New American anti-scientist stamps

A few months ago, the Post Office released a line of stamps devoted to outstanding American scientists. However, given the climate of today, in which 42% of Americans are strict creationists, StayFree thinks it's time for a different set of stamps. Note the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the background of the Bush stamp. As Carrie put it, "We know God isn't precisely 'American,' but try telling that to the evangelicals..."

Download yours today. (Via Boing Boing.)

Avoiding scientific delusions

In all my blogging about altie claims and the alleged (and most likely nonexistent) link between mercury exposure from thimerosal in childhood vaccines and autism, I've been consistent in one thing. I try as much as possible to champion evidence-based medicine. I insist on evidence-based medicine because, with good reason, I believe it to be superior to testimonial-based medicine, which is what practitioners like Dr. Rashid Buttar, who cannot demonstrate that his "transdermal cream" even gets his chelating agent into the bloodstream at concentrations that will chelate anything, much less mercury, much less that it can improve the functional level of autistics in controlled randomized trials, do. (On a side note, I've also learned that Dr. Buttar also doesn't like me very much for saying that, much to my amusement. If this, this, or this inspired him to mention me in the same sentence as "stupidity" or a "brick wall," he really should check out Kev's fantastically sarcastic letter to him or this broadside against chelation therapy for autism. Or better yet, he should read Peter Bowditch's take on the matter. That ought to raise his blood pressure. Then he could chelate himself to get it back down.) I also try to insist on evidence-based medicine because lack of evidence is what quacks like Hulda Clark prey upon in selling their worthless "cures" for diseases like cancer. However, contrary to what some alties will claim, I do not limit my insistence on evidence-based medicine to various alternative treatments. I insist on uniform scientific standards for evaluating the biological mechanism of disease and potential treatments, whether the treatment be "alternative" or "conventional."

Alties are frequently unhappy about medicine's growing insistence on well-designed clinical trials to test their claims, considering it evidence of the "elitism" that they despise in "conventional" medicine. What they don't understand is that the reason that the scientific method and clinical trials are so important is not because scientists and "conventional" doctors are any wiser than "alternative" practitioners or even the general population at large. They most certainly are not; they are just more highly educated and trained. The reason the scientific methods and clinical trials are so important in developing and evaluating new therapies is because doctors are human and therefore just as prone to bias and wishful thinking as the worst pseudoscientist or quack. They are just as prone to falling victim to the trap of wanting so badly to believe that an experimental result is valid or that a treatment is effective that they fool themselves into believing it or to resisting change because "always done it this way." (Altie practitioners tend to be prone to a different kind of self-deception, namely the Galileo gambit, in which they believe themselves akin to Galileo, persecuted because they are so far ahead of their time.)

Last Sunday's New York Times had a very good example of a "conventional" treatment that demonstrates why clinical trials are so important. The treatment is vertebroplasty using spinal cement to treat vertebral fractures due to osteoporosis:

No one is sure why it helps, or even if it does. The hot cement may be shoring up the spine or merely destroying the nerve endings that transmit pain. Or the procedure may simply have a placebo effect.

And some research hints that the procedure may be harmful in the long run, because when one vertebra is shored up, adjacent ones may be more likely to break.

But vertebroplasty and a similar procedure, kyphoplasty, are fast becoming the treatments of choice for patients with bones so weak their vertebrae break.

The two procedures are so common, said Dr. Ethel Siris, an osteoporosis researcher at Columbia University, that "if you have osteoporosis and come into an emergency room with back pain from a fractured vertebra, you are unlikely to leave without it." She said she was concerned about the procedures' widespread and largely uncritical acceptance.

Sound familiar? If not, consider this quote:

"I struggle with this," said Dr. Joshua A. Hirsch, director of interventional neuroradiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He believes in clinical trials, he said, but when it comes to vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty, "I truly believe these procedures work."

"I adore my patients," Dr. Hirsch added, "and it hurts me that they suffer, to the point that I come in on my days off to do these procedures."

Dr. Hirsch apparently started with the noblest of motives, wanting to relieve his patients' unremitting pain from spinal metastases due to cancer or fractures due to osteoporosis. He still believes he is helping; otherwise he would probably abandon vertebroplasty. Many altie practitioners start out similarly, no doubt. They come up with a method or a treatment, see what appears to be a good result, become convinced that it works, and thus become true believers. The difference is that, unlike Dr. Buttar, as an academician Dr. Hirsch at least still feels uneasy about advocating this therapy without adequate research or strong objective evidence to show that it really works better than a sham procedure, because doing so goes against his academic training. (Quacks like Dr. Kerry have no such qualms, even though he was educated at the University of Pittsburgh.) Nonetheless, Dr. Hirsch appears to have convinced himself by personal observation and small pilot studies that the procedure works. That the the Director of Interventional Neuroradiology at Massachusetts General Hospital can convince himself that an unproven treatment works on the basis of personal observation and small pilot studies simply shows how easy it is to persuade oneself to believe what one wants to believe. He may or may not be correct in his belief, but we have no way of knowing.

Unfortunately, personal observation is prone to far too many biases, the worst of which is selective thinking or confirmation bias. In short, we remember successes (or seeming successes) and observations that confirm our expectations, and tend to forget or discount failures and observations that do not confirm our expectations. Small pilot studies are also prone to bias and confounding factors, which is why they are generally good only as a means of determining if a treatment shows an inkling of effectiveness worth following up with a larger trial. As the claim spreads, it can then become accepted through communal reinforcement, regardless of the poor quality of the initial data. Apparently this is happening now with vertebroplasty.

In studies of pain relief treatments or procedures, one particularly nasty bias that cannot be eliminated without good placebo controls is regression to the mean:

For example, he said, patients come in crying for relief when their pain is at its apogee. By chance, it is likely to regress whether or not they are treated. That phenomenon, regression to the mean, has foiled researchers time and time again.

Although there was one uncontrolled pilot study that reported 26/29 patients showing pain relief after the procedure, a followup study with placebo control, although quite small, cast doubt on the effectiveness of the procedure:

But Dr. David F. Kallmes, one of her partners, wanted a rigorous test. He began a pilot study, randomly assigning participants to vertebroplasty or placebo. To make it more appealing, he told patients that 10 days later they could get whichever treatment they had failed to get the first time.

It was hard to find subjects, and Dr. Kallmes ended up with only five. For the sham procedure, he pressed on the patient's back as if injecting cement, injected a local anesthetic, opened a container of polymethylmethacrylate so the distinctive nail-polish-remover smell would waft through the air and banged on a bowl so it sounded like he was mixing cement.

In 2002, he reported his results: three patients initially had vertebroplasty and two had the sham. But there was no difference in pain relief. All the patients thought they had gotten the placebo, and all wanted the other treatment after 10 days. One patient who had vertebroplasty followed in 10 days by the sham said the second procedure - the sham - relieved his pain.

In other words, none of the patients got any relief when they thought that they might be getting a placebo the first time around and thus wanted the "real thing." This implies that the pain relief due to the treatment may well be due to a placebo effect. Remember, placebo effects are often more potent the more elaborate or invasive the treatment is, and thus harder to control for. This is one of many reasons that trials for surgical or invasive procedures to relieve chronic pain are often so hard to do. Sadly, Dr. Kallmes trial was so small that we cannot make any definitive conclusions from it, although there is also an Australian trial that found that pain relief at six weeks in the vertebroplasty group was no better than the control group, bringing the long-term effectiveness of the technique into doubt.

It turns out that the bulk of the evidence that is being used to argue that vertebroplasty is effective are in essence testimonials, rather uncomfortably like the "evidence" being used to promote Dr. Buttar's "transdermal chelation" therapy and other altie treatments. We have no idea whether vertebroplasty actually works, for which patients it does and doesn't work, what the long term results are in terms of durable pain relief, whether it increases the risk of additional fractures, or what the potential complications are. To find that out would require clinical trials, and, barring such trials, we can never be certain whether vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty are anything superior to elaborate placebos. The difference, of course, is that at least vertebroplasty has a biologically and anatomically plausible rationale to lead us to think that it might work. The same most definitely does not apply to Dr. Buttar's treatment. Read this and tell me that this story of a doctor giving a talk about vertebroplasty to a skeptical audience of doctors doesn't sound familiar:

"I could tell by looking at the audience that no one believed me," she said. When she finished, no one even asked questions.

Finally, a woman in back raised her hand. Her father, she told the group, had severe osteoporosis and had fractured a vertebra. The pain was so severe he needed morphine; that made him demented, landing him in a nursing home.

Then he had vertebroplasty. It had a real Lazarus effect, the woman said: the pain disappeared, the narcotics stopped, and her father could go home.

"That was all it took," Dr. Jensen said. "Suddenly, people were asking questions. 'How do we get started?' "

Can you picture this sort of scene in an infomercial for an herbal remedy? I can.

So what's wrong with testimonials? Well, as I like to say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and testimonials usually don't even rise to the level of anecdotes. Testimonials are often highly subjective, and, of course, practitioners can and do pick which testimonials they present. Even in the case of cancer "cure rates," testimonials often mean little because they are given for diseases that surgery alone "cured." (Also, dead patients don't provide good testimonials.) Worse, testimonial-based practice tends to preclude the detailed observation and long-term followup necessary to identify which patients benefit from treatments and which do not, complication types and rates, or long-term results of the treatment. Anecdotes are really good for only one thing, and that's developing hypotheses to test with basic scientific experimentation and then clinical trials. Vertebroplasty may indeed be very effective at pain relief with a low risk of complications. Or it may not. We simply don't have the data to know one way or the other, and now we may never have it. What is odd is that Medicare and insurance companies are usually pretty firm about not paying for an experimental procedure (which is what vertebroplasty should be considered), yet somehow third party payers have been persuaded to pay for this procedure.

Science itself and randomized clinical trials are designed to combat such biases. In preclinical studies, the scientific method uses the careful formulation of hypotheses and testing of those hypotheses with experiments that can either confirm or falsify the hypothesis, experiments that include appropriate control groups to rule out results due to factors other than what the researcher is studying. The scientific method, rigidly adhered to, helps investigators protect themselves from their own tendency to see what they want to see, to correct mistaken results, and recover from stupidity faster. The same is true of randomized clinical trials, which accomplish this in much the same way by using four factors: strict inclusion criteria, so that only patients with the disease being studied are admitted; close measurement of endpoints that are as objectively and reproducibly measured as possible; careful, statistically valid randomization, so that the control group and experimental groups resemble each other as closely as possible; and a placebo control (or a comparison against the standard of care treatment for disease in which a placebo control would be unethical, as in cancer trials). Whenever possible, double blinding is advisable, so that neither the patients nor the doctors know which patient is getting which treatment, so that doctors don't treat patients in either group differently or look more closely for (and therefore find) treatment effects in the experimental group and so that patients don't pick up cues from the doctors' interaction with them. This maximizes objectivity and minimizes bias.

It should also be remembered that one study is not enough, either. Single studies can be wrong one-third or even one-half of the time. I've often joked that, if you look hard enough, you can almost always find a study that supports whatever conclusion about a clinical question that you want to make. Alties don't understand this and will cite one or two carefully selected reports that seem to support their claims, ignoring the many that do not. Illustrating this example is chelation therapy for another disease, namely athersclerotic vascular disease, for which chelationists will cite old papers with inadequate controls that seemed to show a benefit. For example, there was one randomized study in 1990 that appeared to show a benefit for chelation therapy over placebo, but this was a study that looked at only 10 patients. Multiple much larger randomized studies have been done since then, such as this one, and none of them has shown a benefit. Guess which studies alties like to cite? (Hint: It isn't any study newer than 1991 or so.) Hopefully an ongoing NCCAM study will resolve the study once and for all, although there is little doubt in my mind that chelationists will not believe the study if, as is likely, it fails to find a beneficial treatment effect.

What really needs to be considered in clinical decision-making is the totality of data from well-designed clinical studies, something the Cochrane Collaboration tries to facilitate by evaluating the literature concerning important clinical questions and synthesizing it into recommendations and a summary of the quality of available evidence to support their recommendations (or the lack thereof). The bottom line is that evidence-based medicine, far from being a way for "conventional" doctors to assert their superiority over "alternative medicine," is a in actuality means for doctors to try to avoid medical and scientific self-delusion about the effectiveness of a favorite treatment. Just because the medical profession all too often doesn't do a good job of practicing evidence-based medicine is not a reason to throw these scientific standards out in favor of fluffy, feel-good, testimonial-based treatments like Dr. Buttar's or to give advocates of such treatments a pass in terms of supporting their claims. Rather, it is a strong reason to strive to do a better job at improving the science behind our treatments and the scientific rigor of our clinical trials. Evidence-based medicine may not be without problems itself (and perhaps I shall try to address some of its shortcomings in future posts). However, it is far better than the alternative.

Last call for submissions to the Skeptics' Circle

Get your best skeptical blogging to Pat at Red State Rabble by tomorrow night, and then join him for the Sixteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle on Thursday!

Grand Rounds #49

Grand Rounds #49 has been posted at Healthy Concerns. Go forth and enjoy the best medical blogging around.

Vacation dispatches, part I: Drivers to avoid

Well, I'm really back in it now, with a full clinic yesterday, my coming back to find that I'm unexpectedly covering for one of my partners for a couple of days (one of the two who usually has the sickest train wrecks of patients in the hospital), which has already produced one admission that I'll have to cover for at least another day. Welcome back, as they say. (On the other hand, it does force me to switch rapidly out of vacation mode and back to work mode.) Fortunately, however, there haven't been any new consults or emergencies--yet. Consequently, I only have time for a brief anecdote from vacation. I have a handful of these that I thought would make amusing blog fodder, some long and some short, and I'll intersperse among the usual blogging about medicine, surgery, skepticism, and science as the next two or three weeks roll by. Assuming things don't get too hairy, I should have time to post at least a couple of more substantive articles about why clinical trials are so important in evaluating conventional medical therapies and perhaps even take on an altie phenomenon that I've been meaning to write about since at least July but that has finally gotten on my nerves enough to motivate me. If I get time to wade through all 150+ comments on Kristjan Wager's excellent guest blog about the Danish autism studies, maybe I'll make a followup post. Hopefully Kristjan will also provide me with a followup.

So...picture this.

Date: Friday, August 12, 2005
Time: Approximately 7 PM
Location, I-75 North in Michigan, approximately 15 miles north of the Ohio border

My wife and I were cruising along, happy that we had finally gotten through the massive traffic jam on the Ohio Turnpike near Toledo, our final destination rapidly drawing nearer, when we noticed it. There, ahead of us, I noticed an RV towing a car. By itself, this was nothing unusual. Lots of people go camping in RVs and tow their car for use as transportation while they are on vacation. I see it all the time on long road trips during the summer.

I wouldn't have even given it another look if it weren't for something odd that I noticed as we gained on the RV. It looked as though the owner had painted some words on the back of the car being towed. It looked as though he or she had used poster paint of the type that teenage kids use to decorate their cars for high school graduation or that young couples use to paint "Just Married" on their car on their wedding day. As I gained on the car, I was able to read the words on the back of the car:

"Car in toe."

I rapidly passed the RV and its towed car. I wanted to stay as far away as possible from the vehicles. I figured that anyone crappy at spelling probably can't read speed limit or road signs very well. I didn't want to be anywhere near them when bad consequences resulted from that.

What I did on my summer vacation: "Proof of "intelligent design" (and an old friend)

Well, I'm back.

Yes, I know I blogged a fair amount while on vacation, my promise to restrain myself notwithstanding. Nonetheless, with the exception of the posts about the traffic wreck that screwed up our trip home and the tragic death of an autistic boy receiving chelation therapy this week, it was mostly fluff or carnival barking. Think of it this way: I enjoy blogging so much that, if I had spent the two weeks at home rather than traveling to various places in the Midwest (and putting over 2,000 miles on my car in the process), I probably would have blogged a lot more than normal because I would have had the time.

One thing about being on vacation is that I had some time to sit back and think about things that I normally take for granted. For example, I spend a fair amount of time poking fun at adherents of "intelligent design" creationism, the claim that there are some biological structures that are too complex to have come about through evolution by natural selection (a concept they term "irreducible complexity") and therefore must have been "designed" by some "intelligence." (Who or what this "intelligence" is, they studiously avoid saying to secular audiences, sometimes going so far as to leave open the possibility of aliens being the force behind evolution, while on the side they admit the truth to fundamentalist Christian audiences. Is the "designer" God? Nahhh. Couldn't be. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) Frequently cited examples of biological structures or systems that could not have come about without some "design" include the eye, the bacterial flagellum, and the clotting/complement cascade. Sadly, instead of working to look for actual evidence or to do actual experiments to test their mushy claim (which doesn't even rise to the level of a scientific hypothesis or theory), ID advocates instead use their resources to bring political pressure to bear on scientifically ignorant school boards either to teach the (scientifically nonexistent) controversy, to cast doubt upon how well-supported evolution is as a scientific theory, or to actually teach ID as an "alternative theory" to conventional evolution.

True, ID advocates often richly deserve the mockery that gets sent their way, but (I asked myself) have I ever tried to look at the controversy through their eyes? No! So, I set about to look for evidence of "design" in nature as we tooled about through the Midwest. Anything that looked as though it couldn't have come about through random natural processes alone was what I had in mind. After all, one of the key arguments of ID advocates is that we can recognize "design" in nature when we see it, even though they tend not to be too specific about exactly what criteria can be used to recognize "design." In fact, that High Priest of Intelligent Design, Michael Behe himself, has used Mount Rushmore as an example of how we can "know design when we see it" and distinguish "design" from natural processes. Maybe I could find similar examples if I looked hard enough. Scoff all you want, those of you who point out that such reasoning would lead one to conclude that the Old Man of the Mountain was "intelligently designed"! I would not let my attempt to follow Behe's reasoning be deterred by such annoying intrusions of reality-based thinking! No!

So, at every stop during our last two weeks of travel, from the Detroit area, to Nepessing Lake in Lapeer, to rural Ohio, to Chicago, and all points in between, I looked diligently at every natural object, plant, and creature I saw, searching carefully for evidence of design, evidence that it could not have come about without the intervention of intelligence, without some sort of "design" behind it.

I failed.

Although I had a fine time on vacation, visiting family, old friends, and favorite places, on the drive home, this failure haunted me. It cast a pall over the return trip. OK, the pall wasn't so much due to my failure to find strong evidence of "design" in nature that depressed me, but rather the thought of facing the end of my vacation and having to confront the massive pile of paperwork, various patient problems, and writing tasks that were no doubt waiting for me back at the lab and office, as well as the fact that I would be on call today. But stay with me here for the sake of the story.

On our second day back, after having taken a day to recover from the 11 hour drive, my wife and I were trying to get our neglected yard into some semblance of decent shape. Fortunately, the brown grass hadn't really grown much, given the lack of rain and the fairly hot weather that had predominated the first week we were gone, which made the task a bit easier. I was about to head back inside for a moment, when my wife came up to me. She handed me something.

"Hey, check it out. This looks pretty cool," she said.

It was a rock. but not just any rock. I stared, dumbfounded. "Do you realize what this is?" I said. I was practically giddy with joy, not unlike Gollum at Mount Doom after he bit the One Ring from Frodo's hand and danced his way to the edge of the precipice beyond which lay the fiery lava of the Crack of Doom. (It was all I could do to keep myself from hissing, "My Precioussss!") "It's what I've been looking for all along!"

It was this:

(Actual size: Approximately 1 inch in height)

Could it be? I looked it over at different angles:

I thought. I had been looking all over the Midwest for something like this, and there it was, right in my own back yard, the proof I had been looking for! Look at the face! Surely this could not have been the product of random natural forces. Surely this was evidence of intelligent design in nature! And if there could be "design" in geology to produce a stone like this, a stone that looks like a face, then what about the evolutoin of life? I made plans to send photos of this find to William Dembski and Michael Behe. Surely they would be very interested!

My giddiness at my discovery subsided, and my wife stopped looking at me as though I had lost my mind. It was a difficult feat to accomplish for her. I then took an even closer look at the rock.

And a realization dawned on me.

It wasn't just any face. There was something familiar about that face. Something it reminded me of. But what? I knew it! I immediately went to work. First, a little Magic Marker:

Do you see where I'm going yet? No? (Admittedly, my attempt at artwork didn't turn out too good.) How about a little Photoshop? (I'm not too good at Photoshop, either, but this looks a bit more convincing.)

Do you see it now? Do you?

Yes! It's our old friend the Hitler zombie! Not only had I discovered strong evidence of "design" in nature, but I had discovered who the "intelligent designer" must be! None other than the Hitler zombie, that undead eater of politicians' brains and lover of overblown analogies to Hitler, the Nazi, or the Holocaust to be used to slime one's political opponents with, of course! I know I promised to try to keep the Hitler zombie in his crypt for a while, but this was just too big a coincidence!

So why not the Hitler zombie? It makes just as much sense as any other candidates for the title of the "intelligent designer" of "intelligent design creationism," including even my personal favorite up until this discovery, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The rotting Führer is even a deliciously appropriate candidate, given how Michael Ruse himself has fallen victim to the monster's hunger for brains, himself bringing up bad Nazi analogies while apparently endorsing the mistaken notion that Darwinian evolution implies atheism.

Perfect!

What, you say? You can't believe that a fictional device created to make fun of people who make exaggerated and inappropriate analogies to the Nazis could be the "intelligent designer"? If you believe William Dembski when he says that the "designer" doesn't necessarily have to be God, then why couldn't the "designer" be the Hitler zombie, space aliens, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster? If "intelligent design" makes no assumptions about who or what the "designer" is, as many of its adherents claim while trying to argue that it is a scientific, not a religious, idea, then the "designer" could be anything.

And my evidence that the "designer" was the Hitler zombie is just as convincing as the evidence presented by any advocate of "intelligent design." Perhaps it's even more so, given that I actually have a piece of physical evidence. That is better than ID advocates can produce.

The NYT fisks "intelligent design"

Daniel C. Dennett has published a rather nice fisking of "intelligent design" creationism on the Sunday New York Times editorial page. Some choice excerpts:

The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Precisely. The way for a scientist to win fame and glory is not to be conventional, but rather to take an established theory, look at a phenomenon that it doesn't explain well, and then come up with a better explanation that is supported by data and experimentation. You won't find many Nobel Prize winners who won for just supporting accepted theory of the day. They either find something new or find a new twist on an old theory.

And:

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. "Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat," you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: "See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms." And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

Yes. "Intelligent design" advocates try to convince the lay person, who usually doesn't know much about evolution or even how science operates, that there is a genuine debate when there is not, at least not scientifically speaking (politically speaking, of course, is another matter). Dennett also nails it as far as why ID is not taken seriously by scientists:

To formulate a competing hypothesis, you have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be.

That's what's most infuriating about ID, that it presents no testable hypotheses detailed enough to be falsifiable and presents no experimental evidence supporting those hypotheses. It's just a misstated mish-mash of exaggerations, misrepresentations of, and outright lies about known weaknesses in evolutionary theory with an attitude that, if we can't yet understand how evolution produced this particular biological structure, then an "intelligent designer" must have done it. As philosophy or religion, ID may be interesting to study, but it has no place in a science classroom until its advocates show some actual science to support it.

And what makes ID any more worthy than any other concept that has not yet reached the science classroom? Nothing:

It's worth pointing out that there are plenty of substantive scientific controversies in biology that are not yet in the textbooks or the classrooms. The scientific participants in these arguments vie for acceptance among the relevant expert communities in peer-reviewed journals, and the writers and editors of textbooks grapple with judgments about which findings have risen to the level of acceptance - not yet truth - to make them worth serious consideration by undergraduates and high school students.

SO get in line, intelligent designers. Get in line behind the hypothesis that life started on Mars and was blown here by a cosmic impact. Get in line behind the aquatic ape hypothesis, the gestural origin of language hypothesis and the theory that singing came before language, to mention just a few of the enticing hypotheses that are actively defended but still insufficiently supported by hard facts.

They won't, even though, as Dennett points out:

If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, vying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology.

Quite. Maybe if all the money being spent trying to dupe school boards across the country into including ID in their curriculae as "alternatives" to evolution or to beating students over the head with exaggerated "deficiencies" of evolutionary theory were instead spent on research, maybe some Discovery Institute "fellow" will be in line for that Nobel Prize in 20 years.

Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

I'm probably going straight to hell for posting this...

During my vacation, via a friend of my wife's, I discovered changes to the Eucharist made by the new German Pope, Benedict XVI. He sure didn't waste any time...

Kirby tries to cover his posterior

OK, I surrender.

I tried not to write anything during this last weekend of my vacation, but then I became aware of David Kirby's CYA response to the tragic death of a boy during chelation therapy for his autism last week:

But even as the grieving immigrant mother makes funeral arrangements for her beloved boy, opponents of the theory that drew the family to America (the theory that mercury triggers autism, and removing it through chelation may improve symptoms) are holding his death up as proof that the idea is bogus. They claim that the use of chelation to treat autism is foolishly dangerous, and should be shut down at once.

Some people have come perilously close to exploiting this tragedy to further their own political or personal agendas. Some blame the boy’s death on his mother, who has been labeled as reckless and “desperate.” Others blame the Pennsylvania doctor -- and any autism doctor willing to try chelation (the use of certain chemicals to remove heavy metals from the body) – for the tragedy. Some fault me, for writing a book that dared to include the topic of chelation and autism within its pages.

Kirby's probably feeling the heat over this death, as well he should. The popularity of his book, Evidence of Harm, and its favorable treatment of the claim (I refuse to dignify it by calling it a "theory" given that scientific theories require a lot of evidence to support them) that mercury from childhood vaccines causes autism, very likely have played a role in the recent popularization of this bogus "treatment" for autism. As for "exploiting this tragedy to further their own political agendas," Kirby is being rather selective in his criticism. The mercury/autism activists routinely feature autistic children labeled "mercury poisoned" at political rallies to further their agenda. (One could even argue that Kirby's own attempt to spin this tragedy to deflect criticism of chelation is "exploiting this tragedy to further his own political agenda.") In any case, when a boy dies during a dubious treatment that almost certainly doesn't work, of course the incident should be used as an argument to criticize the treatment, no matter how "daring" it was of Kirby to have mentioned it in his book.

Kirby continues:

First of all, only an autopsy will reveal the actual cause of death, and I think it is prudent to wait before jumping to any conclusions about the general safety of chelation and autism. That said, the boy did die while undergoing the procedure, and it’s possible the controversial treatment is what killed him.

Give me a freakin' break! It's way more than "possible" that the chelation treatment killed the boy. It's highly likely. Otherwise healthy five year olds don't just drop dead of cardiac arrest for no apparent reason, particularly while sitting in a doctor's office. It happens, but it's extremely rare. For this boy to have just happened to have droppped dead of a cardiac arrest while he was receiving a therapy that can lower serum calcium and magnesium levels to levels low enough to cause cardiac arrest is one a hell of a coincidence. Unfortunately, the autopsy results may never conclusively show that chelation killed the boy. Electrolyte abnormalities leading to sudden cardiac arrest (the most likely cause of death in this case) can be hard to pin down in an autopsy. If the autopsy fails to find conclusive evidence for this cause of death, it will allow the chelation advocates wiggle room to claim "reasonable doubt" over whether their pet treatment killed the boy.

Worse, Kirby is now trying to blame the scientific community for Abubakar's death, rather than where the blame should be placed if chelation killed him, at the hands of the doctor who administered the chelation for a condition for which it is not indicated and those who support this quackery. (At least he properly asks the question why this doctor was using intravenous EDTA, rather than other, safer methods.)

He goes on:

Just think, if the government had listened to the very IOM report it commissioned back in 2001, we might know a lot more about chelation and autism than we know today. If clinical trials had gotten underway then, we would know with certainty whether chelation could heal, or kill.

Please. We already know whether chelation can kill. We've known it since the 1940's and 1950's. Deaths have been rare since the 1960's, true, mainly due to better cardiac monitoring and more care with infusions, but kidney failure, cardiac complications, and electrolyte deficiencies have not. The correct question is whether chelation can "heal" autism at an acceptable risk-benefit ratio, not the false dichotomy of whether it can "heal or kill." One has to wonder why Kirby chose to quote the 2001 IOM report and its tepid recommendation that chelation therapy should be studied, rather than the more recent 2004 report. Could it be that the evidence developed in the interim that failed to show a link between mercury exposure and autism led the IOM not even to consider chelation as a viable therapy anymore? (I'll have to go back to the 2004 report to check on this.) After all, if mercury is not the etiologic cause of autism, then there's no reason to think that chelation therapy would do any good for it and therefore no reason to waste resources studying it. Even if mercury is involved in the pathogenesis of autism, it's unlikely that chelation treatments given months or years later would do any good, but in that case at least there would be a reason to consider studying it.

Finally, Kirby says:

If hard scientific proof had been uncovered that chelation was 100-percent worthless in the treatment of autism, no parent or doctor would still be pursuing the therapy today. If evidence had surfaced in clinical trials that children could be harmed or even killed by chelation, no one would be using it today. The doctor in Pennsylvania would have halted chelation therapy long ago, and this poor grieving family would never have crossed the ocean from the UK in pursuit of its false promise.

How reasonable-sounding. How charmingly naïve. (I also have to wonder if Kirby is aware that it's pretty rare for a clinical study to provide 100% evidence of any conclusion. Medicine deals with probabilities, and those probabilities only very rarely turn out to be 100%.) Kirby clearly doesn't have much experience with "alternative medicine." Studies don't matter to alties, and that goes triple for conditions for which conventional medicine does not yet have highly effective treatments. Study after study showed that Laetrile didn't help advanced (or even early stage) cancer back in the 1970's and early 1980's. Altie practitioners still use it, and patients still seek it. Recent studies have shown that homeopathy does no better than placebo for a variety of conditions, but do you think that homeopaths will stop using it or people stop seeking it? Studies have come out showing that echinicea doesn't help common colds, but I wouldn't sell my stock in companies selling the herb if I were you. Study after study have shown that chelation therapy does no better than placebo for coronary and peripheral vascular disease. It's still being used, and NCCAM has even funded a large study to see if it works, not because of the science so much but because of its popularity. If the NCCAM study fails to show a benefit for chelation over placebo, you can bet that alties will dismiss the study and that chelation will continue to be used for heart disease. If a study ever conclusively shows that chelation does no good for autism, you can further bet that it won't be believed by the mercury/autism advocates and that chelation will continue. None of this means that we physicians and scientists shouldn't do the studies, of course. That's how science progresses and ineffective treatments are slowly weeded out of our medical armamentarium. However, Kirby's faith that such studies can cause such a rapid halt to the use of dubious treatments is almost touching in its naïveté.

This comment by Kirby, however, is not so touching or naïve:

But what if the opposite were true? What if the “rigorous science” recommended by the IOM had yielded proof that chelation can indeed help some kids -- provided that it’s done with the safest agents, at the safest doses, and through the safest routes of administration (not to mention in combination with other therapies)?

Either way, if America had done its scientific homework, as recommended by its top science professors, Abubakar might still be alive today.

In essence, what Kirby seems to be trying to do here is to deflect the blame for Abubakar's death from chelationists to the scientific community that hasn't studied chelation therapy for autism. Does he even know how clinical studies work? Even if a large randomized, double-blind study had been organized immediately after the 2001 IOM report, four years would probably not be long enough to write the proposal, get it funded, get it approved by the various IRBs necessary at the multiple centers it would have to be done at, accrue enough patients to have enough statistical power to detect the outcomes studied, and have adequate followup to make hard conclusions, and it certainly wouldn't have been long enough to document long-term outcomes of therapy! Preliminary results would probably be available now, maybe even more final short term results, but that would be about it. Also, remember that one negative study would likely not be sufficient to convince doctors (much less activists) who believe that chelation is of benefit in autism (although I'm sure one positive study would be more than enough, even though initial positive studies are wrong 1/3 of the time). It would take more than one study to convince. I would also make the prediction that such a randomized, placebo-controlled study would have an accrual problem. Many parents interested in chelation would likely not want to agree to be randomized to the placebo group. Getting them to sign up might be a hard sell. Such a problem would make a gold standard randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study even more difficult to do and take longer.

Sadly, it appears that Kirby is more interested in spinning this tragedy to decrease criticism of him and the mercury/autism hypothesis that he's become so enamored of than in critically looking at the claims that underlie the use of this dubious "therapy" for autism.

ADDENDUM: Peter Bowditch weighs in on the death of Abubakar Tariq Nadama. Stand back. He's really pissed off.

ADDENDUM #2: More information here and here.

ADDENDUM #3: On January 5, 2006, the coroner announced the results of the autopsy, concluding that it was indeed EDTA chelation that killed Tariq.

I want one of these!

Apparently this Flying Spaghetti Monster answer to the antiscience of "intelligent design" creationism is taking off more than anyone could have anticipated, so much so that Boing Boing is now offering Jim Leftwich's Flying Spaghetti Monster T-shirt for sale at its store. All proceeds will go to the National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. One neat thing is that you can customize your own T-shirt with different color illustrations and backgrounds to make the shirt as cool as you like! (For me this is an issue, given the large number of black T-shirts I've accumulated over the years; a red or blue T-shirt would be nice once in a while...) I also like the rather abstract nature of the logo. It has no words, which is likely to induce people to ask what the picture is supposed to be, allowing the wearer to educate the curious in the ways of His Noodliness.

Check it out, and while you're at it, there's nothing like this logo as well, which is a bit less abstract and more classically artistic.

Sadly, it was only a matter of time: An autistic boy dies during chelation therapy

I started my vacation out with a bit of a bummer of a thought. Unfortunately, it looks as though I'm going to close it with an even bigger bummer. I hadn't planned this. My original plan for today was either to take the day off and post nothing at all (the comment spam issue took care of that) or to post something brief, light, and fluffy, maybe doing the same on Saturday and/or Sunday, using a couple of amusing things I witnessed while traveling the Midwest (other than the Derek Jeter incident, of course). I would then resume regular topics on Monday when, unfortunately, I have to return to work, do clinic, and be on call.

However, this story, e-mailed to me by more than one person, compelled me to do change my plan:

A 5-year-old autistic boy died Tuesday in a Butler County doctor's office while undergoing an increasingly popular though controversial medical treatment touted by some as a cure for the lifelong neurological and developmental disorder.

Abubakar Tariq Nadama died while receiving chelation therapy, an intravenous injection of a synthetic amino acid that latches onto heavy metals and is then passed in the urine.

State police at Butler are investigating Nadama's death, which occurred at about 10:50 a.m. Tuesday in the office of Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry in Portersville.

Authorities said Kerry's office reported that the child was receiving an IV treatment for lead poisoning when he went into cardiac arrest.

An update to this story can be found here. My heart goes out to these parents, who no doubt thought that they were doing something positive for their child. Unfortunately for Abubakar and them, they found out in the hardest way possible that they were not.

Now, I realize that I'm a couple of days late commenting on this topic. I even wondered whether I have anything left to say that hasn't already been said. Indeed, Prometheus, Kev (1, 2, 3), Autism Diva, and numerous others have already commented ably on the story. Given that I've written before about chelation therapy as used to treat atherosclerotic heart and peripheral vascular disease in adults, how randomized double-blind studies have shown it to be no better a treatment than placebo, and how there is not a single study showing that it decreases the size of atherosclerotic plaques or improves blood flow through diseased vessels, I thought I should add my 2 cents.

Sadly, since learning of chelation therapy being used to "treat" autistic children, I've feared that it was only a matter of time before a child died during therapy, and now it has happened. It was inevitable, given that more and more parents of autistics, desperate to do anything to help their children, are opting for this unproven and ineffective therapy. Unfortunately, they usually do so on the basis of incomplete or erroneous information promoted by various organizations like Generation Rescue, whose literature states quite bluntly that "childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger's, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning" (which also makes it puzzling why it is being reported that Dr. Kerry was treating the child for "lead poisoning," given that even the thimerosal/autism advocates don't generally argue that lead causes autism). If you accept that premise that mercury exposure during infancy causes autism, then chelation therapy sounds reasonable. However, even if that premise were true, one has to remember that brain damage is usually permanent and it is hard to propose a plausible biological mechanism by which removing mercury months or even years later would improve neuronal function.

The purpose of chelation is to bind ("chelate") heavy metals with a molecule that allows them to be secreted more rapidly in the urine. EDTA is fairly avid at chelating calcium ions, and that was the original rationale for the use of EDTA in "dissolving" calcified atherosclerotic plaques by "leeching" the calcium out of them. Given that children tend to develop electrolyte imbalances more easily than adults and to be more sensitive to them, utilizing a therapy designed to chelate electrolytes is not something to be undertaken lightly in children. What most likely happened in Abubakar's case is that he suffered a fatal arrhythmia due to hypocalcemia brought on by chelation of the calcium ions in his bloodstream. It may be possible that he died of another cause and that the timing of his death was merely a coincidence, but that would have to be a hell of a coincidence, given how rare it is for an otherwise healthy 5 year old boy to drop dead suddenly from a cardiac arrest.

I'm not going to get into the issue of whether or not mercury in the thimerosal used to preserve childhood vaccines has a role in the pathogenesis of autism yet again. My position on this issue should be abundantly clear to anyone who's read my blog regularly over the last few months, and, if it isn't, you can always check out some of my older articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). Suffice it to say that the preponderance of evidence presently existing does not support a role for exposure to mercury as a major cause of autism in the vast majority of cases. Mercury may be a neurotoxin, but overwhelming evidence fails to support a role for it in the pathogenesis of autism. Given that the mercury hypothesis represents a biologically implausible explanation for the pathogenesis of autism, any therapy based on "removing" mercury is likely doomed from the start to be ineffective, and any doctor who administers such a treatment for autism (in this case, Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry) should be considered guilty of negligence at best and malpractice at worst.

For the sake of argument however, let's play Devil's advocate for a moment and discuss this tragic case operating under the assumption that mercury does play a major role in the pathogenesis of autism. Even in that case, if the child's death can be shown to be due to electrolyte imbalances caused by chelation therapy, this doctor still should be considered guilty of unethical conduct at best and malpractice at worst. Why? First, as has been pointed out, in physiologic conditions in the body EDTA is a relatively weak chelator of mercury ions compared to the -SH group-containing proteins in the body's tissues. This means that, at equilibrium, mercury ions will remain preferentially bound to -SH group-containing tissue proteins in the body and EDTA will not be effective at competing for binding mercury. Effective mercury chelators contain -SH groups and have higher affinity for mercury than body tissues. Examples include compounds such as 2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) and 2,3-dimercaptopropane-1-sulfonate (DMPS). In comparison, EDTA is a poor choice as a therapeutic agent to remove mercury from the body, even though in the test tube it binds mercury more avidly than calcium. (Perhaps this is one reason why Dr. Kerry was reported to have claimed to investigators that he was treating the child for "lead poisoning," for which EDTA is approved). In contrast, EDTA is a strong chelator of calcium and magnesium ions, which is why dangerous hypocalcemia is a risk when using EDTA intravenously. Similarly, EDTA chelation therapy can also lead to kidney failure, anticoagulation resulting in bleeding, vasculitis, autoimmune reactions, and depletion of serum zinc ions (which EDTA binds more strongly than calcium or magnesium), leading to compromise of the immune system. Anyone administering chelation therapy in an office not connected to a hospital needs to be prepared to deal with immediately life-threatening complications like cardiac arrhythmias right then and there, because there won't be time to get the patient to a hospital in time to save his life if such complications ensue. At minimum, this would require a fully stocked crash cart and personnel well trained in ACLS and (if treating children) PALS. If Dr. Kerry did not have these resources available, plus cardiac monitoring equipment, it would have been quite reckless of him to be administering intravenous chelation therapy in his office.

Because there are no good studies that demonstrate its efficacy in treating autism, chelation therapy for this purpose should be considered at best an experimental therapy (at worst it is a completely ineffective therapy). As such, chelation is not and cannot be considered the standard of care. Also, it is generally considered dubious at best and unethical or even malpractice at worst to administer unproven experimental therapies outside the context of properly designed and conducted clinical trials, which brings up the issue of informed consent. Did Dr. Kerry tell the parents the truth of the situation, which is that there is no evidence from even minimally controlled trials that chelation therapy does any good whatsoever for autism and that, in addition, intravenous chelation therapy has the risks of dangerous electrolyte imbalances, sometimes fatal cardiac arrhythmias, kidney failure, etc.? It is impossible to say with the information available, but my guess is that, like most altie doctors, Dr. Kerry probably played up the perceived "benefits" of chelation therapy for autism on the basis of almost zero supporting scientific or clinical data and understated its risks. If there is a lawsuit (as there should be if chelation did kill Abubakar), this issue will become very important. Another issue that will become important is that Dr. Kerry is apparently an otolaryngologist, not a pediatrician or a pediatric psychiatrist. What's an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor who also claims to specialize in allergies doing administering chelation therapy for autism? Where and how did he learn to administer it safely? What are his qualifications to be treating "lead poisoning" or autism? Or did he just start doing it on his own? (I note that the University of Pittsburgh has apparently removed Dr. Kerry from its website; however, the cached page can be found here.)

But, say chelation advocates, no one has died from chelation therapy in decades until now. Well, that's not entirely true. Nonetheless, reply chelation advocates, the risk of death is very small when chelation is properly administered. Maybe so, but it still comes down to a risk-benefit ratio. In the case of serious and often fatal diseases such as cancer, we accept a higher level of risk of treatment-related complications, such as immunosuppression from chemotherapy, and a lower chance of success, because the consequence of no treatment is death. In contrast, in the case of a condition such as autism, where quite a few children improve over time to lead normal or near-normal lives without such interventions as chelation therapy, even a very small risk of death is unacceptable. This is even more true when the treatment risk being taken is due to a therapy whose efficacy is dubious at best, that is likely completely ineffective, and whose premise is not even based on sound science, as is the case for chelation therapy for autism.

Before I leave you temporarily for the last weekend of my vacation, please consider two things. First, one of the hallmarks of quackery is seen when a single therapy is touted as the remedy for a wide variety of diseases of unrelated pathogenesis. For anything other than documented cases of heavy metal or iron poisoning, chelation therapy definitely fits that description. Indeed, chelation is touted as a treatment for atherosclerotic coronary artery and peripheral vascular disease, autism, Alzheimer's disease, kidney stones, diabetes, osteoporosis, skin ulcers, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, muscular dystrophy, arthritis, poor memory, and even cancer. Ask yourself: How can one simple treatment possibly work for such a wide variety of diseases of vastly differing causes? Is it reasonable to believe that it can? No, it is not. Second, in these cases the question comes up about whether the doctor administering the therapy is a huckster. I have no information on which to base an opinion in this case. However, in most cases I have encountered, the doctor is usually a true believer in the quack therapy he or she is advocating. More than likely, Dr. Kerry genuinely believes in chelation therapy for autism, regardless of the paucity of evidence that mercury causes autism or that chelation therapy makes autistics more "normal." It's easy to lose one's objectivity as a physician when one deals with conditions or diseases that do not have good "conventional" treatments. As has been pointed out by Gregory L. Smith, the very reason medicine has come to insist on evidence-based approaches to evaluating treatments through randomized clinical trials is not because doctors and scientists are wiser than the general population, but rather because they are human and can be just as easily deceived (or just as easily deceive themselves) into believing in a treatment they desperately want to be efficacious. Even so, that does not excuse Dr. Kerry, nor should it stop the State of Pennsylvania from taking immediate action to strip him of his medical license or the parents from suing him for malpractice if the autopsy results demonstrate that Abubakar's death was indeed caused by chelation therapy.

Sadly, such an outcome seems unlikely at present:

The boy's mother, Marwa Nadama, said she did not blame the therapy, but was waiting for results of an autopsy.

I, too, will be awaiting the results of Abubakar's autopsy and may have more to say once it is reported.

ADDENDUM: A followup post can be found here.

ADDENDUM #2: On January 5, 2006, the autopsy results were announced, and the coroner concluded that EDTA chelation killed Tariq.

Comment spam: a solution (I hope)

As I mentioned before, while on vacation, this blog been deluged with comment spam. It's mainly hit the new posts (often within a couple of hours of posting), but it's showing up in older posts as well.

As a temporary measure until I manage to get off my duff and switch to a different blogging platform, I've turned on Word Verification on Blogger, something I only just noticed today. Word Verfication means you will have to recognize and type a word before you post your comment. Sorry for the inconvenience of the added step to post a comment, but I got tired of wasting my precious vacation Internet access time deleting comment spams. Blame the comment spammers, who, like e-mail spammers, are the utter scum of the Internet.

We'll see how it works.

Calling all skeptics!

Pat Hayes at Red State Rabble is hosting the 16th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle next Thursday, September 1. Get entries with your best skeptical blogging to him at redstaterabble@yahoo.com by Wednesday night! And, while you're at it, check out the graphics and posters on his sidebar that show the true scientific "value" of "intelligent design" creationism!

As always, I'm still looking for hosts for the Skeptics' Circle. E-mail me at orac_usa@hotmail.com if you're interested in hosting a meeting!

Nooooo! Not you too, McCain!

I interrupt my vacation again to bring you this cry of lament:

Nooooooo! Say it ain't so!

Via Pharyngula, I learn that the only remaining reasonable Republican Presidential hopeful (leaving aside his advocacy of campaign finance reform that restricts free speech around the time of elections, something I've always disagreed with him about), John McCain, has sold his soul to the creationists:

On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.

McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.

The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.

Unfortunately, McCain, like Bill Frist, has apparently figured out that he has no hope of getting the Republican nomination unless he panders to the Republican Party's fundamentalist base. Sadly, John McCain was the only Republican Presidential hopeful with an actual shot at the nomination that I could see myself voting for in 2008. (Indeed, I had supported him over Bush in 2000.) And now he's aligned himself with the antiscience wing of the Republican Party, which, unfortunately, is the dominant wing these days. A disagreement with McCain on his ill-advised and ineffective strategy for campaign finance reform I could overlook, albeit with some difficulty. McCain's swallowing the "intelligent design" Kool-Aid will be much harder for me to overlook, particularly since the "all points of view" canard sounds like it came out of the Discovery Institute's talking points.

Possible explanations for McCain's statement include (1) that McCain really believes that "intelligent design" creationism is worthy of being taught alongside evolution as an "alternative explanation"; (2) that he doesn't have enough knowledge to form an opinion on the issue and so took the easy course of endorsing the mushy platitude of teaching "all points of view" in the schools; or (3) that he doesn't believe that ID is sufficiently supported to be taught in science class but is willing to go against that belief in order to pander to the fundamentalists that dominate the Republican Party. None of these explanations make McCain look good. #1 and #2 imply an ignorance of biology and #3 implies a willingness to go against his beliefs in search of votes.

Three years until the 2008 election, and I'm already screwed as far as picking a candidate.

Rant ended. Time to go back to enjoying the last few days of my vacation.

Tangled Bank XXXV

I interrupt my vacation once again for a plug.

Tangled Bank XXXV has been posted at Cognitive Daily, and, as usual, there's lots of excellent science blogging there, which you should check out forthwith!

As an aside, though, I hate to say it, but I have to quibble a little bit with the way Dave Munger has handled it this time around. He's decided to try to remain completely apolitical, separating the posts that have to do with "intelligent design" creationism and other posts that deal more with the politics of science than with pure science from the main carnival and instead posting them on his personal blog, Word Munger. I can understand his sentiment, which can be summed up the way PZ put it: "You may like your science untainted by politics or the slime of creationism." I can also fully agree for scientific issues that are less well-settled scientifically than the evolution/creationism debate. Although I sympathize with such a view, unfortunately the "slime of creationism" is unavoidable these days, thanks to the fundamentalists who continue to push it against all scientific evidence for evolution. Also, evolution is such a well-founded and well-established theory, that this truly is a debate of scientific fact against pseudoscience. If fundamentalists and politicians didn't keep pushing it, the antiscience that is ID would have withered long ago. Science blogs represent one force that can be harnessed to slap down this invasion of antiscience in the classroom.

Vacation carnival barking, week 2

Argh!
It figures. It's just my luck to get deluged with comment spam during the very period of time when I'm least able to deal with it, mainly because I'm away on vacation and have limited and sporadic Internet access. Maybe I shouldn't have blogged about my weekend encounters with Derek Jeter yesterday, as even the mere mention of the vile Yankees seemed to attract all sorts of scummy comment spammers to this blog, necessitating my wasting precious vacation and Internet time deleting them.

Don't worry, Orac-philes. I'll begin to deal with this problem when I get back home late this week. In the meantime, I only have enough dialup Internet access time for a little carnival barking today. Yesterday, RINO Sightings was posted at The World According to Nick, and today Grand Rounds XLVIII was posted by Dr. Kevin Pho at Straightfromthedoc. Enjoy the bloggy goodness.

And fear not! In less than a week, Orac will be back to his usual medical, scientific, and skeptical topics!

Dispatches from the road, part VI: Vacation purity contaminated

Ah, Chicago! My favorite city, to which I hope to return to reside again someday. Why is it, then, that odd things seem to happen whenever I return for a visit? I hadn’t intended on posting today, but I can’t seem to avoid having things happen to me on vacation that cause me to break my vow to try not to blog much on vacation. (And there's still nearly a week to go before I go back to work.) So it was on my weekend sojourn to my favorite city to visit old haunts (examples include Club Lucky for great Italian food, Silver Cloud as just a great general neighborhood pub, and John Barleycorn, the inspiration for the pub in which the Skeptics' Circle met twice), hang out, visit my sister and cousin, and in general just chill out.

But all was not entirely well. On Friday morning after getting up, I looked out the window to my hotel, the Westin on Michigan Avenue just north of the Hancock Tower. There, as usual, was a lovely view of Michigan Avenue facing south and the base of the Hancock Tower:


Then, I panned to the left and down, to E. Delaware Place, right across the street. This is what I saw:


Odd. What was with the guy in the Yankees jersey? I then remembered that the Yankees were in town to play the White Sox for the weekend, and took no further notice of it, other than taking a picture. (A premonition, perhaps?) Perhaps even then I realized this might mean something. (And it did, but more on that later.) I even wondered if I could get tickets for one of the games, as the series was expected to be a good one. When I lived in Chicago, I used to like to go to Comiskey Park--I refuse to call it by its abominable new name, U.S. Cellular Field, as all Chicago baseball fans, even Cubs fans, should--when the Indians came to town. I went downstairs to the lobby to get some coffee and to use the free wireless Internet access to check my e-mail, generally farting around and killing some time, while my wife slept in a little longer. About an hour later, I came upstairs. Yankee boy was still there in the same spot on Delaware Place.

This is kind of strange, I thought. An hour later, when my wife and I left for brunch, Yankee boy was still there.

Odder still, Yankee boy (or someone who looked eerily like him) was back again on Saturday morning in the very same place, just in a different set of Yankees gear. I observed him while I was sitting in the lobby, soaking in the great feeling of being back in Chicago again and blasting Bill Frist for advocating the teaching of “intelligent design” in classrooms. Weird, I thought. Then a kid in a Yankees hat walked by. And then another. And another. Then a couple of giggly teenage girls in full Yankees regalia. What was going on here in Chicago? I thought I had managed to escape the Yankees and their insufferable fans by heading more than 800 miles west, to the heartland.

I was wrong. But this large number of Yankee fans seemed odd even for a weekend with the Yankees in town to play the Sox. Having lived in Chicago until six years ago, I knew there weren't enough Yankees fans there for a random sampling of them to produce this large a gathering at the Westin on Michigan Avenue hanging out for so long. I suppose it was possible that they had traveled to Chicago just to see the Yankees, but even accounting for that it seemed like an awful lot of Yankees fans. Something was definitely up.

A brief word of explanation for non-baseball fans and my non-U.S. readers is in order about why this disturbed me. If you're a baseball fan and grew up in an American League city east of the Mississippi river as I did, you must hate the Yankees. It's the law (of baseball, anyway). I grew up in Detroit, watched the Tigers take the 1968 and 1984 World Series; later lived in Cleveland during the years when the Indians stopped being a doormat (although they still lost the 1997 World Series in a typical heart-breaking fashion); and then lived in Chicago long enough to start to like the White Sox and Cubs. (I admit I was more partial to the Cubs, mainly due to Wrigley Field). It's part of my DNA to detest the Yankees and particularly their arrogant fans. True, I don't hate the Yankees nearly as much as a Boston Red Sox fan would. No non-Red Sox fan does. I just don't have that raging, burning hatred that only a century of stark rivalry and the curse of the Bambino can produce. But I hate them enough. In fact, I hate them even more now that I live within media range of the Barad-Dur of baseball, Yankee Stadium, and the annoying triumphalism and sense of entitledness that Yankees fans routinely express so colorfully.

So, there I was, wondering why there were so many Yankee fans milling about in the lobby of my hotel, when I noticed a group of them gathered around a tall young man, who appeared to be signing autographs. I didn't recognize him at all, but my wireless Internet connection and a hunch allowed me to determine quickly that this is who he was:


Argggghhh! The rookie second baseman of the New York Yankees, Robinson Cano!

The New York Yankees must be staying at my hotel! It all became clear. Yankee boy and the numerous Yankees fans suddenly made sense! My mind reeled.Then I thought back to a time two or three years ago when I stayed at the Westin for a meeting and ran into several Florida Marlin players in the elevator. The Westin must be the hotel in Chicago where Major League Baseball teams stay when they are in town to play the Sox or the Cubs. And now the dreaded Dark Lords of Baseball themselves were at the Westin, spending the night under the very same roof my that wife and I were! What to do? I decided it was time to head upstairs to the room and tell my wife about this development. I stood and waited at the elevator. It opened.

And this greeted me:


Just kidding. It was actually this man:


There he was, getting off the elevator, the Prince of Baseball Darkness himself, the very personification of the hated Yankees, their team captain and longtime shortstop Derek Jeter! There he was, the most prominent Yankee, more so than other Yankees stars because he was a career-long Yankee, not a free agent who just happened to join the Yankees, like Alex Rodriguez or Randy Johnson.

I stood there stunned for a moment. Before I could react (or pull out my camera phone for a quick picture), Jeter quickly walked past me, heading to the team bus to go to the stadium. It had happened so suddenly that I almost hadn't recognized him. A chubby guy in a Yankees cap pointed and yelled, and instantly a swarm of Yankee sycophants descended upon Jeter, buzzing like gnats, and the moment passed. I thought momentarily about following to see what other Yankees I could see, but decided that enjoying a coffee and telling my wife about what was going on was more important. As the elevator rose, two teenage girls who had also seen Jeter get off the elevator squealed back and forth about what they had just seen and literally jumped up and down with excitement. With difficulty, I held back the urge to vomit.

As annoyed as I was by the infiltration of our Chicago getaway by the hated enemies of all that is good and pure in baseball (God only knows how I would have reacted if I had seen the Dark Lord himself, George Sauron-brenner--I mean Steinbrenner--on that elevator), our Chicago sojourn was quite enjoyable. During our three days there, we hit the Art Institute of Chicago, Millenium Park to see the "Bean" (which, unfortunately, was covered by a huge tent to protect it as it was being polished) and the Crown Fountain, and other places. We did some shopping up at W. Belmont and N. Halstead (Belmont Army Surplus is a great place, by the way, having the best selection of Doc Martens shoes I've found anywhere). Saturday night, we headed to the Kinzie Chophouse for a fine meal (and a chance to regale our friends, even more inveterate Yankee-haters than we, with our tale and commiserate with them about the horrific performance of the White Sox during the first two games of the series) before heading back to the hotel.

Getting back to the hotel around 10 PM, we found a swarm of activity. This is where we discovered that there was at least one advantage to having the Yankees stay at our hotel: sheer entertainment value and people watching (not to mention blog fodder). Instead of heading back to our room, we just sat across the street on Delaware Place and watched the activity. A swarm of Yankees fans were hovering around the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the players either coming or going from the hotel. Around 10:15 PM, a black town car with very chrome, very shiny, very large Pimp My Ride-style wheels pulled up, and Joe Torre got out, a couple of doormen trying to hold back the crowd as he fought his way back into the hotel. A player who looked like Alex Rodriguez (I'm not entirely sure it was him) got into a cab, and a bunch of fans actually chased the cab on foot, including two who got into a car to continue the chase. Finally, the Chicago Police arrived to control the situation, and the amusement more or less ended. I thought that would be the end of our Yankees experience.

It wasn't.

Sunday morning, we packed up and were getting ready to check out. I was a little annoyed because we were running a little late for our date to meet my sister, her husband, my cousin, and my wife's friend for brunch. I was even more annoyed when we got on the elevator and, instead of going down to the lobby, it went up to the 16th floor, cursing myself for not having noticed that the elevator we were getting in was going up. The door on the 16th floor opened, and the people riding up with us got out.

The elevator began to descend.

And stopped on the 15th floor. The door opened. And who should be standing there waiting for the elevator but:

Argghhh! It was Jeter again, perfectly coiffed and impeccably groomed wearing a brown designer suit, an attractive woman in an expensive-appearing dress accompanying him. I wondered if she was a starlet, but didn't recognize her. (NOTE: My wife dissents about this part of the story, having gotten a better look at the woman than I did; she doesn't think the woman was with Jeter, but rather just happened to get on the elevator at the same time. She also estimated the woman to be in her mid-30's, way older than Jeter's usual proclivities when it comes to dating starlets. Sadly, my wife's likely more accurate account of the actual situation makes for a duller story than my version, which, had I had the presence of mind to snap a picture, might have gotten me a nod from the tabloids. Oh well. Maybe I need to get my glasses prescription adjusted.) They stepped on the elevator. We rode down in complete silence, my wife, myself, Derek Jeter, the woman, and our luggage. My wife and I tried not to be too obvious as we smirked at each other. Fifteen floors later, the elevator door opened, and Jeter and the woman stepped out, followed by my wife and me. We followed Jeter because we had to go the same direction anyway to get to the parking garage to pick up our car. We saw Jeter head out to the bus and watched with amusement as a mob of fans waiting behind a velvet rope accosted him. He started signing autographs, then got in the bus.

Friends, even as the proprietor of the Skeptics Circle, and a die-hard advocate of rationalism, science, and skepticism in all things, at times like this I have to wonder if there is such a thing as fate. Consider: Of all the weekends we could have taken a trip to Chicago this summer, we chose this one, when the Yankees just happened to be in town. Of all the hotels we could have stayed at in downtown Chicago, we ended up at the Westin, where the Yankees were staying. (Our other favorite downtown hotel, the Sheraton, happened to be booked solid because of its proximity to the lake and because this was the weekend of the Air and Water Show. Coincidence?) Of all the times Saturday morning I could have chosen to head back up to our hotel room, I chose the exact time when Jeter was coming down the very same elevator that I needed to use. But the capper is this: On Sunday morning, if we hadn't both been running late and gotten on the wrong elevator, we would never have gotten this "opportunity" to share 20 seconds in an elevator with Derek Jeter. It wasn't enough for me to run into Jeter once this weekend. I had to run into him twice, the second time much longer than the first! Spooky, eh?

Don't worry, though. I'm not going soft as a skeptic. I still don't think there is such a thing as fate, even when curious incidents of this sort seem to suggest that there might be, taunting me twice with the personification of the hated Yankees. It's all just coincidence. But if fate does actually exist in any form, particularly in baseball, I'm now convinced of one thing.

Fate was laughing its ass off at me this weekend.

Vacationus interruptus: I take back the nice things I said about Frist

I know I'm supposed to be still on vacation for another week, but this came across the news wire and it irritated me just enough to post this.

It turns out that I was right about Bill Frist the first time around, when I trashed him for his cynical and opportunistic actions with regard to the Schiavo case. I thought that maybe he was turning over a new leaf when he endorsed loosening the restrictions on stem cell research, but apparently he pissed off his fundamentalist base too much and has had to do something to try to regain their good graces. So he's at it again. Now he's endorsing the teaching of intelligent design:

"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

Note the oh-so-noble-sounding mention of a "pluralistic society" having access to a "broad range of fact." Who could argue with that, right? Unfortunately, such sentiments are only true when the ideas and "facts" being presented have roughly equal validity. Or validity that is within an order of magnitude of each other. Or within a thousand-fold of each other. Unfortunately, ID doesn't even reach that level of validity when compared with evolution.

It occurs to me that certain "intelligent design advocates may not be too happy with Frist's remarks. He seems to be tacitly admitting that ID is faith-based, when he adds "including faith" to his remarks. Why did he feel it necessary to mention faith at all, if ID is, as its advocates claim, a scientific theory that does not depend on any one religion? That could annoy some ID luminaries, who keep insisting that ID is not based on faith and does not assume that the "designer" is the Judeo-Christian god, even while explicitly admitting that it is to the faithful who are supporting this nonscientific rubbish. Just try asking them why it couldn't be the Flying Spaghetti Monster responsible for "design." And instead of getting their hypothesis (I won't dignify it by calling it a theory) accepted the scientific way, through research, evidence, and experimentation that eventually forces scientists to pay attention, ID advocates instead get dim-witted or opportunistic politicians to try to get our children indoctrinated with what is in essence a religious concept with no science yet to support it.

Frist then goes on to make the same mistake (or use the same deception) that ID creationists frequently do, namely calling ID a theory and implying it has equal validity as evolution. Remember, the scientific definition of the word "theory" is different than the common usage. When scientists call a set of principles a "theory" they are saying that it is the best explanation presently available for a scientific phenomenon. They are not saying that it's a hunch, which is the colloquial connotation of the word "theory," particularly when evolution is dismissed as "just a theory." Apparently Frist wasn't paying attention in his preliminary courses in pre-med or his actual courses at Harvard Medical School Perhaps he should be sent back for a refresher course in basic scientific concepts. He needs it.

Where he should never be sent is to the White House.

The sad thing is that, among physicians, Frist's misconception with regards to evolution and ID is probably almost as common among physicians as it is among lay people.

Dispatches from the road, part V: The Onion comes through again

Even on vacation, when I'm taking a break from my usual commentary on "intelligent design" creationism, The Onion comes through again with this story. Unfortunately, it's not all that far-fetched. I can see a "theory" of "intelligent falling" coming out of the ID movement next.

Now, off to enjoy Chicago for the weekend!

Dispatches from the road, part IV: This is a first for tunes

[NOTE: This is yet another in a continuing series of short dispatches to keep Orac amused while on vacation. Regular posts on skepticism, alternative medicine, creationism, and whatever else strikes Orac's fancy will resume in about a week or so...]

The Kaiser Chiefs are an up-and-coming band from the U.K. whose debut album Employment I picked up a few weeks ago. It's full of infectious, punkish pop songs reminiscent of The Jam, a bit uneven but definitely full of promise, as the now-retired St. Nate pointed out when he blogged about their appearance at Live 8. However, in my listening to the CD while putting hundreds of miles on my car, I noticed something I've never heard before in a rock album (or any album, for that matter). In the song Saturday Night, the boys sing:

Pneumothorax is a word that is long
They're just trying to put the punk back into punctured lung
Party over, party off, party on
'Cause we are birds of a feather and you can be the fat one

That has to be the first time I've ever heard a song that mentions a pneumothorax.

No wonder I like these guys....

The Fifteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

Being on vacation, I haven't had a chance to post much, mainly because (1) I'm having fun and it's a good thing to recharge Orac's power source for more blogging goodness to come and (2) there have been days where I quite simply have no Internet access or only have dialup. Having tried to use dialup to check my e-mail a couple of times this week, I can no longer imagine how I ever managed without high speed Internet access for so many years. Just checking my e-mail was so painfully slow, never mind trying to post to or update my blog, that I barely managed to respond to a few comments. Then, my cousin sent me an e-mail with a bunch of photos attached, and it took seemingly forever for the message to download. Ouch. In retrospect, maybe I should have posted Kristjan's piece on the Danish autism studies before I left, given the amount of commentary it's attracted. On the other hand, I thought it would be really nice to be able to post at least one or two substantive pieces while I was gone for two weeks, so that you don't all start thinking that Orac's disappeared from the blogosphere.

All of this is a roundabout way to come to one of my favorite topics, the Skeptics' Circle. Austin at Atheism Guide has posted the Fifteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and it's a great example of the straight-up, no-nonsense style of carnival hosting, with a number of high quality submissions. I'm amazed at how much effort he put into the commentary on each article. Maybe I'll try his method the next time I host, whenever that is.

In any case, check it out, and hopefully it will whet your appetite for more of the same when I get back from vacation late next week. And keep those submissions coming, because in two weeks Red State Rabble will host the Sixteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle! Finally, I'm still looking for hosts. If you're interested in hosting an edition of the Skeptics' Circle, e-mail me at orac_usa@hotmail.com. The archives and upcoming schedule are here, and the sorts of articles and hosting I'm looking for are described here and here.

Calling all skeptics!

The 15th Skeptics' Circle will be appearing at Atheism Guide in two days, and Austin still could use some more submissions. Come one, folks, let him have it. Bury him in high-quality submissions. Show him your skeptical stuff!

Send submissions to atheism.guide@about.com before Wednesday night!

Dispatches from the road, part III: Carnival barking

When you're on vacation and taking a bit of a blog break, but still want to do some posts, what's a good thing to do? Carnival barking, of course! And in the last two days, there have been three great blog carnivals to keep you busy and happily reading much bloggy goodness while Orac recharges his (its?) circuits for another run at the alties.

First, off, yesterday, there was the History Carnival #14 at Philobilon. Great stuff, as usual. Indeed, it's so highbrow that I sometimes wonder why they sometimes let my posts in, given that I'm not a historian. One of these days I'll have to see if I can get another Hitler zombie post in there, you know, just to see what the reaction is.

Second, there is the weekly showing of RINO Sightings at Balloon Juice. RINO Sightings is a carnival for conservatives or Republican-leaning types like me who have a problem with the direction the Republican Party's been going the last several years, particularly its utter domination by the religious right and its antiscientific agenda (particularly with regard to evolution, global warming, and stem cell research) and its complete loss of fiscal responsibility.

Finally, this morning, as there is every Tuesday, there's Grand Rounds, this week over at Circadiana. Bora's done a fine job of rounding up the best of the medical blogosphere this week.

One last note: I've noticed that I've developed a comment spam problem. Of course, this would have to happen while I'm away and don't really want to deal with it. However, when I get back into the swing of things at the end of August, this may be the thing that finally gets me off my behind to switch blogging platforms...

Dispatches from the road, part II: The Danish autism studies

This is a first for this blog.

I'm going to post something written by a guest blogger, Kristjan Wager. The reasons I'm posting are twofold. First, Kristjan, a fairly regular commenter on this blog who also happens to live in Denmark, has something interesting and informative to say about the Danish institute that did the widely-cited studies that failed to find a link between the thimerosal in childhood vaccines and autism. Second, I'm on vacation, and it's great to be able to put up at least one substantive post while I'm gone, with my only effort being to type a pithy introduction of a paragraph or two and do a little minor editing of the text for grammar and style. (English isn't Kristjan's first language, but minimal editing was required; I wish I could write so well in another language.)

One of the tactics used by those advocating a thimerosal-autism link is to attack the Danish study, since it is so widely quoted. Sometimes they try to attack the methodology, but, because the methodology was generally sound, such attacks usually don't get much traction. So, the next attack is to do a variant of the "pharma shill" attack, but this time on the scientists who did the studies, because they work for a government institute that manufactures vaccines. Indeed, RFK Jr. himself has said:

The Institute of Medicine as well as the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration base their defense of Thimerosal on four flimsy studies ginned up by the pharmaceutical industry and federal regulators who green-lighted the use of Thimerosal in the first place. Those fraudulent studies deliberately targeted European populations which were exposed to a fraction of the Thimerosal given to American children.

He's referring mainly to the Danish studies here. Never mind that he never says why the studies are "flimsy" or "fraudulent," never shows any evidence to support his assertion that they "deliberately targeted" any population to "hide" a link, and never showed that they were "ginned up" by pharmaceutical companies. In this background, Kristjan's commentary is more relevant. So, enough of my blathering (even on vacation I can't shut up). Here's Kristjan. Either leave your comments here, or you can e-mail Kristjan at public{AT]kristjanwager[DOT}dk.


*****
When debating autism and a possible link to childhood vaccinations and/or thimerosal, the Danish studies of a possible link are often brought up. There are several such studies, looking at different aspects of possible problems with childhood vaccinations, and so far they have all reached the conclusion that there is no link between neither childhood vaccinations nor thimerosal and autism.

When the studies are brought up, the proponents of a link often attack them based on their methodology and the authors of the studies. I haven’t analysed the studies well enough to be able to speak with any authority on the subject of the methodologies, however I can comment on the validity of the attacks on the authors. A good example of such an attack can be found on the blog adventures in autism, in which the author, ginger, writes:

The study is further compromised by the fact that several of the coauthors were employed by the Statens Serums Institut, the government owned vaccine manufacturer who would be held liable if it was indeed found that the use of thimerosal in vaccines contributed to autism.

Besides being an ad hominem fallacy, it also shows a lack of knowledge about the Danish health system and the Danish legal system. This post is an attempt to address the lack of knowledge. While doing this, I will also try to show why the idea that Statens Serums Institut might want to hide the connection, so it won’t influence their income, also is implausible.

First a little background on the Danish health system and Statens Serums Institut.

Denmark has universal health care, which means that everything except medicine
is free, and you will get financial aid for most medicine. In some countries with universal health care, there is a two-tiered system, in which most people have health insurance, ensuring that they get treated in a private hospital if they get sick. In Denmark that is not the case. Private hospitals exist, but were only allowed within the last two decades, and are not used much. The Danish health system also covers the cost for people with special needs, such as some people with autism. Vaccinations are considered normal health care, and as such they are given with no charge to the public.

Statens Serums Institut is a public enterprise that operates as a "market-oriented production and service enterprise". It operates under the Ministry of Health, and is covered by the Danish Health Law (Sundhedsloven) § 222 which, among other things, states that the institute secures the delivery of vaccinations, including the vaccinations to the childhood vaccinations program. According to § 222 2) the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Interior decides the rules regarding payment of the institute. A description of the Danish Childhood Vaccination Program can be found here.

If you look at Statens Serums Instituts annual report (pdf), you can see that the institute had a net revenue of 979.9 million kroner in 2004, and had a operational profit margin of 1.9%. All in all, the institute had a net income of just over 11 million kroner in 2004. That is approximately $2 million. In other words, Statens Serums Institut is by the standards of medical companies a non-profit business, and the institute has a very small profit in making the vaccinations.

One of the reasons why Statens Serums Institute has such as small net income is that it puts a lot of money into research and development, not only of new products, but also of existing products. Since the Institute, by law, has to ensure the delivery of childhood vaccinations, a lot of research goes into this aspect, which is why studies authored or co-authored by employees of the Institute are often cited when debating links between childhood vaccinations and other diseases/ailments. If you look at the annual report, you can see that they have the following comment:

On the research front, the Institute has documented that childhood vaccines do not cause other diseases such as autism and diabetes. This is of great importance to childhood vaccination programs world-wide.

In other words, it’s not only a link between childhood vaccinations and autism they research, its links between childhood vaccinations and any diseases/ailments. Statens Serums Institut doesn’t have anything to do with the monitoring the vaccinations once they are on the market. Instead the Danish Medicines Agency monitors the occurrence of side-effects of all medicines in Denmark, and can recall any medicine if there is a risk that they have serious side-effects.

The liability of Statens Serums Institut

First of all, if a link between childhood vaccinations, or any components in them, and autism was found, this would not make Statens Serums Institut liable. Since the childhood vaccination program is a state run program, it would be the State of Denmark that would be liable. Of course, since Statens Serums Institut is owned by the state, it doesn’t mean that employees there wouldn’t want to try to cover up a connection, so the state wouldn’t be held liable. However, there are some other things to take into consideration before reaching such a conclusion.

The Danish law system is different from the American law system, and it’s not possible to sue the state as it would in the US. Instead the liability is covered by "Lov om klage- og erstatningsadgang inden for sundhedsvæsenet", which deals with such issues within the Danish health care system. In chapter 3 of that law, the rules governing compensation for ailments gotten as a result of treatment are defined, while chapter 4 deals with compensation following ailments as a result of medicine. I haven’t been able find out if vaccinations would be considered treatment or medicine, but most people I’ve spoken to tend to believe it would be covered under medicine.

The law makes it clear that liability is not dependent upon the knowledge of harmful effects at the time of the administration of the medicine, nor even upon the fact that such effects should be plausible at the time. However there are some strict time frames for how long after a medicine (or treatment) was administered that it is possible to try to obtain compensation. In the case of treatment, it can happen up to five years after the patient or a relative discovered that there was a connection between the ailment and the treatment. In the case of medicine, it can happen up to three years after. In both cases it can’t be more than ten years after it happened. So, in the case of childhood vaccinations, it would mean that even if a link was found between the childhood vaccinations, or a component in them, and autism, any person who had the vaccination administered more than 10 years ago, would not be able to get any compensation under Danish law.

Now let’s go back to the original quote:

The study is further compromised by the fact that several of the coauthors were employed by the Statens Serums Institut, the government-owned vaccine manufacturer who would be held liable if it was indeed found that the use of thimerosal in vaccines contributed to autism.

Here we see that ginger is concerned that the coauthors would cover up a thimerosal-autism link because of liability. However, as I stated, any cases more than ten years old would make neither the state nor Statens Serums Institut liable according to Danish law, and, since Statens Serums Institut stopped using preservatives in their vaccinations in 1992, there would be no liability even if a definite link between autism and vaccinations were to be found now. I repeat, there would, under Danish law, be no liability for childhood vaccinations containing thimerosal causing autism.

All in all, I think it's reasonable to conclude that it is extremely unlikely that researchers at Statens Serums Institut would choose to risk their careers to cover up a thimerosal-autism link. And I haven't even gotten into all the legal aspects of what would happen to that person if they did in fact cover up so a link. This might be something I can cover in a future post, if Orac will let me post again.

Dispatches from the road, Part I

Finally, finally, it's come.

Vacation time. Yesterday, my wife and I hit the road to do a grand tour of the Midwest to visit both sets of parents and some old friends, hang out at a lake house for a couple of days and then Chicago for a few more, and generally try to chill out between bouts of driving. Fear not, Orac-philes, however. Although blogging will become somewhat sporadic and there will be at least a couple of days where I will have, in essence, no Internet access other than a dial-up connection through a number that is a toll call from that location (the horror, the horror), it will not cease altogether. I have a few already-written odds and ends I can post, and I probably will have some time to post the occasional brief piece. (Heck, I already have one idea for such a piece that shouldn't take more than 5 or 10 minutes to write and post.) Also, because I am on vacation, it's unlikely I'll be posting at my customary pre-work posting time of 6-7:30 AM. There's no way I'm getting up that early while on vacation. Any time of the day is fair game now (well, any time after about 9 AM or 10 AM, that is).

I even have a special treat for early next week: an article by a guest blogger who will discuss why certain attacks by activists on the Danish autism studies showing no decline in autism rates after the removal of thimerosal from vaccines are fallacious. I'm honored that anyone would take the time to compose something like that for me to post in my absence. As for my work, regular blogging will resume in a couple of weeks. As for the upcoming Skeptics' Circle this Thursday, I will definitely manage to get enough access to post a plug for it on Thursday or Friday, and I will be trying to check my e-mail at least once every couple of days.

In the meantime, I was just thinking (always a dangerous activity). My wife and I were cruising along the Ohio Turnpike yesterday. We had made fantastic time over several hundred miles and had just stopped at a rest stop to gas up the car, our final stop before our destination, my parents' house. My mother-in-law called my wife on her cell phone and asked us if we had encountered an accident. At that point, we hadn't, but she warned us that she had seen a news report of a huge accident on the Ohio Turnpike in the direction we were going. My wife and I both hoped that it was after our exit, so that we would miss it.

The collision was several miles west of our exit. Unfortunately, the traffic jam was more than large enough to extend well east of our exit.

About 8 or 9 miles before our exit, traffic abruptly came to a complete halt, and then crawled for the entire way. Via my mother-in-law, we learned that the collision had taken place nearly three hours earlier, although the news report shows that it had actually taken place nearly five hours earlier. Apparently, a semi truck had plowed into the back of a car stopped in traffic, causing a chain reaction set of collisions. The traffic was still backed up when we hit the area. As we crawled through traffic, seldom moving more than 10 MPH and hitting the brake every few seconds, I started to fume, as is my wont whenever in a traffic jam. We were losing at least 45 minutes to this.

Then I thought about it some more. What caused my inconvenience at the end of a 10+ hour drive had meant the abrupt and violent end of a woman's life and serious injuries to several others. The name of the woman who died was Michelle Williams, and she was only 56. No doubt, when setting out on whatever trip to whatever destination she and her husband were heading to from Pennsylvania, Mrs. Williams had had no idea that it would be the last trip she would ever make. She was probably doing what we all do, thinking about her plans for the day and the day-to-day tasks that needed to be done, with no thought at all that she wouldn't ever get to do them because she would be unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had no way of avoiding her fate as the semi truck barreled into the rear end of the car behind Mr. and Mrs. Williams' car, pushing it into their car and smashing the life out of Mrs. Williams in the process. Even now, based on my experience as a helicopter physician years ago, when I would occasionally land on the very same Ohio Turnpike a hundred miles east to tend to the victims of such accidents and transport them to a trauma center, I can picture the victims, bloody and in pain, trapped in the twisted pile of metal and plastic that was until moments ago their transportation, if still conscious crying out in pain and fear, wondering if they would live or die and why it had to be them. I didn't used to think about this much when I was actually dealing with trauma victims (there was too much to do to try to save their lives), but, now that I'm older and don't do trauma anymore, I can't help but ponder that it could just as easily been me and my wife stopped in that traffic waiting to exit the Ohio Turnpike onto I-75. Or, it could just as easily been you stopped in a traffic backup anywhere there are highways and cars and careless truckers who change lanes too rapidly and don't realize traffic has stopped until it is too late to stop. That's always one of my biggest fears when I'm stuck in traffic, because I'm utterly powerless to prevent some idiot from ramming into the back of my car. The only thing you can do in such a situation is, if you realize you're going to be hit, to take your foot off the brake and hope for the best.

When I thought of this, I realized that, although the traffic jam had made the end of my day into a rather bad one, the cause of the traffic jam had made Mrs. Williams' day into her last one on earth. Getting angry over a one-hour delay in reaching our destination just seemed so petty after that. Yes, it's a bit of a cliche, but after an incident like that, it's hard not to think about how random life (and death) can be, and how none of us can ever take it for granted that we will be here tomorrow, no matter how young and healthy we are. Unfortunately, most of us, myself included at times, act as though time and life are endless and that we will live forever, failing to make the most of the only lives we have.

What a downer of a thought so early on in my vacation.

Must...keep...promise...no..more..Hitler...Zombie...

Back! Back, you miserable creature from the pit of hell! Back into your crypt!Haven't you already eaten enough of Harry Belafonte's brain? Look what you have him saying now! Even while apologizing, he's digging himself in deeper!

Back into your crypt, cursed creature!

The Skeptics' Circle

The Fifteenth Skeptics' Circle is due to be posted at Atheism Guide next Thursday, August 18. Skeptical bloggers, get your posts to Austin by the evening of Wednesday, August 17. As an experiment, I've let Austin include at his discretion forum posts, as long as they are at least equivalent in quality to the blog posts submitted. That alone ought to make this one even more worth checking out than ever.

And, of course, I'm still looking for hosts. The Circle is booked into early November, but any time after that is open, and I'd really love to have hosts scheduled through the end of the year as soon as I can. If you're interested in hosting, drop me a line at orac_usa@hotmail.com.

Don't say I didn't warn you

An amusing encounter is going on over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. A couple of days ago, Ed Brayton posted a piece called The Absurdity of Vox Day, in which he administered a rather nice smackdown to a blogger who goes under the name of Vox Day and also happens to be a columnist at WorldNetDaily. Although Vox bills himself as a "Christian Libertarian commentator" and likes to point out that he is a member of Mensa, Austin Cline probably put it best when he labeled Vox's politics as "one part authoritarianism, one part religious fascism, and one part sheer nuttiness." The particular column that drew Ed's ire was yet more of Vox's usual blather, an article entitled Why Women's Rights are Wrong, in which Vox complains about women's rights, calling them a "disease that should be eradicated." (By the way, he also doesn't believe evolution is valid either.)

Helpful guy that I am, I felt duty-bound as a fellow blogger to warn Ed what he was getting into if he wanted to tangle with Vox. Not that Vox's arguments are usually all that difficult to refute, given his love of confusing correlation with causation an dubious historical analogies, but Vox seems to have attracted a posse of sycophants, toadies, and lackies (apologies to Curtis Sliwa) who descend upon other blogs that criticize Vox whenever he mentions articles critical of him. To that end, in the comments of Ed's post, I pointed out my encounter with Vox a few months ago, when I lambasted him for a post he made in which he said that "too many women are fascists at heart," using this as a justification for arguing that they should not have the right to vote. He then went on to blame the women's franchise for the "West's continental drift towards socialism." (But how can that be, Vox? I thought you said women were "fascists at heart.") Back then, my hit count was considerably lower than it is now, which is why I was somewhat surprised when Vox actually noticed my little comment and took a bit of umbrage at it. Soon after, Vox's posse descended upon my blog and loaded it with mostly inane defenses of Vox's misogyny.

Ed's now getting a taste of what I got, as Vox has noticed him too. The good news is, Ed is more than capable of holding his own, which is why I suggest you check out the coments in his original post and his followup, where there are many more comments. And Ed is right about one thing:

I'm sure this will bring even more of them over here to make juvenile comments about horse manure, but hey, it's kinda fun watching them make asses of themselves. It's even more amusing to watch them gather around him [Vox Day] and assure him that despite what that mean man said, he really is cool (and also "hot", according to one commenter).

Yes, it is rather fun for a while, but my experience four months ago showed me that it rapidly becomes tiresome to wade through their comments as the e-mails alert you to them. That's the main reason I never bothered to mention Vox again after our initial encounter. (On the other hand, having a posse like that to harass bloggers who criticize you would be a most effective means of discouraging them from criticizing you, as, I'm sure, Vox is well aware.) In any case, even the amusement of watching Vox's "fans" fall all over themselves to defend him and the added traffic a Vox Day mention brings are just not worth the aggravation.

But it is rather fun to watch it happening at Ed's blog, particularly since he's wading into the thick of things. And, yes, I realize that mentioning Vox again in an unfavorable way could bring the horde over here. It's worth the risk, though, to lend a little tactical air support to Ed.

You love me, you really love me. Now let me eat your brains!

Yesterday's post, in which I made an offhand remark that perhaps the Hitler zombie might have overstayed his welcome, provoked an unexpected reaction, concern that perhaps I might be retiring our favorite eater of brains for good.

Fear not. He will return someday.

My concern was that perhaps I had overused him during the last few days. I think it was a valid fear. The Hitler zombie is a powerful eater of brains. As a rhetorical device to mock people making ignorant and ridiculously overblown Hitler/Nazi/Holocaust analogies, he should be used sparingly, and I was letting him get out of hand. True, I don't have control over the appearance of so many stupid Nazi analogies in such a short period of time, but, given the recent uptick in Hitler zombie appearances, I think it's time to give him a rest. Don't worry, though, he will appear again eventually, but almost certainly not before the next appearance of EneMan--unless, of course, an example of a bad Nazi analogy so egregious, so mind-numbingly stupid that it threatents to warp the very fabric of space-time continuum comes along.

As long as there are historically ignorant and massively exaggerated comparisons to the Holocaust, Hitler, or the Nazi regime, there you will find the Hitler zombie. He can never be killed, unfortunately, and he always comes back.

The "pharma shill" gambit

I get the impression from the rapidly decreasing number of comments being posted here that the Hitler zombie might--just might--have overstayed his welcome. (Either that, or everyone agrees with me so much that they don't see the need to comment; a conclusion I find highly unlikely.) It's probably not surprising that people might tire quickly of the Hitler zombie, given that (1) he's a walking rotting corpse and thus doesn't smell too good and leaves a mess wherever he goes; (2) he has a propensity to eat brains, which is not generally welcome in polite company such as this blog, and he has really lousy table manners to boot; (3) he incites incredibly idiotic, overblown rhetoric, which annoys the hell out of critical thinkers like me and (I hope) my readers; and (4) he's Hitler, fer cryin' out loud. Even so, after rebutting a defender of Harry Belafonte, I was still half-tempted to write one more sequel, entitled something like "The Hitler zombie and those who love him," à la Jerry Springer meets Shaun of the Dead. Fortunately for all, a rare good sense of restraint stayed my hand.

It's time to move back to other entertaining (I hope) pastures.

I've mentioned before that I cut my skeptical teeth, so to speak, on Usenet, that vast untamed and largely unmoderated territory full of tens of thousands of discussion newsgroups which used to be a lot more active before the rise of the World Wide Web and then later blogs. It started out with combatting Holocaust denial and then branched out into more general skepticism, particularly about the claims of creationists and alties (please read my disclaimer about "alties in the link). After I began to participate in the debates in the main newsgroup where alternative medicine is discussed, misc.health.alternative, it didn't take me long to encounter a favorite tactic of alties who were not happy with one who insists on evidence-based medicine and who therefore questions claims that are obviously not based in valid science: the "pharma shill" gambit. This is a technique of ad hominem attack in which an altie, offended by your questioning of his/her favorite herb, colon or liver flush technique, zapper, or cancer "cure," tries to "poison the well" by implying or outright stating you must be in the pay of a pharmaceutical company, hired for nefarious purposes.

Since I entered the blogosphere, I've only occasionally checked back at my old stomping ground, mainly because blogging is so much less constraining than posting to Usenet, where mostly I used to respond to the posts of others, rather than writing about what I wanted to write about. A couple of weeks ago, though, out of curiosity I checked back and found this interesting little tidbit from a poster calling himself PeterB that demonstrated such a perfect example of the "pharma shill" gambit that I had to comment about it:

To : All participants and readers of misc.health.alternative + other health-related newsgroups

Please be aware that many comments and responses posted to this forum are not those of casual posters interested in an honest exchange. A number of individuals with ties to industry are engaging an effort to shape public sentiment about the risks of mainstream medicine while denigrating the benefits and validity of natural medicine. I refer to these individuals broadly as "Pharma Bloggers"(*). Pharma Bloggers on usenet don't promote a specific company or product, as might be the case with standard "blogging" on a weblog. Most of these people are likely to have an association with a PR campaign whose "blogging" efforts are underwritten by the media and marketing groups of industry. They are not difficult to identify due to specific patterns of behaviour in posting.

Here are a few points to remember while participating in usenet newsgroups:

1. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use intimidation, mockery, and insults to silence those who express belief or interest in natural medicine.

2. Pharma Bloggers on usenet attack those who question the effectiveness of mainstream medicine and defend disease-management "healthcare" as the only viable form of medicine.

3. Pharma Bloggers on usenet post the majority of their responses simply to bury the comments of others; they also strive obsessively to have the last word.

4. Pharma Bloggers on usenet are much faster at posting than casual participants; they almost always respond first to a new thread, question, or observation.

5. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use multiple "bloggers" in a swap-&-relay fashion to create an aura of the "consensus view" in an effort to isolate posters who question the value of mainstream medicine. You will see this tactic used more often than any other.

Tip: If you find yourself reading a response that is unusually dramatic in tone, or inexplicably vicious toward other posters, and if that response is a defense of mainstream medicine, you can be sure you have stumbled upon a "Pharma Blogger." Unfortunately, there are more of these individuals posting to usenet on a daily basis than virtually anyone else, which is why I am posting this alert. If you find it odd that so few people on health-related usenet newsgroups are expressing an interest in natural medicine, it isn't because they aren't there, it's because they have been intimidated into silence. The Pharma Bloggers have over-run the various newsgroups with their industrial brand of dogma, mockery, and ridicule. Many casual posters are simply frightened away. That's one of the goals of Pharma Blogging.

(*) Pharma Blogger: An individual who uses the Internet to: 1) promote and defend maintstream medicine while denigrating natural medicine approaches; 2) attack others who express a preference for natural medicine, or who question the value of mainstream medicine; and 3) cite a variety of "junk medical science" funded by industry for the purpose of establishing markets for marginally effective, and often dangerous, medical products and devices.

PeterB

Ooh, boy. See what I had to deal with? First, let me just mention that I realize that astroturf campaigns do exist, but, quite frankly, die-hard Usenet alties like PeterB tend to be interested in such Internet PR efforts only as a means of smearing those who criticize them for their claims or who have the temerity to ask them to provide scientific studies to back up their assertions. To them, everyone who questions them is probably part of an astroturf campaign. It goes with the conspiracy-mongering proclivities so common among cranks.

This sort of obvious pre-emptive ad hominem attack would be utterly laughable if it were not so common. I sometimes get the impression that PeterB and his compatriots must think that there are hordes of "pharma shills" sitting behind banks of computers (remember the claim "more of these individuals posting to Usenet than anyone else"), waiting to pounce the instant anyone like PeterB starts posting critiques of big pharma or praising herbal "cures." (Yes, that they seem to think they are worth that sort of effort implies PeterB and others like them do seem to have an inflated view of their own importance.) My usual first response to such gambits tends to be facetious and runs along the lines of asking, "Where do I sign up to become a pharma shill? How do I get me a piece of that action? After all, why should I waste my time seeing patients and working like a dog to do science, publish papers, and write grants and then only having a couple of hours in the evenings to blog, when I could make big bucks ruthlessly mocking online dissent against big pharma full time while sitting back in my pajamas and sipping a big mug of coffee? Count me in!" (Expect to see my words posted somewhere out of context to make it seem as though I was being serious about this.)

However, facetiousness usually just infuriates people like PeterB to new heights of "pharma shill" accusations. At that point, it's time to try to be rational, hard as it may be in the face of such provocation, but I try. First, a lot of this smear tends to be a case of projection, of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, #1, #2, and #3 are more typical of Usenet alties than of anyone who questions altie claims. Indeed, the denizens of misc.health.alternative who are most pro-alternative medicine tend to react quite defensively to questioning of their assertions. They are often like a group of Cyber Sisters, except that they are comprised of both men and women, ruthlessly descending upon anyone who questions the dogma of their favorite alternative medicine, criticizes their behavior, or suggests that maybe, just maybe, conventional medicine might have value. (No, those on "our size" are not entirely innocent, but in my experience the alties tend to be quicker with the ad hominem.) One reason for this, I suspect, is that many of them are also active on moderated groups such as CureZone.com, where anyone questioning the alt-med treatment du jour too long or too vigorously will be banned from the discussion groups, thus providing a nice, safe, cuddly environment, where never is heard a discouraging word. #4 and #5 are clearly designed to imply that the so-called "Pharma Bloggers" either don't have a regular job (why else would they have so much time?) or that they are working for big pharma. Of course, they never provide any evidence to support their accusations. In fact, they almost never provide even any reasoning to support their accusations more substantive than variations on "he's criticizing alternative medicine a lot so he must be a pharma shill."

The "pharma shill" gambit, like other varieties of ad hominem or well-poisoning rhetoric, conveniently frees alties from having to argue for their favorite remedies on the science and clinical studies supporting them (which in most cases tend to be badly designed or nonexistent). It's a technique that's not just limited to alties, either. Anti-vaccination cranks and mercury/autism conspiracy theorists like it too. As Skeptico pointed out, even if a newsgroup denizen were a pharma shill, that wouldn't necessarily invalidate his argument. Yes, in the case of a true "shill" who does not reveal that he works for a pharmaceutical company and pretends to be "objective," it is quite appropriate to "out" that person. (Note that I have yet ever to observe such a person in action, which tells me that they are probably a lot less common than alties like to claim.) Even in the case of a real shill, however, this sort of "outing" is not a refutation of that person's arguments; it merely serves to increase appropriately the level of skepticism about what that person is saying. Such an "outing" still leaves the task of actually using evidence, logic, and sound arguments to refute what that person is saying, something alties rarely even attempt to do. It's far easier to fling the accusation of "pharma shill" about and see if they can get it to stick, as PeterB and his ilk do.

Tangled Bank XXXIV

Tangled Bank XXXIV has been posted at Creek Running North. Time for another look at the best of the science blogosphere. Enjoy!

My last word on Belafonte

After two appearances in a row of everybody's favorite undead Führer (also here) I thought that it was definitely time to give him a rest for a while. I hadn' t intended for him to take over again, but he has a way of thwarting even the best-laid plans and inducing political activists to even greater heights of ridiculous rhetorical excess. However, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing (although, I admit, not all would agree that the Hitler zombie qualifies as a "good thing"). I had also thought that the whole Belafonte thing would be a one-off piece. I hadn't intended to follow up on it. I had had my fun, and lingering on the topic any further would serve no purpose. Indeed, I had in mind an entirely different topic for today.

That was until a commenter named Nathan said this, presumably to defend Belafonte's remarks:

Hitler did make use of some Jews in his government...

He referenced a post of his and then went on to point out a comment about Erhard Milch, a high ranking official in the Luftwaffe was supposedly half-Jewish because his father, Anton Milch, was rumored to be Jewish. Never mind that it's not entirely clear that Anton Milch was Jewish. In 1935, while Milch was still State Secretary of the Reich Aviation Ministry, his mother signed an affadavit claiming stating that Milch's biological father was in fact her uncle, Karl Braüer, allowing him to be issued a German Blood Certificate and prompting his boss Hermann Goering's famous quote, "I will decide who is and is not a Jew." Milch later became a Field Marshal after the fall of France.

Nathan then went on to attack a straw man, defending Belafonte thusly:

But if the comparison is metaphorically harsh, it's hardly inaccurate to refer to Jewish functionaries of the Third Reich.

The only inaccuracy in Belfonte's statement is "high up" in the hierarchy.

Unfortunately, it is quite true that quite a few Jews agreed to act as agents for the Third Reich in administering the Jewish ghettoes and executing Hitler's administrative orders among the Jews. Some may have thought they were doing fellow Jews a favor, by having it humanely done by fellow religionists rather than by the Gestapo directly, but there is no question that Jews were functionaries in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.

He then went on to discuss how some Jewish leaders collaborated with Nazi authorities for various reasons.

A Field Marshal who probably was half-Jewish (but may not have been and in any case did not view himself as Jewish) and Jewish collaborators are the best examples he can come up with to defend Belafonte's hyperbole, after being forced to admit that Belafonte was wrong about Jews being "high up in the hierarchy"? Rather thin gruel for a defense. Nathan's argument is a massive nonsequitur that nothing to do with what Belafonte actually said. Belafonte wasn't talking about "functionaries." He was talking about "Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich." There's a big difference. Forgive me if I interpret "high up in the hierarchy" to mean, oh, "high up in the hierarchy," you know, the guys who actually ran things and conceived the Holocaust. Jewish collaborators were low-level agents who had no real power in the Third Reich other than over their own subjugated people. They only followed orders and got their people to follow Nazi orders as well, whether out of fear, greed, a desire to "soften the blow" on their people, or a desire to save their own skins, motivations of collaborationists with conquerers since time immemorial.

Nathan concludes:

The point is not even that it shows that there were evil Jews, but that many people of a particular group collaborate with the enemy of that people for a host of mundane, careerist and other reasons. And they aren't sanctified by being part of the overall group that's being victimized.

Which I think was Belefonte's point. If you are going to justify Bush's policies towards black people, pointing to a few black faces in the administration doesn't prove anything.

Another straw man here. No one is implying that Jewish collaborators were "sanctified" by being part of the overall group being victimized. (Indeed, Jewish collaborators with the Nazis were and remain particularly reviled. Think Sonderkommandos working in the Krema and gas chambers at Auschwitz or collaborators in the Jewish ghettos persuading their own people to cooperate with the Nazis loading them into trains for transport to the camps for "special treatment.") Maybe Nathan's interpretation was actually what Belafonte meant by his remarks, but he chose such an intentionally inflammatory and offensive way to say it that the message was lost. In that light, Belafonte seems to view blacks in the Bush administration as being akin to Jewish collaborators in the Holocaust. Unfortunately, implicit in that metaphor is the assumption that the Bush administration must be perpetrating a new Holocaust against blacks. I'm not a big fan of the Bush administration, as anyone who reads me regularly knows, but equating its policies with regard to minorities to Hitler's policies with regards to the Jews by comparing blacks in the Bush administration to Jews collaborating with the Nazis is like comparing a firecracker to a thermonuclear device. Given the gross error in historical fact Belafonte made, he only made himself look foolish.

Any way you cut it, Belafonte joins the ranks of those guilty of rhetorical excess deserving of a fisking, courtesy of the Hitler zombie, ranks including James Dobson, Michael Ruse, and Charlie Rangel, among others. The Hitler zombie does not discriminate on the basis of race or political leanings, given that conservatives and liberals both like to use bad Hitler/Nazi analogies. Now, I'll conclude with the Arthur Caplan brilliantly summing up the problems with argumentum ad Nazium a couple of weeks ago, and his comments, although aimed at rhetorical excesses used in bioethics, also apply here:

Sadly, too often those who draw an analogy between current behavior and what the Nazis did do not know what they are talking about. The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles about science and medicine. Because its misuse diminishes the horror done by Nazi scientists and doctors to their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand what they are claiming.

Harry Belafonte clearly had no clue what he was claiming and just wanted to imply guilt by association. If Bush's policies are harmful to blacks, playing the Nazi card is not the way to demonstrate it.

Supporting the troops

Kung Fu Monkey, one of my favorite bloggers, has started blogging for a cause. He's supporting the Army Emergency Relief Fund, a fund that helps our soldiers in times of need; for example, for rent, emergency medical expenses, etc. It's sad that, at a time of war, such a charity should be necessary, but unfortunately it is. Regardless of your politics, whether you support the war or think it's a massive mistake, this is a way you can support the troops in a concrete way. There's a PayPal link there to make it easy. He's also going to be rotating refugee relief funds and other charities on a monthly basis.

As KFM put it, "Transforming hot air and bullshit into a tiny bit of good, one post at a time."

Hmmm, I wonder if Orac should think about doing something similar. I may not get quite the traffic that KFM does (yet, hint, hint), but these days my traffic's not too shabby.

Grand Rounds XLVI

Grand Rounds XLVI has been posted at Parallel Universes. Enjoy the best of the medical blogosphere from the last week.

Weekend of the Dead, Part II: The rampage continues

...CONTINUED FROM THE PREVIOUS EPISODE MUCH, MUCH SOONER THAN THE AUTHOR HAD HOPED IT WOULD BE

"Day-O. Daaaayyyy-O." Through the steam and the rush of the shower, singing a rose, a rich luxuriant voice, perhaps not as strong as it was in its owner's heyday 50 years ago, but powerful and disciplined nonetheless. "Daylight come and me want go home---"

A loud thump interrupted.

"Who is it?" And elderly but still vigorous and extremely handsome black man poked his head out from behind the shower curtain, water dripping from his face. He saw nothing out of place. The bathroom looked as it always looked.

He resumed his shower. "Day-O! Daaaaayyy----!"

Another thump.

The man was becoming angry, but an icy fear gripped his heart momentarily. Was it a burglar intruding in his house? How could burglar have gotten through the security system? He turned off the spigot and wrapped himself with a bath towel. He stepped out of the shower. There was no sound except for the distant roar of a lawn mower. Cautiously, ever so slowly, he opened his bathroom door a crack, to see if he could see anything.

One skeletal hand wrenched the door open from his very hands, and another skeletal hand clamped around the back of his neck, drawing his skull towards a rotting mouth.

******

Deep in the bowels of his underground bunker, Orac lit up, blinking multi-colored lights flashing seemingly at random.

"What is it?" Orac demanded testily. "Why do you interrupt my computations? I was just making fascinating observations on the interaction of different computer networks across the primitive network known as the Internet."

"He's struck again," said a scientist.

"So soon?" demanded Orac.

"No, sir, only very shortly after the most recent two attacks." He hesitated. "Unfortunately, we only just learned of this new attack now."

"Only just learned of it now?" hissed Orac. "I provide you with the most advanced computers your primitive minds can use, and you only learn of it more than two days after it happened?"

"Sir, it came from a rather fringe source, but now the right wing blogosphere is picking it up. It won't be long before it spreads across the blogosphere like a virus, and then onto conservative talk radio. I predict that, by the end of the day, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will have picked it up, if they haven't already. Just last night, the obnoxious Limbaugh wannabe Mark Levin was ranting about it."

"Tell me about this fringe source. Why should we believe it? How do we know that the monster has truly struck again? You know the blogosphere is very credulous and that misinformation can spread at an incredible rate through the Internet," said Orac.

"It came from the Cybercast News Service, which is a subsidiary of the Media Research Center, a conservative media 'watchdog' group."

"So its objectivity is already in question, given the clear ideological bias," observed Orac. "Such a group would have motivation to make its ideological opponents look bad, and Belafonte has been quite outspoken in the past."

"Perhaps, but the story provided video. The quote is undeniable, ambush interview or not."

"Download the video into my circuits," commanded Orac. "I will project it for all to see."

The room lights dimmed, and a flickering, grainy video image projected upon a screen. It showed a man's chest as he walked. The camera was clearly bouncing as the interviewer tried to keep up. The interviewers' voice could be heard asking a question about African-Americans in the Bush Administration and whether that said something good about it. The camera moved up to reveal the face of an elderly but vigorous black man.

It was Harry Belafonte walking as he was speaking with the "reporter."

Harry Belafante replied:

Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value.

A black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated.

"I'll never listen to the Banana Boat Song in quite the same way again," smirked a scientist.

"Interesting. This is not nearly as clever a use of argumentum ad Nazium as Michael Ruse displayed," said Orac. "Indeed, it is remarkable mainly for how unimaginative and so obviously fallacious it is. Belafonte must have been attacked by the monster. There simply is no other explanation for an analogy that mind-numbingly stupid. Hitler most certainly did not have a 'lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.' In fact, one of the very first things Hitler did when he took over was to start systematically purging the government of Jews, starting at the top and working his way down. Indeed, in April 1933, slightly more than than two months after taking power, the Nazis passed the 'Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.' Its purpose was to exclude Jews and others the Nazis considered politically unreliable from all levels of civil service and government. That very same month, laws were passed restricting Jewish activity in the legal and medical professions. Belafonte used an extremely sloppy and disgraceful analogy. The Hitler zombie must have eaten more of Belafonte's brain than is his usual custom."

"It's not just Belafonte," said one scientist.

"What?" said Orac. His lights blinked ominously.

"He got Dick Gregory, too. Although there is no video, this is the transcript. Here is Gregory referring to black conservatives."

They have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it up? So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racists thugs have used that word to hide behind?

"In a way, this news is almost reassuring," said Orac.

"What?"

"Come now. Must I do all your thinking for you? Reason it out. The Hitler zombie appears to be returning to his more traditional prey, politicians and political activists," said Orac. "I had become concerned that the creature was seeking new prey, such as vaccine activists, social conservatives pontificating on issues of bioethics, and even philosophers of science. Perhaps its black heart just wasn't in it. If the creature is again restricting itself mainly to political activists, however, perhaps we can narrow our search."

"But how? The creature doesn't discriminate between left and right! Political activists of every stripe are dropping like flies, their brains eaten, and then making fools of themselves," the scientist asked.

"You have a point," said Orac. "I have to wonder what is responsible for this spike in the creature's activity. Yes, it is August and a slow news time, an irresistable draw for the irrational attention-seeking activist fools looking for media attention. However, this behavior brings up the question of whether the creature is weakening. It is, after all, seeking easier prey again, but at the same time it is attacking much more frequently than it has in a long time."

"Maybe it's going for quantity over quality," said a scientist, "junk food, if you will."

"Is there any way we could lure it in and trap it?" asked a young woman in the back.

"Finally, someone is showing signs of rational thought," said Orac. "I must shut down again to consider this question. What sort of bait would work to draw a brain-hungry undead Führer with a love of ridiculously overblown Hitler/Nazi analogies? I must shut down again to consider this question now. In the meantime, keep working on finding the creature."

Orac's lights went black again.

"Great," said one scientist. "There he goes again. He's always disappearing into his computations whenever the going gets tough."

"Sir, sir!" Dr. Myers stumbled into the room, short of breath and huffing. "It's another attack, but this time the Hitler zombie wasn't alone."

"What?" the assembled group of scientists said, almost in unison. "What do you mean?"

"It's D. James Kennedy. This time, though, it's not just the Hitler zombie that attacked him. It looks as though the Hitler zombie's been joined by the Stalin zombie as well! Kennedy's toast!" (Ed. note: see pp. 6, 7, 21, 22, 54, where Kennedy blames evolution for Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.)

The lead scientist sighed. Four attacks in a matter of days and now this. Orac would not be pleased to hear this latest news.

TO BE CONTINUED YET AGAIN....UNFORTUNATELY (but hopefully not for quite a while...Can you say "overexposure"? Sure, I knew you could.)

[Author's note: I hadn't intended to do a sequel to yesterday's Hitler zombie appearance so soon, but I hope you'll forgive me. I have no control over when the creature strikes.]

RINO Sightings

The latest edition of RINO Sightings has been posted at Searchlight Crusade. Lots of outrage from more rational conservatives over "intelligent design," among other good posts, all to a musical theme.

Weekend of the Dead: The Hitler zombie escapes

In an office of a nondescript radio studio somewhere in the heartland of America, a nondescript man with graying hair and glasses, possessing the unctuous manner of a televangelist, sat perusing the script for the coming radio show. He was proud that he had built a nationwide movement and a syndicated radio show that was carried on many Christian radio stations throughout the land and looked forward to spreading the Gospel once again.

There was a barely shuffling noise outside the door, barely audible over the man's breathing.

"Who's there?" said the man.

Silence.

The man approached the door. He thought he sensed a vague smell of rotting meat and silently cursed the station janitorial crew for not emptying the trash more often.

There was the sound of something hitting the door, not quite a knock, but perhaps it was.

"Who's there?" the man said again, becoming irritated. He opened the door--and froze. There, standing just outside his door, was what could only be described as a walking corpse, with flesh hanging off the rotting skull and bones. He was wearing a uniform of some sort that appeared to have Swastika armbands, and, oddly enough, the only part of his face that wasn't thoroughly putrid was his upper lip, which revealed a Charlie Chaplin moustache.

"Braaaaiiinnns!"** it yelled, lunging forward.

The man screamed, as a vision of Hell leapt upon him.

******

In a sterile white room in a drab bunker deep beneath the New Mexico desert not far from the site where the first successful testing of the atomic bomb was carried out in July 1945, a group of white-coated scientists gathered around a clear plastic box full of blinking multicolored lights. Not a sound could be heard, except for the nervous breath of the scientists and the mechanical sound of the ventilation system. Then, the box broke the silence and spoke, its pattern of blinking lights flickering and changing as it spoke. The scientists stood in rapt attention, taking in every word as though their lives depended on it. To some extent, they did.

"I should have known I couldn't expect better from humans," the box said. "It's escaped yet again! How did this happen? You were supposed to make sure it was secure. You were supposed to be studying it! Yet you let it escape, and it's wreaking havoc again, eating brains!"

A short, balding man stepped forward, his face so drenched in sweat that he looked as though he had just run a marathon. He was trembling, and a drop of sweat from his hand could be heard to hit the steel floor. "But Orac," he said, "there appears to be something out there attracting it, something so strong that its will to escape and find it surprised us. It ripped all the chains and cords that bound it; it escaped every one of our safeguards."

"Incompetence," the mechanical voice replied. "You must find it and imprison it again. Normally I would not concern myself with such a petty human concern, but the crimes against reason and fact this creature regularly incites irritate my logic circuits just enough that I want it gone. Tell me more about the victim."

"His name is James Dobson. He runs a ministry called Focus on the Family and does a radio show."

"I am familiar with him. His grasp on logic and reason was tenuous enough to begin with. And what did he say after his brain was eaten by the monster?" demanded Orac, his lights blinking a more ominous shade of red.

"He compared stem cell research to human experimentation by the Nazis on his radio show," replied the scientist, stepping to a console and pressing a button. Here is the clip." A tape started, and Dobson's voice filled the chamber:

In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind. You know, if you take a utilitarian approach, that if something results in good, then it is good. But that's obviously not true. We condemn what the Nazis did because there are some things that we always could do but we haven't done, because science always has to be guided by ethics and by morality. And you remove ethics and morality, and you get what happened in Nazi Germany.

"See the consequences of letting the monster escape?" said Orac. "See the illogic. Ridiculously overblown analogies comparing the vile experiments of the Nazis to work on cells. Consider the nature of the experiments the Nazis did, vile and evil deeds, such as irradiating women's pelvises to sterilize them; doing high altitude experiments to see how low a pressure it takes to kill humans; testing typhus vaccines by injecting the vaccinated with live typhus; inflicting phosphorus burns on prisoners and then testing various salves on them; experiments submerging prisoners in ice water to see how long they can survive. How can any rational being compare using embryonic stem cells in an attempt to treat disease, regardless of one's opinion about abortion? Can any of you claim that this is not a ridiculously overblown analogy used to tar anyone supporting stem cell research as Nazi-like? Whether stem cell research corresponds to a human's vision of what is moral must be determined by the actual merits and problems with stem cell research, not on ill-considered Nazi analogies. Such analogies rarely serve any purpose other than to demonize one's ideological opponent, and indeed they inflame others who might have good reason to be offended by the trivialization of the Holocaust. Clearly his brain has been eaten by the monster."

"But how can we find the zombie?" said another of the scientists.

"Seek it where rhetoric is most the most ridiculously overblown. There you will find it," replied Orac, with a flourish of blinking lights.

"Are you trying to tell us we now should seek it in Washington?"

"I am not trying to tell you anything. I am simply not interested in attempting to compensate for your amazing lack of observation," replied Orac. "How and where you find it are not my concern. That it be found and safely locked up again is what is imperative. Now, I am shutting down. I have much to do. You have engaged my circuits on your petty affairs for far too long."

The blinking lights darkened, leaving only a single red constant red light as the only indication that Orac still had power.

"Damned arrogant, that Orac is," muttered one scientist.

******
Michael Ruse was sitting in his home in Tallahassee waiting for a phone call from a journalist from Salon.com who had requested an interview. He had been happy to oblige, because he had a book to promote, but unfortunately the interview had to occur while he was on vacation. The journalist had wanted more, and Ruse had agreed to a followup interview at home. He had thus made sure that he would be alone, so that he could give them some good quotes.

He sniffed the air. What is going on? He thought. It smells like something rotten. The smell reminded him of the stench he had once noted on a dog who had rolled on the maggot-infested body of a dead bird. He got up and sniffed around, looking for the source of the odor, as people do when they notice an odor in their house that should not be there. He checked first the kitchen, given that that would be the most likely location to find something rotting. There was nothing out of place, but it seemed stronger. He headed towards the stairs to his basement. Definitely stronger. What on earth could it be? He opened the door.

And found himself staring into the rotting maw of---something. Inhumanly strong skeletal hands pulled him closer, and an undead maw clamped tightly on his skull.

******

A new scientist, Dr. Myers, having just arrived at the bunker from Minnesota, shuddered as he clicked a square key into a matching receptacle on the plastic shell of Orac. He was not looking forward to this. Lights began blinking, and there was a brief beep as Orac reactivated.

"Why have you disturbed me?" Orac said testily.

"It's struck again."

"Why is this my concern?" said Orac. "I told you to find it. If the team cannot carry out my orders, I will cease to concern myself with its affairs."

"Its attacks are branching out even more."

"Explain," said Orac.

"It's eaten the brain of Michael Ruse."

"Explain."

"It has to do with creationism and intelligent design."

"Nonscientific religious ideas masquerading as science do not concern me," said Orac. "That humans do not understand the nature of scientific investigation and how it cannot ever prove or disprove the existence of a god and that some of them consider their religious beliefs to be scientific 'theories' equal in standing to actual firmly established scientific theory supported by decades of research in multiple scientific disciplines should not be my problem." Orac always did have a tendency to be long-winded.

"I am aware of that, but it is now, Orac. Look at what Ruse said." Dr. Myers pushed a button, downloading the interview into Orac's memory bank:

I can't understand why I can't get through people's thick skulls on this one. If in fact Darwinian evolutionary theory implies atheism, then you ought not to be teaching it in schools! It's not good enough to say, "Well, I'm a National Socialist. But the fact that that meant a lot of Jews were hauled off to Auschwitz, that's not my worry!" It bloody is! If your theory leads to 6 million Jews being made into soap, not only is there something deeply troubling about your theory, but you've got a moral obligation to face up to its implications. If this theory leads to atheism, then it's got religious implications.

"Interesting," said Orac. "It is indeed quite disturbing to observe what happens when a formerly rational individual falls victim to this monster. Dobson's hold on rationality was quite weak to begin with. His falling victim to the monster is not that surprising, nor is result of the monster's attack all that different from Dobson's usual blather. I am almost surprised the monster bothered with such thin gruel. Ruse is another matter, however. His falling victim to the monster is more disturbing."

The computer paused, and briefly its lights blinked more rapidly and in more varied patterns. "I must grudgingly acknowledge cleverness in the subtle way Ruse says 'if in fact.' He uses that introduction to try to immunize himself against accusations of claiming that 'Darwinian evolutionary theory implies atheism,' when in fact that is exactly what he means to imply. He then brilliantly goes on to equate not-so-subtly both evolution and atheism to National Socialism and the deaths of six million Jews during the Holocaust. It is obvious, however, that he clearly does not know much about the Holocaust, or he would not have made that ridiculous statement about 'turning six million Jews into soap.' It is one hyperbole too far. Perhaps Ruse is just too clever by half. Any scholar of the era knows that in fact very few of the victims of the Holocaust were made into soap. Certainly not all six million Jewish victims were. It was an experimental program. Exaggerated stories about human soap and lampshades made from human skin, incidents that in actuality played only a small role in the enormity of the crimes Holocaust and the truth of which have no bearing on the historicity and magnitude of the Holocaust, have been fodder used by Holocaust deniers for years to deceive, deny, and obfsucate."

"Orac," interrupted Dr. Myers. He was less intimidated by Orac than most of the other scientists. "The Holocaust history lesson is all very interesting, but we all know how ridiculous Ruse's hyperbole is. Besides, I'm not done yet. There's more. Consider this statement by Ruse."

I see the sacrifices they make. William Dembski [the mathematician and philosopher who is among the I.D. movement's intellectual stars] is a very bright guy who should have been able to get a very good job, and he's reduced to going off to some theological tinpot college in Tennessee or something [actually, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.]. Paul Nelson hasn't got a regular job. They're making sacrifices for their faith. While I think their position is terrible, I don't see them as evil people. I don't see them as Hitlers. They're caught up in an appalling, idiosyncratic American religion. So they're not the first.

"Even more cleverness," observed Orac. "He is using another straw man argument, as you have already noted. Biologists are not accusing Dembski or Nelson of being 'evil' or 'Hitlers,' just incorrect about evolution and disingenuous about teaching 'intelligent design.' Ruse is trying to make it seem as though it is actually his foes who have fallen victim to the zombie, not him! I must consider this new territory the Hitler zombie has entered. I hypothesize that the monster found the brains of politicians to be such poor nourishment that it moved on to the brains of activists in medical issues and then social conservatives making pronouncements on bioethics. Finding them to be only nominally better, it has now moved on to the brains of philosophers of science. The implications of this are not good."

"But what can we do? Where will he strike next?"

"I do not have sufficient data to make an accurate prediction," replied Orac. "However, given his recent activity, it is clear that no one is safe from the technique of demonization by argumentum ad Nazium. Indeed, it would not surprise me if the next victim is an historian or a scientist, given the rate he is accelerating his rampage." Orac's voice rose to address the entire gathered group of scientists. "Now go. Find him before he strikes again. I must shut down again to consider this and formulate a plan. In the meantime, find the monster."

Orac's lights abruptly went black.

UNDOUBTEDLY TO BE CONTINUED AT SOME POINT.....UNFORTUNATELY


Check out the exciting sequel Weekend of the Dead, Part II: The Rampage Continues.



**Again translated from the German, of course.

Al Swearingen on "intelligent design" creationism

I bet you didn't know that Al Swearingen served as a guest blogger, or that he had an opinion on ID creationism. But he does, and you should read it--but only if you don't have delicate sensibilities when it comes to cussing, given Al's preferred means of expressing himself. (Via Pharyngula.)

And pigs will fly...

I almost passed out when I read this.

I've always considered Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum to be a serious tool of the religious right that drove me away from the Republican Party. However, going to show something along the lines of the same principle that says a stopped watch is right twice a day (although with ol' Rick it isn't nearly that often that he's right), he went and actually said in an an interview with NPR that he disagreed with President Bush's statement that "intelligent design" creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science classes. Santorum even said:

I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested," Santorum, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, told National Public Radio. "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."

And later:

As far as intelligent design is concerned, I really don't believe it has risen to the level of a scientific theory at this point that we would want to teach it alongside of evolution.

Amazing. It's almost as though he understands. (Of course, what he probably doesn't understand is that ID is incredibly unlikely ever to rise to the level of a scientific theory.) Indeed, Santorum does undermine his point somewhat in an other statement:

"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes -- and I think there are legitimate problems and holes -- in the theory of evolution. What we need to do is to present those fairly, from a scientific point of view," he said in the interview.

It all sounds fair enough, but I wonder if Santorum is aware that advocating the teaching of the "problems" or "holes" in evolutionary theory tends to be code among "intelligent design" creationists for teaching creationist "alternative explanations" to evolution. Besides, any good science teacher will point out the gaps in the theory and, most importantly, that no scientific theory is ever the "final word." Gaps in scientific theories need to be filled in with evidence and experimentation, something ID advocates never seem to grasp. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think Kung Fu Monkey may be right about it when he describes how this sort of movement will lead to the disintegration of our economic competitiveness in the biotech sector.

60 years ago today: Hiroshima

Sixty years ago today, our world changed forever. Yes, I know it's a cliche, but in this case I don't care. This is one of those rare topics when the cliche is completely true and even appropriate, because on August 6, 1945 we entered the nuclear age. True, it could be argued that the more appropriate date for our entrance into the nuclear age was July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was detonated in the sands of New Mexico, rather than the bombing of Hiroshima, which resulted in 60,000 dead, but today marks the anniversary of the world's learning about the destructive power that had first been unleashed three weeks before. This information was to shape the history of the succeeding six decades in a way that perhaps no other information has, and fear of the bomb continues to shape our history and policies even today, well over a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Indeed, even now, the "war on terror" is based in large part on the not unreasonable fear that someday, somewhere, terrorists will get their hands on a nuclear weapon and detonate it in a major city.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been controversial in the decades since they occurred, but it is surprising to note how uncontroversial the decision to drop the bomb was at the time. The U.S. had been engaged in a brutal, two-front war for nearly four years. In the development of the bomb from its very beginnings, there was no doubt that it would be used as soon as possible. The military leadership was contemplating a land invasion of Japan in the fall of 1945, with the planning and approval of Operation Downfall earlier in the summer. The Japanese had their own defense plan, designed to go down in a blaze of glory. A horrific invasion would have been necessary, followed by several months of fighting, with the possibility of a guerilla war after that. Casualty estimates ranged from 100,000 to 500,000 American soldier and as many as millions of Japanese. This was the thinking that informed the decision. Indeed, as David M. Kennedy noted in a recent Time op-ed article:

Stimson appointed the so-called Interim Committee on May 1, 1945, to give advice on the Bomb's use against Japan. Scholars have probed the record of the committee's month-long existence in vain for evidence of the kind of deliberative decision-making process that the resort to nuclear weaponry might seem to have warranted. Stimson asked the committee primarily for recommendations about how, not whether, to use the new weapon. Members spent only about 10 minutes of a lunch break discussing a possible demonstration of the Bomb's effect in an unpopulated area. No other alternatives were brought forward. Without qualifications, the committee recommended "that the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible."

The discomforting truth is that Allied leaders strode unhesitantly into the atomic age. "I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used," Truman later wrote. "[N]or did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise," Winston Churchill added. Nothing in the record contradicts them. Dropping the Bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, was among history's most notorious foregone conclusions.

One sad truth that made the use of such horrific weapons a foregone conclusion is that the atomic bombings appeared at the time to be merly an extension, a ratcheting up if you will, of the Allied bomber war and the culmination of a trend in bombing that had begun in World War I, continued in a variety of conflicts between the wars, and then was taken up with a vengeance by Germany, Japan, and the Allies. I've written about this before, specifically the bombing of Dresden and the firebombing of Tokyo. The bombing campaigns against Germany, conceived initially as the Allies' only means of "hitting back" at Germany in the dark days of 1942-1943 as well as a means of destroying their industrial and military production, continued as a relatively ineffective program in 1943 and early 1944. (I say "relatively ineffective," because through 1943 casualty rates among American bomber crews were very high, verging on unsustainable, in return for relatively little impact on Germany's industrial capacity.) Initially, U.S. believed in a doctrine of daylight raids using "precision bombing" to target closely German industrial and military targets, but the technology of the time could not produce the required accuracy. "Precision bombing" was in practice little different from area bombing. As Germany's air defenses collapsed and the Allies developed fighters that could accompany the bombers all the way to their targets and back, the number and destructiveness of the raids increased exponentially, culiminating in the Dresden bombing. When the war in the Pacific lead to the American capture of islands within heavy bombing range of the Japanese homeland late in the war, it only seemed logical to extend the bombing campaign to Japanese cities, using even larger bombers and more destructive raids. It is important to note when considering Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the combined death toll of these two atomic bombings was roughly equal to the death toll of the firebombing of Tokyo using conventional incendiary bombs five months earlier, and that the bombing campaign on the Japanese homeland in essence leveled more than 60 Japanese cities and produced hundreds of thousands of deaths.

All of this leads to the uncomfortable question of whether the use of atomic bombs against Japan was morally justifiable. Not surprisingly, there are strong opinions on both sides and always have been. Surprisingly (or maybe just evidence that perhaps I don't know as much about the history of this issue as I thought I did), I discovered that, in the early years after the war, the group that was most critical of Truman's decision to drop the bombs was conservative, for example, Herbert Hoover, who wrote to a friend: ""[t]he use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." Weeks after Japan's surrender, an article in the conservative magazine Human Events called the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki morally "more shameful" than Pearl Harbor, and even through the 1950's, noted conservatives like William F. Buckley and George S. Schuyler lambasted the decision. Today, as has been noted, "Times change." It is now conservative talk radio hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity; conservative writers and bloggers (for example, Victor David Hanson); and conservative "satirists" such as Scott Ott, who are the most vocal defenders of the decision to use the atomic bomb (although in the more libertarian strain of conservatism, the old criticisms still live, joined by liberals, some of whom have an unfortunate tendency to conflate ridiculously the bombing of Hiroshima with the war in Iraq when criticizing U.S. policy).

On the other side still remains the argument that not bombing would have lead to a continuation of the war and even more Japanese casualties. To American pilots and support crews charged with the atomic bombing and troops facing the prospect of many months, if not years, of more war and being ordered into what would have been the largest and bloodiest invasion in history, the bombings were widely cheered because of the perception that they shortened the war and made an invasion of Japan no longer necessary. There is little doubt of that, given the fanaticism of the military leaders holding sway in Japan in the summer of 1945, who were determined to fight to the death and kill as many American troops as possible while going down in a blaze of glory, even if it meant the deaths of millions of Japanese civilians, who were being groomed to fight a guerrilla war. Japanese leaders had proven this in part by not having surrendered already and then proved it again by not surrendering after the first atomic bombing, believing the Hiroshima was a "one-off stunt" that could not be replicated any time soon. Given that background, there is little doubt that the bombings probably shortened the war substantially, and that is undoubtedly a good thing. Unfortunately, victory came at a considerable moral cost, as it made the U.S. the only nation in the world ever to have used nuclear weapons in combat. On the other hand, there is little doubt that almost any government in the midst of total war would choose to use such a weapon as soon as possible after it is developed. The mindset and logic of total war and the Allied policy of demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan demanded nothing less. That's one reason why, sixty years later, such debates about the morality of the bombings are almost beside the point. Although other choices could have been made, it would have been a rare leader indeed with the will to choose not to use the bomb as soon as it became available. Just consider the situation: You are the leader of a nation engaged in a massive war, and your military informs you that they have just devloped a devastating new weapon that could end the war in one stroke. How, as a leader, do you justify not using it?

Nonethless, such debates do serve a purpose today. It is not so much the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves that should be troubling to the U.S., a nation that prides itself on having a higher moral purpose than other nations. These bombings were in reality only the culmination of a larger policy devised and executed over the preceding three years of the war, that of bombing enemy cities with little concern for the civilian casualties that would result. Like Jonathan Rauch (whom I have quoted before), I like to think that America's present policies with regards to war, in which the military goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties even when it puts our own troops at more risk to do so, is in some part a consequence of the horror and an attempt to make up for past excesses:

It is true that the United States in 1945, in marked and important contrast with, say, al Qaeda in 2001, viewed the targeting of civilians as a last rather than a first resort; and it is true that throughout history even the virtuous have wound up fighting dirty if fighting clean failed; and it is true that sometimes the good must do terrible things to destroy a great evil. But it is also true that if the good find themselves driven to barbarism, they own up afterward and search their souls.

America is better at reforming than at repenting, which is probably just as well. Perhaps America's quiet way of paying its debt to the dead of Tokyo has been to take unprecedented pains, far beyond anything done by any other great power, to design and deploy weapons and tactics that spare civilian lives. A lot of innocent people in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are alive today as a result. Still, the erasure of the Tokyo firebombing from Americans' collective memory is not a noble thing.

These sorts of policies with regard to avoiding civilian casualties, developed in the decades since World War II, are often derided by the "bomb 'em all" crowd who like to call in to conservative talk radio shows to advocate massive retaliation after every insurgent attack or who, like Tom Tancredo and his supporters, consider the bombing of holy sites to be an appropriate response to a terrorist attack on the U.S. However, I consider such policies to be noble and like to think that their evolution and implementation might, just might, mean that we have learned a lesson from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bombing campaign that led up to them.


Select links on the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Hiroshima: What People Think Now
Why U.S. Leaders Never Questioned the Idea of Dropping the Bomb
Will We Still Remember Hiroshima After the Last Victims Die?
What Recent Scholarship Concludes About Hiroshima
Why Did the Japanese Delay Surrendering?
The Birth of "Mere Terror"
Why It's Time for Us to Confront Hiroshima
Reflections of Nagasaki remain worlds apart
Crossing the Moral Threshold
Harry Truman on Trial
Hiroshima-Nagasaki was Democide
Suppressed film of 1945 nuclear attacks to air
Hiroshima gallery

Kev shows that anti-mercury all too often means antivaccine

Speaking of anti-vaccination mania, anti-mercury activists, who blame the thimerosal in vaccines for autism, frequently go out of their way to emphasize that they are not "anti-vaccine." Unfortunately, as Kev shows (and as I've pointed out in the past), there is at least a significant minority who are in actuality virulently anti-vaccine and have just jumped on the thimerosal bandwagon because they think it validates their extreme distrust of vaccines. Kev even mentions that, at the "March for Truth" rally a couple of weeks ago, one of the placards read:

"Vaccines are weapons of mass destruction."

Remember this the next time you hear RFK Jr. or David Kirby strongly denying that they are "anti-vaccine." They personally might not be anti-vaccine, but, with their fallacious and distorted readings of the evidence with regards to thimerosal and autism as nicely summarized by Arthur Allen in Slate, they are giving a great deal of aid to those who are anti-vaccine. Also remember the examples Kev gives of upsurges of preventable diseases that are becoming more prevalent because of declining vaccination rates, as well as this example of the return of previously conquered diseases in an affluent community when even a relatively small number of parents stop vaccinating their children.

SupportVaccination.org

While perusing my referral logs, I came across this. I don't normally plug a blog that only has one post thus far, mainly because I have no idea whether or not the blog will evolve into something worthy of my recommendation. (No sarcasm, please, I usually have a pretty good track record recommending blogs. Yes, I know I used to have Wizbang and LaShawn Barber's Corner on my blogroll, but nobody's perfect.)

However, this one intrigued me:

As someone who suffered through some of the "benign" childhood diseases like chickenpox and whopping cough. While I obviously lived to tell the tale, in the former case I ended up with pneumonia and in the latter I was miserable for months on end. I would not wish those diseases on anyone, and I don't pretend to understand why someone would leave their child unprotected from those diseases - and in a few cases, intentionally expose their child to said disease.

The opposition to vaccination is one of the most well-organized, well-funded "alternative health" movements I've ever seen. It is important to speak out against those who would use questionable science and fallacious arguments to influence parents not to vaccinate. The consequences of those actions can be potentially devastating.

Indeed it is, as I've blogged on before. And then later:

So what I ask of anyone - whether they support vaccines or not - is to show up with evidence that passes scientific muster. That's all. Anecdotes, ad hominem, or other logical fallacies need not apply.

Given that that is exactly the philosophy behind Respectful Insolence, I'm cautiously optimistic that I could be witnessing the birth of something good. Certainly this article leads me to think that I'm correct. An excerpt:

You will be hard-pressed to find anyone out there - other than hardcore anti-government conspiracy theorists - that claims to oppose vaccination. Rather, they’ll claim that they support “parental choice” (also referred to as being “pro-choice”) and “informed consent”.

Now being “pro-choice” sounds great, doesn’t it? Nobody wants to have their decisions on how to parent their child taken away from them. I certainly wouldn’t. And any parent would want to have a reasonable amount of information before they made decisions regarding the health of their children.

But what if I was told that my choice to vaccinate could cause my child to be paralyzed, brain damaged or die of SIDS? What if I was told that vaccines really didn’t have a whole lot to do with getting rid of disease? And what if I was led to believe that there were other alternatives to building up my immune system that didn’t require vaccines? If I were to base my decision on those criteria, I certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with immunization. I can’t imagine any rational person would.

That is the common thread that runs through many so-called “parental choice” websites. They tell you that you can choose to vaccinate. But by doing so, your child is at risk of getting a whole host of other diseases, and the vaccine isn’t really going to work anyway.

That's exactly how anti-vaxers operate. They grossly and often deceptively exaggerate the risks of vaccination while downplaying or even denying the benefits, sometimes going so far as to deny that vaccines prevent disease. Another favorite tactic is to claim vaccines "don't work" because they are not 100% effective in preventing disease. Never mind that virtually no medical interventions are 100% effective. In actuality, vaccines are one of the safest and most effective medical interventions there are. Sadly, JP already knows that the ad hominem "pharma shill" attacks are coming, as he shows:

I'll get this out of the way right now. I work as a marketing manager for a large technology concern that has no known ties to any government agency or drug company. Before that, I worked for a newspaper; before that, a radio station; before that, a chain of music stores. At no point in my life have I ever worked for a drug company. My wife doesn't work for one. None of my family members do, either. I have some acquaintances who are doctors, but they don't work in pediatrics nor do they (as a rule) administer vaccines to children.

(More on the "pharma shill" gambit beloved of alties--particularly online alties--next week; somehow I never got around to writing about it this week.)

I'll be keeping an eye on this new blog, to see how it evolves.

Revenge

The Waiter cracked me up with a story demonstrating that revenge is a dish best served cold.

The sequel left me a bit flat, but it was nonetheless satisfying to see the arrogant get his comeuppance.

So much for the claim that the "intelligent designer" isn't God

Via Stranger Fruit and Pharyngula, I've learned that one of the leaders of the "intelligent design" movement, William Dembski, has produced an article for an online Christian news service praising President Bush's recent endorsement of the teaching of ID in schools. Money quote:

There is a long tradition in Christian theology that sees God’s revelation as coming through “two books”: the Book of Nature, which is God’s general revelation to all people; and the Book of Scripture, which is God’s special revelation to the redeemed.

Accordingly, intelligent design should be understood as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in Scripture.

And:

Precisely because intelligent design does not turn the study of biological origins into a Bible science controversy, intelligent design is a position around which Christians of all stripes can unite. And, indeed, there are creationists who also call themselves design theorists (e.g., Paul Nelson). To be sure, creationists who support intelligent design think it does not go far enough in elucidating the Christian understanding of creation. And they are right!

And:

Even so, there is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of
Darwinian evolution.

The mask has slipped.

Does anyone doubt any longer that the "intelligent designer" ID advocates mean when they invoke "design" is God, no matter how much they (and Dembski) might try to deny it when speaking to secular news outlets and audiences? It's now obvious that he was being quite disingenuous in his interview on CNN the other day, when in answer to a point-blank question about whether the "designer" was God, he said in essence, "No, not necessarily," and then even speculated that it might be an alien race or even an "inherent intelligence" in nature that was responsible for "design"!

The Fourteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Wizardly Skepticism

The Fourteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at Be Lambic or Green. And an excellent one it is, too! The introduction starts:

The ceiling of the great hall was studded with stars, the milky way splashed across the centre of it, mimicking the night sky outside Hogwarts. The long house tables were groaning under the weight of hundreds of bowls, plates and platters. Ron Weasley was in the middle of his second large helping of chocolate ice cream when, with a bright flash, all the food vanished. The buzz of conversation died down as Professor McGonagall stood and surveyed the room.

“Students of Hogwarts, I cannot describe how happy I am that you were all able to attend this special summer school session. These are dark times we live in and so it was decided that some extra tuition was required. Today we will not be discussing spells or magical creatures. We will not be examining charms or magical herbology. Today we will be teaching you something which is common to the Wizard world and the muggle world. Sadly it has not been taught enough here, just as it has not been taught enough in muggle schools.”

“I am talking about critical thinking. In a world filled with magic, strange creatures, weird plants and dark lords it is easy for us to fall into the common trap of believing everything we see. It is a dangerous trap because even in the wizarding world we can be fooled by our senses and tricked by our beliefs. We must evaluate everything we see and hear, weigh the evidence and make a judgement on whether we want to accept what we have seen or heard.”

Go there and read the rest! Orac's only complaint is about being dropped by Filch during the festivities. Although his structure is quite tough and resilient, making his internal circuitry difficult to damage from a simple fall, he does not like scratches on his transparent case!

I'm surprised no one thought of this creative way to present a blog carnival before, given the recent buzz around the release of the 6th Harry Potter book (which, by the way, I finally finished the other night--more next week perhaps). I'm grateful to Mark for starting my tenure as proprietor of the Skeptics' Circle off with such a fine effort.

The next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will be held on August 18 at Atheism Guide. Start getting your best skeptical blogging going to send to Austin by August 17! The remaining schedule (and the archives, which you should really check out if you're new to the Circle) are here.

Also, although I'm quite happy that we have hosts lined up through October, I'm always on the lookout for more hosts and won't rest until I have hosts lined up into 2006. If you're interested in hosting the Skeptics' Circle, drop me a line at orac_usa@hotmail.com.

Pseudohistory and pseudoscience

I've alluded to this similarity before, but DarkSyde posted an interesting piece about the similarities between the fallacies used by Holocaust deniers and those used by creationists. He begins:

Most people can get by fine without ever being taught evolutionary biology just as most folks can get by fine without being taught cosmology. So if there's no harm, why should we teach evolution but not creationism or the evidence against evolution?

Most folks can also get by fine in life without 'believing in' the Holocaust. You can learn a trade, get married, have kids, raise them, retire, and enjoy leisure, all without acknowledging it at all. Would it materially change the life of most people if they were taught in K-12 schools that the Holocaust might be a hoax?

There's a group of folks who advocate exactly this in spite of the evidence. They're called Holocaust Deniers or Holohoaxers. These people are not Nazis and I'm not trying to imply, directly or otherwise, that they are or that creationists are Nazis. These are mostly regular Joe's who are to some degree or another skeptical about the extant of the Holocaust. What they are is misled by sources they implicitly assume are being truthful; just like most run of the mill creationist supporters.

Those misleading sources point out that witnesses could be lying or exaggerating, they point out that most of the living survivors still around were pretty young at the time and they could be suffering from imperfect memories of a simple internment camp or false memory syndrome and so forth. They suggest documents have been faked or taken out of context. They point out other possible uses for the installations/ruins of the 'alleged' concentration camps. They quote mine credible historians so as to make them appear to doubt the Holocaust, when in fact those academics fully accept it. They say that even if a few Jews were killed, so were a bunch of Germans and Poles and Gypsies and so on. They subtly play on prejudice by suggesting it's in the interests of the "Zionists to play it up for all the world's sympathy they can get" and go on to claim that Jews "control broadcasting, publishing, and academia" so it would be easy for them to do so. They correctly point out that the victors write the history books.

Overall, this is an excellent article, and it quite correctly points out similarities in the arguments and tactics used by pseudohistory pushers (Holocaust deniers) and pseudoscience pushers (such as ID advocates), wondering sarcastically what's wrong with teaching pseudohistory like Holocaust denial in public schools and then "letting the kids decide what to believe" if it's OK to teach pseudoscience like creationism based on a similar argument.

Unfortunately, I have one not-too-minor quibble with one statement DarkSyde makes. While it is quite true that cranks often use the same sorts of fallacious reasoning and conspiracy-mongering to win adherents, the main reason I've been very reluctant to use the exact comparison DarkSyd has made, to compare the logical and scientific fallacies used by the ID crowd with those used by Holocaust deniers, is that the comparison is so toxic that it carries a grave risk of drowning out the reasonable point. Creationists will whine that they are being called "Nazis" or "anti-Semites" when in reality what DarkSyde is doing is simply showing that they are using the same sorts of fallacies of logic, evidence, and science as Holocaust deniers do.

There is a reason that this comparison is so toxic. Although DarkSyde is correct to state that comparing fallacies used by Holocaust deniers and creationists should not imply that creationists are Nazis or anti-Semites, he is at least partially incorrect when he makes the qualification that Holocaust deniers are not "Nazis." In a literal sense, it is probably quite true that most Holocaust deniers are not Nazis or formal members of white supremacist groups, although certainly such groups are the most vocal advocates of Holocaust denial. However, their belief in such utter bilge as Holocaust denial implies at the very least that they have a strong sympathy for the sorts of "ideals" that Nazis and anti-Semitic white supremacist groups hold dear. In my experience virtually all Holocaust deniers are anti-Semites or have neo-Nazi tendencies (often both), regardless of where they were exposed to the ideas behind denial. Period. Oh, I suppose it's possible that Holocaust deniers who aren't anti-Semites might exist, but in my eight years of doing my little part to fight the lie of Holocaust denial online, I haven't encountered a single Holocaust "revisionist" yet who can hide his anti-Semitism when questioned closely.

Given that one famous neo-Nazi once, in a rare moment of candor, actually agreed with Deborah Lipstadt's statement that "the real purpose of Holocaust revisionism is to make National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again," it should not come as a surprise that there is such a high correlation between belief in Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic and/or neo-Nazi beliefs. One effective way to find this out is to ask a Holocaust denier why the "myth of the Holohoax" persists. They will try to remain vague and equivocate, but if you push them just a little, you can almost always get them to blame it on a Jewish conspiracy of some kind; or they'll use shopworn codewords for "Jews," such as "bankers," the "media," or various other obvious terms. An old Usenet trenchmate by the name of Allan Matthews had another, more amusing technique for driving this point home for all to see. Every so often, on alt.revisionism, he would post a brief article entitled, "Where are all the revisionists who aren't neo-Nazis or anti-Semites?" Here is one such post:

Gee, you'd think that after many months of posting this at least one revisionist who isn't a neo-Nazi or anti-Semite would have come forward and said "Here I am!"

But, no. It appears that there just aren't any such revisionists around.

Based on their past posting history, the few bozos who have bothered to claim that they aren't neo-Nazis or anti-Semites were, upon examination of their claims, found to be clearly lying. Of course, given the general behavior of revisionists, this lack of honesty isn't surprising in the least.

However, just in case some revisionist 'scholars' have missed my question to date, here it is again:

Where are the revisionists who aren't neo-Nazis or anti-Semites?

It's a fair question. After all, how can revisionists hope to be taken seriously if they all have such apparent biases, agendas and axes to grind?

So, then, if Holocaust revisionism is an intellectually honest endevour, where are the revisionists who aren't neo-Nazis or anti-Semites?

As Allan intended, a variety of Holocaust revisionists (in actuality, Holocaust deniers) would inevitably reply to his posts, drawn like moths to a flame. In doing so, they always eventually demonstrated their anti-Semitism or Nazi sympathies in very obvious ways. Always. For example, here is one such reply to Allan:

You mean "Jewish Holocaust revisionists" Allan. Get it straight. You have no problem with anyone dissecting the relationship between Eisenhower and McArthur regarding the Korean War.

You couldn't care less whether revisionists pick apart the details of the Boer Wars, or the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

You and the Cockroach Clan are single minded in your efforts: To protect the fabricated and "sanctified" image of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis during WWII, and to absolve Jews of any guilt regarding the atrocities committed under Bolshevism and Communism.

There is much at stake, isn't there Allan?

If the general perception of the public were to change . . if people no longer viewed Jews as the "poor, picked-on, innocent scapegoats" that they have been portrayed to be . . . What would be the consequences?

It never ceased to amaze me that Allan's little ploy, even though it was mind-numbingly obvious to all exactly what he was doing by posting his challenge, always worked. It never failed to reveal the anti-Semitism or Nazi sympathies of the Holocaust deniers who responded to deny that they were anti-Semites. I could only conclude that either Holocaust deniers were so stupid that they didn't see what Allan was doing (unlikely) or that (more likely) the intensity of the anti-Semitism that led them to a belief in Holocaust denial, despite the mass of evidence supporting the historicity of the Holocaust, was such that they just couldn't keep the façade up for very long or very convincingly. Still, I do try to keep my mind open to the possibility that there might, just might, be out there somewhere a Holocaust "revisionist" who is not an anti-Semite and/or Nazi sympathizer.

I have yet to find one, though.

This very high correlation between Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi beliefs is the very reason why comparisons to Holocaust denial are so toxic and also why I rarely compare the techniques of pushing "intelligent design" creationism (or quackery, for that matter) to those used by adherents of Holocaust denial, even though excellent cases can be made for the similarities in the distortion of evidence and fallacious logic used. If I don't include a lot of explanation, I leave myself open to the charge of comparing creationists to anti-Semites and/or Nazis. Unfortunately, by the time I get through all the qualifications and explanations necessary to try to convince people that I am not implying that creationists are anti-Semites or Nazis, the message ends up hopelessly muddled or diluted.

And the qualifications and explanations don't work anyway. Creationists still whine that I'm calling them Nazis. I suspect that they will do the same to DarkSyde, should they become aware of his otherwise excellent article.

An answer to the "teach both sides" argument

Red State Rabble exposes the hypocrisy in the recent statement by the President with regards to "intelligent design" creationism that "Both sides ought to be properly taught [evolution and intelligent design], so people can understand what the debate is about."

Remember this the next time you hear ID advocates pontificating that students should be exposed to "both sides of the debate" in science class.

Shermer debates Dembski on CNN

Via Telic Thoughts, I've discovered this debate (warning: 27 MB Windows Media video file) between Michael Shermer and Bill Dembski on Daryn Kagan's program on CNN. It amazes me to what lengths "intelligent design" advocates will go to deny it when asked point blank if the "intelligent designer" behind "intelligent design" is God. In this case, Dembski demurred that "there is an intelligence involved" in evolution. He even went to far as to admit that the "designer" could be an alien intelligence. But what drew my attention most of all and made me want to blog about this interview is that Dembski made an astounding speculation that, instead of God, it could be a "natural intelligence built into the world" that is responsible for "design."

To me that sounds an awful lot like the Gaia hypothesis. I wonder how long conservative religious advocates of ID will stick with the concept of a "designer" if adherents like Dembski, in their zeal to avoid being labeled "creationists," trot out on national TV New Age, even pagan, ideas about about what this "intelligence" might be. Look for a comeback of old-fashioned young earth creationism if that happens.

The final straw: Bush endorses intelligent design

I tell you, I fail to check my blog for several hours after posting the morning's article at an ungodly early hour (mainly because I was hard at work in the lab and in meetings), and what happens? I miss something big and end up addressing it much later than the rest of the blogopshere. By the time I get to it later in the evening, either the issue's played out, or I'm too tired to blog about it. It's a bitch when my real job gets in the way of blogging, isn't it?

Yes, as you might have guessed, yesterday I missed this (another report is here) which I only discovered when an e-mail informed me of it. The news? Our President has endorsed the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism in public schools:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss ''intelligent design'' alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,'' Bush said. ''You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.''

Ugh. I wish I could say I were surprised, but I'm not. It's been mind-numbingly obvious since the stem cell debate in 2001 that this President is more concerned with placating his religious base than with advancing science and science education. It's just that, up until now, he's remained cleverly canny about his views on this particular subject.

Naturally, I turned to PZ Myers for his inimitable take on this bit of news and through him learned of Bush making this comparison:

Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over "creationism," a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution.

Mr. President, "intelligent design" is creationism. Period. If you have a doubt about that, just ask your own science advisor, who has denounced ID as unscientific. Just ask an ID advocate who this "intelligent designer" is. Ask him if the "designer" is God. He will almost certainly either decline to give a straight answer (or even to speculate), or he will mumble that he does not place any "conditions" on who the "intelligent designer" is. Then ask him: Why can't the designer be David Icke's race of intelligent giant lizards, an extraterrestrial humanoid civilization, as the Raelian cult claims, or even a Flying Spaghetti Monster, as illustrated here? The question will make an ID advocate very uncomfortable (or even angry), especially if you're persistent and don't accept the usual equivocating, handwaving responses, a point I've been making since very early on in this blog.

The bottom line is that there should be no inherent contradiction between accepting evolution as the best current scientific theory explaining how the diversity of life developed (which it is) and a belief in God. Evolution has enormous quantities of experimental and observational evidence to support it, evidence that is consistent with and complementary to evidence and theories from other disciplines. "ID" creationism has no such evidence or science to support it, and is ultimately not falsifiable. In essence, all ID does is throw up its hands whenever it encounters a complex biological structure whose origin cannot yet be understood by science and says "it must be 'designed,'" basically giving up on an explanation other than a higher intelligence (whose identity is left intentionally vague but implicit). Science cannot answer the questions of whether God exists or whether He is guiding the evolution of life forms (barring a highly unlikely Revelations-like appearance of the Almighty telling us that that is what He has been doing, complete with miracles to convince the doubters). Such questions are simply not within the purview of science. There is nothing wrong with believing that a "higher power" either set evolution into motion (otherwise known as theistic evolution) or is guiding evolution to complex organisms ("intelligent design"). Belief in theistic evolution or ID make perfect sense if you believe in God. However, such beliefs are a matter of faith, not science. It would be perfectly acceptable to teach ID as religion or philosophy in public schools, but not as science because such beliefs are not science. Indeed, it is at the very least ascientific, relying on unfalsifiable hypotheses, fallacious reasoning, and distortions or even outright lies about what evolutionary theory actually says and what the evidence supporting it really is.

This statement by President Bush not unexpectedly has caused pro-ID bloggers, such as Jonathan Witt, Denise O'Leary, Stephen Jones, and William Dembski to crow. At least one was more circumspect, pointing out correctly that the President cannot dictate what school boards include in their curricula. True enough, but the President can influence where federal education aid goes and to what sorts of programs. Fortunately, this announcement has outraged even many conservatives, seemingly (to me, at least) even more so than liberals, a heartening development. It shows that not all conservatives drink the antiscience Kool-Aid being laid down by fundamentalists, nor do they all want to teach thinly disguised religious beliefs as "science" in the public schools. Examples from the conservative half of the blogosphere who have attacked the President's statement include: Instapundit, Rick Moran, John Cole, Right Thoughts, Catallarchy, Roger L. Simon, Don Surber and Andrew Sullivan, among others, and even some conservative columnists are also taking aim at ID. The best quote, as is often the case, comes from The Commissar:

Trying to prove the Dems right, one stupid f*cking statement at a time. Is Bush ‘playing to the base’ or does he believe it? I don’t know which is worse. One is horribly irresponsible; the other is just ignorant.

Charles Krauthammer also gets in a good shot, though:

There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.

Indeed. Come to think of it, certain ID advocates and fundamentalists aren't too thrilled with sciences like geology, physics, or astronomy, either. Will they start trying to dictate what is taught in these sciences as well?

Regular readers know that I've been becoming increasingly disillusioned with the brand of conservatism that is currently in ascendence in this country, even though my own political beliefs haven't changed much, if at all. This clear ignorance about what is and is not science on the part of our President, now confirmed yet again, is just one more reason why. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a place for someone like me in the Democratic Party either, which leaves me without a party to call my own, at least a party with a chance of actually influencing policy. As John Rogers put it, I miss old-fashioned Republicans, the pro-science realists of the past.

Grand Rounds XLV

Grand Rounds XLV has been posted at Alois, MD. Enjoy the best of the medical blogosphere for this week.

A day delayed...here he is! It's EneMan's birthday

You know, after eight months of blogging and using this odd little guy as the mascot of Respectful Insolence, I was running out of clever and pithy ways of introducing his appearances every month. Indeed, this month, due to the oddly distubing nature of one of the pictures, I was almost just going to post them with minimal commentary. (You will see what I mean in a moment.) Fortunately, my decision to hold off for one day on the usual monthly appearance of that champion of colon health with the hat no living creature should wear on his head out of respect for my parents' 46th wedding anniversary resulted in my seeing a piece of e-mail that I normally wouldn't have seen before everybody's favorite Fleet mascot had already been posted (mainly because I received it yesterday):

Dear Webmaster,

My name is XXXX, and I run the web site about Constipation:

http://www.poopdoc.com/

I recently found your site http://oracknows.blogspot.com and am very interested in exchanging links. I've taken the initiative and posted a link to your site, on this page:

http://www.poopdoc.com/links/other.html

As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to our site as follows:

Title: Constipation
URL: http://www.poopdoc.com/
Description: Now, an all natural discovery allows you to Get Constipation Relief on Demand.

[Remainder deleted, and I'm not putting actual links in]

Arrgh! What hath EneMan wrought?

It's bad enough that I've been linked to from a gay bondage forum before because of our favorite colon cleanser. (The guys there thought he was quite amusing and one suggested he would like to get his hands on an EneMan costume for purposes that I really don't want to contemplate.) Now I'm getting altie pitches for "natural constipation relief." On the other hand, EneMan seems to be pretty popular, and I get lots of hits from Google searches looking for EneMan pictures. I suppose, blog publicity whore that Orac is, any link that leads eyeballs to Respectful Insolence is probably a good thing. Even better, anyone looking for "colon cleansing" information who happens to look over his links will be lead here, where hopefully some of the emphasis on evidence-based medicine will rub off.

In any case, this particular webmaster apparently hasn't actually read my blog. (For example, has he seen my post about the Orange Man?) If he had, he would know right away that I'm not exactly the kind of guy who's receptive to pitches like this:

PoopDoc is a full intestinal and colon cleanser which has been formulated to melt away compaction in the bowel and provide oxygen to the intestinal tract and carried through the bloodstream throughout the body. PoopDoc doesn’t just clean out the colon, it cleans the colon, small intestine, and large intestine—all without the side effects of laxatives or psyllium based cleansers. While psyllium and other fiber products simply scrape matter out through the center of a clogged colon, PoopDoc removes old, impacted fecal matter as it detoxifies and cleans the entire intestinal tract.

Or this:

Over time undigested food and waste material build up in the intestinal tract and colon. This is a perfect breeding ground for anaerobic bacteria, which if left alone could cause serious health problems. Many strains of Anaerobic bacteria can be harmful in our digestive system. This type of bacteria cannot survive in a healthy, oxygen enriched environment, such as a healthy digestive system.

Aerobic bacteria are the ‘GOOD’ bacteria that allows our digestive system to operate properly. This type of bacteria thrives on oxygen. When PoopDoc is introduced into the digestive system, the O1atom attaches itself to both good and bad bacteria. The oxygen released helps to destroy the bad bacteria and nourish the good bacteria.

PoopDoc cleans the entire 25-30 feet of the digestive tract. It is designed to clean, oxidize and reduce the amount of impaction and hard fecal matter in the small intestine, large intestine and colon. Other cleansers focus on the colon and stimulate mucous production instead of breaking down hard fecal matter.

Oooh boy. I've actually been meaning to blog on this altie obsession with "cleansing" the digestive tract, and, with EneMan's help and the above as a reminder, I may just do it in the next few days. In the meantime, here's a little wafer to cleanse the palate. Suffice it to say that the above paragraph is utter B.S., particularly the part about the oxygen. There are plenty of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in the colon, normal commensal residents. This appears, in my experience, to be a common altie misconception that, just because C. difficile colitis is a result of a species of anaerobic bacteria that can overgrow and cause colitis when antibiotics kill off the normal bacterial flora, anaerobic bacteria are all bad and aerobic bacteria are "good." Never mind that E. coli, a species of aerobic bacteria, is the most prevalent species of bacteria in the colon, and that certain E. coli strains can cause severe colitis as well. He also doesn't seem to have a clue what reactive oxygen species are (commonly known as free radicals). At least, that's what I think he was referring to. Hint: They aren't "O1atoms." O2-, OH-, or *OH, maybe, but not "O1atoms."

Maybe EneMan can serve as "fly paper" to draw these altie colon cleanse pushers in to be debunked. On the other hand, it makes me wonder why EneMan isn't considered an altie. Maybe because he's the mascot of a dreaded pharmaceutical company. No doubt he's a "pharma shill." (I suppose the hat is a dead giveaway.)

But back to our monthly Ene-fest. This month, apparently, is EneMan's birthday, and the pictures from the three calendars I have reflect that. First, the 2002 calendar:

August 2002

OK, fairly pleasant. Not so bad, right? (Those kids in the picture don't appear all that happy, though, do they?) But, two years later, we have this one (WARNING: not for the faint of heart):

August 2004

I may be scarred for life by this picture. I also don't know what it says about me that I thought such crude thoughts about this particular picture, but it can't be good. (On the other hand, what does it say about Orac that he has a tall guy dressed in a giant enema suit, complete with "business end," as the mascot of his blog?) The only redeeming feature is that some of the kids (particularly the blonde, somewhat older girl to EneMan's left) appear to have been Photoshopped into the picture. Maybe some of them escaped the horror.

Fortunately, this year's photo is much less disturbing and even rather uplifting (although I wonder what my U.K. readers will think):

August 2005

Well, that concludes EneMan's appearance for August. He will return next month, as always. And, of course, as always, here is a list of every appearance our intrepid colon health defender has made here since the very beginning:

July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
EneMan's first appearance (December 2004)

And, so far, it looks as though, despite threatening to do so last month, the Hitler Zombie has yet to mount a serious challenge to EneMan for control of the blog mascot franchise. But stay tuned. It may well someday come to a slapdown between the two for control of this blog.

But not yet.

The History Carnival

The latest History Carnival has been posted at WILLisms. Past and future History Carnivals can be found here. Enjoy.

Happy Anniversary

My regular readers know what the first of the month usually means. However, this month, I'm afraid, you'll have to wait one more day. I just couldn't do it on schedule this month because today is my parents' 46th wedding anniversary. Out of respect for my parents and a sincere desire to wish them a happy anniversary, I decided to delay this blog's mascot's usual monthly appearance by one day. (Besides, one of the pictures for this month is the most disturbing yet.)

In the meantime, happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Eavesdropping on hell

One of the most hotly debated questions about World War II is how much the Allies knew about the Holocaust and when they knew it and why military action wasn't undertaken to slow the killing. There is little doubt that the Allies had to know that the Nazis were engaged in a systematic campaign to persecute and expel Jews from Germany and Nazi-occupied territory. This campaign began within weeks after Hitler assumed power with boycotts of Jewish businesses. Over time, it expanded to the imprisonment of Jews thought to be threats to the state, the banning of intermarriage between Jews and Germans, and a variety of other restrictions. However, in 1939, the persecution of the Jews had not yet turned exterminationist. The invasion of Poland in 1939 resulted in a a very large Jewish population falling under Nazi control. These Jews were expelled from their homes and forced to live in large crowded ghettoes. Although many Jews were killed, either through starvation, disease, forced work, or summary execution, even as late as 1941, the Holocaust still had not yet turned primarily exterminationist.

That changed with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. This brought an even large number of Jews under Nazi control, and by this time it had become clear that other plans the Nazis had developed to expel the Jews to places like Madagascar were completely impractical. It was at this point that the Final Solution truly started to turn exterminationist, as mobile killing units known as the Einsatzgruppen moved across newly occupied territory, carrying out mass slaughters of Jews and suspected Communist Party officials. After the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, it became the explicit policy of the Nazi regime to deport Jews in the occupied territory to the East, use some of them as slave labor, and kill the rest, with Reinhard Heydrich, SS chief Heinrich Himmler's head deputy and head of the Reich Main Security Office, envisioning as many as 11,000,000 Jews eventually being subjected to the Final Solution.

Yesterday in the New York Times, there appeared an article discussing the intelligence behind what the Allies knew about the Holocaust at the time it was happening. An analysis of intelligence-gathering about the Holocaust by Robert J. Hanyok, a historian with the National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History in Maryland, entitled "Eavesdropping on Hell" was released last month. Most interesting about the report is how the clues were often there but not understood because of a shortage of translators, bad translations, and a large backlog of intercepts. An example:

But the bits of information often arrived without necessary context.

For instance, one message, declassified in 2000 and barely noticed except in scholarly journals, was intercepted on Jan. 11, 1943. It specified the number of Jews killed under "Operation Reinhard" at four death camps - Lublin, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka - through 1942: 1,274,166.

But, the report notes, "the message itself contained only the identifying letters for the death camps followed by the numerical totals."

The only clue that these were death camps would have been the reference to Operation Reinhard, a tribute to the SS general Reinhard Heydrich, who had been charged with organizing the Nazis' plan to eliminate Europe's Jews.

But that was probably "unknown at the time" to the British code breakers, the report says. Still, British analysts obviously considered the message important. It was classified as "Most Secret" and marked "To be kept under lock and key: Never to be removed from the office."

There was also even a suggestion that widespread anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Britain may have made the intelligence operatives less concerned. Also, because they weren't specifically looking for evidence of crimes of this nature, they either failed to grasp the enormity of what was going on or were willing to ignore or downplay it:

Mr. Hanyok said analysts had been looking for information about internal security, impacts of bombing and prisoners or war rather than potential evidence of war crimes and probably would not have grasped the enormity of the Nazis' plan.

He also quotes a memorandum from a British cryptologic official, dated Sept. 11, 1941, that takes account of German massacres in the Soviet Union and concludes: "The fact that the police are killing all Jews that fall into their hands should now be sufficiently well appreciated. It is not therefore proposed to continue reporting these butcheries unless so requested."

Mr. Hanyok attributed the British official's response to "either his inability to appreciate the implications of the massacres, or his willingness to ignore what the Nazis were doing."

What this all shows is yet more evidence of the messiness of intelligence gathering and interpretation during a time of active warfare,. It is very easy to criticize the Allies after the fact for not appreciating the full scope of the Holocaust. However, with the information available to the Allies at the time the slaughters were going on, it is unlikely that the full scope of the Holocaust could have been discerned earlier than it was. Does this observation let the Allies off the hook? Not completely. While their policy that the best way to stop the killing of Jews was to defeat Germany was militarily sound and bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz or its crematoriums would have been unlikely to impede the killing much, that does not entirely excuse them for not taking more substantive steps to get more Jews out while it was still possible, by loosening immigration controls, for example. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that very many Jews could have gotten out of Europe between 1941-1945, with Germany in control and the Holocaust in its most deadly phase. Although many historians criticize the Allies for there inaction, there has been no consensus as to what, if anything, could have been done to decrease the killing, and this report is unlikely to change that.