Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Smoke and mirrors—cult medicine's attack on science

    I generally enjoy Bill Maher. I mean, he seems like an ass, but I enjoy his shows—except when he talks about medicine. As any regular viewer knows, he regularly spouts the usual denialist canards about medicine. This week, he was interviewing Senator Arlen Specter, who, among other accomplishments, has survived Hodgkin’s Disease, a form of blood cancer. Maher had the bad taste to ask him is he was disgusted that health care is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Had he said this to me, I would likely have responded, “Look, asshole, the American health care system just saved my fucking life!”

    This is of the more popular canards propagated by cult medicine leaders and their followers. According to the wackos, modern medical care kills and injures more people than, well, just about anything. Joe Mercola and Gary Null have very long articles on their websites bemoaning the dangers of medicine versus the safety of woo. They love to make statements like, “It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.”

    What does this all mean? Should we, as the cultists suggest, abandon medicine for the cults of homeopathy, naturopathy, and chiropractic?

    Probably not. Why do I say that? Because I’m a paid shill for the Big Pharm/AMA/FDA juggernaut? Well, no. Abandoning modern medicine for the cultists doesn’t make sense, either medically or statistically.

    When cultists cite their terror statistics they leave out a few important facts. There is no doubt that medical errors, and even medical therapy without errors, can harm. No one would argue otherwise. The flip side is, it also helps—a lot. For example, one of the statistics often cited from the Institute of Medicine’s landmark study on medical error is that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths yearly in the U.S. may be due to medical errors. Now, to put that in perspective, advances in the treatment of coronary artery disease reduced the number of deaths by over 340,000 in 2000 alone. And that’s just one disease. Of course there are risks to modern medicine—it’s active treatment, not placebo, so it can be expected to hurt some people. But it helps far more. Returning to the era of roots and berries is not likely to improve quality of life or longevity. Reducing medical errors is important, and is an active field of research. The solution to medical errors isn’t voodoo, it’s science. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

  • 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 history of denialism – Part III – Global Warming Denialism

    Part III of our discussion of the history of denialist movements is on one that should tie things together and one I hope some of my fellow sciencebloggers will realize speaks to the necessity of challenging denialists on every front.

    My work in this instance is made extremely easy as Naomi Oreskes has done it all for me. Please watch her discussion on the history of global warming denialism, it takes a bit of time, but it is dead on and is one of the best discussions of the methods and strategy of denialism (not to mention free-market fundamentalism) I have seen to date.

    For those of you who follow this site and recent postings you will see some consistent themes:

    1) Well-funded think tanks are capable of derailing a scientific consensus, in this case the consensus on global warming which has existed for nearly 3 decades.
    2) The goal of denialists is not to propose an alternative theory that is explanatory and useful, but to create controversy and doubt where it does not exist.
    3) These attempts are highly effective despite a complete absence of controversy in the scientific literature. Attacks in the lay press are more than sufficient to create a false debate using an appeal for parity or balanced presentation of ideas.
    4) The same strategies used by the tobacco companies to deny the link between cancer and tobacco smoke, and in fact, some of the exact same actors are present in both cases.

    These efforts must not be ignored. The methods of denialists must be exposed and attacked, and the sources of denialism must be discredited.

    Part II – tobacco
    Part I – the ancients