Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • The Ghost of Henry Ford I

    Given Ford’s early track record, this story out of California is rather disturbing. (Via PZ). A SoCal Ford dealership is using prejudice against non-Christians as a prominent selling point for their business.

    Henry Ford I was a well-known antisemite, and published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his personal rag, the Dearborn Independent. During the pre-war/depression era, Detroit hosted a number of prominent isolationists and antisemites, including Ford and Father Coughlin.

    But, if you know your market, intolerance sells, and hard times sometimes bring out the worst in people. Still, it’s rather sad to see my hometown company doing nothing to rein in their renegade dealership. Unless of course, they approve of the marketing tactic of hate and prejudice. Hey, I’m sure they can afford to lose a few customers. The U.S. auto industry is doing well enough to alienate anyone they please. They are an unstoppable juggernaut, dominating the world auto market. I think.

  • Denialist award—Andrew Schlafly, Esq.

    I am giving out a previously non-existent award today to a truly great denialist. Andrew Schlafly, spawn of anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and some long-forgotten sperm-donor (ironic, eh?), was not content just being the legal counsel to the uber-crank Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. No, he had to take it one step further, and clog our precious intertubes with Conservaepedia, a repository of all things stupid. In fact, there is so much stupid there, an entire wiki is devoted to documenting it. I was newly enraged when a commenter over at the “blogging on peer-reviewed research” site tried to use this pile of electronic dreck as a legitimate reference.

    For those of you who might have forgotten, Conservaepedia hit teh ‘tubes a little over a year ago, with a mission to counter the horrid liberal bias at Wikipedia. Well, no one is going to accuse Conservapaedia of liberal bias. In fact, the entire site is essentially a demented play book for reactionary Christian cults and denialists.

    I don’t want to take you too far through the looking glass, but here are some fun examples of reactionary lunacy for you.

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  • Skeptic's Circle Number 87 is up

    It’s a must read over at action skeptics. Dirty limerick skepticism!

    Of note, Orac on quackademic medicine, and Greta Christina on the science of sexuality.

  • When a patient asks for the unusual

    Here’s the conundrum:
    Let’s say your patient’s insurance has decided that they will pay for 12 sessions of reiki for, say, back pain. All that the patient needs to have this therapy approved and paid for is their primary care doctor’s referral.

    Let’s say that doctor has examined the evidence, and found reiki to be unsupported for any use. You explain to the patient the correct evaluation and treatment of low back pain, and explain that you will not be making the referral.

    The patient is angry. She doesn’t want to have to pay for the treatment out of pocket.

    What would you do?

    Now let’s say you have a patient with cancer. It’s incurable, but the patient is receiving several standard and experimental treatments to prolong his survival. Otherwise, same scenario. Now what?

  • Science ain't over 'til, um…well, never!

    Over at sciencebasedmedicine.com, Mark Crislip has a great post on the history of medical advances. First, go read it. WAIT! Don’t forget to come back and read the rest of my post! OK, you can go now.
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  • Another legal tactic from the anti-vaxers

    Here’s an interesting one for ya. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting on a vaccine injury case filed by an Atlanta couple. The story is familiar and sad—a child starts off as a normal baby, and eventually develops a devastating neurologic illness. Based on the fact that symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders happen to show up around the same time as vaccines are given, the family blames the vaccines.

    Here’s the saga:

    The Ferrari’s decided to sue. They brought suit against:

    […]nine vaccine manufacturers, eight manufacturers of thimerosal and one manufacturer of a treatment used for mothers when their blood types are incompatible with their fetuses. The Ferraris also sued Georgia Power, claiming that mercury emissions from its power plants also injured their son.

    In 2005, a state court judge rightly dismissed the suit against the vaccine manufacturers, given that the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program specifically protects manufacturers. The Appellate Court, based on a precedent regarding a technical issue, disagreed, and now the case is in the Georgia Supreme Court.

    The primary issue, is, I believe, whether the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986 preempts state laws. This act was passed specifically because lawsuits, frivolous and otherwise, were causing the cost of vaccines to soar, and creating a potential public health crisis. The suit allows for compensation of injured parties outside the court system (and is much more lenient than the usual courts, as the Hanah Poling case showed). It would seem that the Ferrari’s suit is just the type of thing the law was designed to stop.

    According to the AJC:

    Bridgers, the Ferraris’ lawyer, told the justices that courts should review vaccine challenges on a case-by-case basis, not bar them completely. Otherwise, complaints must be brought in Washington before the U.S. Court of Claims where there are restrictions on the amount of awards, he said.

    “Did Congress really intend to create an opt-out provision that allows the child to be thrown out of court?” Bridgers asked the justices. “I think not.”

    Well, apparently Congress intended exactly that, but I guess we’ll have to wait to see what the courts say.

  • A hint of sanity from McCain

    John McCain has succumbed to sanity—or perhaps to political expediency. Either way, he has finally rejected the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee. If you’ll recall, Hagee is one of those wacko cult leaders on the right-hand side of the Evangelical movement (I hope). He hates Catholics, and thinks Jews are just great! (That is, if you think “great” means “responsible for their own near-extermination”, and “founding Israel so that they can hasten the return of Christ and be sucked into Hell at a later date.”)

    I suppose I don’t really care what McCain’s motivation was for dumping Hagee—I’m just glad he did.

  • Happy blogiversary to me!

    I almost forgot! It’s my blogiversary! On May 21st of 2007, I opened my WordPress blog after keeping a few notes on Blogger, which I didn’t love. I started out blogging about the abomination that is Conservapedia, added my own medical musings that I had collected over the years, and then branched out into the world of medical science, skepticism, and whatever else I wanted to do. In the 10 months I was at WordPress, I published 332 posts. In my first full month online, I had 381 visits. In August of 2007, I had almost 22,000 page views.

    In March of this year, the Hoofnagle brothers invited me to come over to denialism blog here at ScienceBlogs, and the opportunity to work with other dedicated writers has been terrific.

    I love to write, and the blogsphere has been very good to me. Thanks for visiting.

  • Connecticut Attorney General practicing medicine without a license

    A rather opinionated reader made me aware of a disturbing issue. In Connecticut–the state whose city of Lyme gave the name to the tick-borne disease–the Attorney General decided that the nation’s foremost infectious disease experts have their heads up their arses. Apparently responding to pressure from questionable advocacy groups, the AG launched an “investigation” into the Infectious Disease Society of America’s Lyme disease treatment guidelines. The excuse for the investigation was alleged anti-trust violations.

    Let’s step back a little. As discussed yesterday, there is some controversy surrounding so-called “chronic Lyme disease”. The overwhelming majority of experts agree that there is no role for long-term antibiotics. There has been no evidence to support either the diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease (as it is used by advocacy groups and some physicians) or the use of expensive and dangerous therapies to treat it. The guidelines on treatment of infectious diseases issued by the ISDA are just that—guidelines. Physicians are not required to follow these guidelines, but insurance companies often use them to determine what therapies they will pay for. These guidelines are, however quite influential, as we physicians count on our specialist colleagues to help sort out these difficult issues.

    The CT AG decided that these guidelines were tainted by anti-trust violations. I’m not sure how evidence-based guidelines put together by a diverse group of experts can violate anti-trust laws, which were designed to prevent corporate monopolies, but the AG tried to pull it off.

    More below the fold—>
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  • Fake diseases, part deux–chronic Lyme disease

    New diseases are pretty rare these days. It used to be that a good observer could travel to the great unknown and acquire/discribe scads of new (to them) diseases. In the interconnected world of the present, “new” diseases spread rather quickly, and become old. When I was a young attending physician, I had heard of West Nile Fever from small chapters in medical school books. When I took over an inpatient medical service in the summer of 2002, I was taking care of several patients with the disease. It was new to me, but hardly new. Sometimes I wonder if people miss the great days of disease discovery, and try to make up for it by inventing their own diseases.

    Here at denialism blog we’ve occassionally written about “fake diseases”, that is, diseases that are not recognized by science-based medice, have no clear definitions, and attract quackery. One of these diseases is Morgellons syndrome, an ill-defined malady recognized by no one other than patient advocacy groups and their stooges. Another plays on a real disease, but tries to stretch that disease’s definition to include just about any symptom you could imagine.
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