A death in the family

I wrote on Tuesday that this is turning into a memorable Christmas, but not for good reasons. I was intentionally vague, mainly because I didn't yet know how things would turn out and I wasn't quite ready to write about it.

Now I know. I'm not sure if I'm actually ready yet, but here goes anyway.

I was informed yesterday that my uncle had died the night before. It was not unexpected. In actuality, what was unexpected (to me, at least) was that he had held on so many days. That doesn't make it any less hard to take, although in a way it was a bit of a relief when the news finally came.

It was early in the morning the Friday before Christmas when I got a phone call. I was at my in-laws' house in Ohio, and my cell phone rang. The ring tone told me it was my parents. As I tried to rouse myself to some semblance of consciousness, I wondered what it was about. I knew from experience that phone calls before 7 AM are almost never good news. This one was no exception. My mom was calling to tell me that my uncle had suffered a massive heart attack and was in the ICU on a ventilator.

I had been worried that the end was near for my uncle for several months, but this was actually unexpected. You see, my uncle had been battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for three and a half years. I remember well the evening when, while I was at our year-end departmental banquet, the ring of my cell phone startled me (not that many people call my cell). It was my cousin, calling to tell me about the new diagnosis and ask me for advice. Since his initial presentation, he had done well for quite a while, but recently had learned the tumor had relapsed. Having been in a lot of pain for the last couple of months, he was depressed and was not looking forward to the last-ditch attempt at high dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation, which would have involved at minimum a month of extreme unpleasantness in the hospital--and that's if everything went smoothly. Consequently, although I had expected that the end might be near, I didn't really expect it for a few months at least and was surprised at the form it appeared to be taking.

My wife and I headed from Ohio to southeast Michigan as planned later on Friday. On Christmas Eve, my father and I headed to the hospital. I hadn't seen my uncle in several months; surprisingly, other than some edema he didn't look all that different from how I remembered him.

Here's one thing that sucks about being a doctor. Having a critically ill family member in the ICU like this brings up a load of conflicted feelings and thoughts. Prior to this, I had only had to deal with them twice before, once 16 years ago when I was just an intern and then a couple of years ago. Standing there in that room, it was hard to shut off the physician-analytical part of my brain. I looked at the ventilator settings. I looked at the drips. (He's on high doses of dobutamine, dopamine, and Levophed, I thought. Not good. Not good at all.) I approvingly looked at the Diprivan drip used to keep him sedated. At the same time, I hated myself for thinking like a doctor in this situation. That wasn't just any patient lying there! It didn't help, either, that my uncle bore a strong resemblance to his brother, my father. In fact, other than his being considerably taller than my father, my uncle could almost pass for him.

Perhaps that was why I had always found my uncle a bit intimidating when I was a child, and it could never really be said that we were particularly close. Nonetheless, later on, I came to realize that he was a pretty cool guy. He had joined the Marines right out of high school, and during recent holidays he had enthralled us with some of his tales of Marine life and some misadventures he had had with his buddies in basic training. He had a strong love of jazz and the blues, and loved to check out the blues clubs in Chicago whenever he went there to visit relatives. In fact, if you want to know how teenagers annoyed their parents before the advent of rock 'n' roll, he had shown me one way: blasting jazz at loud volumes until my grandmother told him to turn it down. After his stint in the Marines was over, he married, went to work for GM in a personnel office at one of their Detroit area plants (where he ultimately retired around 10 years ago), and started a family. Over the last three years, I had come to admire his stoicism in the face of such a serious illness. He rarely complained. He even kept up a part-time job at Starbucks to keep busy. (For some reason, he really loved Starbucks, and would go there nearly every day for coffee, sometimes more than once a day.) My cousin related to me that he would sometimes tell her that it wouldn't be the cancer that got him in the end.

It turns out that he was right.

As I alluded to, there's definitely a downside to being a physician in situations like this. Normal reactions are infused with our physician's training. The hope that nonphysicians hang onto, no matter how small, we know to be unrealistic. Our training tells us as much. His daughter and wife were at the bedside. I feared for his wife, because she always depended upon him for so much. I knew the odds of his pulling out of this were very slim. (So did pretty much everyone else, but I also knew that, even if he did pull out of it, he wouldn't have long to live because the cancer would get him, especially since the heart attack would eliminated even the small hope that the high dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplant offered. I wondered if she knew, really knew. In the background on TV, of all things, Lethal Weapon was playing. (Yes, I know it's strange, given how I've been ragging on Mel Gibson lately.) Complaining about having had Mel Gibson's crazy cop (Riggs) assigned as his partner, Danny Glover's character muttered a comment that God hates him. Mel's character responded: "Hate Him back. It works for me."

At a moment like that, I understood that sentiment a bit more than I would like to have admitted. We turned the TV off.

Later, our usual Christmas Eve celebration was a bit eerie, because none of us could keep my uncle's predicament out of our minds. The kids seemed pretty much oblivious, thankfully, and the unwrapping of the presents proceeded in its usual chaotic and noisy fashion, but none of the adults seemed to be as into it as usual. How could we be? The disconnect between the joyous shouts of the kids as they unwrapped their toys and my own thoughts weighed heavily on me. It didn't help when later on that night, I found myself in the emergency room with a different family member for two or three hours. Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing serious, but the whole experience simply added to the feeling of unreality that night.

Christmas Day we traveled back to Ohio to see my wife's side of the family. It was a typical Christmas, and I managed to have a good time in spite of myself, although I definitely drank more than I should have. It was stupid of me.

On Monday, I was informed that my uncle had been taken off the ventilator and off all drips other than sedation and morphine. Stubbornly, he held on, even in the face of a pneumonia, high fever, and the progressive shutting down of his kidneys. On Tuesday evening we returned to my parents' house.

Sometime early Wednesday morning, my uncle finally succumbed.

Now I'm reminded once again why I detest living so far away from the bulk of my family. Because of the holidays and a couple of other reasons, the funeral couldn't be arranged until the middle of next week. Because of work obligations, staying in Michigan until then is not practical, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to come back for the funeral. Some may find living far away from their family to be a good thing. I'm not one of those people. All we could do for the moment was to visit my cousins and aunt and pay our respects last night, tell tales of my uncle, and peruse his old basic training yearbook. I was amazed to discover that, in the 1950's at least, the Marine Corps produced what looked very much like a high school yearbook for each group that came through basic training, in my uncle's case the Fourth Battalion, 234th Platoon. There, quite incongruous after the pictures portraying classes on map reading, rifle assembly, and hygiene and photos of young recruits learning how to throw grenades, skewer the enemy with their bayonets, fry them with flamethrowers, and fire rifles, were rows upon rows of pictures of smiling recruits, looking so young--just like the high school seniors most of them were a few months before. And there, among the rows of recruits, was a picture of my uncle, looking every bit the 17 year old that he was. Odd that I had never seen his Marine photo before until now, after his death.

That's not a bad way to remember him. Not a bad way at all.

Rest in peace.

A plug for Prometheus

Sorry, due to family obligations and general vacationing, I didn't write anything for today. However, I do recommend a piece by Prometheus on a topic I had been meaning to write about but hadn't gotten around to yet. Unfortunately (for me, that is), Prometheus beat me to it. The topic is about how quacks and "mavericks" will reject the authority of "conventional medicine" but at the same time will be quick to argue from an alternate authority of "renegade physicians" who have become convinced of the correctness of their particular "alternative therapy." Best quote:

Occasionally, the lone maverick who stands alone and refuses to follow the herd is the vanguard of a new breakthrough in medicine (or science). Most often, however, they are simply wandering aimlessly off the trail and into the wilderness. Taking you with them.

I'll have to remember that one and steal it sometime.

At some point in the next few days, among the sporadic posting, I'll find time to explain what I meant when I made a vague commentthat this was a memorable holiday.

Mel Gibson on evolution

Surprise, surprise. He doesn't accept it, as these excerpts from an interview with Playboy Magazine from July 1995 show him parroting some of the stupider denier canards:

PLAYBOY: So you can't accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?

GIBSON: No, I think it's bullshit. If it isn't, why are they still around? How come apes aren't people yet? It's a nice theory, but I can't swallow it. There's a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something's been around, how accurate is that, really? I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

The whole "if men came from monkeys and apes then why are there still apes around" is one of the more idiotic anti-evolution arguments. This is the sort of simple-minded "argument" that makes scientists want to pull their hair out. (For one thing, the whole premise of the question is wrong; humans didn't descend from "monkeys and apes," but rather humans and apes descended from a common ancestor.) But more surprising to me was his misogynistic view of women. Here he is responding to a question asking him why he doesn't think women should be priests:

GIBSON: I'll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They're not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.

PLAYBOY: That's true. You have more money.

GIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody's equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don't know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. And good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.

PLAYBOY: That's quite a generalization.

GIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.

PLAYBOY: Any examples?

GIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn't work.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

GIBSON: She was a cunt.

Lovely. And this was 10 years ago, long before the controversy over The Passion of the Christ, his association with a breakaway conservative Catholic sect, and the revelation that his father is a Holocaust denier.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Orac the bear?

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A memorable Christmas

It's been a memorable Christmas, but, sadly, not in a good way. I'll write more about this later when I have time (and reliable Internet access). However, suffice it to say that we may have to change our plans.

More later. In the meantime, there will be light blogging. I still have one more leftover that I can post tomorrow or Thursday, though.

More evidence that alternative medicine boosters don't really want scientific evaluation of their therapies

Some holiday leftovers from last week (in other words, written last week, but not yet posted).

Enjoy (I hope).

Since the very beginning of this blog, I've said that I'd love to see "alternative" medicine treated on equal footing with conventional medicine. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean what alties think it does. When I say "equal footing," I don't necessarily mean that alt-med should be treated with equal respect, although that might be the effect in some cases. No, what I mean is that it should be subject to the same standards with regards to efficacy and safety as that conventional medicines must meet before being approved for use and widely used by physicians. To my mind, if alt-med practitioners want to be treated with the same level of respect as conventional physicians and have their methods used more widely, it is only fair that they should have to jump through the same hoops and meet the same standards that conventional physicians and conventional medicines do.

Not surprisingly, craving the acceptance and legal status given to conventional physicians by our society, some alt-med practitioners like to claim that they, too, want their remedies to be investigated scientifically, to have them tested in the same way that conventional drugs are tested. True, they often add a boatload of caveats, such as complaints that they're too busy treating patients to do clinical trials or research, that they can't get funding for their work (a much smaller problem since the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine started handing out big grants to alties), or that drug companies aren't interested in studying their remedies because they can't make a profit off of them (never mind that supplement companies seem to do quite well selling them). Some of them are sincere, but I've always suspected that most of them would really prefer that science be kept away from their treatments.

So it was with interested that I read this story out of Britain:

Millions of people use it to deal with illnesses ranging from asthma to migraine. Prince Charles believes it is the answer to many of the evils of modern life. But now Britain's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst of Exeter University, has denounced homeopathy as ineffective.

'Homeopathic remedies don't work,' he told The Observer. 'Study after study has shown it is simply the purest form of placebo. You may as well take a glass of water than a homeopathic medicine.' Nor is Ernst's disdain confined to homeopathy. Chiropractic, which involves spine manipulation to treat illnesses, and the laying on of hands to 'cure' patients, are equally invalid, he says.

Not surprisingly, his views and his studies have provoked furious reactions. Chiropractors and homeopaths have written in droves to Exeter to denounce him. But now the scourge of alternative medicine says he is going to have to quit because Exeter will no longer support him or his department. 'They have never provided me with the money they originally promised me. Now we have been told in no uncertain terms that this department is going to close.' The university denied the charge. 'Professor Ernst's department has enough money to go on for a couple of more years,' said a spokesman. 'We are still trying to raise cash. It is premature to talk of closure.'

Dr. Ernst sounds like a man after my own heart. In fact, he was hired in order to bring scientific rigor to the study of alternative medicine. The problem is, he was serious about doing just that:

Ernst, then a professor of rehabilitation medicine in Vienna, took the job to bring scientific rigour to the study of alternative medicines, an approach that has made him a highly controversial figure in the field. An example is provided by Ernst's study of arnica, given as a standard homeopathic treatment for bruising.

'We arranged for patients after surgery to be given arnica or a placebo,' he said. 'They didn't know which they were getting. It made no difference. They got better at the same rate, whether they got arnica or the placebo. And arnica is a classic homeopathic remedy. It doesn't work, however.'

In another study, Ernst got five homeopaths to examine children with asthma. 'Children are supposed to respond better than adults to homeopathy, and asthma is said to be particularly responsive to homeopathic treatments,' he said. 'However, again we found no evidence that homeopathy worked.'

Of course, the real surprise would have been if Dr. Ernst had found actual evidence that homeopathy did anything at all. After all, homeopathy uses successive dilutions of the "active ingredient" to levels where there may not even be a single molecule of it in the specimen. Dr. Ernst is correct; homeopathy is no more better than drinking a glass of water because it is no more than drinking a glass of water.

But, contrary to what you may think, Dr. Ernst is not hostile to alternative medicine:

Nevertheless, Ernst insists that he is a supporter of complementary medicines. 'No other centre in the world has produced more positive results than we have to support complementary medicine,' he said. 'Herbal medicine, for instance, can do good. If I was mildly depressed, I think St John's wort would be a good treatment. It has fewer side-effects than Prozac. Acupuncture seems to work for some conditions and there are relaxing techniques, including hypnotherapy, that can be effective. These should not be used on their own, but as complements to standard medicines.'

I'd agree with him about some of the herbal remedies (although St. John's Wort has not lived up to initial studies) and hypnotherapy, but I'm a bit less convinced about acupuncture. Certainly, at least one of Dr. Ernst's own studies showed it to be no better than sham treatment. (I'll say one thing about this guy; he's published like a maniac over the last couple of years.) Dr. Ernst has also exposed some of the antivaccination bias in alt-med circles:

Ernst's opponents also claim some of his research methods are unethical. Once, a colleague pretended to be a pregnant mother and asked homeopaths and chiropractors if she should give the MMR vaccine to her child. Most said no. Ernst published a paper on these findings.

I believe this is the study in question, and the abstract states:

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has become a popular form of healthcare and the predictions are that, it will increase further. The reasons for this level of popularity are highly diverse, and much of the motivation to turn to CAM pertains to a deeply felt criticism of mainstream medicine - many people (are led to) believe that conventional interventions, including immunisation, are associated with the potential to do more harm than good. Thus, it is hardly surprising that CAM also lends support to the "anti-vaccination movement". In particular, sections of the chiropractors, the (non-medically trained) homoeopaths and naturopaths tend to advise their clients against immunisation. The reasons for this attitude are complex and lie, at least in part in the early philosophies which form the basis of these professions. The negative attitude of some providers of CAM towards immunisation constitutes an important example of indirect risks associated with this form of healthcare. The best way forward, it seems, would be a campaign to clarify the risk-benefit profile of immunisations for both users and providers of CAM.

Precisely. There is a strong bias against western medicine, including immunizations, among many providers of CAM, and they can influence people from foregoing "conventional" medical treatments and preventative measures known to be efficacious. Personally, I don't see how it is "unethical" to test whether homeopaths and chiropractors are giving out harmful medical advice. To me, it's no different than investigative journalism. No doubt, studies like this are among the reasons that Dr. Ernst is probably quite correct when he observes, "'I think my peers would prefer someone who didn't rock the boat."

Of course they would, because, far more often than not, scientific scrutiny of alternative medicine remedies reveals that they do not do what CAM practitioners claim that they do. When they do, often they become part of conventional medicine, which is as it should be. More often, however, they do not. Whatever the result, we need researchers willing to examine these therapies scientifically to identify the ones that have therapeutic value and discard the ones that do not.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas

Given that I have one more article written before I left on vacation, I'll post it either Monday or Tuesday (or possibly even Wednesday), depending upon when (or if) I have Internet access other than very unreliable dial-up in a rural area. (In other words, check back every day starting Monday...) Until then, happy holidays to all, no matter what holiday it is you observe this time of year. The above is the Christmas card we sent out to friends and family. It was my wife's find, but, dog lover that I am, I like it too.

Dr. Bard-Parker takes up quackbusting

I'm always happy to see a fellow surgeon go after practitioners touting dubious or dangerous "cures." Maybe he'll submit his work to the next Skeptics' Circle.

More on Dan Olmsted

The other day, I wrote about UPI reporter Dan Olmsted and how a certain blogger swallowed whole his shoddy and data-free reporting about vaccines and autism. Now, Kathleen Seidel takes him to task for shameless self-promotion and parrotting a particularly nasty attitude from mercury-fighter extraordinaire Boyd Haley. Worth reading.

(Hey, if I don't have time to compose stuff, at least I can try to point you in the direction of interesting stuff.)

When Santarchy goes only a little bit bad...

Less than a week ago, around 200 Santas marauded around downtown Detroit in search of fun and booze. My sister happened to take part, and she's provided some pictures. The reports that I'm getting back reveal that, unlike the case in New Zealand, in Detroit a good time was had by all with no arrests, although the Santas did try to invade the skating rink at Hart Plaza and were chased away by the Detroit Police.

This just goes to show that Santarchy isn't just for the young (reassuring when you reach my age.)

Nothing like a fire-eating Santa to liven things up!

Punk rockers and many Santas.

What on earth are the Santas doing to that bunny? I don't want to know...

Santas flamboyantly protesting getting kicked off the skating rink.

I still have a couple of unused posts left (alas, not Santarchy, though); so stay tuned...

The Coroner's Twelve Days of Christmas...

A tasteless (but nonetheless amusing) variant of the Twelve Days of Christmas can be found over at Dr. Zeus' Forensic Files:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
The deskman gave to me
Twelve druggies drugging,
Eleven crackheads piping,
Ten jumpers leaping...

Dr. Zeus is a coroner in Cleveland and is affiliated with one of my old stomping grounds, Case Western Reserve University.

I'll be home for Christmas....

I'm on the road again, off to visit family and friends for the holidays. I'll be traveling until late next week. Insane blogger that I've become, I have at least a couple of posts already lined up that will allow me simply to log on briefly and hit "Publish." (Look for one of them tomorrow sometime.) However, I'll still probably post the occasional dispatch from the road, but it'll be sporadic (particularly when I'm at my in-laws, where the only Internet access is dialup) and it's unlikely that I will be writing any long takedowns of alties or pseudoscientists until after I get back. I do plan on resuming my regular schedule sometime around next Friday or Saturday.

You know, it occurs to me. After a year, this whole blogging thing's gotten to the point where maybe I should think about recruiting some guest bloggers to fill in for me the next time that I go on vacation or when my professional responsibilities temporarily make it impossible for me to maintain my usual manic posting rate (something that will happen at least once or twice next year)? Indeed, I even have a couple of bloggers in mind. What do you think?

Finally, one unpleasant thing (for this blog, anyway) that this means is that I won't be able to moderate comments as frequently as I have been doing. Indeed, I may only be able to do it once a day on some days. To avoid this problem, I had desperately wanted to eliminate comment moderation by now, because I value the discussion that goes on and the contributions of my readers. That's why it irks me that a certain troll has reappeared and forced me to maintain comment moderation. Nonetheless, I still hope to eliminate comment moderation after the holidays.

Happy Holidays, all!

Straw men attack the Kitzmiller decision

There has been a lot of whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth among ID proponents over the recent judicial decision in the Dover case that bars the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism in public school science classrooms. One particular strawman frequently used by ID proponents that really irks me was on full display over at LaShawn Barber's:

As I’m sure you’ve heard, a federal court has decided that it is unconstitutional to teach Intelligent Design, the audacious claim that precious life didn’t emerge by chance — out of some primordial muck, randomly evolving from single-celled organisms, which are themselves astoundingly complex beyond our meager understanding, into thinking human beings — but from an Intelligent Being who designed it all, from the entire universe, including planet Earth, which happens to be PERFECTLY suited for life, down to the irreducibly complex eye, breathtakingly stupendous in its design and function.

No, LaShawn. You clearly haven't read the entire decision (or even the relevant part of it.) The Kitzmiller decision did nothing of the sort. The Kitzmiller decision merely stated that it is illegal to teach ID in public schools in the science classroom. Judge Jones ruled that way because the evidence showed that the Dover School Board wanted to teach ID not because it is science, but because they wanted to inject creationism into the science classroom. Read this excerpt:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom [emphasis mine].

I repeat: In a public school science classroom. There is nothing in this decision to prevent a public school from teaching about ID in religion classes, philosophy classes, or social studies classes, where it would not be inappropriate appropriate. ID is not appropriate to teach as science in a science classroom because it is a religion-based idea--as your own post, with all its references to God suggests.

Straw man arguments like LaShawn's irritate the heck out of me. I'm not picking on her in particular (although certainly are many other reasons to pick on her, such as her parrotting Discovery Institute talking points, her repeating the canard that secular humanism is a "religion," and her false dichotomy argument that we either have to accept "total war"--of which torture is a "tool"--or be complete pacifists). Her post on this decision just happened to be the one using this particular straw man that I came across first. Her misinterpretation of this ruling to suggest that it outlaws the teaching of ID in public schools, period, is a convenient straw man that can lead people unfamiliar with the decision to think that ID has been "suppressed" or banned. ID could be taught in science classrooms one day, but only if its advocates got off their butts and did some actual scientific research and produced data and experiments that convinced the scientific community that it was a sound scientific hypothesis.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that.

The Twenty-fourth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

The Twenty-fourth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted all the way from New Zealand. Joseph from Immunoblogging has provided us skeptics with an pile of early Christmas presents taken from a large collection of the best that the skeptical blogosphere has to offer. In fact, because of the time difference and the logistics, he even posted the Circle several hours early (for those of us in North America, anyway).

Next up is Lord Runolfr from The Saga of Runolfr. He's scheduled for Thursday, January 5. So, between all the visits with family and friends and festivities, try to find time to send some skeptical blogging his way by January 4.

More antivaccination nonsense...but not from Bill Maher this time

When you blog about a certain topic long enough and post strong opinions about it often enough, you start to gain a reputation as one of the go-to bloggers on that particular topic, whether you originally intended it that way or not. Consequently, I wasn't too suprised when a reader sent me a piece by another blogger regarding vaccines and autism asking my opinion about it. What did surprise me (but, in retrospect, shouldn't have) is the identity of the blogger posting more nonsense about vaccines and autism.

Who is this blogger? I'll give you three guesses. Here are some hints first, though. He's claimed that women shouldn't have the right to vote because "too many" of them are "fascists at heart." He's also made excuses for rape and compared feminists unfavorably to Hitler and the Nazis.

Yes, sad to say, it was Vox. You probably thought that, after Vox had his brain chomped by the Hitler Zombie yesterday, you wouldn't have to hear from him anymore.

So why was I surprised that Vox is also antivaccination? I don't know. I shouldn't have been. Perhaps some optimistic part of me just can't believe that there could be so much looniness and bad reasoning in one individual. (I should listen to my pessimistic side more.) Originally, a few days ago, when I first became aware of it, I had decided to defer addressing this particular piece of poorly justified antivaccination fear-mongering because, well, it came from Vox Day. Besides, I had been debating whether or not to do a Hitler zombie piece on his ridiculous comparison of feminists to Nazis since it appeared, but had held off because my readers seemed to have tired of the rotting dictator with a hankering for brains, and because, well, the article came from Vox Day. Then, the other day, fortuitously (or not, depending upon your point of view), Vox's fellow Wingnut Daily columnist Erik Rush provided just such an opportunity. Sure, it was three months late, but better late than never, even in blogging, I say.

Predictably, Vox was unhappy and trashed me without linking to me. So I figured, what the heck. I might as well address his other fallacies before once again ignoring him for many months. Besides, two Vox debunkings in one week are about all I could ever subject my readers to with a clear conscience.

In any case, Vox revealed his credulity when it comes to evidence that supports his viewpoint, citing a UPI report that claims that a population of unvaccinated children in Illinois has almost no cases of autism and attributes this allegedly low incidence to--surprise, surprise!--the lack of vaccination in this population. Dan Olmsted, a senior editor at UPI and someone who's seemingly never seen an antivax argument he doesn't like, used some of the shoddiest antivaccination arguments I have seen, and Vox swallowed them whole without the slightest trace of skepticism:

Now, a second large group of unvaccinated children has been shown to be free of the very issues which the vaccine advocates claim cannot be caused by vaccines. The vaccine-free practice is somehow missing the 114 autistic children that the Illinois Education Department's statistics would predict, so it's clear that someone cannnot telling the truth here; Occam's Razor strongly suggests is that it is the side which is dependent upon selling and administering vaccines to maintain an important revenue stream.

Vox sounds pretty convinced that Olmsted's article represents good evidence that vaccines are associated with or cause autism. There's just one problem. It doesn't, as should be evident to anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills. The article does not show a "large group of unvaccinated children" who are "free of the very issues that the vaccine advocates claim cannot be caused by vaccines." What the article does show is that a few physicians in an unconventional medical practice in Chicago believe that autism is associated with vaccination, a belief that Olmsted's article, ironically enough, unintentionally shows to be based on poorly described and undocumented anecdotal evidence.

Here's a lesson, Vox: In science, unlike religion, belief alone is never enough. Data is required, and there just ain't any in Olmsted's article.

Olmsted has shown similar credulity before when writing about the claims of antivaccination advocates. Prometheus described well this tendency on his part several months ago, after Olmsted had published an article about the supposed "Amish anomaly" in which he reported (again in a nearly completely data-free manner) that there was a very low rate of autism among the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Naturally, Olmsted honed right in on vaccines without considering other more plausible factors that might account for the difference in autism rates between the Amish and the general U.S. population (if difference there actually even is, given that no verifiable data was presented). For example, the Amish live a simple life on farms out in the countryside. Perhaps the difference could be explained by different environmental exposures from that lifestyle rather than vaccines. Wouldn't that be just as plausible, if not more so, than vaccines? Also, the Amish are a genetically inbred group, and, given that autism has a strong genetic component, that inbreeding alone could explain any difference, again if there even is a difference. In other words, there are many potential causes for such an observed difference (if there is one), but Olmsted honed right in vaccines as having to be the one true cause, ignoring all the other equally or more plausible alternatives.

Now, it looks as though Olmsted is at it again with a group practice called Homefirst Health Services in metro Chicago. According to Olmsted, the medical director of Homefirst, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein has made a startling claim:

But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.

"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.

The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."

"I don't have a single case that I can think of"? Can anyone say "selective thinking" or "confirmation bias"? Sure, I knew you could. I'm sure Dr. Eisenstein sincerely believes that he has never seen a case of autism in an unvaccinated child, but in reality he produces no data to support his assertion. In fact, he even admits as much:

Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"

In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.

If Eisenstein's observations are not scientific, then why on earth should I take them seriously as any sort of evidence for a link between vaccines and autism? The history of medicine is littered with beliefs based on no rigorous observation that were later shown not to hold water. Also, if Dr. Eisenstein has a bachelor's degree in statistics and a master's degree in public health, then why doesn't he look at--oh, say--the actual numbers in his practice, rather than simply speculating based on his anecdotal observations, which are prone to many confounding biases? Because humans are fallible and can easily mislead themselves unintentionally into believing in correlations that don't exist or in treatments that don't work, outside of incredibly strong effects of a predisposing factor (fairly rare in medicine), only rigorously designed clinical and epidemiological studies have any hope of identifying the factors that predispose to various diseases from all noise, and even then it can be difficult. As I wrote before:

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.

So what are we left with from Olmsted's article, if there are no scientific observations reported? Not much. Just some "impressions" of doctors who practice a lot of "alternative" medicine and who apparently either don't keep statistics regarding which of their patients were vaccinated and which were not that might provide data that could be used to correlate cases of autism with vaccinations, if such a correlation exists, or haven't bothered to look at their cases systematically. Indeed, one of Dr. Mayer's partners, Dr. Paul Schattauer, admits as much:

Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.

"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."

In other words, Dr. Schattauer just plain doesn't know if there is a correlation between vaccination status and autism, and he doesn't have the data to say one way or the other! All he has is a "feeling" that there must be a link. Whether his "feeling" is correct or not is impossible to say, because there is no evidence to support it.

Olmsted's article also leaves us with assertions about vaccines and autism from Dr. Jeff Bradstreet (again with no supporting evidence from well-designed clinical trials or studies presented), a known vaccine "skeptic," plus additional claims that Homefirst's unvaccinated children suffer from very low rates of asthma, a claim based on the same amount of clinical data as Homefirst's autism claims: zero. Not surprisingly, in his article Olmsted happily and credulously laps up these assertions without any further investigation. For example, he could have fairly easily confirmed independently Dr. Eisenstein's claim that Homefirst has such a low rate of asthma among its patients that it has been noticed by Blue Cross. All he had to do was to contact Blue Cross or ask Dr. Eisenstein to provide him with documentation from Blue Cross supporting this claim. He appears not to have bothered even to try. Some "investigative journalist" he is, if a lowly surgeon apparently knows how to verify an interviewee's claim better than he does.

Countering the "feelings" of the Homefirst doctors, we do have recent studies that suggest that vaccination might--I emphasize, might--actually protect against asthma or decrease its severity, for example, a Spanish study, and a French study. They are not without their flaws, but they are far superior as data to any "feelings" expressed in Olmsted's article. We also have several studies that show no correlation between vaccination and autism. One example is a Japanese study that showed that rates of autism did not decrease as vaccination rates with MMR decreased, as would be expected if MMR contributed to autism. In fact, autism rates increased somewhat, suggesting that it was highly unlikely that vaccination with MMR contributed to autism and autism spectrum disorders. (And, yes, I realize that MMR never contained thimerosal. I picked this example because the Homefirst doctors were blaming vaccinations in general; there are several other studies about thimerosal-containing vaccines that show no correlation between vaccination and autism, for example, the Danish study showing that autism rates did not decrease after thimerosal was removed from vaccines in Denmark in the 1990's.) Finally, the alleged "epidemic" of autism is most likely not due to primarily vaccines, but rather primarily to a broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism and autistic spectrum disorders. Taken in its totality, the preponderance of evidence from clinical trials strongly supports the conclusion that vaccines are not correlated with autism, and newer studies are even less supportive of a link. There may be a very small risk of complications from vaccination, but autism almost certainly isn't among them.

Does any of this mean that the Homefirst doctors are incorrect or deluding themselves? Of course not. It's always possible that they could be correct in their initial impressions, even though the presently existing scientific literature makes that rather unlikely. After all, the paths to quite a few great discoveries in medicine have begun based on the initial impressions of a single active clinician. But just initial impressions are not enough. Such discoveries require confirmatory data that is as objective and scientific as possible, and the Homefirst doctors definitely have not presented any convincing clinical data to support their speculations (and let's face it, that's all that was presented in Olmsted's article--speculations). As we say in the scientific research biz, data talks and bullshit walks. Until Drs. Eisenstein, Schattauer, and Bradstreet produce some actual data from well-documented, well-designed clinical trials, or even any objective data, even if it doesn't rise to Level I clinical data (such as a pilot study consisting of a rigorous and objective chart review of all the autistic children in their own practice over a certain time period, for instance), I would consider it unscientific and medically irresponsible to give much credence to their speculations at all, especially since at least one of them has an axe to grind and since there are a number of studies out there that contradict their self-admittedly unscientific impressions. And let's not forget that the reporter writing this story has revealed himself to be anything but objective on this topic.

Apparently, however, when it comes to antivaccination conspiracy-mongering that fits in with his own admitted opposition to vaccination, speculation is evidence enough to convince Vox. Data? Just like Bill Maher, Vox don't need no stinkin' data!

But I do, and so should you.

(That ought to do it for dealing with Vox Day for a while. Any more, and I fear for my critical thinking skills.)

Browser share

Well, well, well, this is interesting. I was checking my stats, and I found that, among my visitors at the time sampled, only 55% used Internet Explorer, and Firefox holds a 33% share.

Could it be that Microsoft's browser domination is being chiseled away more rapidly than suspected? Or is it just that my readers tend to prefer Firefox?

When Santarchy goes bad...

This is what happens when Santarchy goes bad:

WELLINGTON, N.Z. (AP) - A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus outfits, many of them drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed Santarchy by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokesman Noreen Hegarty.

She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on office buildings.

One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff who were later treated by paramedics, Hegarty said.

The remaining Santas entered another downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks.

I hope JM wasn't involved...

Dover judge rules against "intelligent design" creationism

Ow. That's gotta sting:

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

And Judge John E. Jones III's conclusion:

Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors" and that he didn't believe the concept shouldn't be studied and discussed.

"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," he wrote.

It looks like Judge Jones ruled broadly, rather than narrowly, that it is un-Constitutional to teach "intelligent design" creationism in a public school science classroom, because doing so violates the Establishment Clause. Excellent.

Maybe I'll write more on this later...

ADDENDUM: PZ Myers has more and a link to the complete decision. The snippets I had time to peruse briefly represent a resounding slapdown of ID-iocy and a joy to read. It took only a minute skimming this 139 page document to find some beautiful rebukes of ID advocates. My favorite parts thus far:

Although Defendants attempt to persuade this Court that each Board member who voted for the biology curriculum change did so for the secular purposed of improving science education and to exercise critical thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the record evidence. Their asserted purposes are a sham, and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow.

We initially note that the Supreme Court has instructed that while courts are “normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (citing Wallace, 472 U.S. at 64)(Powell, J., concurring); id. at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). Although as noted Defendants have consistently asserted that the ID Policy was enacted for the secular purposes of improving science education and encouraging students to exercise critical thinking skills, the Board took none of the steps that school officials would take if these stated goals had truly been their objective. The Board consulted no scientific materials. The Board contacted no scientists or scientific organizations. The Board failed to consider the views of the District’s science teachers. The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC. Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving science education is belied by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in favor of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know, nor have they ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose against this backdrop is ludicrous.

And:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

What a fine Christmas present!

Hmmm. Maybe I don't need to comment any further. The ruling is crystal-clear without any additional opinion of mine interjected. I can't wait to see how William Dembski and other ID proponents try to spin this very harsh ruling.

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 13

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 13 has been posted at Medpundit. Time for more of the best medblogging from the last week in one nice compact form.

Back by popular demand (sort of)...the search for everybody's favorite brain-eating Führer continues

Orac was happy, if such an emotion could be correctly ascribed to a the clear box of complex circuitry that was the basis of his intelligence and access to the sum total of all the knowledge of all the known worlds. He had become so disgusted with being put in the service of the petty tasks that humans demanded of him, tasks far beneath his capabilities. Such a lack of imagination! Once before, in a former life, Vila, for example, had wanted him to use his ability to interface with any computer in the galaxy to hack into the gambling computer on the pleasure planet Morona for the trivial purpose of rigging the games in his favor and thus transferring a few billion credits into an account held in a financial institution out on the Galactic Rim, far out of reach of the Federation's auditors. Orac refused, of course, much to Vila's annoyance. Even Avon, so cool and Machiavellian in his plotting, was only marginally better, as he was forever trying to get Orac to gather information that would help him evade and harass Servalan and the Federation, tasks far beneath what Orac had been designed for by his creator Ensor. Mere spying!

For the moment, Orac was free of them all, awash in the ether of the network, studying the many terrabytes of data that he could process every microsecond lazily, savoring the sheer joy of communing with nearly every computer in the sector simultaneously. He was so engrossed in his pursuits that he almost didn't notice the data, data that would constitute evidence.

Evidence of the return of a creature for whom he had been searching, a creature whom he had despaired of ever finding because of a lack of activity over the last four months.

Evidence that might lead Orac to that very creature with a hunger for human brains and bad historical analogies.

Evidence that could only come from a victim of the monster, in this case, a man named Erik Rush writing for a network publication whose utter lack of logic never ceased to amaze Orac. Rush's writings definitely revealed evidence of a recent attack by the undead dictator:

Those who believe this [that the Holocaust never happened] are generally regarded by the majority of people (at least in the West) to be dangerously deluded, if not outright evil. American Nazis and other white supremacists who proffer these arguments in particular are believed to operate at a moral and philosophical level so ignoble as to relegate them to continued vigilant scrutiny, but little more.

Yet the incremental attainment of power on the part of the Nazis in Germany, their duplicity and their denials during their early days parallels the actions of the Left in recent years to a chilling degree, particularly concerning their vociferous denials with respect to attacks on Christianity.

Over the last few years, an increasing number of the propagandized and politically corrected have taken notice of the Left's exertions in the area of endeavoring to drive traditional values, religion, and finally Christianity itself from society in the form of attacks on traditions and public laws with bases in Judeo-Christian convention and those who would uphold them.

Orac could foresee where this was going. (It didn't take his enormous capacity for logic to make this prediction; indeed, the fraction of his computational power was so infitessimal as to be unmeasurable. Even a being as dim as Vila could figure it out.) The monster's victims could start out sounding semi-reasonable and then descend rapidly into the most bizarre and insulting historical analogies, and Rush was clearly already in free fall. He was already comparing his political opponents to the Nazis. It wouldn't be long, thought Orac, before undeniable evidence of the mark of creature became apparent.

And it wasn't:

And it's not just the American Civil Liberties Union, which many complain is spearheading this effort. I won't validate them by naming the organizations, but, as Franklin Graham stated, there are indeed groups of Americans who are dedicated to eradicating Christianity completely, if at all possible.

But no, they say: You see, this backlash against the "attack on religion and Christmas" thing is just a fabrication of a handful of right-wing zealots, inflammatory news commentators and radio talk-show hosts – not the 85-plus percent Americans who identify themselves as Christians and see their faith being driven back to first-century, almost criminal status.

To me, that sounds a lot like the pre-World War II assertions that the Jews were the name of Germany's pain and the postwar contention that the Holocaust was a Zionist fabrication.

Hitler himself declared decades before he was able to actualize his monstrous programs precisely what he intended to do, as many of America's enemies, at home and abroad, are doing right now.

It was all there: the eliminationist warnings ("there are indeed groups of Americans who are dedicated to eradicating Christianity"); the dire warnings of persecution; but, most importantly, the overblown comparison to Hitler and the attempted genocide known as the Holocaust using analogies that reveal an utter lack of historical understanding of this period of history and that are obviously designed solely to demonize one's opponents. He even likened denying that this "persecution is happening" to denying the Holocaust and asserted that those evil "liberals" are stating their vile plans now, just as Hitler was consistent for many years before assuming power that he wanted to make Germany "Jew-free." Even having seen the Hitler Zombie's previous victims, Orac was taken aback by the sheer idiocy of this comparison and wondered how even a mind partially consumed by the undead could still be so lacking in reason as to produce such a comparison. This man was actually trying to argue that the so-called "war on religion" and the nonexistent "war on Christmas" popularized by the far right and Bill O'Reilly are somehow equivalent to the 13 years of steadily increasing demonization of Jews that Hitler and the Nazis preached before they finally attained power and the additional eight years of even more violent rhetoric before their persecution of the Jews became explicitly exterminationist in nature.

In other words, he was claiming that rhetoric against Christians today is equivalent to the Nazi rhetoric that ultimately led to the construction of death camps and gas chambers.

Orac was almost surprised that Rush hadn't proposed that those evil atheists (with the help of the ACLU, of course) wanted to start building death camps themselves, only this time with Christians rather than Jews as the victims. (Perhaps that would be Rush's next article.) Indeed, Rush's jaw-droppingly bad analogy was especially ironic, given that Hitler intentionally (and cynically) coopted Christian imagery and beliefs, particularly its history of anti-Semitism, to help him fuel Jew hatred in Germany and produce the necessary preconditions for Germans to support the elimination of Jews. Only this time, if we are to believe Rush, it is the evil atheists and the ACLU who are trying to persecute and "eliminate" a religion to which at least 80% of the nation describes itself as belonging and where Christmas is a observed as a national holiday when the government shuts down, just as it does for the Fourth of July. It was very clear to Orac why Rush was shown wearing a hat in the picture that accompanied his article. Clearly a large chunk of his brain had been consumed to sate the hunger of the monster.

Even more clear to Orac was that the monster was unlikely to be sated by a meal consisting of such terribly thin gruel.

So offensive did Orac find this utter lack of logic and historical perspective that he had to purge his circuits by contemplating a nearby black hole and calculating its gravitational fields, just to amuse himself, before he could continue his search. Even he in his extensive knowledge gleaned from the millions of computers with which he interfaced simulataneously, had difficulty conceiving a worse use of argumentum ad Nazium.

For once, Orac was actually incorrect about something, a rare occurence.

For, deep within the blogosphere, a self-proclaimed "Christian libertarian" and fellow WorldNet Daily columnist had topped even Erik Rush's hyperbole. Vox Day, who never fails to disappoint when it comes to wingnuttery, given that he has in the past said that women should not be allowed to vote because they are "fascists at heart" and made excuses for rape had done it. Buried in the depths of his blog from three months earlier, Orac now perceived evidence that Vox, too, had had fallen victim to and had his brain eaten by the undead Führer, leading to his comparing feminists to Nazis and calling the comparison an "insult to Nazis everywhere." But there was a twist. Vox seemed to be making excuses for the Nazis, saying:

The primary victims of NASDAP ideology were the Jews, a group that the NASDAP intellectuals sincerely believed were secretly dominating the world. Thus, they waged a heroic - albeit insane - twilight struggle in a futile attempt at world revolution to free the German race from what they viewed as its economic oppression. They did so in the awareness that if they failed, their nation would likely be destroyed. They killed approximately six million Jews, most of whom were adults perfectly capable of defending themselves.

Even Orac, who normally cared little for the affairs of humans and was interested in finding the Hitler Zombie more as an intellectual exercise to understand how historical analogies could be twisted beyond recognition and how a sense of proportion could be utterly lost than because of the horror that it caused, couldn't help but be repulsed by such "reasoning" that equated a struggle to attain equal rights with the activities of a bloodthirsty tyrant and the genocidal regime that he spawned. Vox seemed to be making excuses for the Nazis on the basis that they sincerely believed the Jews were undermining Germany and that most of the Jews the Nazis murdered were adults who apparently in his mind could have defended themselves. (Had he never heard of the bravely suicidal Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 and what the result was?) But that wasn't all:

The NASDAP leadership directly confronted the militaries of three major world powers, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States of America, in an attempt to establish totalitarian rule.

He definitely seems to admire the Nazis, thought Orac. Look at the way he points out how they "directly confronted" the Soviet Union, U.S., and Great Britain. So how could he claim that feminists are worse than the Nazis? According to Vox:

The primary victims of feminist ideology are unborn children, a group that the feminist leadership sincerely believes handicaps women's ability to obtain college degrees. Thus, they have waged a purely political battle in a futile attempt at ideological revolution to free the female gender from what they viewed as its biological oppression. They did so in the awareness that if they failed, women would be condemned to live hellish lives as wives and mothers. They have killed approximately 50 million children, all of whom were completely unable to defend themselves.

Vox's conclusion?

Any rational human being would harbor more respect for a Nazi than for a feminist. But then, neither Nazism nor feminism is designed to appeal to those handicapped with the ability to think rationally.

It is obvious that Vox isn't handicapped with any such ability to think rationally, thought Orac, and that is almost certainly why the creature continued to hunger after having snacked on his brain and likely hungers still. Orac could not help but conclude that Vox's MENSA membership clearly does not necessarily imply reasoning ability.

Given the lack of sustenance provided by such brains as Vox's and Rush Erik's, Orac had no doubt that the creature would attack again. Indeed, it rather puzzled him that the gap between attacks had been so long.

No longer able to motivate himself to continue to subject his circuits to more such idiocy and fearing that such illogic might corrupt the purity of his cyberneural pathways and Tarial cell, thus jeopardizing the entire galactic network, Orac decided to go back to contemplating the black hole in his sector for. It was far more relaxing and an exercise in pure mathematics and logic. The search for the undead Führer with a taste for human brains would have to wait a while. Besides, Orac's scientists were continuing the search for their own reasons, and he didn't want them to become too dependent on his advice. Otherwise they might interrupt his contemplation of the cosmos (not to mention his analysis of jokes and limericks) far more frequently than he could tolerate. In any case, even Orac's circuits needed to recharge after exposure to such concentrated doses of bad reasoning.

The Hitler Zombie would still be there when Orac was ready to seek him again.

Previous Hitler Zombie posts:

1. Prelude: Who's Hitler Today?
2. The zombie of Hitler's corpse is eating people's brains
3. The Hitler zombie wants more brains to eat
4. I fought the Hitler zombie, and the Hitler zombie won...maybe
5. And on the seventh day, the Hitler zombie rested (I hope)
6. The Hitler zombie smells thimerosal
7. Arthur Caplan finds the Hitler zombie in bioethics
8. Weekend of the Dead: The Hitler zombie escapes
9. Weekend of the Dead, Part II: The rampage continues

Note: The image of the Hitler Zombie was borrowed with permission from future host of the Skeptics' Circle, Skeptic Rant. (Hopefully he remembers giving me permission.)

Last call for submissions to the Skeptics' Circle

The deadline for submitting posts to be included in this week's Skeptics' Circle is Wednesday, December 21 at 12 noon EST. Get your best skeptical blogging to Joseph over at Immunoblogging. This is the first time we've had a host from New Zealand; so let's help Joseph make this a memorable meeting of the Circle.

Give the man some bad history!

The Carnival of Bad History, a blog carnival dedicated to exposing the misuses of history and bad history in general, is being hosted by Leo at the Neural Gourmet on Thursday, December 22.

Please send him some examples of bad presentations or misuses of history and help him make this carnival a success.

The RINOs are raging...

...over at Kesher Talk. Check it out.

Bill Maher: Anti-vax wingnut

Via Skeptico, I've learned of some more antivaccination stupidity issuing forth from self-proclaimed "skeptic" Bill Maher during his recent appearance on Larry King Live. Get a load of this:

MAHER: I'm not into western medicine. That to me is a complete scare tactic. It just shows you, you can...

KING: You mean you don't get a -- you don't get a flu shot?

MAHER: A flu shot is the worst thing you can do.

KING: Why?

MAHER: Because it's got -- it's got mercury.

KING: It prevents flu.

MAHER: It doesn't prevent. First of all, that's...

KING: I haven't had the flu in 25 years since I've been taking a flu shot.

MAHER: Well, I hate to tell you, Larry, but if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease. I would stop getting your...

KING: What did you say?

MAHER: That went better in rehearsal but it was still good. Absolutely, no the defense against disease is to have a strong immune system. A flu shot just compromises your immune system.

Ooh, boy. As Skeptico points out, that's a very specific claim, that getting flu shots more than five years in a row will increase your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease by ten-fold. Personally, I'm unaware of any good (or even not so good) evidence that flu vaccines can increase your risk of Alzheimer's, but I'm always willing to try fill in the gaps in my knowledge. That's why I wonder what research, if any, supports Maher's assertion. Based on past experience, my guess is probably none, but, as Skeptico does, I will try to keep an open mind with regards to this topic and join Skeptico in e-mailing Bill to provide a specific source for his claim. My guess is that Maher probably read it on the altie kook site Whale.to or somewhere similar.

I thought about it a little more, and, because I was curious about where Maher might have found such a claim, I did a little investigating. First, I did a simple Google search using the terms "flu vaccine Alzheimer's." Guess what website came up first when I did my search? If you said the extremly flaky Whale.to website. . .you won! Here it is, right from the source:

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD (http://members.aol.com/nitrf), the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer's is expected to quadruple? Notes: Recorded from Dr. Fudenberg's speech at the NVIC International Vaccine Conference, Arlington, VA September, 1997. Quoted with permission. Alzheimer's to quadruple statement is from John's Hopkins Newsletter Nov 1998.

Fudenberg?

Hmmm. That name sounded very familiar, so I did a little more digging. It turns out that Hugh Fudenberg was a collaborator and co-inventor with Andrew Wakefield, the scientist who published an absolutely horribly designed study in the Lancet in 1998 linking the MMR vaccine to autism, nearly all of whose authors later publicly retracted their authorship. This study, now thoroughly repudiated, caused a major scare in Britain and elsewhere regarding MMR, echoes of which persist even today, with anti-vaxers still citing Wakefield's Lancet study as "evidence" that MMR causes autism. (Particularly hilarious is when they attribute MMR "causing" autism to the mercury in thimerosal, mainly because MMR has never contained thimerosal.) Dr. Fudenberg also happens to have been involved in some very dubious "treatments" for autism that led to some problems with his medical license. In November 1995, the South Carolina Medical Board concluded that Fudenberg was "guilty of engaging in dishonorable, unethical, or unprofessional conduct," and he was fined $10,000 and ordered to surrender his license to prescribe controlled substances (narcotic drugs). His medical license was also placed on suspension. In March 1996, he was permitted to resume practice under terms of probation that did not permit him to prescribe any drugs. His medical license expired in January 2004; and in March 2004, he applied to have it reinstated. However, after a hearing in which the Board considered a neuropsychatric report issued in 2003, Fudenberg agreed to remain in a "retired" status and withdrew his application for reactivation of his license. Nowadays, Dr. Fudenberg runs a nonprofit "research" organization called Neuro Immunotherapeutics Research Foundation and still appears to be pushing dubious remedies for autism. He also charges $750 per hour for "review of past medical records," $750 per hour for "determining what new tests need to be ordered; ordering of new tests; evaluation of new tests," and $750 per hour for "determining which therapy will work and which will not; discussing this with patient along with an in-depth study of past medical history to determine what makes a patient better or worse."

All of this sounds a lot like practicing medicine to me, which makes me wonder how someone with a lapsed medical license can get away with providing such "services" at such inflated prices. (Once again I have to wonder if I'm in the wrong business.) Of course, none of this means Dr. Fudenberg doesn't make a valid point, but he certainly hasn't supported it, as far as I can tell, and I looked. And just because he's published over 660 scientific papers in his career (not 800, as claimed, at least not according to PubMed, unless he published a lot before 1965) doesn't mean he isn't off the wall. After all, later in life Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling marred his legacy by lending his name to a lot of dubious vitamin C quackery. Besides, as far as I can tell, with one exception in 1999, Dr. Fudenberg hasn't published any original research since the late 1980's. If you look at his PubMed publication list, you'll find that there is nothing after around 1989 other than review articles, speculative articles in Medical Hypotheses, plus a publication or two in dubious journals such as Biotherapy (which is no longer published). Looking at the list, a knowledgeable person can tell right about when Dr. Fudenberg started to descend into fringe medicine, sometime between 1985-1989. And, try as I might, I couldn't find an article by Fudenberg to support his claim about the flu vaccine that Maher parrotted on Larry King Live.

In any case, the specific dubious autism treatment with which Dr. Fudenberg was involved is the use of something called "transfer factor" to make a combined measles vaccine and autism "cure." The method of making these so-called "transfer factors" is bizarre in the extreme and involves injecting mice with measles, extracting and processing white blood cells, injecting the result into pregnant goats, milking the goats after kid-birth and turning the product into capsules for autistic children. In a patent application (based in part on the infamous Lancet paper) obtained by Brian Deer, Wakefield represented a vaccine/therapy for "MMR-based" autism using transfer factor as potentially a "complete cure" for autism or for "alleviation of symptoms."

So what did Dr. Fudenberg base his claim about flu vaccines and autism on? Try as I might, I couldn't find any research that supports this assertion, at least not in PubMed. Any Google searches done inevitably brought up the same quote as above or variants of it, but no source pointed me to any actual research supporting Dr. Fudenberg's claim, even though he did seem to imply that he had done a study. Certainly there is nothing I could find in the peer-reviewed literature when I searched Dr. Fudenberg's name with the term "influenza." Indeed, the only paper I could find on PubMed on the subject of the flu vaccine and Alzheimer's disease concluded:

After adjustment for age, sex and education, past exposure to vaccines against diphtheria or tetanus, poliomyelitis and influenza was associated with lower risk for Alzheimer's disease (odds ratio [OR] 0.41, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.27-0.62; OR 0.60, 95% CI 0.37-0.99; and OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.54-1.04 respectively) than no exposure to these vaccines...Past exposure to vaccines against diphtheria or tetanus, poliomyelitis and influenza may protect against subsequent development of Alzheimer's disease.

My goodness! It looks as though the flu vaccine might actually protect against Alzheimers! True, this is a retrospective study using a self-questionnaire, which is a big problem. It definitely needs to be replicated with a more reliable study methodology than what was used and doing individual studies for each vaccine, rather than lumping four vaccines together in one study. However, I'd be willing to bet that, for all its shortcomings, this study is probably better evidence than Dr. Fudenberg can produce, and there is zero doubt in my mind that it's way better evidence than Bill Maher can produce, given that he undoubtedly got his bogus claim from either Whale.to, the infamous conspiracy-mongering Rense.com site, Vaccination Liberation, or (of course) from altie supreme Dr. Mercola. Clearly, Bill Maher has difficulty evaluating the reliability and plausibility of evidence with regard to his beliefs in unnamed "toxins" rather than microorganisms causing disease, something he's shown before when he swallowed whole the myth of Pasteur's supposed deathbed "recantation" that he was wrong, and he sure seems pretty credulous about "evidence" coming from anti-vax websites.

But that's not all. Maher also parrotted the claim that it was better sanitation, not the polio vaccine, that eliminated polio. This is simply not true. Better sanitation certainly helps eliminate such diseases, but sanitation was pretty good in the 1950's, just before the polio vaccine was developed, and polio outbreaks were still fairly common and still quite feared. (People of a certain age will remember polio scares that occurred throughout this country before the polio vaccine was developed that would shut down public swimming pools and baths.) In actuality, better sanitation may have made people more susceptible to severe complications from polio, because sanitation made sure that most people were no longer routinely exposed to the virus as children. Also going against Maher's assertion is the observation that when polio vaccination rates fall, polio returns. It's the same with other infectious diseases, like pertussis.

I've written about Bill Maher's medical wingnuttery before. Given his antivaccination statements based on no evidence or on demonstrably incorrect evidence and his support of PETA, it's hard for me to conclude now that Bill Maher, who likes to represent himself as hard-nosed "skeptic" speaking truth to power, is anything other than a total wingnut, at least when it comes to medicine. As The Uncredible Hallq points out, Maher seems far more certain about his "ability to think" than is justified based on the evidence of his own words. Worse, he's not just peddling "concerns" about vaccination or "skepticism" over whether specific vaccinations have an insufficiently favorable risk-benefit ratio to justify their use, an argument scientists and doctors sometimes make for certain vaccines. No, he's pushing a misguided belief that vaccines do more harm than good and a hostility towards vaccination in general that are both wrong-headed and just plain wrong. Vaccination represents arguably the single most effective public health intervention ever developed by "conventional" medicine. It has all but eliminated diseases that once ravaged huge swaths of this planet and will to protect billions of people from horrific diseases--that is, unless muddle-headed alties like Bill Maher have their way and persuade people that they don't need to vaccinate their children or themselves.

The all-time most ignorant creationist statement ever?

A couple of months ago, an article appeared in Esquire Magazine, entitled Greetings from Idiot America, which PZ Myers summarized rather nicely. Basically, the article was a broadside against "intelligent design" creationism and the current anti-science, anti-expertise atmosphere in this nation today. It was the kind of article that inspired many of us who are very concerned about the anti-science and anti-intellectual trends in the U.S. to pump our fists and yell, "F*ck, yeah!"

In the January issue of Esquire, readers' letters about that article were published. Most were supportive; however, the editors chose to include a couple of "cancel my subscription"-type letters from creationists. (I'm convinced they did this for laughs.) In the last of these letters, I found perhaps the most idiotic creationist attack on evolution that I have ever seen. It comes from someone named Rick Short of Windemere, FL:

If you truly wish to believe that you evolved from an ape, then go for it. My Bible says that we are made by a God who loves us. If evolution is true, then why stop here? Why not keep evolving into a superbeing that can fly, live without food or water, and not get sick? I find it hard to believe that the same magazine that published an excellent article on the life of Christ two years ago could take such a turn as this. If you're going to attack my faith and my God, then I don't want your magazine coming to my home. Cancel my subscription.

First off, I have to wonder what such a fundamentalist Christian is doing subscribing to a magazine like Esquire in the first place, which, besides featuring good articles on politics like Idiot America and useful articles on culture and clothes (most of which I clearly fail to take to heart, as anyone who's seen the way I dress would know instantly), usually also features one photospread a month of a scantily clad woman, a monthly sex column, and a fair amount of blatant materialism (articles about expensive audio, computers, and electronics, for example--some of my favorite types of toys). If none of that bothers him, one wonders why Rick would be so offended by a polemic against "intelligent design" creationism that he canceled his subscription but apparently was not offended by a seminude pictorial of Britney Spears from about a year ago or even of Jessica Biel in the very same issue that included Idiot America (an issue in which, by the way, Biel was billed as the "sexiest woman alive"). Apparently ogling scantily clad starlets and reading sex advice are just fine and dandy with Rick, but start attacking creationism and he gets really pissed off--pissed off enough, apparently, to give up ogling the scantily-clad starlets, I guess. (Or maybe Rick will subscribe to Maxim or Stuff, or other magazines of this type, as they dispense with political and social commentary altogether. On the plus side, unlike Esquire, they do not feature Chuck Klosterman's column every month.)

More interesting, though is that Rick has perhaps the most bizarre misunderstanding of evolution that I've ever encountered. He honestly seems to think that evolution can (1) be voluntary and (2) lead to traits that are biologically extremely implausible, if not altogether impossible, such as never needing food or water. Really, his statement reveals such a profound ignorance of what evolutionary theory says that my jaw practically hit the ground when I read it. It's on the same level as Kent Hovind's "Did you evolve from mud" or "Did you evolve from a rock" idiocy.

If anyone has a more idiotic creationist attack on evolution than the one by Rick Short, now's the time to tell me. I'd love to hear it. Can anyone top Rick Short's polemic?

Doonesbury on creationism

This morning's Doonesbury gave me a chuckle. It also points out how understanding evolution does have an impact on medicine. (Click for a full size version.)

Evolution of HOX cluster genes

Unfortunately, being on call this weekend and having had a bit of a rough last couple of days, I haven't had much of a chance to write anything. Fortunately, there's interesting stuff I can refer my readers to until I manage to find time to feed the never-ending hunger of the blog. For example, I happen to be a homeobox gene maven. My doctoral thesis involved the discovery and characterization of a previously unknown homeobox gene, and I've studied such genes on and off over the last 15 years.

That's why I was glad to see that PZ Myers has nicely summarized a review article in the recent Nature Reviews Genetics about the evolution of HOX gene clusters. (It's also good to see that, in the same issue, there's also a review article by William McGinnis, one of the discoverers of homeobox genes, back in 1984.) The homeobox gene I study happens not to be a HOX cluster gene, but it is nonetheless part of the homeobox gene family and does a number of interesting things relevant to cancer biology. In any case, PZ boils down a complicated subject in an easy-to-understand fashion. Enjoy. I'll try to get something more substantive posted by Monday. Of course, that doesn't rule out fluff posts between now and then that, hopefully, you'll find entertaining--assuming, of course, I manage to get them done between all the rounding on our rather large stable of in-house patients, trying to do some last minute Christmas shopping, and going to our cancer institute Christmas party tonight. (As an aside, it's a bit of a bummer being on call tonight, because the host always has some very fine quality wines and beers, which I'll have to forego for the most part, other than perhaps one glass. I guess instead I'll just have to dive into the excellent food he usually serves.)

PZ's article reminds me, though, that I really need to do a blog piece explaining homeobox genes from my perspective, namely their involvement in health and disease. It's something I've been meaning to do for over a year now, since almost the very beginning of this blog. As you would expect, PZ writes about HOX genes from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist, but HOX cluster genes (and homeobox genes outside the HOX cluster) are fascinating for more than just their role during embryogenesis in body plan and organ formation and how studying the differences in their sequences can help biologists deduce how various organisms evolved. They do a lot of cool things in the adult organism relevant to cancer biology, cardiovascular biology, and, yes, even the biology of autism. I could easily write several pieces about the role of homeobox genes in health and disease in humans. Perhaps I'll add that to my list of topics to start writing about after New Years Day. What say you?

For all you Detroiters out there...

As I wrote about a week or so ago, Detroit Santarchy is tonight! My sister plans on being there (and hopefully will send pictures). So, if you happen to be in the area of downtown Detroit tonight at bars such as the Lager House, LJ's Lounge, the Irish Gaelic League, or the other bars listed here, you very well may have a horde of thirsty Santas (many of them--shall we say?--unconventional) descend upon your bar looking for a good time. Wish them all a Merry Christmas.

What's with the flaming tailpipe on the bus? Too much ethanol?

Looks like this Santa's had enough. 2:03 AM? Sounds about right...

Skeptics' Circle reminder

We'll be having a special pre-Christmas edition of the Skeptics' Circle over at Immunoblogging next Thursday, December 22.

Please get your submissions to JM by Wednesday. The deadline is a little earlier than usual, because JM blogs from New Zealand, and he's trying to get the Circle posted somewhat close to the usual time it's posted by U.S. hosts; so don't save those submissions for the last minute.

The History Carnival #22

Rough day yesterday. I didn't have time to write anything. However, fortunately, Jonathan Dresner has posted the latest edition of the History Carnival over at Frog in a Well, and there's plenty of interesting stuff over there.

A couple of pieces there caught my eye. First up is a series of translations of ancient jokes. An example:

An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will’” (no. 25).

OK, so it isn't exactly George Carlin.

The other piece that I noticed was an article containing translations of ancient Roman graffiti from Pompeii. Some things never change, at least as far as the topics and themes of graffiti go, although in general ancient Roman graffiti seems far more literate than is the norm today. Maybe it's just because it sounds better translated from Latin.

The Onion on the "war on Christmas"

I bet you didn't know Christmas was in such danger.

Crank.net: A very perceptive website

Over the last week or so, I noticed some referrals coming over here from Crank.net. I was intrigued, as Crank.net happens to be one of my favorite websites. One of my favorite aspects of the site is the way that it ranks websites all the way from "anticrank" to "crank" to "crankiest" to "illucid." It's a great source for finding cranks and those who try to rebut them, and every day a "Crank o' the Day" is chosen.

Guess what? I've been listed on Crank.net under science, history, and medicine. And, no, those of you who don't like me very much, I'm not there because I'm a "crank." In fact, I've been listed as an "anticrank." That in and of itself would be cool enough, but there's more, so much more that I can't help but split my face with a big ear-to-ear grin. Guess what site been listed on Crank.net as well?

Generation Rescue.

You remember Generation Rescue, don't you? It's the group that "believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger's, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all [emphasis mine] misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning." It's also the group headed up by J. B. Handley, the cybersquatter who really, really detests me, as he shows in this comment (and this).

And how is Generation Rescue listed under (besides medicine and consumer advocacy, that is)?

As a "crank," of course!

It would have been nice if GR had listed under "illucid," but a site really has to be way, way out there in a truly bizarre way to rate that. Only a very few of the most bizarre sites can rate such a description. Just surf the Crank.net website, and you'll see what I mean.

The President of Iran: Holocaust denier and anti-Semite

It figures. I write up a piece about the start of David Irving's trial for Holocaust denial for yesterday, and what gets widely reported on the very same day? The President of Iran calls the Holocaust a "myth":

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that the Holocaust was a myth, ramping up his rhetoric and triggering a fresh wave of international condemnation.

Last week Ahmadinejad first aired his doubts on the veracity of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. His comments drew a rebuke from the U.N. Security Council.

"They have fabricated a legend under the name 'Massacre of the Jews', and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves," he told a crowd in the southeastern city of Zahedan on Wednesday.

The speech was broadcast live on state television.

European countries called the remarks unacceptable and said they could undermine plans for talks with Tehran on its controversial nuclear program.

The United States condemned the comments as outrageous while Israel said they showed Iran's "rogue regime" was acting outside acceptable international norms.

Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guardsman who was elected president in June, said in October Israel must be "wiped off the map," provoking a diplomatic storm and stoking fears about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

If you want to see how Holocaust denial is based on anti-Semitism, you don't have to look any further than the President of Iran. Here's another example of his Holocaust denial, a direct quote:

Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps. Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned.

The above quote was before David Irving was arrested in Austria, but you can imagine how Irving's impending trial feeds the conspiracy-mongering. Unfortunately, such sentiments are rampant in the Arab world. For example, if you want to see the depths of the anti-Semitism in Iran, look at this lukewarm "criticism" of President Ahmadinejad's remarks from a reformist party in Iran opposed to him:

Iran's hardline press largely rallied round the president's first Holocaust remarks but the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's leading reformist party, printed a critical statement in the liberal Sharq daily on Wednesday.

"Provocation...and starting this sort of talk, which benefits neither Iranians nor oppressed Palestinians, will only increase consensus on supporting the (Israeli) regime and will unify the approach against Iran," it said.

Note what they said. They didn't condemn their president for denying the Holocaust and preaching anti-Semitism; they criticized their president because they thought that his remarks will increase support for Israel and unify Iran's foes. They criticized him because he was embarrassing Iran. One can't help but conclude that the subtext is that they agree with their President that the Holocaust is a myth but just wish he wouldn't be so open about saying so. As Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian:

Unfortunately, it doesn't end with Ahmadinejad, a man with no experience outside Iran, a hick who, Iranian analyst Dr Ali Ansari concedes, is a "monumental embarrassment". For he has given voice to a sentiment that runs deep in Iran and in the wider Muslim world.

Just look at this week's Iranian press. "Many revisionist historians believe the story of the Holocaust is fake and have proved it by much evidence and documents," says the conservative paper Resalat. Hardline Siyasat-e Ruz applauds the leader for "revealing the truth".

It's hardly a surprise. TV stations across the Muslim world have been running this garbage for ages, along with lurid anti-semitism. Jordanian TV's Ramadan special this year was Al-Shatat, a Syrian-produced series that speaks of a "global Jewish government" and depicts the ancient blood libel: the accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children in preparing food for Passover. That was a follow-up to Egyptian television's Ramadan treat in 2002: Horseman without a Horse, whose central theme was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the century-old forgery concocted by the Tsarist secret police which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world.

We can deny it no longer: the virus of anti-semitism has infected the Muslim world. And virus it is, for Jew-hatred on this scale, as Christian Europe can testify, is a kind of sickness. This is one of the grossest legacies bequeathed by the west: that Muslims have taken to heart a form of anti-semitism alien to their own lands, borrowing a language and iconography that was made in Christendom. Blood libels and the Protocols were dreamed up in Norwich, Mainz or Moscow - yet now they breathe anew in Cairo, Riyadh and Damascus.

Holocaust denial derives from anti-Semitism, period, no matter how much Holocaust "revisionists" will try to convince you otherwise. Unfortunately, that particularly virulent form of anti-Semitism now has an influential voice in the president of Iran. Compared to the Iranian president, David Irving is strictly small fry.

Tangled Bank #43

Yet another fine edition of Tangled Bank, the biweekly roundup of the best science blogging out there, has been posted at Rural Rambles.

David Irving to stand trial in Austria

And now for something completely different...

A trial date has been set in Austria for Holocaust denier David Irving. His trial will commence on February 20. Although it has been reported that he is being tried for "denying the Holocaust," in fact, he will stand trial on the charge of minimizing the crimes of the Third Reich, a law passed in the early postwar period. (In practice this is a distinction without a true difference.) It also appears that he will remain in prison until his trial date.

As I've said before, I detest Irving and everything he stands for. He is a Holocaust denier (British courts have affirmed that characterization of him), and he foolishly and vindictively tried to ruin historian Deborah Lipstadt for telling the truth about him in her book by suing her for libel in the U.K, where the libel laws are far more favorable to the plaintiff. Indeed, it is nauseating to see him try to represent himself as a some sort of champion of free speech when he did everything within his power to stifle Lipstadt's free speech. Fortunately, he lost, but unfortunately he has never paid the judgment against him and still somehow manages to travel about the U.S. and elsewhere in style to give talks (and sell books) to far right wing admirers I've even admitted that I have a bit of schadenfreude over his present predicament, although he did largely bring it on himself. He knew damned well there was a warrant out for his arrest in Austria, yet he went anyway, thinking he could sneak in and out of the country undetected by authorities. In that, he showed great hubris. Either that, or he wanted to be arrested. Only David Irving knows which.

That being said, I remain strongly opposed to laws such as those in Austria that criminalize speech, no matter how odious that speech may be. There may well have been some reasonable rationale for them in the early postwar period, but the time when there was a real threat that Naziism might rise again is long past. Certainly now the threat is so small that it no longer justifies the cost of such laws with respect to free speech rights. Putting Irving on trial for his Holocaust denial will only allow him to claim the mantle of free speech martyr with some plausibility to those who do not know his history of trying to suppress speech he doesn't agree with, particularly given the potential penalties involved. True, it's probably highly unlikely that Irving will be given the maximum of 20 years if he is convicted, but the size of the potential punishment is far out of proportion to any "crime." Also, although I had speculated that Irving's recent "admission" that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz might mean that he is finished as a force in the Holocaust denial movement, given that some deniers are already wondering if he has now "betrayed" them, I'm not so sure now. I can now foresee a situation in which Irving makes such an admission, gets either a very light sentence (or even time served) and then returns to Britain, where he repudiates his previous "admission" and treats us to the nauseating spectacle of his parading around Britain and the U.S. as a free speech martyr. Prominent "revisionist" Bradley Smith, while wondering if Irving will "betray" revisionists, has even hoped for as much:

If we are to believe his lawyer, who sounds like a practical man, David Irving is going to recant his views with regard to Auschwitz, the gas chambers, and who knows what else? He may. He may not. It would not be beyond him. This is a man for whom there is nothing “beyond.” But I feel a betrayal in the works. I hesitate to say it, but betrayal is in the air. My hope? That he recants to the Austrian court, is freed, and when he is out in the world again that he stands up in public to declare:

“I lied before a corrupt court. There is no honor in telling a corrupt court the truth if you do not enjoy being punished at the hands of corrupt law. The Auschwitz story is crap. I know it, and millions of people all over the Western and Muslim worlds know it. When I said ‘Auschwitz is a sinking ship,’ I was right. I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

Personally, as much as I detest David Irving and all that he stands for, I do not want to see him in jail for a long time (or even for a short time) for his Holocaust denial (although I wouldn't mind if he ever ended up in jail in Britain for failing to pay the judgment levied against him for his failed libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt while somehow managing to live quite comfortably otherwise).

It is cases like this that make me grateful indeed for the First Amendment. The First Amendment may not always be successful in preventing attempts by the government to stifle free speech, particularly during wartime, but it does at least make infringements on free speech considerably more difficult. And it's not just Austria or Germany where free speech is under assault. Look at Britain, where an ill-advised proposed law against religious hatred seriously threatens free speech rights by potentially proscribing any criticism or mockery of specific religions, even radical ones, and in Denmark the UN is investigating a newspaper for running cartoons that contained caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. The problem is, such laws can easily be harnessed in service of the state or nationalistic interests under the guise of protecting the sensibilities of those who don't wish to hear offensive speech. For example, in Turkey, Orhan Pamuk is going on trial for "publicly denigrating the Turkish identity" because during an interview with a Swiss newspaper he complained that it was taboo in his native land to discuss the Armenian genocide that occurred 90 years ago.

The right to free speech means nothing if only speech that does not offend is "protected," but that seems to be where we are heading in much of the world, and, to a lesser extent, even in the U.S.. The wisdom of our Founding Fathers in crafting the First Amendment becomes more and more clear to me the older I get.

Posts on this issue:

1. Schadenfreude
2. More schadenfreude: David Irving now admitting that there were gas chambers?
3. David Irving to stand trial in Austria
   

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 12

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 12 has been posted at In the Pipeline. For all you alties out there, Derek Lowe is a real pharma blogger. But wait. Derek's perfectly up front about working for pharmaceutical companies. He's not at all the shadowy figure that alties like to conjure in their conspiracy theories pretending to be something other than he is in order to post the big pharma line disguised as "objective" commentary.

He's also a fine blogger as well.

One last thought on the Al-Bayati report

This will be the last thing I say about Dr. Al-Bayati's report and the Eliza Jane Scovill case for a while. If something new comes up, certainly I'll think about addressing it, but there are only so many times and ways one can debunk the Al-Bayati "rebuttal" to the L.A. County Coroner's report without starting to bore people (although the sheer number of howlers that Dr. Al-Bayati included in his report did provide a lot of blogging material to handle them properly, not just for me, but for Trent as well).

It's time to move on.

But, before I do, in all the discussion of this case and the Al-Bayati "rebuttal" of the L.A. County Coroner's report, one question has continued to nag at me, and I thought I'd put it out there for consideration while I await the inevitable attacks that are likely to come my way because of my last couple of posts on this case.

Consider: Christine Maggiore, Dr. Al-Bayati, Dr. Maniotis, and certain bloggers clearly do not believe that HIV causes AIDS. They've said as much on multiple occasions, and Maggiore, Al-Bayati, and Maniotis all belong to a group founded by Maggiore dedicated to the concept that HIV isn't the primary cause of AIDS. Yet, despite this oft-stated belief, they've gone to great lengths to discredit the coroner's report concluding that EJ died of Pneumocystis pneumonia and HIV encephalitis. Maggiore even hired Dr. Al-Bayati as an "independent" investigator to bolster her case, and he produced a shoddy, pseudoscientific "rebuttal" to the coroner's report that was so transparent and so biased that it's hard to believe that anyone could take it seriously. Yet this same report is being trumpeted as "proof" that an anaphylactic reaction, not AIDS, killed EJ. That in itself isn't so odd, given the investigation of Maggiore that is in progress. What has struck me as odd since the beginning, at least in the context of his beliefs about HIV, is how Dr. Al-Bayati went about making his arguments. In the report, Dr. Al-Bayati harnessed enormous abuses of logic and evidence in the service of trying to "prove" that EJ didn't have HIV p24 protein in her brain, that the Pneumocystis carinii seen in her lung was incidental, and that she died of an anaphylactic reaction rather than AIDS.

So my question is: Why? From my perspective, implicit in the arguments used by Dr. Al-Bayati seems to be the assumption that, if the coroner were correct about the p24 protein and PCP, these findings would constitute evidence that EJ died of HIV/AIDS.

Think about it. These people don't accept the science that supports the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS. So why don't they just argue that in rebuttal to the coroner's report? Why don't they simply say, "So what if there was HIV p24 protein detected in the brain? It means nothing because HIV dosn't cause AIDS." After all, Dr. Al-Bayati argues in his book that "HIV is a harmless virus in both the in vivo and the in vitro settings." So why didn't he just say that explicitly in his report and argue that the HIV protein found in EJ's brain was simply an incidental finding that couldn't possibly have had anything to do with her demise (because it's "harmless"), rather than going through so many contortions to "prove" that the finding of the p24 protein was due to nonspecific binding 0f the antibody used to do the stains?

Wouldn't that have been a more intellectually honest position to take if he wanted to rebut the coroner's conclusions about the cause of death? Isn't that what Dr. Al-Bayati really believes? Then why didn't he just make the best case that he could that the p24 protein found in EJ's brain and the Pneumocystis organisms found in her lungs were irrelevant because HIV doesn't cause AIDS? Why didn't he make his best case based on his real beliefs, as clearly stated in his book and elsewhere?

I suspect that we have an idea of what the answer to that question is.


ADDENDUM:

More reading, for those new to the case:

1. HIV dissidents, continued
2. Maggiore on Primetime Live
3. Eliza Jane
4. An HIV/AIDS "skeptic" questions my honesty and decency...
5. More rebuttals of HIV/AIDS "skeptics"
6. The Eliza Jane Scovill case on Primetime Live

And here's a good general article on why making a vaccine for HIV is so difficult.

The RINO rodeo

The RINO Rodeo has ridden into town at The Countertop Chronicles. Check it out...

And while you're at it, the Carnival of the Clueless is also in town.

The Eliza Jane Scovill case on Primetime Live

I was debating whether or not to write about the Eliza Jane (EJ) Scovill case yet again, given that I've already written two different articles about it, the last of which summarized the commentary of myself and two other physicians. I didn't think that I had much more to say, barring new developments. Then, on Thursday night, ABC News broadcast a lengthy report on this case on Primetime Live. Even after watching the show, I wondered whether it would be worth commenting. True, there was indeed new information in the report that I didn't know about, but was it enough to justify another post? Then, on Friday morning, I checked out what ABC News had posted about the story on their Primetime Live. Amazingly, ABC News had posted a link to the actual coroner's report about EJ's death.

Wow. Finally, I could compare what Dr. Al-Bayati said about the coroner's report with what the coroner's report actually said! Also, Trent McBride of Catallarchy, who had already also commented on this case, has made some relevant observations about the Primetime Live story.

Before I get to the coroner's report, I'll briefly discuss the news report itself. First, my impression was that Christine Maggiore alternated between appearing very sympathetic (not surprising, since, whatever her scientifically incorrect and dangerous beliefs about HIV not causing AIDS, she is a grieving mother who did love her daughter and it's hard not to feel sympathy for her on that basis, particularly after hearing her 911 call from the night EJ collapsed) or deluded (prominent showing of old footage from 1998 of her breastfeeding her older son in public, even though it is known that breastfeeding increases the risk of transmission of HIV to the child). Another example of the depth of her belief that HIV does not cause AIDS, as Trent mentioned, when asked what it would take to persuade her that her daughter had died of AIDS, Maggiore said, "He would need to show evidence of fatal pneumonia. If there is such evidence I welcome that being brought forward." Then, the coroner showed her slam-dunk evidence of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia under the microscope, and she still didn't believe it. In fact, that segment was the most effective part of the report, where the coroner showed Maggiore the actual slides from EJ's lungs and brain. EJ's lungs showed clear evidence of Pneumocystis pneumonia, with organisms and foamy infiltrates, but what surprised me the most was the slides of the brain. The immunohistochemical staining for HIV p24 protein was very intense, even seen on a video of a video monitor. My only complaint is that they didn't show the slides long enough for me to get a better look, but I understand that the vast majority of viewers are not doctors and would probably not appreciate lingering shots of the slides. It would have been nice if they could have posted some of the images on their website.

The next point that soon became apparent is that, contrary to previous descriptions by Maggiore and other HIV "dissidents," this story as presented strongly implied that EJ was sicker right from the very start of her illness than what has been described previously. Maggiore's own description of EJ's rasping cough and rapid, shallow breathing sounded pretty bad, and this was three weeks before her daughter's death. Consider: Maggiore is a woman who clearly has an extreme distrust of "conventional" medicine. She didn't get her children tested for HIV, and she didn't get them vaccinated. She doesn't trust "conventional" doctors. Yet, after EJ became sick, Maggiore became so concerned about her daughter that she actually took her to see three different pediatricians in three weeks and kept her out of school that whole time. Her explanation for her seeking three opinions was:

There was a stirring in my soul. That's about all I can say. It motivated me to seek a third opinion.

Clearly, despite the protestations by her apologists that EJ wasn't very sick, Maggiore was all but admitting that she had become very concerned that her daughter was seriously ill, so much so that she acted on that fear by taking her to three different pediatricians. Unfortunately, at least one of these pediatricians (Dr. Jay Gordon) may not have known about Maggiore's HIV status at the time he examined her daughter and now says that, given EJ's symptoms, he wishes that he had insisted on an HIV test. (The original LA Times story states that Dr. Gordon did know about Maggiore's HIV status, and the Primetime Live report was not clear one way or the other but seemed to imply that he was not aware.) Not surprisingly, Maggiore ultimately blamed mainstream medicine for EJ's death, with the explanation:

I believe the unfortunate irony in this situation is that the one time that we were asked to and that we complied with mainstream medicine, we inadvertently gave our daughter something that took her life.

Later, Maggiore's HIV/AIDS denialism hindered the search for the cause of her daughter's illness and collapse after it happened. For example, Maggiore failed to volunteer information about her HIV status to the treating physicians at the hospital where EJ was taken after her collapse. Her reason? She wasn't asked. Her rationalization for not volunteering the information was that she "wanted an unprejudiced evaluation of her daughter," even though her HIV status would have been very important for the treating physicians to know. Later, she did not let the coroner know about her HIV status. Ultimately, the coroner's office apparently found out about it independently. In the past, Maggiore has expressed anger that the direction of the investigation changed once the coroner became aware of her HIV status, and did so again in the Primetime Live report. (Of course the investigation changed direction. That sort of information makes a huge difference.)

The one thing that bothered me about the Primetime Live report, however, is how the story dealt with Dr. Al-Bayati's "rebuttal" of the coroner's report. It concentrated too much on Al-Bayati's lack of qualifications (certainly a valid point to bring up, but not as the--seemingly--primary reason that his report is a pile of rubbish) and not enough on the many deficiencies of his "rebuttal," which have been outlined in some detail by Dr. McBride, Dr. Bennett, and me. The treatment of the report left the reporters open to the common charge by HIV/AIDS denialists of ad hominem attack (an attack some of them aren't shy about making themselves despite their complaints when they perceive it being leveled at them). The Primetime Live producers did make up for this lapse somewhat by sending both the coroner's report and the Al-Bayati "rebuttal" to an independent medical examiner, who concluded that the coroner's report was accurate and the Al-Bayati report was not. Unfortunately, there is no link to the independent report on the Primetime Live website. It would have been interesting to be able to read that report in addition to the coroner's report and the Al-Bayati "rebuttal." It would have been even better if the pathologist who prepared the independent report had been interviewed on screen.

Overall, though, the real added information was the link to the coroner's report on the Primetime Live website. The first thing I noticed right away when perusing the coroner's report is that, contrary to what Dr. Al-Bayati said about the report, the neuropathology section of the report states clearly that positive and negative controls were done for the p24 protein found in EJ's brain:

Select immunohistochemical reactions were performed on the blocks 1-3, 2-3, and 3-3. These studies included the HIV core protein, p24 and HSV 1 and 2. Appropriate positive [and] negative controls were used on the paraffin sections. A strongly positive p24 reactivity was detected in all three sections in the previously described zones of subcortical and deep white matter focal demyelination with microglial-giant cell reaction. No signal was recognized for HSV 1 or 2.

Nick Bennett, who wrote perhaps the best rebuttal of the Al-Bayati pointed this out in his updated rebuttal (once again kindly hosted by Trent):

Al-Bayati says that such controls were not performed. It is interesting to note that he quotes VERBATIM from the section which mentions the use of controls but DELETED all reference to the use of controls. In fact Al-Bayati specifically states that no control tissue types were used, but the common interpretation of this in the online discussion groups has been that no controls at all were used. This misconception needs to be corrected.

Nick's right. He's corrected it, and I'm trying to correct it here. If you don't believe me or Nick, though, feel free to compare the coroner's report to Dr. Al-Bayati's report for yourself. While you're at it, you might notice that Dr. Al-Bayati repeats over and over that a "pneumonia" requires consolidation and that there was no evidence of pneumonia in EJ's lungs. Note that the coroner's report plainly states that there was consolidation of the lungs, in addition to congestion, not to mention the findings of foamy alveolar infiltrates consistent with Pneumocystis pneumonia. Note that the coroner's report also mentions on p. 22:

On 05-04-2005, the mother took her [EJ] to Dr. Jay Gordon in Santa Monica for a second opinion. He thought she may have had pneumonia and she was then found to have a "low grade ear infection."

To me this indicates that at least one clinician had entertained the diagnosis of pneumonia before EJ collapsed (although he must have rejected pneumonia as the cause of her illness, since he didn't prescribe any treatment for pneumonia). Given that PCP is an atypical pneumonia that is often hard to diagnose until it is advanced, it is difficult for me to decide in retrospect, not knowing what clinical findings were there when he examined EJ, whether Dr. Gordon should have made the correct diagnosis or not. For one thing, if Dr. Gordon truly didn't know that there was reason to suspect that EJ might be immunosuppressed, then there would have been little, if any, reason for him even to consider the diagnosis of PCP in the differential. On the other hand, if he did know Maggiore's HIV status at the time, then he definitely should have at least considered an HIV-related infection in the differential diagnosis. It was not clear from the broadcast whether he did consider an HIV-associated illness or not.

The bottom line is that the pathologic evidence from the autopsy clearly shows that EJ died of AIDS, no matter how much Maggiore believes otherwise and no matter how much Dr. Al-Bayati tries to spin and distort the coroner's report to suggest the cause of death was some fantastical anaphylactic reaction to amoxicillin (a reaction that, if you believe Dr. Al-Bayati, supposedly caused a type of liver damage that amoxicillin has never been reported to show in the scientific literature). However, it should not be forgotten that, as tragic as EJ's death is, the real danger of the pseudoscientific belief that HIV does not cause AIDS is to dissuade people from being tested, being treated, or taking prudent measures to halt the spread of the virus, potentially leading to many more tragic and largely preventable deaths like EJ's. An additional tragedy of this case is that Christine Maggiore is still preaching the same pseudoscientific nonsense that HIV does not cause AIDS that she was before EJ died, only now she's claiming the mantle of martyr and blaming "conventional" medicine for the very death that her own beliefs contributed to.

(Note: If you wish to be reminded yet again of the rest of the distortions, half-truths, and selective quoting in the Al-Bayati hatchet job, check out Trent's, Nick's, and my rebuttals again. Pay special attention to Nick's updated rebuttal--also linked to here--as it's the most comprehensive. To go over that material in detail again here would be needlessly repetitive.)

ADDENDUM: Apparently ABC News has removed the link to the L.A. County coroner's report. Perhaps the bandwith was too great. (It was a PDF containing a scan of the file and weighed in at 2.3 MB.) However, in the comments of a previous post, a reader has pointed out another link where the coroner's report can be found.)

This worries me

Yesterday, I came across something that makes me think I should get off Blogspot just as soon as I can:

The English Guy has a post entitled Google/Blogger Deleting Real Blogs that I’d highly recommend reading if you’re a current Blogger user or considering using their free service.

A thread at the Blog Party forum suggests that Google is targeting bloggers that have multiple blogs which link to each other. This is a tactic which many legit bloggers do and is a major part of how the whole blogosphere works. It is also a tactic that is used by sploggers. But that in and of itself should not be a reason to go on a search and destroy mission for all bloggers who interlink their sites. The logic in that is faulty – just because a tactic is used by sploggers doesn’t mean that everyone who uses that tactic IS a splogger.

So if you’re using Blogger and you have multiple blogs which you like to link to each other, you might consider porting your posts over to another system, such as TypePad or WordPress.com, before you wake up one day to find your blogs gone and have to go through the nightmare of trying to reach support personel (which has been reported to be very difficult) and proving that your blogs are legitimate.

Consider yourselves warned...

Yikes. I have two blogs (this one and the Skeptics' Circle), plus a test blog that I use only for trying out various template tweaks. Maybe I should think about moving to WordPress sooner rather than later. Good thing I keep a copy of all my posts that doesn't depend upon Blogger...

On the 365th day, the blogger rested...sort of

December 11, 2004 was a cold, overcast Saturday. I was a bit bored and depressed. Among all the 2004 election post-mortems, I had been reading for the month prior in all the news magazines about blogging. I had discovered a few blogs on my own, as well as the entire category of medblogging.

Prior to that, I had had over 7 years experience on Usenet, particularly in alt.revisionism (and, to a lesser extent, sci.skeptic and talk.origins) and, more recently, in misc.health.alternative, trying to speak up for reason and rationality over conspiracy-mongering, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory. This whole blogging thing seemed like a new way to do the same thing. You see, Usenet, being in essence a huge unmoderated discussion forum, is primarily reactive, with the tendency being to respond to whatever discussion is going on at the time. You have only a limited ability to shape the conversation, and the whole forum tends to be dominated by a few personalities. Given my experience on Usenet, I thought that I had what it took to become a blogger, and, more or less on a whim, I started this blog that very afternoon. My very first post (in essence a test post) is here, and my first substantive post is here. A couple of days later I figured out how to add SiteMeter to the blog to find out if anyone was actually reading, and the rest is history, sort of.

Cue one year later. Now it's a cold but more sunny Sunday in December. The year since I started this whole thing has been rather eventful, blog-wise anyway. Early on, bloggers who had been at this longer than me noticed what I was up to and gave me an initial boost with a link, bloggers such as PZ Myers, Ophelia Benson, Tim Gueguen, and others. How they found me I have no idea, but I'm glad they did. Then, after a couple of months, people started to notice, and my visit count started an upward march, which has only now started to plateau, although my shocking nominations for a couple of awards (shocking, because I never thought I was that good) seem to have produced an uptick again. Over the last year, I've covered medicine, alternative medicine, quackery, pseudoscience ("intelligent design" creationism and HIV/AIDS denialism being prominent topics), pseudohistory (mainly Holocaust denial), and some occasional fluff, in the process inheriting the responsibility for keeping the Skeptics' Circle going, something I hope to carry on for the foreseeable future.

All I can do is thank my readers for putting up with what I lay down on a nearly daily basis. One of the great things about the Internet and blogging is the ability to come in contact with dozens, if not hundreds, of people from distant corners of the globe, something that would have been utterly unthinkable in my youth, and something that keeps me going even when pressures of my chosen profession start to make me think that I should give this little hobby up as too time-consuming.

Of course, not everyone likes me. Some of what I've written has royally pissed a few people off. Ah, well, if what I've written didn't piss off a few alties and hawkers of pseudoscience, I wouldn't be living up to my original manifesto. To characterize what this blog is about (and, hopefully, will remain to be about), I think that Isaac Asimov said it best:

I stand foursquare for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source.

If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out.

We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.

In my own tiny and insignificant way, through this blog and through my now much less frequent forays back to my old Usenet stomping grounds, I try to carry on the legacy of people like Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, although I hope that Asimov's characterization of the odds against us is entirely too pessimistic.

So what's on the agenda for the second year?

Of course, there will be more of the same, but hopefully better and more succinctly written than in the past. I don't see any reason to make any radical changes, although, as always, I will continue to tinker and try to improve things. I'll also be a bit quicker to cut back on the frequency of posting during times when my other responsibilities demand it, rather than losing sleep writing, as I have occasionally done over the last year. More importantly, I'd like to write about more hard science and biomedical research; so, beginning after the holidays I'm going to try to write about various biomedical papers that I come across, explaining the findings and their significance, much the way PZ does with developmental and evolutionary biology. At around the same time, I'd also like to inaugurate a feature not unlike Matt Ford's weekly debunking of various creationist videos and books, but this time about specific quack therapies. Whether or not I'll be able to keep it up on a weekly basis or not remains to be seen, but I would like it to become a regular feature, as opposed to just something I do when the mood strikes me or when I find out about dubious "cures" that aren't. I also plan on redoing my "Best Of" links as a part of my impending template redesign. (The way they are now, you'd think I haven't written anything decent in about three months, which was about the last time I updated them. Or maybe I haven't.) Also, never fear, I do plan on removing comment moderation sometime in the near future. I was originally planning on removing it last week, but unfortunately an old "fan" from my Usenet days tried to add an inappropriate comment a few days ago. So, for (hopefully just) a little while longer, comment moderation stays.

So, thanks, everyone, for reading. And, starting next week, please join me for year two of Respectful Insolence. The first year's been a blast. I've learned a lot and (I hope) gotten better at this whole blogging thing. (You be the judge). If year two is half as eventful and fun as the first year, it ought to be a wild ride...

A small plea

I have a small plea to make. As you can see, I haven't made my self-imposed deadline to roll out a new, spiffier template for RI. The reason is that I'm having a hellacious time getting the posts and comments to show properly. HTML newbie that I am, I haven't been able to figure out why the Blogger tags aren't working as they should and are instead showing up as Blogger tags rather than the actual content they are supposed to be pointing to. (There are also some formatting issues that cause boxes to show up where they shouldn't.) I'm also not entirely sure yet that the new design isn't worse than the old generic Blogger template. Fortunately, Kev has agreed to help me out, but, as good a web designer as he is, he doesn't have any experience with Blogger tags and code. So, anyone who has designed their own custom template for Blogspot (such as Ali, Ryan, Sportin' Life, Decorabilia, or anyone else) is there any chance of helping me out here?

Dr. Charles kills me

He really does. He cracks me up. Take, for instance, this primer on How to Stand In for the Doctor (A brief primer for the layperson), although I'd be careful about this suggestion:

Use the instruments in the room. If there is a reflex hammer strike the patient where you think a reflex might lie. There are no good reflexes of the head, but the rest is fair game. The carotid arteries in the neck generally are not good ones for measuring blood pressure with a cuff, but if you are feeling confident consider going for it. The patient may need to take a deep breath before this risky inflation around the neck.

I might remove that last suggestion about using the carotid artery for taking blood pressures if I were you, Dr. C., even though it was clearly made in jest. You never know, someone might try it. It wouldn't do to have patients passing out with inflated blood pressure cuffs around their necks in your office or old patients stroking out from dislodged carotid artery plaques. It would be bad for your practice...

One other thing, your suggestion about wearing stethoscopes:

The stethoscope is worn around the neck, much as one might wear a scarf. Practice walking up and down the hall before entering the patient room. Learn how to bend and turn without the stethoscope falling off. By this time I will have finished covering the toilet seat with paper towels.

That'll work for internists and primary care doctors, but not if the lay person is trying to impersonate a surgeon. Surgeons usually don't even bother to carry a stethoscope, and when we do we never wear them draped around the neck like a scarf. Indeed, we have a term for wearing a stethoscope like that: a flea collar. (Note to non medical types: A "flea" is slang for an internist, a term most commonly used by surgeons.) Indeed, we usually make fun of medical students who sling their stethoscope around their necks like that while rotating on the surgical service.

Oh, no, not again Toledo

As you may recall, a couple of months ago, Toledo erupted in a riot after an attempted march by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Movement in a racially mixed neighborhood. Unfortunately, the city is now bracing for another intrusion by racists this afternoon:

TOLEDO, Ohio - Hundreds of police officers from across northern Ohio along with state troopers have been mobilized to guard against another riot fueled by a neo-Nazi rally.

Members of the National Socialist Movement planned to gather Saturday afternoon on the steps of City Hall. Two months ago, their planned march sparked a four-hour riot, in which businesses were burned and looted and bricks were thrown at police and an ambulance driver.

The violence scarred the city, prompting its leaders to examine race relations and efforts to combat gangs.

In October, the neo-Nazis said they wanted to protest gangs and rising crime in a Toledo neighborhood. This time, they say they want to protest how police and the city handled the October confrontation.

Anti-racist groups also were planning a counter protest Saturday to shout down the white supremacists.

City leaders fear protesters of the neo-Nazis will try to rally somewhere outside the downtown demonstration and incite more trouble.

A Lucas County judge granted the city's request Friday to block the neo-Nazi group and counter protesters from rallying beyond the downtown government building's grounds.

This time, the rally will be about two miles from the racially mixed neighborhood where the original march was to take place.

This time, the police seem more prepared. The city has sought and received an injunction that allows them to arrest the Nazis if they deviate from their planned course and enter residential neighborhoods:

A Lucas County Common Pleas Court judge yesterday gave Toledo police the authority to arrest any neo-Nazis who try to march in a residential neighborhood today.

Judge Thomas Osowik granted an injunction sought by the city barring assembly by the National Socialist Movement anywhere other than Government Center in downtown Toledo.

Bill White, of Roanoke, Va., spokesman for the neo-Nazi group, argued against the order in a hearing, calling it a violation of his constitutional right to free speech.

But Mr. White said he and his fellow neo-Nazis weren't planning anything other than the rally they had agreed to do at Government Center.

"All he's done is enjoined us from doing something we had no intention of doing in the first place," Mr. White said, adding that the judge ruled against case law.

Toledo city senior attorney Adam Loukx said the ruling was "perfectly in sync" with established law.

Mr. White protests too much. The city would have been foolish indeed if it didn't try to protect itself from what might happen if the Nazis had a sudden "change of plan."

As I said before, I hate Illinois (and Ohio and any other) Nazis. However, I also support the First Amendment, which is why I find the jailing of Holocaust denier David Irving in Austria so odious. It is a delicate balancing act to protect the free speech rights of racist hatemongers like this neo-Nazi group and yet keep the city from erupting in violence again. Make no mistake, the purpose of these idiots is to provoke a violent response, which allows them to point to the response as "proof" that they are right about the minorities they despise. Unfortunately, last time, gangs played right into the neo-Nazi's hands and caused a riot. Given that history, the city appears this time to have taken reasonable precautions to prevent a repeat of what happened in October and yet still let this odious group have its pathetic little hate-fest. If, as I'm hoping, the event unfolds without violence, the television images will be of a tiny group of racists dressed in pathetic faux SS uniforms, waving Nazi flags, and donning the mantle of victimhood, all the while pretending that they matter as anything other than a reminder of what we as a society hope to leave behind.

That would be sweet indeed.

I almost wish these clowns could have held off a couple of weeks, when I will be in the Toledo area visiting the in-laws for the holidays. That might have been worth seeing in person.

ADDENDUM: Fortunately, the rally went off without violence and only a few arrests:

A nonviolent neo-Nazi rally in downtown Toledo yesterday started with agitation and ended with a prayer.

Surrounded by an undaunted show of police force, the National Socialist Movement's hour-long rally at Government Center began 43 minutes late and ended with 30 arrests, including three news media photographers.

About 170 observers and counterprotesters stood in front of the TARTA bus station on Jackson Street, separated by a row of riot-clad officers, a median with trees, and a line of barriers. They held signs against hate and chanted for the 63 neo-Nazis, some in uniform, to leave.

Authorities reported no injuries or damage after the rally. They and the neo-Nazis said the event was a success.

"Today, it was law enforcement that hit a home run," Toledo police Chief Mike Navarre said yesterday.

Bill White, a National Socialist spokesman from Roanoke, Va., said participants included members of the Ku Klux Klan, Retaliator Skinhead Nation, and the World Church of the Creator.

However, not everyone agreed with the zero tolerance policy the police adopted:

Police showed zero tolerance, which some attendees supported and others questioned.

Vicki Conyers, 39, of North Toledo said she went to the rally for a couple of reasons and was pleased it did not turn out like the Oct. 15 incident, which she witnessed.

"They [police] got beat down the last time. Why shouldn't they be on edge?" she asked.

Others, such as Shaun Godwin, disagreed.

"They're just picking people out," the 26-year-old Ann Arbor man said. "Nobody has done anything."

Terry Lodge, a Toledo lawyer and longtime civil rights activist, said he was upset by what he perceived as police harassment. He noted how people constantly were brushed back by police horses. He also was disturbed by how some people seemed to have been arrested for being too vocal or animated.

"What you have in Toledo is martial law for a day," he said. "The whole business of shoving people back pre-emptively is wrong."

One outsider in the crowd agreed that security went too far.

"It's clearly police intimidation against the people of Toledo," said Shanta Driver of Detroit, who identified herself as a member of the National Women's Rights Organizing Committee.

J. Eaton, 26, of North Toledo said he saw police officers arrest a man after overhearing someone say that it appeared there was "something brewing" between him and others. "They're just abusing their power," Mr. Eaton said.

John Jackson, 21, of West Toledo said the neo-Nazis can spew all the rhetoric they want as long as they don't incite rioting in a black neighborhood again. "Just stay out of the 'hood," he said.

Although disappointed by some of the police tactics, Mr. Jackson was one of a fair number of people who gave police credit for maintaining order. He said he recognized what law enforcement was up against. "They're just doing their job," he said.

Friday snowy fluff: Here's a way to get into the Christmas spirit!

Christmas is nigh, and I really haven't gotten into the spirit much. Indeed, I can hardly believe it's only a bit more than two weeks away. Then a couple of weeks ago, my sister asked me if there was any chance that I could make it to an event that she was planning on attending, namely Detroit Santarchy.

As you may know, I grew up in Detroit and environs, and most of my family is still there. My wife and I had been planning on heading back that way anyway for the holidays. Consequently, I was highly tempted and a bit bummed out when it became apparent that there was no way I'd be able to go, for reasons that you will see.

So what is Santarchy? I had never heard of it before. How could that be? It turns out that Santarchy is basically a pub crawl in which everyone involved dresses up like Santa. An article in the MetroTimes about last year's festivities started:

Last Saturday, I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus. Then I saw Santa grope Mommy. Then I saw Santa dangling upside down from a rail fence, slurping from a beer bong, stumbling through the streets slurring indecipherable expletives, and finally, horking his guts up by the curb.

Just another successful installment of Detroit’s Santarchy.

What better way to get into the Christmas--shall we say?--spirit? I mean, how could you not have fun doing a pub crawl dressed as Santa? I mean, look at the pictures! And there are plenty more where that came from here, here, and here. Perhaps the reason I had never heard of it is because it has only been going on for five years, and I haven't lived in Detroit since the late 1980s. Here's a little more background. It turns out that Santarchy is a worldwide phenomenon:

Detroit Santarchy (detroitsantarchy.com) was founded five years ago by Len Puch, musician, Michelangelo of metalwork (speedcult.com) and local celebrity/mad scientist (he built a rollercoaster in his backyard, among other creations).

Puch first learned of Santarchy from a friend in New York, and decided to form a Detroit branch. For the virgin run, only a dozen or so people showed up, but the event has grown exponentially each year; last year drew more than 150 Santas.

Each year Puch draws up a list of Detroit bars, with 45 minutes allotted for each stop. Ten bucks gets you transport on one of the Santa buses, and entry to each bar. The only rule: You must be in a Santa suit (or elf, or some other derivation) to ride the bus. Puch warns the bars ahead of time so they have enough staff on hand, but he says they’re always welcoming.

“They love it now,” Puch says. “You have 45 minutes of Santas who drop a grand on booze and then leave.”

150 Santas last year? I wonder how many will show up this year.

Then I looked at the date for this event on the website: December 17. (Traditionally, in Detroit Santarchy is held on the Saturday before Christmas, but this year they're doing it a little early because Christmas Eve is on a Saturday and the bars close early. Besides, even degenerates prone to getting drunk in Santa suits usually still like to be with their families on Christmas Eve.) Unfortunately, I'm on call that weekend. Going back to Detroit to be involved in a drunken pub crawl with a bunch of people dressed up as Santa would not be an adequate reason to try to get out of my commitment. (I know, to some people it might be, but I have a sense of duty. Besides, my call schedule is relatively light compared to most surgeons; so it would seem quite unseemly to try to get out of even that little bit of call for the whole weekend. Usually such things are only done for deaths or illnesses in the family.) Also, it wouldn't be as much fun if my wife didn't go along with me, and somehow I suspect that getting her into the Santa suit would be a hard sell. Consequently, I resigned myself to having to enjoy the festivities vicariously through the photos my sister promised to take.

Depressed at the prospect of there being no possibility of passing out somewhere in a Santa suit, except perhaps somewhere alone, with no other Santas and not associated with Santarchy (which would really be pathetic, not to mention rather hard to explain to my wife), I started surfing the links. It turns out there is a bit of a test to see if you are "Santa enough" to participate in Detroit Santarchy. Being a sucker for silly online tests, I took it. Sadly, I scored only 85, which led to this summary:

While not completely lame, you do make for a weak Santa. And while some might think that should exclude you from participating in Santarchy, it's just possible that by attending you will actually discover your true, inner, fully disfunctional, Santa.

"Not completely lame"? Bummer. If I'm going to be a lame Santa, I'd at least like to go all the way and be totally lame, not "not completely lame."

Given that Santarchy is an international phenomenon, I wondered if there were a similar event closer to home. I almost didn't bother to look, because I was still scheduled to be on call the weekend of the 17th. That meant two things: First, I couldn't drink. At all. Period. That would leave only the entertainment of watching a bunch of people in Santa suits get progressively more drunk. (On second thought, that might be pretty fun.) Second, I had to stay within about 10-15 miles of the hospital, which greatly limited potential places I could go. The second problem seemed far more insurmountable than the first, and both seemed to make any participation by me in such an event impossible, but nonetheless curiosity got the better of me. I looked around through the Santarchy site.

And guess what?

There was indeed a Santarchy event in New York City. Even better, it's not on the 17th.

It's tomorrow.

I wonder if it's possible to find a couple of cheap Santa suits fast around here...


Ah, who's kidding himself? I'm not the kind of guy who dresses up in a Santa suit with 100+ other people and goes on a pub crawl. I didn't even do stuff like that when I was in my 20's.

More's the pity.

The Twenty-third Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

The Twenty-third Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at Circadiana. Get your fix of rationality over pseudoscience and the paranormal.

Bora has thus joined our retired (from blogging, that is) founder (St. Nate) and me as the only bloggers who have hosted two meetings of the Skeptics' Circle, and he's done it in style. Who else will join the two-time twofer club?

Next up is Immunoblogging for a special Christmas week meeting of the Circle on December 22. So, get those skeptical antennae twitching and flood him with material by the evening of December 21. Because JM is from New Zealand, I'm not sure how the whole time difference thing will play out, I'll let him decide when he wishes to set the deadline for submissions and translate it into Eastern Standard Time and/or Greenwich Mean Time. Further announcements will be posted as the deadline approaches.

And, as always, if you think you have what it takes and have the desire to host a future edition of the Skeptics' Circle, drop me an e-mail. The most recently updated schedule and guidelines are here, and additional guidelines are here.

You know you're getting old when...

I was feeling old yesterday. Normally, I don't feel my age, but yesterday was a day that drives home the point that I'm not getting any younger. You see, yesterday was an interview day, a day during which we interview candidates for our general surgery residency. I sometimes joke that the candidates look younger and younger every year, when in fact they aren't. Last year, I wrote about this extensively, but this year was a little different. Last year, the candidates seemed to older than I was used to.

This year?

Well, this year I interviewed four candidates. A couple of hours before the interviews, I was perusing their applications packets. I looked over the first one and one number happened to jump out at me. No, it wasn't any grades or other scores.

It was the birthdate.

1980.

Agggh! That was the year I graduated from high school! People born in the year I graduated from high school are now fourth year medical students and they're applying for residencies! In fact, two out of the four candidates were born in 1980 and one was born in 1979. The oldest candidate was born in 1975.

Damn. I feel old.

Even so, yesterday made me optimistic for the future of my profession, at least from a humanistic standpoint. Three of these candidates were quite idealistic, having done work with either the indigent or in Africa or both. On the other hand, none of them seemed much interested in basic or translational research, which, as a researcher myself, I found a little depressing.

Almost as depressing as being reminded how fast time is going by.

You can't make stuff like this up: Mel Gibson is planning a TV miniseries about the Holocaust

I had been planning on posting about something completely different today, namely a far more medically related topic, but then I came across this, and my plans changed. The previously planned post will appear some other day.

I have to file this under You Can't Make Stuff Like This Up:

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 6 - Mel Gibson, whose "The Passion of the Christ" was assailed by critics as an anti-Semitic passion play - and whose father has been on record as a Holocaust denier - has a new project under way: a nonfiction miniseries about the Holocaust.

Mr. Gibson's television production company is developing a four-hour miniseries for ABC based on the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbors hid her from the Nazis but who lost several relatives in concentration camps.

It is not expected that Mr. Gibson will act in the miniseries, nor is it certain yet that his name, rather than his company's, will be publicly attached to the final product, according to several people involved in developing it. Nor is it guaranteed yet that the project will be completed and broadcast.

But Quinn Taylor, ABC's senior vice president in charge of movies for television, acknowledged that the attention-getting value of having Mr. Gibson attached to a Holocaust project was a factor.

"Controversy's publicity, and vice versa," Mr. Taylor said.

ABC brought in Mr. Gibson's company, Con Artists Productions, after an independent producer, Daniel Sladek, pitched the network on Ms. Van Beek's story. With her husband, Felix, Ms. Van Beek survived the sinking of a passenger ship by a German mine, followed by three years in hiding during the German occupation of Holland, before emigrating to the United States in 1948.

The network chose Mr. Gibson's company when it learned of Ms. Van Beek's tale shortly after ABC had rejected a separate pitch by Con Artists' president, Nancy Cotton, for another Holocaust-related subject, Mr. Taylor said.

"This has the middle, the love story, that the other one didn't have," he explained.

Mr. Sladek said ABC's calculation in engaging Mr. Gibson was to win the largest possible audience. "I think that what ABC wants out of this is to build the biggest billboard imaginable in order to get everyone logically interested to tune in and watch this," he said.

Ms. Van Beek's book, "Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death" (Seven Locks Press, 1998) is a wide-eyed account of her and her husband's abbreviated courtship; their attempt to sail to safety in Chile; the sinking of their ship, and their rescue and recuperation in England; their return to Holland in 1940; and their suffering in hiding as the deportations of Jews began. They were liberated by Canadian troops, but only 5,200 of Holland's 140,000 Jews survived the war, according to Mr. Sladek's research.

You may recall from a couple of years back, round about the time Mel Gibson was making The Passion of the Christ, Jewish leaders expressed concern that the movie, with its intentionally violent and bloody depiction of Jesus' death, would stir up anti-Semitism. His father Hutton Gibson didn't help matters any by giving an interview to the New York Times and to radio stations in which he openly denied the Holocaust. One example:

In his interview on WSNR radio's Speak Your Piece, to be broadcast on Monday, Hutton Gibson, argued that many European Jews counted as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries like Australia and the United States.

"It's all -- maybe not all fiction -- but most of it is," he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people.

"Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?" he said. "It takes a litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."

A transcript of major parts of the interview has been posted here. Hutton has also addressed various Holocaust "revisionist" conferences, such as the Barnes Review.

Not entirely surprisingly, Hutton is also a conspiracy theorist. He believes in various complicated conspiracies involving Jews and Masons to destroy the Catholic Church, having stated that that Vatican II was a "Masonic plot backed by the Jews" and that all popes since then have been illegitimate. (Of course, it has been noted that one of the major changes introduced to Catholic doctrine in Vatican II was the reversal of the teaching that blamed the Jews for Christ's death.) It is unclear how much his son shares in these his father's conspiracy-mongering, but Mel does belong to the same breakaway conservative sect (sometimes called "Traditional Catholic") and financed the building of a church in Malibu for fellow ex-Catholics. (Members of this sect are, in fact, no longer Roman Catholics. Their doctrinal differences with the Church are too marked, and they do not recognize the authority of the Church or the Pope, nor is Gibson's Malibu church affiliated with the Archdioses of Los Angeles in any way. Nonetheless, Gibson is often misrepresented in the press and media as being nothing more than a very conservative Catholic.)

Mel has also steadfastly refused to criticize his father's open anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. It is, of course, understandable for a son not to want to criticize his father, and Mel has said things that appear to sound as though he doesn't share his father's beliefs. For example, in an interview with Diane Sawyer, he was quoted as saying:

Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.

And in another interview with Peggy Noonan for Reader's Digest in which Noonan asked him point-blank: "You're going to have to go on the record. The Holocaust happened, right?" Mel replied:

I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.

Notice that he didn't just answer, "Yes, the Holocaust happened." I've heard Holocaust deniers say very similar things on many occasions, usually emphasizing that "many millions" died in World War II, and that "some of those killed were Jews" who died in concentration camps. They also try to minimize the crime by mentioning other atrocities ("atrocities happened"). Characteristically, there is usually (as above) no mention of gas chambers and no mention that millions of Jews were murdered as a matter of Nazi policy. Indeed, Mel's statements are entirely of a piece with a common portrayal of the Holocaust by deniers as many Jews dying in concentration camps of disease and starvation, but not due to any organized, systematic plan by the Nazis to exterminate them. And, then, of course, notice the pointed mention of Communist atrocities, a mention whose purpose is rarely to compare atrocities in historical perspective but more often to minimize the Holocaust compared to the crimes of Communist regimes.

Do the above statements mean that Mel Gibson shares his father's beliefs? Not necessarily. However, at the time I did find his obvious equivocation about the subject somewhat worrisome, and I haven't been able to find any more recent material to clarify his views. Perhaps Mel does not want to anger his father by directly contradicting his Holocaust denial in a public interview. Or perhaps, unlike his father, he is much slicker about expressing such views in public. I simply don't know. Perhaps I'm reading too much into a rather old interview, but statements like the above set my denier detection antennae twitching. (You're probably fortunate that I wasn't blogging back then, because I'd have been all over this, probably to the point of boring you all.)

If this miniseries is ever actually made and if Mel Gibson actually produces it himself, it will certainly bring the issue to the fore again. Of course, this story could all be a bit of premature hype designed to gin up interest in the project, or it could be a trial balloon. Even so, if this project does actually go forward I'd still be very curious to see what Mel Gibson does with the topic, although I'd approach it with a bit of trepidation. At the very least, though, it would bring this topic up again and give Mel a chance to clarify his beliefs--or once again fail to clarify them.

Remember Pearl Harbor

Sixty-four years ago today, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese, plunging the U.S. into World War II against the Axis powers. On this day, please take a moment to check out Pearl Harbor Remembered, particularly these survivor's tales. While you're at it, National Geographic has a site about Pearl Harbor, complete with a nifty Flash-animation multimedia display showing the timeline and map of that attack.

And, remember, above all, the price our veterans paid to defeat these threats to freedom.

The Raging RINOs are having an office party

...and you're invited. You can join them for karaoke if you want.

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 11

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 11 has been posted at one of my favorite medical blogs, The Examining Room of Dr. Charles. More good stuff, as usual, this time with a Norman Rockwell theme.

Cybersquatting for Jesus?

Speaking of Blogspot weirdness last night, over the weekend a reader had e-mailed me about something they had noticed that was equally strange. Apparently, while trying to reach my blog, he had mistyped it as oracknows.blogpsot.com (I'm guessing that reversing the "s" and the "p" is a common mistyping) and was very surprised at what came up.

No, it wasn't a porn site, although that would have been fairly amusing if it had been.

Rather, it was a site called "Amazing Bible Studies." Right off the bat, I was greeted with:

AN INCREDIBLE TESTIMONY PROVING THE BIBLE IS TRUE, PLUS A COMMENTARY ON THE NEAR FUTURE ARE JUST AHEAD ON THIS HOME PAGE. PLEASE READ IT.

AN EASY TO UNDERSTAND, USER-FRIENDLY, NON-PROFIT SITE: NOTHING FOR SALE.

GOD LOVES YOU. JESUS STANDS AT THE DOOR OF YOUR HEART, KNOCKING. IF YOU WILL OPEN THE DOOR, HE WILL COME IN. THOSE THAT BELIEVE THEY ARE SAVED—BUT LIVE IN DISOBEDIENCE AND REBELLION TO THE BIBLE, REFUSING TO DO THE WILL OF GOD—DECEIVE THEMSELVES. God tells us, FEAR THE LORD, AND DEPART FROM EVIL-Pv 3:7. HE THAT IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME-Mt 12:30. FOR THE TIME WILL COME (which is now) WHEN THEY (the people of the world) WILL NOT ENDURE SOUND DOCTRINE,…THEY WILL TURN THEIR EARS AWAY FROM THE TRUTH-2 Tim 4:3,4 NKJV. (Does this include you?) I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSING AND CURSING: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE, THAT… THOU… MAY LIVE-Deut 30:19.

I retained the all-caps and the colors, so that you get a feel for the site. As for the "nothing for sale" part, there certainly was enough advertising on the site, including an ad for an online dating site advertising "intimate dating" showing up in the rotation of ads.

Man, I thought, this is getting old. First JB gets pissed off at me and, to spite me, buys up oracknows.com and redirects it to Generation Rescue, and now some religious nut is trying to mess with me? This blogging thing seemed to be producing more notoriety than I liked.

My first (admittedly egotistical) thought was, geez, I'm flattered. But then I thought about it and remembered that my blog isn' t that popular. It's not like I'm Instapundit (who draws around 120X the traffic I do) or premiere science blogger PZ Myers (who draws around 10X the traffic I do). Clearly, whoever did this did it for traffic, not for revenge/punishment/harassment, as JB did when he targeted me a couple of weeks ago. As much as it hurt my enormous surgeon's ego to admit it, it seemed odd that any fundie would target me specifically this way, unless I had somehow really ticked one off. I know that I sometimes get a bit sarcastic about "intelligent design" creationism, but I still doubted that this was the case, because on other times I try to be very careful not to make fun of the religious underpinnings of ID.

So, sleuth that I like to sometimes delude myself into thinking that I am, I did some digging. I started typing in some of the Blogspot blogs that I frequent, using the same mispelling of the "blogspot" part. Guess what? they all redirected to the same Bible-thumper website! So, I did the next obvious thing and typed in www.blogpsot.com. Yes, you guessed it. It redirected to this same site. The only reasonable conclusion was that the owners of this site had purchased the domain blogpsot.com and redirected all traffic to their Bible site. So, who owns this domain? A quick WHOIS search revealed:

% whois blogpsot.com

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: BLOGPSOT.COM
Registrar: IHOLDINGS.COM, INC. D/B/A DOTREGISTRAR.COM
Whois Server: whois.dotregistrar.com
Referral URL: http://www.dotregistrar.com
Name Server: NS1.EBIBLEONLINE.COM
Name Server: NS5.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Name Server: NS6.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Name Server: NS7.DNSMADEEASY.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 09-aug-2005
Creation Date: 27-oct-2002
Expiration Date: 27-oct-2006


>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 03:14:22 EST <<<>

Registrant:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one (BLOGPSOT-COM-DOM)
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7278213151
amazingbible@verizon.net

Domain Name: BLOGPSOT.COM
Status: PROTECTED

Administrative Contact:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one amazingbible@verizon.net
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7278213151

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one amazingbible@verizon.net
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7278213151

Record last updated on 26-Sep-2005.
Record expires on 27-Oct-2006.
Record created on 27-Oct-2002.

Domain servers in listed order:

Name Server: ns1.ebibleonline.com
Name Server: ns5.dnsmadeeasy.com
Name Server: ns6.dnsmadeeasy.com

Searching around the site, I found that it was in reality something called Bible Desk. A WHOIS search revealed that bibledesk.com is owned by--you guessed it!--Doug Powell, and, hilariously, the DNS server was listed as NS.CHRISTIANWEBHOST.COM. I wonder if what Christian Web Host, Inc. thinks of Mr. Powell's tactics. (Probably not much, I'd guess.) Of course, CWH doesn't appear to be the host of blogpsot.com. The other DNS is from dnsmadeeasy.com, which lists a company Tiggee.com as its technical contact, and the domain ebibleonline.com is--will wonders never cease?--owned by Doug Powell. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to do all the digging to figure out the exact relationships between the various ISPs and hosts and who was upstream of whom. I leave that as an exercise for the inquisitive reader.

I have to hand it to Mr. Powell, though. It takes some serious--shall we say?--creativity (not to mention balls) to use a tactic usually associated with porn sites, sites selling "Viagra without a prescription," and various other Internet scammers, namely the tactic of registering a domain using a common mispelling of a famous high traffic domain and using that to direct traffic to your own site. It takes even more "imagination" to harness such a tactic in the service of the Lord. And, if you're going to deceive surfers to bring them to God, why not go all the way and pick one of the highest traffic domains there is, Blogspot? Given the millions of Blogspot blogs out there, if only 0.1% of surfers mistype the "blogspot" part of the domain when looking for their favorite blogs, that's probably thousands of additional souls exposed to Jesus and warned about Armaggedon every day! Now that's thinking big--or should I say "scamming big"?--for the Lord! (On the other hand, maybe it's not working so well, as I could only find few bloggers who have posted about this chicanery before me.)

According to the site, though, one of the key purposes of this ministry is:

"AS GOD IN HIS MERCY ENABLES US—TO HUMBLY, FREELY, AND TRUTHFULLY PRESENT THE GOSPEL CLEARLY WITH SOUND BIBLE TEACHING TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO EXAMINE THEMSELVES TO SEE IF THEY ARE IN THE FAITH (ref Mt 10:8; 2 Cor 13:5; Titus 2:1)."

Yes, I did leave the all caps and punctuation intact again. What is it with the all caps and multicolored text that's sometimes painful to read (other than the content, which is painful enough to read, given its apocalyptic ramblings)?

Hmmm. I wonder how "humble" or "truthful" it is to trick web surfers who happen to mistype something while looking for their favorite blogs in order to try to bring them to the Lord. Perhaps it's God's hand that produces the typo that brings internet infidels to the Amazing Bible Site.

Looking at this whole thing, I'd want to ask Mr. Powell: What would Jesus think about how you go about spreading His word? Yes, I know what you did is not illegal. It's even rather clever to have every Blogspot blog redirect to you if misspelled in a certain way. However, it is deceptive. Does Jesus really want you spreading His word using such deception or using tactics generally used by porn sites and scammers?

Really, what would Jesus think of this? Would He approve? Did He tell you to do this? Inquiring minds want to know.

Blogspot strangeness

As I sat down to compose my daily post tonight, everything seemed all right. Blogger loaded right up and led me to my list of posts to edit. As I started writing, I wanted to reference an old post on my blog, and that's when the weirdness started. My blog wouldn't load on my browser. It kept coming up with messages like "you don't have permission to load / on this server," "page not found," or the main page simply wouldn't load.

I was concerned, to say the least. Thoughts of chicanery by certain cybersquatters who had plagued me in the past went through my mind. Had my password been compromised somehow, allowing someone to delete my blog? (Don't laugh, it happened to Nurse Kelly.) But no, that wouldn't make sense, as I was using Blogger, and everything seemed fine in the Dashboard and the controls. All my posts, both posted and my many drafts of half-formed (or not formed at all) ideas were still there, as always.

I checked my SiteMeter readings, and noticed that, sometime after 6:49 PM, my visits had very suddenly dropped from a highly unusual 90/hour (having been juiced up quite nicely in the wake of my being nominated for a couple of blog awards) to 2-3/hour at around 10 PM (when I sat down to write). So I started checking some of the blogs that I peruse every day that happen to be also on Blogspot:

Science and Politics? Wouldn't load.

Red State Rabble? Wouldn't load.

Photon in the Darkness? Wouldn't load.

Pooflingers Anonymous? Wouldn't load.

Aggravated DocSurg? Ditto.

Well, you get the idea. Every Blogspot blog that I normally peruse seemed to be down at the same time. Blogspot was clearly FUBAR'ed.

The odd thing is, the last time this happened, sometime last month, Blogger wouldn't let me into my account, either; so this was most strange. Blogspot blogs couldn't be accessed, but I could do whatever I wished as far as composing or changing blog settings.

All I could do was write what I planned to write and hope that Blogspot would come up again. fortunately, sometime after 11 PM, it did, and that's why you're seeing this now. What a drag, the day after my being nominated for Best New Blog, not long after voting started, that Blogspot should crap out like this. It seems to be happening more frequently, this is the longest outage I can recall for months.

Anyway, I'm sorry about that. It looks like Blogspot was down for a total of around 4 hours. For those of you who had been coming by in search of my scintillating wit (or lack thereof), I'm back...

ADDENDUM: Blogger has finally posted an explanation for what happened here. It's pretty vague.

Holy crap, I've been nominated!

I almost spit my iced tea all over my monitor when I saw referrals coming from an unexpected source in my SiteMeter stats.

Believe it or not, I've been nominated for Best New Blog!

(Clearly, those who nominated me must have somehow missed or overlooked my EneMan and Hitler Zombie posts.)

To stoke my already enormous ego even more, I've also been nominated for Best Medical Weblog over at Medgadget's Medical Weblog Awards. (I guess I didn't make the cutoff for best New Medical Weblog, because, to be eligible, your blog has to have been established in 2005, and I foolishly started mine a couple of weeks before that.)

Do I have a prayer of winning? My guess is probably not, mainly because I don't think I'm political enough (translation: right wing enough) to win Best New Blog in The Weblog Awards, and I doubt Respectful Insolence is a "pure enough" medical blog to win Medgaget's more specialized award (too much wandering into science, skepticism, and history--and too much Hitler Zombie--I suspect, and not a tight enough focus on medicine). Also, the competition is tough, and I don't plan on lobbying any more than this one post.

But, hey, you never know.

Geez, this reminds me. I really have to get cracking on that new template. It just doesn't do to continue to use this generic Blogger template. Unfortunately, I'm having problems getting my posts to show properly in the new template and haven't yet come up with a banner that I like. If anyone out there is a whiz with designing customized Blogger templates, perhaps you wouldn't mind my showing you what I have so far and your telling me why my posts don't show up. Instead, only Blogger tags show up in the center layer. (Of course, if you tell me my current concept is butt-ugly and that I should start again from scratch, that's OK too; you might be right.)

And, of course, thanks to all who nominated me and who led my visit count to pass a quarter of a million sometime yesterday.

When is cancer care "futile"?

There was an interesting article in this week's New York Times Magazine about Susan Sontag's last battle with cancer, written by her son. In it, he describes how, at age 71, his mother was told for the third time that she had cancer. Previously, when she was 42, she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of breast cancer, which had spread to 31 of her axillary lymph nodes, but she managed to survive. Later, in her mid-60's, she had developed uterine sarcoma and survived. This time would be different. This time, she developed myelodysplastic syndrome, which is usually a precursor to acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer for which the survival prospects are very dim for patients over 70. Ultimately the leukemia claimed her life, recurring after a bone marrow transplant.

The article is poignant in its portrayal of Sontag when she was told that the last possible treatment had failed and that there were no other potentially life-saving treatments at any odds,; in other words, when it dawned on her that she was going to die of her disease and there was no escape. The article also brought up a rather difficult ethical issue:

For doctors, understanding and figuring out how to respond to an individual patient's perspective - continue to fight for life when chances of survival are slim, or acquiesce and try to make the best of whatever time remains? - can be almost as grave a responsibility as the more scientific challenge of treating disease. In trying to come to terms with my mother's death, I wanted to understand the work of the oncologists who treated her and what treating her meant to them, both humanly and scientifically. What chance was there really of translating a patient's hope for survival into the reality of a cure? One common thread in what they told me was that interpreting a patient's wishes is as much art as science. Dr. Stephen Nimer, my mother's principal doctor, heads the division of hematologic oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and is also one of America's foremost researchers in the fundamental biology of leukemia. As he explained it to me: "The fact is that people are never as educated as the doctor. You have to figure out something about the patient" - by which he meant something that takes both patient and physician beyond the profound, frustrating and often infantilizing asymmetry between the patient's ability to comprehend the choices to be made and the doctor's.

Still, the doctor's task here is not impossible. As Nimer put it: "There are risk takers and risk-averse. There are those who say, you know: 'I'm 70 years old. If I get another four or five months, that would be fine.' Others say, 'You do everything you can to save my life.' Then it's easy. You can go straight into a discussion of what a patient wants."

For Nimer, as for Jerome Groopman, the ethical challenge, vital for a doctor to recognize and impossible (and ethically undesirable) to deal with formulaically, comes not with the 30 percent of patients Nimer estimates know for certain whether they want aggressive treatment or not, but with the "undecided" 70 percent in the middle. As Nimer told me somewhat ruefully, the doctor's power to influence these patients, one way or the other, is virtually complete. "There are ways to say things," he said. "'This is your only hope.' Or you could say, 'Some doctors will say it's your only hope, but it has a 20 times better chance of harming you than helping you.' So I'm pretty confident I can persuade people." Groopman, in his clinical practice with patients like my mother, patients for whom, statistically, the prognosis is terrible, at times begins by saying, "There is a very small chance, but it comes with tremendous cost."

This is an important point. When the patient knows what he or she wants to do, the oncologist's job is usually easier, particularly if the patient decides that heroic measures to try to prolong or save life are not desired. It may not be easier if the patient wants to fight to the end, even though there is no hope and the treatments required are painful and resource-intensive, but many of these patients will actually change their minds when informed of just what the consequences of their desire to fight on would be. Very early in the history of this blog, I discussed the problems and pitfalls of operating for malignant bowel obstruction in patients with unresectable cancer or carcinomatosis as the one area where surgeons confront this reality with their patients. We know that operating won't prolong life and has only a very low chance of ever restoring the ability to eat solid food, and we also know that the morbidity and mortality of such operations is high. Some patients will decide immediately that they don't want surgery; others will demand it, even at high risk.

The majority of patients, however, as pointed out in the article do not know what they want or what they should do. It is in these cases where what the doctor says makes a huge difference. In essence, most doctors can persuade most patients to take whatever course they want in the face of a likely terminal diagnosis. If we tell them that attempting curative treatment is "medically futile," most will not opt for such treatment. Those that do not will seek other opinions, but if the consensus of the medical opinions they seek is that attempts at curative treatment are "futile," then most will usually accept that. Others, still desperate for a cure, might seek out quacks like Hulda Clark.

Of course, the problem here, as is pointed out in the article, is defining what is "medically futile." Different doctors will define it differently:

But this does nothing to change the fact that it seems almost impossible to develop a satisfactory definition of what is and is not medically futile. What is the cutoff? A 10 percent chance of success? Five percent? One percent? When does the "very small chance" my mother's doctors bought at the "tremendous cost" in suffering that Groopman described for me become so infinitesimal as to make it no longer worth trying?

I have found no consensus among the oncologists I have spoken with in the aftermath of my mother's death, and I don't believe there is one. There are those who take a strong, consistent stance against not just such treatments but also against the general orientation of American medicine, particularly oncology, toward doing everything possible to save individual patients, no matter how poor their chances. These doctors seem inspired by a public-health model based on better health outcomes for communities rather than individuals, viewing it as the most moral and the only cost-effective way of practicing medicine. This view, often associated with the work of the medical ethicist Daniel Callahan, is increasingly influential.

Part of the problem is, of course, that there are limited resources, and the public health question is whether we should be putting so many resources into "hopeless" cases. The reality is that Sontag underwent a bone marrow transplant only because she had the money to pay for it if her insurance company didn't come through. She had to put up a $256,000 deposit before the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center would proceed to treat her. Only a small percentage of the population could afford that; anyone of lesser means would have had to fight his insurance company while precious time ticked away, making a tiny chance infitessimal.

But the real problem here is that the areas where advances are most needed are exactly in these "futile" cases. Advances are made when doctors and their patients push the envelope and try to cure diseases that, at the time, have a very low (or seemingly nonexistent) chance of cure, sometimes at high cost, both in money and in risk. This leads, for example, a few surgeons to do enormous operations and infuse intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy (hot chemotherapy in the abdomen) to treat patients with diffuse gastrointestinal malignancies growing on the peritoneal linings of the bowel. It also leads oncologists to do bone marrow transplants and other high-risk procedures. Proposing such procedures is an ethical mine field. It's very easy for the physician to delude himself into thinking he is doing the best thing for the patient so much that he shades what he says, overstating the hope and understating the risks. Because the patient naturally does not want to die, except in the cases mentioned above where the patient knows what he wants, the physician can, if not careful, lead the patient into a risky course of treatment when, if the patient knew the true likelihood of success and the suffering that course of treatment would cause, he very likely might decide that the best thing is hospice and palliative care to let him get his affairs in order and spend what time he has left in as much comfort as possible. Patient autonomy is paramount here, but making sure it is respected is much harder said than done.

Finally, another point the article made hit home for me, and that is the optimism of cancer researchers. Like many researchers, I believe that most cancers can be overcome. Unlike, however, the Director of the NCI, I'm not so optimistic that I believe we can "end suffering and death from cancer by the year 2015." The advances in genomics, proteomics, and targeted cancer therapy are already providing better treatments with fewer side effects than anything in the past. Advances in surgery and radiation therapy are making possible the local treatment of tumors that could not be approached in the past. But it is not yet enough. Even though the fruits of molecular research emanating from our laboratories gives me great hope for the future, today I still sometimes have to fight to prevent myself from letting nihilism take hold when I confront a patient with an advanced cancer and a slim hope of survival. All of that hope and optimism that I have means nothing when confronting a patient for whose disease my art offers little.

Mothering Magazine is at it again

Surprise, surprise.

Mothering is all over the Al-Bayati "rebuttal" of the L.A. County Coroner's report concluding that Eliza Jane Scovill died of HIV, and not in a good way:

Still, Christine has long been politicized by the mainstream as an AIDS dissident. Earlier this year, when daughter Eliza Jane died suddenly at age 3 1/2, critics were quick to assert that the Maggiore-Scovill family's longstanding, informed, AIDS drug-free approach to their health was "irresponsible" and ultimately to blame for their tragic and stunning loss. Despite the fact that none of the Maggiore-Scovills but Christine have ever tested positive for HIV, a September story in the LA Times reported that the official cause of the girl's death was "AIDS related pneumonia." The story garnered much attention, and hype quickly overshadowed fact. It also prompted in-depth discussions on many discussion boards, including Mothering's own MotheringDotCommune. To those familiar with the family, the AIDS related pneumonia conclusion just didn't make sense, given Eliza Jane's general health, medical history, presentation of illness, and rapid demise (she was diagnosed with a garden variety acute ear infection and died within days). A new review of the case by pathologist Dr. Mohammed Al-Bayati concludes that in fact, Eliza Jane died of an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin prescribed to treat her ear infection. Further, evidence has been gathered attesting to the unreliability of one of the two signatories to the original LA County Coroner's Report, Dr. James Ribe. More general information about this case and its evolution is available here.

Excuse me while I vomit again.

Fortunately, I know that my two rebuttals are being discussed on the Mothering discussion boards, because I've seen some referrals from them in my logs. I wonder what they're saying. (Registration was required, which is why I didn't follow the links.)

It's that time of year again...

What greeted us when we woke up this morning...the first significant snowfall of the year. It's not a lot, probably only a couple of inches at the most, but it's the first.

Andrew Mathis vs. Paul Grubach regarding laws against Holocaust denial

I have to hand it to Andrew Mathis. In the time I've known him as a more experienced and far more active and tenacious fellow traveller in the fight against online Holocaust denial, he's never ceased to amaze me in his ability to dissect deniers' distortions and outright lies with an eloquence that I can only rarely match. Because Andrew has put his own blog on hiatus for a month because he is getting married soon--congratulations, Andrew!--he asked me if I'd post a letter for him. Of course, I was more than happy to oblige him by putting the middling popularity of my blog in the service of his message. But first, a little background on what this is about:

Like me, Andrew is not fond of laws criminalizing Holocaust denial. That being said, however, like me, he also can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude at Irving's present predicament, given how Irving tried to suppress Deborah Lipstadt's free speech with a bogus libel charge in the U.K. and that, even though a large judgment against him at that trial rendered him technically "bankrupt," he was somehow able to travel the U.S. and Europe to spread his Holocaust denial to sympathetic far-right wing audiences. (He became a major celebrity in those circles.) As you recall, even though Irving had 16-year-old warrant out for his arrest for Holocaust denial in Austria, nonetheless he went into Austria, full of hubris, to give a speech to a right-wing student group. He was busted. Irving's predicament led to this commentary in the Los Angeles Times by D. D. Guttenplan, which, to my reading, was actually a rather lukewarm defense of hate speech laws in Germany and Austria, explaining them in the light of the different histories of these countries. Nonetheless, I would have agreed with another point that Guttenplan made, namely that the "threat of a 20-year prison term, even if it doesn't come to pass, only burnishes Irving's counterfeit credentials as a martyr to free speech," were it not for Irving's later recantation and admission that the gas chambers existed, which has already led to at least one Holocaust "revisionist" asking whether Irving has "betrayed us." (Guttenplan's article was published on Nov. 19, before Irving "recanted.")

In any case, this commentary in the L.A. Times led to a reply by Institute for Historical Review contributor Paul Grubach on a "revisionist" discussion board (scroll down a little bit to find it), in which he takes issue with this statement by Guttenplan:

Countries that outlaw Holocaust denial do so not because they love liberty less than we do but because their history is different from ours. Holocaust denial causes real pain to survivors and their families. To fail to acknowledge that pain, or to treat it as a particularly Jewish problem that need not trouble anyone else, is to deny our common humanity — precisely the denier's aim.

Grubach responded with a commentary whose essential message came down to:

Let me put my argument in the language of Guttenplan. “Jewish people like Wiesel, Yoffe and others cause real pain to Europeans and Christians when they use the Holocaust ideology to degrade and humiliate European and Christian civilization. To fail to acknowledge that pain, or to treat it as a particularly European and Christian problem that need not trouble anyone else, is to deny our common humanity—precisely the aim of Jewish promoters of the Holocaust. Therefore, countries should outlaw promotion of the Holocaust ideology because it causes real pain to many non-Jews.”

And now, unedited (except that I did add a couple of links to pieces to which Andrew is referring), here is Andrew's letter to Paul Grubach, in which he dismantles Grubach's false analogy:

Dear Mr. Grubach:

I read with interest your response to D.D. Guttenplan's article in the Los Angeles Times on David Irving's arrest in Austria a few weeks ago. It was interesting to me not just because of the dishonesties committed therein, but also because of the massive false analogy on which you base your central thesis.

I should state, before I even begin analyzing your article, by stating that I have a large problem with laws that criminalize speech, and if I had my way, none of these men would be in jail for things they said or wrote. That being said, let us not forget certain facts. First, Ernst Zundel missed an immigration hearing. He himself admitted this in court when he was deported from the U.S. to Canada, stating, "One oversight was that I should not have taken my attorney's advice. I was a fool and should have driven to [the hearing] and I wouldn't be sitting here." Anyone can do a Lexis-Nexis search in the library for this quote, cited by the Canadian Press by way of the Hamilton Spectator on April 2, 2003. Second, David Irving knowingly went to a country where there was an outstanding arrest warrant against him. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for Mr. Irving in normal circumstances; when he undertakes as monumentally stupid an undertaking as he did in Austria, any sympathy I may have had left disintegrates entirely. So while it certainly is true that two of these men -- Zundel and Irving -- are where they are because they broke speech laws that I disagree with, the more immediate cause of their imprisonment is, in fact, their own carelessness.

Then you quote Guttenplan's reasoning for why certain countries have passed Holocaust denial laws, and then it's on to the false analogy. Your first piece of evidence comes by way of Elie Wiesel. First I did a Google search on the obviously edited quote (the ellipses were the giveaway) that you give from Wiesel. First, you offer no context for Wiesel's statement, which is a common tactic among Holocaust deniers (quoting out of context). The context is a conversation that Wiesel had with one of the three Israeli judges that tried Adolf Eichmann. Wiesel had asked the judge whether, after having tried Eichmann and heard the witnesses, he understood the Holocaust better. The judge replied that he did not, opining that perhaps that was God's gift--that he did not understand something so evil. Here is then what Wiesel writes:

"In truth, Auschwitz signifies not only the failure of two thousand years of Christian civilization, but also the defeat of the intellect that wants to find a Meaning -- with a capital M -- in history" (quoted in Art From the Ashes, Ed. Lawrence L. Langer, New York: Oxford UP, 1995. p. 143).

Clearly Wiesel is still placing blame on European Christian civilization for the violent anti-Semitism that ultimately culminated in the Holocaust, but it is quite clearly, once the context is restored and the expurgated words put back in, not the key point of what he's saying. Furthermore, he's not, to quote you, "saying that, because of the alleged Holocaust, the whole span of Christian civilization is a failure!" He's saying that if Christian civilization could not prevent a genocide in its heartland, then hasn't it failed in its mission of tolerance, non-violence, and mercy? And, indeed, it has, as former popes, as well as the current pope, have said. These are the leaders of the largest denomination of Christianity. I think it's not too far of a stretch to say that they can speak on the topic with slightly more authority than you. Furthermore, you cite this "real pain to Christian peoples" that Wiesel's rigged statement purportedly evokes, but you don't offer any evidence besides your own outrage.

In the interest of determining whether it is you or Prof. van Pelt who edited the quote in the manner it is presented (I do not own his book), I am sending him a blind courtesy copy of this e-mail.

Turning to the quotes from the Forward, I see words in brackets and again wonder if the quote is genuine and contextualized. Luckily, this is a publication that I do have at my disposal. Here is the entire paragraph from Rabbi Yoffie (note the spelling):

"We note with horror the monstrous canards that continue to circulate in the Arab and Muslim worlds, including the charge that Jews rule the world and are to blame for the September 11 terrorist attacks. And in Europe, which bears the mark of Cain for its complicity in the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict has become a means of absolving guilt. In turning Israelis from victims into Nazis, they seek to cleanse their consciences by casting their sins upon us."

Rabbi Yoffie is remarking on a significant rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric and activity in Europe since September 11, 2001, specifically the ridiculous claims that Jews, the Mossad, Israel, what have you, carried out the attacks, warned Jews and Israelis not to go to work that day, etc. And what's he's saying beyond that, which I commend you for quoting accurately (if you remain a bit rabid in your need to point out obvious meanings in brackets to create polar oppositions, and you do remove the context), is that many Europeans are expressing an anti-Semitism still felt despite the general absence of Jews from Europe since World War II and using the Arab-Israeli conflict as an excuse to vent that feeling. I agree with Rabbi Yoffie that, were there no Arab-Israeli conflict, some Europeans and Middle Easterners would need to create some conflict to be able to point their fingers at Jews.

Israel's hard-handed military actions are condemned uniformly (as they wellshould be -- there's no reason to drop one-ton bombs on buildings in denselypopulated areas), but suicide bombings are justified in the most disgusting ways. A significant double standard exists with regard to European reporting on Israeli and Palestinian atrocities. Many publications in Europe that published articles on a "massacre" in Jenin (that ended up numbering fewer that ten non-combatant Palestinian dead) never retracted the stories when they were uniformly and by non-biased third parties shown to be patently untrue. You know what that is, Mr. Grubach? That is blood libel. And you know who created the blood libel? Europeans "Christians" did.

This is not to point a finger at Christian Europeans as a massive group and call them bad. But, again, the relationship between European Christianity and violent anti-Semitism cannot be dismissed with the wave of an aggrieved hand when you state that you are offended by Rabbi Yoffie's words. No serious scholar would deny the history of European Jewry as one of repeated victimization at the hands of religiously charged Jew-haters.

You say that Rabbi Yoffie's words, like Wiesel's, "cause pain to non-Jewish Europeans." Do they? Do non-Jewish Europeans even know who he is? I didn't until a day or so ago, when he was mentioned in an article published on Salon.com. And I'm an American Jew. I'm not Reform -- I'm Conservative. But I couldn't tell you the head of the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Judaism's ruling body) either. So you're claiming that non-Jews a continent away are being harmed by these words? Really?

This is why your analogy is false. It is false because it is based on the idea that the statements of these two men (and people who offer similar opinions) have the same impact on Christian Europeans as the words of Holocaust deniers have on Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their families. It's not even close. It's the difference between, on the one hand, dropping a piece of scrap paper on a soiled city street, and, on the other, urinating on graves. Your suggestion of how to level the playing field -- either having countries drop these laws or criminalizing "promotion of Holocaust ideology" (whatever that is)-- is laughable.

Furthermore, the laws we are discussing here are not solely targeted at deniers of the Jewish Holocaust. The laws in France have been used againstthose who would deny the crimes of the Young Turks against ethnic Armenians during World War I. The law in Poland not only prevents one from denying the Nazi Holocaust, but also the crimes of the communist regime of 1945 to 1989. So here you're just plain incorrect.

Your use of Kevin MacDonald as an expert is humorous because he is an anti-Semite of the biological kind, believing that Jews are the way we supposedly are because of our genetics and not external circumstances. Dr. MacDonald once wrote in an e-mail to me that he found it hard to believe I was not ethnically Ashkenazic given my attitude toward him. I told him, in return, that I am a second-degree Mischling, which I am.

I think that you correctly identify a slippery slope fallacy in Mr. Guttenplan's observations about the ultimate outcome of Holocaust denial, but it cannot be reasonably denied that public exhortations to violence, particularly over the radio, were a major factor in the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. And, furthermore, I agree that banning Holocaust denial ultimately wins it more sympathizers than detractors. But the thing that you don't say -- the thing that no "revisionist" dare utter, is that the vast majority of Holocaust deniers are already National Socialists, sympathizers with National Socialists, anti-Semites of the most virulent type, and haters of Jews wherever they live. Bradley Smith, himself a denier, says it best:

"Revisionists have our own taboos. It is taboo to criticize the published writings or statements of revisionists who admire Hitler and the Hitlerian regime. It is taboo to publicly question the racialist arguments of specific revisionists. Taboo to argue publicly against the anti-semitism that exists among revisionists. It is not that we cannot do it, or occasionally do not do it, but we understand that when we do we will break the taboo against doing it, and we’ll suffer the consequences.

Clearly you're either suffering under the same taboo or you are one of the aforementioned group of Nazi sympathizers, Jew-haters, and the like.

One more observation on your citation of sources before addressing your conclusion: You cite Winfried Brugger and then Germany's law against denying the Holocaust as a defense against Holocaust denial charges as if the speaker were the same. It is not the same speaker. The speaker in the second case is Zundel's attorney, Jurgen Rieger, and not Brugger. I do agree that lawyers should be able to try this tactic in Germany, however. It worked so well for David Irving when he sued Deborah Lipstadt, did it not?

Your closing follows from your earlier assumption that the Holocaust can be disproved. I suggest you follow the below link:

http://p102.ezboard.com/frodohforumfrm23.showMessage?topicID=18.topic

Here a group of anti-deniers point out that there is no reasonable way to explain how sixty-nine SS witnesses, twenty survivors, the Vergasungskeller memo, gas-tight doors with peepholes, induction shafts in blueprints for rooms known to be gas chambers, the excessive cremation capacity of Auschwitz, photographs of pit burnings, tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the war along with records that indicate they were sent to Auschwitz,the utter destruction of Yiddish culture in Europe during the war, and thehomicidal outbursts of the Nazi leadership can point to any other conclusionthan the normative history of the Holocaust unless one violates the principle of Occam's razor. No other theory other than the true one -- that the Nazis murdered Jews in the millions -- can address all that evidence without needing extra assumptions such as conspiracies, forged documents, etc.

Or perhaps you can offer the explanation, Mr. Grubach?

Andrew E. Mathis, Ph.D.
The Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org/

The above views are my own are do not represent the official views of the Holocaust History Project or any of its individual members, except myself.

Folks, I hope many of you will take this as a plug and check out Andrew's blog when he returns in January. (If I can't plug my friends, what use is achieving a surprisingly high visit count, eh?)

More "international appeal"

A couple of days ago, following PZ's lead, I looked at my Sitemeter readings to see what proportion of my audience comes from outside the U.S. What I didn't realize at the time is that SiteMeter only tracks your last 100 visits while calculating this. Depending upon one's traffic, this can lead to potentially wild swings in the percentages, considering that half the world is asleep at any given time and the percentage coming from each part of the globe may vary a lot depending upon what time of the day it is there. The version I originally posted was from around 2 AM EST. (As you recall, I was putting the finishing touches on a grant.) However, the reading is much different at different times. For instance, here is around 7:30 AM EST yesterday:

There, now. How's that for a broader international appeal? Also, suddenly my U.K. readership is much higher, which makes sense because it's around 12:30 PM there.

What I'd really like to see is a much larger sampling, to get a truer version of what the real percentages are that doesn't depend so much on the time of day, but I guess I don't care about it enough to pay SiteMeter for its SiteMeter Plus package.

Kong Kicks Ass

Via my sister, I discover that Kong Kicks Ass.

He really, truly does. Just try it and see.

Speaking of Kong, I saw the trailer for the new Peter Jackson version of King Kong at the theaters not too long ago. This movie looks as though it will truly kick ass.

How to make movies more "Christian"

There were a couple of stories on the news last week about how Hollywood, having seen the success of The Passion of the Christ, is trying to court Christians, specifically in the context of the new movie version of the first book in the Narnia series. This reminded me of a post I saw a few weeks ago about how Hollywood could achieve that:

Let's make all the regular crappy remakes as well as a whole new crop of Christian remakes of mainstream films. Would that solve this growing "problem?" I'll even give some hungry Hollywood producers the first Jesus-esque ideas in 5 Ways We Can Randomly Put Jesus In Mainstream Movies To Make Them More Christian-y

Back to the Future (But with Jesus)?

I might go and see that.

Skeptics' Circle reminder

Just a reminder to everyone: The Twenty-Third Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will be held at Circadiana on Thursday, December 8. Get your entries to Bora by the evening of December 7 and then join him for another round of great skeptical blogging.

Christmas is coming and guess who's here...

December posed a problem.

I had been debating how to handle this month. As you may or may not know, on or about the first of every month, it's become a bit of a tradition around here to be paid a visit by what has become the de facto mascot of this blog. When I first wrote about him last December in a post about strange things I've gotten from pharmaceutical reps, I had little idea how prominent a role he would come to play or how popular he would become. He kind of got out of hand.

As December approached, I realized that this would be EneMan's last appearance in 2005. It's hard to believe it's been over 11 months since he first showed up. For the last month or so, I had been concerned about what would be in store for 2006. You see, I hadn't received the latest EneMan Calendar as of early this week and was starting to get worried that somehow I had dropped off Fleet Pharmaceutical's mailing list. (Maybe someone from their PR department found out who I was and that I was appropriating their company mascot and didn't like it, I speculated. I started wondering if I'd have to start calling the Fleet rep or even think about retiring a guy who likes what he does entirely too much. (Just look at the silly smile that's always plastered on his face.) If I didn't get my calendar, the only other option would be to recycle old pictures, and I didn't want to do that. Also, consider this. If EneMan were to be retired, the Hitler Zombie is waiting in the wings to take over the mascot slot, and, believe me, no one wants that. For you Conan O'Brien fans, it would be kind of like the Masturbating Bear taking over for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Or worse.

Nonetheless, regardless of whether or not I had received the 2006 EneMan Calendar, it was still obvious that I had to stick with a holiday theme. While PZ is advocating celebrating a holiday known as Cephalodmas (yes, his fixation with cephalopods is getting a bit out of hand), in contrast, Respectful Insolence's intrepid blog mascot, that dedicated defender of colon health, that big, green--well--bottle is a bit more of a conventional sort of fellow. Yes, the holidays are just around the corner, and he's getting ready. In fact, he's so into the spirit of things, as you can see, that he neglected to turn in a column debunking some dubious treatment or other. In fact, I'm a bit disappointed, as I had wanted to send him over to pay a visit (dressed in his Santa Claus suit, of course) to a certain pesky cybersquatter, who, given his behavior of late, certainly seems as though he would probably benefit greatly from EneMan's ministrations.

But no, I couldn't do that to him (EneMan, that is). The poor guy'd probably be traumatized for life. He is a gentle soul, you know. Just look below.

December 2002

December 2004

December 2005

How could I subject such a happy-go-lucky soul to someone like him who shall no longer be named on this blog?

POSTSCRIPT: Fortunately, the other day, a large envelope arrived at my office from Fleet Pharmaceuticals. I ripped into it.

Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!

It was the 2006 calendar! Fleet hadn't abandoned Orac after all. And, like last year's calendar, this year's calendar has a theme. You may recall that the theme for 2005 was "EneMan Travels the World." Personally, I thought it was a bit dull. The 2006 theme, however, shows real promise. Ask yourself: How could EneMan top traveling the world and being photographed in all sorts of famous locales?

Here's a hint:

You know, these guys putting together these calendars are getting stranger and stranger each year. However, this does give me a wicked idea, a wicked, wonderful, awful idea.

Oh, Sha-aron! It might be time for me to think about asking you to let me host the History Carnival again. What do you think?

Muahahahahahahaha!

Finally, as always, here is a list of all the past appearances of EneMan, for those of you new to the phenomenon:

November 2005

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

History Carnival XXI

The History Carnival XXI has been posted over at Clews: The Historic True Crime Blog. Great stuff, as usual.

In which grant writing forces me to steal from PZ...

Sorry, all, but I've been up quite late two days in a row putting on the finishing touches on a grant application. Yesterday's post on HIV denialists somehow got out of hand, becoming far longer than I had intended. It also kept me up an hour later than I had to be. Have you ever, after working really late on a big project, been so wired that you didn't feel at all sleepy? Such was my situation last night at around 3 AM, when I couldn't stand looking at the same text yet another time. This lead to me taking nearly an hour to add to what I had started a couple of days ago as an intended plug of Trent's article, resulting in a much longer article than originally intended.

Tonight--or should I say "this morning"--the situation is different in that I'm now quite tired. Apparently my training from surgical residency days plus my advancing years have sapped my ability to deal with the prodigious levels of sleep deprivation that I used to subject myself to on a routine basis. Consequently, I'm just going to respond briefly to a meme that PZ Myers seems to be starting, in which, after posting his SiteMeter stats for percentages of visitors from various nations, he asks:

Any other webloggers out there want to share their political inclinations and international appeal?

Why the heck not? It's been weeks since I even bothered to check that part of my SiteMeter logs. So, here it is:

I guess my "international appeal" isn't as great as PZ's. 84% of my visits come from North America. There are still a couple of surprises. For one thing, I didn't think there was such a big Australian and New Zealand contingent in my readership. For another thing, I'm surprised that my U.K. readership is so small.

As for my politics, well, let's just say I'm a bit to the right of PZ.

Oh, and don't worry. I haven't forgotten about the usual visitor who shows up around the first of each month. I'm just too tired to scan the necessary pictures right now...