Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Ayurvedics Are Secretly Using Pb®

    Friends, many of you know the miraculous benefits of Hoofnagle Brand All-Natural Pb®. Well, I am writing to tell you that today I am filing a suit against a wide range of ayurvedic herbal supplements providers for using the active ingredient of Pb® and its sister product, As33® without licensing it from me.

    The New York Times reported yesterday on this widespread deception of consumers. You see, in order to make ayurvedic medicine appear efficacious, a large number of supplement providers are secretly including Pb® and As33® in their scammy supplement products:

    A report in the Aug. 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly 21 percent of 193 ayurvedic herbal supplements bought online, produced in both India and the United States, contained lead, mercury or arsenic.

    As you can see, the ayurvedic practitioners are riding off the all-natural, pure, elemental aspects of Pb®. I’m not going to allow this to continue, and you shouldn’t either–continue to buy your Pb® and As33® directly from Hoofnagle!

  • What makes these quacks different from all other quacks?

    These quacks are in a bit of trouble. The FTC and FDA have decided that they are sick of bogus cancer cures, and have sued a handful of companies.

    WHAT THE HELL TOOK THEM SO LONG?

    And more important, are they going to go after more snake oil salesmen? There is nothing special about the companies the FTC is going after. They make the usual bogus claims—“our particular magic herbs detoxify, boost immunity, and cure cancer.”

    Hopefully, ChrisH will weigh in on some of the legal issues, but one of the interesting facets of these cases bears directly on the Quack Miranda Warning. According to ABC News:

    In a May 27, 2008, the FDA acknowledged that Spohn had “attempted to disclaim” some of the statements about products sold by the company, Herbs for Cancer.

    The FDA noted that the site contained the message: “Disclaimer: The FTC and FDA require us to place this disclaimer here, please read. Herbs for cancer are not intended to cure, treat, or diagnose your illness.”

    In the letter, the FDA told Spohn, “However, untrue or misleading information in one part of your site will not be mitigated by inclusion of such a “disclaimer.’”

    Wow. I have regularly complained that snake oil salesmen are allowed to operate unmolested by simply giving the completely disingenuous disclaimer. Is this a sign that the Quack Miranda Warning may someday lose it’s magical power of protection?

    Another fun piece of the FTC complaint is “the letter”—the FTC is requiring the cancer herb quack to send “an exact copy” of a letter to all customers:
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  • Everyday, every day

    I love language, which I suppose is as good a reason as any for being a writer. I’m also terribly critical—I hate misuse of language, especially my own. I’m not talking about silly grammatical rules that real speech renders moot. I’m talking about the misuse of words that actually changes meaning.

    Every day I give bad news. I hate it. For me, it’s an everyday thing—not routine, exactly, and not rote, but profoundly normal. For patients, it’s the furthest thing from normal. Bad news doesn’t come every day. No matter how everyday it is to me, my words can deliver the worst news of a person’s life.

    Part of delivering bad news is helping guide people’s reactions. I can’t stop someone from being sad or angry, but I have to help them stay on course. If they find the news so devastating that they can’t function, the battle is lost. Thankfully, I have examples of survival to share with my patients.

    Several years ago, I diagnosed an acquaintance with metastatic lung cancer. It really was a horrid diagnosis, and most people with her diagnosis die—quickly. She didn’t (but she’s gone now, a story for another time, perhaps).

    One day, after her life had change completely, I ran into her in the hospital on her way to chemo. We sat in the lobby and chatted.
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  • I Can Haz Less Poison in My Drugs?

    The Journal reports this morning that:

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned imports of more than 30 generic drugs made by India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., citing concerns about the safety of the company’s production practices.

    The ban affects low-cost versions of popular medicines such as the anticholesterol drug Zocor; Acyclovir, which treats herpes; the heartburn pill Zantac; and AIDS drugs. Consumers shouldn’t be affected by a medicine shortage because the drugs can be supplied by other generics makers, the agency said.

    The agency said it acted because of concerns about the “seriousness and extent” of violations of manufacturing standards at two Ranbaxy plants in India. The agency said it hasn’t found safety problems in drugs in the U.S.

    There are a number of aspects of this story that are scary. First, I’m involved peripherally in the issues surrounding offshoring personal data to countries like India. The complexities of that should be reserved for another post, but a basic problem involves supervision and accountability. How can you tell that data has been misused or stolen? The complexities must be more severe in ensuring that drug makers have sound practices. I would imagine that US regulators cannot detect most violations of the rules.

    Second, for our government to take action against a drug maker means that things were really screwed up. And if things were really screwed up, why should we believe that Ranbaxy-made drugs in the US are unaffected?

    More broadly, is there any way for consumers to ensure that their generic or branded drugs are made in the US? I read every day about the Chinese Poison Train (next stop, you), and would like to limit my exposure to leaded or otherwise tainted foreign products.

    Here is the FDA’s release on the Ranbaxy action, and the list of affected drugs.

  • The Miracle that Failed

    Yesterday, I posted about the rabid, pro-free-market rhetoric present in Washington, DC over the past decade. When Congress had the opportunity to consider privacy laws that would limit marketing of financial products, it chose to side with bank lobbyists, who invoked the idea of the “miracle of instant credit.” Basically, they argued that any incursion on the free market would harm credit markets. They promised that this miracle would lower credit prices, make credit more convenient, and manage the risk involved in lending. Congress sided with the banks. As a result, many financial products were marketed to people who didn’t deserve mortgages. And now you’re paying for it. You’ll soon be paying their auto loans and credit card bills too.

    To get a flavor for the atmosphere, check out this Congressional testimony by John Dugan. It was delivered on behalf of the Financial Services Coordinating Council, American Bankers Association, and the American Insurance Association. Dugan was listing the various benefits of having a federal standard for information sharing, unfettered by state privacy laws:

    Better risk management. Risk management is a crucial factor in every decision that a financial institution makes, including determining what types of products and services to offer. Undercutting this decision-making process has important implications. For example, if a lender cannot depend on credit files that are truly complete, loans may not be extended or may become more expensive in order to account for the higher level of risk. Moreover, Cate and Staten find that robust, national credit reporting has made it possible for more people to have access to more credit without significant increases in defaults.

    Oops. That risk management apparently wasn’t good enough. So, you didn’t get privacy protections or good risk management. And who’s John Dugan, you ask? Well, he’s now one of the principal regulators of banks–he is the Comptroller of the Currency and a director of the FDIC.

  • Cancer 101

    Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., and at any moment directly affects almost 4% of the population, or about 10.8 million Americans. A diagnosis of cancer can be one of the most frightening moments in someone’s life, and yet most people understand little about the disease. I hear the same questions about cancer over and over again, so it’s well past time to give a bit of an explanation of this set of diseases.
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  • [Updated] Free Markets and the Credit Crisis Freefall

    [Update: The WSJ reports that you’re now bailing out AIG.]

    For years working in Washington, I listened to libertarian tripe about how privacy law would prevent free markets from operating, and how banks should be able to freely trade personal information to assign risk and create new credit products. The “Miracle of Instant Credit” was invoked as a positive force that would allow banks to move smartly into the subprime market and make more Americans homeowners. They won that battle with the 2003 passage of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, which largely superseded state law attempts to rein in the trade of personal information in the financial context. Prior to this, banks also lobbied to remove barriers in place (but weakened) since the 1930s that limited joint ownership of banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies. Allowing these mergers caused banks to become behemoths that could not be beaten because of their political power.

    Frustration with the ideology of the free market radicals, and their blind faith in the market solving problems (if it didn’t solve a problem, the market wasn’t free enough, or the problem wasn’t actually a problem) motivated me to write the Denialist Deck of Cards. These same guys totally missed the housing blowup, or somehow thought they could manage the risk of it. Do you remember the news articles written about mortgages granted to people who didn’t even need to prove their income? Or the huge housing projects being built farther and farther into nowhere?

    Well, it’s all coming down on us now. It’s not just the subprime area where the miracle of instant credit fueled the crisis. Prime mortgages, auto loans, and soon, credit card debt will all be in trouble. Meanwhile, the bankers made tons of money and many were just in denial about the crisis. As Credit Slips points out, Lehman Brothers paid out $5.7 BILLION in bonuses in December 2007, overall, compensation was up 9.5% for the year!

    I’m happy that the feds taxpayers didn’t bail out Lehman. But other firms are going to fail, and you’re going to be left holding the bag for their denialism and their banal greed. Ultimately, the bailouts may be a good economic decision. But a few years from now when things have changed, let us remember how these people totally abandoned the rhetoric of personal responsibility, free markets, etc, when it was their interests on the line.

  • A very confused pharmacist

    I’ve written often about the ethics of doctors and pharmacists imposing their own morals on their patients and customers. Our Sb pharmacologist has as well. And even though all of our legitimate professional organizations recognize this line, Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services has jumped into the ring to join a fight that should never have started. And just to demonstrate how single-mindedly idiotic an evangelical (small “e”) mindset can be when applied to medicine, PZ Myers, uber-atheist, received an interesting solicitation (please, don’t quote-mine that).

    To remind you of the issue at hand, there are a number of doctors and pharmacists out there who think that their own religious beliefs should trump the standards of good medical care and the needs of their patients. This is why I write of “evangelism”: professionals who are trying to teach the Good Word (any Good Word) to their patients have stepped very far over an ethical line.
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  • A Vote for Science

    The ScienceBlogs Command Center has decided to fire up a group blog for election season. It’s called A Vote for Science, and several Sb’ers and others will be writing about the candidates and science policy (including yours truly).

    If your a political junkie and a science geek, cruise on over and check it out.

  • Medical professionalism, or WE ARE YOUR GODS, BOW BEFORE US

    One of our sciblings, Dr. Signout, is learning the ropes as she struggles (and presumably excels) through her medical residency. As her writing has picked back up, she has brought up some important questions about medical education and medical professionalism. I’m a little further along in my career than she, and I have some thoughts that may flesh out her experiences, and shed some light on the medical profession as a whole.

    Her latest posts brought up two particularly important issues, one about how doctors are treated “without the white coat” and the other on what it means to put others’ needs before one’s own. These, it turns out, are connected.

    Even when we shed the white coat, we’re still doctors. If we are out to dinner, and we see someone in distress, we respond. If a family member or friend has a problem, they call us up, day or night. Being a doctor is uniquely tied into personal identity. This makes certain situations particularly awkward—being a patient in your own hospital is discomfiting to say the least, and visiting a loved one is often no better.
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