Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • God in the exam room

    My profession does not allow me the luxury of suffering fools, but neither does it allow me the luxury of always being blunt in my beliefs.

    Readers may have noticed a slight tendency toward snarkiness, especially when dealing with woo. I refuse to pull punches when it comes to people peddling quackery. Religion is different.

    In my work, my religious beliefs (or lack of them) are irrelevant, and I don’t intend to “confess” to either belief or non-belief to my patients. Being a physician is not the same as being an academic scientist. As a bench scientist, your cell cultures don’t really care who you are—not so with patients. Patients are acutely interested in their doctors–their marital status, if they have kids, where they grew up. I spend quite a bit of time just chatting with my patients. Mrs. S. always likes to see the latest pictures of my daughter, and I oblige her.

    Not that I don’t enjoy showing off my kid, but there is a greater purpose to these activities. Patients who know you and like you are more likely to trust you and follow your advice. That’s why I usually go along with whatever my patients say regarding religion. That’s not a cop-out, it’s real medicine.

    People are different from primers and test tubes. They require comfort and trust. I never mock (or even contradict) their religious beliefs (I save that for cafe arguments). Telling a cancer patient that God is a fairy tale is not only wrong, it’s cruel.

    Patients believe, and nothing a doctor says is going to change that. Yes, sometimes these beliefs get in the way of good medical care, but more often they are benign, strongly attached to the patient, and their removal would cause more harm than good. Primum non nocere.

    There are lots of things in this world that I don’t believe in—fairies, God, good Chinese food in the Midwest—but my patients can believe whatever helps them get by (except the Chinese food thing). It’s my job to heal, not evangelize.

    That being said, whenever my patients show me the latest bottle of get-well potion they’ve purchased, I gently explain why it won’t do them much good. I won’t take God away from a patient, but I’ll happily separate them from Gary Null.

  • Out, pesky engram!

    I think I made clear that Scientology is a wacked-out cult. The primary concern from my perspective as a doctor is their denialist position on psychiatric illness.

    Given the toll mental illness takes on society, and the amount of influence exerted by Scientology, everyone should be shouting from the rooftops (in a perfectly calm and sane way), “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

    The Church of Scientology has a little friend called the “Citizens Commission on Human Rights“. It’s motto is “investigating and exposing psychiatric human rights abuse”. Who is this “commission” and what is their beef?

    A good place to start is on their info page. Hardly a paragraph goes by without a falsehood or logical fallacy.

    (more…)

  • You say pranic, I say panic–let's call the whole thing off

    I was thinking about poor Orac and his death crud, so I thought I’d do a little research for him.

    I did a quick google search for holistic healing (call a doctor? Are you kidding?) and immediately found my answer–Pranic Healing.

    First, I gotta tell you, it’s a deal–a steal, really–because you get knowledge, and no one can take that away from you. I mean, penicillin, you take it, you’re cured, and that’s it–nothing left, just “wham bam thank you ma’am”.

    The Level One class is under $400.00. Compared to the expense of a doctors visit (about $80.00), and some online research from reputable medical sites (free), it’s, well–I’m crying, really.

    Let’s look at the course description. Starting at the bottom:

    This course is intended for Energy Healers, Physicians, Nurses, Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Massage Therapists, or anyone interested in a safe and powerful energetic healing system.

    Basically, anyone can take the class, as long as they are interested in a “safe and powerful energetic healing system.” What in the world?

    Reduce Stress — Support Physical and Emotional Healing
    The Pranic Healing Level 1 class teaches energetic scanning to balance the chakra system for healing simple and complex illnesses. A person’s energy field holds the template for the physical body. When the chakras in the energy field are balanced, the physical body is healthy.

    MCKS Pranic Healing is taught directly and succinctly so that anyone, with or without energy training, or previous knowledge of energy healing can effect and support healing for oneself and for others.

    Sweeping and energizing are taught as powerful healing techniques.

    Energies are taught to be directed with intention.

    Protocols are provided for healing many specific ailments from simple headaches to chronic disorders.

    Learn distance healing and energetic hygiene.

    Lovely, just lovely. Sounds so–weird.

    Pranic Healing is an advanced form of energy medicine based on energy centers lying along the major acupuncture meridians.

    So, to summarize, this is a “healing modality” based on ayurvedic ideas (chakras), and acupuncture meridians. Both ideas are complete bullshit. Recent studies have invalidated the already bizarre theory of acupuncture meridians, and ayurvedic medicine is just another untested, unproven “alternative” to real medicine.

    So, should you take a class in Pranic Medicine? It seems obvious from where I sit, and I hope you feel a little closer to the answer.

  • Just another cult

    My pager went off at about 7 p.m. I had already finished rounding at the hospital, gone home, showered off the day, and sat down with a cup of tea. It was my senior resident. We had admitted a psychotic young woman to the hospital, and her parents were trying to sign her out against medical advice.

    The young woman had been acting more and more strangely over the past several months. (more…)

  • New Skeptics' Circle is Up

    …at Mike’s Rant, and quote-mining is the rule of the day…don’t miss it!

  • Speaking out against quacks

    In light of recent discussions in this corner of teh intertubes, I’ve been thinking about anti-quackery writing. To what extent does our debunking actually feed the ducks?

    Many of us don’t link to crank sites—that makes sense, since click-throughs probably put money in their pockets.

    But speaking out works. Most people don’t know medicine. It’s a profession that takes years to learn. People count on information from experts, and most doctors are too busy working to put together slick ads for their services (that plus the whole ethics thing). That leaves the field wide-open to any idiot who wants to take your money.

    The world is filled with people who believe, or are at risk of believing, in “other ways of knowing“, eschewing science for cult medicine. There are as many types of cult medicine as there are hucksters—there is only one kind of science-based medicine, and science is really the only appropriate way to approach healing. Science, of course, does not exclude compassion and empathy. The doctor-patient relationship is critical to applying science to medicine.

    But quacks are crooks, plain and simple. The HIV denialists, anti-vaccine wackos, and homeopaths want you to join their cults and give them your money.

    Many people are looking for good information on health. They may be easily sucked in by crooks, but we can get them back. That doesn’t mean we have to go easy on the like of Joe Mercola and Gary Null. We need to call them out for being the immoral, unethical, evil swindlers that they are.

  • In bizarre religions ritual, cult members murder their child

    Hat-tip to PZ for shining some light onto local idiocy. The basic story is an old one—family kills kid by refusing medical care for a curable condition. In this case, it’s a child with type I diabetes. This hits close to home for two reasons: I’m an internist, and my nephew is a type I diabetic, diagnosed at four years of age.

    In the case above, an innocent child was killed by ignorance. Perhaps there is a preacher somewhere behind this murder. I’d like to know. The parents prayed for their ailing daughter, but “apparently didn’t have enough faith.” The child died of diabetic ketoacidosis—her death was likely slow and painful. No one would have confused her state for a minor problem.

    I can’t tell you anything about the state of mind of these parents. I’m sure they loved their child. But whether they were delusional, or belonged to some Christian cult, they murdered their child just as sure as if they’d put a gun to her head.

    There is no ethical principle that can be used to justify this behavior. Parental autonomy just isn’t important enough to justify murder.

    Once upon a time, kids became diabetics, and either starved to death or died of ketoacidosis. Then insulin was discovered. People used it and lived. And people still believed in God. What is so different about this couple’s God, that It demanded a child’s life?

    Nothing.

    God did not come to their house, sit down for dinner, and tell them not to treat their child. God did not send a registered letter, or leave their name in the Bible with instructions to stay away from doctors. These are all human beliefs and human actions, and as such, are subject to human laws.

  • Science—the only way to view reality

    Science is the investigation of reality. Reality is, by definition, everything. It is all we can see, all we can measure. It is, for all practical purposes, a god; it is omnipresent, omnipotent. The only tool that successfully measures and describes reality is science (including mathematics).

    So why the desire to placate theologians and theocrats in scientific discussions? What can religion offer the exploration of reality?

    The only thing it has to offer is a potentially consistent moral code; and that isn’t unique to religion. Religion can offer beauty, song, art, poetry, fellowship, but it cannot offer insight into physical reality. Those who say it can are either deceiving themselves, or deceiving others.

    That isn’t to say religion is inherently at odds with science. Human beings are very capable of simultaneously holding mutually contradictory thoughts—it is indeed possible to be a religious scientist, but not if the carefully constructed wall between these magisteria falls. As soon as religious thought starts to influence scientific investigation (outside, perhaps, the realm of ethics), science is destroyed.

    There is no way to “deal” with Creationism and other cults; there is no way to make the message of science more palatable to them. They don’t buy it. Telling them that six days could mean 3 billion years or that God isn’t susceptible to empiric investigation is lying to them and lying to ourselves. Anything humans can conceive of is open to scientific investigation, including God. Nothing is “outside science”. Some Creationists are susceptible to deprogramming—and that is the “wedge” for rational people to exploit.

    Sure, we should be polite to people of (almost) all beliefs. Politeness does not include allowing them to destroy our school cirricula, compromise science, or change our secular Constitution.

    God will not educate our children, cure disease, or fuel our society. It’s all up to us, and making nice with those who vehemently believe otherwise will only slow progress.

    Scientists shouldn’t look to God for answers; God should look to science for answers.

  • Cult medicine vs. professional medicine

    So-called alternative medicine beliefs are an interesting and perhaps inevitable phenomenon. They make use of uniquely human qualities such as our intelligence, our pattern-recognition abilities, and our tendency to over-estimate how well we understand things. Most “science”, including medicine, relies on similar human qualities, but modern science has made some improvements. Medicine used to be based on observation mixed with superstition and other non-evidence based ways of understanding the world. Many of these systems were internally consistent, but ultimately failed to accurately describe the real world.

    The gradual transition of medical science (the use of evidence to evaluate medical practice) has revolutionized medicine. We no longer rely on the glorified shamanism that existed before the mid-20th century.

    This also means that medicine has become a true “profession”; it isn’t something you can just “pick up”, hang out a shingle, and practice from your front room. I’ve taken to calling practices that aren’t evidence-based “cult medicine“.
    (more…)

  • Herb prevents sudden death–or your money back!

    I gotta admit, this is one of my favorites. I was browsing around the alternative health corners of the web when I came across a lovely site peddling “alternative” remedies. My gaze was immediately drawn to a link for “shock and emergency: rescue remedies”.

    For a physician, shock means something in particular–something very bad. Shock is a medical state wherein multiple organs stop working for a variety of possible reasons, such as severe infection or physical trauma. Patients with shock die quickly without immediate medical attention. So I followed the link to the product page:
    (more…)