There was a great deal of laughter on Twitter last night when this panicky e-mail landed in my inbox, leaked by a friend who was one of the recipients, and which I evilly passed on to several dozen skeptics:
Hi everyone
One of the students at college has brought the message below to our attention; so I am passing it on to everybody.
Please read and forward on to people you think may be interested.
Thanks xx Anna
Dear EVERYONE,
This is urgent. TOP PRIORITY!!! The deadline is the 18th of February. The practice of homeopathy by lay homeopaths is at stake, and if the MHRA changes the wording to the document mentioned below, we will ...not be allowed to practice any longer. This will take effect immediately. The new wording which is being suggested by sense against science, and is being considered by the MHRA will effectively put us in catch 22 so that we can no longer give out remedies - basically, it is about the difference between dispensing and prescribing. all homeopaths dispense remedies as a normal part of daily practice. the new rules will mean that it will be illegal to dispense without a license, and only a qualified doctor can make a prescription. without the ability to dispense, all we can do is sit and listen to people's problems, but can do nothing else about it. this will also have an affect on the homeopathic pharmacies, who will only be allowed to dispense licensed remedies (currently, only arnica and possibly one or two others are licensed) unless prescribed by a physician, and this means the potential loss of thousands of remedies. The key words in the version we want, which help keep homeopathy going are "...use within the homeopathic tradition". This avoids the need to prove the science behind prescribing of remedies and allows us to practise as normal.
Could you please send this template to EVERYONE and inundate Ms Farmer with requests to keep the wording as shown below, so that homeopaths can continue to practise homeopathy legally.
Please contact everyone on your database, if you are a homeopath, please send it in yourself and contact all your patients to do the same. we can counteract sense about science with numbers. we just proved we have greater numbers than they do, and that when we mobilise, we can beat them at their own game. last week, they started a poll against homeopathy in an irish newspaper ( see link - http://www.thejournal.ie/do-you-have-faith-in-homeopathy-2011-02/?voted=1) and inundated it with votes against. it was 435 against 67 for. we started a campaign on facebook, and within 24 hours, we shifted the balance of power to what you see here in the link - 67% for 27% against. they gave up and went away with their tails between their legs, and we showed them that people don't want what they have to offer.
Please help us to do this again. many people don't realise this new risk we are facing. it only takes a minute to copy and paste the below template and email it. Apologies in advance if you have acted on this already.
Thank you to everyone in advance - i know if we all work together, we can beat this.
andrea.farmer@mhra.gsi.gov.uk
Ms Andrea Farmer
MHRA, Area 5M
151 Buckingham Palace Road
Victoria, London SW1W 9SZ
Dear Ms Farmer,
I am writing to you about the MHRA consultation document entitled; Review of Medicines Act 1968: informal consultation on issues relating to the PLR regime and homeopathy. As a member of the public who chooses to use homeopathy and benefits from its application/practicing homeopath (delete as applicable), I am deeply concerned by the current orchestrated campaign against homeopathy, which is led by a self-appointed pressure group, Sense About Science, and a number of bloggers.
I consider it to be a fundamental right of any citizen living in a country which purports to be a democracy, to have ready access to the healthcare option of their choice. This includes homeopathy, which as you know is included in the original NHS charter.
I find your statement below acceptable for the new registration labels, and can see no reason to change this statement:
"A homeopathic medicinal product licensed only on the basis of safety, quality and use within the homeopathic tradition"
Yours sincerely,
I'll completely ignore the whole business of competitive polljacking. It's something I find entirely tiresome and pointless - any fool can play at that game and they generally do. As Bertrand Russell said: "The fact that a belief has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not absolutely absurd" - and polljacks are hardly proportional census reports. So I'll start with the fact that I guess I can add two homeopathy proofs:
ARGUMENT FROM COMMAND OF ENGLISH
1) My spelling, punctuation and grammar are appalling.
2) This is because I have been concentrating on homeopathy, which is more important.
3) You only notice because you are petty.
4) And also because you have nothing important on your mind.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGNS
1) Some self-appointed pressure groups and bloggers can orchestrate campaigns.
2) They are self-appointed and therefore wrong.
3) Therefore, their campaigns are wrong, as is the orchestration.
4) I know if we work together we can beat this.
5) Therefore, our campaigns and orchestration are right.
6) Therefore, homeopathy works.
If I understand right, the proposal that has so upset this student is summarised here (feel free to sign - at the time of writing there is a short time left in which to do so). The actual document, which may be the source of the panic, is here.
The points in question are as follows. Point 23 states: "“The MHRA will review the labelling requirements under the NRS to ensure that these deliver clarity as to the status of products and their composition" (i.e. that the composition is sugar and water?).
And the fuss is, I think, over the next three points:
24. The form of wording currently used on the labelling and in the accompanying patient information leaflet under the NRS is
“A homeopathic medicinal product used within the homeopathic tradition for the symptomatic relief of ….”
25. MHRA considers there is scope for this information to be made more specific, particularly for the benefit of those consumers who may be less familiar with the nature of homeopathy. We propose the following more explicit form of wording should be used, on the outer packaging and patient information leaflet:
“A homeopathic medicinal product licensed only on the basis of safety, quality and use within the homeopathic tradition”
26. Information about indications would read:
“A homeopathic medicinal product used within the homeopathic tradition for the symptomatic relief of……”
So as you see, homeopathy is hardly being illegalised. I'm not sure the proposed sentence in point 25 will actually change anything - how many people take the slightest notice of the fact that all adverts for horoscope telephone numbers in newspapers have the disclaimer "For entertainment purporses only"? And that in itself is, in my opinion, a great deal clearer. I fear people need a great deal more education to read label-ese - and if that's taught in schools, I'm afraid I missed it.
That the student ends the first pargraph (the one beginning with "URGENT! TOP PRIORITY!") with "this avoids the need to prove the science behind prescribing of remedies and allows us to practice as normal" rather sums up the whole business.
But what also sums it up is that the whole thing was accepted without question by the professor and passed on just like that. Imagine if a student of any other subject wrote to a professor with a great deal of misinformation, asking for everyone to be informed and to act against the supposed enemy, and the professor, rather than correcting the student or recommending a little more research, simply went ahead! Not only would this be bad practice to the rest of their students and colleagues and the whole academic community, but it would be effectively humiliating the student!
I quote a couple of responses people made when I forwarded on the e-mail to them:
"The MHRA will not change the rules on Friday; homeopaths will still be able to sell their sugar pills. The MHRA are proposing changing the wording for National Rules products. There is ONE such product: Nelson's Arnicare. The changes they (or at least Big Quacka) should be more worried are the revoking of all Product Licences of Right, because with that goes the right to claim it's good for minor and serious medical conditions. She either has not read the consultation document or has completely misunderstood it."
"I'm afraid I saw this as an example of a student getting hold of the wrong end of a stick and leaping into the fray wielding it - even if the fray is entirely of the student's imagining. Very poor that an administrator has picked it up and run with it though. Very professional, right down to the xx. Poor Ms Farmer, who will be inundated with these emails - no doubt many of them still with 'delete as appropriate' in them - and will no doubt form her own opinion of whose is the orchestrated campaign."
You can read more at Zeno's Blog, Don't Homeopanic at Crispian's, and at the Quackometer.
In the kind of democracy the student and the unquestioning professor claim we should have, anyone can dispense any remedy, regardless of what it does - their own faith and shunning of explanations is evidence enough that they are "helping". Is that really the kind of democracy we want? To put it another way, would you want your own doctor to give you whatever vaccinations he or she fancies; your schoolteacher to teach your child any old thing such as religious extremism, rolling down grassy banks or lion-taming? Just the way most people agree on a set of general manners, I think it's only sensible to agree on a set of medical rules - and I'm afraid science, not salespeople's hurt feelings, is the better driver of medicine's progress.
Showing posts with label Health/Medicine/Science Versus Nonsense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health/Medicine/Science Versus Nonsense. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
We don't have to be either workers or a drain
Today there are enough stories about neglect in our care and health services to make you cry. The NHS "fails to treat the elderly with care and respect," says the BBC, adding four reports by witnesses (workers and patients' relatives) telling condemning stories. "Hungry, thirsty, unwashed . . . Elderly people treated by the NHS were denied even the most basic standards of care," says the Independent.
Before that, Johann Hari wrote a moving piece on the neglect his grandmother went through in one care home after another - and, after the overwhelming response the article received, evidently interviewed many people to search for a solution, which he presents here. And although I loathe to link to the Daily Mail, this account by a nurse of the massive culture change her profession has undergone is infinitely worth a read.
The stories she tells are infuriating - heartbreaking for anyone who might have been through this themselves, or knows anyone else who has - and also, although this sounds less impressive but is true all the same, desperation-inducing to someone like me, who has worked in the NHS and whose immediate family still does. Making people better is something that many doctors, nurses and others give their lives to. Someone in my family is (and has been for many years) on call 24 hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and is often at work ten or twelve hours a day to make sure the patients get everything they need on top of the mountains of unutterably pointless, illogical and ill-thought-out - and immediately forgotten, to add insult to injury - forms the managers demand he spends hours a day filling in. It's aged him rapidly. And nothing distresses him, or the others, more than learning of mistakes or poor care.
Joan Woodcock, the author who wrote the article in the Daily Mail, does not mince her words about where things have gone wrong:
I've had a couple of good blogs pointed out to me over Twitter. One called BillyNoJob remarks on a conclusion by John Humphrys: "This is not about professional incompetence. It is about inhumanity, lack of compassion, and the most basic failure of respect for other people." Joan Woodcock and Johann Hari's articles amount to the same thing. BillyNoJob adds, unlike them, that he has witnessed many patients treating hospital staff with rudeness and contempt, too. This is especially so when many staff are immigrants, since care is not - as Johann Hari says, too - rewarding or a profession to which Britons are encouraged to aspire.
This shows two problems: firstly that (as Johann Hari also mentions) care is not well-paid, rewarding or a profession to which Britons are in the least encouraged to aspire; secondly the old business of scapegoating. It is a genuine problem when a health worker's English is not very good, not only in medical terms but in euphemisms and non-verbal messages patients are likely to use a lot in terms of their illness and on intimate subjects. This may be a contributing factor; but the atmosphere of distrust and dislike that the tabloids encourage does not get anyone anywhere.
Johann Hari, among others, emphasises the lack of niceness health care workers show - indeed have time to show - to patients who are bored, frustrated, and have nobody to talk to. This lack of time is ruining things for "Militant Nurse", whose outside life and family and doubtless her own health and energy are suffering as she has to work unpaid overtime just to get even the basic jobs done. The ward is horrifyingly understaffed. She is in a state of understandable rage, made all the worse when the patients misinterpret her shortage of time as a lack of caring, and are grateful to the only other worker who is not equipped with the skills of a nurse and as a consequence does have time to make them a cup of tea. Reading her blog, one wonders what keeps any nurse from looking for another job - other than the lack of other jobs available.
Among lack of time and lack of niceness also lies a lack of willingness to take responsibility. Joan Woodcock's article shows how no one person seems to be responsible for any particular task, and various staff are all too keen to say, "That's X's job, not mine" - and therefore it doesn't get done. "Militant Nurse" notes that the consequence of this is that when a problem has to be addressed, whoever happens to be on the ward when the manager arrives gets the blame.
This is a difficult issue, but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. (And if I'm wrong, it's better that I at least thought about it than that I accepted possibly flawed conclusions.) Ducking responsibility shows nervousness and a lack of empowerment. A lack of empowerment stems from general distrust. I write about that more here. In short, I get the feeling that the emphasis is on protecting oneself and one's job (which is after all usually one's family's lifeline). The point of the job has been lost in the worry about basic survival, and that makes people selfish and helpless. Maybe selfishness and helplessness is rewarded more than doing the job is. Maybe helplessness looks inoffensive to those who don't like their colleagues to answer back.
A few years ago, in Cornwall, I knew a Hungarian lady who was a care worker - and an academic. She was doing the care work to fund the academia, and she cared a great deal about both. She mentioned at one time that it was difficult to get a new job not because of her inexperience, but quite the opposite. "They prefer naive young girls who don't know what it involves, because they think the rest of us will leave," she explained to me. "I know what it involves - it involves a lot of pee and poo." (She looked after adults with mental health problems.)
I mentioned flawed conclusions just now, and it is important to note that the ombudsman's report was based on ten cases. This looks like I'm making excuses, I know, but we can't judge the entire NHS on ten cases, nor on the four highlighted by the BBC. Reports like Joan Woodcock's, I think, are worth taking seriously (though not as all-encompassing) despite being by only one individual, for she has seen several decades pass and umpteen thousand patients.
Doubtless this report will be sprung on by circling vultures: private companies all too ready to take over; probably alternative medicine sellers who'll claim that their product "treats the whole individual" just as these public services evidently are not; and the government itself, to demonstrate that "the NHS is not working". But the NHS did work for a long time and in most cases it still does - good treatment just doesn't make headlines! Privatising would solve little or none of the above. What's so good about being "treated like a customer"? It only means a hierarchy will be created rather than efficiency - the simpler your disease and the fatter your wallet, the better care you'll get. And vice versa.
You may wonder why these issues worry a 28-year-old so much. It may be partly my medical family, but also because I've known long-term illness for myself - the weakness, the helplessness, the lack of knowledge about your future. For some time, I didn't know if I'd ever get better. I wondered if death would be the better option. Therefore, the thought of getting old and going to one of those care homes absolutely terrifies me - yet it's something that a great many of us will actually have to face.
The worst thing about a long-term illness is feeling useless, a drain on other people, unable to give anything, only to take. I'm really not happy when I'm only taking and not giving - and I don't say this because I think I'm a saint or something, I think that's actually what nearly everybody is like (it just makes you look silly or smug to say so). And I think it's something that we feel more the older we get, and the more we get accustomed we become to working and to looking after others. Who wants to rely on others for everything when they've lived 70 or 80 or 90 years and have worked hard and given a great deal for most of them?
It's peculiar how society is divided very strongly into two classes of people now: those who are working and those who are not. Those who are working are seen as the only useful ones. Those who are not are, frankly, a problem, and their numbers should be brought down. If they can't find a job, they're scum - they should do voluntary work not even for minimum wage, or starve. If they're not working because they're studying, they should pay vast sums - the assumption here being that the studying will only benefit them, not society as a whole. If they're not working because they're too young or too old, they are a pest and a drain because they're taking up other people's resources - and we must find ways to economise on this wasteful problem. Carers are treated shabbily enough. Parents are finding it increasingly hard to find somewhere to put their children while they work - and they're being threatened with very severe punishments if they want to look after their children themselves. (This sort of thing has been going on for some time - I recall there was a plan to punish parents who do not get a job as soon as their child turns one, and another once their child turns three, and another once their child turns seven, and another once their child turns ten. Plans generally come to nothing - in autumn 2007, as a trainee teacher, I was told that by autumn 2008 all schools would legally have to be open until 8pm for babysitting purposes, which of course by autumn 2008 had been completely forgotten - but the constant stream of threats and promises is a constant source of uncertainty, inability to plan properly, and doubtless waste and great stress.)
In short, if you haven't got a job, you're an affront ro the economy - and the ratio of people looking after you to other useless people like you should be as unequal as we can possibly afford.
But having a job versus not having a job is not the only definition of useful. Do you remember that children's book from the 1860's, "What Katy Did"? Katy's sick cousin Helen told her that "a sick person can be the heart of the house", and that they have a unique advantage: "she is always on hand". The Victorian era was a time of vast productivity, and it was a time of masses of different roles taken in society. (I'm not saying it was a time of universal good or that everyone was well looked after.) Why should we all aim to be in the role of the worker? - and if we are not, why is it assumed our only role is as a drain?
If we do not assume that the young, sick, studying or elderly are basically society's unwanted baggage - if we think of them as people who want to give, rather than simply want to take and who we "ought to treat with more respect", I wonder if things would change?
I had this idea a few years ago. It's an amateur idea, if that. It's an idea that you may simply laugh off. It's an idea that has so many possible legal pitfalls that I doubt it would ever get off the ground. It may simply be decoration rather than addressing a fundamental problem. And it might really annoy those who know more than I do. But if I don't share it we will never find out. Here it is.
What about combining care of the very old with care of the very young? For example, a residential care home which doubles as a children's nursery by day? Yes, there would need to be separate areas. But imagine how nice for both parties to have the other one around. The children would have someone to run to if they'd made an amazing tower with blocks, or if they'd fallen and hurt their knee. The elderly residents - who had a "daily activity" in one of Johann Hari's grandmother's homes - would have a bunch of ready-made grandchildren to talk to and listen to, to teach to read, to share their memories with. And they need not look after them all the time!
Fine, this idea has a great deal of untested personal bias. People tend to move across the country now - I never got to know any of my grandparents at all well before they died. But when I was little, I adored the elderly. I knew they had to be treated gently, but for some reason I was convinced they were all magnificent and saintly. I have also never forgotten a passage in Torey Hayden's story "One Child" in which she brings a mute four-year-old to meet a nearly-mute elderly stroke victim, who becomes far more "animated" as soon as he is in the room. Once I started office work, my colleagues only had to bring a little one in for me to develop a huge grin and, if the child wanted to talk to me, to have my full attention and have me make paper aeroplanes for them. Teaching and looking after kids brings me joy like nothing else can. Also I have worked at a call centre where the sick and elderly rang me to book hospital transport, and almost all were so very lonely. I know it wouldn't suit all young or old people. But it's an idea worth thinking about, perhaps?
As well as less in the way of wild promises, inconsistent and target-obsessed management, and general inhumanity, I would like to see people who need care being treated more as people - not just in terms of what they should get, but what they can do. It would have vast effects on self-esteem and morale all around. In my idea, the children's education and social development would benefit, as would I hope the elderly people's happiness (and if they get fed up they should surely be able to retreat to a private sitting-room!). It would hopefully inspire a lot more friendships and family links - perhaps children's parents would be interested in how the elderly people are doing, too. It would stop people being segregated into classrooms, offices or care homes where they only people they meet are others exactly like themselves, which would have to be good for generating mutual respect all round.
Wishy-washy-wisfulness, or a lot more radical than privatisation? I don't pretend this is a solution to all ills. I just think it might be worth a try. If nothing else, my Hungarian carer friend thought the idea had promise - and some of the adults she looked after were helpless in some ways, yet able to find some form of in-depth hobbies and even employment in others. If you work in healthcare, or just care - or even if you don't - I'd be interested to hear what you think.
Before that, Johann Hari wrote a moving piece on the neglect his grandmother went through in one care home after another - and, after the overwhelming response the article received, evidently interviewed many people to search for a solution, which he presents here. And although I loathe to link to the Daily Mail, this account by a nurse of the massive culture change her profession has undergone is infinitely worth a read.
The stories she tells are infuriating - heartbreaking for anyone who might have been through this themselves, or knows anyone else who has - and also, although this sounds less impressive but is true all the same, desperation-inducing to someone like me, who has worked in the NHS and whose immediate family still does. Making people better is something that many doctors, nurses and others give their lives to. Someone in my family is (and has been for many years) on call 24 hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and is often at work ten or twelve hours a day to make sure the patients get everything they need on top of the mountains of unutterably pointless, illogical and ill-thought-out - and immediately forgotten, to add insult to injury - forms the managers demand he spends hours a day filling in. It's aged him rapidly. And nothing distresses him, or the others, more than learning of mistakes or poor care.
Joan Woodcock, the author who wrote the article in the Daily Mail, does not mince her words about where things have gone wrong:
I am sure that many of the new generation of nurses are as caring as we were. But what chance do they have of showing it when the hospitals in which they work are run not by experienced nurses but by bureaucrats?She adds: "When matrons were phased out at the end of the 1960s and replaced by managers, things soon began to slide. There was no longer any one person in charge of patient care in each hospital, no one with the authority and respect of those like [the strict and demanding matron]."
Too often these managers fail to realise that patients are people, not commodities, and that management skills acquired in banks and retail business don’t necessarily transfer to the running of NHS hospitals.
I've had a couple of good blogs pointed out to me over Twitter. One called BillyNoJob remarks on a conclusion by John Humphrys: "This is not about professional incompetence. It is about inhumanity, lack of compassion, and the most basic failure of respect for other people." Joan Woodcock and Johann Hari's articles amount to the same thing. BillyNoJob adds, unlike them, that he has witnessed many patients treating hospital staff with rudeness and contempt, too. This is especially so when many staff are immigrants, since care is not - as Johann Hari says, too - rewarding or a profession to which Britons are encouraged to aspire.
This shows two problems: firstly that (as Johann Hari also mentions) care is not well-paid, rewarding or a profession to which Britons are in the least encouraged to aspire; secondly the old business of scapegoating. It is a genuine problem when a health worker's English is not very good, not only in medical terms but in euphemisms and non-verbal messages patients are likely to use a lot in terms of their illness and on intimate subjects. This may be a contributing factor; but the atmosphere of distrust and dislike that the tabloids encourage does not get anyone anywhere.
Johann Hari, among others, emphasises the lack of niceness health care workers show - indeed have time to show - to patients who are bored, frustrated, and have nobody to talk to. This lack of time is ruining things for "Militant Nurse", whose outside life and family and doubtless her own health and energy are suffering as she has to work unpaid overtime just to get even the basic jobs done. The ward is horrifyingly understaffed. She is in a state of understandable rage, made all the worse when the patients misinterpret her shortage of time as a lack of caring, and are grateful to the only other worker who is not equipped with the skills of a nurse and as a consequence does have time to make them a cup of tea. Reading her blog, one wonders what keeps any nurse from looking for another job - other than the lack of other jobs available.
Among lack of time and lack of niceness also lies a lack of willingness to take responsibility. Joan Woodcock's article shows how no one person seems to be responsible for any particular task, and various staff are all too keen to say, "That's X's job, not mine" - and therefore it doesn't get done. "Militant Nurse" notes that the consequence of this is that when a problem has to be addressed, whoever happens to be on the ward when the manager arrives gets the blame.
This is a difficult issue, but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. (And if I'm wrong, it's better that I at least thought about it than that I accepted possibly flawed conclusions.) Ducking responsibility shows nervousness and a lack of empowerment. A lack of empowerment stems from general distrust. I write about that more here. In short, I get the feeling that the emphasis is on protecting oneself and one's job (which is after all usually one's family's lifeline). The point of the job has been lost in the worry about basic survival, and that makes people selfish and helpless. Maybe selfishness and helplessness is rewarded more than doing the job is. Maybe helplessness looks inoffensive to those who don't like their colleagues to answer back.
A few years ago, in Cornwall, I knew a Hungarian lady who was a care worker - and an academic. She was doing the care work to fund the academia, and she cared a great deal about both. She mentioned at one time that it was difficult to get a new job not because of her inexperience, but quite the opposite. "They prefer naive young girls who don't know what it involves, because they think the rest of us will leave," she explained to me. "I know what it involves - it involves a lot of pee and poo." (She looked after adults with mental health problems.)
I mentioned flawed conclusions just now, and it is important to note that the ombudsman's report was based on ten cases. This looks like I'm making excuses, I know, but we can't judge the entire NHS on ten cases, nor on the four highlighted by the BBC. Reports like Joan Woodcock's, I think, are worth taking seriously (though not as all-encompassing) despite being by only one individual, for she has seen several decades pass and umpteen thousand patients.
Doubtless this report will be sprung on by circling vultures: private companies all too ready to take over; probably alternative medicine sellers who'll claim that their product "treats the whole individual" just as these public services evidently are not; and the government itself, to demonstrate that "the NHS is not working". But the NHS did work for a long time and in most cases it still does - good treatment just doesn't make headlines! Privatising would solve little or none of the above. What's so good about being "treated like a customer"? It only means a hierarchy will be created rather than efficiency - the simpler your disease and the fatter your wallet, the better care you'll get. And vice versa.
You may wonder why these issues worry a 28-year-old so much. It may be partly my medical family, but also because I've known long-term illness for myself - the weakness, the helplessness, the lack of knowledge about your future. For some time, I didn't know if I'd ever get better. I wondered if death would be the better option. Therefore, the thought of getting old and going to one of those care homes absolutely terrifies me - yet it's something that a great many of us will actually have to face.
The worst thing about a long-term illness is feeling useless, a drain on other people, unable to give anything, only to take. I'm really not happy when I'm only taking and not giving - and I don't say this because I think I'm a saint or something, I think that's actually what nearly everybody is like (it just makes you look silly or smug to say so). And I think it's something that we feel more the older we get, and the more we get accustomed we become to working and to looking after others. Who wants to rely on others for everything when they've lived 70 or 80 or 90 years and have worked hard and given a great deal for most of them?
It's peculiar how society is divided very strongly into two classes of people now: those who are working and those who are not. Those who are working are seen as the only useful ones. Those who are not are, frankly, a problem, and their numbers should be brought down. If they can't find a job, they're scum - they should do voluntary work not even for minimum wage, or starve. If they're not working because they're studying, they should pay vast sums - the assumption here being that the studying will only benefit them, not society as a whole. If they're not working because they're too young or too old, they are a pest and a drain because they're taking up other people's resources - and we must find ways to economise on this wasteful problem. Carers are treated shabbily enough. Parents are finding it increasingly hard to find somewhere to put their children while they work - and they're being threatened with very severe punishments if they want to look after their children themselves. (This sort of thing has been going on for some time - I recall there was a plan to punish parents who do not get a job as soon as their child turns one, and another once their child turns three, and another once their child turns seven, and another once their child turns ten. Plans generally come to nothing - in autumn 2007, as a trainee teacher, I was told that by autumn 2008 all schools would legally have to be open until 8pm for babysitting purposes, which of course by autumn 2008 had been completely forgotten - but the constant stream of threats and promises is a constant source of uncertainty, inability to plan properly, and doubtless waste and great stress.)
In short, if you haven't got a job, you're an affront ro the economy - and the ratio of people looking after you to other useless people like you should be as unequal as we can possibly afford.
But having a job versus not having a job is not the only definition of useful. Do you remember that children's book from the 1860's, "What Katy Did"? Katy's sick cousin Helen told her that "a sick person can be the heart of the house", and that they have a unique advantage: "she is always on hand". The Victorian era was a time of vast productivity, and it was a time of masses of different roles taken in society. (I'm not saying it was a time of universal good or that everyone was well looked after.) Why should we all aim to be in the role of the worker? - and if we are not, why is it assumed our only role is as a drain?
If we do not assume that the young, sick, studying or elderly are basically society's unwanted baggage - if we think of them as people who want to give, rather than simply want to take and who we "ought to treat with more respect", I wonder if things would change?
I had this idea a few years ago. It's an amateur idea, if that. It's an idea that you may simply laugh off. It's an idea that has so many possible legal pitfalls that I doubt it would ever get off the ground. It may simply be decoration rather than addressing a fundamental problem. And it might really annoy those who know more than I do. But if I don't share it we will never find out. Here it is.
What about combining care of the very old with care of the very young? For example, a residential care home which doubles as a children's nursery by day? Yes, there would need to be separate areas. But imagine how nice for both parties to have the other one around. The children would have someone to run to if they'd made an amazing tower with blocks, or if they'd fallen and hurt their knee. The elderly residents - who had a "daily activity" in one of Johann Hari's grandmother's homes - would have a bunch of ready-made grandchildren to talk to and listen to, to teach to read, to share their memories with. And they need not look after them all the time!
Fine, this idea has a great deal of untested personal bias. People tend to move across the country now - I never got to know any of my grandparents at all well before they died. But when I was little, I adored the elderly. I knew they had to be treated gently, but for some reason I was convinced they were all magnificent and saintly. I have also never forgotten a passage in Torey Hayden's story "One Child" in which she brings a mute four-year-old to meet a nearly-mute elderly stroke victim, who becomes far more "animated" as soon as he is in the room. Once I started office work, my colleagues only had to bring a little one in for me to develop a huge grin and, if the child wanted to talk to me, to have my full attention and have me make paper aeroplanes for them. Teaching and looking after kids brings me joy like nothing else can. Also I have worked at a call centre where the sick and elderly rang me to book hospital transport, and almost all were so very lonely. I know it wouldn't suit all young or old people. But it's an idea worth thinking about, perhaps?
As well as less in the way of wild promises, inconsistent and target-obsessed management, and general inhumanity, I would like to see people who need care being treated more as people - not just in terms of what they should get, but what they can do. It would have vast effects on self-esteem and morale all around. In my idea, the children's education and social development would benefit, as would I hope the elderly people's happiness (and if they get fed up they should surely be able to retreat to a private sitting-room!). It would hopefully inspire a lot more friendships and family links - perhaps children's parents would be interested in how the elderly people are doing, too. It would stop people being segregated into classrooms, offices or care homes where they only people they meet are others exactly like themselves, which would have to be good for generating mutual respect all round.
Wishy-washy-wisfulness, or a lot more radical than privatisation? I don't pretend this is a solution to all ills. I just think it might be worth a try. If nothing else, my Hungarian carer friend thought the idea had promise - and some of the adults she looked after were helpless in some ways, yet able to find some form of in-depth hobbies and even employment in others. If you work in healthcare, or just care - or even if you don't - I'd be interested to hear what you think.
Sunday, 3 October 2010
They Protest!
OK, this is going to be a bit of a lazy link round-up, but I've been following two amusing but worrying stories over the weeks - those concerning our guests of honour at Cardiff Skeptics. One of these stories has just ended, and I wanted to put together an update.
First the one that isn't: the MMS saga, known on Twitter as #bleachgate. Although the hero of this saga is of course Rhys, I think the best place to start is Noodlemaz's in-depth investigation. It's pretty frightening. For more on the early episodes, check out LizDitz's link round-up (now we need a link round-up of link round-ups . . .).
To summarise, MMS, "miracle mineral solution", is basically bleach. People are sold it as a "cure" for anything from AIDS to Crohn's Disease, and are told that when they feel nausated that is the "toxins being released". Actually, when they feel nauseated it's because it's doing exactly what it does to everything else: oxidising it, which basically means destroying living tissue. Supporters who understand this much chemistry claim that it somehow magically selects pathogens in our bodies and leaves our own tissues alone. They also repeatedly claim that "THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CURED WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO THEM YOU BIG PHARMA SCOURGES" (etc), though have not provided any links to such stories - and obviously not to scientific studies.
That's because there aren't any. This is how they go about things - again, credit to Noodlemaz for finding this:
Martin Robbins wrote this brilliant article about MMS - both the forum incident and the worldwide state, both of which attracted a lot of comment. Several folks from the Crohn's Forum came along to offer their defences, and the replies to them made highly amusing reading. On a larger scale . . . look what's happened as a result, again by Martin Robbins.
I feel terrible about Africa when I think about it. I know it has a lot of problems of its own - the stories of mass rape in Darfur and children being killed as witches - and yet I can't help but feel that if it wasn't pushed into treaties that kept it as a recipient of aid rather than a participant in trade, among so much more, incidents like these would be fewer. Countries themselves, drawn up by Europeans, have very little to do with the people that populate them, who think of themselves as members of their tribe rather than citizens of their countries. (If anybody thinks I'm patronising anyone by saying this, it's not unique - I give you as a more local example certain folks in Cornwall who would boast for half an hour at a time about their Cornish ancestry and surnames as a means of putting me in my place when I lived there. I haven't got a direct link to source my Africa/countries comment, but a close relative lived in Africa for many years, and I recommend this in which it's mentioned - though it's hardly the focus.) That also makes Africa the perfect haven for those who wish to market their untested products and ideas which would be promptly stopped in their own countries, from anti-condom propaganda to MMS.
Onto more cheerful subjects, look what Rhys Morgan has done! Not a bad thing to start off such a huge campaign before even reaching 16. You can also hear him on the radio (if I remember rightly, about 17 minutes in) here. He's got a link round-up too (see what I mean about link round-ups . . .). The BBC report that there's now an official safety warning in this country, too. Those MMS adverts which keep appearing on Wordpress sites whenever the product is mentioned - I wonder how long they will stay?
All this has seriously rattled Jim Humble himself. Or at least, someone posing as him - you never know. Check out these comments early on in Rhys's blog . . . it's really quite surreal. Note that the first thing he does is advise Rhys not to speak publicly any more.
There's no point trying to convince him or his fanatical supporters, though. The best thing, in my opinion, is to try and educate the consumers and regulators. It's always the hardest, most costly solution, I hear a few people cry, isn't it? To round up as many people as possible, which will take the most time and the most resources. You could say the same of a scientific trial. Yet it seems worth it to me a thousand times over. Because putting in lots of time, money, resources and people is going to have thousands more good effects than just encouraging people not to drink bleach. Because this is very tied up with some of mankind's greatest problems, and there are no quick fixes to those.
(Humankind if you prefer, but I write it meaning the same thing.)
That story might only be just beginning. But here's one that's ended, at least this part of one. Councillor John Dixon's #stupidscientology tweet has been deemed to be in a private capacity. That is, he is entitled to tweet an obviously personal rather than Cardiff Council representing opinion.
WalesOnline and the Guardian have also reported on the case, and the latter has a brief follow-up on the disagreement of the Ombudsman. (You can read the Ombudsman's report a little way down Jack of Kent's blogpost here.) I recommend the comments of the Guardian website. I couldn't resist inserting a cheeky idea - the one about how, if he was representing his constituents, he was probably doing so quite accurately. A couple of comments above mine is the remark that whether John Dixon was cleared or not is beside the point for the scientologists - their aim was to make councils worry and waste their time, and therefore to discourage freedom of speech, rather than to punish John Dixon particularly.
The story coincided neatly with a Panorama documentary on scientology. I didn't watch it, and understand that while it was revealing about some of the strangeness of the cult, it didn't go into its practice of harrassing its critics. Why We Protest has revealed a most interesting e-mail sent around to scientologists on how to handle criticism on websites. I don't suggest this represents scientologists as a whole, and you know what? I also don't think it's likely to be terribly effective. (The tired part of me wonders if any comment on any news-related website is ever effective.)
On a lighter note, the Daily Mash and Crispian Jago have thrown their oars in for a good laugh. But best of all is John's guest post on Jack of Kent, which goes into the Paul Chambers case and Rhys's campaigning too.
It looks like the Internet is shaping things up for quite a lot of coordinated fighting from both sides of all controversy. Well, I suppose that's better than nothing . . .
First the one that isn't: the MMS saga, known on Twitter as #bleachgate. Although the hero of this saga is of course Rhys, I think the best place to start is Noodlemaz's in-depth investigation. It's pretty frightening. For more on the early episodes, check out LizDitz's link round-up (now we need a link round-up of link round-ups . . .).
To summarise, MMS, "miracle mineral solution", is basically bleach. People are sold it as a "cure" for anything from AIDS to Crohn's Disease, and are told that when they feel nausated that is the "toxins being released". Actually, when they feel nauseated it's because it's doing exactly what it does to everything else: oxidising it, which basically means destroying living tissue. Supporters who understand this much chemistry claim that it somehow magically selects pathogens in our bodies and leaves our own tissues alone. They also repeatedly claim that "THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CURED WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO THEM YOU BIG PHARMA SCOURGES" (etc), though have not provided any links to such stories - and obviously not to scientific studies.
That's because there aren't any. This is how they go about things - again, credit to Noodlemaz for finding this:
Do you understand the power that a church has that hasn’t given up its power? Look at the Catholics. Their priests have been molesting women and children for centuries and the governments have not been able to stop it. If handled properly a church can protect us from vaccinations that we don’t want, from forced insurance, and from many things that a government might want to use to oppress us.I will let you form your own opinion of the above.
Martin Robbins wrote this brilliant article about MMS - both the forum incident and the worldwide state, both of which attracted a lot of comment. Several folks from the Crohn's Forum came along to offer their defences, and the replies to them made highly amusing reading. On a larger scale . . . look what's happened as a result, again by Martin Robbins.
I feel terrible about Africa when I think about it. I know it has a lot of problems of its own - the stories of mass rape in Darfur and children being killed as witches - and yet I can't help but feel that if it wasn't pushed into treaties that kept it as a recipient of aid rather than a participant in trade, among so much more, incidents like these would be fewer. Countries themselves, drawn up by Europeans, have very little to do with the people that populate them, who think of themselves as members of their tribe rather than citizens of their countries. (If anybody thinks I'm patronising anyone by saying this, it's not unique - I give you as a more local example certain folks in Cornwall who would boast for half an hour at a time about their Cornish ancestry and surnames as a means of putting me in my place when I lived there. I haven't got a direct link to source my Africa/countries comment, but a close relative lived in Africa for many years, and I recommend this in which it's mentioned - though it's hardly the focus.) That also makes Africa the perfect haven for those who wish to market their untested products and ideas which would be promptly stopped in their own countries, from anti-condom propaganda to MMS.
Onto more cheerful subjects, look what Rhys Morgan has done! Not a bad thing to start off such a huge campaign before even reaching 16. You can also hear him on the radio (if I remember rightly, about 17 minutes in) here. He's got a link round-up too (see what I mean about link round-ups . . .). The BBC report that there's now an official safety warning in this country, too. Those MMS adverts which keep appearing on Wordpress sites whenever the product is mentioned - I wonder how long they will stay?
All this has seriously rattled Jim Humble himself. Or at least, someone posing as him - you never know. Check out these comments early on in Rhys's blog . . . it's really quite surreal. Note that the first thing he does is advise Rhys not to speak publicly any more.
There's no point trying to convince him or his fanatical supporters, though. The best thing, in my opinion, is to try and educate the consumers and regulators. It's always the hardest, most costly solution, I hear a few people cry, isn't it? To round up as many people as possible, which will take the most time and the most resources. You could say the same of a scientific trial. Yet it seems worth it to me a thousand times over. Because putting in lots of time, money, resources and people is going to have thousands more good effects than just encouraging people not to drink bleach. Because this is very tied up with some of mankind's greatest problems, and there are no quick fixes to those.
(Humankind if you prefer, but I write it meaning the same thing.)
That story might only be just beginning. But here's one that's ended, at least this part of one. Councillor John Dixon's #stupidscientology tweet has been deemed to be in a private capacity. That is, he is entitled to tweet an obviously personal rather than Cardiff Council representing opinion.
WalesOnline and the Guardian have also reported on the case, and the latter has a brief follow-up on the disagreement of the Ombudsman. (You can read the Ombudsman's report a little way down Jack of Kent's blogpost here.) I recommend the comments of the Guardian website. I couldn't resist inserting a cheeky idea - the one about how, if he was representing his constituents, he was probably doing so quite accurately. A couple of comments above mine is the remark that whether John Dixon was cleared or not is beside the point for the scientologists - their aim was to make councils worry and waste their time, and therefore to discourage freedom of speech, rather than to punish John Dixon particularly.
The story coincided neatly with a Panorama documentary on scientology. I didn't watch it, and understand that while it was revealing about some of the strangeness of the cult, it didn't go into its practice of harrassing its critics. Why We Protest has revealed a most interesting e-mail sent around to scientologists on how to handle criticism on websites. I don't suggest this represents scientologists as a whole, and you know what? I also don't think it's likely to be terribly effective. (The tired part of me wonders if any comment on any news-related website is ever effective.)
On a lighter note, the Daily Mash and Crispian Jago have thrown their oars in for a good laugh. But best of all is John's guest post on Jack of Kent, which goes into the Paul Chambers case and Rhys's campaigning too.
It looks like the Internet is shaping things up for quite a lot of coordinated fighting from both sides of all controversy. Well, I suppose that's better than nothing . . .
Monday, 23 August 2010
Getting into the health pages
It intrigues and amuses me that, while it took three years of devoted care and learning to get anywhere in the field of astronomy communication, all I have to do is annoy a couple of people by pointing out that homeopathy doesn't work and next thing I know I'm grinning like a moron in a newspaper.
The first time was in my local, as part of the Ten23 campaign. The second was in the Western Mail a couple of weeks ago. Upon the birth of Cardiff Skeptics, Dean and I were contacted by a very friendly, straightforward lady named Kirstie McCrum, asking us for more information. Her editor is not (yet) interested in running a piece on us - though we have had some interest from a new radio program - but we did pelt her with information about our skeptical acvitities in the hope that she could use it somehow. I was pleasantly surprised when she got back to me a few weeks ago to let me know she was writing up a piece on the pros and cons of homeopathy to go in the health section of the Western Mail.
It came out on Saturday 14th August. I wrote to ask if there was a link. It never did make it online, but Kirstie has kindly sent me a PDF and given me permission to put it here. As luck would have it, I can't upload PDFs, but I've taken some screenshots which with luck you should be able to expand. (Click on them and then click again.) I can also e-mail it to you if you ask!
The full page spread:
The "yes" column:
The "no" column:
Thanks to my sister, incidentally, for coming out into the sunny garden with me to take this photograph at two minutes' notice!
Now you may be interested to know, if you don't already, that things have a great deal of room for alteration between the time they get said or written to the journalist and the time they end up in the paper. Kirstie offered to interview me by telephone, but in the end we decided that I would write a 600 word article and she would write with any more questions. I did, and she asked me how I'd got into skepticism in the first place and a few other good ones that got me thinking and drew out a lot more information.
The only thing that really snuck in on its own was the point that my parents were doctors. I mean, they are, and she asked and I answered, but the article gives the impression that that is the reason I'm a skeptic. I'm a skeptic because I've spent three years working with scientists and dealing with large amounts of data and working on the communication of that data, and I've seen how easily the mind and eye can be tricked by exceptions or led by other people's interpretations. I'm a skeptic because I joined Twitter and learnt what was going on with Simon Singh and the BCA, and I learnt through that just how much misinformation there is out there. My parents certainly encouraged me to learn and to think scientifically, but alternative medicine is not a huge interest of theirs, pro or con! But if that's the only inaccuracy, then all's certainly well.
It was of course just my luck that I warn against homeopaths who believe that all conventional medicine is evil, and then it turns out that my "opponent" does not say this at all. Elaine Weatherly-Jones is definitely a moderate - not at all typical of the sort whose voices are loudest on the web - which makes me look a little hysterical by comparison. I expect some of the readers will have come across less moderate homeopaths, however, and that many homeopaths would villify her for her moderation! Not to mention her referring to clinical trials as "the gold standard". Note her careful wording, though. She does not say that they prove homeopathy works, only that some people like it and believe that it has worked. She can't say otherwise, and what she says does not refute my statement that the sugar pills are effectively all the same and swapping them around unknowingly would have no effect at all.
Anyway, Kirstie and I agreed that a great way to start would be the story of my overdosing on arnica, and here is the text of what I originally wrote for her . . .
On a snowy day in January, I swallowed an entire bottle of homeopathic pills. They tasted nice, of crunchy sugar. They allegedly also contained arnica.
Spread on the skin, arnica is an effective traditional herbal remedy. It works by encouraging dilation of nearby blood vessels. If swallowed, this leads to gastrointestinal bleeding and danger.
I felt no effects, good or ill. Whatever arnica had been in those pills had been so diluted that I would have had to take millions to consume one molecule of the stuff.
Homeopathy is not a natural herbal remedy. It is a a multi-billion pound industry using an 18th-century idea which contradicts basic science. Jacques Benveniste claimed that water "remembered" antibodies, but no scientist has been able to reproduce these effects when experiments are carried out in an unbiased manner.
Water molecules move around freely until frozen; they readily collect around dissolved substances; they then continue on their way.
Banging them ten times against a leather and horsehair contraption, as Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, suggested, does not magically cause them to swim back into the (gigantically larger) shape of a molecule a person wants - physically or metaphorically. Sorry.
The manufacturers had got another principle of homeopathy confused when they marketed the pills, anyway. "Like cures like" is the dogma, such as caffeine for sleeplessness. But this arnica had been sold for its healing properties of the skin. The packet certainly contained no information about the difference between that and swallowing it, nor any warnings about the dangers of swallowing arnica. I looked those up.
It did contain some extreme specifics, such as not touching the pills with your hand and dissolving them under the tongue. No reasons were given. One might feel proud of accomplishing this fiddly activity. It would be easy, later, to atrribute your recovery from illness to that achievement. "Our medicine stimulates the body to heal itself." But bodies heal themselves anyway. Next time you have a cold, make sure you wear red socks every day. You'll probably get better then, too.
Homeopaths occasionally try to get round this by claiming: "If you feel worse temporarily, this is your body excreting toxins," but are never able to say what these toxins are. Again, your body naturally excretes waste that would be harmful if it built up. Think a) jaundice, b) going to the toilet.
When you're ill, it's a comfort to feel that someone is doing something about it. An industry with plenty of money, homeopathy can offer a listening ear and a great specificity of choice between diluted substances - none of which prove any more effective or specific than another when swapped around.
Effectively, it's hope, and the illusion of power over your fate. Perfectly harmless, until you actually need medication.
Gloria Thomas was only 9 months old when her eczema killed her. Doctor after doctor revealed that her life could have been saved even hours before her death, but her parents refused. They treated her with homeopathy alone. Diabetic Nakhira Harris died when her insulin was replaced with homeopathy. Both sets of parents doubtless meant the best for their children.
Belief in homeopathy may boost your sense of well-being. But it also demands a belief in the evil of conventional medicine and the "Big Pharma" that also manufactures it (read the label). Nasty little stories are spreading of people being advised not to be vaccinated for malaria before going to the tropics, or to give up their medicine for heart trouble.
There are things wrong with "Big Pharma" - but my great love, science, sides with neither. It does not tell, but shows. It'll show you what's really going on with all those beautiful little water molecules, with the complexities of biology and our bodies. And it'll show you what medicine works, even if it's not what you want to hear.
I guess not all of that would have fitted onto the page spread!
Many thanks Kirstie for being helpful and interested and appreciative throughout, and I hope I can persuade her (among many others) to come along to Cardiff Skeptics' opening night.
If you're in the mood for something from a bigger newspaper, there is a wonderful article - "Government ignored our advice" - in the Independent, backed up by brilliant columns from David Colquhoun and Julian Huppert. How sad that Julian Huppert is the only scientist left in the House of Commons, and science is such an essential part of the world now. We can but keep trying to get it out there!
Sunday, 15 August 2010
An introduction to Withybush Hospital
Four years ago, the Labour government wished to close several hospitals, including Withybush Hospital, Haverfordwest.
Withybush Hospital is the only hospital in Pembrokeshire with an Accident and Emergency Department. It was long needed, and finally built, in 1978 as a result of a public outcry when a man died on the way to Carmarthen.
You won't find it in Withybush's "About Us" section, because its staunchest supporters are the medical staff and members of the public who do not get such an official voice, but Withybush Hospital is a burning political and emotional centre of the otherwise quiet Pembrokeshire. Calculations about 4 years ago revealed that, on average, each citizen of Pembrokeshire gave £5 to Withybush - especially Ward 10, the cancer care unit. (In a great many obituaries, you see "Donations to Ward 10". Ward 10 is never defined, because everybody knows.) It's the largest employer in the county, to the best of my knowledge it has the lowest rates of infection in Wales, and it's been listed as one of the UK's "Top 40" hospitals.
Pembrokeshire's winter population of 100,000 often swells to 300,000 in the summer because of the influx of tourists. It's not exactly a risk-free county: we have cliffs, we have the sea, we have several oil refineries and no overnight fire service.
We also have a great deal of space between ourselves and Carmarthen. So nothing was more symbolic when a government official was dispatched to come and tell us why Withybush should close, and had to start by explaining why he arrived late. "I didn't look at a map first, so I didn't realise how far away you are."
It's a long hilly road to Carmarthen, 30 miles along an almost entirely single-lane road heavily populated by oil tankers and tractors. It takes the best part of an hour to get there from Haverfordwest. From various corners of Pembrokeshire, it can take about an hour to get to Haverfordwest itself. Trains leave Haverfordwest every 2 hours, and take about 40 minutes to get to Carmarthen.
"The golden hour" is a phrase used by doctors to describe the amount of time a patient has to live without treatment should they have a severe heart attack. To close Withybush would therefore be a death sentence for all such patients.
So keeping Withybush Hospital open seems like a pretty good idea to me, for reasons moral, economic, and health-wise. I believe it costs in the region of £8 billion a year, admittedly a lot more than the £4 million currently spent on homeopathy for "patient choice", but an extremely small fraction of what is currently spent on illegal wars.
I make no apology for including this blogpost in the category of "Health/Science/Medicine Versus Nonsense". There's a lot more nonsense out there than quack remedies marketing themselves as miracles, and I'm afraid uninformed (or indeed misinformed) government policy can qualify as just such nonsense.
In 2006, upon plans to close or massively downgrade the hospital, Pembrokeshire suddenly churned with activity. A group called "SWAT" - Save Withybush Action Team - sprang to life: many of its members were doctors. (Sadly their website seems to have vanished within only the last few months.) 1000 people attended a public debate in the vast agricultural hall outside Haverfordwest, and many more attended smaller meetings in their villages. Thousands of people wrote letters and signed postcards and petitions.
We remained entirely unimpressed with pontifications such as "quality of patient care has to be at the heart of a progressive health service", and arguments that more care could take place "in the community" therefore led onto a necessity to close the hospital. The Local Health Board was staffed with government officials who knew nothing about Pembrokeshire, and were basically there to tell us a lot of things we knew perfectly well were untrue. Fortunately, our arguments were actually so well-researched, so noisy, and so strong, that in the end the lady in charge actually announced that the Local Health Board wished to pursue the agenda chosen by the activists, rather than one of the two dictated by the government. We had some suspicion that this would be pushed under the carpet until the next election, but for now, Withybush was safe.
Until a brave soul leaked a certain document to the Western Telegraph . . .
The health board are, of course, furious, and denied everything. They also assured the BBC that Withybush is here to stay. But can we trust them? There are, I understand, still plans to move many essential services away through the back door. Not only will this mean it takes a great deal longer to treat people, and that ill people will have to undergo the discomfort and danger of a great deal more travelling, but also it will discourage doctors and nurses and other medical people from coming to work here. There has been quite enough deliberate discouragement of that already - including, it is alleged, tearing up and hiding of job applications in order to skew appearances of a department's viability.
I'm sorry that this entry contained so few references. Especially in the last paragraph, such things can only be spread by word of mouth - you're hardly going to find written proof anywhere. Sadly, much of the material that was online and available at the time now seems to have been taken down. But when you get as involved with something as I was, you don't forget the facts and figures. They will come, I hope, because SWAT will doubtless reform, and I am also going to ask them to help me retrieve them!
I'm going to follow this up with - I hope - at least two blogposts: one about the history of Withybush Hospital and the plans for closure, and the other about my recollections of the campaigning. I'll also address exactly why I am so strongly in favour of what the politicians think of as the "the old way" and "inefficiency", and why the grand words about community care and access to specialised services basically do not make sense for the majority.
Now, should this flare up and it turns out that "the first document" is the accurate one, you'll see several more blogposts on Withybush Hospital - I hope a few of you will join the fight!
In the meantime, a few little news items from 2006:
A BBC report on the activities of SWAT, and how the poor little health board feels these people are really Luddite and getting in the way of inevitability;
A transcript of a conversation with someone who has witnessed the consequences of this "progress";
Another BBC news item about the "disappointment that people have decided to demonstrate";
Wales Online about the "two options" (i.e. both closure) between which the public was originally "invited" to choose, closure or massive downgrade amounting to closure being this wonderful "patient choice";
The Western Telegraph on how SWAT planned to create an "Option 3" despite not having the time and resources the Local Health Board did (recall that not only did SWAT do that, but Option 3 got chosen!);
The Western Telegraph records a debate between Bernadine Rees of the Local Health Board and Dr Chris Overton of Withybush Hospital (NB Dr Overton was suspended for 6 weeks for his original whistle-blowing over the dangers facing Withybush Hospital, while Bernadine Rees was given an MBE);
Our local MP Stephen Crabb, the Tories in Carmarthenshire, and Paul Davies AM, give their support to Withybush.
Withybush Hospital is the only hospital in Pembrokeshire with an Accident and Emergency Department. It was long needed, and finally built, in 1978 as a result of a public outcry when a man died on the way to Carmarthen.
You won't find it in Withybush's "About Us" section, because its staunchest supporters are the medical staff and members of the public who do not get such an official voice, but Withybush Hospital is a burning political and emotional centre of the otherwise quiet Pembrokeshire. Calculations about 4 years ago revealed that, on average, each citizen of Pembrokeshire gave £5 to Withybush - especially Ward 10, the cancer care unit. (In a great many obituaries, you see "Donations to Ward 10". Ward 10 is never defined, because everybody knows.) It's the largest employer in the county, to the best of my knowledge it has the lowest rates of infection in Wales, and it's been listed as one of the UK's "Top 40" hospitals.
Pembrokeshire's winter population of 100,000 often swells to 300,000 in the summer because of the influx of tourists. It's not exactly a risk-free county: we have cliffs, we have the sea, we have several oil refineries and no overnight fire service.
We also have a great deal of space between ourselves and Carmarthen. So nothing was more symbolic when a government official was dispatched to come and tell us why Withybush should close, and had to start by explaining why he arrived late. "I didn't look at a map first, so I didn't realise how far away you are."
It's a long hilly road to Carmarthen, 30 miles along an almost entirely single-lane road heavily populated by oil tankers and tractors. It takes the best part of an hour to get there from Haverfordwest. From various corners of Pembrokeshire, it can take about an hour to get to Haverfordwest itself. Trains leave Haverfordwest every 2 hours, and take about 40 minutes to get to Carmarthen.
"The golden hour" is a phrase used by doctors to describe the amount of time a patient has to live without treatment should they have a severe heart attack. To close Withybush would therefore be a death sentence for all such patients.
So keeping Withybush Hospital open seems like a pretty good idea to me, for reasons moral, economic, and health-wise. I believe it costs in the region of £8 billion a year, admittedly a lot more than the £4 million currently spent on homeopathy for "patient choice", but an extremely small fraction of what is currently spent on illegal wars.
I make no apology for including this blogpost in the category of "Health/Science/Medicine Versus Nonsense". There's a lot more nonsense out there than quack remedies marketing themselves as miracles, and I'm afraid uninformed (or indeed misinformed) government policy can qualify as just such nonsense.
In 2006, upon plans to close or massively downgrade the hospital, Pembrokeshire suddenly churned with activity. A group called "SWAT" - Save Withybush Action Team - sprang to life: many of its members were doctors. (Sadly their website seems to have vanished within only the last few months.) 1000 people attended a public debate in the vast agricultural hall outside Haverfordwest, and many more attended smaller meetings in their villages. Thousands of people wrote letters and signed postcards and petitions.
We remained entirely unimpressed with pontifications such as "quality of patient care has to be at the heart of a progressive health service", and arguments that more care could take place "in the community" therefore led onto a necessity to close the hospital. The Local Health Board was staffed with government officials who knew nothing about Pembrokeshire, and were basically there to tell us a lot of things we knew perfectly well were untrue. Fortunately, our arguments were actually so well-researched, so noisy, and so strong, that in the end the lady in charge actually announced that the Local Health Board wished to pursue the agenda chosen by the activists, rather than one of the two dictated by the government. We had some suspicion that this would be pushed under the carpet until the next election, but for now, Withybush was safe.
Until a brave soul leaked a certain document to the Western Telegraph . . .
The health board are, of course, furious, and denied everything. They also assured the BBC that Withybush is here to stay. But can we trust them? There are, I understand, still plans to move many essential services away through the back door. Not only will this mean it takes a great deal longer to treat people, and that ill people will have to undergo the discomfort and danger of a great deal more travelling, but also it will discourage doctors and nurses and other medical people from coming to work here. There has been quite enough deliberate discouragement of that already - including, it is alleged, tearing up and hiding of job applications in order to skew appearances of a department's viability.
I'm sorry that this entry contained so few references. Especially in the last paragraph, such things can only be spread by word of mouth - you're hardly going to find written proof anywhere. Sadly, much of the material that was online and available at the time now seems to have been taken down. But when you get as involved with something as I was, you don't forget the facts and figures. They will come, I hope, because SWAT will doubtless reform, and I am also going to ask them to help me retrieve them!
I'm going to follow this up with - I hope - at least two blogposts: one about the history of Withybush Hospital and the plans for closure, and the other about my recollections of the campaigning. I'll also address exactly why I am so strongly in favour of what the politicians think of as the "the old way" and "inefficiency", and why the grand words about community care and access to specialised services basically do not make sense for the majority.
Now, should this flare up and it turns out that "the first document" is the accurate one, you'll see several more blogposts on Withybush Hospital - I hope a few of you will join the fight!
In the meantime, a few little news items from 2006:
A BBC report on the activities of SWAT, and how the poor little health board feels these people are really Luddite and getting in the way of inevitability;
A transcript of a conversation with someone who has witnessed the consequences of this "progress";
Another BBC news item about the "disappointment that people have decided to demonstrate";
Wales Online about the "two options" (i.e. both closure) between which the public was originally "invited" to choose, closure or massive downgrade amounting to closure being this wonderful "patient choice";
The Western Telegraph on how SWAT planned to create an "Option 3" despite not having the time and resources the Local Health Board did (recall that not only did SWAT do that, but Option 3 got chosen!);
The Western Telegraph records a debate between Bernadine Rees of the Local Health Board and Dr Chris Overton of Withybush Hospital (NB Dr Overton was suspended for 6 weeks for his original whistle-blowing over the dangers facing Withybush Hospital, while Bernadine Rees was given an MBE);
Our local MP Stephen Crabb, the Tories in Carmarthenshire, and Paul Davies AM, give their support to Withybush.
Friday, 13 August 2010
Moderators of a medical forum hide safety warning about drinking what is effectively bleach
Yes, they really did. But let me give you a little background.
I love chemistry, so I'm going to start with the element chlorine. For the chemists, it's element no. 17, the second lightest halogen - you'll find it on the second-from-right column (called "Row 17") of the Periodic Table (not this Periodic Table, excellent as that is). There are some pretty good visual aids of the atomic structure here.
Each atom has a different number of protons, neutrons and electrons (please do scroll down if you already know this). The number of protons and electrons are the same. It's the number of neutrons and protons that determine the "big" stuff, for example in stellar reactions such as the Sun making helium from hydrogen - that determines the qualities of the element, as well as swaps around masses amounts of energy. The number of electrons is, effectively, the skin. That determines what the element does in more shall we say relaxed conditions, such as on Planet Earth, where lots of things change in a mundane way without (usually) nuclear bombs and so on.
This works because, although chemists will tell you that electrons are found in "probability clouds", these clouds have a rather well-formed structure that we can represent as shells, or layers, around the nucleus of protons and electrons. You can think of these like bookshelves longing to be filled up, too. The innermost one only has space for two electrons. The next two can hold eight. Now, an atom prefers that all its shells are filled up, and the closer it comes to this state, the more upset it gets - and the more eagerly it will rush to do anything to achieve this state, either by casting an electron off, or by snatching one. Chlorine belongs to the latter group.
Chlorine's outer "shell" has seven out of eight possible, and so it's always longing to get another one. Sodum, meanwhile, has one out of eight, so it's all too pleased to throw an electron off. So if a sodium atom meets a chlorine atom, the chlorine will snatch the sodium's electron. Now the chlorine has too many electrons. This means it's now a chloride ion, that it has a negative charge, and that correspondingly the sodium has a positive charge. This makes them stick together. That makes salt.
This kind of thing can happen with other elements, too, but chlorine is particularly eager to do it.
That's ionic bonding. Now what happens among non-metals, organic chemistry, and generally a great deal on this Earth, is covalent bonding. In this case, picture two chlorine atoms. They "share" two of their electrons. Although they've still only got seven electrons in their outer shell each, this "sharing" allows them a lot more stability. Not a great deal, though. Chlorine gas is very reactive.
It's a powerful oxidant, or oxidising agent. To oxidise something often means you add some oxygen, which is the case with rusted iron. What this oxygen does is steal some electrons. And that's what, in chemistry terms, "oxidising" really means - to nick some electrons. This of course changes the properties of whatever has been oxidised. It makes them want to bond with other materials, because they're unstable now. With fats in foods, it often makes them smell rancid. With iron, it makes it brown and flaky. With biological matter, it often completely screws it up.
That's why chlorine is often used as a sterelising agent in swimming pools, and why labels keep going on about "antioxidants" as a matter of safety as well as taste. And why it was used as a weapon, poisonous gas, in World War I. Oxidising is a nasty process.
And it's really not a good idea to drink the stuff. (Did anyone else do "An Inspector Calls" at school, in which Eva Smith drinks a bottle of disinfectant that "burnt out her throat"?)
However, a 15-year-old skeptic, Rhys Morgan, has been permanently banned from a medical forum for pointing out this danger to vulnerable people.
I first came across Rhys on Twitter when FerFrias introduced him to my homeopathy post. It was clear that he was exceptionally keen on what was real science and what wasn't, and what is good for people's health and what is just a belief, or indeed a scam. He suffers from Crohn's Disease, which I understand varies in severity but can be extremely nasty. I suffered from digestive problems for several years and had to deal with daily pain and nausea, sometimes non-stop for days on end. Rhys is extremely brave and optimistic about it, but he also knows how vulnerable people can be when they're ill, how they are driven to try absolutely anything for a cure.
He joined a forum for suffers of Crohn's disease and colitis - to exchange mutual support and medical information. There are many of such forums, but this one is called crohnsforum so is probably the first that most people find. Here he encountered a user who fervently encouraged his fellow forum users to use "Miracle Mineral Solution", abbreviated to MMS.
Look at that link a moment.
Yes, it says 28% sodium chlorite.
Just scroll up a moment and read back to what I wrote about chlorine.
Yes, sodium chlorite is not chlorine - but it contains chlorine and will easily let it go. It's also not sodium chloride, which is salt. A mere flick through the Wiki entry (which seems to have been thoroughly researched) reveals snippets such as: "Do not mix with organic chemicals in case of explosion" (such as . . . Your throat?); that it's used as an antiseptic (i.e. to kill germs) in mastitis in cattle; that it's used in the bleaching of paper; that "chronic exposure . . . could cause reproductive and neurodevelopmental damage"; and that it's an oxidant (see above where I mentioned oxidation reactions).
Not something I'd much fancy drinking, thanks. For more information on Jim Humble, its first advocate, check out this excellent blogpost by Noodlemaz (but finish reading this first, please, because you will get about as distracted as it's possible to get!).
However, a user on the forum of which Rhys was a member urged a user with a sore throat not only to drink this solution, but to continue drinking it when he said his thraot was getting worse. Drinking MMS makes you feel nauseous. I gather the reasoning is that the nausea demonstrates the removal of toxins.
I've often heard about toxins, and educated science students talking about detox. I have yet to hear what these toxins actually are, or how they could so suddenly be removed from the body, from where or to where. In his book "Bad Science", Ben Goldacre writes brilliantly about how, just as people used to wish for penance to "cleanse" themselves of their sins, the modern consumer longs for "detox" in a similar wish to feel somehow pure and good.
I've also read a book about self-harm, which makes it very clear how going through pain can often feel like an achievement. Not to mention articles which remark on how people can be quite competitive about how stressed they are. It sounds to me as if vulnerable people are being encouraged, effectively, to self-harm, and feel that the discomfort and indeed agony they go through is going to help them.
Besides all this being basically twisted, wrong, and not going to cure the person at all, it sounds bloody dangerous to me.
Rhys challenged this person and was on the receiving end of a great deal of public and private abuse for it. He was sworn at, for a start; he was also informed that "Big Pharma" should pay for medical trials because the poor little billion-pound complementary and alternative medicine industry can't afford them, that conventional medicine has problems (see "ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (1)"), and that conventional medicine only contains chlorine.
All right, let's actually deal with some of these points. Why is it so expensive to do a proper medical trial? Again, read Ben Goldacre's book, which tells you in a very straightforward way how to do one. (I have some ideas on that and citizen science myself, which I hope to speak about at Skeptics in the Pub some time . . .) Also, the fact that you're too poor to test something for safety doesn't mean it's safe, or that you have any right to promote it. Trying to make others feel guilty is really not an argument!
As for the chlorine - recall the sodium chloride. You ever see salt turning into sodium and chlorine again, out of the school lab where you do electrolysis with a load of wires and rusty crocodile clips? No. Because chlorine's very reactivity gives it another important characteristic. Because it's so reactive, once it does make a bond it's "happy" with, it stays that way. The chlorine-chlorine bond isn't very strong - nor are the bonds in sodium chlorite - so they'll fall apart easily. But chlorine's very strenth can give it amazingly strong bonds. Once it's chloride - the negative ion - it's perfectly happy, and that's how it'll stay. You'll find chloride ions all over the world - they're the biggest component, after water, of sea water. I hope this makes it clear that, when pointing out the "such and such" uses chlorine, you need to be a tad more specific if you want to make a proper argument.
By now you might also be thinking: "Hang on, our stomach contains hydrochloric acid - that's half chlorine!" And the penny might also have dropped . . . yes - chlorine with different properties, again. The chlorine exists as the chloride ion, again, so it won't have the same effects at all as the sodium chlorite. The hydrogen exists simply as lone protons, having had their one electron "snatched". It's an extremely strong acid, designed to kill germs and bore ways into the food to make it more digestable. All that acid's later neutralised by bile from the gall bladder, so that the bacteria in your gut can get on peacefully with their lives.
Anyway, two of Rhys's threads have been deleted. However, the brilliant JoBrodie got them both off Freezepage! (Please be aware these might expire after 2 weeks.) In one of them he posted the official FDA warning against MMS, and was argued against vigorously on the grounds that conventional medicine also had problems. Rhys remarks that it is unsafe to urge someone whose health is clearly very poor to continue taking MMS despite hideous pain and discomfort, and is accused of "slander". Upon retrieving the conversation, he's accused of "taking the quotes out of context" and informed that "I have requested that you be banned".
In the other, Rhys asks why people on the forum are often so anti-science and anti-conventional medicine: he agrees that there are problems with it, but it's the best we've got. "I made an evidence based posting, not one even from a skeptical point of view, warning people about Miracle Mineral Solution," he wrote. "The forum's response? Trying to silence me, childish name calling and of course, blaming Big Pharma for the lack of medical trials on such unproven non-treatments."
After banning him permanently for his "attitude", both these threads were deleted.
Rhys tweeted: "It's disgustingly irresponsible that they deleted my post which was merely a link to the FDA warning page. They were willfully keeping others ignorant, by doing so." (Said tweets here and here.)
A forum moderator myself, I am stunned. Stunned that safety warnings were hidden; stunned that science was silenced. I can see that, in their uninformed view, Rhys was not being diplomatic; but seriously, the worst he said was "grow up", which is nothing compared to the abuse he's received. I suppose they felt that the majority must be right. But my God, deleting an official safety warning and making sure such vulnerable people remained in ignorance about what they were doing? I am so stunned I don't think I have any words. I don't think I need any, anyway. Rhys and his 30+ commentators say enough here!
He's been extremely active since then, calling Cardiff Trading Standards, who called him back with more information, and hopes to start a campaign to at least raise awareness of MMS even if it doesn't get banned. This bit I don't know much about, so we'll have to wait for that. I've predicted he'll be giving Skeptics in the Pub talks in a year or so, and have his own forum a year or so after that!
Let me just mention one or two more issues. JoBrodie quite rightly pointed out the issue of cliquiness. This often makes forums miserable and annoying, skews issue in favour of opinions that aren't necessarily correct, and if the moderators are involved, certainly leads to injustice. That's one cause - the effect is a lot worse. Another cause may simply be ignorance on the part of the moderators. As pretty well anyone can set up a forum, it must be exceedingly difficult for medics and scientists to keep track of them, let alone make sure that the right information gets out to the right people. Still, as forums grow large, and especially on such a responsible topic, shouldn't we at least try? Or would that mean a lot more regulation and stifling - and could that regulation and stifling indeed lead to more censorship of science, through officialdom rather than cliques? What do you think? Someone like me should know, but sadly I don't!
Another issue is the idea purported by some that MMS will sterelise unwanted organisms within the body. This is about as likely as a homeopathic remedy remembering the presence of arnica rather than whatever else the water has been in contact with over its billions of years of existence. Your digestive tract contains a huge number of microscopic organisms, most of them benign and indeed beneficial. The first place the sodium chlorite gets (apart from the poor throat) is, of course, the stomach, in which the strong acid attacks incoming bacteria. Adding chlorine is totally out of line with what the body's doing, and is at least as likely to attack your insides as any bacteria you don't want in there.
Well, I thought I'd go for the "sciencey" side, since a lot of people have covered this issue now - my favourite blogpost so far is Noodlemaz's (not the same one I linked to earlier). It was all over Twitter the other day - I wish I'd written about it sooner, but I've been a bit distracted - and retweeted by the likes of Ben Goldacre and James Randi. Rhys is famous!
He's done an interview for the Pod Delusion, will be a subject discussed by the SkepChicks, and has been contacted by a video production company in Yorkshire. When he said he was off to London, lots of us assumed it was to the BBC. Well done Rhys, and looking forward to seeing you at Cardiff Skeptics!
Now, who says 15 year olds can't do things?
I love chemistry, so I'm going to start with the element chlorine. For the chemists, it's element no. 17, the second lightest halogen - you'll find it on the second-from-right column (called "Row 17") of the Periodic Table (not this Periodic Table, excellent as that is). There are some pretty good visual aids of the atomic structure here.
Each atom has a different number of protons, neutrons and electrons (please do scroll down if you already know this). The number of protons and electrons are the same. It's the number of neutrons and protons that determine the "big" stuff, for example in stellar reactions such as the Sun making helium from hydrogen - that determines the qualities of the element, as well as swaps around masses amounts of energy. The number of electrons is, effectively, the skin. That determines what the element does in more shall we say relaxed conditions, such as on Planet Earth, where lots of things change in a mundane way without (usually) nuclear bombs and so on.
This works because, although chemists will tell you that electrons are found in "probability clouds", these clouds have a rather well-formed structure that we can represent as shells, or layers, around the nucleus of protons and electrons. You can think of these like bookshelves longing to be filled up, too. The innermost one only has space for two electrons. The next two can hold eight. Now, an atom prefers that all its shells are filled up, and the closer it comes to this state, the more upset it gets - and the more eagerly it will rush to do anything to achieve this state, either by casting an electron off, or by snatching one. Chlorine belongs to the latter group.
Chlorine's outer "shell" has seven out of eight possible, and so it's always longing to get another one. Sodum, meanwhile, has one out of eight, so it's all too pleased to throw an electron off. So if a sodium atom meets a chlorine atom, the chlorine will snatch the sodium's electron. Now the chlorine has too many electrons. This means it's now a chloride ion, that it has a negative charge, and that correspondingly the sodium has a positive charge. This makes them stick together. That makes salt.
This kind of thing can happen with other elements, too, but chlorine is particularly eager to do it.
That's ionic bonding. Now what happens among non-metals, organic chemistry, and generally a great deal on this Earth, is covalent bonding. In this case, picture two chlorine atoms. They "share" two of their electrons. Although they've still only got seven electrons in their outer shell each, this "sharing" allows them a lot more stability. Not a great deal, though. Chlorine gas is very reactive.
It's a powerful oxidant, or oxidising agent. To oxidise something often means you add some oxygen, which is the case with rusted iron. What this oxygen does is steal some electrons. And that's what, in chemistry terms, "oxidising" really means - to nick some electrons. This of course changes the properties of whatever has been oxidised. It makes them want to bond with other materials, because they're unstable now. With fats in foods, it often makes them smell rancid. With iron, it makes it brown and flaky. With biological matter, it often completely screws it up.
That's why chlorine is often used as a sterelising agent in swimming pools, and why labels keep going on about "antioxidants" as a matter of safety as well as taste. And why it was used as a weapon, poisonous gas, in World War I. Oxidising is a nasty process.
And it's really not a good idea to drink the stuff. (Did anyone else do "An Inspector Calls" at school, in which Eva Smith drinks a bottle of disinfectant that "burnt out her throat"?)
However, a 15-year-old skeptic, Rhys Morgan, has been permanently banned from a medical forum for pointing out this danger to vulnerable people.
I first came across Rhys on Twitter when FerFrias introduced him to my homeopathy post. It was clear that he was exceptionally keen on what was real science and what wasn't, and what is good for people's health and what is just a belief, or indeed a scam. He suffers from Crohn's Disease, which I understand varies in severity but can be extremely nasty. I suffered from digestive problems for several years and had to deal with daily pain and nausea, sometimes non-stop for days on end. Rhys is extremely brave and optimistic about it, but he also knows how vulnerable people can be when they're ill, how they are driven to try absolutely anything for a cure.
He joined a forum for suffers of Crohn's disease and colitis - to exchange mutual support and medical information. There are many of such forums, but this one is called crohnsforum so is probably the first that most people find. Here he encountered a user who fervently encouraged his fellow forum users to use "Miracle Mineral Solution", abbreviated to MMS.
Look at that link a moment.
Yes, it says 28% sodium chlorite.
Just scroll up a moment and read back to what I wrote about chlorine.
Yes, sodium chlorite is not chlorine - but it contains chlorine and will easily let it go. It's also not sodium chloride, which is salt. A mere flick through the Wiki entry (which seems to have been thoroughly researched) reveals snippets such as: "Do not mix with organic chemicals in case of explosion" (such as . . . Your throat?); that it's used as an antiseptic (i.e. to kill germs) in mastitis in cattle; that it's used in the bleaching of paper; that "chronic exposure . . . could cause reproductive and neurodevelopmental damage"; and that it's an oxidant (see above where I mentioned oxidation reactions).
Not something I'd much fancy drinking, thanks. For more information on Jim Humble, its first advocate, check out this excellent blogpost by Noodlemaz (but finish reading this first, please, because you will get about as distracted as it's possible to get!).
However, a user on the forum of which Rhys was a member urged a user with a sore throat not only to drink this solution, but to continue drinking it when he said his thraot was getting worse. Drinking MMS makes you feel nauseous. I gather the reasoning is that the nausea demonstrates the removal of toxins.
I've often heard about toxins, and educated science students talking about detox. I have yet to hear what these toxins actually are, or how they could so suddenly be removed from the body, from where or to where. In his book "Bad Science", Ben Goldacre writes brilliantly about how, just as people used to wish for penance to "cleanse" themselves of their sins, the modern consumer longs for "detox" in a similar wish to feel somehow pure and good.
I've also read a book about self-harm, which makes it very clear how going through pain can often feel like an achievement. Not to mention articles which remark on how people can be quite competitive about how stressed they are. It sounds to me as if vulnerable people are being encouraged, effectively, to self-harm, and feel that the discomfort and indeed agony they go through is going to help them.
Besides all this being basically twisted, wrong, and not going to cure the person at all, it sounds bloody dangerous to me.
Rhys challenged this person and was on the receiving end of a great deal of public and private abuse for it. He was sworn at, for a start; he was also informed that "Big Pharma" should pay for medical trials because the poor little billion-pound complementary and alternative medicine industry can't afford them, that conventional medicine has problems (see "ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (1)"), and that conventional medicine only contains chlorine.
All right, let's actually deal with some of these points. Why is it so expensive to do a proper medical trial? Again, read Ben Goldacre's book, which tells you in a very straightforward way how to do one. (I have some ideas on that and citizen science myself, which I hope to speak about at Skeptics in the Pub some time . . .) Also, the fact that you're too poor to test something for safety doesn't mean it's safe, or that you have any right to promote it. Trying to make others feel guilty is really not an argument!
As for the chlorine - recall the sodium chloride. You ever see salt turning into sodium and chlorine again, out of the school lab where you do electrolysis with a load of wires and rusty crocodile clips? No. Because chlorine's very reactivity gives it another important characteristic. Because it's so reactive, once it does make a bond it's "happy" with, it stays that way. The chlorine-chlorine bond isn't very strong - nor are the bonds in sodium chlorite - so they'll fall apart easily. But chlorine's very strenth can give it amazingly strong bonds. Once it's chloride - the negative ion - it's perfectly happy, and that's how it'll stay. You'll find chloride ions all over the world - they're the biggest component, after water, of sea water. I hope this makes it clear that, when pointing out the "such and such" uses chlorine, you need to be a tad more specific if you want to make a proper argument.
By now you might also be thinking: "Hang on, our stomach contains hydrochloric acid - that's half chlorine!" And the penny might also have dropped . . . yes - chlorine with different properties, again. The chlorine exists as the chloride ion, again, so it won't have the same effects at all as the sodium chlorite. The hydrogen exists simply as lone protons, having had their one electron "snatched". It's an extremely strong acid, designed to kill germs and bore ways into the food to make it more digestable. All that acid's later neutralised by bile from the gall bladder, so that the bacteria in your gut can get on peacefully with their lives.
Anyway, two of Rhys's threads have been deleted. However, the brilliant JoBrodie got them both off Freezepage! (Please be aware these might expire after 2 weeks.) In one of them he posted the official FDA warning against MMS, and was argued against vigorously on the grounds that conventional medicine also had problems. Rhys remarks that it is unsafe to urge someone whose health is clearly very poor to continue taking MMS despite hideous pain and discomfort, and is accused of "slander". Upon retrieving the conversation, he's accused of "taking the quotes out of context" and informed that "I have requested that you be banned".
In the other, Rhys asks why people on the forum are often so anti-science and anti-conventional medicine: he agrees that there are problems with it, but it's the best we've got. "I made an evidence based posting, not one even from a skeptical point of view, warning people about Miracle Mineral Solution," he wrote. "The forum's response? Trying to silence me, childish name calling and of course, blaming Big Pharma for the lack of medical trials on such unproven non-treatments."
After banning him permanently for his "attitude", both these threads were deleted.
Rhys tweeted: "It's disgustingly irresponsible that they deleted my post which was merely a link to the FDA warning page. They were willfully keeping others ignorant, by doing so." (Said tweets here and here.)
A forum moderator myself, I am stunned. Stunned that safety warnings were hidden; stunned that science was silenced. I can see that, in their uninformed view, Rhys was not being diplomatic; but seriously, the worst he said was "grow up", which is nothing compared to the abuse he's received. I suppose they felt that the majority must be right. But my God, deleting an official safety warning and making sure such vulnerable people remained in ignorance about what they were doing? I am so stunned I don't think I have any words. I don't think I need any, anyway. Rhys and his 30+ commentators say enough here!
He's been extremely active since then, calling Cardiff Trading Standards, who called him back with more information, and hopes to start a campaign to at least raise awareness of MMS even if it doesn't get banned. This bit I don't know much about, so we'll have to wait for that. I've predicted he'll be giving Skeptics in the Pub talks in a year or so, and have his own forum a year or so after that!
Let me just mention one or two more issues. JoBrodie quite rightly pointed out the issue of cliquiness. This often makes forums miserable and annoying, skews issue in favour of opinions that aren't necessarily correct, and if the moderators are involved, certainly leads to injustice. That's one cause - the effect is a lot worse. Another cause may simply be ignorance on the part of the moderators. As pretty well anyone can set up a forum, it must be exceedingly difficult for medics and scientists to keep track of them, let alone make sure that the right information gets out to the right people. Still, as forums grow large, and especially on such a responsible topic, shouldn't we at least try? Or would that mean a lot more regulation and stifling - and could that regulation and stifling indeed lead to more censorship of science, through officialdom rather than cliques? What do you think? Someone like me should know, but sadly I don't!
Another issue is the idea purported by some that MMS will sterelise unwanted organisms within the body. This is about as likely as a homeopathic remedy remembering the presence of arnica rather than whatever else the water has been in contact with over its billions of years of existence. Your digestive tract contains a huge number of microscopic organisms, most of them benign and indeed beneficial. The first place the sodium chlorite gets (apart from the poor throat) is, of course, the stomach, in which the strong acid attacks incoming bacteria. Adding chlorine is totally out of line with what the body's doing, and is at least as likely to attack your insides as any bacteria you don't want in there.
Well, I thought I'd go for the "sciencey" side, since a lot of people have covered this issue now - my favourite blogpost so far is Noodlemaz's (not the same one I linked to earlier). It was all over Twitter the other day - I wish I'd written about it sooner, but I've been a bit distracted - and retweeted by the likes of Ben Goldacre and James Randi. Rhys is famous!
He's done an interview for the Pod Delusion, will be a subject discussed by the SkepChicks, and has been contacted by a video production company in Yorkshire. When he said he was off to London, lots of us assumed it was to the BBC. Well done Rhys, and looking forward to seeing you at Cardiff Skeptics!
Now, who says 15 year olds can't do things?
Friday, 30 July 2010
Do you get it? I don't.
Let me recap on the events in the political and justice systems of the UK and abroad in the last few weeks.
I'm not even going to rant. I'm just going to make a list.
The Government has decided that, upon being a hospital patient, we do not have the right to choose when or how we die. However, we do have the right to demand taxpayers' money - of which there is a massive shortage when it comes to, for example, much-needed surgery - for sugar pills from a multi-billion pound industry that have been shown not to work.
A letter from my friend @medtek, and Islington PCT's response, both rather sum things up.
(By the way, before Dr Nancy Malik et al accuse me, I am very balanced about homeopathy. Indeed I have supported it so far as to make a list of its dozens of successful mechanisms.)
This is not simply whinging about silly allocations of taxpayers' money in the UK - on an international level, as the Quackometer points out, the problem is a lot more serious. The blind eye Europe turns to pseudoscience is lethal to millions.
On the justice front, throwing eggs at a demonstration has landed a man in jail. Meanwhile, the same Crown Prosecution Service that has fined Paul Chambers £1000 and given him a criminal record for a silly tweet which not a single person took seriously will not even prosecute the policeman whose violence against Ian Tomlinson in 2009 was followed by his death minutes later.
There seems to be a huge amount of debate about exactly what happened to the bodily fluid which was drained from the body. Apparently the violence itself, a video of which is available here, was insufficient evidence, or something else which can be read as "quite all right in the eyes of the law".
I seriously don't get it.
Oh, and I wish @CrazyColours the best of luck with this tweet!
There is another case I'd like to write about, but I don't have the money or bravery to get sued by the organisation. Suffice to say that I am greatly looking forward to one of its victims of this particular attitude appearing at Skeptics in the Pub in Wales this autumn!
Speaking of suing, you probably already know what I think about the Simon Singh case and that of many others. Now let me introduce the latest libel hero: Luke Bozier, who has been forbidden by Tangent to say he doesn't like Gordon Brown's website.
However, turning to an international level, the Claimant in a perfectly justified case in America has lost. The grounds for her losing is that, according to the jury, merely being present at a nightclub is sufficient consent for a) sexual assault and b) show your breasts on film without your knowledge, let alone any pay.
Er . . . why?
There is, at least, a law against the practice of genital mutilation of children in this country. Yet this summer, between 500 and 2000 schoolgirls will - they think - go on holiday. The article about what actually happens to them, I should warn you, made me feel extremely sick and faint for a long time - I recommend fresh air, a glass of water, and a good angry and restoring chat with some friends after reading it.
If you don't want to read this, let me sum it up: it happens in several countries worldwide, especially Africa; it happens to British children; it causes horrendous physical and psychological damage; it is not required by any religion; the victims are not anaesthetised or even warned what will happen; the tools are seldom sterelised; the danger of it happening is not grounds for asylum in any European country; and not a single person has been prosecuted for doing it or allowing it to be done to a child in their care.
There seem to be an awful lot of prosecutions and libel cases going on for things people have written. But things which people do that put others' lives in danger, or indeed terminate them, seem to be getting off scot-free.
I think the system is: do what you like, just don't put it online? Am I anywhere near getting it yet?
With regard to genital mutilation (which is dangerous and damaging to both sexes), Noodlemaz has researched and written about it extremely well; and you can also support the Orchid Trust and the Addis Ababa Fistla Hospital.
My head and stomach are both now spinning, and I need to get away for a bit.
If you need cheering up, may I most respectfully refer you to Jack of Kent who in turn will respectfully refer you to The Reply Given in Arkell versus Pressdram?
Right. Food!
I'm not even going to rant. I'm just going to make a list.
The Government has decided that, upon being a hospital patient, we do not have the right to choose when or how we die. However, we do have the right to demand taxpayers' money - of which there is a massive shortage when it comes to, for example, much-needed surgery - for sugar pills from a multi-billion pound industry that have been shown not to work.
A letter from my friend @medtek, and Islington PCT's response, both rather sum things up.
(By the way, before Dr Nancy Malik et al accuse me, I am very balanced about homeopathy. Indeed I have supported it so far as to make a list of its dozens of successful mechanisms.)
This is not simply whinging about silly allocations of taxpayers' money in the UK - on an international level, as the Quackometer points out, the problem is a lot more serious. The blind eye Europe turns to pseudoscience is lethal to millions.
On the justice front, throwing eggs at a demonstration has landed a man in jail. Meanwhile, the same Crown Prosecution Service that has fined Paul Chambers £1000 and given him a criminal record for a silly tweet which not a single person took seriously will not even prosecute the policeman whose violence against Ian Tomlinson in 2009 was followed by his death minutes later.
There seems to be a huge amount of debate about exactly what happened to the bodily fluid which was drained from the body. Apparently the violence itself, a video of which is available here, was insufficient evidence, or something else which can be read as "quite all right in the eyes of the law".
I seriously don't get it.
Oh, and I wish @CrazyColours the best of luck with this tweet!
There is another case I'd like to write about, but I don't have the money or bravery to get sued by the organisation. Suffice to say that I am greatly looking forward to one of its victims of this particular attitude appearing at Skeptics in the Pub in Wales this autumn!
Speaking of suing, you probably already know what I think about the Simon Singh case and that of many others. Now let me introduce the latest libel hero: Luke Bozier, who has been forbidden by Tangent to say he doesn't like Gordon Brown's website.
However, turning to an international level, the Claimant in a perfectly justified case in America has lost. The grounds for her losing is that, according to the jury, merely being present at a nightclub is sufficient consent for a) sexual assault and b) show your breasts on film without your knowledge, let alone any pay.
Er . . . why?
There is, at least, a law against the practice of genital mutilation of children in this country. Yet this summer, between 500 and 2000 schoolgirls will - they think - go on holiday. The article about what actually happens to them, I should warn you, made me feel extremely sick and faint for a long time - I recommend fresh air, a glass of water, and a good angry and restoring chat with some friends after reading it.
If you don't want to read this, let me sum it up: it happens in several countries worldwide, especially Africa; it happens to British children; it causes horrendous physical and psychological damage; it is not required by any religion; the victims are not anaesthetised or even warned what will happen; the tools are seldom sterelised; the danger of it happening is not grounds for asylum in any European country; and not a single person has been prosecuted for doing it or allowing it to be done to a child in their care.
There seem to be an awful lot of prosecutions and libel cases going on for things people have written. But things which people do that put others' lives in danger, or indeed terminate them, seem to be getting off scot-free.
I think the system is: do what you like, just don't put it online? Am I anywhere near getting it yet?
With regard to genital mutilation (which is dangerous and damaging to both sexes), Noodlemaz has researched and written about it extremely well; and you can also support the Orchid Trust and the Addis Ababa Fistla Hospital.
My head and stomach are both now spinning, and I need to get away for a bit.
If you need cheering up, may I most respectfully refer you to Jack of Kent who in turn will respectfully refer you to The Reply Given in Arkell versus Pressdram?
Right. Food!
Friday, 9 April 2010
Nine Days' Woo Report, brought to you by the Blogosphere
As I expect you know by now, Simon Singh won his appeal. This is terrific news for the scientific, journalistic, medical and any communicating bodies, who have not only given Simon their staunch support for nearly two years, but have been awaiting the outcome on tenterhooks about what it means for their professions.
It sounds like the judges made it clear that they are in favour of libel reform. Perhaps, in future, it will be less dangerous to reveal that a new drug may have some side effects your colleagues don't want the world to know about; that some bigshot actually did put millions into funding some dodgy enterprise; or that there is actually no real evidence to support the miraculous claims being made by self-styled health practictioners . . . because, as Richard Dawkins expressed so beautifully months ago, Simon's case has been a landmark.
It can't have been easy for Simon. He's lost out 2 years of his life. He hasn't been able to do any more writing for the Guardian or even start any more great science books - so, in effect, he has been silenced even while he fights. I've only ever had the faintest taste of a legalese attack and it is just as stressful as he says. But he's not giving up, because he is - and this is rare - in a position not to do so. At the moment, most writers do simply because defending yourself is more than they can afford. What is even sillier is that, on the grounds that a website or a few books might be read in Britain, people in totally different countries can pop along here to sue each other. And for that reason, there are laws being passed in America to protect their own citizens from us, and the National Enquirer have blocked us. Try and go there from anywhere in Britain! Not that it sounds like earth-shattering news that everyone needs to know, like science is; but how embarrassing can you get?
You can read a lot more at a court analysis, a guest post and an open letter at Jack of Kent; a wonderful article at Thinking is Real . . . and so many more, but my personal favourite is this succinct tweet from VizTopTips: "QUACKS: If you are happily promoting bogus treatments, keep the whole thing quiet by suing people. No-one will notice."
The BCA's press release gave me and several others quite some amusement. If I remember rightly, they complained about the "happily promotes bogus treatments" but Judge Eady didn't "agree" with them, he actually took it a lot further than they'd ever even thought of, didn't he? "The Guardian subsequently offered a right of reply but this fell short of our expectations, not least of which because the original libel would have remained uncorrected." In other words, this was because they couldn't reply convincingly - as their "plethora of evidence" demonstrated. "The BCA has followed its legal advice throughout this case." Oh, are they libelling their poor hardworking lawyers now? Or perhaps their lawyers gave them advice which would earn themselves the most money, rather than the most sensible route . . . ? "The motivation for this action was always to clear our good name, particularly in respect of the implication that we acted dishonestly." Simon himself has said he doesn't consider the BCA to be dishonest - and yet their refusal to produce anything that convincingly says the opposite must have given an awful lot of people that idea, far more than would have thought it simply by reading the article. (Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science" is very careful to distinguish between nuttiness and actual lying, for example in the case of nutritionists who claim on telly that each glass of fruit juice adds 6 months to one's life.) "It never was, and it is still not our intention, to curb freedom of speech, whether in the field of scientific research or elsewhere, although sadly we recognise that this is how it has been portrayed by Dr. Singh and his supporters”. Well, since intentions don't seem to come into it, how about the entire world of scientific research and elsewhere sue you folks for doing it in practice then? "Our original argument remains that our reputation has been damaged." I wonder who is the most responsible for that.
A commenter on Jack's open letter proposed that the BCA are less bothered about the consequences of their silly action than the importance of seeing Simon punished. That reminded me of a remark by one of Bismarck's contemporaries, which I read about in Hannah Pakula's "An Uncommon Woman": "He would always repay a pinprick with a knife thrust." Bismarck was a master of reinterpretation and of grand scale punishment for the least little annoyances. If the BCA really want to look like proper doctors, perhaps they should behave like real ones who put up with daily nutty accusations of forced vaccination, misdiagnosis, failure to be on call 24/7, failure to save 94-year-old cancer victims so complete incompetence, etc. etc. etc.
Now, before I get sued (so could someone please save a copy of this page in order for it to multiply across the blogosphere later), on to more amusing woonecdotes.
Check out this petition to save the London Homeopathic Hospital. I am Tara Rara Boomteay. To this day I am not sure if it is real or not, or if they are going to count the spoof votes.
Have you been watching Wonders of the Solar System? There is still a day or two left on iplayer to catch up if not - I certainly need to, my family not being into TV and us therefore not having switched over to digital yet. (Our local butcher doesn't understand how we survive. He obviously hasn't met the delights of the Internet.) Anyway, Brian Cox seems to have enchanted millions and annoyed a few with what I doubt very much was "an unfortunate chance remark" about astrology, so the poor little astrologers have got mighty upset. I'm astonished they didn't manage to predict it.
Actually before Jourdemayne's talk began last Thursday, Edd and I had a great conversation in the pub about astrology. I told him I was thinking of winding up the astrologers with a few facts against which to pit their beliefs. For example, let's imagine a future colony based on Mars. It now takes double the time for you to go round the Sun. Does your horoscope still work at different seasons? It can't tally with someone who was born at the same moment as you but is now on Earth.
Or, what about if you go to another galaxy, or even just to a different place in this one? You won't be seeing the same constellations and the stars won't be doing the same things. Which gets the upper hand? What they're doing from the point of view of Earth? Or does a new load of tosh, I mean what astrologers think is serious scientific study dreamed up, and by who?
Or what if you don't know your birth date?
Or what if you're not a human? Why does some supposed influence only apply to humans? Animals and humans are very much alike, DNA-wise. Perhaps the stars should predict when an ant gets stepped on. What about a foetus - why doesn't your "chart" start when you're conceived? Or what if you break it down into when the egg and the sperm that made you were created? That's when you'll get a serious headache, since those wouldn't have been at the same time.
I'd hoped to make Edd laugh; but, unlike me, he is a real scientist and reminded me that the ultimate test isn't how stupid something sounds, even when you break it down logically, but whether or not it works. Of course astrologers will promptly claim it does - but have a look at The 21st Floor to see how easy it is to make it look like that. Oh, and by the way, astrologers, I'd still be interested to hear your comments on my scenarios above. "You are only showing your ignorance" is the answer I can confidently expect (and will certainly laugh at), seeing as they do seem to think that Brian Cox needs to be an avid supporter of astrology and to have spoken at astrology conferences before he can be qualified to have an opinion. (However do they deal with defectors?) For anyone reading this who doesn't feel very competent to address such subjects: fear not, the scientific method is remarkably simple, and accessible to all. If you understand the scientific method, you are qualified to say whether or not something is good science.
The Bad Astronomer jumped on this with a hilarious headline, and invited alternatives over Twitter. "'Astrology sucks' - Cox"; "Astrologers not prepared to take Cox lying down", and so on were promptly suggested - you can think up the rest for yourself!
To end on a happy note, check out this wonderful song about Tony the Fish by Tim Minchin, on the subject of the scientific method. That has to be the funniest thing I have seen in a long time, although I am not sure I could prove that under reasonable experimental conditions!
It sounds like the judges made it clear that they are in favour of libel reform. Perhaps, in future, it will be less dangerous to reveal that a new drug may have some side effects your colleagues don't want the world to know about; that some bigshot actually did put millions into funding some dodgy enterprise; or that there is actually no real evidence to support the miraculous claims being made by self-styled health practictioners . . . because, as Richard Dawkins expressed so beautifully months ago, Simon's case has been a landmark.
It can't have been easy for Simon. He's lost out 2 years of his life. He hasn't been able to do any more writing for the Guardian or even start any more great science books - so, in effect, he has been silenced even while he fights. I've only ever had the faintest taste of a legalese attack and it is just as stressful as he says. But he's not giving up, because he is - and this is rare - in a position not to do so. At the moment, most writers do simply because defending yourself is more than they can afford. What is even sillier is that, on the grounds that a website or a few books might be read in Britain, people in totally different countries can pop along here to sue each other. And for that reason, there are laws being passed in America to protect their own citizens from us, and the National Enquirer have blocked us. Try and go there from anywhere in Britain! Not that it sounds like earth-shattering news that everyone needs to know, like science is; but how embarrassing can you get?
You can read a lot more at a court analysis, a guest post and an open letter at Jack of Kent; a wonderful article at Thinking is Real . . . and so many more, but my personal favourite is this succinct tweet from VizTopTips: "QUACKS: If you are happily promoting bogus treatments, keep the whole thing quiet by suing people. No-one will notice."
The BCA's press release gave me and several others quite some amusement. If I remember rightly, they complained about the "happily promotes bogus treatments" but Judge Eady didn't "agree" with them, he actually took it a lot further than they'd ever even thought of, didn't he? "The Guardian subsequently offered a right of reply but this fell short of our expectations, not least of which because the original libel would have remained uncorrected." In other words, this was because they couldn't reply convincingly - as their "plethora of evidence" demonstrated. "The BCA has followed its legal advice throughout this case." Oh, are they libelling their poor hardworking lawyers now? Or perhaps their lawyers gave them advice which would earn themselves the most money, rather than the most sensible route . . . ? "The motivation for this action was always to clear our good name, particularly in respect of the implication that we acted dishonestly." Simon himself has said he doesn't consider the BCA to be dishonest - and yet their refusal to produce anything that convincingly says the opposite must have given an awful lot of people that idea, far more than would have thought it simply by reading the article. (Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science" is very careful to distinguish between nuttiness and actual lying, for example in the case of nutritionists who claim on telly that each glass of fruit juice adds 6 months to one's life.) "It never was, and it is still not our intention, to curb freedom of speech, whether in the field of scientific research or elsewhere, although sadly we recognise that this is how it has been portrayed by Dr. Singh and his supporters”. Well, since intentions don't seem to come into it, how about the entire world of scientific research and elsewhere sue you folks for doing it in practice then? "Our original argument remains that our reputation has been damaged." I wonder who is the most responsible for that.
A commenter on Jack's open letter proposed that the BCA are less bothered about the consequences of their silly action than the importance of seeing Simon punished. That reminded me of a remark by one of Bismarck's contemporaries, which I read about in Hannah Pakula's "An Uncommon Woman": "He would always repay a pinprick with a knife thrust." Bismarck was a master of reinterpretation and of grand scale punishment for the least little annoyances. If the BCA really want to look like proper doctors, perhaps they should behave like real ones who put up with daily nutty accusations of forced vaccination, misdiagnosis, failure to be on call 24/7, failure to save 94-year-old cancer victims so complete incompetence, etc. etc. etc.
Now, before I get sued (so could someone please save a copy of this page in order for it to multiply across the blogosphere later), on to more amusing woonecdotes.
Check out this petition to save the London Homeopathic Hospital. I am Tara Rara Boomteay. To this day I am not sure if it is real or not, or if they are going to count the spoof votes.
Have you been watching Wonders of the Solar System? There is still a day or two left on iplayer to catch up if not - I certainly need to, my family not being into TV and us therefore not having switched over to digital yet. (Our local butcher doesn't understand how we survive. He obviously hasn't met the delights of the Internet.) Anyway, Brian Cox seems to have enchanted millions and annoyed a few with what I doubt very much was "an unfortunate chance remark" about astrology, so the poor little astrologers have got mighty upset. I'm astonished they didn't manage to predict it.
Actually before Jourdemayne's talk began last Thursday, Edd and I had a great conversation in the pub about astrology. I told him I was thinking of winding up the astrologers with a few facts against which to pit their beliefs. For example, let's imagine a future colony based on Mars. It now takes double the time for you to go round the Sun. Does your horoscope still work at different seasons? It can't tally with someone who was born at the same moment as you but is now on Earth.
Or, what about if you go to another galaxy, or even just to a different place in this one? You won't be seeing the same constellations and the stars won't be doing the same things. Which gets the upper hand? What they're doing from the point of view of Earth? Or does a new load of tosh, I mean what astrologers think is serious scientific study dreamed up, and by who?
Or what if you don't know your birth date?
Or what if you're not a human? Why does some supposed influence only apply to humans? Animals and humans are very much alike, DNA-wise. Perhaps the stars should predict when an ant gets stepped on. What about a foetus - why doesn't your "chart" start when you're conceived? Or what if you break it down into when the egg and the sperm that made you were created? That's when you'll get a serious headache, since those wouldn't have been at the same time.
I'd hoped to make Edd laugh; but, unlike me, he is a real scientist and reminded me that the ultimate test isn't how stupid something sounds, even when you break it down logically, but whether or not it works. Of course astrologers will promptly claim it does - but have a look at The 21st Floor to see how easy it is to make it look like that. Oh, and by the way, astrologers, I'd still be interested to hear your comments on my scenarios above. "You are only showing your ignorance" is the answer I can confidently expect (and will certainly laugh at), seeing as they do seem to think that Brian Cox needs to be an avid supporter of astrology and to have spoken at astrology conferences before he can be qualified to have an opinion. (However do they deal with defectors?) For anyone reading this who doesn't feel very competent to address such subjects: fear not, the scientific method is remarkably simple, and accessible to all. If you understand the scientific method, you are qualified to say whether or not something is good science.
The Bad Astronomer jumped on this with a hilarious headline, and invited alternatives over Twitter. "'Astrology sucks' - Cox"; "Astrologers not prepared to take Cox lying down", and so on were promptly suggested - you can think up the rest for yourself!
To end on a happy note, check out this wonderful song about Tony the Fish by Tim Minchin, on the subject of the scientific method. That has to be the funniest thing I have seen in a long time, although I am not sure I could prove that under reasonable experimental conditions!
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
And therefore . . .
Proofs That Homeopathy Works!
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY ARGUMENT
1) Anyone who doesn't like homeopathy is clearly in the pay of Big Pharma.
2) The fact that Big Pharma also makes homeopathy pills is neither here nor there.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE CHERRY PICKING ARGUMENT
1) Some quotes support homeopathy.
2) The skeptics say not if you read them properly, but that's just twisting things.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE CHERRY PICKING ARGUMENT (2)
1) Some scientific papers find that homeopathy does work.
2) Others find it doesn't.
3) The skeptics claim that #2 are the better ones, because they have better methodology.
4) Yeah, but they were funded/invented by Big Pharma.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE "HOLISTIC" ARGUMENT
1) Homeopathy treats the cause, not the symptoms.
2) The very principle of homeopathy is to find an ingredient that mimicks the symptoms. But the same symptoms can mean a host of different things. For example, a headache may mean tense muscles, eye strain, or meningitis.
3) But homeopathy is holistic.
4) And you just don't understand homeopathy.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM INCOMPREHENSIBILITY
1) Quantum physics is weird.
2) I don't understand it, and surely you don't either.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE CONSUMER CHOICE ARGUMENT
1) For Boots to remove homeopathic products from the shelves is to attack consumer choice and deny us our freedom.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (1)
1) There are problems associated with conventional medicine.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (2)
1) Homeopathy doesn't cause side-effects like conventional medicine.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (3)
1) A doctor once misdiagnosed my head cold/food allergy/weird wart on my finger.
2) This was disgraceful. I pay his wages. I will never go to a doctor again.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM NECESSARY OPPOSITES (4)
1) When I was 13 a doctor was mean to me and dismissive of my headache/period pains/splinter.
2) See #2, above.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE MYSTICAL ARGUMENT
1) You don't understand how homeopathy works, which only goes to show how ignorant you are.
2) I don't understand how homeopathy works, which only goes to show the mysteries of science and the life-force which narrow tick-boxes cannot define.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
1) Someone had an idea!
2) It is just petty to suggest this idea might be wrong. You're jealous and close-minded.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM POLITICAL CORRECTNESS (2)
1) I have an opinion.
2) I am entitled to my opinion.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM POLITICAL CORRECTNESS (3)
1) My opinion is that homeopathy works.
2) If I disagree with your opinion, that is my right.
3) If you disagree with my opinion, that is persecution.
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM POLITICAL CORRECTNESS (4)
1) We felt really intimidated by the mean-spirited Ten23 protest.
2) We didn't even dare unfurl our banner.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
ARGUMENT FROM INCREDULITY
1) I can't believe the placebo effect would work on animals and children.
2) Apparently it does, but I don't believe that.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM INCREDULITY (2)
1) If it's harmless and doesn't work, why are they attacking it?
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
ARGUMENT FROM THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE
1) I don't understand the science of homeopathy, but once upon a time we didn't understand electricity either.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM PERSONAL PREFERENCE
1) I don't like what skeptics say.
2) Therefore, skeptics must be narrow-minded.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM PERSONAL PREFERENCE (2)
1) I don't like skeptics.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY
1) Galileo was persecuted for his belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
2) The fact that Galileo had deduced this with experiments rather than simply thought it up, while the Church was the source of unreasoned faith, is far too complex a matter to understand and you are simply picking holes in my argument because you have no ideas of your own.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM DIGNITY
1) Skeptics ask why water does not remember poo.
2) That is a very undignified question.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
ARGUMENT FROM DISLIKE OF SCIENCE
1) Double-blind randomised trials make it clear that homeopathy does not work.
2) Well, they must be wrong.
3) And I don't like science anyway.
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES
1) Homeopathy cured my auntie of cancer.
2) She took chemotherapy and had an operation too, but she didn't like either of them and it can't have been that, chemo contains nasty chemicals.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM ALLIES
1) Skeptics don't like chiropractors either.
2) Poor chiropractors.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM SMUGNESS
1) The Ten23 campaigners are only proving their own ignorance by overdosing.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE OPPOSITION ARGUMENT
1) I read in an article that skeptics approve of GM food and think 6 month old babies can survive 900 vaccinations in one go.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE THEORETICAL ARGUMENT
1) Skeptics claim to be the guardians of universal truth.
2) Those of us who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE THEORETICAL ARGUMENT (2)
1) Our bodies are designed to heal themselves.
2) Excuse me? Are you saying that deaths of starvation mean homeopathy doesn't work?
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE MORAL ARGUMENT
1) We went all the way to Haiti to treat earthquake victims with homeopathy.
2) Wasn't that nice of us?
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE ROYAL ARGUMENT
1) The Royal Family use homeopathy.
2) They have very long lives.
3) And they must be right. They're the Royal Family!
4) What? Of course they don't live longer due to other causes as well. Don't try to sidetrack my point.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE POLITICAL ARGUMENT
1) Politicians such as Evan Harris are losing votes by their bad behaviour attacking homeopathy.
2) We know he's wrong because he's a politician.
3) Politicians such as David Tredinnick are doing a great deal of good in the face of a difficult Parliament.
4) We know he's right because he's a politician.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM THE TOILET
1) The water in your toilet is different in more ways than in chemical composition than water out of a spring.
2) You need me to explain that?!?!?! HA HA HA HA HA YOU ARE SO IGNORANT!
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
ARGUMENT FROM HUMOUR
1) We can make a lot of claims about skeptics, that will make you laugh until your throat is sore!
2) For example, they believe pregnancy is a disease, think people should be vaccinated, and don't know the difference between LIVING and DEAD FOOD!!!!!!!!
3) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
4) Actually, some skeptics are laughing at you for saying that.
5) But of course they are. They have nothing real to laugh at because they live such miserable lives.
6) Of course they will deny their stupidities, once said stupidities are exposed.
7) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE CONSISTENCY ARGUMENT
1) Sometimes skeptics change their minds.
2) THEY RETRACT THEIR VIEWS!!!
3) THEY ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG!!!!!!
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE HARMLESSNESS ARGUMENT
1) Nobody died as a result of the Ten23 protest.
2) This only goes to show that homeopathy is not dangerous, like conventional medicine.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE LEGAL ARGUMENT
1) Simon Singh is being sued for libel.
2) He must be a malicious liar.
3) Homeopaths are being criticised and mocked and defamed.
4) We must be right; truth is always attacked.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE ARGUMENT FOR "NATURE" (AND IGNORANCE)
1) Homeopathy is natural.
2) What, it isn't herbal?
3) Well, it was invented 200 years ago.
4) My mind's made up. Don't confuse me with facts.
5) Therefore, homeopathy works.
THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT
1) Homeopathy saves the NHS money.
2) It also doesn't make drugs companies a profit (unless of course they're the same drugs companies that manufacture conventional drugs).
3) Therefore, drugs companies say homeopathy doesn't work.
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT
1) ΨPPR = a ΨPx + b ΨPr + c ΨRx.
2) There you are - serious science!
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY ARGUMENT
1) Show your support for homeopathy! Please retweet!
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
THE NUMERICAL ARGUMENT
1) Only three MPs have so far signed the so-called "evidence check" on homeopathy!
2) That is disgraceful.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
GODWIN'S LAW ARGUMENT
1) I don't understand why homeopathy is being attacked.
2) It must be something to do with Hitler.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
And finally, a masterpiece of beautiful, logical thinking by one of my new Twitter followers . . .
ARGUMENT FROM CONSTIPATION
1) Skeptics are constipated.
2) How I think I know about their bowel movements and indeed why I concern myself with such things is an undignified question.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
Thanks to Captsharkey, Batarista and Medtek for pointing me to specific sources, and many highly amusing websites and comments pages I've been enjoying myself over the last couple of months!
Please point me in the direction of any more sources or arguments - and you know what I'd really love? For this to become a chain e-mail.
Update 1: Very many thanks to @FerFrias on Twitter for this wonderful translation - and Menéame, a Spanish website, for bringing in más tráfico!
FerFrias wrote two more "reasons". How I could have failed to include the latter I don't know. Here they are:
ARGUMENTO DE LA REPUGNANCIA FÍSICA
1) No me gusta tu cara, así que no pienso escucharte.
2) Luego la homeopatía funciona.
(Fuente)
ARGUMENTO DE LA FAMA
1) Algunos famosos utilizan la homeopatía.
2) Obviamente, los famosos saben sobre la salud mucho más que los simples médicos y científicos.
3) Luego la homeopatía funciona.
(Fuente)
This means:
ARGUMENT FROM PHYSICAL REPUGNANCE
1) I don't like your face, so I don't have to listen.
2) Therefore, homeopathy works.
ARGUMENT FROM FAME
1) Some famous people use homeopathy.
2) Obviously, celebrities know far more about medicine than doctors and scientists.
3) Therefore, homeopathy works.
Right on!!!
PS again - This has now appeared on at least 4 Spanish websites and at least one German one. Thanks to all of you and I hope you were suitably entertained. You can now download a Spanish translation as a PDF file here!
Update 2: 17th January 2011
KERRYHOMEOPATH'S ARGUMENT
1) Your brain is 80% water.
2) You remember stuff.
3) Therefore, water has a memory.
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
SkepticBarista's reply: .@KerryHomeopath Excrement is 75% water. If Water has memory,#homeopathy is full of shit.
TimandraHarknes's reply: Beer is 93% water. I drink beer, I remember nothing. Therefore homeopathy cannot work.
Update 3: 23rd September 2011
ARGUMENT FROM GAIAHEALTH (WHICH THINKS IT UNDERSTANDS CERN)
1) CERN proves the speed of light is not the universal speed limit.
2) We'll just ignore the fact that this is not peer reviewed, nor published, nor certain rather than an error.
3) And hide that by accusing skeptics of ignoring studies that are . . . yes, flawed.
4) Therefore, homeopathy works.
(Source)
PPS - I originally wrote this at the top, but is has become quite secondary so can go at the bottom.
"It's been a good few weeks for the skeptics. Although we're still awaiting the outcome of Simon's appeal, it was much enjoyed by Jack of Kent, Crispian Jago, Index on Censorship, Skepticat, Jack in fun mode, and many more. You can read the entire transcript of the appeal here on Jack's website. I have read the beginning and end and a great deal awaits my untrained brain. It reminds me of a play in some parts. Perhaps it should become a play, performed perhaps at the Tricycle Theatre whose production of "Called to Account" I shall never forget?
"In the meantime, it's also been an enraging few weeks for, I think, the homeopaths even more than the chiropractors. The recent Evidence Check on homeopathy has not been good news for them. Spies inform the Twitterverse that a mass Twitter attack is on the way [NB. In fairness to all, I did not observe this in the end. But if it was homeopathic, I wouldn't have] . . . so I thought it time to hurry up and publish an especially nasty idea my mean-spirited nerdy brain had nurtured for a few days - inspired by Godless Geeks (health warning: you will either love this last link or hate it; I think you can work out which from the name)."
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