CAM, Anti-Vax loons and the Morons at Merck

I am more than a little pissed after reading this post, which I found through Greg Laden. I am pissed because I have become increasingly involved with fighting non-evidence based medicine, mostly with people around me. I don't really write about it much, though I have begun thinking that I should. I haven't really felt the need to, because there are a lot of great medical bloggers out there who do such a fantastic job of it - several of whom are linked in my sidebar. In particular, Orac, PalMD, Mark Hoofnagle and the great people at Science Based Medicine do one hell of a job tearing down the veneer of crap and exposing it for what it is.

Here's the issue I have. I'm a reasonably intelligent person, a bit above average even. Yet I am also what I like to call, pathologically credulous. I have fallen into remarkable amounts of magical thinking over the years and not because I'm dumb. In fact part of it is because I tend not to assume that something is true, just because everyone else says it is. And my relationship with non-evidence based "medicine" was largely grounded in the idea that evidence based medicine is largely profit based and therefore largely corrupt. What wasn't so apparent to me at the time, was that a lot of the bullshit that I was falling into was just as profit based and much of it was even more corrupt - though much of the corruption was a very different sort. I also fell into a lot of the bullshit because many of the claims were made by people who also made claims that were easily verifiable - they fostered my trust and I believed what they had to say about things that weren't so easily verifiable.

And that is the key to sucking people into so called alternative medicine. Efficacy by association. Throwing plant medicines that actually have some degree of efficacy (largely because many pharmaceuticals are derived from plant sources) into the mix, even though this can actually be quite dangerous in some cases (a whole post of its own sometime). Throwing legitimate medical treatments in, but using them for things they simply aren't called for - such as chelation therapy. It makes it easier to sell people on flat out bullshit. Things like osteopathy, homeopathy and energy medicine - things that are not only not supported by evidence, but which are flat out absurd on their face. Things that are based on nothing more than magical thinking.

It's bad enough that some of these "medicines" can be dangerous in and of themselves - either because the actual treatment is harmful, or more often, because the treatment is used in place of evidence based medicine. But it doesn't stop there. There is a very dark side to this, with insane and deadly notions like HIV/AIDS denialism, denial of the germ theory of disease, the anti-vaccine movement and anti-chemotherapy proponents. People actually die because of this complete and utter bullshit.

Another reason it is easy for some people to fall into magical thinking in regards to medicine, is because of the perception that evidence based medicine is mostly based on therapies developed by corrupt pharmaceutical companies. Most people don't start out believing that, but I think that most people do recognize that pharmaceutical companies and for that matter, medical science in general, is not immune to corruption. And I think that most people recognize that sometimes that corruption includes maliciously covering evidence that companies wish to avoid becoming public. This makes it rather easy for some people to buy the CAM line that critics of CAM and even fringe CAM ideas, are simply shills for Big Pharma - an evil bogyman that's out to addict people to their medicines and cast them aside when they've been poisoned by them. From there it isn't much of a trek to believing that all evidence based medicine is evile and that doctors are merely merchants of death, the death manufactured by Big Pharma.

This is why I am so very angry at Merck and the doctors that contributed to their advertising rag, disguised as a legitimate science journal*. The doctor involved should should face sanctions. And Merck should be fined heavily by the FDA. Things that would happen, if we lived in a reasonable world, in a reasonable country with reasonable oversight. There is something very wrong with a system where this can happen and the people involved don't even understand that they did something wrong. This is absolutely and categorically disgusting and unconscionable.

But the idea that this somehow validates the proponents of woo, the peddlers of magical thinking in the guise of medicine, is a logical fallacy and a rather obvious one - if not also one that is easy to accept. Just because another pharmaceutical company and some doctors were really damned stupid and highly unethical, does not mean that all of science based medicine is. And there are several doctors and scientists out there who would like to make sure you know that this is not the mainstream of science based medicine. Some of them have even written about this....


Respectful Insolence

Adventures in Ethics and Science


Dr. Isis

Stranger Fruit

Greg Laden

*I would also note that I am more disappointed in Elsevier for publishing this bullshit, than I am with Merck and the people involved from their end. That they would choose to put out this kind of garbage reflects poorly on them and while it may be a while yet before I am publishing papers, this will certainly reflect on my decisions about where to publish.

Sorry about the silence

Complete and utter chaos, would be an understatement. Life is absolutely insane these days. But I do have several issues that have been grinding at me, that I hope to hit on soonish. Not sure what the priorities will come out as, but here are the topics;

The abolition of marriage as a civil institution, beyond marriage equality for GLTs. More and more, I am finding that I am far from alone on this. I have a lot to say on this issue, but in short, even allowing gay marriage, would still restrict marriage rights to those who are in, or are willing to claim to be in a romantic relationship. I for one, find this ridiculous.

The absurdity of simplistic dichotomies (to steal a phrase from my brother). As the primaries are getting into full steam, the stench of partisan politics is enough to make the strongest of iron stomachs retch. From republicrats, to the conservative/liberal dichotomy, where do I fit in? Where do you? When you really think about it, do the labels we are pegged with really fit, even if they are self imposed? I am prochoice, progayrights, for ending the drug war and believe in a comprehensive, if a not so comfy welfare state. I am also progun, fiscally conservative and dead against affirmative action.

Private security contractors in America. Another topic my bro has written a lot about lately, I would like to hit on it from a different angle. Though this article does a particularly great job of expressing what the America with PSC's might look like, I think it's important to look at where they already are. Do you have PSC's operating in your towns business district? Portland does and it is a problem.

The War on Vice. Because gods know, the guy down the street smoking a joint is causing irreparable damage to your lifestyle. Especially if he has a hooker once in a while. And that friendly poker game in his basement once a week, how dare he skirt the state and native monopoly on gambling. So lets spend billions upon billions annually, persecuting these folks. Lets continue to incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other country* in the world. Yeah! We're number one!

*Keeping in mind that China tends to execute, rather than incarcerate. And they're not alone.

There are these and more. Including more on ADHD, bipolar and neurodiversity. More discussions of rights in the abstract. More thoughts on euthanasia. More about denialism. And a discussion about about CAM "medicine" and a (hopefully) soon to be published print article, by your's truly. Indeed, if all goes well, I will have a print article out, about the HIV/AIDS denial (and denialism in general) as well as the CAM article.

So what do you think I should focus on first?

By and by, my baby has discovered the things that flop around him are hands and he controls them. He has also started smiling and giggling, though the giggles are rather a disturbing sound. Unfortunately, he seems to have some distaste for the camera, so the smiles are yet unrecorded.
Homeschooling is definitely starting to come together, though it is slow and unweildy as of yet. But we have found even more resources and are starting to get a stride.