Denialism Blog

Author: denialism_bv2x6a

  • As goes Vermont…

    I hadn’t realized that Vermont has passed a law requiring insurers to cover naturopathic care.

    We’ve covered extensively the quackery that is naturopathy, but really, if a patient chooses to see a quack, it’s their business. But with health care costs soaring, requiring insurers to pay for voodoo is a rather bad idea. Already, many plans cover chiropractic, another unproven treatment. Throwing more health care dollars at more unproved and disproved treatments will help no one (except the quacks who have boat payments to make).

    There are many causes of high costs of health care: we hate the idea of rationing, so many American cities have more MRIs than the whole country of Canada; we incentivize doctors and others to order tests and treatments that may or may not be necessary; we inadequately reimburse preventative care. The list goes on.

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  • More Kirby nonsense

    Just a quick note—check out Ames’s live blogging of David Kirby’s appearance in New York. The talk contains some of the usual gems, and also a few surprises, such as (if reported correctly) that homosexuals are sick but can’t admit it.

  • Canada rocks!

    I’ve just returned from one of the world’s great treasures, Algonquin Provincial Park, in Ontario, Canada. I have very little skepticism to offer—sure, I could talk about Park management, the Master Plan, logging, First Nations, etc. but then I’d lose an opportunity to share some of the natural beauty and some of the medical highlights.

    The Park is about the size of Connecticut and occupies a huge chunk of Ontario as it bends around Lake Huron. (Remember that Ontario’s southernmost leg is rather far south, with the city of Windsor being directly south of Detroit. It widens toward the northeast, and then opens up north and westward, forming a sort of reverse “c” around Michigan.)

    Now, for my fellow Americans, let me just reiterate: Canada is a country, not a state. Not only that, but their dollar is now worth about the same as ours, although many of those dollars come in odd coins called “loonies” and “twonies”. They are also fond of some odd foods, such as poutine (not to be confused with “poutaine“), a dish which ruins perfectly good french fries by covering them with cheese curds and gravy.
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  • 2nd Amendment Right to the Poop Gun?

    I wonder whether the Heller decision is broad enough to give me an individual right to own a poop gun, AKA, the “Brown Note.”

  • We Can Haz HandCannon!

    Mark, I find your post on DC v. Heller lacking in enthusiasm. It is not often that our Supreme Court finds a new constitutional right (except when big business wants more rights). We should celebrate this, thing–the Second Amendment. It must be important, right, since it becomes before the Third and Fourth!

    We should exercise it too. I’m a fan of the old school Colt 45 Auto:

    What handcannon are you going to buy?

  • NNDB Map of the Discovery Institute

    This is fun. Someone’s created a new NNDB mapper on the Discovery Institute. It’s called Theocracy Now!

  • How to Become a Cult Leader

    The hat tip has to go to that self-love-fest, BoingBoing…nevertheless, this is a masterpiece.

  • Ham, Get on Message!

    Jon Hurdle reports in today’s Times on nine Philadelphia-based institutions that are planning a “Year of Evolution” program for February 2009, to celebrate Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species.

    Check out the comments of Ken Ham, which I think are totally off message:

    Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum, said he expected to see more pro-evolution events as the Darwin anniversary approaches. Mr. Ham said that in response his museum was planning its own exhibits on the origins of life.

    “The culture war is definitely heating up,” he said.

    Mr. Ham, who also leads Answers in Genesis, a nonprofit group promoting a literal interpretation of the biblical creation story, defined the clash of ideas as “Christianity versus the relative morality of secular humanism” and said they were “two fundamentally different worldviews.”

    He rejected the possibility that Christians could believe in evolution. “If you take Genesis as literal history, then of course the two are exclusive,” he said. “Christians who believe in evolution are being inconsistent.”

    This is about the scientific case for creationism, right? So, why is Ham talking about the culture war? Don’t his comments basically support the idea that teaching creationism’s flavor of the week amounts to feeding the Christianity side of the “culture war?”

    Ham needs to hire me. He should have said: “Intelligent Design does a better job explaining the fundamentals of how life first appeared on Earth and how a creator could have fashioned all the species in such a way that allowed microevolution to flourish. The Creationism Museum assembles the scientific evidence and philosophical evidence, much of which derives from liturgical sources, to make the case for Intelligent Design. The Evolutionists have to coordinate this event, because they are threatened by the Kuhnian revolution now underway that increasingly supports the maxims of Intelligent Design.”

    I will go shower now.

  • I'm going to hide in Canada…

    …but I’m pretty sure Jimmy knows his way around there.

    HT Archeaoporn, Cectic

  • Watch as Pfizer desperately clings to a patent…

    …instead of focusing on innovation. I’ve written about Pfizer and Lipitor a few times in the last year. Now, Pfizer has found a way to extend its patent on Lipitor, a very profitable drug used in the management of heart disease and high cholesterol.

    Lipitor’s a great drug. It treats high cholesterol very effectively, and is effective as both primary and secondary prevention for cardiovascular disease (there is much more to the story, but that’s it in a nutshell). It’s also costs about $120.00 for a month of therapy, and therapy is usually life-long.

    In contrast, simvastatin, a generic drug, is also effective for primary and secondary prevention (once again, it’s a bit more complicated than that) but is generic and costs between $2.00 and $20.00 per month of therapy.

    Not all statins are created equal. Some have better data in primary or secondary prevention, in coronary artery plaque regression, in reduction of mortality, stroke prevention, side-effect profile…you get the idea.

    What we do know is that statins save lives, and cheap statins probably save lives just as well as expensive ones.

    Pfizer suffered a big setback last year. A trial of a new type of cholesterol medication failed badly (link to my old blog above). Drug development is risky business. But clinging to an old drug by squeezing more time out of a patent is doomed to fail. Insurance companies put a lot of pressure on doctors and patients to prescribe generic alternatives where appropriate, and in the era of high deductibles, patients want the cheaper drug.

    Hopefully, companies like Pfizer will invest more resources in drug discovery and development, and let the market do away with it’s enormous Lipitor profits. After all, if you can keep a patent forever, what use is looking for new drugs?

    Definitions:

    Primary prevention: preventing a first incident (first heart attack, stroke, etc.)

    Secondary prevention    : preventing further events in established disease (subsequent heart attacks, strokes, etc.)