A creationist response to antibiotic resistance?

Here's an amusing take on how creationists might deal with the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance. After all, blaming bacterial resistance to antibiotics on something like evolution by natural selection (the selective agent being the antibiotic, of course) just won't do, will it? Instead, better to let the Creationist Patrol deal with it...

(Via Pharyngula.)

Skeptico finds more RFK Jr. quote-mining

I've been slamming RFK Jr. over the last few weeks for shoddy, one-sided research and quote-mining in his infamous Salon.com article from a couple of weeks ago, Deadly Immunity, in which he swallowed whole all the mercury-autism hysteria and postulated dire conspiracies on the part of the CDC and IOM to "cover up" the supposed link. I started the ball rolling by pointing out an example of RFK Jr.'s brand of highly selective quoting, and Skeptico took it further by reading the entire Simpsonwood transcript (warning: link to large PDF file) and showing how selectively it was quoted out of context in order to give an impression of a whitewash.

Well, now, challenged by a commenter on the Institute of Medicine report (warning: link to a large PDF file) to "explain to me how these quotes are taken out of context as the IOM president would like us to believe," Skeptico has waded through the report and done just that. He's shown that RFK Jr. didn't confine his deceptively selective quoting to just the Simpsonwood transcript. He applied the same technique to the IOM report, taking quotes out of context to make them sound conspiratorial, as if scientists were trying to hide something. Naturally, it's enraged and frustrated Skeptico, and I can entirely sympathize with his rant at the end:

OK, that’s it. Enough! The conspiracy believers have taken their best shot – and that was your best shot – and neither document quoted by Kennedy shows any conspiracy or cover-up. And frankly, taking a few out-of-context quotes from a 199 page transcript as proof of a conspiracy is pretty stupid anyway, but when the transcript reveals a group of honest scientists trying, with integrity, to grapple a difficult problem, it gets beyond stupid and is just thoroughly dishonest. It’s pathetic, frankly. If there really was a cover up, wouldn’t they have something better than this?

No more. Don’t bother throwing down a url linking to a huge .pdf with a couple of dodgy quotes in it and expecting me to read it. That’s over now.

Wow. First he wades through the entire Simpsonwood transcript in record time, and now he wades through the entire IOM report in similarly record time. I'm impressed, but somehow have to wonder if he needs to get a bit more of a life.

Just kidding--although the three-day Fourth of July weekend is coming up soon.

I also wonder if that means I'm now going to have to try to wade through more of these transcripts; I've just barely finished the Simpsonwood transcript--and that was two weeks in coming....

A scientific creation story

Although I've been slamming the Huffington Post lately for buying into the mercury-autism scare-mongering wholeheartedly, I can't help but give it credit for publishing a column by Michael Shermer. This week, Shermer gives us a scientific creation story. I can't help but think he's being a bit tongue-in-cheek:

...And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, the fishes. And God created great whales whose skeletal structure and physiology were homologous with the land mammals he would create later that day. Since this caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt God brought forth abundantly all creatures, great and small, declaring that microevolution was permitted, but not macroevolution. And God said, “Natura non facit saltum”—Nature shall not make leaps. And the evening and morning were the fifth day.

And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve, who were anatomically fully modern humans. In the book in which God explained how He did all this, in chapter one He said he created Adam and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in chapter two He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. This caused further confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created Bible scholars and theologians to argue the point.

And in the ground placed He in abundance teeth, jaws, skulls, and pelvises of transitional fossils from pre-Adamite creatures. One he chose as his special creation He named Lucy. And God realized this was confusing, so he created paleoanthropologists to sort it out. And just as He was finishing up the loose ends of the creation God realized that Adam’s immediate descendants who lived as farmers and herders would not understand inflationary cosmology, global general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, biochemistry, paleontology, population genetics, and evolutionary theory, so He created creation myths. But there were so many creation stories throughout the land that God realized this too was confusing, so he created anthropologists, folklorists, and mythologists to settle the issue.

Alas, it would appear that some people refuse to listen.

Herbs vs. homeopathy

Last week, I was in the recovery room of the Same Day Surgery Unit, having completed my last case of the day. While I was sitting at the computer entering postoperative orders, I overheard a conversation. A middle-aged woman, who appeared to be a relative of one patient lying in one of the recovery bays, was speaking to the patient's nurse. She was expounding in great length and detail about the herbal and homeopathic remedies that she favored, with the nurse politely listening, but with a slight tightening of her mouth that told me she was probably thinking, " I wish this lady would shut up, already." Then the woman said something that I actually found myself agreeing with, although not for the reason this woman would think:

"Remember, homeopathic remedies and herbal remedies are two completely different things."

Believe it or not, I agree with that. A few herbal remedies might actually have a therapeutic benefit, mainly because some herbs contain pharmacologically active compounds that work like drugs (albeit in amounts that vary markedly from batch to batch, making herbs an unreliable source of active drugs). Indeed, many of our drugs are chemically altered versions of active molecules found in nature, usually in plants. For example, Taxol, a chemotherapy drug used to fight breast cancer and a variety of other tumors, comes from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree, Taxus brevifolia. Another drug, digoxin is derived from the foxglove plant, and the list goes on and on. In marked contrast, homeopathic remedies by their very definition don't contain any active ingredients, at least not at any concentration that could possibly have pharmacologic activity. This makes homeopathic remedies completely worthless, the claims of its advocates that somehow the water used to dilute the solution retains a "memory" of the active ingredient that was diluted out notwithstanding.

Remember, if a "homeopathic remedy" actually contains any active ingredient whatsoever, after all, then by the homeopathic Law of Infinitesimals, it is not really "homeopathic" at all!

The 31st Meeting of the Tangled Bank Society

Join David Winters at Science and Sensibility for the 31st Meeting of the Tangled Bank Society, a gathering of scientific bloggers presenting their findings to their peers:

Welcome to day one of the 31st meeting of the Tangled Bank Society. As you know the Tangled Bank meeting offers a chance for scientists and scientific communicators working in disparate fields to get together and talking about what they are up to, what drives them and what they find interesting Below is a schedule for today's session which is being held in the Winter Lecture Theatre. Each presentation is identified by title which is followed by the author's name and the institution the presenter is representing. As you will note the schedule for today is pretty full so we encourage you to make any comments to presenters in person following their presentation. Enjoy the talks and we hope to see all of you at tomorrow night's banquet!

It's a fine collection of the best science blogging from the last two weeks. My only question is: What's on the schedule for Day #2?

A brief Cablevision rant

Allow me a moment to vent today.

I've come to hate Cablevision.

Oh, I like its high speed Internet access service, Optimum Online. It's blazing fast and generally reliable, albeit a tad on the pricey side, but as a cable TV company Cablevision is the pits. It suffers from all the problems of a monopoly: high prices, piss-poor customer service, and a lack of certain channels that most other cable companies in my area routinely provide as part of basic or enhanced basic packages, such as Turner Classic Movies (available from Cablevision only in the most expensive digital package), BBC America, or Trio.

I was reminded the other day of one of the reasons (well, several, actually) that I hate this company so much. We have two TVs, one in our family room and one upstairs in our bedroom. The cable signal to the TV in our family room has always worked pretty well. In contrast, the the one in our bedroom has been dicey almost from day one, but ever since we switched to digital cable it's always been a problem. Channels pixelate badly, freeze, and the box even turns off and reboots seemingly at random. Often, channels don't even come through at all, and I know it's not the box, because hooking the same box up to our other TV does not result in the same problems. Similarly, rebooting the box repeatedly didn't help. Because we mostly only watched the 11 PM news and Letterman when up there, it didn't bother us too much, mainly because it was usually the premium channels that did this. Besides, both my wife and I work, and taking an afternoon or morning off to wait for the cable guy just never seemed to be worth the pain it would take to get one to come out. Several calls to customer service and going through troubleshooting routines didn't help. I was convinced it was the cable connection, because our other connection worked fine, suggesting that a service call might require major rejiggering of the cable itself. Worse, many months ago, I scheduled a service call to deal with this very problem, and the repair guy never showed up. I was fed up.

Basically we just lived with it, with me occasionally making calls and going through trouble-shooting routines that either didn't work or only marginally (and briefly) helped. A few weeks ago, though, the broadcast channels started doing the same, and the other day, after procrastinating and taking the temporary measure of occasionally hooking the cable directly into the TV (which gained back the broadcast channels but lost the digital channels), I finally got fed up enough to do something about it. I called customer service.

Big mistake.

First off, since the last time I went through this, Cablevision has added an annoying computerized "customer service" system that speaks to you with "artificial intelligence" using a creepily inhuman sounding female voice, much like the system Sprint PCS uses when you call customer service. "She" sounds like a female version of HAL 9000. I hated that system enough, but at least you can get past Sprint's electronic gatekeeper if you use the right phrase or just request a representative. Not so this electronic gatekeeper Cablevision has employed, whom I'm now dubbing "She-HAL 9000" and whose dedication to keeping you the customer from getting through to a real human being rivals the tenacity of Heimdall in guarding the Bifrost Bridge and preventing trespassers from entering Asgard. A horde of enraged frost giants could be trying to get past this electronic fortress wall, and their catapult projectiles would bounce harmlessly back, rebounding on them with devastating power.

But enough of the Norse mythology references, as much as I like them.

"Hello," said She-HAL 9000. "Tell me what your problem is."

"My picture is pixelating and even freezing up."

"Please repeat." I repeated it. "I didn't get that. I'm going to list some complaints. Please repeat the complaint when you hear it." She (it?) listed five or six problems, none of which quite fit my problem. I picked one that was the closest and ran with it.

What followed were 15 minutes of ever increasing frustration. My temper and blood pressure steadily rose as I tried to go through this damnable system. The computer had me reboot the cable box twice. The first time, as I waited for the box to reboot, the she-HAL 9000 "helpfully" kept telling me that it could take "several minutes" for the box to start up. (Thanks, I never would have guessed that myself.) After I rebooted, it asked me if the problem was fixed. I said no. So it went through the same troubleshooting routine again! My answers slowly got louder and more insistent and then finally more laced with profanity. I was beginning to feel like Sysiphus, pushing the stone up the hill, feeling as though I was getting closer to the Holy Grail of finally talking to an actual live human being, only to have it roll down again. Unfortunately, She-HAL 9000 was impervious to my best cussing, which usually resulted in a reply along the lines of "please repeat."

I did. With gusto. (Never mind what cussing like a longshoreman at a computer says about me.)

Finally, after the troubleshooting didn't work again, the machine asked, "Would you like to speak to a customer service representative?"

"YES!" I bellowed.

Finally, a live human being, capable of understanding more than a few preprogrammed phrases! Of course, by this time, I was in such a thoroughly foul mood that, had I been more in control of myself, I would have realized that this could only end badly. Either that, or what was to come probably wouldn't have irritated me nearly as much. Nonetheless, I tried to compose myself and explain my problem, after pithily (I thought, anyway) pointing out to him why Cablevision's new electronic gatekeeper was an object worthy of derision and destruction.

That's when things got off on an even worse foot, when he said, "Well, if you don't want to do what it takes to take care of this..."

If I don't want to do what it takes? If I don't want to do what it takes. I pay this damned company well over $1,000 a year for cable and Internet access, and they expect me to jump through hoops and run the proverbial electronic gauntlet to get service when their crappy product isn't working?

I restrained myself, but it took a Herculean effort. When I got to the end of my explanation, the customer service representative, in his infinite wisdom, sized up the situation, and asked me what model number cable box I had. I told him. "Do you turn your cable box off at night?" He said.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Well, there's your problem," he said, in a condescending tone.

"There's no way that's the problem," I said, "because I have tried turning off the cable box for extended periods of time and rebooting. I've tried all sorts of permutations, with no effect."

"I'm telling you, that's probably the problem."

"Don't insult my intelligence." I finally muttered, exasperated.

"I'm not insulting your intelligence," he said cooly. "I'm just giving you information about your cable box."

Now I was really pissed. Was he really telling me that (1) despite the fact that I had told him that I've turned this box off many times for hours at a time that doing it again one more time would fix a problem that none of the previous shutdowns did or (2) that Cablevision was using boxes so ridiculously badly designed, so primitive, that they have to be turned off overnight or they cease to work properly until they are? I couldn't tell, but either option painted a very bad picture of the company. It's either moronic customer service or bad equipment (or both). Never mind that the installation guy never mentioned anything of the sort, and there's nothing in the cable box instruction manual saying anything of the sort. I went back and forth with this guy, trying to restrain my temper and avoid losing it. This guy wasn't worth it. Finally, he said dismissively, "I have an appointment aon Friday between 2 and 5 PM. Do you want someone to come out?"

"I'll take it," I growled into the phone, knowing that I would be at work. I didn't care. I could always change the appointment later; Cablevision does have a phone menu option that lets you reschedule already scheduled appointments, as I had found out in previous encounters. It's only to make the first appointment to have someone come out to check it out in the first place that you have run the gauntlet of She-HAL 9000 and then the cable version of David Spade's impassable receptionist, the one who wouldn't let Jesus Himself pass. I will admit, though, that, if I could have reached through the phone, down the line, to the switching station, and to the customer rep's phone, grabbed him by the lapels, and pulled him through to face him, I would have, just so I could cuss him out face to face and give him an eye-gouge, Moe-style. But why bother? Just get the cable guy out to our house and forget the annoying customer service flack.

And, in case you're wondering, out of curiosity, I did do what the David Spade wannabe recommended and turned off the cable box overnight. Guess what?

The picture was even worse in the morning.

A fellow MD scores a takedown!

RangelMD is on a roll. First, he gave Bill Frist the major thrashing that he deserved for his behavior with respect to the Terri Schiavo case, as I mentioned last week.

Now he's joined the fight against the antiscience known as "intelligent design" creationism. It's not often that you see a more dedicated medblogger like RangelMD take on "intelligent design" creationism, but I find it quite heartening to see. (I only say "more dedicated medblogger mainly in comparison to me, because Respectful Insolence is rather like a Frankenblog; it's the medical/science/history/skepticism/silly rants blog, whereas RangelMD tends to stick more closely to medicine and medical science.) A choice excerpt:

Not only are they stuck without any direct evidence of intelligent design (ID) but also proponents of ID don't have a viable theory on exactly how God implemented her design into the universe. Any proposed mechanism paints them into a corner. If the universe was designed at the start and put into motion then God is a metaphysical being and thus beyond our ability to prove or disprove her existence beyond that of a concept. If God directly manipulates her creation on the go then where is the evidence for supernatural activity (i.e. a corporeal event completely unexplainable by conventional science)? If any supernatural manipulation of nature is beyond the ability of science to detect then we are back to square one in which ID is just another philosophy. If we can't directly prove anything about the activities of God then ID proponents must accept the fact that their theory has exactly as much weight as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism!

Nice takedown, and welcome to the fight, Chris. I might have to add an appropriately rephrased version of this paragraph to my Reply to a 14-year-old creationist.

Grand Rounds XL

Grand Rounds XL has been posted at Health Business Blog. It's yet more more medical blogging goodness all gathered into one nice easily digestible package. It should be enough to satisfy even the geekiest docs around here. Check it out.

RINO sightings (not to mention eminent domain)

The very first ever edition of RINO sitings, a forum where secular and moderate conservatives who are being driven away from the Republican Party by the loonier elements of the right wing (creationists, religious fundamentalists, etc.), has been posted at SayUncle. As they say, it's Republican, without all the crazy (well, mostly, anyway; a few of these guys are still quite a bit farther to the right than me). In any case, I joined the RINOs because it is at least attempting to provide a forum for secular moderate conservatives like myself.

One post I do agree with 100% is this attack on the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain. As Barry puts it:

As a practical matter, this means that you've got good title to your property, and the right of ownership, as long as there isn't a politically connected developer in your hometown who'd like to build a Wal-Mart where your family home sits now.

Sadly, unless you live in a state that has stronger protections against eminent domain seizures than the U.S. Constitution (which, given this ruling, is now essentially no protection at all), Barry is not exaggerating.

Besides my belief that property rights are fundamental rights in a democracy, meaning that the government should not be able , this issue also resonates with me because of what happened 24 years ago in my hometown of Detroit. In 1981, General Motors and the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck collaborated to displace 4,200 people from their homes in a neighborhood known as Poletown in order to build a new auto plant. In essence, Detroit and Hamtramck used eminent domain to seize private property to give to another private entity, setting a standard that served as the basis for other governments to justify making similar property transfers to private entities for stadiums and the like. Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled the Poletown seizures unlawful and placed limits on the rights of state and local governments to use eminent domain to seize land, a significant victory against abuse of eminent domain.

Too bad the U.S. Supreme Court couldn't have seen its way to do the same. At least in the Poletown case, the actions of Detroit and Hamtramck, although an example of the abuse of eminent domain, are somewhat understandable. It was the middle of the deep recession of the 1980's, and unemployment rates were in the double digits. Anything that could create badly needed manufacturing jobs was highly tempting, even if the cost was the destruction of an old ethnic neighborhood. The Connecticut case that the Supreme Court ruled on was a land grab to transfer property to wealthy developers for "economic development" and increased tax receipts.

It would appear that the title to your house now means very little if the government decides it would generate more tax revenue as an office park or a hotel.

Mercury and autism: More Huffington Post nonsense

A few days ago, I linked to a great article on the Huffington Post by Michael Shermer defending evolution and pointing out the weaknesses in "intelligent design" creationism. Unfortunately, I spoke too soon. Remember how much I bored you all with my broadsides against the antivaccine paranoia running rampant on the Huffington Post (1, 2, 3, 4)? Well, the paranoia is back with a vengeance (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I guess that's what I get for not looking for this stuff on the Huffington Post for a week or two and for writing my piece about the Michael Shermer article several days before actually posting it.

I should have expected this, though, after RFK Jr.'s one-sided deceptive screed against the pharmaceutical companies blaming mercury in vaccines for autism and crying coverup, the one that I've been pounding on for the last 10 days or so (1, 2, 3, 4). In fact, I was sort of wondering why our favorite conspiracy-mongering pediatrician from the Huffington Post, Dr. Jay Gordon, hadn't yet weighed in on this issue. I toyed with the idea that perhaps he had been so taken aback by the blog tag team slapdown administered to him by myself and Skeptico (1, 2) for his irritating tendencies to take the irrational position of ignoring out of hand any research funded by pharmaceutical companies simply because they were funded by pharmaceutical companies and to give backhanded "compliments" to the principle investigators of such studies by calling them "honest" while simultaneously insinuating that they're hoplessly biased because of their connections to big pharma without being able to point out any specific flaws in their studies.

No such luck. He's like the Energizer Bunny on this issue. He keeps going and going and going and going....

In his post, No Conflict of Interest, Dr. Gordon not surprisingly swallows whole all the distortions and conspiracy-mongering that RFK Jr. could lay down and completely buys into RFK Jr.'s complaint that ABC News changed a more positive segment to an attack piece at the behest of its pharmaceutical advertiser masters. Quoth he (with Orac's pithy comments):

Mercury in vaccines causes autism and other brain injury. [Orac says: There is no good evidence that mercury in vaccines cause autism. Indeed, the most recent experience from Canada and Denmark strongly supports the contention that it very likely does not. The jury's out on other brain injury, but, based on current evidence, the likelihood of a connection there is also probably low.] The IOM twisted the facts to suit the CDC and the vaccine industry. [Orac says: Care to provide evidence for that assertion that, Dr. Gordon? Certainly RFK Jr. failed to do so and was reduced to twisting facts and misrepresenting the Simpsonwood Conference to make his fallacious case.]

This week, ABC TV (my old employer) twisted the editing and commentary to weaken Mr. Kennedy's interview. [Orac says: Care to provide evidence that it was intentional "twisting" and "editing" designed to "weaken" his interview? Of course, Orac can't help but savor the utterly delicious irony of RFK Jr., who proved himself to be a master at selective quoting in the service of making the Simpsonwood Conference seem ominous and conspiratorial, now complaining about his supposedly being selectively quoted by ABC News!] For ABC TV, hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue are at stake and they were irresponsible with the lives and health of children at risk. They should be ashamed of themselves. [Orac says: I have two words for you, Dr. Gordon: Vioxx and Merck. Gee, the mighty pharmaceutical company didn't seem able to stop the barrage of negative publicity from the press on that story. Yep, the fear of losing advertising revenue really shut 'em up that time. Even in the absence of that example, perhaps you could show us some hard evidence, rather than speculation, that ABC News altered its story for fear of losing pharmaceutical company revenue. Just a little evidence? Even a tiny bit? You can do that for a fellow M.D., can't you?]

Yes, once again, Dr. Gordon insinuates conflicts of interest and dire conspiracies without showing the least bit of evidence. Of course, the funniest line in Dr. Gordon's post is this one: "David Kirby's book, Evidence of Harm is meticulously-researched and a great read." Just ask Autism Diva, Aubrey Noelle Simola, Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, or Kevin Leitch (1, 2) about how "meticulously researched" it is. A lot of references and a nice index do not necessarily indicate "meticulous research," just voluminous research. It is quite possible to do a ton of research and come up with an utterly incorrect conclusion if you berry-pick the data and ignore data that does not support your thesis, as certain political pundits have proven time and time again.

Speaking of David Kirby, though, he's also now over at the Huffington Post blog bellicosely braying, Bring It On to his "naysayers," gloating, and taking credit for getting this whole media firestorm started in the first place:

We have just witnessed the biggest week ever in the history of reporting on this high-stakes debate and, naturally, I could not be happier. A nationwide discussion about thimerosal and autism was my primary goal in writing “Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic,” and at long last the conversation has begun.

At least Kirby finally admitted his bias openly.

In any case, Kirby also boasts of his media appearances on Don Imus' show, the Montel Williams Show, and MSNBC's Connected, bragging about how difficult it has been for him to find someone willing to "debate" him on the issue in a public forum. He's being disingenuous, of course, as this is a very old tactic frequently used by purveyors of dubious science. Although orders of magnitude more dubious than the science behind the mercury-autism link (which is why I make this comparison with a bit of trepidation), "intelligent design" creationism does provide some guidance here. Creationists have long "challenged" scientists to "debates" on evolution and then used the absence of takers as "proof" that scientists are "afraid" to debate them. Besides the fact that such debates are almost always held in venues sympathetic to the pseudoscience (which is very relevant to the case at hand, given that Don Imus, who has been pushing the mercury/autism link on his radio show, will likely host the proposed debate), creationists know that just standing on the same stage or sitting in the same TV or radio studio with a serious scientist automatically gives the impression that they have something scientifically valid to say and that there is a real controversy. Scientists have been arguing amongst themselves for years whether or not it helps or hurts the case for evolution and against ID in the public's mind if they formally "debate" creationists in public forums. Many of the same arguments for and against "debate" apply to David Kirby's challenge. Scientists have learned the hard way that advocates of dubious science like David Kirby and RFK Jr. are often quite good at media-friendly sound bites, whereas debunking those sound bites often requires lengthier (and therefore less glib) responses. As Lenny Flank puts it in reference to creationism:

For this reason, the "debate" is one of the ICR's [Institute for Creation Research] primary tools. . . Nearly all of their opponents make the fatal mistake of underestimating them. . . They [ICR debaters] are highly educated people who possess enormous personal appeal and charisma. They are also highly skilled orators and polished debaters. . . As master showmen, however, they are very capable of turning an unprepared scientific opponent into the equivalent of a blithering idiot.

I don't know if David Kirby falls into the above category as far as his public speaking and debating skills go, but any vaccine scientist who contemplates accepting his challenge to debate would do well to heed Lenny's warning, particularly since the proposed venue (Imus in the Morning) will be so hostile. (At least Imus is on vacation until July 11.) If I were the pharmaceutical executive who, according to Kirby, has accepted his challenge, I'd insist on a change of venue to a show with a more neutral host.

Finally, there was one useful link in Dr. Gordon's post to demonstrate yet again RFK Jr.'s disingenuousness, a fawning Scarborough Country interview. Check out this quote:

Thimerosal is a preservative that was put in vaccines back in the 1930s. Almost immediately after it was put in, autism cases began to appear. Autism had never been known before. It was unknown to science. Then the vaccines were increased in 1989 by the CDC and by a couple of other government agencies.

I've already dealt with this utterly idiotic "correlation does not necessarily indicate causation" canard before, as well as the myth that autism didn't exist before thimerosal-containing vaccines were introduced in the 1930's. Shall I repeat myself? Yes I shall:

No, the reason the disease was "unknown" until 1943 was because it was not described as a specific condition by Dr. Leo Kanner until 1943, after which Dr. Hans Asperger described a similar condition that now bears his name in 1944. Before that, although Dr. Eugen Bleuler had coined the term "autism" in 1911, no specific diagnostic criteria existed for the disease. Even for decades after 1943 autism was not infrequently confused with mental retardation or schizophrenia, and over the last two decades the diagnostic criteria for autism and autism spectum disorders have been widened.

To which I now shall add: It goes back way further than that. There are published accounts of behavior that resembles autism in the 18th century. In the 18th and 19th century, there were many accounts of idiot savants, many of whom were likely autistic or had Asperger's. There are even some who speculate that Sir Isaac Newton may have had Asperger's, although I'm not sure I entirely buy their argument. Does RFK Jr. really mean to argue that autism and ASDs just popped up almost overnight a few years after mercury was introduced into vaccines? These diseases most definitely did not. They've probably been around as long as humans have been around; it's just that before the mid 20th century sufferers of these diseases were relegated to insane asylums, lumped together with the mentally retarded and schizophrenics, used as entertainment in freak shows, or simply labeled as "odd" or even "mad." RFK Jr. only shoots himself in the foot and makes himself look a fool by constantly repeating such an easily debunked canard.

RFK Jr. even repeated his misrepresentation of the Simpsonwood Meeting:

And we now have the transcripts of the secret meeting that they did in Simpsonwood, Georgia, in the year 2000.

And it's the most horrifying thing that you can read, Joe. There are scientists there from the government who are saying — who are reading the reports and saying, this is undeniable. There's no way we can ever deny this. I am not going to give this to my children, but now let's hide this from the American people. And it's that clear. And this is what I write about. It's this language that I write about in the "Rolling Stone" and the "Salon" piece that is so shocking, where we have the guys who are supposed to be protecting Americans` health who are actually conspiring to keep this stuff in the vaccines.

RFK Jr., meet Skeptico and Majikthise. Majikthise and Skeptico, meet RFK, Jr. You should all have a lot to talk about, such as what really happened at Simpsonwood, rather than RFK Jr.'s paranoid account. Finally, RFK Jr. stated that he was going to write an article that would go through "all the science" around the thimerosal/autism issue. I assume it's this article (which I haven't had time to read yet, given that it's 66 pages long). Fortunately, Skeptico and Autism Diva have had time to look at it and begin the necessary deconstruction. It looks as though RFK Jr.'s probably going to be the gift to skeptical bloggers that keeps on giving, requiring periodic debunkings.

Unfortunately, I'm becoming more concerned than ever that we are entering a time when good science is too easily cast aside and ignored. As a a surprisingly good recent New York Times article about thimerosal/autism controversy stated:

Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, the number of parents who blame thimerosal for their children's autism has only increased. And in recent months, these parents have used their numbers, their passion and their organizing skills to become a potent national force. The issue has become one of the most fractious and divisive in pediatric medicine.

"This is like nothing I've ever seen before," Dr. Melinda Wharton, deputy director of the National Immunization Program, told a gathering of immunization officials in Washington in March. "It's an era where it appears that science isn't enough."

Indeed it is, and, sadly, not just for the issue of whether thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. This dubious and excessive focus on mercury as a cause of autism frightens parents unnecessarily about the safety of vaccination and drops a load of guilt parents with autistic children who did vaccinate their children, making them wonder if they caused their children's condition. Worse, it wastes scientists' and legislators' time and effort and diverts money from research that might actually get us closer to understanding the pathogenesis of this disease and offering real hope to parents with ASDs.

And on the seventh day, the Hitler zombie rested (I hope)

The Hitler zombie's been a busy undead Führer the last three weeks (1, 2, 3, 4), and it's time (I hope) for him to go back into his coffin for a while, assuming the politicians and pundits so enamored of letting him out don't open the casket again. But, before I nail the lid shut on this undead eater of politicians' brains, I thought it was worth briefly answering one question that was asked in the comments of his last appearance:

But again I ask, to whom should he [Durbin] compare the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo?

A fair question, and here's my answer:

A more appropriate comparison for the abuses at Gitmo would be "banana republic" authoritarian regimes like Manuel Noriega's, Fidel Castro's, or regimes like those of our erstwhile "allies" Pakistan or Egypt. Even these would still be somewhat overblown comparisons, but they wouldn't be nearly as ridiculously overblown.

Now that I've answered that, something else came to mind. The Hitler zombie is such a great device, that I'm sure I'll have reason to open the coffin and let him out again from time to time. Given that, I thought it would be cool to have an actual picture of a Hitler zombie to use as a graphic. I did a Google picture search, but all I could find were the pictures I've posted here. I rather like the Robot Brain vs. Hitler's Corpse graphic, but I don't think the zombie Hitler should be carrying a gun. His weapon is his ability to eat the brains of politicians and pundits; he needs no other.

So, if anyone knows where any good Hitler zombie pictures can be found (or pictures that could be easily altered to become Hitler zombie pictures), let me know. Who knows? If I get a chance, I may even have a little fun with Photoshop, although I'm not that talented with it. Of course, if anyone out there is really creative, I would be more than grateful to see your creation.
For now, though, it's time for the Hitler zombie to go back to his unnatural sleep for a while (hopefully a long while). There he will stay in his underground resting place. There's no doubt that he will return again someday, but for now, he is satiated. Until someone like Charlie Rangel, Rick Santorum, Dick Durbin, or anyone else revives him, let's be grateful for a break from the hyperbole. But, believe me, the shambling, rotting corpse of the deceased Führer will be ready and waiting--as always.

ADDENDUM: Argh! Josh Rosenau has pointed out another victim of the brain-eating Hitler zombie, Rachael Lea Hunter, a candidate for Supreme Court Justice in North Carolina. Apparently the undead Führer somehow managed to grab a little snack on the side while I wasn't looking. I'll have to keep a closer eye on the sneaky little bastard!

Tom Cruise in meltdown

I think that Scientology has finally affected Cruise's brain, perhaps irreparably. I really do. Want evidence? Read this hilarious transcript of Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer last week. He calls psychiatry a "pseudoscience" and tries to justify his statement that Brooke Shields shouldn't have used antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression. Repeatedly claiming that he "knows the history of psychiatry," Cruise fallaciously concludes that, just because there have been abuses in the history of psychiatry that it is all bad. Here is one amusing excerpt:

TOM CRUISE: But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways of vitamins and through exercise and various things. I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what-- what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, anti-psychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. // the thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She-- she doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt.

MATT LAUER: But a little bit what you're saying Tom is, you say you want people to do well. But you want them do to well by taking the road that you approve of, as opposed to a road that may work for them.

TOM CRUISE: No, no, I'm not.

MATT LAUER: Well, if antidepressants work for Brooke Shields, why isn't that okay?

TOM CRUISE: I-- I disagree with it. And I think that there's a higher and better quality of life. And I think that promoting for me personally, see, you're saying what, I can't discuss what I wanna discuss?

I just wish Lauer had asked Cruise to justify the utterly ridiculous pseudoscience behind Scientology, such as the "E-meter" that its adherents use to diagnose the "mental and spiritual condition" of the test subject. Naturally, the conclusion is always that the subject needs more "auditing" (Scientology's "diagnosis and therapy" for such problems) at a cost of thousands of dollars. And this ridiculous pseudoscience is not without other costs. For example, there is the case of Jeremy Perkins, a schizophrenic many of whose family were members of the Church of Scientology and who was left untreated. He ended up stabbing his mother 77 times. Apparently Tom's ability to recognize pseudoscience when he sees it isn't quite as fine-tuned as he seems to think it is.

Of course, The Onion, as usual, got it just right a few years back when writing about John Travolta's Scientology beliefs...

On the uselessness of chelation therapy for autism

In my recent blog frenzy (1, 2, 3, 4) about thimerosal in vaccines and autism brought to the forefront by RFK Jr.'s deceptive and biased article, Deadly Immunity, a fair number of comments and e-mails came up about whether chelation therapy is useful in treating autism. In this regard, there is no evidence whatsoever that it does any good or improves the symptoms of autism. However, there are parents out there who are utterly convinced that it helped their child enormously. Such cases are hard to deal with for the simple reason that no matter how much you point out that it is mechanistically implausible for chelation therapy should help autism or ASDs and that there is no evidence that it does anything good whatsoever for these neurodevelopmental disorders, they tend to remain utterly convinced that it helped their children. And, because the nature of medicine and science is such that impossible ever to prove a negative, you can never rule out 100% that chelation may have helped in this one case, chelation therapy lives on, and the quacks continue to profit off of preying upon the hopes of desperate parents who want to do something to help their children.

As dubious as intravenous chelation therapy is for autism, though, there is a newer form of "chelation therapy" that is even more dubious. That is the so-called "transdermal" chelation therapy championed by Dr. Rashid Buttar (what an utterly appropriate name, given that it's been called the "Buttar treatment," and the cream could be said to look a bit like butter). Dr. Buttar claims that TD-DPMS can do wonders for autism. Unfortunately, he presents no data. He can't even present pharmacokinetic data to show that the active chelating agent is actually absorbed through the skin in sufficient quantities to chelate anything. Yet he treats children with it.

Fortunately, Kevin Leitch is on the case, writing this fantastically sarcastic letter to Dr. Rashid Buttar. Money quote:

Such an important scientist as yourself must surely have peers flocking to review your work. As such an august scientist you are no doubt aware of the most basic scientific precept of subjecting your scientific work for review so that others may critically appraise your work and replicate it. I was surprised therefore to discover that a search of www.pubmed.gov – the site that lists all scientific articles in peer-reviewed scientific literature – and found nothing when searching for ‘Rashid Buttar’. Did you submit your thesis under a pseudonym perhaps? I’m positive this must be an oversight and that the safety and efficacy of a product that you regularly use on children has been regularly tested and re-tested by both yourself and your peers as to do otherwise is tantamount to admitting one is afraid to submit one’s work for peer review – I’m certain that can’t be the case for you!

Alas, such is not the case. Perhaps Dr. Buttar will use the "too busy taking care of patients to get published" excuse that alties frequently use. I wish I could get away with that one when I come up for my yearly review. Somehow, I don't think my division chief would buy it.

The Onion does it again!

Imagine, if you will, The Onion as it will appear fifty-one years from now. I'm just bummed that much of the Midwest will be radioactive ruin then and Haliburton will get the contract to rebuild it.

And wouldn't you like it if your horoscope looked like this? Sure, it's just as much a bogus pile of B.S. as horoscopes are now, but at least it has way cooler signs. So, what's your sign? Asimov, Zelazny, or Bester?

Maybe there's hope for the Huffington Post after all

In the cause of going back to blogging about topics less controversial than the alleged thimerosal-autism connection or dubious Nazi analogies and the people who love them, I note that there is actually a nice article by Michael Shermer on intelligent design at the Huffington Post. An excerpt:

Since the U.S. Constitution prohibits public schools from promoting any particular brand of religion, this has led to the oxymoronic movement known as “Intelligent Design” (ID) where ID (aka God) miraculously intervenes just in the places where science has yet to offer a comprehensive explanation for a particular phenomenon. ID used to control the weather, but now that we have a science of meteorology He has moved on to more obdurate problems, such as the origins of DNA or the evolution of cellular structures such as the flagellum. Once these problems are mastered then ID will presumably find even more intractable conundrums. Thus, IDers would have us teach students that when science cannot fully explain something we should look no further and declare that “ID did it.” I fail to see how this is science. “ID did it” makes for a rather short lab lecture.

By contrast, a scientist would want to know how ID