Denialism Blog

Author: denialism_bv2x6a

  • Jenny McCarthy is an idiot—and I don't mean that in a nice way

    I have a certain amount of sympathy for any parent dealing with a sick kid. I also don’t think people should “suffer in silence”. If, for instance, your child is injured in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver, speaking out publicly is a public service.

    If, however, you are a fuckwit with no relevant education, and are famous only for being famous, leave the bully pulpit to others. Case in point, Jenny McCarthy. Many of us have been following McCarthy’s descent into woo-filled madness as she has dealt with her son’s growth and development. As a brief primer: Son diagnosed as autistic, McCarthy buys into anti-vaccination movement, re-invents word “indigo”, subjects child to bizarre dietary regimen, proclaims him cured, doesn’t shut up about it.

    OK, now that you’re caught up, the “not shutting up” continues, and this time CNN is giving her all the bandwidth she needs to show off her stupidity.

    I’m not a journalist, and as such, I don’t really have an obligation to, you know, the truth. Still, I’m a physician, and I have a reputation (of sorts) to maintain, so I do my best. I would think that CNN would have journalistic standards somewhat higher than your humble blogger.

    Not so much.

    McCarthy seems upset that the rest of the world isn’t knocking down her door to spread the word of her son’s “cure”.

    We believe what helped Evan recover was starting a gluten-free, casein-free diet, vitamin supplementation, detox of metals, and anti-fungals for yeast overgrowth that plagued his intestines…

    Lot’s of kids believe in Santa with the same level of evidence, but that doesn’t make him real. Where is the evidence?

    (more…)

  • More JPANDS lies—Godwin, here we come


    BPSDB    Once again, JPANDS, the mouthpiece of the AAPS, has it all wrong. The contradictory missions of the AAPS often lead to humorous juxtapositions of policy. For example, the AAPS wants the physician-patient relationship unsullied by any outside forces—unless that relationship pisses them off. They intervened in the Terry Schiavo case, they wish to make abortion illegal—in other words, they’re libertarians, unless AAPS disapproves of your decisions.

    Their big beef in the current article is that there has been a conspiracy to hide the dangers of oral contraceptives and abortion. You see, apparently these cause breast cancer and the NIH doesn’t want you to know. Straight to Godwin:

    The NCI Workshop on Early Reproductive Events is reminiscent of an event that occurred in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler was displeased because “Jewish” science was coming to prominence. The government assembled 10 physicists, including two Nobel laureates, to each write an essay against Einstein’s theory of relativity. The book was published as 100 Essays Against
    Einstein    . Einstein remarked to an inquiring reporter that were they correct, “it would have only taken one.” In a similar way, our government has interfered with the scientific process of conducting studies and relaying the relevant information to the general public.

    Wow. Let me clarify a few things here. First, the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCPs), and breast cancer is muddy to nonexistent. Huge studies have been conducted to try to clarify the issue of exogenous estrogen use and the jury is still out. There are a number of reasons to use both OCPs and HRT, and sometimes reason to avoid them. Most of these reasons have to do with blood clotting disorders rather than cancer.

    Anyway, the one issue that is not unclear is the abortion-breast cancer question. Here is a short list of citations for articles that have shown no link between abortion and breast cancer:

    1. NEJM 1997, 336, 81-5
    2. British Medical Journal 1989, 299, 1430-2
    3. Cancer Causes & Control 1997, 8, 93-108
    4. Lancet 2004, 363, 1007-16
    5. American Journal of Epidemiology 1988, 127, 981-9
    6. British Journal of Cancer 1982, 45, 327-31
    7. American Journal of Epidemiology 1987, 126, 831-41
    8. International Journal of Cancer 1991, 48, 816-20
    9. European Journal of Cancer 1999, 35, 1361-7
    10. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 2005, 59, 283-7
    11. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention 2003, 12, 209-14
    12. American Journal of Epidemiology 1983, 117, 35-45
    13. Epidemiology 2000, 11, 76-80
    14. International Journal of Cancer 2001, 92, 899-905
    15. Cancer Causes & Control 1997, 8, 841-9
    16. International Journal of Cancer 1996, 65, 401-5
    17. British Journal of Cancer 1990, 62, 122-6
    18. International Journal of Cancer 1993, 215-9
    19. Cancer Causes & Control 1995, 6, 75-82
    20. American Journal of Public Health 1999, 89, 1244-7
    21. British Journal of Cancer 1999, 79, 1923-8
    22. Epidemiology 2000, 11, 177-80
    23. Cancer Causes & Control 2000, 11, 777-81
    24. International Journal of Cancer 1998, 76, 182-8

    And here is a list of all the well-done studies showing a clear link:

    (crickets)

    So, why abortion and OCPs? Why not hormone replacement therapy? Why not smoking? Because the radical Cult Christians and quacks that run AAPS hate women. Period. They want to put control of women and their bodies back where it belongs—in the hands of Cult Christian manly men.

    Thankfully, the AAPS is a fringe cult group. But people do listen, and they hear what they want to hear. Shameful, really.

  • Autism cranks going after bloggers

    It’s time to open up a can of Streisand. The author of the autism blog Neurodiversity, along with many other blogs and other online entities, has been subpoenaed to produce what amounts to her entire life to aid in some frivolous autism suit. The only thing they didn’t ask her to do was submit to a speculum exam (don’t get any ideas, bastards!).

    This is truly outrageous. It is a clear attempt by a group of (forgive me, please PP) demented fucking wackaloons to intimidate a humble New Englander who enjoys writing.

    Time to get the word out!

    (Hat tip LizDitz)

    Addendum:

    Orac and others have pointed out that the lawyer involved is the real bad guy here. It’s hard to blame devastated parents, but this Clifford Shoemaker guy should be ashamed of himself.

  • Is that really a disease? Epistemology and crank-ism

    And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man would call every living creature, that was to be the name thereof. (Genesis 2:19)

    Human beings are great organizers. As far back as written history goes, people have named and classified what they observe. In fact, it forms the basis for modern science. Linnaean classification, based on observation of traits, predates modern cladistic and genomic classification of organisms, based on arguably more fundamental characteristics.

    The same is true of human disease. Hippocrates was a great observer of human disease and correctly described many conditions in ways easily recognizable to modern doctors. Today, where we know causes of disease, classification has become more precise. For example, we may divide diseases into those caused by bacteria, viruses, genetic defects, etc. When we don’t know the cause of a disease, we still rely on observation. We have various syndromes such as lupus where we do not know the cause, and must fall back on description. This is especially true of psychiatric diseases, where causes are largely unknown, but identifiable patterns of thought and behavior exist.

    It is of course most desirable to be able to describe a disease and know its cause, but being able to name less “concrete” disorders is also helpful. It allows researchers to identify cases and test interventions. Even though lupus does not have one easily identifiable cause, we can describe it well enough to study treatments, thereby helping design treatments.

    This all leads up to a larger epistemologic question: what is a disease?
    (more…)

  • Open letter to Deirdre Imus

    Dear Deirdre,

    Hi! How are you? I am sooo proud of you. I mean, when I have a serious personality flaw, I usually try to hide it, but you! You are willing to show the WHOLE WORLD how intellectually challenged you are (that means “stupid” LOL).

    Your recent article in the Huffington Post was so brave. Seriously, it’s pretty clear to insiders that there are problems at the CDC. But to get it so wrong took real guts.

    For example:

    These criticisms have been voiced for several decades. An example of how the agency can design a study so that it fails to link disease and pollution can be found in the way the CDC investigated the cancer clusters in Fallon, Nevada and Sierra Vista, Arizona…

    The CDC itself admits the agency repeatedly fails to identify, or connect, environmental chemicals to these clusters. Quoting from the CDC website, “From 1961 to 1982, CDC investigated 108 reported cancer clusters in 29 states and 5 foreign countries…The studies were begun in hopes of identifying a viral cause of cancer clusters. During these investigations, however no clear cause was determined for any of the reported clusters.”

    I love it! A failure to find the result Deirdre wants equals failure! The grandiosity—it’s so…Paris Hilton!

    But you saved your real courage for influenza. You showed the whole world that it doesn’t take brains or research to have an opinion. I mean, a conspiracy to inflate flu death statistics to raise money! Brilliant! OK, maybe it’s not original, but at least it’s, um…well, let’s see.

    I’ll quote you so I get it right:

    (more…)

  • The message and the messenger

    ResearchBlogging.orgI’m not sure what to make of this. An article in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports some potentially good news for type II diabetics. Type II diabetes has been extensively studied (detailed post to follow), and one area of difficulty has been reducing the incidence of macrovascular disease (heart attack and stroke, primarily). Treating blood pressure and cholesterol aggressively in diabetics helps, but controlling blood sugars closely doesn’t seem to help with these particular sequelae of diabetes.

    Further complicating the picture was some data released last year about rosigitizone (Avandia), an oral diabetic drug. This showed possible increased cardiac mortality with the use of this medication, although the numbers weren’t too convincing.

    So, the new article reports on pioglitizone (Actos), a close relative of Avandia. The data seem to indicate that, versus another type of oral diabetes medication, Actos reduced incidence of death, heart attack, and stroke.

    Hmmm. Dr. Steve Nissen, who has always been out front in denouncing potentially dangerous drugs was a lead author on this study. He was also very noisy about the harm of Avandia.

    It just seems like an odd coincidence that he should be out front decrying the (possible) harm of one drug, and then be the lead author of a study supporting the use of its main competitor. Nissen has an excellent reputation, so nefarious motives are probably out. But it does show that who says something can be almost as important as what is said.

    Nissen, S.E., Nicholls, S.J., Wolski, K., Nesto, R., Kupfer, S., Perez, A., Jure, H., De Larochelliere, R., Staniloae, C.S., Mavromatis, K., Saw, J., Hu, B., Lincoff, A.M., Tuzcu, E.M. (2008). Comparison of Pioglitazone vs Glimepiride on Progression of Coronary Atherosclerosis in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: The PERISCOPE Randomized Controlled Trial. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 299(13), 1561-1573. DOI: 10.1001/jama.299.13.1561

  • Tangled Bank #102

    It’s now up at Further Thoughts…go and read!

  • Why denialists ultimately fail

    Scientologists apparently have the answers to mental illness. HIV denialists swear that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. But very few people are actually buying it—enough to cause trouble, surely, but the Tom Cruises and Peter Deusbergs of the world aren’t winning any Nobel Prizes. Why not?

    Because they offer nothing. HIV researchers and clinicians have emptied out the AIDS wards, but the denialists have done nothing. Psychiatrists (and yes, their medications) have helped people lead normal lives. Scientologists have done, well, nothing but sue critics.

    The difference between the scientific approach to medicine and the denialist approach is that one offers solutions, while the other does the intellectual equivalent of leaving a flaming bag of poo on the front porch.

    Remember this—denialists offer no solutions, only conflict.

  • A challenge for Scientologists

    Based on earlier posts, it’s pretty clear that I feel that Scientology is a dangerous and bizarre cult. The responses to the post included some apologetics for the CoS and their stance on psychiatry.

    As is typical in these situations, the commenters simply refused to answer any substantive questions and fell back on such arguments as “prove that Scientology believes X”, when of course all we have to work with are leaked documents, as the “church” is quite secretive.

    So here is my challenge:

    Scientologists—please debunk my false beliefs about your religion. Since you abhor psychiatry, please explain the theories behind your treatment of mental illness.

    I’ll wait….

  • JPANDS and HIV denialsim

    This entry needed migrating from the old blog. Thank you for your indulgence. –PalMD


    BPSDB    JPANDS, the mouthpiece of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, is a well-known organ or quackery, so it seemed like a good idea to see what they’ve been up to lately. It’s not good. The most recent issue publishes a screed on HIV denial that is so blindingly stupid, I developed a cluster headache on reading it. Now that I’ve recovered, let’s risk a closer look. (more…)