text:
Biology is always more complicated than you want to believe
I watched a little bit of a kerfuffle today as self-described "science groupie" Gia Milinovich decided to pontificate1 once again on the subject of sex and gender.
I am a woman. I menstruate. I have given birth. I have all the usual female mammalian reproductive parts. I won't shut up.
— Gia Milinovich (@giagia) February 16, 2014
I follow a lot of feminists and trans* activists on Twitter, so I see people arguing against transphobic misunderstandings of biology pretty regularly. There are good responses to this line of argument; I always think back to Natalie Reed's post on bilaterally gynandromorphic chickens and Skepchick Will's response to the last time Gia pulled this out.
This time I foolishly decided to slip in a couple of remarks. In particular, I responded to this comment:
@judeinlondon @sueveneer @giagia XYs will NEVER be females no matter how many cosmetic mutilative surgeries they have, that clearer?
— Dirt (@ThedirtfromDirt) February 16, 2014
Which was so wrong it hurt. I pointed out what's obvious to anyone who's done ten minutes of reading on complications of gender, or who's watched fucking "House," would have:
@judeinlondon @ThedirtfromDirt @sueveneer @giagia I love people who have never heard of Complete Androgen Insensitivity.
— Uosdwis R. Dewoh (@Doubting_Tom) February 16, 2014
@judeinlondon @ThedirtfromDirt @sueveneer @giagia Or, for that matter, people who think they know their karyotype without a genetic test.
Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is a condition where cells don't respond to androgen hormones, causing 46,XY individuals to present phenotypically as female, down to a (frequently shallow or undeveloped) vagina, breasts, and in rare cases, a fully-developed uterus and other "usual female mammalian reproductive parts." Swyer syndrome is even more to the point, as those 46,XY individuals, due to undeveloped streak gonads, will develop into women capable even of pregnancy (through fertilized egg implantation) with only an administration of hormones. No "mutilative" surgeries necessary for XY females in either of those cases.
Unless, of course, this argument is circular, and you define female as "people without XY genotypes." In which case you'd have to do a genetic test before referring to anyone by their gender, because of the sheer number of conditions (chimerism, mosaicism, Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, Perrault syndrome, Triple X syndrome, etc.) that exist in humans which make it difficult to judge someone's sex chromosome makeup by looking at their phenotype alone. Which is the point I hinted at in that second tweet.
The appropriately-named "Dirt" replied to that second tweet with a link to their blog o' transphobia, presumably as a way of rebutting my points. I glanced over it, and two things became apparent:
This has little if anything to do with what I was talking about.
SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET.
So an old-school fisking was in order! Oh, was it ever.
No one is born transgendered.
Note the complete lack of any support for this bald assertion. Watch it become a theme.
Transition is a medical invention of the 20th century created to "cure" homosexuality
Transgenderism can ONLY occur via medical intervention.
Lots of things can ONLY occur via medical intervention, such as the normal development of people with Swyer syndrome. So what? Medicine is great!
Oh, here's a fun game: any time they talk about "transgenderism" in a medical context, swap in "abortion," just to see where these talking points are coming from.
Hormones used for transition can and do change personality AND sexual attraction.
Hormones used for transition are the same hormones made by gonads. "Used for transition" is an unnecessary phrase here. We've all experienced the changes to personality and sexual attraction caused by hormones thanks to something called "puberty."
ALL transition surgeries are UNNECESSARY.
Except to the people who need them.
ALL transition surgeries are barbaric, permanently mutilating once healthy body parts.
So are gauged ears and split tongues and tattoos. If it's not your body, then why do you care?
Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld and Richard von Krafft-Ebing first linked homosexuality with inversion, in the early 20th century.
Inverts were males and females who were perceived as being inverted, such as female inverts having a "masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom". In other words those who didnt subscribe to the Gender Straight Jacket.
"Old white male researchers lumped a bunch of superficially-similar groups together as a single pathology." Not exactly breaking news.
It was during this time (1931) that Lili Elbe received and died from the first sex reassignment surgery. Elbe was most likely intersexed, as medical evidence at the time indicated.
Hey, acknowledgement of an intersex condition! Surely this will lead the writer to recognize that sex is more complicated than a binary option completely determined by two chromosomes, right?
Also, this story of Lili Elbe ignores the earlier case of "Dora R." and fails to note that Lili Elbe died after her fifth SRS operation likely due to rejecting a transplanted uterus. Hey, doctors in the '30s couldn't do something that doctors today still can't do. Guess there aren't any trans people.
Harry Benjamin who was a friend of and highly influenced by Magnus Hirshfeld, was heavily interested in gay male drag shows where according to HB, "many of the customers appeared in the clothing of the other sex".
Harry Benjamin is the father of transsexualism/transgenderism.
Even according to that Wikipedia article, Benjamin's research on transgender issues largely began when Alfred Kinsey asked him to see/treat a male child who wanted to be female. Kind of pokes some holes in those "no one is born transgendered" and transgender being an invention notions. Moreover, it only takes about five minutes of looking into transgender history to learn about overlaps between the transgender and transvestite communities. When cross-dressing was illegal, it's no surprise that people with similarly interested in it for different reasons would band together.
Viewing psychiatry through a Gender Straight Jacketed lens, Benjamin ignorantly assumed transvestites and gay men to be one and the same.
HB believed gay men to all be effeminate.
Most of Benjamin's patients were female fetishizers he mistook for homosexuals.
No citations are given for these assertions. I like the term "female fetishizers" though, because its attempt to be specific and skewering really make it look like an indictment of objectification and the male gaze.
Within the first decade of SRS, female fetishizers created an underground snail mail communication system whereby female fetishizers knew beforehand what to say to HB and later SRS doctors that would enable them to be approved for SRS.
Marginalized groups found ways around a system that pathologized and marginalized them. So what?
Also, try playing the abortion game with that one.
The main criteria for early SRS (and today still) is homosexuality or behaviour considered to be homosexual.
Our sexist, homophobic society doesn't exactly spoon-feed people the terms or opportunities to sort out their sexualities and gender identities. There's a lot of messiness as everyone who doesn't conform to the socially-accepted standard susses things out, largely on their own. The existence of the Internet has certainly made it easier for people to find resources and vocabularies and support networks, but kids and teens who are uncomfortable with themselves and how their desires and bodies and mental images are changing still need to seek out that information. It's not surprising that some would try to fit their particular issues into familiar terms or contexts, and the contexts for homosexuality are a lot more prevalent than the ones for transgender.
Also, what "criteria"? Legal? Medical? "Regulatory organizations are slow to adapt to changing cultural and scientific understanding about marginalized groups" is the breaking news headline right under "White Dudes Oversimplify Minorities."
The majority of transitions remain straight white males who have a twisted cock response to clothing labeled "girls" or "womens". Males known as Autogynephiles or as I call them, Female Fetishizers. Males who fetishize the patriarchal Male Gaze constructed IDEA "woman/femininity".
Again, no citations. And the sign of a solid scientific paper, "terms I just made up myself." It's worth linking to the criticisms section of that article, but it's also worth looking at Blanchard's approach as discussed in the opening paragraph. It's all about sex, and specifically, all about attracting a particular kind of partner or achieving some sexual fantasy. That's not just insultingly reductive (and characteristic of all manner of other homophobic and misogynist ideas about people–see also: any time a right-winger talks about gay sex or slutty clothes), it erases or eroticizes the experiences of transgender children–you know, like the one that introduced the previous cited researcher to the issue.
It'd be way easier for Dirt if their cited sources weren't so contradictory to their attempted points.
Female Fetishizers carry out transvestism to the Nth degree in search for greater and greater sexual highs.
Sure seems like a lot of money and pain and effort to expend just for pursuit of a sexual fetish. I mean, I know people go to extremes, but really? All transgender people?
Take furries, for instance. There are those who indulge their fetish mostly online. There are those who dress up in animal suits and get together for sexual purposes. There are those who go out in the fursuits in public, trying to live as furries full-time. There are those who get body modification, altering their faces and tongues, getting tattoos, having eyebrow or horn or whisker implants, and otherwise "mutilating once healthy body parts." You know what there isn't? A disproportionately high rate of violence against furries compared to other populations. Or if there is, it's neither studied nor publicized as far as I can tell. It seems that being a furry is a lot less dangerous than being transgender. Despite that, I think you'll find a lot smaller percentage of furries trying to live full-time or undergo medical interventions than transgender people. Why is that?
It gets back to the notion that sexuality is a choice: if it were, who would choose discrimination and violence and marginalization? Similarly, if transgender identity is just about some kind of sexual gratification, how many people are really going to weigh the options and decide that getting some jollies off is worth the cost and the pain and the threats of violence and murder?
The medical community didnt invest in sex changes until the Kinsey Reports of (1948) and (1953) which concluded at least 10% of the population was homosexual and 37% of males had had a homosexual experience.
It's totally a coincidence that this is also when transgender individuals (pre-surgery!) were achieving some measure of media coverage and were forming organizations. I'm sure Dirt would point the causal arrow in a different direction than I would; Dirt would also neglect to read anything before that linked section of the article, and would handwave away the 30 years of SRS prior to the '50s as "not investing."
In the early seventies pro consensual pedophilia doctor John Money (notorious for experimenting on the intersexed) coined the term Gender Identity/Gender Roles.
Gender Identity/Gender Roles are socially constructed via patriarchy, NOT organically created in the womb.
Money is (in)famous for being the doctor at the center of the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision, under Money's direction. But Reimer's case would really seem to be a blow to Dirt's hypotheses here. See, Money believed, as Dirt does, that gender identity was an entirely social construct. It therefore followed that if Reimer were raised female, with an apparently female body and female hormones and the like, that Reimer would form a female gender identity. Money reported for years that the case was a successful validation of his belief in the social construction of gender.
But it wasn't. According to sexologist Milton Diamond, who worked with Reimer as an adult, the socialization didn't take, and Reimer stopped identifying as female somewhere around the ages of 9 to 11, and began living as male at 14. As a teen, he was driven into suicidal depression.
Hm…suicidal depression because your outward gender presentation doesn't match your self-identification…where have I heard that kind of thing happening before?
See, if Dirt and Money were right, Reimer should have grown up female with no real trouble2, since that's how he was socialized, that's what hormonal instructions his body was receiving. Unless there's something more inborn or innate about gender, something distinct from hormones and patriarchy. Either gender is social or it's biological (or, as is more likely the case, it's a combination of both), but Dirt's trying to pretend that there's a sharp divide while trying to have it both ways. In neither way does the case of David Reimer help Dirt's case.
Just as homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, Gender Identity Disorder was slipped in.
If you read the abstract Dirt links here, it actually makes the opposite point:
Another point of controversy is the claim that the diagnosis of GIDC was introduced into the DSM-III in 1980 as a kind of "backdoor maneuver" to replace homosexuality, which was deleted from the DSM-II in 1973. In this article, we challenge this historical interpretation and provide an alternative account of how the GIDC diagnosis (and transsexualism) became part of psychiatric nosology in the DSM-III. We argue that GIDC was included as a psychiatric diagnosis because it met the generally accepted criteria used by the framers of DSM-III for inclusion (for example, clinical utility, acceptability to clinicians of various theoretical persuasions, and an empirical database to propose explicit diagnostic criteria that could be tested for reliability and validity).
What is it with pseudoscientists and the inability to read?
The Trans Politic was created by straight white males-female fetishizers-using politics to further their pornographic urgers, not so dissimilar to NAMBLA's political pedophilia via the Gay and Lesbian platform.
Wow, ad hominem much?
Transition DOES NOT and CANNOT EVER change a person's sex.
Define "change" and "sex."
Transition is purely a cosmetic and legal "sex change".
Even if it were, so what?
Gay males who transition do so out of internalized homophobia, usually within a hyper masculine minority culture amid the larger white culture.
Yes, because if there's one thing we know about the larger homophobic white culture, it's how non-misogynist and trans-friendly it is.
Since gay white male popularity and large media visibility, gay white male transitions have drastically decreased to near nonexistence.
Citation please. Seriously, I spent some time looking for even just a breakdown of transgender prevalence by race, and couldn't find it. The best I found was an overall summary of LGBT population and an estimate by Los Angeles county of their transgender stats. If these statistics exist, I'd love to see them.
In quantity, lesbian transition was largely unheard of until the backlash against feminism rode its Trojan horse-Queer Theory-into academia and then the Lesbian community.
Yeah, we'll ignore the women who lived as men and married women dating back to the early 19th century.
A huge phase of feminist backlash is hyper-femininity.
Not until hyper-femininity began reaching new undreamed of heights did dykes begin transitioning in numbers.
As hyper femininity began being hammered upon younger and younger women/girls, Trans Trending among lesbian youth took off.
I do not see the thread. Wasn't there hyper-femininity before feminism? Why isn't this also due to internalized homophobia?
Transitioning children has been rare due to the lack of legal medical grounds to do so.
Since the recent publication of the DSM5 which includes transitioning children, the trans kid phenomena has skyrocketed.
"Now that doctors think this treatment might be acceptable, more people are doing it!" What a newspaper this person runs.
Trans kids are considered children who do not sport the Gender Straight Jacket.
You strung some words together there but it's a real shame they don't actually make sense in that arrangement.
Trans kids if left alone will grow up in most cases to be healthy gay and lesbian adults.
Oh I see, the point of that previous point was to define "trans kids" broadly enough so it encompasses all gender-nonconforming individuals, from homosexual all the way out to trans and genderqueer and whatnot. That way, you can bootstrap this claim, since you've already defined "trans kids" to include "kids who never actually identify as trans and are actually gay or bi, but have a non-gender-conforming interest in musicals or softball."
Also, note "in most cases."
Homophobic parents are transitioning their children rather than have a gay son or lesbian daughter.
Because homophobes are so much more accepting of transgender people. And hormones and surgeries are way less expensive than kicking the kid out or shoving them in the closet.
Transitioning children IS an overt attempt to eradicate gays and lesbians in their youth.
It's not doing a very good job.
Hormone blockers used to "treat" GI-gender in-congruence in children are dangerous and life threatening.
Can I just note the hilarity of that link? It links to another post on Dirt's blog. Can't bother to even link an independent article about the drugs. From a cursory look, Lupron's side effects don't seem very sinister, and pages for trans youth make the counterpoint that they reduce the need for future surgery and reduce the depression and anxiety associated with gender dysphoria. Of course, that requires you to view transgender people as actual people who can make their own decisions and honestly report their experiences and intentions and motivations, and not as men driven by lust to mutilate their bodies for sexual purposes.
Ugh, I just realized how that rooted that attitude is in seeing women only as objects of sexual pleasure and not as people.
Transition is the ONLY treatment for modern MENTAL illness that barbarically removes or rearranges healthy body parts for its cure.
I'd like to see the citation for this one.
The GID/GI diagnoses requires the patient be suffering from dysphoria (severe uncomfortableness with the body or how the body is viewed by society).
Female fetishizers who make up most transitions NEVER suffer from dysphoria.
Well, that omits most of the trans* people I follow online then, because I see them discussing feelings of dysphoria fairly frequently.
ALL females suffer from varying degrees of dysphoria.
Oh, I see. You've broadly redefined "dysphoria" too–or, more accurately, equivocated between "dysphoria" (the opposite of euphoria) and "gender dysphoria," which is the component of GID diagnosis. Note that Dirt doesn't link to the Wikipedia page on gender dysphoria, despite liberally linking to Wikipedia in other points. This may be because the opening paragraph states:
Evidence suggests that people who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth may do so not just due to psychological or behavioral causes, but also biological ones related to their genetics, the makeup of their brains, or prenatal exposure to hormones.
Complete with a little superscripted link to an actual peer-reviewed medical journal article on the subject. Curse that evidence, always getting in the way of bigotry and pseudoscience.
Yet lesbians remain the prime females receiving transition as a cure for their dysphoria.
Children do not suffer from dysphoria, yet those suspected of being gay or lesbian are being labeled trans and transitioned.
We'll ignore all those children cited in your links who experienced gender dysphoria. Also, this.
Transition has NEVER cured anyone of their dysphoria.
Dysphoria relief from transition is temporary.
Dysphoria increases over time post transition.
These seem like testable hypotheses. Perhaps it would be good to find and link to studies which evaluated them.
Outside of transition, no therapy has been used to ease dysphoria or attempt to cure it.
From that Wikipedia article on Gender Identity Disorder again: "Until the 1970s, psychotherapy was the primary treatment for GID. Psychotherapy is any therapeutic interaction that aims to treat a psychological problem. Though some clinicians still use only psychotherapy to treat GID, it is now typically used in addition to biological interventions as treatment for GID."
Man, if only Dirt had read that article, they wouldn't have looked quite so silly.
Transition drugs have no serious long term studies and have caused cancer and other complications in trans persons.
Considering that "transition drugs" are basically the same hormones prescribed for other types of hormone therapy, this claim is flat-out ludicrous. Yes, there are links between certain hormones and certain kinds of cancer, but not just in trans people (for instance, breast cancer in postmenopausal women undergoing HRT). Some links of note: 1, 2.
Once the trans person passes as the opposite sex, there is a perpetual mental fear and stress of being found out.
All the troubles that lead the trans person to transition do not magically go away post transition, in fact many more new troubles arise.
Certainly none of that is impacted by people believing that transition is done purely for sexual gratification and that trans* organizations are just like NAMBLA.
Cis is an organic chemistry term trans persons use misogynistically to attack primarily feminist and separate themselves from non transitioners.
"Cis" is a term from chemistry, meaning the opposite of trans (similar to "straight" as the opposite of "queer"). How it's "misogynistic" is an exercise best left for the reader to decide.
Because the trans identity is self created, i.e weak, trans persons cannot fathom critical analysis of any kind.
Maybe because the critical analysis is all transphobic pseudoscientific bullshit like what you've spewed?
No one labeling themselves trans is a feminist.
Define "feminist."
The foundation for transition is misogyny, and misogyny is the foundation for homophobia.
There's some truth to the last half of that. But there's a lot more misogyny in boiling women down to objects of sex and a pair of chromosomes or a particular anatomy than there is in transitioning.
Transphobia does not exist.
Maybe if you repeat that enough times, it'll come true.
Trans persons attacked or murdered are done so because of homophobia and the foundation of homophobia-misogyny.
I suspect there's a lot of truth to that, too. But here you are, attacking trans people. Which are you, a homophobe or a misogynist?
Transition flourished because female fetishizers for decades have used the gay and lesbian political platform to advance their fetishes and inline with the leaders of the straight white homophobic medical community, hampered and out right destroyed gay and lesbian advancement and lives.
Now might be a good time to note the central roles that transwomen like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson played in the Stonewall Riots and otherwise agitating for LGBT rights. Yep, those "female fetishizers" right there, holding back the gay community.
Transition never ends, high dosing of hormones must continue the life of the trans person.
This is also true of many non-trans people. Again, talk to a postmenopausal woman or man with low testosterone sometime.
To feminist reading this, if there is something you feel needs to be added, email or comment me.
You really ought to add some facts, and remove all the rank bullshit.
1. Even if we ignore all the complications of biological sex, this leaves a lot of women out of Gia's category of women: the childless, the infertile, the prepubescent, the post-menopausal, women who have had hysterectomies or infibulations or oophorectomies, or whose sex organs incompletely developed. Gia's womanhood is an exclusive , essentialist womanhood even before you discuss intersex or trans* conditions.
2. Of course, given Reimer's allegations about Money's abusive treatments, he was probably going to develop complexes regardless. It's just interesting to watch Dirt try to smear the trans community with Money's unethical practices when his opinion of gender is the same as Dirt's. If anyone's smeared, it's the "just a social construct" folks.
Filed under Asshats, Fallacies, Feminism, GLBT issues, Medicine, Science, Sex, Skepticism, Stupid People
XKCD tells it truly
I've recently been a bit under the weather. After having a cold I couldn't shake and getting a week or so worth of antibiotics, I was having a host of appetite and gastrointestinal problems, so I went back to the doctor. In the sixteen days that had passed between visits, I'd lost ten pounds.
Now, having repeatedly fallen off the wagon with respect to my calorie-counting and exercise regimen, I was surprised to learn that I'd lost any weight at all, let alone what I knew was an unhealthy amount. Needless to say, my doctor was concerned. He ran some tests, and among the things he said he'd be looking for was the bacteria H. pylori.
I recognized the name immediately, though I wasn't sure of the connection until he elaborated that H. pylori is associated with peptic ulcers. My initial thought on making that connection was "Cool! I might be infected with H. pylori!" I proceeded to tell my doctor about the Nobel Prize that resulted from the discovery of H. pylori and its association with peptic ulcers (previously thought to be caused by stress and spicy food). Taking a page from comic books, and apparently just to prove a point, researcher Barry Marshall experimented on himself with the bacterial culture, giving himself gastritis, then demonstrated that antibiotics could treat it. Certainly it was a small sample size, but confirmation earned Marshall and partner Robin Warren the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine, and I suspect the 2005 Nobel Prize in utter badassery as well.
So the thought of being connected, even tangentially, to such an overwhelmingly hardcore demonstration of science excited me, despite the stomach aches.
Or, as explained by the illustrious Randall Munroe:
Filed under Meatspace, Medicine, Science
Meme Debunking #3: Wash your damn hands!
This may come as a surprise to the non-penised among you, but there's a meme among penis-possessors regarding the necessity of washing one's hands after urinating. I've encountered it since junior high, but it's probably best expressed here:
The boiled-down logic goes something like this: if I wash my penis in the morning, don't pee on my hands, and don't touch anything but my already-cleaned penis in the bathroom, then why should I have to wash my hands afterward? That would just expose me to the further germs on the faucet handle and soap dispenser. More scientifically-savvy non-washers might also note that urine is sterile, and so even a little dribble on your fingers might just cause you to smell a little bad.
The reasoning seems valid, and I think that's a lot of why people are compelled to accept this argument. I also assume that some people don't want to wash their hands for whatever reason, and this is a convenient way to support that preexisting position. Frankly, I wash my hands so often that the CDC considers me a key factor in the development of resistant bacterial strains, so I don't get the appeal.
Here's where I see the problem: next time you meet someone who doesn't wash and offers this excuse, ask them if they'd say the same thing about their hair, or their feet, or their armpit. "I washed my feet and armpits in the shower this morning, and ever since then, they've been enclosed in clean clothes. Why should I wash my hands after touching my feet and/or armpits?" Ask them if they'd be okay with their waiter or cook using that logic when changing before a shift. I haven't done the polling, but I suspect they'd probably be a little uneasy with that prospect.
And that's because we spend a lot more time thinking about and dealing with the normal functions of sock-and-shoe-clad feet and clothed armpits: namely, sweating. The armpits are a crevice containing a rich network of sweat glands and, unless you're a swimmer or otherwise depilated, a bunch of hair. Feet tend to be less hairy where it counts, but have similar crevices between toes, have an abundance of sweat glands as well, and tend to often be contained in tight-fitting cotton coverings. Sweaty crevices are pretty much the Garden of Eden for bacteria growth, and hair and tight cloth have the added effect of holding sweat close to the skin and keeping those dark creases consistently moist. Which is why we apply antiperspirant to our armpits and hate it when our socks get wet. I know that the feeling of sweat-pruned feet is among the most disgusting things I experience in the course of normal living.
And yet, some people are quite willing to consider the penis to be pure and pristine after a long day of the same activities that cause sweaty armpits and toe jam. I hate to break it to you, folks, but the crotch has all the downsides of both feet and armpits when it comes to sweat and bacterial content, as anyone familiar with the term "ball soup" can attest. The male crotch is a mess of creases and crevices, far moreso than the armpit, has a whole bunch of hair, and has the same kind of sweat glands as the armpits. Plus, it's generally contained beneath at least two layers of fabric, one of which is generally at least a little snug, either way providing a means for sweat to stay in the general vicinity for extended periods of time. The result is a bacterial rain forest, rich in a variety of species.
I can't speak to whether or not the swampy crotch is cleaner or dirtier than the door handle or faucets, or even whether or not it's cleaner than your hands. Those questions would require experimental studies that I haven't looked for or tried to carry out. I can't even say that crotchal region bacteria are more or less harmful than other bathroom-based microbes (although as a general principle, "harmless" or "helpful" bacteria often stop being harmless when introduced into a foreign environment, like the E. coli in your gut or the Staphylococcus on your skin). What I can say is that the argument presented in the comic and elsewhere, that your dick stays clean and pristine from the time you leave the shower to the time you unzip your fly, is prima facie absurd, and contradicted by the bacteriological evidence of the groin as a microbial Amazon.
Or, in other words, wash your damn hands!
Filed under Humor, Medicine, Meme Debunking
Bumper Crop
"Simple Living Saves Lives."
So proclaimed the window sticker I saw on a car today, the words written around an old-school windmill. I don't know that I've ever seen the naturalistic fallacy stated so succinctly and so wrongly.
Yes, Simple Living Saves Lives. Unless you're an infant. Or a premature birth. Or deformed. Or exposed to common viruses and bacteria as a child. Or injured in accidents with "simple" technology. Or injured by animals. Or ingesting parasites from insufficiently sanitized food and cooking utensils. Or infected through unsanitary living conditions. Or infected with one of many dangerous STIs from insufficiently-protected/informed sexual encounters. Or pregnant. Or infected with a disease that's only treatable by modern medicine. Or requiring modern surgery. Or a cancer patient. Or a person with a heart condition. Or someone with a propensity for strokes. Or an elderly person. Or a myriad of other things that endanger people's lives, and that are only correctable through modern, "complicated" living.
The sentiment is naïve pastoral nonsense, and what's more, we've known it for at least four hundred years. Sure, technology causes new problems, but the whole reason we have it in the first place is because it solves problems as well. Pastoralists forget that, which means they also implicitly forget an important part of that: in the past, we still had problems.
So, yes, there are lives that would have been saved if we all still lived in agrarian societies with limited technology. You wouldn't see people dying due to radiation poisoning or plane crashes or air pollution due to car exhausts. But you'd probably see a lot more people dying of heatstroke or injuries from domesticated animals or ergot poisoning. The increasing world population, the increasing number of healthy elderly and the decreasing infant and child mortality rate in the developed world are testaments to the point that the complexities of modern life save more lives than they end.
And no lives are saved by forgetting history and idealizing the past.
Filed under Dumbassery, History, Medicine, Nostalgia, Science
This is the worst Ranger since Turbo
Update! In my haste to get away from the bastion of woo that is NaturalNews.com, I missed the link which said that the craziness continues if you register. I've added the new commentary between the horizontal rules down below, and many thanks to commenter blf in PZ's comments for notifying everyone else of the unabridged version.
So, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, doesn't like skeptics. He doesn't like them so much that he decided to write a scathing article about "what 'skeptics' really believe" without actually bothering to find out what skeptics really believe. Apparently he has his knickers in a twist because of the Twitter-based Shorty Awards, where he was winning until it was discovered that a bunch of his votes were coming from dubious Twitter accounts, and supporters of actual medicine voted an actual doctor into the top spot. So, after accusing science-based medicine advocates of lying about the fraudulent votes propping him up, Adams decided that the best course of action would be to do some lying himself, in the form of an article that boasts more strawmen than a Wizard of Oz convention. It's easy pickings, and I'm sure Orac and Steve Novella will be all over it soon enough, but I figured it'd give me a chance to exercise some atrophied snark muscles.
(NaturalNews) In the world of medicine, "skeptics" claim to be the sole protectors of intellectual truth.
Everyone who disagrees with them is just a quack, they insist.
No, not everyone, just the ones claiming to provide medical services without the backing of evidence. We don't call Creationists quacks, for instance, we call them wackaloons. There's a detailed taxonomy, remind me to send you the poster.
Briefly stated, "skeptics" are in favor of vaccines, mammograms, pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy.
You could have said "skeptics are in favor of real medicine" and saved yourself some typing.
They are opponents of nutritional supplements, herbal medicine, chiropractic care, massage therapy, energy medicine, homeopathy, prayer and therapeutic touch.
And again, "they are opponents of things which haven't been shown to work, or have been shown not to work." Sure, it's only one word shorter, but it's far more accurate.
But there's much more that you need to know about "skeptics." As you'll see below, they themselves admit they have no consciousness and that there is no such thing as a soul, a spirit or a higher power.
I don't think "consciousness" means what you think it means. But again, "they don't believe things for which there is no evidence" would be more economic.
There is no life after death. In fact, there's not much life in life when you're a skeptic.
Actually, there's a lot of life in life when you're a skeptic. In fact, thanks to modern science-based medicine, there's a lot more life in life than there used to be. I get to live a lot longer than my ancestors did, and thanks to all those treatments you dismiss–vaccines, mammograms, chemotherapy, etc.–I get to live through things that would either shorten (cancer, influenza, meningitis) or negatively impact (polio, shingles) my life. There was a time when prayer, herbal remedies, and such were the standard medical practice. Around the same time, 2/3 of Europe died of the plague. Perhaps there's a connection.
What skeptics really believe
Note: this is not what skeptics really believe.
I thought it would be interesting to find out exactly what "skeptics" actually believe, so I did a little research and pulled this information from various "skeptic" websites.
"I also neglected to provide actual quotes or links to said sites, so you'll just have to take my word that all this is totally representative, I swear."
What I found will make you crack up laughing so hard that your abs will be sore for a week. Take a look…
I have a feeling that you're right, but not for the reasons you think.
• Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they've never been tested),
Really? Show me a vaccine available for public consumption that has never been tested. Then, show me a homeopathic remedy that has been tested and found both safe and effective. I'll even give you a tip: don't start with Zicam.
that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will,
That's getting to murky legal and ethical waters. Obviously people shouldn't have medical procedures inflicted on them without their consent. On the other hand, people who have taken reasonable measures to protect themselves from preventable diseases shouldn't have their lives endangered because anti-science quacks have convinced people that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. And the children of antivax kooks and suckers shouldn't be endangered because their parents couldn't sort out science from nonsense.
and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. So injecting all children with, for example, 900 vaccines all at the same time is believed to be perfectly safe and "good for your health."
I'd like to know who you're quoting there, Mike. Sure, there's a limit to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. I mean, at some point you're going to be diluting the blood to a dangerous degree. And I'm sure there are dosages of any chemical in vaccines which would be dangerous–after all, anything is deadly in large enough amounts. This is why we have guidelines and tests and studies to determine what the safe limits are, and why we keep any dosages well below those limits. You're almost right in one respect, though, and that's that skeptics understand that the human body's capacity for dealing with pathogens is many orders of magnitude greater than what's present in vaccines. I mean, the immune system is dealing with countless attacks from all fronts 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Adding a few weakened or dead viruses into the mix–or even more benign, some bits of viral coat or surface proteins–barely even registers. It's just enough for the body to take notice, build up defenses, and continue dealing with the real threats.
• Skeptics believe that fluoride chemicals derived from the scrubbers of coal-fired power plants are really good for human health.
What does the source of a chemical have to do with how healthy it is? A fluoride molecule from a coal-fired power plant is exactly the same as a fluoride molecule from anywhere else–including from the natural fluoridated water sources that first tipped people off to the idea of fluoridating water. Moreover, you do realize that coal comes from plants, right? Don't you like plants?
They're so good, in fact, that they should be dumped into the water supply so that everyone is forced to drink those chemicals, regardless of their current level of exposure to fluoride from other sources.
Who's forcing anyone to drink tap water? You don't like it? Buy bottled, get a filter that traps fluoride, move overseas. If you can't accept the basic chemistry and biology behind water fluoridation–not to mention the clinical evidence supporting its safety and effectiveness–then you have plenty of options available to you.
• Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs.
In fact, they believe that people of all ages can be safely given an unlimited number of drugs all at the same time: Antidepressants, cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping drugs and more — simultaneously!
Do you know how science-based medical practitioners can make those claims? Because we've done the legwork to find out how different medications affect the body, and how they might interact with one another. See, when you rely on science and evidence to guide your medical practices, you're able to make specific diagnoses, specific prescriptions, and specific warnings and predictions about how different drugs will interact. Tell me, Mike, what kind of interactions can I expect if I see both a chiropractor and an acupuncturist? Is there a chance that by fixing a subluxation I might end up blocking a chi meridian? If I'm taking an herbal sleep remedy and a homeopathic sleeping pill, am I at risk for overdose? What happens if I pray during all this? Does God consider any of these things to be witchcraft or magic or otherwise verboten?
When your "medicine" is based on fairy tales and fantasies, it really doesn't matter how they combine, does it? Just go ahead and pay your naturopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic healer, reflexologist, TT practitioner, and homeopath simultaneously; there's no danger of harmful interactions except between their hands and your wallet.
• Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganism and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines.
This is absolutely hilarious, because it really goes to show just how little the Health Ranger knows about basic, grade-school science. The reason vaccines work is because of the immune system. When the immune system is exposed to new pathogens, it develops weapons to fight them, so it's already prepared the next time there's an encounter. What vaccines do is make the initial encounter harmless. Instead of encountering the pathogen in the wild and hoping your body survives long enough to develop the virus-specific weaponry, you encounter the virus–or parts of the virus–in a controlled situation. Your body is made aware of the threat and prepares accordingly, so that when you do encounter the wild pathogen, you're already ready.
It's the difference between trying to fashion wooden stakes and crosses in the middle of a full-on surprise vampire invasion, and finding a weakened vampire crawling into town so you can stockpile stakes and garlic before the dangerous ones show up. I know which situation I'd rather be in: forewarned is forearmed.
• Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They are opponents of natural childbirth.)
Define "natural childbirth." I mean, I may be radical in thinking that pain is generally a bad thing, and if we can lessen or avoid it, we should. I also think that pregnancy is a medical condition, which necessarily requires medical care and supervision if the child is to be born as safely and healthily as possible. Or are you opposed to folic acid supplements too? Childbirth is dangerous for both mother and child, and so it should be supervised by people who know what to do if a baby is born strangled by its umbilical cord, not people who think that the best environment for a newborn is a lukewarm bathtub contaminated with feces and afterbirth. And if we can make the process go down without all the natural pain that derives from a series of evolutionary compromises, so much the better.
• Skeptics do not believe in hypnosis. This is especially hilarious since they are all prime examples of people who are easily hypnotized by mainstream influences.
Wow, an equivocation on the term hypnosis. And used in such a witty way! Yes, buck that mainstream, Mike! Screw germ theory and sanitation and the scientific method, what we really need are some health rebels!
• Skeptics believe that there is no such thing as human consciousness.
I beg to differ.
They do not believe in the mind; only in the physical brain.
This is simply asinine. It's equivalent to saying "they do not believe in sight, only in the physical eye." The mind is what the brain does. It's an emergent property of the physical brain. This doesn't mean there's no such thing as consciousness, it just means that consciousness isn't some supernatural mystery.
In fact, skeptics believe that they themselves are mindless automatons who have no free will, no soul and no consciousness whatsoever.
The matters of free will and the existence of the soul are ones that skeptics debate freely and frequently; the former depends largely on how we define "free will," the latter depends on various factors including the religious convictions of the skeptic. In any case, since my soul has never had a broken bone or a headcold, I don't see how this is relevant to medicine.
• Skeptics believe that DEAD foods have exactly the same nutritional properties as LIVING foods (hilarious!).
This is hilarious, for lots of reasons. First, it's patently untrue. Skeptics (and everyone else) recognize that living foods and dead foods have very different nutritional properties. For instance, living foods have lots of bacteria and parasites and other things living on and in them, which is why we tend to cook chickens instead of just biting their heads off. Second, aside from carnival geeks and Ozzy Osbourne, who eats "living foods"? I suppose we could quibble about when exactly a lettuce leaf or apple is no longer living, but as soon as it's plucked and plated, it certainly isn't going to be carrying out its life functions much longer. By the time any foods, living or otherwise, get to any part of the digestive tract where nutritional properties matter at all, I think we can safely call them dead. Finally, what is the big nutritional difference between a dead food and a living food? There are certainly different chemical processes that take place in different stages, and cooking obviously changes various properties (denaturing proteins and all that), but the lettuce leaf example really underscores the problem: when is a food "dead"? At what point does the nutritional value change? Living things are made of the same cells and chemicals as dead things, and living things necessarily become dead things on the way toward the intestines, so what is the general nutritional difference between the two?
Maybe you're just not eating its soul. That must be it.
• Skeptics believe that pesticides on the crops are safe,
Safer than the pests. Pests don't rinse off.
genetically modified foods are safe,
All foods have been genetically modified. Most of it was done crudely, haphazardly, and in a totally undirected fashion by natural selection over millions of years. Eventually, humans came on the scene and invented agriculture and animal husbandry, and we've been genetically modifying food ever since. Nowadays, we can just do it a whole lot better, quicker, and safer than we could before, since we're working on genotypes instead of phenotypes. So yes, skeptics think genetically modified foods are safe, and if you've ever eaten a banana or an ear of corn, you do too.
and that any chemical food additive approved by the FDA is also safe.
Well, more or less. Certainly safer than dietary supplements and herbal remedies not approved by the FDA.
There is no advantage to buying organic food, they claim.
We don't claim that, the evidence does.
• Skeptics believe that water has no role in human health other than basic hydration. Water is inert, they say, and the water your toilet is identical to water from a natural spring (assuming the chemical composition is the same, anyway).
That's right, skeptics hold the shocking belief that chemistry is true and water isn't magic!
Quacks, on the other hand, believe that if you shook the water from your toilet just right, it might make a great cure for diarrhea1.
• Skeptics believe that all the phytochemicals and nutrients found in ALL plants are inert, having absolutely no benefit whatsoever for human health. (The ignorance of this intellectual position is breathtaking…)
No, skeptics understand that many of the chemicals in plants certainly do have effects. Some of those effects may have great therapeutic value–say, salicylic acid from willow bark–and some of those effects may be extremely dangerous–say, the neurotoxin coniine from hemlock. What we need to do is subject plants with possible therapeutic effects to careful systematic tests to find out exactly what the effective chemicals are, exactly what effects they have, and exactly what dosages are safe and useful. Then, we isolate the effective chemical, purify it, and put it into specific dosages. That way, we can ensure that people are getting those phytochemicals in safe, effective dosages for specific ailments, not getting unregulated, potentially contaminated samples with unknown effects for general symptoms in unknown dosages, as they would with herbal supplements.
As to the nutrients, I like salad just as much as anyone else. I doubt that you'll find a skeptic who doesn't believe in the value of a balanced diet.
• Skeptics believe that the moon has no influence over life on Earth.
This is just ridiculous. Of course the moon has effects on living things–gravitational effects show up as tides, animals like moths use its light for direction, etc. These effects, however, are physical and validated by scientific observation.
Farming in sync with moon cycles is just superstition, they say. (So why are the cycles of life for insects, animals and humans tied to the moon, then?)
This, on the other hand, isn't. The Skeptic's Dictionary has a good article on lunar effects, what they are and aren't. The life cycles of humans, insects, and animals aren't tied to the moon (what you've heard about menstruation is myth and coincidence. The moon's effects on living things are nearly all due to the light it gives off, not some magical, metaphysical connections.
• Skeptics believe that the SUN has no role in human health other than to cause skin cancer. They completely deny any healing abilities of light.
That's right, skeptics disbelieve in photosynthesis and the production of vitamin D. The strawmen are getting more desperate.
• Skeptics believe that Mother Nature is incapable of synthesizing medicines.
Not incapable, just not very good at it. Evolution isn't in the business of manufacturing pure pharmeceuticals in discrete doses for specific ailments. Evolution is in the business of manufacturing organisms which reproduce themselves. Any natural medicines are byproducts, which is why we need to isolate the effective chemicals, purify them, and…well, I mentioned all that above. I assure you, no skeptic disbelieves in aspirin.
Only drug companies can synthesize medicines, they claim. (So why do they copy molecules from nature, then?)
Good question; maybe it's because your claim of what skeptics claim is entirely baseless. Yes, we copy chemicals from nature. We test them, isolate them, and improve on them. We figure out what effects they have on the body and find other chemicals that produce the same effects more efficiently. What we don't do is grind up random leaves, put them in unregulated capsules, and call them "treatment" or "medicine."
• Skeptics do not believe in intuition. They believe that mothers cannot "feel" the emotions of their infants at a distance. They write off all such "psychic" events as mere coincidence.
Skeptics don't disbelieve in intuition. We just recognize it for what it is: "a bridge between subconsciously processed information and the action of conscious thought." Hunches are not entirely unreliable–nor are they magical sources of perfect knowledge. They also aren't psychic phenomena, which for some reason always turn out to be indistinguishable from coincidence, trickery, or fallacious thinking when tested. We withhold belief in "psychic" events because there is no plausible mechanism behind them and because they always fall apart under careful investigation. If someone presented some good evidence of psychic phenomena, we'd change our minds–and give them a million dollars.
As to mothers feeling the emotions of their children at a distance, I have a question: why do baby monitors exist? If this intuitive ability were reliable or consistent, then why would any mother need a device that allows you to listen in on a baby in another room?
• Skeptics believe that all healing happens from the outside, from doctors and technical interventions. They do not believe that patients have any ability to heal themselves.
Dude, you're repeating yourself. Get a damn editor.
Thus, they do not ascribe any responsibility for health to patients. Rather, they believe that doctors and technicians are responsible for your health. Anyone who dismisses doctors and takes charge of their own health is therefore acting "irresponsibly," they claim.
Yes, skeptics think that the people best equipped to diagnose and treat disease are the people who have been specifically trained in how to diagnose and treat disease, and who do so with the backing of scientific evidence. We also think that the people best equipped to design buildings are the architects who have been specifically trained to draft structures with careful consideration of the materials involved and the potential complications of the building site, and who do so with the backing of scientific evidence. Just as it's irresponsible to build your own house with no training in architecture, design, or engineering, it's irresponsible to "take charge of [your] own health" with no training in medicine, anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc. Is it really so radical, so surprising, to suggest that tasks which require expertise are best done by experts?
• Skeptics believe that cell phone radiation poses absolutely no danger to human health. A person can be exposed to unlimited cell phone radiation without any damage whatsoever.
Shorter: Skeptics understand how the electromagnetic spectrum works. If low-energy, nonionizing, low-intensity microwaves that aren't even enough to cause heating had detectable physiological effects, then we'd experience it from natural sources–which are far more intense–as well. Furthermore, if low-energy microwaves could have terrible physiological effects on human health, then the far more intense visible radiation should be orders of magnitude more dangerous. And yet, you claim that light has healing effects. Strange how that is.
• Skeptics believe that aspartame and artificial chemical sweeteners can be consumed in unlimited quantities with no ill effects.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Dude, aspartame? Really? Sigh, okay, here goes: No, no scientifically-minded person thinks that anything can be consumed in unlimited quantities with no ill effects. Even your vaunted spring water is deadly in high doses (and depending on what's in it, possibly low doses as well). Scientists understand that toxicity is all a matter of dosage, not so much of substance (or the absurd dualist notions that you seem to employ). The Acceptable Daily Intake of aspartame, as determined through actual scientific investigation is 50 mg per kg of body weight. A can of diet soda contains 180 mg. For a 75 kg (a little over 150 lbs) person to exceed the ADI for aspartame, they'd have to consume 3750 mg of Aspartame, or about 21 cans of diet soda. I don't know anyone who drinks that much pop in a day on a regular basis, do you?
See, again, when science is the basis for your recommendations, you can actually make informed statements about the safety of various substances, rather than assuming that all natural things are okay and all artificial things are dangerous in any amount. If you're looking for more info on aspartame, here's a good place to start.
• Skeptics believe that human beings were born deficient in synthetic chemicals and that the role of pharmaceutical companies is to "restore" those deficiencies in humans by convincing them to swallow patented pills.
• Skeptics believe that you can take unlimited pharmaceuticals, be injected with an unlimited number of vaccines, expose yourself to unlimited medical imaging radiation, consume an unlimited quantity of chemicals in processed foods and expose yourself to an unlimited quantity of environmental chemical toxins with absolutely no health effects whatsoever!
First, you're repeating yourself again. Get a damn editor.
Second, all those things you mention have known safe dosages. No one believes that you can, for instance, be exposed to unlimited X-rays with no ill effect. That's why they give you a lead apron, that's why radiologists and technicians stand behind the shielding when they give you an X-ray, you boob. Every treatment carries with it some degree of danger, and thanks to science-based medicine, that degree is quantified before you ever lay down on the X-ray table.
All the beliefs listed above were compiled from "skeptics" websites. (I'm not going to list those websites here because they don't deserve the search engine rankings, but you can find them yourself through Google, if you wish.)
Ah, "I'm not going to document my sources, because I don't want them to feel special." One more difference between you and scientists. See, real medicine requires people to be explicit about their research and experiments, documenting every source of information. Imagine the uproar among alt-med proponents if a medication were released with documentation this sloppy. The truth is that you don't want to link to your sources because your readers might actually check them and find out that your statements are either ridiculous exaggerations of what skeptics say, or outright fabrications.
But you can prove me wrong, Mike: post your list of sources. Shut all the skeptics up by demonstrating that every one of your points is drawn from actual quotes from actual skeptic websites. I won't hold my breath.
Skeptics aren't consistently skeptical
Pot, meet kettle.
If you really look closely at the beliefs of "skeptics," you discover their skepticism is selective. They're really skeptical about some things — like vitamins — but complete pushovers on others such as the scientific credibility of drug company studies.
No, we're equally skeptical about both, requiring rigorous scientific evidence for either. When the rigorous scientific evidence validates a drug's effectiveness, we accept it (tentatively). When the rigorous scientific evidence shows vitamins to be largely unnecessary, we accept that too (tentatively). Where's the inconsistency?
Here are some of the many things that "skeptics" should be skeptical about, but aren't:
I'm sure this will be enlightening.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the corruption and dishonesty in the pharmaceutical industry. They believe whatever the drug companies say, without asking a single intelligent question.
Citation please. Drug companies are businesses like any other, and they have the bottom line as their main goal. Drug advertisements, despite the regulations, are just as prone to being misleading and slanted as ads for anything else. This is why we don't really care about drug companies so much as the scientific research behind the drugs. See, the research isn't conducted by just one company or just one scientist or just one group. It's conducted by a variety of people and validated by independent research. Drug trials have to be evaluated by a host of independent scientists and agencies who aren't concerned with Astra-Zeneca or Pfizer's bottom line, but who are concerned with safe and effective treatments validated by rigorous scientific evidence.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about medical journals. They believe whatever they read in those journals, even when much of it turns out to be complete science fraud.
Hey, you know who exposes science fraud? Skeptical scientists. Skeptics tentatively accept medical research that makes it to reputable journals, because most of us aren't trained medical researchers and don't have the resources to repeat every experiment that comes down the pipe. We trust the experts provisionally, just as we'd trust what the mechanic says when he examines our cars. And if something is hinky, we trust the scientific process to eventually expose it–to give us a second opinion on our car troubles, as it were. But even despite a lack of expert training on the part of most skeptics, we're still able to pick out the hallmarks of bad studies–low sample sizes, unstated conflicts of interest, subjective measurements, uncontrolled confounders, conclusions that don't match the data, poor blinding, etc.–which show up in a number of medical studies–especially in certain journals (*cough*alt-med journals*cough*). Skeptics–and especially skeptical scientists–are just as likely to pick these studies apart as any other.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry. They believe that drug companies are motivated by goodwill, not by profits.
Right, and what motivates alt-med practitioners? What motivated Andrew Wakefield or the Geiers? Rainbows and butterflies? We're under no delusions about the desires of the pharmaceutical companies; can your devotees say the same about purveyors of "natural" remedies?
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the motivations and loyalties of the FDA. They will swallow, inject or use any product that's FDA approved, without a single reasonable thought about the actual safety of those products.
The FDA is a gatekeeper, really becoming important only after all the drug testing legwork has already been done by independent scientists. It's a stamp of approval on work that has already been done. And yet, it's a step further than alt-med and herbal proponents are willing to take. Tell me, Mike, which is better: an imperfect regulatory agency, like the one for drugs, or a nonexistent regulatory agency, like the one for alternative medicine?
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the safety of synthetic chemicals used in the food supply. They just swallow whatever poisons the food companies dump into the foods.
Yawn, more repetitive dualism.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the enormous dangers of ionizing radiation from mammograms and CT scans. They have somehow convinced themselves that "early detection saves live" when, in reality, "early radiation causes cancer."
Again, the danger is in the dose, not the substance. Small amounts of X-ray radiation carry a known risk, and that risk is weighed against the benefits of early detection of dangerous diseases. People are exposed to ionizing radiation every time they walk outside (what was that above about the sun's healing properties?), and the amount of exposure to ionizing radiation during a mammogram is about what you'd get from living in the United Kingdom for a year. I don't see Brits dropping left and right from radiation poisoning or abnormal cancer rates, do you?
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the mass-drugging agenda of the psychiatric industry which wants to diagnose everyone with some sort of "mental" disorder. The skeptics just go right along with it without asking a single commonsense question about whether the human brain really needs to be "treated" with a barrage of mind-altering chemicals.
Right, there are no skeptical evaluations of psychiatry. None at all.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about mercury fillings. What harm could mercury possibly do anyway? If the ADA says they're safe, they must be!
And no skeptic has ever expressed concern over mercury fillings, even if the studies show no significant risk.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the demolition-style collapse of the World Trade Center 7 building on September 11, 2001 — a building that was never hit by airplanes. This beautifully-orchestrated collapse of a hardened structure could only have been accomplished with precision explosives. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc…) Astonishingly, "skeptics" have little understanding of the laws of physics. Concrete-and-steel buildings don't magically collapse in a perfect vertical demolition just because of a fire on one floor…
Oh Jesus, you're a Truther, too.
• Skeptics aren't skeptical about the safety of non-stick cookware, or the dangers of cleaning chemicals in the home, or the contamination of indoor air with chemical fumes from carpets, paints and particle board furniture. To the skeptics, the more chemicals, the better!
Hey, dipshit, guess what: everything is made of chemicals. Paints, teflon, carpets, drugs, the sun, pets, people, even water and herbs. About the only thing mentioned here that hasn't been made of chemicals is electromagnetic radiation, which is instead produced by chemicals.
Nature is bad, chemicals are good
*Facepalm*.
Summing up the position of the "skeptics" is quite simple: Nature is bad, chemicals are good!
Okay, you've made it clear that you don't have an editor, so I'll offer my services for free, just this once:
If we only had more chemicals injected into more babies, the world would be a better place, they say. If we could only ban all plants, herbs, vitamins and supplements, we'd all be so much healthier because then we'd take more pharmaceuticals!
If only we could crack more spines, put more dirty needles into children's skin, expose more people to preventable diseases, and fill people full of unregulated herbs and supplements, we wouldn't have to worry about overpopulation anymore! But who's going to bury all the bodies?
Let's turn it around, Mike: are there any good chemicals? Is there anything natural which isn't beneficial? I've explained my skeptical position throughout this post, including the points that some natural remedies are effective and some chemicals are harmful. Are your beliefs so nuanced?
Seriously. This is what they believe.
Note: this is not seriously what anyone believes.
They openly admit this is their position.
Note: no one has ever claimed this as a reasonable position ever.
And all you people drinking green smoothies, and growing your own food, and getting natural sunlight, and taking care of your own health, and drinking herbal tea… well you're all just fools, say the skeptics.
Note:…okay, that one's pretty much right.
You're all just too stupid to understand "real" science. Because if you understood real science, you'd give up all those useless herbs and superfoods and healing vegetables and you'd be taking twenty different prescription medications instead.
Sigh, nice false dichotomy. No, the saddest part of all this is that real science isn't that hard to understand. Anyone can understand the basic principles of basing your claims on evidence and validating them through careful observation. The concepts behind actual medicine are quite easy to grasp, even if the specific biochemistry is more complicated. Perhaps it uses more syllables than "qi" or "soul" or "magic," but it has the benefit of being real.
Then you'd be really smart, see. Because all those chemicals make you healthy and smart. A few extra vaccine injections will make you even smarter. Then you can join the skeptics because you're smart enough at that point to understand that chemicals are the answer to all of life's problems: Depression, anxiety, digestion, sexual performance, sleep, even test-taking abilities… there's a chemical "solution" to every problem you might experience.
As opposed to alt-med and woo, which offer solutions even for made-up problems like chiropractic subluxations, qi blockages, sick auras, sin, and spiritual illnesses.
What skeptics really are
Mike, you wouldn't know what a skeptic is if one kicked you in the natural ass.
I hope it's fairly obvious to you by now that skeptics are the most misinformed people on the planet.
That sound you heard, that faint shaking beneath your feet, was the detonation of my latest irony meter.
They are the easiest people to fool. They're the easiest to hypnotize, too, because they lack independent thinking skills. Rather than thinking for themselves, they have joined a "club of skeptics" where they can be told what to think and then label themselves "intelligent" for following others in the group.
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These are the people who line up to be injected with useless H1N1 vaccines. (The joke is on them, of course. Those vaccines were a complete fraud…)
And what's your evidence for that claim?
These are the people who stand in line at the pharmacy to buy a dozen different prescriptions (costing sometimes thousands of dollars) that their doctors told them to take.
As opposed to the people who stand in line at the Whole Foods store to buy a dozen different supplements (costing sometimes hundreds of dollars) that their naturopaths told them to take.
These are the people who eat processed, dead junk food laced with chemicals that make them sick — and then they wonder why they're sick.
I'll spare you the details of what's in the natural fertilizers and pesticides that get used on "organic" crops.
These are the people who sit at home watching television and think to themselves how smart they are because they follow the medical advice they learned in drug company advertisements.
Because no homeopathic remedies or herbal supplements are ever advertised on TV. I've certainly never seen a commercial for HeadOn or Zicam or Airborne.
These are the real "skeptics." They are so incredibly isolated from reality that they don't even believe in their body's own ability to heal itself.
These are the real "medical practitioners." They are so incredibly isolated from reality that they don't understand that water from a toilet is chemically identical to water from a natural spring.
Skeptics don't believe in a higher power of any kind: No God, no spirit, no angels, no guides, no creative force in the universe… nada.
Yeah, this is the real proof that you did absolutely no research for your article, because the schism between skeptical atheists, skeptical theists, and skeptics who think everyone should just leave religion alone has been a hot-button skeptical topic for months.
They think the universe is a cold, empty, lonely, stupid place full of soulless, mindless, zombie biological bodies who have no free will and no consciousness.
And people like you, Mike, really don't help to dispel that belief.
Gee, no wonder these skeptics are so misguided. They have the most pessimistic view possible. No wonder they seek to destroy themselves with chemicals — they don't even think they're alive to begin with!
Skeptics are bent on self destruction. And they believe that when you die, the lights just go out and you cease to exist. Nothing happens after that. You're just a mindless biological robot whose life has no meaning, no purpose, no higher self.
This is exactly what the skeptics believe. They'll even tell you so themselves!
I…I just give up. How do you argue with someone so arrogantly ignorant?
Never argue with drones
Oh, okay. Thanks, Mike!
Realizing this, it makes it so much easier to debate with skeptics on any topic. Whatever they say, you just answer, "WHO is saying that? Are YOU, a conscious, free-thinking person with a mind and soul saying that, or are those words simply being automatically and robotically uttered from the mouth of a bag of bones and skin that has no mind and no soul?"
I like how you're giving your followers a script to follow in response to what you perceive as robotic, hive-mind behavior. Truly you have no sense of irony.
If they answer you honestly, they will have to admit that they believe they are nothing more than a robotic bag of bones and skin that is mindlessly uttering whatever nonsense happens to escape their mechanical lips. At that point, you've already won the debate because YOU have a soul, and THEY don't. You're arguing with a mindless robot.
I'm laughing on the outside, but I'm weeping on the inside.
Seriously. Think about this deeply.
That's the first good advice you've given. Unfortunately, I doubt that even you will follow it.
If you believe what the skeptics want you to believe (because they are always right, of course), then you must accept the fact that THEY have no consciousness. They are not really "alive." They are just robotic biological machines. They are drones, in other words. And drones are not equal to a being of energy with a consciousness and a soul, inhabiting a human body with purpose and awareness.
I know what all those words mean individually, but I'll be damned if I can make any sense out of them in that configuration. Seriously Mike, hire an editor.
Never argue with drones. You only waste your time and annoy the drone.
Okay, two good pieces of advice.
Skeptics… zombies… drones… different words for the same thing. Soulless, mindless, lacking consciousness and free will, having no awareness of the value of life… these are the skeptics arguing for vaccines, mammograms and chemotherapy today. They are agents of death who can only find solace in an industry of death — the industry of modern medicine.
Yes, we are the agents of death. We, who advocate methods which have resulted in the eradication of smallpox and the near-eradication of measles and polio; we, who advocate methods that have drastically reduced infant mortality rates worldwide; we, who advocate the science that has uncovered the roots of once-deadly diseases and found ways to extend the lives of patients who even ten years ago would have been lost causes. We're the agents of death, not the people peddling treatments that were outdated and unsupported in the Dark Ages, who deny basic biology and chemistry, and who have been directly responsible for the resurgence of preventable illnesses in first-world nations.
You're a ghoul, Mike, you're apparently totally disconnected from reality, and your refusal to link or quote your opponents suggests that you're consciously aware of that. You're a coward, Mike, afraid to let your followers see what skeptics actually have to say, and so you invent ridiculous positions and lie about them. I can only hope that you don't drag too many people down with you, and that at least some of your readers are able to recognize your strawmen and ad hominem attacks for the substanceless jabs that they are.
So overall, Mike, your examination of "what 'skeptics' really believe" has almost nothing to do with what skeptics really believe. Instead, you've crafted an army of strawmen to flail against, and even then, you fail. How many of these complaints can be turned back on you, Mike? How many alt-med enthusiasts and religionists claim to have a lock on secret, ancient knowledge superior to anything produced by scientific investigation? How many antivaxxers claim to have intimate knowledge of a secret conspiracy of "Big Pharma"? How many alt-med loons think that all herbs and alternative modalities are safe and effective, even if they've never been tested (or have been tested and found to be unsafe or ineffective)? How many think that everyone needs vitamin supplements and herbal remedies and chiropractic treatments and acupuncture to maintain health rather than cure specific ailments? How many think that six-month-old infants need to have their necks and backs adjusted even though their bones haven't yet ossified? I could go on and on. You exercise so much pseudo-skepticism about science-based medicine, but you fail to apply the same criticism to your own side. And when backed against the wall, scientific medicine can show you the research, the evidence, the double-blind tests, and the rationale underlying every drug, diagnostic, and prescription. What can you show, Mike? What does any newage alt-med proponent have on his side except platitudes, fallacies, and supposed wisdom from before the germ theory?
Physician, heal thyself.
1. A strawman? Yeah, probably. I suppose it'd be more accurate to talk about water's magical selective memory that makes it somehow forget the piss and shit on the way through filtration systems, but remember stuff that was diluted out of it during homeopathic preparations. That point, however, has been done to death. This one is funnier. But at least I understand that it's not necessarily an accurate depiction of homeopathy.
Filed under Dumbassery, Medicine, Science, Skepticism, Woo
Allergic to Skepticism
Over the summer, I made the trip to visit Akusai, Magus, the Fianceé and Wikinite, along with an assortment of other Hoosiers. The trip was a blast–as any such gathering would be–but that's not why I'm dredging it up several months later. No, the reason for the resurrection comes from something Akusai was talking about at the event–namely, his allergies.
I've recently developed several such allergies. I remember most of my life that I would get a cold or two in spring or summer. At some point, my body decided that wasn't enough, so toward the end of high school, I started getting all those classic allergy symptoms at various times of the year, and always around cats.
I've never gone to an allergist; instead, I self-medicated. I experimented first with Benadryl antihistamines, and it only took a few weeks for me to realize that the reason I was falling asleep much earlier than usual was because of the whole "MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS" thing. I switched over to Claritin (loratadine) and its generic counterparts, and I haven't looked back since.
So, when Akusai brought up his allergy problems, I chimed in that Claritin really helped mine. He (and he can correct me if I get this wrong) replied that it didn't work for him, and that his allergist said it didn't really work for anyone. I was taken a little aback, skeptic though I am–had I really fallen prey to Doggerel #70? I know I'm not immune to the placebo effect or other fallacies of thought, but this one surprised me a little. So, I resolved that I would do some research into the medicine and find out what kind of clinical evidence supported its efficacy.
And then, I didn't do much else. I pulled up some articles on my iPhone at one point, but never really got around to reading them. I kept using the Claritin as necessary, mainly because I still had these bottles of it, and resolving to look into the literature eventually.
Eventually was within the last week, as it turns out. My fianceé, you see, has been using Zyrtec (cetirizine hydrochloride), and has been trying to convince me to give it a shot. I didn't want to run into the same trap that I'd apparently hit with Claritin, so I decided to do some research. In the meantime, I bought a trial pack of the Zyrtec.
I also completely exasperated my fianceé by launching into full-on skeptic mode in the medicine aisle, explaining that I wanted to do the research, and that I wasn't going to believe it worked just based on her self-reported experience. We also got into a bit of back-and-forth over whether or not the brand name mattered; clearly both bottles contain the same chemical (it says so on the label); why would one affect me differently? Apparently, I failed the "being skeptical without coming across as a dick" test. I'd like to work on that, but apparently the threshold is a lot lower than I suspected.
Anyway, when I got home, I pulled up PubMed and searched for combinations of "loratadine," "cetirizine hydrochloride," and "allergy." I read and skimmed a lot of abstracts, which covered an awful lot of terms that I didn't understand, but at the end of it I was pretty well satisfied that both loratadine and cetirizine had been shown to be significantly more effective than placebo in controlled trials. Moreover, at least some of the abstracts suggested that the latter was more effective than the former, which has inspired me to continue at least trying Zyrtec. And by "Zyrtec," I mean "generic cetirizine hydrochloride," because I still haven't been convinced that there's a difference. My next big step is to see an allergist (now that I have insurance), so I can get a better idea of what exactly I'm allergic to.
The point of this meatspace anecdote is as a reminder that it's easy, even for skeptics, to be fooled. I don't (and I'd say, I can't) really turn off that skeptical impulse, much to my fianceé's consternation, but through laziness and assumptions, I can delay it, and I should be more careful about that. True, I can't go researching each and every thing I do or consume or think about, but I can at least do the legwork when it's my money and my health on the line. All told, that research didn't take long, and while the details of the studies were well beyond my ability to comprehend, the conclusions were straightforward.
The other point is one I'm going to be working on in meatspace a bit more. As skeptics, we tend to be harsh and blunt because, I think, we recognize the value in that unvarnished truth (and because we like to argue). We understand that the only idea worth believing is one that's been through an unrelenting gauntlet of harsh trials and uncompromising questions. We have a specialized vocabulary to describe all the ways that people can be fooled and can fool themselves, and we use it regularly.
Most people, however, are not as steeped in the skeptical movement as we are. Launching into a skeptical examination with all guns blazing, talking about the worthlessness of anecdotal evidence and the placebo effect and mistaking correlation for causation is all well and good in blog comments and TAM conversations, but it seems to come across as hostile to non-skeptics. I think it's important to rein in those finely-honed skeptical impulses when we're in meatspace dialogues, lest we come across as condescending know-it-alls.
Conversely, though, we also need to educate (and it's difficult to educate peers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all) so that we can have these kinds of discussions, and so that other people understand why we are so focused on this harsh evaluation of ideas, beliefs, and claims. There is value in skepticism for everyone–except perhaps the woo merchants, frauds, and charlatans–and we have a responsibility to communicate and promote that. If we did it more often and more effectively, we'd have a lot less to worry about with regard to tone and civility.
Filed under Action Skeptics, Meatspace, Medicine, Skepticism
I can hear you, just barely hear you, I can just barely hear you
July 6, 2009 22 Comments
I have tinnitus in my left ear. At least, I think that's what I have; my attempts to get the condition diagnosed have generally been unsatisfying. For me, it manifests as a static sound, accompanied by a feeling of movement or pressure or something in my ear canal. It comes and goes, and it usually accompanies sounds, but not with any particular pattern I've been able to discern. Naturally, it never seems to happen when I'm getting tested, so I'm sure that's contributed to the vagueness of my diagnoses. It's a nuisance, more than anything, but I'd certainly like to be rid of it.
So, recently I've heard this commercial on my local Air America affiliate. It starts with some overly dramatic voices–"Do you hear it?" "I hear it all the time!" "It's annoying." "It keeps me awake at night."–and so forth. There's an annoying sound in the background, which rises in intensity as the voices rise in desperation, and if that portion of the commercial were to escalate any further, I'd expect it to head for some desperate Lovecraftian or Poeian declaration of insanity–"'TIS THE BEATING OF HIS HIDEOUS HEART!" or something.
Cue the soothing sales pitch, saying that you can "hear the silence" with Quietus, an all-natural herbal remedy for tinnitus. My first reaction was one of sardonic literary geekery: yes, I imagine that quietus is a cure for a great many ailments. All of them, in fact. I just wonder if they make it with a bare bodkin.
That lame English major joke would have been the end of this post, but that "all-natural herbal" tagline in the commercial seemed like an opening for copious amounts of woo, so I dug a little deeper. Lo and behold, when I found their website (such as it is–it's just a one-page ad with no information about the composition), the woo ran hot and cold like pure water:
That's right, it's homeopathic. For the two of you who don't know, homeopathy is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine modality based around the "Law of Similars"–that if you have some symptom, the way to cure it is by taking small amounts of substances that cause that symptom. In order to achieve those small amounts, one part of the allegedly curative substance is diluted in ten or one hundred parts of water, which is then shaken in a particular way. This procedure may be repeated several times, giving incredibly dilute solutions. And by "incredibly dilute," I mean "well beyond Avogadro's Number, so diluted that none of the solute remains in the solution." This is okay, because the water has memory, and shaking it causes something about the vibrations of the substance to yadda yadda. The point being that if it worked the way homeopaths claim, it would require us to completely rewrite the laws of physics. Thankfully for the physicists, homeopathic remedies consistently fail all well-designed tests of efficacy.
Now, it's possible that Quietus uses one of the more potent dilutions–1X, for instance, would be a 1/10 dilution, which is quite potent for some substances. I don't know, because the website doesn't include any information on the product.
But what the website does have is a phone number. I decided that this blog fodder was too rich to pass up, especially since it hit so close to home. So I gave them a call. I stayed on hold for awhile, jotting down the questions I wanted to make sure to ask. Eventually a representative picked up–we'll call him Dane–and asked me basic information about my name and condition. I was completely honest, describing my symptoms just as I did above, and mentioning that I've had them since about sixth grade or so.
He explained that Quietus is a chewable tablet that you take twice a day; over the course of the conversation, he further explained that most people show an effect in seven to ten days, and that you should wean yourself off of it once your symptoms are gone. But he was also careful to note that this isn't a cure for tinnitus, but it will cause the symptoms to go away, or it will cause you to stop noticing the symptoms–that much wasn't entirely clear.
Dane mentioned in the early part of the call that Quietus is a proprietary mix of various herbal remedies "proven" to relieve the buzzing, ringing, etc., associated with tinnitus. He also noted that it was "certified effective by the FDA Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia." When I could, I asked if he'd be able to tell me the ingredients–I wouldn't want to risk an allergic reaction, after all. He listed off a bunch of ingredients: Potassium blends, sodium, salicylic acid, iodide, and something called "cenosha" or "senosha" bark. I've tried looking up the latter on Google in a variety of spellings, but I can't find anything even close. After each substance, he mentioned that it has been "proved" to be effective on tinnitus symptoms.
I then moved on to the only question I had to really play dumb for: "You mentioned it's certified effective by the FDA Homeopathic…what did you say? I've heard of homeopathic stuff before, what is it?" Dane explained that it was the branch of the FDA in charge of vitamins and supplements. I understand what he meant, but he really wasn't answering anything even remotely like the question I asked. It was also clear that he either didn't know what homeopathy was, or really didn't want to say–and I suspect the former.
Finally, I asked, since it had been certified effective by the FDA, if there were any clinical trials. He answered that they had been proved effective, and that it had been proved for five years to be safe and effective. I asked if the results would be published anywhere, and if that information was available; Dane said that the literature that would be included with the pills would have testimonials and such. I may have cut him off a bit there; "I was thinking more like medical journals or something like that." He replied that he was pretty much just a salesman, and wasn't sure about anything like that. Obviously, I understood that.
Given that, I said that I wasn't sure if he'd be able to answer the other question–"What mechanism it works through, like the biochemistry of it?" He really didn't know, and I didn't blame him. At one point he'd said that the remedies enter the body and cause the brain (or ear) to no longer recognize the noise, but it was unclear how this happened.
Dane realized at that point that he hadn't even told me how much it cost–$59.95 for one bottle of 64 pills (I think that was the number), and discounts for more bottles, plus a 100% money-back guarantee if I'm not satisfied. I explained that I'd have to do a little more research first, and that I'd call him back. I realized the call wouldn't end there, because I'm sure he gets paid on commission. He asked whether it was a cost issue, or if I was just skeptical about whether or not it worked; I answered that it was a little of both. Dane suggested that the best way to find out if it works is to try it yourself, and I really held back the torrent that that Doggerel could unleash. I said "sure," and Dane said that everyone was different, so even if you look at all the trials, it won't tell whether or not it'll work for you. I agreed, but said that I know there are also cognitive biases that I wouldn't want to fall into, and so I'd like to do a little more research before I make a decision. Dane said that he thought we could both agree that the best idea would be to do some more research, look at the information, and try it myself. I chuckled a little and said that I agreed, and I figured I'd do the first step and call him back for the second. I thanked him for the information, and he more or less hung up.
I don't want to say anything disparaging about Dane, he was a nice guy, not really pushy at all, and I only wish he was a little more knowledgeable about the product. I feel a little bad for him; I wasn't going to be dropping $60 on homeopathic pills, regardless of the dosage, and so I did kind of waste his time. It's not his fault that homeopathy is bunk; he's just the guy answering the phones, and he wasn't prepared for some skeptic blogger to call and bother him for twenty minutes. Then again, that wouldn't be a concern if his employers weren't peddling pseudoscience as real treatment. Thinking back, I would have liked to have asked him about the dilution, but that would have tipped my hand as someone who knew a thing or two about homeopathy. I also would have liked to know if there were any expected side effects, and I'm kicking myself a little for not thinking of that in the first place.
I want to hit on that "proved" word which kept coming up in the conversation. Now, if it were a normal drug, then I would expect that word to refer to a multi-phase series of clinical trials, the results of which would be published in medical journals and available to anyone with the appropriate subscription. What "proving" means, apparently, in homeopathy is "homeopaths showing that a given substance causes a given symptom at some dosage." I don't know that this is what Dane meant in particular (and I don't know if he'd have known either), but I do find the repetition of that particular word to be interesting, since it does have such significance in homeopathy. In any case, the fact that it's in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia really doesn't mean anything to me; the FDA's regulations governing homeopathy are almost nonexistent, a problem exposed most recently by the Zicam scandal. If Quietus went through tests to demonstrate safety, as Dane suggested, then it went above and beyond what's necessary under FDA guidelines.
What all this comes down to is that tinnitus is really the perfect woo-friendly ailment. The symptoms are entirely subjective, which opens the door to some significant psychological effects. At least in my case, the symptoms also come and go irregularly and unpredictably, and I'd be a little surprised if even chronic tinnitus didn't wax and wane in severity over time. Not only does this open the door to confirmation bias, post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking, and regression fallacies, but it explicitly suggests that the latter is to be expected as a normal effect of treatment. Quietus isn't a cure, and Dane specifically recommended keeping some pills on-hand in case symptoms recurred. Therefore, any improvement in symptoms–even if that improvement is just normal, expected regression to the mean–would be attributed to the pills' effectiveness, and any restoration of symptoms has already been explained away as normal, expected, and reason to use more pills. I think the only fault in this scheme is the relatively small pool of sufferers–which I think accounts for the $60 bottles, as opposed to a more Zicam-esque $15 or so–but even then, since there is no actual cure, they've got a chance of snagging quite a large portion of those sufferers.
I can't say, without knowing a little more, whether or not this is a scam. After all, it might have therapeutic dosages of the substances in question, and they might be effective. What I can say that there's not a chance that I'll be dropping $60 on tinnitus remedies anytime soon, and that "try it for yourself" is about the last method I'd choose to evaluate the efficacy of such a drug.
Filed under Homeopathy, Medicine, Science, Skepticism, Woo
You may have noticed in the sidebar that I've been reading Autism's False Prophets by Dr. Paul Offit. I'm happy to say that I've finished it, and it's fantastic. The book lays out the autism situation and the battle against the antivaccinationists in great detail, and it's really well-written to boot. Go out and get a copy of it now–bookstore or library, as long as you read it. You'll laugh, you'll get mad, you'll want to strangle dangerous quacks like Andrew Wakefield, and if you're like me, you'll want to send Dr. Offit a letter of thanks afterward.
Filed under Anti-Vaxers, Medicine, Science


WBAL reports a jury of eight women and four men was seated on Wednesday in the trial of Officer William Porter, who is one of the six police accused in Freddie Gray's death. There were no cameras in the courtroom, but Arthur Lien was there providing visuals.
As is the case with most trials, cameras were barred inside the courtroom during the trial. So, courtroom sketch artists are allowing people who aren't in the media a window inside. Lien is a courtroom artist for the social media age, posting on the Twitter handle @courtartist as well as on his website. His other recent work includes Supreme Court arguments and the sentencing of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle.
The space provided by Twitter allows Lien room to go outside the main action, such as a sketch of reporters inside the courtroom. Lien's captions are another highlight. One sketch points to the human needs in the halls of justice.
I thought the jury was to remain anonymous? How is that if he is drawing pictures of them and posting them online?
In cases where the jury is to remain anonymous, artists typically draw the jury without faces. If you'll click on the links in the post you can see the sketches, which include only an outline of the jurors.
And WYPR is reporting that the jury is eight women four men, not eight men four women; eight black four white. Is there a disconnect here?
Yep. We flipped it. Thanks for catching our error.


Be sure the parking brake is fully released before driving. Failure to do so can cause brake failure and lead to an accident.
Do not release the parking brake from outside the vehicle.
Do not use the shift lever in place of the parking brake. When parking, be sure the parking brake is fully engaged.
Do not leave children unattended in a vehicle. They could release the parking brake and cause an accident.
To engage: Pull the parking brake lever up A .
Firmly apply the foot brake.
Manual transmission models: Place the shift lever in the N (Neutral) position.
While pulling up on the parking brake lever slightly, push the button B and lower the lever completely .
Before driving, be sure the brake warning light goes out.