health freedom

An antivaccine-sympathetic legislator right in my own back yard!

oracknows — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 04:00:03 +0000

An antivaccine-sympathetic legislator right in my own back yard!

I've written on multiple occasions of what I like to refer to as "antivaccine dog whistles." In politics, the term "dog whistle" refers to things politicians can say to certain groups, usually groups with odious views, that they are with them without actually echoing the views for which the group at which the dog whistle is aimed. The intended target audience gets the message, while those not familiar with the issues either don't get the message or see what is being said as something unobjectionable, even admirable. Think "states' rights" versus civil rights, for example.

It turns out that antivaccinationists have their own dog whistles. Used most prominently recently by the antivaccine pediatrician "Dr. Bob" Sears and by candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination Rand Paul, antivaccine dog whistles generally involve appeals to "health freedom," the "freedom" not to be injected with medicines, and, of course, "parents' rights." Unfortunately, in practice, what antivaccinationists mean is that parental rights trump the child's right to receive the recommended standard of science-based medical care with respect to preventative care. Indeed, Rand Paul even went so far as to answer a question about this issue by saying, "The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom."

Except for those children, who apparently are the parents' property, it would appear.

Of course, in fairness, many politicians who use these dog whistles probably don't realize exactly just what they're appealing to (I'm talking to you, Chris Christie), but unless they're completely dense they do realize that they're appealing to a constituency that believes vaccines are harmful. Be that as it may, With SB 277, a bill that would, if passed into law, eliminate nonmedical exemptions in California, being the subject of intense opposition by the antivaccine movement, not surprisingly the antivaccine dog whistles are blowing fast and furious, so much so that I almost wish I couldn't hear them as well as I do now ever since I first noticed them. But hear them I do. I hear them in appeals to "freedom." I hear them in similes and metaphors that liken "forced vaccination" to the Holocaust, although Holocaust analogies bring the whistle into the hearing range of everyone else. The appeal to freedom is a potent message that has succeeded in squashing efforts to make nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates hard to get.

Unfortunately, such dog whistling has arrived right in my very own backyard, thanks to one State Senator Patrick Colbeck. Yesterday, as I idly perused Facebook while eating lunch in my office, I noticed this on Facebook:

Last week, I met with a group of concerned and well-informed parents from my district on the subject of mandatory...

Posted by Senator Patrick Colbeck on Monday, April 27, 2015

Here is a screenshot, in case the post disappears down the old memory hole:

Yes, that is a state senator promising to appear at a screening of an antivaccine "documentary" Trace Amounts that's being heavily promoted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and features a who's who of the mercury wing of the antivaccine movement. Yes, that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the man whose completely unhinged conspiracy theories provided my gateway into skepticism and science with respect to critically examining antivaccine claims nearly a decade ago and who just last Friday appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher to promote the movie using the same old antivaccine tropes designed to spread fear of vaccines through fear of mercury that he's been using ever since I first started blogging. Those "well-informed" parents from his district are anything but well-informed. They are, as I've described so many times before, misinformed.

Now, I can understand a politician meeting with groups of constituents to hear their concerns. That's part of his job. He should do that. But Colbeck has gone beyond that. Not only has he met with these antivaccine parents, but he clearly either hasn't bothered to examine the science or had had antivaccine proclivities himself—or perhaps a little of both. He's gone beyond hearing concerns and into advocacy. Worse, he's asking people to join him at a screening of Trace Amounts because "the responsible exercise of freedom depends upon an informed citizenry." What he's too clueless to understand is that anything about vaccines produced by RFK, Jr. will do anything but inform. It will misinform, as I've explained more times than I can remember. I haven't seen the film yet, obviously, but if it's anything like what's in RFK, Jr.'s book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: Mercury Toxicity in Vaccines and the Political, Regulatory, and Media Failures That Continue to Threaten Public Health, I know it's going to be chock full of the same antivaccine misinformation that RFK, Jr. began promoting in earnest a decade ago and continues to promote through his book, reaching out to critics ineffectively, and now his movie. Indeed, given RFK, Jr.'s appearance on Real Time, and what I've read about the documentary, I know that it features the same ad hominem attacks on Paul Offit plus the infamously silly CDC whistleblower conspiracy theory. Moroever, his penchant for Holocaust analogies about vaccines and autism is nothing new.

I actually have to wonder if Sen. Colbeck knows that Trace Amounts is tightly associated with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I say that because Colbeck was first elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, and he is very much of the Tea Party wing of the state Republican Party. Indeed, he loves to castigate "Obamacare," which he keeps characterizing as being about "control, not care" and was one of the most vigorous opponents of the state Medicaid expansion, almost succeeding in blocking it. His preferred "alternative" to the Medicaid expansion (and to Obamacare) consists of what are in essence concierge medical plans supplemented with high deductible health insurance, seemingly believing that the magic of the free market will lower costs. I've tried to educate him about why his assumptions are painfully simplistic, how the free market often provides perverse incentives in medicine that increase costs, and how one of the "success stories" he used to tout, a surgical center that undercuts the competition on costs, actually produces for itself a similarly perverse incentive to do unnecessary operations and provide unnecessary care in order to "make it up in volume." (Doctors like to think themselves immune to such influences, but we are not. We're very good at deluding ourselves that financial considerations play no role in our patient decisions.) The only reason I've related these things is because, knowing his far right, Tea Party-associated politics, it would amuse me to see Colbeck cite any material so strongly endorsed by RFK, Jr. for anything, except for the fact that in doing so now he is pushing RFK, Jr.'s brand of antivaccine misinformation, which Trace Amounts echoes in spades.

I also relate this history because it is easy to see how Colbeck would be very susceptible to conflating requiring vaccines to attend school with, apparently, jack-booted thugs coming to enforce "forced vaccination." You'd hope that a state legislator would know the difference, but apparently Colbeck doesn't. Either that, or he knows the difference but chooses to conflate the two. In any case, there is a big difference between forcing children to be vaccinated (i.e., true forced vaccination, wherein there are criminal penalties for not vaccinating) versus reasonable requirements that children be vaccinated before they can attend institutions (like school or day care centers) where large number of children will spend several hours a day in close proximity, thus creating what I like to refer to as veritable germ factories.

It's also very easy to see how he would be particularly susceptible to "health freedom" arguments, not realizing that all "health freedom" really means is the "freedom" of quacks to ply their wares without pesky regulatory interferences. It's the "freedom" of believers in quackery like antivaccine beliefs to exempt themselves from reasonable societal obligations. It's the "freedom" not to be science-based in medical matters. Meanwhile, nowhere is there any evidence that Colbeck has bothered to consult...oh, you know...actual pediatricians and scientists who know something about vaccines. Apparently he's too busy palling around with physician-entrepreneurs offering the sort of concierge medical services that he envisions as the future of American health care.

I also couldn't help but note that Colbeck also was featured as having answered yes to these three questions by Michigan Opposing Mandatory Vaccines:

I support an individual's/parent's right to make vaccine decisions for themselves and their children.
I support an individual's/parent's right to informed consent. I would require legislation be passed before forcing parents to view any presentations by the Michigan Department of Community Health or local health departments. The presentations shall be accurate; complete; objective and non-judgmental; and geographically considerate.
I would support independent basic scientific research on the link between vaccination end chronic disease."

Notice how these are phrased so that, if you take the phrasing at face value, you don't have to be antivaccine to sign any of these, with the possible exception of #3. In any case, We've met MOMV before. They basically have opposed any attempts to make personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates harder to obtain or to require true informed consent instead of misinformed consent before they are granted. The above statements are all seemingly reasonable statements on the surface, but if you know the code you will recognize three antivaccine dog whistles: parental rights, "informed consent" (actually misinformed consent when mentioned by antivaccinationists), and a call for "independent" (code for: having nothing to do with the hated CDC) research.

Why am I not surprised that Colbeck answered yes to all these questions?

Unfortunately, the comments after Colbeck's post are, as of this writing, nearly universally positive, along the lines of:

"Thank you Senator Colbeck for taking the concerns of your constituents seriously and addressing this very serious issue."
"Thank you for taking time to hear the less publicized side of the story!!! We need more people in Government like you, sir! God bless you!"
"Thank you for for protecting the rights of individuals and medical freedom in Michigan!"

One negative comment criticizing Colbeck for his stand resulted in at least one antivaccine trope like, "What's the concern if vaccines work, then an unvaccinated child is no threat to a vaccinated child correct?" Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! No vaccine is 100% effective, and then of course there are always those too young to be vaccinated. It's all of a piece with the the "screw you" attitude of antivaccinationists to any other than their own children, which they justify to themselves by deluding themselves into thinking that their decision not to vaccinate has no consequences to any other than their children, that their children pose no threat to other children, even though they do.

Given that Colbeck knows me and does not like me, I can only hope that there will be people in the State of Michigan who recognize how far down the rabbit hole Senator Colbeck's gone. I notice that there are as yet only 16 reservations, with 69 more needed for the reservation quota to show Trace Amounts at the theater being booked. In light of the past lack of success of antivaccinationists in getting enough people to sign up to book a theater, maybe this won't be happening. At least now we know where Senator Colbeck stands on the issue of childhood vaccines, and he does not stand on the side of science.

In the meantime, I know that, if any reasonable bill comes before the legislature to tighten up or eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, Senator Colbeck will likely oppose it, because freedom.

oracknows Tue, 04/28/2015 - 00:00

I would require legislation be passed before forcing parents to view any presentation...

I'm still stumbling over this. I'd require legislation before requiring anyone to do anything since legislation is the only legal basis for requiring it. This statement seems poorly drafted by MOMV.

I would support independent basic scientific research on the link between vaccination end chronic disease.

If we lived in a world with ample research funding, that would be a reasonable request. And I would have a pony, too. In the actual world, the studies which have been performed have been (1) underpowered, (2) fraudulent, or (3) obtained null results. So I can understand why peer review panels would give such research a low priority, as they should until and unless there is evidence indicating the possibility of such a link. I'll further note the irony of a Tea Party legislature urging this research, when his party has been doing what it can to make research resources scarce.

I don't understand why we don't seem to have any politicians here in the UK like senator Colbeck mentioning anything about vaccinations. We are coming up to a general election as well.

I mean Andrew Wakefield was British and did his research here. We also have Prince Charles and a few kooky Health ministers. But Zilch!

@Fergus,

Wait, you actually want politicians like this, I'd be more than happy to send you a few.

Thanks but no thanks.

Just interested how the Zeitgeist is different.

I’d require legislation before requiring anyone to do anything since legislation is the only legal basis for requiring it.

I suppose there's also regulation by an executive or judicial agency, but that would have its ultimate authority in legislation as well.

I’ll further note the irony of a Tea Party legislature urging this research, when his party has been doing what it can to make research resources scarce.

Ah, but that's different.
Then, it was about wisely allotting limited resources and stopping the gravy train.
Now, it's about addressing a very important public issue.

Politicians were often weather wanes in a previous life.

What MOMV is referring to is the recent decision of the Michigan Department of Community Health to make personal belief exemptions harder to obtain. The new rule took effect on January 1; so during last year's election it was a big deal to antivaxers.

Basically, the rules were changed to be very much like California's AB 2109, which requires parents seeking personal belief or religious exemptions to see a health care provider for informed consent and have that form signed. As this was an administrative rule change allowed for by the law, it wasn't problematic from a legal standpoint, but what MOMV is referring to is requiring an explicit law to do this.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/12/12/who-knew-my-states-vaccine…

@Orac

As this was an administrative rule change allowed for by the law, it wasn’t problematic from a legal standpoint, but what MOMV is referring to is requiring an explicit law to do this.

Because that's a good use of legislative time and taxpayer money.

I'd suggest publicizing this to Tea Party groups far and wide, that Colbeck is nuzzling up to arch-liberal Kennedy and getting all cozy with him.

If you want to go a little further, "inquiring minds want to know" if Kennedy's agenda is "population control" via disease outbreaks of the kind that regularly occur in the "Muslim world" such as Pakistan.

A little further still, make full use of crank magnetism to attract 9/11 truthers and their fellow-travelers into the game (chemtrails, anyone?). They will make endless pests of themselves until it becomes Crystal Clear* that the whole business is not worth wasting any more time on.

And don't forget to mention that arch-ultra-liberal Marin County California is one of the hot spots for anti-vax activism.

---

*Crystal Clear: That's "crystals" as in "magical healing crystals" and "clear" as in Scientology;-)

...the recent decision of the Michigan Department of Community Health to make personal belief exemptions harder to obtain. The new rule took effect on January 1; so during last year’s election it was a big deal to antivaxers.

Basically, the rules were changed to be very much like California’s AB 2109, which requires parents seeking personal belief or religious exemptions to see a health care provider for informed consent and have that form signed. As this was an administrative rule change allowed for by the law, it wasn’t problematic from a legal standpoint, but what MOMV is referring to is requiring an explicit law to do this.

Just wanted to note the rule change was itself "explicit" as well. Statutes are passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor. Regulations (a/k/a "rules") are published in proposed form by administrative agencies for public comment; after consideration of the comments, published again in final form; then in Michigan they are approved by a joint legislative committee before they become law.

Good point. I was unaware of that last part.

800 kids with narcolepsy after swine flu vaccine is enough for any parent to say no. Why the hell would anyone trust the CDC or the FDA or the Government to make a business free choice on vaccination!

I don't know anyone who does.

"If you want to go a little further, “inquiring minds want to know” if Kennedy’s agenda is “population control” via disease outbreaks of the kind that regularly occur in the “Muslim world” such as Pakistan. " bullshit swizzle

So you are going to compare a political craphole like Pakistan with the US and make an assumption about mortality from disease? What kind of racist nonsense is that?

Next you will be telling us these people are dying because of their religion

"I would support independent basic scientific research on the link between vaccination end chronic disease.

If we lived in a world with ample research funding, that would be a reasonable request." lund

But we do, the amount of money donated to cancer research is obscene

Cancer has a chance to be cured. Yes, we spend a lot of money on cancer research. As a result, outcomes are better and some cancers that had no cures, have some.

Since there is no evidence vaccination causes any chronic disease in the first place, researching it would be a colossal waste of money.

"johnny" keeps quoting that 800 kids with narcolepsy #, even though he/she/it has been provided with multiple cites that it's wrong.

About on a par with his/her/it's insistence that the toddler in Germany was vaccinated against the measles.

Leaving aside the fact that johnny is lying through his/her/its teeth, narcolepsy was 17 times more common following the flu than following vaccination. If the flu infected just 6% of immune naive individuals, the vaccine would still be a better choice.

“johnny” keeps quoting that 800 kids with narcolepsy #, even though he/she/it has been provided with multiple cites that it’s wrong.

Phildo's original assertion was that there were 800 cases in the UK. I'm not going through the ECDC report.

And the last thing anyone needs is yet another channel airing reruns of The Philip Hills Show.

A disclaimer- I endorse no views. I am brain dead according to narad.
But the link about 800 children was from Reuters
www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-narcolepsy-vaccine-pandemrix-idUS…

But the link about 800 children was from Reuters
The presence of the word "Sweden" reduces its relevance to Johnny Chav's compulsions..

I am brain dead according to narad.

The term I used was "boneheaded." The figure in that report is not background-subtracted, which is hard, and which is why I brought up the ECDC report.

What does the narcolepsy thing prove anyways? It seems like it shows that the US regulations worked well (Pandemrix was never licensed here) and that when there are legitimate side effects we can admit that and do better in the future. The CDC says:

An increased risk of narcoleps was found following vaccination with Pandemrix, a monovalent 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine that was used in several European countries during the H1N1 influenza pandemic.

Not much of a cover up.

johnny@14

So you are going to compare a political craphole like Pakistan with the US and make an assumption about mortality from disease? What kind of racist nonsense is that? [emphasis mine]

And here I thought I couldn't be surprised by the extent of your lack of self awareness.

Is anyone else bored with johnny? Can we get a new troll, please? Or, maybe, someone to have an intelligent conversation/argument with?

What does the narcolepsy thing prove anyways? It seems like it shows that the US regulations worked well (Pandemrix was never licensed here)....

Part of that was because AS03 isn't licensed in the U.S. The problem is that there's no good evidence that the problem was the AS03. The hypocretin paper didn't replicate, so the origin of the signal is still a mystery. It's going to be necessary to try to detect whether there's a dip below the previous background going forward, but that will take years and isn't going to be an easy signal to detect if it's there.

"the amount of money donated to cancer research is obscene"

It would be amusing to see johnny yelling this at participants in a breast cancer awareness march, and getting repeatedly whacked over the head with placards as a result.

@JustaTech #26

I hear ya. I never thought I'd miss Th1Th2... (But I don't miss He Who Shall Not Be Named But It Starts With A G. Not at all.)

I miss Thingy,and I miss Sid,too. :(

I miss Thingy,and I miss Sid,too.

Not I.

Anyway (and ultimately relating to a nearby state), I noticed that canaryparty-"this site may be hacked"-org is trumpeting a poll* they apparently commissioned:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 27, 2015

SACRAMENTO, CA—Survey USA released new poll results today showing the majority of California residents believe parents and doctors, and not bureaucrats at the State Capitol, should make vaccination choices.

Leaving aside my inability to find any trace of this at, you know, surveyusa-dot.com, and the $200k GR boondoggle with the same firm, one thing caught my attention:

“Bills like SB277 are dying all over the country because this is America and we value freedom. In recent weeks, Oregon, Washington, Maryland, North Carolina, New Mexico, Illinois and Texas realized their proposed bills like SB277 were far too draconian to impose on their citizens. Those bills died. Is California going to join ranks with only Mississippi and West Virginia and be the third state that does not value parental choice,” asked Jude Tovatt of the California Coalition for Health Choice.

Um, no, Illinois' SB1410 passed the Senate as amended** and is in the hands of the House. There's no bill that I'm aware of that sought to remove religious examptions.

* Scroll down for the bonus, though: "Mark Blaxill on RT Discussing Vaccine Mandates and the CDC Whistleblower Scandal." Soy Gevondes!
** The first version was unconstitutional on its face.

About this narcolepsy thing... A back of the envelope calculation takes a birth cohort of about 4 million children per year, incidence of 1 in 2000 overall, and age of onset typically 10-30 to suggest that one would expect about 2000 new cases per year with about 1000 of them being in their teens. This matches up reasonably well with the Reuters article and its loose figure of 800 cases in Sweden and other European countries.

So maybe this is another case of "children develop autism after MMR vaccines, because MMR vaccines are typically given at the age when autism begins to appear." AKA no causal relationship, even if the clusters are real and temporally connected to the shots.

@ Panacea

As a result, outcomes are better and some cancers that had no cures, have some.

In just a few decades, the changes are staggering. When I started university in early 90's, diagnostics of child leukemia were not seen as a death sentence as it was in the 70's, but still had a "very bad prognostic", as our teacher put it.
Nowadays, it's still very far from a walk in the park, but survival rates are above 60%.

So maybe this is another case of “children develop autism after MMR vaccines, because MMR vaccines are typically given at the age when autism begins to appear.” AKA no causal relationship, even if the clusters are real and temporally connected to the shots.

The Reuters report, as written, appears to just be a tally of the number of narcolepsy reports since Pandemrix was introduced. Of itself, this is completely meaningless.

There definitely was a coincident temporal spike, though. To bring things more up to date, GSK stated in 2014 May (PDF) that

"By July 2013, a total of 989 cases of narcolepsy in people reported to have been vaccinated with Pandemrix™ (H1N1) or Arepanrix™ (H1N1) during and after the 2009 pandemic had been received by GSK. Due to limitations imposed by local privacy law, sufficient information cannot be obtained on many reports to ensure they do not represent duplicate reports and/or that they describe confirmed cases of narcolepsy. Over 90 million doses of Pandemrix™ (H1N1) or Arepanrix™ (H1N1) have been administered worldwide. Of the reported cases, approximately 69% are from Finland and Sweden."

Now, 2013 is well past the actual spike, so the tailing reports have a certain built-in bias. Another one to consider, though, is simple case surveillance bias.

Phildo, of course, remains a simple affront to any conceivable notion of the Mystical Body within which the imperative of the dispensation is perfection of the individual.

A little OT...but has anyone seen anything from lilady? I don't frequent everywhere she posts, but she seems to be missing from RI comments...I miss her.

"SACRAMENTO, CA—Survey USA released new poll results today showing the majority of California residents believe parents and doctors, and not bureaucrats at the State Capitol, should make vaccination choices." NObRed

Getting good at this, the majority of people who filled in the poll agreed with this, most people who fill in polls believe in their value so again we see a biased cohort in the sample.

I think we can take it as read that anything alluding to a study on vaccinations is going to bias the data as much as possible in favor of the studies' forgone conclusion

"Bills like SB277 are dying all over the country because this is America and we value freedom."NObRed

They are dying, dear boy, because they are a shit idea. Too right, who the hell wants some practice nurse shoving a syringe full of untested snake oil in your kids arm?

^ Sheesh, I sent myself into moderation with a broken third link: "any conceivable notion."

@johnny
That's funny. Just yesterday you were complaining about vaccine testing not meeting your exacting standards for dubious and contradictory reasons. Today you're saying that they haven't been tested. What happened?

Survey USA released new poll results today showing the majority of California residents believe parents and doctors, and not bureaucrats at the State Capitol, should make vaccination choices.

Argument by opinion poll is not accepted here, johnny. It is widely known that subtle rewording of questions, and leading or loaded questions, can skew poll results.

"That’s funny. Just yesterday you were complaining about vaccine testing not meeting your exacting standards for dubious and contradictory reasons. Today you’re saying that they haven’t been tested. What happened?"justheshits

Well that makes complete vaccine logic.

"Argument by opinion poll is not accepted here, johnny. It is widely known that subtle rewording of questions, and leading or loaded questions, can skew poll results."

Well that's odd Julian, the thread used argument by opinion poll to make a point Julian - this is a case of pot and kettle black or medical vaccine anecdote Offit syndrome? Might even be a serious case of Bill Gates transmutation Polio syndrome by proxy?

Being against vaccination is a response to reading all the evidence and finding it seriously lacking in any substance. Over here at PubMed promo central, the consistent line you spin is that everyone who is against vaccination per se is a nutter! That sort of 'science' is usually the privilege of religious dissension or that of the likes of Saddam Hussain.

Until you come up with some real comparative evidence, not some kind of weird advertising market thang, you will always appear like ridiculous people, clutching at straw fallacies and the like.

Visions of NobRed having nothing better to do than polish his helmet over his geeky ability to quote PubMed is disturbing enough. What a waste - of tissue

Until you come up with some real comparative evidence

We have, dimwit. The fact that said evidence contradicts your dearly held wrong notions about vaccination doesn't make it "not real".

The hilariously sad thing about Phildo is what an utter square he is. Think about it: a Papist and disgruntled Rotarian with nothing better to do – for years on end – than actively seek derision using a stale script so half-assed that other people have to tell him what he's referring to, a parade of gender-swapping pseudonyms, and a singular lack of talent when it comes to the fallback glue that's supposed to sustain the operation, simple insult.

He's freaking Hyacinth Bucket. There's little need for imagination to form a picture of how much he must loathe his clientele, given the repression that oozes from the hobbyist personas, but speculate, if you dare, on what his record collection must be like.

I suspect that I may have also forgotten earlier to get around to the obvious Lance Kerwin parallel.

I didn't know you liked "Keeping up Appearances", Narad.

I didn’t know you liked “Keeping up Appearances”, Narad.

That would be going a bit far, but I was saddened when the news broke that Geoffrey Hughes had died.

johnny @36
For some reason, the results aren't on the Survey USA website.
I wrote an email to know when they will be put online.

the thread used argument by opinion poll to make a point

Where? The only person who's using opinion polls is you.

800 kids with narcolepsy after swine flu vaccine is enough for any parent to say no.

Wha, whazzat? Sorry, I momentarily fell asleep.

Being against vaccination is a response to reading all the evidence and finding it seriously lacking in any substance.

You've read all the evidence! I'm extremely impressed. I doubt even Paul Offet can say that. After all, there are an enormous number of studies* published on the topic.** How did you find time to read all of that?

“That’s funny. Just yesterday you were complaining about vaccine testing not meeting your exacting standards for dubious and contradictory reasons. Today you’re saying that they haven’t been tested. What happened?”just[t]hes[ta]ts

Well that makes complete vaccine logic.

I get it! You're using paraconsistent logic and chiding us for our small-mindedness in thinking the universe follows classical logic. I admit I have a hard time believing that a statement and its negation can both be true, myself.

Now everything you say makes total sense!

Would you like to let us in on the flavor of paraconsistent logic you favor? It needs to be one where the following statements can be part of a non-trivial theory:
∀ PaperAbout(vaccines, ) ⟶HasRead(johnny, )

∃ HasRead(johnny, ) ⋀ PaperTests(, vaccines) ⋀ DoesNotLikeButCannotExplainWhy(johnny, )

∄ PaperTests(, vaccines)

* You'll notice that I linked to Google Scholar instead of the most popular search engine for medical research due to your aversion to it.

** Other searches you should find interesting and relevant include "thimerosal toxicodynamics" and "disease eradication."

Looks like WordPress doesn't like the Unicode for variables. Let's try this:
∀p PaperAbout(p, vaccines) ⟶HasRead(johnny, p)

∃ HasRead(johnny, p) ⋀ PaperTests(p, vaccines) ⋀ DoesNotLikeButCannotExplainWhy(johnny, p)

∄ PaperTests(p, vaccines)

Chris Christie and Rand Paul's pandering to antivaccinationists: Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?

oracknows — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:58 +0000

Chris Christie and Rand Paul's pandering to antivaccinationists: Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?

"I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice as well. So that’s a balance the government has to decide.”

-- NJ Governor Chris Christie, February 2, 2015

"The state doesn't own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom."

-- Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), February 2, 2015

Longtime readers know that I lived in central New Jersey for eight and a half years before taking an opportunity to return to my hometown just under seven years ago. Having spent the better part of a decade there, I think I understand New Jersey, at last the northern and central parts of the state. It's a strange state with a lot of corruption and mismanagement. (For instance, I was there when Jim McGreevey was governor, and I even met him before he became governor, back when he was still mayor of the Woodbridge Township and then later when he was governor.) Indeed, while I lived there I had a hard time deciding if Chicago politics was more corrupt than New Jersey politics or vice-versa. I ended up deciding that it was pretty much a wash.

Be that as it may, I can sort of understand why New Jersey elected Governor Chris Christie. He's big—literally. He's boisterous. He's blunt and plain-talking (for a politician), and he gives the impression of not taking any guff from anyone while being relatively moderate politically. All of these are very much part of how Jersey natives appeared to view themselves. (Personally, I don't like him much because I view him as a loudmouthed bully, but I don't live in New Jersey anymore.) As of yesterday Gov. Christie's also a poster child for the political peril of pandering to the antivaccine movement. In fact, I view him as Exhibit A supporting a growing belief that I've been developing that the Republican Party has become the antivaccine party. Wait, maybe that's a little too strong, but certainly it has become the party supporting antivaccine viewpoints more strongly than the Democrats.

Behold how this controversy began. There Christie was, in England on a trade visit, doing the things politicians do to try to bolster their foreign policy credentials in preparation for running for President, and he had to go and put his foot in it with respect to vaccines during a visit to a medical research facility. First, as background, you should know that the night before, Sunday night, President Obama had issued an unequivocal call to parents to have their children vaccinated:

"I understand that there are families that in some cases are concerned about the effect of vaccinations. The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We've looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren't reasons to not," the president explained.

And:

"You should get your kids vaccinated. It's good for them, but we should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country."

So far, so good. You can't expect a much more unequivocal statement of support for vaccination than that from a politician.

So Monday morning it just so happened that Governor Christie was touring MedImmune's research facility in Cambridge. MedImmune just so happens to manufacture a nasal influenza vaccine, FluMist. It's not clear what moved the subject to vaccines, but during the visit, Christie basically took the opportunity that presented itself to pander to antivaccinationists. It was so bad that even the far-right (oh, heck, let's just call it what it is, namely wingnut) website Breitbart.com described it thusly:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s outreach to the anti-vaccination crowd is one of the strangest things anyone has done during the 2016 shadow primary season. In the midst of a significant outbreak of preventable, communicable diseases among children, Christie decided to throw anti-vaxxers a bone, making President Obama look enormously sensible by comparison.

So what did Christie say that annoyed even Breitbart.com's correspondent? This:

“All I can say is that we vaccinate ours. I think it’s much more important as a parent than as a public official, and that’s what we do,” he told reporters during his trip through London on Monday. He went on to say that’s “part of making sure we protect their health and public health.”

“I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice as well. So that’s a balance the government has to decide,” Christie added.

Asked whether he was advocating leaving parents the option to not vaccinate their kids, Christie said “I didn’t say I’m leaving people the option,” but that “it depends what the vaccine is, what the disease type is and all the rest.”

Oh, dear. Whether Christie realized it or not when he said these words, which must have seemed to him at the time to be an eminently reasonable attempt to describe balancing personal freedom versus public health, he was, as Breitbart.com put it, "throwing antivaxxers a bone." Of course, he was also doing this at the worst possible time. Think about it. Here we are in the middle of a measles outbreak that's cracked 100 cases, an outbreak in which the majority of cases were not vaccinated, indeed an outbreak that almost certainly wouldn't have happened if there weren't pockets of unvaccinated children in southern California near Disneyland, and Gov. Christie's blathering about vaccine "choice." His sense of timing is impeccable in its wrongness.

He also revealed himself to have an uncanny ability to demonstrate in a couple of sentences that he doesn't understand issues of public health with respect to vaccines. After all, parents already do have "vaccine choice." There is no such thing as "forced vaccination" in this country, no matter how much the antivaccine movement likes to try to characterize it this way. Rather, what we have in this country are school vaccine mandates. It's very simple, so simple that even Gov. Christie should be able to understand it. No parent is forced to vaccinate her child for anything, but if the parent makes that choice the child will not be allowed to enroll in school or day care. It's an eminently reasonable compact: You don't have to vaccinate, but you don't have the right to let your child endanger others. It's a system that has served us well for many years. It's less coercive than actual forced vaccination, which inevitably produces a really nasty backlash, but it still functions well to maintain high levels of vaccination in most cases.

That is, until the rise of various non-medical exemptions.

If you've studied vaccination policies, you know that every state allows medical exemptions. That is how it should be. However, there are non-medical exemptions as well. For instance, every state other than West Virginia and Mississippi allows religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Yes, I know it's odd that West Virginia and Mississippi would be leading the nation in rational vaccine policy, but there you have it. Of course, few religions have a problem with vaccination; certainly with only rare exceptions is vaccination against a religion. So religious exemptions tend to be uncommon (although antivaccinationists are not above teaching parents how to lie about their religion in order to obtain religious exemptions).

That's why antivaccinationists are becoming increasingly fond of personal belief exemptions or, as they are also sometimes called, philosophical exemptions. Currently 20 states permit these exemptions. Basically, these exemptions are granted based on parents' personal beliefs against vaccines, be they personal, moral or other beliefs. In essence, all a parent has to do is to say she doesn't believe in vaccinating, and the exemption is granted. True, different states have different requirements, but in all too many states such exemptions are far too easy to obtain. Indeed, that's why California recently passed a bill to make it harder to obtain personal belief exemptions by requiring parents requesting them to have a health care professional sign the form certifying that he's counseled them about the risks of skipping vaccination, although Governor Jerry Brown basically neutered the law through a signing statement. In any case, in at least 20 states, parents can obtain exemptions to vaccine mandates, with varying degrees of difficulty in doing so, simply by saying that they "don't believe" in vaccinating or have some sort of moral or personal objection to vaccination. It is these personal belief objections that have led to pockets of low vaccine uptake and subsequent outbreaks, such as the ones in California and, alas, my own home state.

So right in one interview, Gov. Christie showed that he doesn't have a clue about vaccine mandates, but worse, that he's willing to pander to those holding antivaccine beliefs.

Of course, if you've been following the story, you know that Gov. Christie started feeling the heat over his ill-advised remarks almost instantly. Twitter erupted in righteous fury mocking Christie's remarks. In particular, his willingness to quarantine a nurse who might have been exposed to Ebola without medical justification was contrasted unfavorably with his love of "choice" and "freedom" with respect to vaccines. So great was the backlash that Christie's office scrambled to "clarify":

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie walked back comments he made here Monday morning calling for "balance" on the measles vaccine debate to allow for parental choice, asserting that "there is no question kids should be vaccinated."

"The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," Christie's office said in a statement. "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."

And:

Christie, however, said, “There has to be a balance and it depends on what the vaccine is, what the disease type is, and all the rest.” He added, “Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

This is, of course, a clarification that doesn't clarify, empty words that say almost nothing, other than that kids should be vaccinated against measles. "Balance"? What does that mean? Does Christie think himself more capable of balancing risks and benefits in determining what vaccines should be recommended than the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics? Does he think himself more qualified to determine which diseases are a sufficient public health threat to warrant a mass vaccination campaign than medical authorities? How would he judge which diseases are sufficiently threatening? What criteria would he use? Based on what science?

Unfortunately, Gov. Christie wasn't the only one laying down the antivaccine pandering. In fact, compared to Rand Paul, Christie is virtually the voice of reason. See what I mean:

Paul, in comments on conservative talk-radio show host Laura Ingraham's show Monday, said he's "not anti-vaccine at all."

"But particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary," he added. Paul cited incidents where you have "somebody not wanting to take the smallpox vaccine, and it ruins it for everybody else."

"I think there are times in which there can be some rules, but for the most part it ought to be voluntary," Paul went on. "While I think it's a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that's a personal decision for individuals to take."

He also said he was "annoyed" that his kids were supposed to receive the Hepatitis B vaccine as newborns, and that he had doctors space out the 10 vaccines they wanted to give his infant children over time.

And in a later interview with CNBC, Paul suggested he had seen the negative effects of vaccines that those in the anti-vax movement cite in their opposition. None, however, are widely supported by the scientific community, and Paul's office did not respond to a request for comment for details.

"I've heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines," Paul said. "I'm not arguing vaccines are a bad idea. I think they're a good thing. But I think the parents should have some input."

Rand Paul is another sad excuse for a physician. Remember how I described antivaccine "dog whistle" terminology that "Dr. Bob" Sears was so adept at using? Rand Paul is doing exactly the same thing here. He's using the same appeal to "freedom" as Dr. Bob, and that "annoyance" he expressed at the neonatal dose of hepatitis B vaccine reveals an ignorance that he could easily have remedied with a little reading; you know, that thing we doctors do when we encounter a medical issue with which we are not familiar. Dr. Paul is, after all, an ophthalmologist, and ophthalmologists do not routinely administer vaccinations, much less childhood vaccinations. Indeed, he has even less reason to be familiar with childhood vaccines than the ever-vile Dr. Jack Wolfson who, being a cardiologist, would be expected to offer at least the pneumococcal vaccine to his heart failure patients. As I mentioned before, administering the hepatitis B vaccine at birth is a very reasonable strategy for preventing hepatitis B, and that moralistic trope about its being a sexually transmitted disease is not a reason not to vaccinate newborns.

And Rand Paul also seems unaware that we do not have forced vaccination and that parents do have in put. If they didn't have the choice, with easy personal belief exemptions allowing parents in 20 states not even to have to choose between public school and vaccines, it's unlikely that outbreaks would be a problem.

I once described how antivaccinationism is very much at home with libertarianism, to the point where many libertarians express a view recently espoused by Dr. Jack Wolfson that it is not their responsibility to vaccinate, that they have no obligation to society, so much so that they reacted rather violently when one of their own, Ron Bailey of Reason.com, advocated coercive vaccine mandates. Rand Paul is simply dog whistling from that very playbook. Indeed, check out this interview given later in the day:

You don't have to watch all nine minutes; that is, unless you want to. Just watch the first 2:20 minutes of the video, which is all about vaccines. Notice how he starts out clearly sarcastic, replying early on, ""I guess being for freedom would be really unusual." No, Dr. Paul, being "for freedom" is not unusual, but spouting antivaccine nonsense about vaccines causing permanent neurological injury is unconscionable. Personally, I think Paul's most telling remark comes near the end of the vaccine segment, when, clearly irritated by the reporter's insistence on pursuing questions about vaccine choice, Rand Paul replies with petulant annoyance, "The state doesn't own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom." Yes, it's the antivaccine dog whistle about "freedom," but it's more than that. See what Rand Paul let slip? It's an attitude that is all too common, namely that the parents own the children and that parental "rights" trump any rights children might have as autonomous beings. The right of the child and any public health considerations are subsumed to parental "freedom to choose" and "parental rights," with children viewed, in essence, as their parents' property, to do with as they will.

As for the rest of the interview, it's the same old antivaccine dog whistles on steroids. There's the antivaccine trope against the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine as being not indicated because it's a sexually transmitted disease, even though hepatitis B is transmitted by more than just sex. The trope is an obvious ploy to outrage parents by telling them that they're being "forced" to have a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease as though they were immoral. We also learn that Paul delayed vaccines for his children, thus leaving them vulnerable to childhood diseases longer than they needed to be, just like many vaccine averse. Indeed, I'd be very interested in knowing what vaccine the Pauls gave their children and at what ages. He even repeats his claim that vaccines cause neurologic injury, even though, as a physician, he should know damned well that this question has been studied time and time and time again, with the overwhelming scientific consensus being that vaccines do not cause autism, neurodevelopmental disorders, or "profound mental disorders." And through it all, to Paul vaccine "choice" is all about "freedom."

Oh, and his selective reading of the history of smallpox vaccination as being "voluntary" throughout most of our history is telling as well. He neglects to note that, as History of Vaccines notes, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the state has the power to make vaccines mandatory.

Is it any surprise that Rand Paul is a prominent member of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the organization of "brave maverick physicians" that has a history of promoting the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for "vaccine injury" and extreme libertarian views, such as the view that Medicare is unconstitutional?

In any case, as a result of Christie's and Paul's statements, this story has even hit the national news. For example:

Antivaccinationism is often presented and criticized as a belief that arises primarily among crunchy, affluent liberals. Even The Daily Show makes that mistake. In fact, existing evidence suggests that the prevalence of antivaccine views are very similar on the left and the right, or, as I like to say, antivaccine views transcend politics.

However, the roughly equal prevalence of antivaccine views on the left and right do not mean that both parties are equally good (or bad) when it comes to vaccines. Over the last several years, I've noticed that antivaccine views, supported under the rubric of "freedom," have grown in prominence more in Tea Party and conservative circles. Antivaccine views are very much intertwined with the "health freedom" movement, which tends to be primarily (but certainly not exclusively) a product of right wing circles, given its emphasis on freedom from government regulation and mandates with respect to health. Indeed, it is no coincidence that my one experience watching Steve Novella debate antivaccine physician Julian Whitaker occurred at FreedomFest in 2012, a yearly conservative/libertarian confab that happened to be going on in Las Vegas as TAM that year. Also that same year, the Texas Republican Party had strong "health freedom" and "vaccine choice" planks in its party platform, planks that were still there in 2014.

I don't think that Gov. Christie is antivaccine (although I'm not so sure about Rand Paul). What I do know is that the conflation of "choice" with vaccination has led to a powerful incentive for politicians, particularly Republican politicians, to pander to antivaccine views. Nor is pandering to the antivaccine movement a new thing for Christie. In 2009 he met with Louise Kuo Habakus (whom we've met before) and the NJ Coalition for Vaccine Choice, a very much antivaccine coalition whose member organization list reads like a who's who of the national antivaccine movement and includes Life Health Choices, an antivaccine organization founded by Habakus. Indeed, Habakus herself is coauthor with antivaccine lawyer Mary Holland of a book entitled Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children. Indeed, so prominent an antivaccine loon is Habakus (at least in New Jersey, if not nationally), that she has her very own entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons. To these people, Christie followed up his visit with a letter, quoted thusly:

“I have met with families affected by autism from across the state and have been struck by their incredible grace and courage,” Christie wrote in the letter. “Many of these families have expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.”

Indeed, Republicans and Independents are more prone to oppose vaccine mandates:

Republicans and independents are more likely than Democrats to advocate against required vaccinations.

Thirty-four percent of Republicans and 33 percent of independents told pollsters that parents should be able to decide about vaccinations, versus just 22 percent of Democrats who said the same.

And, within the past five years or so, Republicans have become LESS likely to say vaccinations should be required, while Democrats are now MORE likely to advocate for the mandatory shots.

In 2009, 71 percent of both Democrats and Republicans said vaccinations should be required. By last August, that number decreased to 65 percent for Republicans, but it's increased to 76 percent for Democrats.

Not only do antivaccine views fit in nicely with libertarian and Tea Party political beliefs, but such views have become so conflated with "freedom of choice" that it's become worth it to Republican politicians to espouse these views, or at least to give a nod to them in order to curry favor. It's not universal, of course. Another Republican physician running for office who is known for saying stupid things about other issues actually has come out strongly supporting vaccine mandates. Yes, believe it or not, Ben Carson did just that. Still, he seems to voicing a less common view within the base of the Republican Party.

I noted back in 2008 that both Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain had, to one degree or another, pandered to the antivaccine movement. Now, in 2015, what we see here appears to be a rising tide of support for "vaccine choice" among Republicans, with a concomitant decrease in support for vaccine mandates, while among Democrats, it would seem that the opposite is happening. Yes, the Democrats have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and he is indeed an antivaccine loon, but you don't see major Democratic candidates pandering to antivaccine views the way Rand Paul did and Chris Christie recently did, nor do you see major liberal confabs staging debates with antivaxers, as happened at FreedomFest.

Maybe the Republican Party really is becoming the party of the antivaccine movement. If that's true, it is very bad news indeed.

ADDENDUM: This morning the New York Times published a story entitled Measles Proves Delicate Issue to G.O.P. Field. While noting that it isn't a clean left-right break and that there are pro-vaccine Republicans (such as Scott Walker), the NYT also notes:

But for Republicans like Mr. Paul who appeal to the kind of libertarian conservatives who are influential in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first two contests in the battle for the nomination, there is an appeal in framing the issue as one of individual liberty.

Asked about immunizations again later on Monday, Mr. Paul was even more insistent, saying it was a question of “freedom.” He grew irritated with a CNBC host who pressed him and snapped: “The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.”

oracknows Mon, 02/02/2015 - 19:00

Categories

Policy

Methinks it will play out much as it did on the very small scale in Connecticut in the mid-terms.

briandeer.com/solved/tara-cook-littman.htm

There aren't many family issues over which the electorate has so clearly spoken through their actions.

What is it about Presidentian wannabes traveling to Brittian and saying stupid stuff (see Bobby Jindal and "no go zones").

Pandering for votes transcends party affiliation but Republicans, in particular, have a large anti-science constituency. I see incremental improvement on that front but the pace of change can be painfully slow.

What's with Chris Christie? He knows his every move and his statements are being monitored by the mainstream media, especially since his missteps about the nurse's "quarantine" who had returned from Africa after caring for Ebola virus patients. IMO, he's just killed his chances to mount a serious campaign to be nominated as the Republican Party Presidential candidate.

Rand Paul? He just might have positioned himself in a better spot, if, in fact, the far-to-the-right fringe groups/Tea Party are the strong voting bloc in the Republican Party Presidential primaries.

There's that common thread of "heath freedom" and "right to chose which vaccines (or no vaccines), are given to their children. They own their children and "so sorry if your kid is unable to receive MMR vaccine". Ethically challenged, lacking in empathy and self-centered parents...all of them.

Haven't they learned from Michele Bachmann's statement about an adolescent who received an HPV vaccine "and became mentally retarded, thereafter"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cru2KsV5UxA

I found this great site for people, regardless of their political affiliation, to educate themselves about the link between autism and vaccines.

www.howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

Orac, I was reading your comments on Dr Burzynski last night, could not comment 'cos at the end of every page I got : "The site is currently under maintenance. New comments have been disabled during this time, please check back soon". Well, comments on this page are not disabled and since you have been very actively critisising Dr B for THE LAST FEW YEARS, I hope, you and some of your fans might want to read this. I enclose my mail and I write under my full name unlike the rest of you. This is my cell number +48 505 505 600 just to make sure, that I will not be accused of being another of Dr B's employee or even Dr B himself.

I'm 52, 3 kids, Gist since 2010, 3 surgeries, tumor 20cm x 10cm fully removed after 18 months on Glivec, complications after op, without Glivec tumor has grown back to the size of 7cm x 4, back on Glivec and stable since 2012.

Am I Dr B patient ? - no, never seen this guy and I will not get paid for what I am writing here
Do I intend to be his patient ? - maybe, when Glivec stops working, but before i will try to gather as much info about Dr B as possible. Luckily I will not have to rely on your comments alone.

Let's start with facts:

1. it took me few minutes on Google to find a Polish girl, Kalusia Dzieniak with a head tumor, who runs a blog since 2012 describing her fight against cancer. http://kalusia82.blogspot.com/
At the end of her treatment and given no hope in local hospitals, she raised a great amount of money and for the last 2 years she is Dr B's patient - alive, stable and happy with the treatment she recieves. There are numerous tv shows about her case and over 1600 people on Facebook, rising funds every year to allow her to carry on with the treatment at Dr B clinic. You guys could not find few cases like this in all those years of your "interest" in Dr Darth Vader's evil manipulations? You spend hours writing about Dr B, how many hours did you spend verifing the "success stories" on his site ? Have you contacted any former patients ? Did you enclose any prove, that the treatment they recieved at Dr B's clinic was wrong - caused death or injury?

Well, you did not show or proved any of this - exept for long, medical / scientific explanations, that are just your point of view.

I believe, that Dr B runs his clinic for over 20 years - your Dr Mengele must have had thousends of patients and not one, who successfully charged him with malpractise - show that person, let's read about this case or else shut up and stop defaming others. I showed a positive, documented example of Dr B ongoing treatment, what have you got to show ?

2. Cost of treatment - 10,000 USD per month for a treatment at Dr B's clinic proves to you that he is a fraud ?? Well, I got a bill for 15000 USD for starters from "politically correct" MD Anderson - they would not accept my molecular tests done in Poland, they have offered to open me up again just to repeat this test.
The needle is not prefered option, as it might cause the cancer to spread.
MD Anderson, after being informed about my medical history and ongoing treatment with Glivec, offered me genetically designed doses of ...Glivec.
Well, Glivec depending on the type of gist, IS treated with various douses and that is just the normall procedure - 1 x 400mg, 2 x 300mg or 2 x 400mg daily.
Would you consider this offer for me from MD Anderson as "fraud" by your standards? And if so, shall we start a blog ? You may enclose my story as a first comment.

There are hundreds, if not thousends of semi-doctors and scientists "providing" cancer cures all over the world. Diets, roots, vitamins and mental healing cures everything - according to people that make money in this business.
It is absolutly right to pin point fraud and warn people in need, but one must stay tolerant, unbiased and open minded. Do not kill hope when you are not 110% sure, because often it is the only thing that some of us have left. Check your story, Check your story and again Check your story.

Regards,

Bad News for Sharyl Attkisson?

Real fans of all this stuff may be interested to know that my new laptop suddenly acted identically to that videod by Sharyl Attkisson as evidence that the government was bugging her.

Out of the blue (although possibly triggered by some unknown sequence of keystrokes) the copy on my screen began deleting itself.

I don't know if anyone checked whether Ms Attkisson was using a Lenovo, or whether she had the new rent-a-software version of Word, as I have. But if the government was deleting her priceless investigative work, I wonder why it would be deleting my novel.

I understand that she has some multi-million lawsuit going, so maybe my novel will do better than I expected.

I wished I'd videod the phenomenon (on a month-old machine), but I was so alarmed at seeing my writing vanishing that, after helplessly tapping various keys, and mousing around, I shut the lid.

Readers may recall that McGreevey was forced to resign the governorship when it was revealed that he was a closeted gay man who had appointed his boyfriend to a state job despite lack of qualifications. Which prompted the greatest Onion headline, ever:

Gay Man Tearfully Admits to Being Governor of New Jersey

Also, Charlie Pierce (Esquire.com, politics) has a "five-minute rule" regarding Ron and Rand Paul: They may make sense for five minutes, but at 5:01 they'll say something completely off the wall and you'll realize that they're basically a lunatic.

Christie has been influenced by Louise Kuo Habakus (American Loon #163 http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2011/03/163-louise-kuo-habakus.html). She is a hater of science and modern technology as part of her woo group Fearless Parents. Bonus to any reader who can find something they don't fear.

Here, for example of Christie with this American Loon and friends from perhaps 2009.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/chris-christie-expressed-concern-about-vacci…

I think you read far too much into President Obama's statement. While it certainly encourages parents to immunize their children, it says nothing about what government policy should be towards vaccines. Did he speak out against the personal belief exemption or religious exemptions? Did he discuss the pediatric vaccine schedule and whether it should be followed or whether he believed in a certain latitude in timing?

Sorry democrats, 2 people do not a political party make. You're confusing the fact that republicans have a wide range of values within their party with dissidence. It's only because of the strictly enforced "my way or the highway" dogma of the democrat party that you see it this way.

Hmmm, have there recently been prominent Democrats advocating for "vaccine choice" for parents and saying vaccines cause brain damage, as Rand Paul strongly implies when he repeats his story about having seen children suffer neurologic injury after vaccines? BTW, that's not a new story for Paul. He's been saying it for years.

Hobbes,

I am reminded of when Will Rogers said

I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.

I've seen no evidence that the Democrats have a strictly enforced “my way or the highway” dogma. If you've got evidence of that, please share.

@Yvette: Yes, I remember about Louise Kuo Habakus. Thanks for that link; I've added a blurb to the post mentioning Christie's having pandered to at least one explicitly antivaccine crank group in New Jersey during his original bid to run for governor.

"Yes, I know it’s odd that West Virginia and Mississippi would be leading the nation in rational vaccine policy, but there you have it."

I think you would appreciate the irony of this:

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea_aut_num_of_chi_wit_aut_percap-auti…

You know you've stepped off the deep end (however temporarily) when even a Breitbart.com writer is more sensible than you.

“The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.”

A rather revealing statement. Sen. Paul views children as chattel. We've been hearing similar statements from autism woo pushers as well as anti-vax types. And it's still so far wrong that I don't know how Sen. Paul will find right even with a map.

For all these small government Republicans, I'd like to see the cost to each state, county, and city. It would also be interesting to determine the cost to businesses, including but not limited to Disneyland. (And this is for a small outbreak of around 100 people.)

And wouldn't you know, Rand Paul is featured in a large photo @ AoA today ( -btw- he's not named after Ayn) with a smaller photo below of that stealthy vaccinator, Barack.

More hilariously, it appears that AoA/ TMR/ et al now have additional television personalities and journalists to despise and abuse whilst championing Attkisson.**- it's not just Anderson anymore.

Some reactions I've heard are that the mainstream is bought and sold thus strengthening alt media ( in their downward spiral down the drainpipe of unreality). As I've said many times, these advocacies are 'group therapy gone wrong'.

Interestingly, anti-vaxxers have been trying to get themselves on mainstream media for the past several years through twitter campaigns, PR announcements, writing ( crappy, fantasist) books and now, they finally will be receiving the attention they deserve but not in a way they like.

** as I mentioned previously,when my own computer behaved bizarrely in November my first thought wasn't " North Korea!" but, "I need a new computer"

As we've seen over the years, anti-vax views are neither right nor left ( and woo-meisters tailor their anti-vax talking points accordingly- see PRN and NaturaL News esp) BUT I wonder if politicians like the aforementioned might be pushing the faithful towards one end of the spectrum.

re Habakus:
she has been making a splash on alt media running "fearless Parent Radio" and website since MacNeil dropped out.

Randal Paul is not pandering, he is actually that crazy. He panders when he pretends not to be a complete libertarian, ie, no one has any right to tell him to do anything.

As for herbal pills...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/new-york-attorney-general-targ…

Yes, I am sure all the west side mommies causing this crisis are radical republicans. That's what white upper-middle class women are known for in CA.

In fairness to the President, this is the entire statement, made after a voter came up to talk to him about vaccines:

We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Nobody knows exactly why. There are some people who are suspicious that it’s connected to vaccines and triggers, but (pointing to his right) this person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it. Part of the reason I think it’s very important to research it is those vaccines are also preventing huge numbers of deaths among children and preventing debilitating illnesses like Polio. And so we can’t afford to junk our vaccine system. We’ve got to figure out why is it that this is happening so that we are starting to see a more normal, what was a normal, rate of autism. Because if we keep on seeing increases at the rate we’re seeing we’re never going to have enough money to provide all the special needs, special education funding that’s going to be necessary.”

DATE: April 21, 2008
LOCATION: Blue Bell, PA

@ TK:

Great.
In fact, one of the idi... I mean *alternative medicine advocates* I survey characterises NY, NJ and CA as the most corrupt and simultaneously most anti-alt med states- they have too many laws that impinge upon his freedom.

Before I depart:
both of these fellows rhapsodise in unencumbered fashion about freedom and choice but IIRC, neither is a particularly strong advocate of *choice* involving abortion and issues concerning women's reproductive health.

Charlie Pierce just posted a great column on Rand Paul ("Senator Aqua Buddha") over on Esquire/politics, highlighting his antivax lunacy.

Pierce can be one of America's finest, and funniest, political writers. That's what a background in sportswriting gets you.

Looks like the anti-vaccine bashing of Ben Carson bashing is already starting!

From Mothering:

"...do you know that he has part in a group creating a colon cancer vaccine?"

"Yes, Ben Carson is working on a colon cancer vaccine. How did anyone miss that?"

Annie @27 -- OMG that's hilarious!

They're eating their young!

I will never understand the boogeyman of "The government should force parents to vaccinate!" I would think reality and common sense would dictate the need to vaccinate.

Shay @23 -

How is it "in fairness to the President" to bring up a quote from almost 7 years ago and imply that it was part of what he said most recently?

The President appeared to be firmly in the vaccination camp, all the while agreeing to spend coin to research the supposed increase in autism. Randal wants to stop public health needed vaccines.

Paul's comments are hilarious when set against his avowed anti-abortion stand. Kids belong to their parents, unless the parents don't want them, then they belong to the state.

LH -- because our esteemed box of blinky lights specifically mentioned the 2008 incident which -- if you only are aware of the sound-bite -- makes it look as though he was "pandering" to the antivaccine movement while running for his first term.

In context, the quote comes off as not quite so anti-vaxx friendly..

I also note that I blogged about the whole quote in detail in 2008 and linked to my discussion in this post. Click the links, people, before you criticize. They're there for a reason. :-)

I haven't combed the numbers (polls) but from my conversations I can say the anit-vaccine loonacy crosses the complete political spectrum from far left progressives to far-right religious zealots. My sister is one of the latter.

I have a new weapon in my anti-lunacy bag of tricks:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/01/growing_up_unvaccinat…

See the top comment on the left.. Powerful.

There are really 2 different issues with 4 different policy positions.
Pro or anti-vaccine
Pro or anti- government mandated vaccines

I consider myself pro-vaccine. I have all my vaccinations up to date, I always get the quaternary flu vaccine, my kids are up to date on their vaccines and we even enrolled our children in a phase III trial for a new vaccine.

I also consider myself anti-government mandated vaccination. I can understand government vaccine mandates for places like public schools where kids will be crammed together as long as public schooling is not compulsory.

I think that Orac is lumping these two different issues together under 1 topic. I don't think that is fair or accurate.

I turned off a national news channel(CNN?) last night while treadmilling, because they were promo-ing "Pediatricians Go Head To Head Over Vaccines". Couldn't stand the thought of another round of "both sides".

But I wasn't fast enough shutting off the radio at midday when Rush Limbaugh was launching into a screed about how Demoncrats* are intentionally targeting Republican presidential candidates with vaccine questions in order to create a new version of the War On Women.

You see, there's no debate! It's a dead issue! Measles was eradicated in the U.S. until Obama relaxed immigration laws and allowed lots of Mexican with rashes over our borders!!

I've just got to be faster hitting the off button.

*intentional misspelling.

I’ve just got to be faster hitting the off button.

You always have the Elvis option.
http://www.elvisinfonet.com/elvisgoulet.html

@JeffM

The Slate article is very good. The anecdote from a reformed anti-vaxxer is helpful for sharing with those n the fence.

Interesting bit of news, thoujgh not exactly welcome around here

Two adults and two children have fallen ill in four separate cases, according to Toronto Public Health.

---

The message is that measles is circulating in Toronto,” said Dr. Lisa Berger, associate medical officer of health with Toronto Public Health. “There has been spread somewhere.”

Berger said that in three of the four cases, the individuals had not been vaccinated against the disease. In the fourth case, the person received only one dose of the double-dose vaccination, she said.

None are from the same family and there is no source case, said Berger. ”

I was impressed with Rand Paul's comment "The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.”

How easy is it to transfer ownership?

@16 Eric Lund

“The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.”

I too am appalled that someone who claims allegiance to libertarian principles would say such a thing. Too often I think the 'health freedom' argument for parents control over their children is pitted as freedom vs collectivism, with any govt or CPS control being viewed as 'collectivism'.

I think that is completely wrong. Vaccination and ensuring proper medical care for children IS an individual rights issue. The individual rights of the child to proper healthcare and the opportunity to reach adulthood. Parents need to realize that THAT is what they should be seeking to uphold, their own children's rights. Not stripping them away in the name of 'health freedom'.

Again, the idea that a stalward of the libertarian party doesn't understand that is incomprehensible...

"Parents own the children." I've long suspected libertarianism isn't about the desire for freedom for all, it's about freedom for those who have "earned" it. This certainly goes a long way to support my suspicions.

DW:

both of these fellows rhapsodise in unencumbered fashion about freedom and choice but IIRC, neither is a particularly strong advocate of *choice* involving abortion and issues concerning women’s reproductive health.

Typical ladybrain logic fail. Libertarian support for property rights means the right of a man do what he wishes with his property, not that his property has rights. Therefore no contradiction in Rand Paul's stance on freedumb and choice.

J.K. Rideau

How easy is it to transfer ownership?

According to Micheal Shermer the infallible "mind of the market" will sort that out.

Little Green Footballs has been a very relevant site to the "debate" recently, for example: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44285_Vox_Misrepresents_Obamas_… and http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44280_Death_and_The_Anti-Vaxxer
As to Baby Doc Paul and whether parents own their children, we never thought we owned our children, but held them in trust for the adults they have grown to be. I am not a great admirer of Kahlil Gibran*, but his saying that "They come through you but not from you" resonates with me.
Regarding the Hepatitis B -- STD trope, as someone who treated HIV patients in the mid-80s, it sounds depressingly familiar - "It's the queers and junkies, it's their problem, who cares anyway?" Yet Hep B not only comes through other routes, but it can infect through so many more than HIV far more effectively that refusing the vaccine to your children will come back to bite you, or more accurately, your children, in the ass.
*"People read Gibran when they want to get laid." - Lenny Bruce

Gray Falcon

I’ve long suspected libertarianism isn’t about the desire for freedom for all, it’s about freedom for those who have “earned” it.

Your rights end where my privilege begins.

All fringe crazies meet around the back. I am a libertarian and I'm shocked that Rand Paul claims to have heard of ( not seen or witnessed)many cases where children have had grave mental injuries from vaccines. How very irresponsible to make that claim and not provide any data to back it up. I'm all for voluntary vaccination however; I believe and as stated in the article, the state has a compelling interest in denying those who chose not to vaccinate attendance at public schools without a medical exemption being the only exception.

I see that AoA is in full-on fetal-position babbling-to-itself mode, with John Stone not just still trying to sell the notion that there have really been only single-digit measles cases, but declaring that "there is a feeling in the air rather like the last days of the Warsaw Pact and the Fall of the Berlin Wall."

@ Militant Agnostic:

Right, choice is only for the chosen.

If the un-chosen would like to choose their own course in life they can't. I know that often includes what I mention but I wonder if marriage choice for gay men and lesbians i

Republicans have been the prime movers on the vast majority of antivaccine state legislation introduced in the last several years. To be fair, a few physicians who are also Republican legislators have sponsored bills to limit nonmedical exemptions, but taken as a whole, this stuff gets more support on the right hand side of the aisle, at the state level, in any case.

Take for example this (http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2015/01/06/concerns-r…) interesting new legislator, who took a bill before her committee to allow the department of health (*clutch pearls!*) to set school immunization requirements.

Her contribution to the process? She deleted all of that stuff, added in a new requirement for chickenpox, and created a philosophical exemption for everything. Unfrickinbelieveable.

Oooops!
if marriage choice for gay men and lesbians is acceptable.
AFAIK Paul may support it but most others don't.

Slate: The case for lawsuits. Sources include Arthur Caplan of NYU and Dorit Reiss. Check it out.

For further evidence of politicizing of the vaccine "debate" , check out today's editorial in the Wall St. Journal criticizing "Christie's Vaccine Stumble".

The editorial slams Christie's "meandering meditation on parental rights", praises Obama's pro-vaccine message (acknowledging that must have been physically painful) and notes that "The real public health problem isn't a lack of parental choice but a lack of common sense about vaccines, and politicians should do more to promote the latter."

This is all very nice, but I strongly suspect the Journal is landing on Christie with both feet because the Journal's editorial board views him as a dangerously "liberal" Republican candidate who must be neutralized before he threatens the nomination of a nice, sensible conservative candidate (interestingly, the editorial says nothing about Rand Paul's meandering meditations).

This is the same Wall St. Journal that routinely sneers at the idea of climate change, so their newfound allegiance to common sense and scientific consensus is a bit suspect.

DB, as you mention, I do find it interesting that the WSJ stomps on Christie for his mistake, but says nothing about Rand Paul, whose antivaccine spew was clearly way worse than Christie's, which was far more a stumble based on ignorance and the perilous conflation of "vaccine choice" with freedom. Moreover, Paul has been letting loose antivaccine bons mots for at least five years, if not a lot longer.

I rather suspect that's the same reason Breitbart.com comes down hard on Christie but doesn't seem to mention Rand Paul.

Oh, wait. Maybe not. Check out this video:

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/03/rand-paul-flashback-mandatory…

At least my party still has the hot women......that's all I got on this one.

I would presume that everyone already knows that Senator Paul, like Congressman Paul, opposes government mandates. Thus Senator Paul's comments come as no particular surprise.

Senator Paul is also an inexperienced politician and (hopefully) not considered as a serious presidential candidate except by a small but vocal group of enthusiasts.

Governor Christie's rather mild comments, on the other hand, get more play because he is a more experienced politician and a more serious contender for the presidency. The comments are also more vague, giving people lots of room to argue about what he really means.

DB@52: The Wall Street Journal is ostensibly the mouthpiece of the investor class. If measles (or pertussis, mumps, diphtheria, etc.) outbreaks become common, the government would likely (and justifiably) have to impose some serious travel restrictions. That would be bad for business. Much better if vaccination rates are higher, so that those who can't get the vaccine (and those for whom the vaccine fails) can hide in the herd.

As for the Pauls: In the last two presidential primaries Ron had a devoted and vocal but small following. Rand might do slightly better, but unless the field is thoroughly fragmented (which the Republican money people are hoping to avoid) I don't see how he wins the nomination. Note also that Rand's senate seat is up for re-election in 2016, and Kentucky (unlike some states) does not allow a candidate to appear on both the president/vice president line and another office. So I'd look for Rand to exit the presidential race in late 2015 or early 2016. I'd be surprised if he continues past the New Hampshire primary.

It's a good thing posts here are moderated. Ron Paul supporters troll the internet for criticism of their guru and unleash a torrent of vitriol when they find (or think they find) some on a news story, blog, or so on.

Rand Paul today released a photo of himself getting a booster shot for Hep A on Capital Hill. The blowback from his recent comments was getting to him.

“It just annoys me that I’m being characterized as someone who’s against vaccines,” Mr. Paul said as he settled into a chair in an examination room in the Capitol physician’s office.

“There’s 400 headlines now that say ‘Paul says vaccines cause mental disorders,'” he added. “That’s not what I said. I said I’ve heard of people who’ve had vaccines and they see a temporal association and they believe that.”

Except that IS what he said. He's splitting hairs now that his buddies on the Hill are not backing him up.

Panacea, Orac does not "moderate" comments. IIRC, new commenters with new IP addresses are put in moderation, until Orac has the chance to remove them out of moderation. Only very filthy phrases might not be posted...simple no-no words used to emphasize an opinion...will eventually leave moderation and will be posted.

Speaking of libertarian health regulations:

For much of the past 36 or so hours, we’ve heard from a number of Republicans that risking the occasional measles outbreak is simply the price of liberty. While Rand Paul and Chris Christie were busy championing the sacred right to expose others to disease, it fell to freshman Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to take up the next great cause in the fight for freedom from regulatory overreach. We speak, of course, of the right of restaurants not to require their employees to wash their hands after using the restroom.

Speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday, Tillis related a story from his tenure in the North Carolina legislature to help explain his overarching philosophy on the finer points of hand-washing.

“I was having this discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,” Tillis said. “Let an industry or business opt out as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment, literature, whatever else. There’s this level of regulations that maybe they’re on the books, but maybe you can make a market-based decision as to whether or not they should apply to you.”

When Tillis’ interlocutor noticed a Starbucks employee coming out of the restroom and inquired whether Tillis would apply his anti-regulation stance to employee hygiene, Tillis affirmed that he would.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom,’” he said. “The market will take care of that.”

Great read. Personally, I believe they've become the anti-science party and that GOP should now stand for Gobs of Paranoia. Looks like both Christie and Paul are backtracking. Nice to see the RN involved in the anti-science ebola quarantine weigh in on Christe's actions on this topic.

if marriage choice for gay men and lesbians is acceptable. AFAIK Paul may support it but most others don’t.

This is where they play the States Rights card so they can be both for it and effectively against it.

Slightly off topic: there is a new facebook page encouraging everyone who is pro-vaccines to donate money to UNICEFs vaccination effort, in the name of prominent pro-diseasers (Vaccines from Anti-Vaxxers). Might I suggest Chris Christie, Rand Paul, MAM or the so-called "Dr" Jack Wolfson as suitable recipients. The "Dr" will be receiving a card thanking him for 400 tetanus vaccines to protect mothers and children, and a message stating how I feel about him in a few days. I found it to be a far more satisfying way to let out my anger at these people than repeatedly punching a wall.

On topic: I think that parents should absolutely be able to choose not to vaccinate their kids. However, this choice, like any, has consequences. If they make that choice, they should not be allowed to send their kids to public schools, take them to public parks or use public transportation. If you choose not to participate in public heath measures, you also choose not to participate in any public service where you can infect those who for legitimate medical reasons can't vaccinate. And of course, if an (intentionally) unvaccinated child starts an outbreak, the parents should be held liable for all costs to society and the individual.

Mephistopheles:

He opposes government mandates *on well-to-do adult men*. He thinks it's fine to tell a rape victim she has to bear the criminal's child, but once the woman has made it through pregnancy (at her own expense, of course), he has no objection to letting the child die of whooping cough.

Let's not forget Hillary on vaccines too, demanding an investigation into vaccines and autism while speak to anti-vax crowds.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/03/hillary-in-2015-vaccines-work/

Apparently you didn't read my post very closely. Actually, I rather suspect you didn't read it at all, other than perhaps the title. In this post, I actually did make it a point to refer to how all three major candidates in 2008, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton showed a little too much credulity when it came to the vaccine-autism link. I even linked to blog posts I wrote about each incident back when they happened in 2008.

Seriously. Read the damned post next time.

It is rather interesting how some ostensible libertarians can be so opposed to women's rights. The actual Libertarian Party platform has a very strong plank supporting women's right to choose, Faux libertarians have a distressing tendency to be all about freedom until it comes to certain intrusion into private health and sexual matters. On the other hand, to be fair to Paul, he has been generally good opposing foreign military entanglements and the rise of the surveillance state.

Time to get your credit cards out and give to charity on Paul's and Christie's behalf. You can buy a donation of vaccines through UNICEF and have a gift card sent to the anti-vaxxer of your choice (with a personal message for extra sneering joy), thanking them for the donation you've made as a gift to them. http://www.unicef.org/inspiredgifts/index_51968.html

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom,’” he said. “The market will take care of that.”

Excellent, then he won't mind those who eschew vaccines and their unvaccinated spawn will be required to wear signs stating such.

Hey, let the market take care of that right?

Vicki,

I disagree with his position on abortion, but that's not how Senator Paul would phrase it. His phrasing is at http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=3.

Videos show that Mr Christie was more subdued today - he didn't speak to reporters in London.

Orac @67

It is rather interesting how some ostensible libertarians can be so opposed to women’s rights.

I thought I explained it quite clearly at #43

Seriously, this is what you get when you combine the misogyny of abrahamic religion with the sociopathic philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Hey Minions! I worked all day on an anaylsis of the GOP politics around the vax comments, with discussions of the primary/caucus schedule, campaign financing, vax and exemption rates in each of the early states, data from a study in Pediatrics about the difference between anti-vaxers and non-vaxers, more GOP pols who've made comments during the day, Hilary's take, and Ron Paul's outlook as a 'serious candidate'.

Yes, it's almost Oracian in length, but not quite. Please take a look.
https://sadmar.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/gop/

Last time this came up I looked into the question of who "owns" the children and concluded that rooted in British common law the state claims to have the strongest claim on "ownership". By convention, and lacking more suitable candidates, the parents are, by default, given charge of the children until it is shown that they are unwilling or unable to raise them as good citizens.

This is why there are no property rights claims when the state removes children from derelict or abusive parents.

Orac, I see your Christie and Paul and raise you a Walker and a Carson. I love your work, but I don't see how this supports your notion that the GOP is somehow well on its way to becoming "the antivaccine party". The fact that Christie had to walk-back some of his comments because of the heat aimed in his direction would seem to also not support the idea that this original comments found fertile ground with the party base.

The fact that Christie had to walk-back some of his comments because of the heat aimed in his direction would seem to also not support the idea that this original comments found fertile ground with the party base.

The conclusion doesn't really follow from the premise, but that may have something to do with "the party base" not being imbued with any particular meaning.

@Art:

Last time this came up I looked into the question of who “owns” the children and concluded that rooted in British common law the state claims to have the strongest claim on “ownership”.

Parens patriae has come a long way, baby.

I may not agree with their politics, but props to Rubio and Jindal for apparently getting it right the first time:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rubio-jindal-latest-weigh…

Ahh, the AAP chimes in on Christie and Rand with about as spineless a statement as possible (http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/American-Ac…) ;

"A measles outbreak has grown to more than 100 people in 14 states. As public officials discuss the outbreak and the immunizations that could have prevented it, the American Academy of Pediatrics urges each of them to research the issue first, using credible, science-based sources of information. It is incumbent on public officials to speak from the facts when shaping public perception and policy. This is crucial when it comes to our children's health and safety".....

"We encourage public officials to employ sound science in communicating about such an important topic. Our children's health is at stake."

C'mon--is the AAP that terrified of offending anyone that can't specifically address the anti-vaccinationism expressed by Christie and Paul? Then again, this is another manifestation of the same AAPathy that, to date, has weakened the AAP to the point of not speaking out against FAAPs Robert Sears and Jay Gordon.

Art, #74: the concept in English law (not sure about Scottish) also involves the "inherent jurisdiction" of the high court, which is what is ultimately invoked when parents are acting against the interests of their children.

The 1989 Children's Act is also very clear on parental responsibilities towards their children. In my old line (child and adolescent mental health) we kept an eye on repeated failures to attend appointments as a possible sign of neglect which we would need to contact our local children's services about (family protection in US-ia, I think).

FWIW, some big name Republicans have made statements in favor of vaccines. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky offered an intensely personal opinion Tuesday about the necessity of childhood vaccinations: "As a victim of polio myself, I'm a big fan of vaccinations."

House Speaker John Boehner of Butler County came out pro-vaccination Tuesday: "I don't know that we need another law, but I do believe that all children ought to be vaccinated."

Cartoon of the day:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/cartoons/2015/02/beeler0204.html

Re. Orac @ 60: Sen. Thom Tillis, moving the party "forward" from anti-vaccination to anti-sanitation. Who needs clean drinking water standards either? Bring back the chamber pot too!

We were having a time of it over on Daily Kos on Tuesday, reading about Tillis and more about Christie and Paul, and feeling stuck somewhere between shock and nausea, alleviated only with the aid of mild scatological humor.

The three of them even got nicknames:

Cholera Christie, Typhoid Tillis, and Polio Paul.

And someone came up with a package design for a Tillis-endorsed brand of latex gloves, that one should wear while shaking hands with Republican politicians.

All of which commentary doesn't sum to policy proposals, but there have been many of those over there as well.

IMHO if this got politically polarized it would be a good thing. Republicans would get trounced in next year's election, and then hopefully the party would get its act together about science. That would make it easier to pass legislation.

As for voluntary/mandatory, I'm for mandatory and free, with medical exemptions only. Make it a requirement for anyone applying for a driver's license or state photo ID, and if they're a parent, they have to show that their kids are vaccinated as well.

It's bad enough to have little vectors running around in school, but they do also take the bus and go to movies and malls, etc., where they can infect more people. So I say No to that: get your shots or live in a closed community like the Amish.

As for Paul's item about parents "owning" their kids, on any ordinary news day that would be shocking and horrifying enough, but Tuesday it merely came across as dumb-headed and crass.

@MOB #81
FWIW, the Cincinnati Enquirer is trying to spin mushy fake walk-back as 'pro-vaccination.'

"I’m a big fan of vaccinations." So is Chris Christie. So is Mike #36. Note the subject of the sentence. Well, at least Mitch is a 'fan'.

Boehner, not so much. " I do believe that all children ought to be vaccinated.” is about as weak and distance as prose gets.

Cincinnati, as some may not be aware, is only de jure in Ohio, de facto it's the largest city in Kentucky, which is probably why the Enquirer is carrying water for McConnell, and failing to parse for it's readers Boehner's shout out in support of he-who-shall-not-be-named, better known to us as Rand Paul: "“I don’t know that we need another law." That 'other law' we don't need is restriction or elimination of PBEs, or any other measure that would actually involve "government" big or small to intervene in even the teensy-tinest way with the collapse of herd immunity due to 'personal freedom'.

That's the line, "I like vaccinations! (but if you don't want your kid to get one, that's up to you)."

Politically, exemptions are the issue, period. Cruz did actually come out a bit 'pro-vax' in a policy sense by saying other states should adopt Texas's standard, which is 'religious and medical exemptions only' – pretty easy to do in Texas. Rubio really put himself out there: "medical exemptions only".

HRC didn't say anything about exemptions, but compare her comment to McConnell and Boehner, "”The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest” She actually endorsed the science, called the anti-vaxers flat-earth idiots, one-upped the anti-vaxers on the 'Mom' card, referenced herd immunity ('all our kids') and implied policy be using the plural subject "us" and the active verb "protect".

The way you figure out what someone means by an ambiguous-seeming statement is by figuring out all the other expressions that might have been used to express whatever, and seeing what the expression at hand is NOT.

E.g among the things "I do believe that all children ought to be vaccinated.” is NOT is "Listen people, there's a public health crisis. If your kids aren't vaccinated for measles, take them in for the MMR now."

How does anyone sane NOT say that now? Only one reason. They're afraid of the voting/finacial power of "”I guess being for freedom would be really unusual.”

Hillary Clinton on Twitter 2/2/15:

The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let's protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest

@Gray Squirrel #83
In Lancaster County anyway, the Amish shop at WalMart. There are bunch of special spaces in the parking lot reserved for buggy's. (The don't do the indoor mall, though. Too hochmut.) I'm totally for 'medical only' myself, and vax is the kind of thing where most the Amish anyway might come around. (It's not core to a simple plain life "not of the world".)

But we all know if it's medical only, there'll be a First Amendment challenge from somebody. I say: "Bring it on!" But I'm not running for President in Iowa or New Hampshire, the later BTW being the only state in the Union w/o a mandatory seat-belt law..... FREEDOMMM!!!

(They should change the motto from "Live free or die" to "Live free and die")

OBVIOUSLY AoA is quite pleased with Christie and Paul: today they feature articles by Heckenlively and Handley.
Although TMR wasn't up when I looked, its facebook page was and it featured a link to Handley's " Angry Father's Guide to the Measles Vaccine".

But we all know if it’s medical only, there’ll be a First Amendment challenge from somebody.

So far, we haven't seen any such challenges in Mississippi or West Virginia, the two states that currently allow only medical exemptions.

@DB #82
I don't know how you interpret the cartoon, but fwiw...
It's not saying "Science has won and proved anti-vaxers are as wrong as flat-earthers."
It's a political cartoon saying that the anti-vax 'movement' has sailed off it's own dining room table and is now as politically relevant as flat-earthism. It's saying anti-vax ain't gonna be around much longer. I think it's probably right, but we'll see. It all depends on far and how long the current outbreak goes, sad to say...

The frustrating thing about having Christie et al wade into this is that they have blurred the line between "should vaccination be compulsory" and "should vaccination be a condition for school entry." Those are two very different things. State laws mostly address the latter as they relate to children.

As for the First Amendment and the "because, freedom" argument, this is pretty well settled in the law. Nonmedical exemptions exist because of politics.

Antivaxers frequently misrepresent school vaccine mandates as being compulsory or "forced" vaccination in order to co-opt the "freedom" and "the government can't force anyone to inject chemicalz into my body" message. This is a feature, not a bug, as I'm sure Rand Paul knows. I doubt Christie knew and that's why he so blindly blundered into this issue. To him it probably seemed like a reasonable approach to make "both sides" happy.

@ sadmar:

Whatever happens, I think that the anti-vax movement WILL be around - although it may have hopefully less influence on young parents in the future- and it may be moved off further into the darker, festering depths of the cybersphere.
many, many diehard believers have invested their lives in it and some entrepreneurs - as well as parents- have made money off of it and have achieved a measure of fame- they get support and applause for their madness.

If you read the regulars at AoA/ TMR and dedicated facebook pages, you'll find that the movement has become their social life and often, their claim to fame. They identify themselves through it and they have a perpetual axe to grind against the mainstream.

How would people like them ever get on television otherwise?' These outlets then embed the video and followers later congratulate the Truth Teller on facebook.
Quite a few get book deals to narrate their tales of woe or showcase their 'investigative journalism' Would any of them write a book WITHOUT these covens of bad science pulling for them or without a cohort / fellow traveller who owns a publishing company?

And they get to style themselves as Brave Maverick Parents in mimicry of the Brave Maverick Doctor- ex-doctor , really- so many mini- Andys and Andreas attempting to ride upon his tattered coattails..
And last but not least, Andy is only 50-something, he can be around for decades.

I'd post this link to Orac's pitiful, cowardly blog titled "Antivaccine cranks try to create Vaccine Injury Awareness Month. Everyone either yawns or laughs."
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/01/antivaccine-cranks-try-to-…
but he's closed that heinous blog, akin to Holocaust and climate change denialism, from further comment.

Here's a new, brief article I wanted to share with all the vaccine injury denialists here:
http://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/gut-microbiota-infant-vaccine-pro…

So if the Republicans need another voice saying we need to get rid of any kind of public health requirement of any kind I present:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/thom-tillis-on-whether-employees-need-to-wa…

I'm still waiting for the embarrassment my state elected him to the Senate to overtake the relief I feel that we don't have him mucking around directly with my state anymore.

What is the next thing that restricts our freedom to infect others that will be made OK to do by legislative act?

Well, the Wall St. Journal has belatedly turned on Rand Paul in a new editorial headlined "The Weird Vaccine Panic". Paul is lambasted for "broadcasting misinformation" and "libertarian dormitory passions". He was also criticized specifically for trying to connect "mental disorders" with vaccines, in what the Journal said was "a dog whistle )perhaps unintentional) to autism fears".

The editorial also took note of Obama's sidling around vaccine fears in 2008, along with Hillary Clinton who "responded to a questionnaire from an autism activism group with a commitment to 'make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines'". And the Journal declared that the "privileged communities of the liberal elite" in southern California are centers for vaccine refusal.

It's sort of entertaining to see the political fur flying - as long as these folks get it right in the end.

So far, we haven’t seen any such challenges in Mississippi or West Virginia, the two states that currently allow only medical exemptions.

No, Patti Finn did her usual crash-and-burn routine in Workman v. Mingo County Board of Education.

On the subject of Mississippi, though, this is timely.

^ It should perhaps also be noted that Mississippi is unusual, in that the reason there's no religious exemption is that in 1979, the Supreme Court of Mississippi held them to be unconstitutional on an equal protection basis (Brown v. Stone).

sadmar,

The way you figure out what someone means by an ambiguous-seeming statement is by figuring out all the other expressions that might have been used to express whatever, and seeing what the expression at hand is NOT.
E.g among the things “I do believe that all children ought to be vaccinated.” is NOT is “Listen people, there’s a public health crisis. If your kids aren’t vaccinated for measles, take them in for the MMR now.”

While that can be a useful technique, there are a few limitations and cautions. For instance:

- you don't always know the context of the statement, which can make a difference. The words used depend on the question that was asked.

- you don't know that the article includes the full statement. The article may leave out the boring bits, or may be restricted for length. Just as an entire 1 hour speech may be cut to 4 5-second sound bites on television news, a longer quote may be cut down to what the reporter (or editor) considers the essential point.

- it can be used in parsing those you agree with as well as those you disagree with. For example, only given former secretary Clinton's statement above, can you realistically infer her views on religious or philosophical exemptions? How about President Obama's views?

As to Boehner's statement that "I don’t know that we need another law", I suppose that would all depend on the context. He's a Congressman from Ohio - perhaps he doesn't think a federal law is appropriate (due to, say, Constitutional issues) and he thinks that the Ohio statue (http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3313.671) is adequate. I really couldn't say.

As to "Cincinnati, as some may not be aware, is only de jure in Ohio, de facto it’s the largest city in Kentucky, which is probably why the Enquirer is carrying water for McConnell,...", the article does say that "The Enquirer surveyed the governors of Ohio and Kentucky plus members of the local congressional delegations on their views about vaccinations." Thus if you found and read the article (as opposed to my snippets), you'd also see responses from other Ohio and Kentucky politicians. McConnell (KY), Rand Paul (KY), and Boehner (West Chester Township, OH) would be considered members of the local congressional delegations.

DW: "Ethically challenged, lacking in empathy and self-centered parents…all of them."

Except for parenthood, that could also describe any Republican candidate. Like the anti-vax movement, the GOP has become a haven for unpleasant people.

@ PGP:

But I didn't say that.
Must have been my evil twin - well, one of them. I have several...
( Not that I'm not evil)

"Which prompted the greatest Onion headline, ever"

Second greatest? "New President Feels Nation’s Pain, Breasts."

I really feel like we're in a place where parental rights over 'ownership' of their children are in direct conflict with critical public health concerns - and that's the individual right of each child to herd immunity, IMO. There should be no religious or philosophical vaccine exemptions for school. Medical only.

Rand Paul's ties to the AAPS highlighted in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/us/politics/rand-paul-linked-to-assoc…

Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that the anti-vaccine movement will get the negative publicity they so richly deserve and will be finally relegated to the same level as holocaust or moon landing deniers. It's a horrible price to pay, though.

“The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.”

Makes you wonder if his parents made him pay for his freedom.

Charlie Pierce has yet another excellent column on this today:

So this is what I'm thinking. The Republicans will use this as a wedge to split the Democratic party along the Nervous Parent fault-line that is rivening it. This fault line may well crack open between classes, as the wealthier left seems more inclined toward using Internet quackery to protect their little snowflake babies.

Don't know if anything will come of it, slightly off topic(but not);
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2015/02/anti_vaccination_d…

And...Jake Crosby weighs in on his Epoch Times blog, which gave me the opportunity to link to his posts on the CDC Whistleblower. Jake removed all the comments on the Whistleblower one month ago, yet he continued to post comments at me.

Jake's last comment directed at me was posted 8 days ago and he admitted that his mentor for his "Culminating Experience" (MPH-Epidemioogy thesis), was former medical doctor Mark Geier, who (somehow) got him access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database.

Screen shots...the only way to preserve comments that Jake sends down the old memory hole:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/blog/obama-contradicts-vaccines/

To excuse Dr. Randel Paul's opinions on medicine just because he is an eye doctor. It is way too forgiving. He went through many of the same general classes required of every doctor, he would have been taught all of the same basic principles of medicine and science that is taught every medical student. While I often spoke poorly of the medical profession in my career, chided them memorization over application, even I can not imagine that anyone gets to put a "M.D." after there name without being exposed to enough information to know better. No, don't blame his education, don't blame his specialization. You insult a lot of good honest doctors.

FYI, There is no love lost between Mitch and Dr. Paul, Mitch is an over school establishment republican, a wheeler-dealer, a person with huge ties to the establishment. Dr. Paul is an upstart, whom beat Mitch's anointed candidate in the primary. There was no love lost in the primary battle, Dr. Paul spoke of Mitch as the enemy. After the victory, pleasant fwords and a facade were placed over wounds and scars, do not expect that they do not fester beneath the surface.

@ lilady:

Gawd, I just read that!
Jake seems to have difficulty interpretting what people say ( e.g. Barack Obama) despite the fact that it was relatively simple and in English .I'm not sure if he has some sort of language-based disability ( or NVLD) or if it's merely a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality.

He doesn't put simple facts together as most people would but then he creates mountains out of molehills and intricately elaborates upon relationships that don't exist outside of his fevered imagination.
In short, lots wrong there.

I notice that PRN put up one of his old, crappy AoA posts about Dr Offit saying f@cking and sh!t.or suchlike.
If I met Jake in person I'd probably say f@cking and sh!t as well.

BUT I'd glad to come across this after reading someone's recollections about victims of terrorism- I need a laugh.

No spoken or receptive language disability, Denice. Just a nasty, over indulged "kid" who only thinks he's qualified to work as an epidemiologist; he's not.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Offit, Summer 2013. He's a warm, compassionate charming man who is dedicated to the children entrusted to his care and he's been subjected to Jake's lies and pathological stalking behaviors.

I'm delighted to be your "evil twin".

Can anyone point me to the scientific evidence for herd immunity?

Can anyone direct me to the scientific evidence for herd immunity?

Thank you.

Can anyone direct me to the scientific evidence for herd immunity?

Sure.

One way to see how this is going to fall out is to keep an eye on 'mainstream' non-fanatical granola crunchers...
@ Denice #92
That's what I mean in my hyperbolic way in #89, AV isn't going away as a culture, I just think it's on its way off the table as a significant political influence. And while I'm sure about the former (it will live on in some form) I'm nowhere as sure about the later, but that's how I read the signs du jour

As far as book deals and TV and profitable ventures go — Disneyland changes everything. Again, it's so sad/stupid it had to come to this, all the poor kids actually getting sick. My hypotheses for the near future:

AV Entrepreneurs. There will continue to be $$ to be made by selling re-inforcement to this community, just less of it. The 'base" won't shrink, but the secondary/tertiary spheres will and mainstream publishers who would have put out an anti-vax book two years ago won't touch them now, leaving them to specialty presses.

Television/Media: Clearly the new AV role here is whipping boy/ villain. Which will just make them more mavericky in their own shrinking bubble. But it's absolutely slaughtering them as a meaningful social force.

'Natural' Entrepeneurs/activists: Wedges may well appear in previous alliances. In the cherry-picked media quotes from appalling unaffected AV parents, I've noticed two slightly different philosophies: 1) the very specific 'MMR causes autism' standard line, 2) the more generic 'naturalistic fallacy" rejecting corporate commodities, embracing Gaia myths & organic everything This position has previously accommodated a 'vax MUST be toxis POV' though the exact mechanism and product of toxicity is left open and can be fluid. What any number of commenters (a growing minority it seems) in this subculture are showing is that anti-vax isn't necessary to this world view and can easily be discarded. One of the anti-(anti-vax) 'trolls' on mothering.com has a sig "I'm pro natural birth, midwife care, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing and a keen advocate of cloth diapering. And I'm pro-vaccine." C.f. also Tara Cook-Littman, the pro-vax, anti-GMO Connecticut Dem mentioned by BD #1 who got pole-axed by the GOP in 2014 for having been duped into giving an interview to the producers of Bought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mxYu7CL1Xg

Anti-vax isn't core to the organic/natural mythos — and neither are organic 'cures". The mythos basically comes down to a fairly generic belief that less processing is 'healthier' in some vague way. Typical granola-crunchers just try to reduce 'unnecessary' industrial diddling in a more-or-less pragmatic mode — e.g. they still drink tap water, etc. So this 'lifestyle choice' can go forward perfect well if MMR and flu shots move into the category of "no reasonable pragmatic natural alternative" along with hundreds of other elements of quotidian existence in industrialized society.

So I'd keep my eye on the less wiggy 'natural food' promoters — not necessarily Mikey — to see if any of them are easing up on doing any cross-promotion with the AV crowd — as I have a feeling it will be in their economic interest to do so.

@ Meph #99
All excellent qualifiers! Yeah, those are the kinds of things you have to do if you're using that method (a basic technique of 'semiotics') in a serious scholarly paper. They're part of the necessary 'controls' if you will, of establishing a solid argument. I was just firing off a quick lil polemic: sort of 'well, it could be this' rather than any kind of sold 'proof'.

And I thought I had at least implied that re: HRC by noting that unlike Rubio and Cruz, she didn't state an exemption policy, only inferred one by very different language choices than McConnell and Boehner used. Still, if there was a liberal's illustrated dictionary there'd be a pic of BIll and Hil next to the entry for "slippery".

I'd also add re: McConnell and Boehner. As Majority Leader and Speaker they'e going to be concerned with keeping some appearance of unity amongst the various caucuses in their party, and model 'let's stay on the same page' strategies. Both of the quotes (can't speak to the full statements) offer the opportunities in private discussions with different members to say either 'I came out as pro-vax' OR 'I didn't endorse restricting exemptions'.

@ MarkN #55
"At least my party still has the hot women……"

Citation needed. :-)

There are numerous tv shows about her case and over 1600 people on Facebook

OK, that combination has totally convinced me!

Oh dear. Dan Olmsted has posted a link on AoA to an interview he's done with "Vox". I imagine he thinks he comes over quite well, but actually comes over as a frothing loon, with all his points debunked - mostly with references, some to our esteemed host.

The phrase "done up like a kipper" springs to mind.

You sad, sad fool, Olmsted.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7972335/dan-olmsted-anti-vaxxers

@ MarkN #55 and sadmar#119
Your sexism is noted.

MartinB @122 -- I'm acutely aware that accusations of hypersensitivity and humorlessness are the go-to tactic for sexist bullies attempting to defend the indefensible, but MarkN and sadmar's little exchange struck me as being entirely in jest, and actually pretty funny.

@palindrom
Sure - when talking about a political party, discussing the "hotness" of women is just funny and nothing else.
Yes, it was somewhat funny, yes, it was in jest, no, it is not a big problem, and neither is the world going to end nor will MarkN and sadmar be held in contempt forever because of these remarks, but yes, the remarks were sexist all the same.

@ sadmar:

I think the book deals may continue but only because they originate from Skyhorse, which is owned by a fellow traveler,, Tony Lyons, who has written a few tomes from his perspective as a ( woo-drenched) autism parent- he published his ex's book as well- that's devotion to a cause for you!

But truly, I think that recent events have helped push anti-vax towards the darkest depths of cyberspace- Ickes' and Bolen's territory as it were. Actually, this might assist alt media loons who have been telling the faithful that the mainstream is utterly corrupt; *bought* by the corporatocracy and governmental fascisti.

I listened to PRN"s head honcho rant yesterday and I detected a hint of desperation amidst his pressured, malaprop-ridden speech ( see PRN/ the Gary Null Show/ yesterday) and dear Mikey appeared to be grasping at the same straws but more feverishly than is usual ( see Natural News, recently). It may make it harder for them to reach a general audience- which is after all, their aim, supplanting the mainstream in an orgy of paradigm shift: their fantasy system come true.

-btw- I thought the 'hot women' jibe was funny.

The mention of Tony Lyons is inclined to set me off. This is a guy - very much like Wakefield - who has abandoned any kind of professional standards in order to hawk his wares to the vulnerable. He sees the desperate parents of often seriously challenged kids as a marketing opportunity.

Forget his pumping of Wakefield's fraud which, had he perpetrated it in the UK, would have bankrupted his company with uninsurable libel bills.

But look at his publication of a book advising parents how to vaccinate their children, written by people who are not doctors and have no relevant expertise. In my view, a truly sickening scam on the public that could never pay for itself without the captive vulnerable group to be preyed on at the usual quack conferences.

Then look at his publication of a book by the ludicrous malignant crank David Lewis, whose writing is so poor and whose mental condition so questionable that any competent publisher would have thrown his manuscript into the trash after reading the first page.

This is the David Lewis who says that my journalism is of such a high professional standard that I must be corrupt. Really. I kid you not. Unusually, you can see Mr Lyons's author saying so himself. I have him listed on my website as the funniest crank I've ever encountered:

http://briandeer.com/solved/david-lewis-true.htm

I’m totally for ‘medical only’ myself, and vax is the kind of thing where most the Amish anyway might come around. (It’s not core to a simple plain life “not of the world”.)

They don't need to come around, however: the idea that the Amish do not vaccinate is a myth. The majority of Amish parents do vaccinate their children, and among the minority who do not the most common reasons cited for failure to vaccinate are the same anti-vaccine fueled fears that non-Amish anti-vax parents embrace in the absence of supporting evidence. (see PMID:21708796)

@ Brian Deer:

There is so much lunacy surrounding Lyons that if he didn't exist, sceptics would have to invent him to serve as a sterling example of the literary enablement of bad science.

I once spent an hour or two surveying his wares ( @ Skyhorse's website)- new releases especially - altho' there are a few meaningful items- there is a miasma of alt med/ anti-vax/ autism garbage in numbers hitherto unseen in the western world. He gave Gary Null his own imprint. He has already printed loads of AoA contributors' bilge as well as Andy's, sponsors book events with them and assists TMR by printing their madness involving parental advice gone wrong, histrionic tales of woe and the creation bizarrely restricted cuisine for kids with ASDs. Lyons even has published autism-themed fiction -
oh wait, all of these books are fiction, aren't they?

He wrote ( IIRC) two books about autism himself. The entire list of crap lit hawked at AoA was made possible by him.
Lewis fits right in.

I think that recent events have helped push anti-vax towards the darkest depths of cyberspace

Unfortunately people have short memories. I am very much afraid that going through outbreaks periodically is the only way to convince people that VPD's are, in fact, dangerous and children need to be protected from them.

For a moment I had skyhorse confused with "Slaying the Sky Dragon", which is a book that attempts to disprove the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The book is, of course, a hilarious compendium of crackpot science.

Sounds like its near-namesake is also not exactly an authoritative source on matters scientific.

Martin #124 - yes, thank you, all of that.

I sure hope Martin never winds up reading Clickhole.

Brian Deer, Tony Lyons publishes (almost) all of the anti-vaccine books written by the AoA crank journalists and commenters. He did, after all, refuse to publish one book:

"Skyhorse has got several excellent books. Not mine however. They won't even reply when I send them the manuscript for my book (which is freely downloadable at maryWmaxwell.com). Title: "A Balm in Gilead: Curing Autism and Awakening the Physicians."

When I was a Good Girl, years ago, four of my books got published by university presses. Now that I am a Bad Girl (i.e., I say who dunnit), I may as well be a leper.

Speaking of leprosy, it was caused, in modern times, by the smallpox vaccine. Don't take my word for it; many eminent docs said so. And then that was end-of-career for them, of course.

Posted by: mary w maxwell | January 28, 2015 at 11:44 PM"

@ lilady:

It never fails to amaze about how these people catastrophise every single life event that befalls them as they imagine that having an autistic child- rather than the perfect one that exists only in their imagination- is an earth-shattering tragedy which they OBVIOUSLY will rise above In g0dlike fashion to countless readers' applause.

Lyons isn't just their enabler- and that of the loony medical critics as well- he is a fellow traveller- he's one of them- and as much a drama queen.

I think that my friends** whose lives have been transformed by terrorism decades ago sound much more upbeat than this lot of soppy cry babies.

** not the ones form Northern Ireland

@ Lilady: I'd quite like the five minutes back that it took me to download Mary Maxwell's opus but, despite everything, I think she would not make the threshhold for Mr Lyon's tastes because she is not a malignant crank.

Did I say anywhere that BMJ got a threatening letter from some run-out-stock lawyer for David Lewis (the dental equipment hygiene guy) threatening to sue them if they didn't accede to all kinds of weird demands.

Of course, they got told to f--- off, but it was truly hilarious. I ought to post it sometime. It was full of stuff like "you will post on x website denouncing Brian Deer" and so on and so forth.
Pages and pages of gibberish.

not the ONE FROM...

@Lilady, there is a grain of truth in the smallpox vaccine and leprosy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC422848/

I mean grain, in that there is some evidence that given a small pox vaccine to a person with leprosy can cause problems, but I expect not as much as a leper that actually catches smallpox.

Of course, they got told to f— off, but it was truly hilarious. I ought to post it sometime. It was full of stuff like “you will post on x website denouncing Brian Deer” and so on and so forth.
Pages and pages of gibberish.

And you're holding this back from us why?

@ Denice #125

In my remark about book deals, I was thinking about:
Dr. Jay, whose Autism and ADD books are published by Wiley
Dr. Bob, whose Vaccine book is published by Little Brown
and of course
Jenny McCarthy, whose autism books are published by Penguin

A quick Amazon search reveals a number of 'beat autism with health food' books from major presses.

@Lilady, there is a grain of truth in the smallpox vaccine and leprosy.

Maxwell's basic source dates to a bit before 1973, though.

@Colonel Tom - actually, excema is also a contra-indicator for the smallpox vaccine as well.

@Lawrence I am surprise, contra-indications for the small pox vaccine is surely not something being currently taught?

However, and it shames me that I have this link saved, is a case where excema was a factor in a "secondary" exposure. The reason why I have this link, is the poor girl properly expressed her concerns to a Dr., but her concerns were not given the weight they should have been.

I must warn that this is a rather, graphic, case summary.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5925a2.htm

I got the same vaccine, and everyone was warned to minimize contact. I have no idea if disciplinary actions were taken, after he completed his deployment. For all I know, he never came home.

I also like the notes on this case, one might use the "upon hearing hoofbeats expect horses not zebras", but the notes are rather "clinically icy" in their presentation that the other indications for the STD he tested for were just not there. .

Not that I am antiVax, debate about the smallpox vac and its military use is a more subtle issue.

Of course, they got told to f— off, but it was truly hilarious. I ought to post it sometime. It was full of stuff like “you will post on x website denouncing Brian Deer” and so on and so forth.

I believe the standard legal version of the response to that is "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."

Narad, thanks for the 100 + year old references from whaleDOTto.
C'mon Brian Deer; we're waiting for your post about David Lewis...Wakefield's good buddy who sent you the scoring sheets for the bowel specimens from Wakefield's study subjects.

Colonel Tom: I had the smallpox vaccine (NYC Department of Health Dryvax smallpox vaccine) during the run up to the bogus WMDs scare, promulgated by Bush I...post 9-11. I was qualified to receive Dryvax because I had smallpox vaccines in early childhood and prior to a trip to Europe, 1972. I also did not have an history of eczema.

Incidentally, as either sadmar or Denice predicted, now that anti-vax views have intersected with politics, Rachel Maddow is indeed covering the matter, and quite well. She's charmingly somewhat baffled by the whole thing: "Wait, this is a thing? Why on earth is this a thing? Why on earth are mainstream politicians touching this thing with a ten foot pole?"

If there's one thing I can do whilst almost catatonically depressed, it's watch Rachel Maddow. Well, that and drink gifted homemade mead, apparently. Dangerous stuff, that.

Funny thing, as a kid, I had measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella, and poliomyelitis, all before they were vaccine-preventable. but I still wound up with an autism spectrum condition, and I can't even blame it on vaccines.

@ JP:

Well, I hope she can influence some left-leaning people.
She has social power in certain quarters I would guess as well as being quite gifted as a barkeep instructor.
Am I not right?

@Colonel Tom:
While Rand Paul almost certainly learned at least the basics of infectious diseases, immunology, and vaccines in med school, it doesn't mean he didn't start forgetting the day after the final. With a lot of medical knowledge, it's a matter of use it or lose it. Of course, he may also have been poorly taught. I still remember many things I was taught and never worked with because some of my instructors made them interesting and taught with clarity.
When I was still a working PA, I did presurgical testing. One time I saw an abnormality on an ECG and called the surgeon to tell him that the case would have to be postponed for further workup. When I started to detail the findings to him, he said "You forget, I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I don't know about that kind of thing."

leprosy, it was caused, in modern times, by the smallpox vaccine

Time travel is a dangerous thing when misused.

@Denice:

I can only hope so. I've been monitoring FB for any sort of anti-vax statements by my more crunchy liberal friends back on the Left Coast, and they've been basically silent - good news or bad, that, I'm not sure. In any case, if anti-vax views do start to become aligned with right-wingers, it might at least drive some liberal fence-sitters in the opposite direction. (My friends here in Ann Arbor town have been joining me in pro-vax sentiment; they are, though, of the more nerdy, wonky liberal variety. One of them is studying medical history, and runs the excellent Nursing Clio blog.

I do always enjoy Maddow's "Cocktail Moment" segments, and have been tempted to attempt several of the recipes, though the closest I typically come to mixing drinks is putting ice in my bourbon, and that on rare occasions.

Old Rockin' Dave, I went through about half of those classes with the med students, bio medical engineer, and I just have trouble believing that you could forget so many basics. How diseases spread, how can you forget that. Now you forget what exactly what areas of the heart are affected by which bifascicular blocks, but you surely remember what the bundle of his is. I hope. My allergist understood his own condition when his cardiac pacemaker cells began to go wonky, and he was older than dirt.

Rekha Basu, Des Moines Register columnist is on Rachel Maddow, talking about how Paul's and Christie's vaccine comment's are dog-whistling both the Iowa Tea Baggers (no big government) and Christian Conservatives (Parents Rights) that form the two wings of the GOP caucus vote in the state and have few issues in common — even though, as Maddow says, "there's no national constituency for playing with that kind of fire, playing with vaccine conspiracies." Also, both Maddow and Basu say the pols know setting themselves up to get criticized by the media, lets them complain about being bashed by liberal media, which also plays really well in Iowa to both factions.

Maddow's take is ultimately that these are not blunders — even though the national press considers them so — but planned strategic moves to gain ground in Iowa that will be abandoned and forgotten once the campaign moves to larger states and a national audience.

Meanwhile Christie and Paul are talking out of both sides of their mouths. Putting it forward, taking it back, putting it forward, taking it back. Christie might have had a chance to get away... but he doesn't want to! Today it came out he's like the only governor that doesn't participate in Hallmark's vaccine reminder card to new moms program...

Here's a 2009 photo of Chris Christie smiling posing with a group of 6 anti-vaxers, with only one identified on screen: Louise Habakus. And then the screen shows the campaign letter Christie put out referring to — well, Rachel says "anti-vaccine groups" with a pull quote "I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor." But I see Orac has the text in the OP; "families affected by autism [who] have expressed concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the nation vaccine mandates." Evil, evil mandates.

I Googled "Chris Christie Louise Habakus" and see this story went viral at the beginning of the week... Stuff movin' faster than I can follow...

@ lilady. I fear the danger of succumbing to the entertainment quality of some of these people. Malignant cranks may have all manner of personal issues they are expressing - in some cases, I believe, organic - but they are easy to play for laughs.

A more serious issue arises when you come across people like Wakefield, Lewis and even Celia Farber (who descends from time to time from the astral plane to critique molecular biology).

They believe they are entitled to accuse any number of people of the most horrendous, foul crimes against humanity, with the most vicious, unsubstantiated abuse. Then, if the accused turn round, defend themselves and and say: "You lying f--- scumbag", people such as Wakefield, Lewis (the most malignant of the cranks that I have ever encountered) and Farber, they sue, or threaten to.

Between them, they've run, I'd say, about ten or more lawsuits: none of which have done anything useful, but have consumed huge amounts of money and given them a few years to use these for public relations purposes (to quote a judge), presumably to raise more money.

Well, yes, the double standard these cranks demonstrate is spectacular. They'll compare pro-science advocates of all manner of horrific activities, crimes even. They'll compare them to Hitler and the Nazis. But if anyone calls them out for their misinformation, pseudoscience, and lies, suddenly they clutch their pearls, shocked—shocked, I say!—that anyone would say anything mean about them. Then some of them threaten to sue.

They’ll compare them to Hitler and the Nazis
Case in point:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/anti-vaxxer-radio-host-accuses-jon-s…

Responding to Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s criticism of both the far left and far right wings of the anti-vaxxing movement, an anti-vaccination promoting radio host compared the Jewish comedy host of being a “Nazi” ready to put the anti-vaxxers in “concentration camps.”

They’ll compare them to Hitler and the Nazis.

Gerg, a Canadian, has recently asserted that vaccines are worse than DAESH, or something, and that history will judge Obama harshly.

Speaking to the GOP = leaning anti-vax thesis of the article, I'm pleased to report that the on right and libertarian-leaning discussion website I follow, people are jumping the Rand Paul ship as fast as they can (Christie they never liked much anyway). Vaccines are the hot-topic of the day (as they are elsewhere), and I'd give a rough estimate of 90% of commenters are strongly pro-vaccine; the anti-vaxxers who comment are challenged in strong language.
Can't speak for the politicians, but for the electorate, I do think it's split pretty evenly left and right.

Colonel Tom, you know as well as I do that they can make you study something but they can't make you believe it. Baby Doc's membership in his fringe medical society proves that, not to mention all the other a-hole physicians Orac has alerted us to.
It seems to me that his sole motivation in getting his MD was to become a surgical specialist in order to rake in some bucks, and not have to bother with all those troublesome facts that contradict his favorite fairy tales.
Thankfully, not all surgeons are like that (Hat tip to you, Orac.).

@Old Rockin' Dave, I do have a paranoia of my own that runs into what you just said. Having been a premed, having a cliche of friends that were premed, having been in a graduate program taking some school of medicine classes, having worked with lots of doctors in my early career. I have this concern that the whole medical education system is slanted more towards those individuals that are in it for the money. Not exclusively, but the insanely high cost of the education combined with the tortuous training, it does seem to be biased towards a certain type of very materialistic souls. Not exclusively, but if I had to evaluate the other 12 pre-med chemical engineers I went to school with, I'd say at least 4 of them were money fixated. Especially Chuckles, geez what an ahole he turned out to be.

I have this bad tendency to believe that people do bad things because they don't know better. Time and time again I am disappointed by my bias.

Its funny, my daughter's illness kicked up again, and I was surfing to see if there were over the counter testing for parasites. I did not know that this is a new pet theory of some really wacko people. I found an excellent source of information on round and tape worms, the website sponsored by a doctor with good credentials, her school respectable. Until I got deep into what she was recommending, including that she used an herbal concoction similar to the medicine my grandmother would have brewed. She did leave out the red oak fungus at least, that stuff will take you to places you don't want to go. I might use traditional blends for minor purposes, but if you have round worms I'd really expect a doctor to use pharmaceutical grade medicine. The stuff my grandmother made, I still use it on chickens and dogs.

Well, at least I know why my pediatrician looked at us like we were kooks when the wife asked about worms.

I have been immensely pleased with my cardiologists, I am on my third one. Unfortunately, the first one I had I have outlived, against all odds. He was the walking breathing posture child for cardiac health, fit and active. Damn inoperable cancer in the hippocampus.

Old Rockin' Dave:

Please tell me this has nothing to do with Duvalier.

Vicki, it's just a passing middle finger up to the Drs. Paul, Congressman and Senator, father and son. The rotten apple didn't fall far from the diseased tree.
Colonel Tom, I have had general good luck with my docs, with the sole exception of the urologist who nearly killed me by leaving a bleeder in my abdomen. That turned an expected two day hospital stay into two weeks, half in SICU, most of which I can't remember, and that also left me with a hypovolemic ischemic encephalopathy, mainly manifested with some badly delayed recall for proper nouns and the occasional adverb. Ironically, for someone who made his living as a PA, the recall most affected is for brand names of medications.
I entirely regret not going with my gut on this one - I didn't like him from the beginning, and I have learned that a doc that I don't like as a person is more than likely to be a bad practitioner.

Crap Dave, we're both members of the scrambled brains club. At least in my case, I doubt my surgeon did anything wrong. I was at death's door because I had a real atypical right side heart attack (right corn artery), I was misdiagnosed for six days. By the time they got me on the table I was almost gone. A few little clots got stirred up. Lost the power of speech for years, but during a religious ceremony I discovered I could still sing. I'm almost to the point where I can "sing-talk" to just talk. My use of language appears to have suffered too.

Am I understanding properly, that you went into shock from a bleeder to the point your brain went hypoxic? Crap, how were they monitoring you post-op? That is just, so wrong.

I have spoken here before about the bad obstr that refused to believe us on the conception date, daughter almost died during a late delivery as it was. My beloved, praise to her, had the sense, strength and gift to know a person that won't listen is not who you want to delivery your child.

You also seem to know Senator Paul fairly well, as I keep telling people it isn't a political mistake on their part, he almost certainly believes the crap that he is saying. He believe he has obtained everything on his own, andothers that need are weak.

P.S BTW, people like us were part of my never completed PhD. Everyone talks about artificial intelligence, but we really don't understand how memory works (although we know much more now). One part studying the tragic cases, one part trying to model computer programs to mimic human memory.

The dissonance that overshadows both parties glimmers here. The Left, the intellectuals and scientists and artists; all embody the liberated mind, the free thinkers; and yet they fail to sympathize with parents who, in the light of vaccinations being admittedly often preserved with Mercury, a known neurotoxin, have shied away from exposing their children to questionable medical practices, of which many have been revealed over the decades. In fact individual choice seems to be the watchword of the Left, but not on this topic, clearly.
Meanwhile, the Right, that bastion of Christian thought on Creation, among other questionable notions;and yet, they advocate a 'sink or swim' policy with social services, implying that Darwin was right, Gol'darnit! People should survive or not on their own merits and efforts, ignore government edicts if they choose, and the Government should basically ignore them....sounds like Natural Selection to me!

No, molly cruz, almost no vaccines are preserved with mercury these days.

Also, you are at best oversimplifying on the left/right thing: for one thing, the intelligentsia are not necessarily "embodying the liberated mind." "Individual choice" is too broad to be useful here: it could be carelessly used to describe whether I go to church, and if so which, as well as whether I drive a car while drunk or toss my trash in someone else's backyard.

Molly Cruz, a new coal powered power plant puts out hundreds of pounds of mercury, a gypsum wallboard plant puts out a third of a ton of mercury because it uses byproducts of coal combustion. Forest fires put out huge amounts of mercury, rereleasing material absorbed from years of coal combustion. Mercury is so many places, yet some how mercury that used to be in some vaccines in a form of very limited bio-availability are the few molecules that cause autism.

Molly Cruz, the mercury (lower case m, the upper case is a god or a planet, that's just me being pedantic) in vaccines you are referring to is an organic compound called thimerosal. Yes, it contains mercury, but very little is absorbed, the amount in any single dose of a vaccine is incredibly tiny, and most vaccines that used it were reformulated in the wake of Wakefield. The presence of mercury in it doesn't mean much out of context; cobalt is seriously toxic to humans as well, but it's present in cyanocobalamin, aka Vitamin B12, which you regularly ingest in your food without a second thought.
Meanwhile, I have never heard that there is an inherent or natural right to spread potentially deadly infectious diseases to others. I don't think there was a plot to leave it out of the Constitution, the Atlantic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or any other document. Even the Bible comes down foursquare on the side of quarantine.

Colonel Tom, I had a "robotic"-assisted prostatectomy. I went back to the OR for the interventional radiologist, then again for an emergency laparotomy. I was a week in SICU, either heavily sedated, lightly comatose, or both. I was another week on a regular floor, most of which is a blur too. I was blunted for months after. Finally realized I often can't recall names I should know well until well after I need them. My brain throws out plausible but wrong answers (Frederick Turner for Frederick Remington, Keith-somebody for Ken Russell, etc.). Recently I meant to reference "regression to the mean" but could only come up with "reversion"; good substitution, but still wrong. I find that if I review everything I know about the person or thing, it will eventually come to me, but it can take any time from minutes to a day or so.
Now as to the Pauls, the two of them, and many another libertarian, are somewhere between obtuse and detestable. I have often said that Ron Paul puts the "Aryan" in "libertarian". I share the opinions of them are expressed well by Prof. Steve Dutch at this link: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/NoLibert.HTM

Old Rockin' Dave, the technique of not trying to remember a name, but remembering an event or circumstance where you used that name. Sometimes it works.
I actually called up a friend doing research with access to a PET scanner. For the shear fun of it, we traced the three areas of my brain that got zapped. I thought it was important at the time.
I find "libertarianism" such a strange mindset. While I actually am a huge fan of self-sufficiency and discipline, I am also a person who had the safety net there for them after his father died at a very young age. Social security and my father's VA benefits are what kept us in beans and corn meal. Back then, summer jobs and selling your life to the military were enough to get you a college career.

Given your ability to devastate the most impervious medical quackery with reason and logic, after all these years, I still am amazed how politics seems to short-circuit that part of your reasoning mind. I see your two Republicans with Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer (or any other D from California) and raise you Dennis Kucinich.

Here's how another Science oriented blogger put it 3 years ago:
http://www.science20.com/cool-links/urban_legend_democrats_are_proscien…

Here’s how another Science oriented blogger put it 3 years ago:
And here's how another Science oriented blogger kicked seven kinds of sh1t out of Berezow and Campbell's tendentious exercise two years ago:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/progressive-mythology/

In the comments, of course. :-)

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer: Who's to blame?

oracknows — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:00:40 +0000

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer: Who's to blame?

I figured that yesterday’s post about the First Nations girl in Ontario with lymphoblastic leukemia whose parents stopped her chemotherapy in favor of “traditional” medicine would stir up a bit of controversy, and so it did, albeit much more at my not-so-super-secret other blog, which featured an expanded version of this post. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything. It was expanded in order to have a more in-depth discussion of the quack in Florida who’s treating this girl, something I’ve already discussed here and could just link to. Efficiency!

Before I launch into this, let me make one thing very clear. I come to this story from the same direction that I’ve come to each and every story about children with life-threatening cancers being denied effective chemotherapy in favor of quackery, going all the way back to the very earliest days of this blog and the story of Katie Wernecke. My view is that what matters the most is the life of the child and making sure that child is given her best shot at life by being treated with the best science-based medicine has to offer. Everything else is secondary and, to me, important only inasmuch as it helps or hinders achieving the goal of saving the life of the child. I don’t care much about whether I offend by criticizing a religion that would allow a child to die. I don’t care much if it bothers anyone that I criticized a racial, ethnic, or cultural group that facilitates the medical neglect of children. And I don’t really care that much, in the context of this case, about the historical grievances native peoples have based on past transgressions of the Canadian government. That’s not to say I don’t recognize them as important; rather, it’s that I do not accept them as valid reasons to let a child die.

I bring this up because the way discussions have been going have been disturbing, albeit predictable. Perhaps the most annoying arguments boil down to, in essence, what I like to refer to as an appeal to past repression. In other words, because the Canadian government has treated aboriginal peoples horrendously in the past, something that is inarguably true, it is argued that the Canadian government today shouldn’t make sure that this First Nations girl receives effective therapy for her life-threatening cancer today and should instead defer to the mother even though the mother’s choice will, unless reversed, lead to the death of her child. No, this is not a straw man argument. If you don’t believe me, check out the comment thread in my not-so-super-secret other blog.

Of course, the other argument being made, the one that appears to be the one that won the day for the parents of this girl, was that traditional medicine is integral to the identity of aboriginal people, that it’s so much part of their culture that to deny parents the right to choose to treat their child with traditional medicine is to deny their very culture. Indeed, this is the spin that the Six Nations Council put on Ontario Court Justice Gethin Edward’s decision denying McMaster University’s petition in a press release last Friday, that I can’t resist commenting on. It begins:

The Six Nations of the Grand River and the Mississaugas of New Credit are please with the Ontario Court of Justice’s decision today, affirming our peoples’ inherent Aboriginal right to use traditional medicines.

We have relied on and cared for our families with our medicines since time immemorial. We know that they are effective.

The court affirmed that our use of traditional medicines was integral to our cultures, historically and today. The court recognized that our right to use our medicines is not subject to the approval of western medical practitioners.

Except that the girl is not using “traditional medicines.” The family took her to a white quack down in Florida who has nothing to do with Six Nations or the Mississaugas of New Credit. As I described in yesterday’s post, the quack, Brian Clement, was giving talks in the area, one in particular entitled “All About Cancer and Conquering Disease with Living Foods.” The girl’s mother encountered him there. Impressed with his “confidence” she gave him a call. When he assured her he could cure her daughter, she stopped her daughter’s chemotherapy and headed to Florida with her daughter. She is not using traditional aboriginal medicine, unless traditional aboriginal medicine includes things like wheatgrass implants (enemas), colonics, far infrared saunas, ozone pools, “bio-energy” treatments, “colorpuncture” (a bastard offspring of acupuncture), detoxification, intravenous vitamins, and the Aqua Chi ionic footbath.

Somehow, I doubt that it does.

The press release continues:

Our communities have two girls and families directly affected by this decision. Both families are loving, diligent, and conscientious in the care they provide for their daughters and the decisions they make concerning their medical care. Both have elected to discontinue chemotherapy, and are relying, instead, on traditional medicines.

Again, neither of the two girls are relying on traditional medicines. The statement above is simply untrue, and, given that the chiefs must know that what Brian Clement offers is not traditional medicine, it’s hard not to see this statement as, under the most charitable interpretation, disingenuous as hell, and a lie if you’re not as charitable. (At the very minimum there's a massive case of cognitive dissonance.) Indeed, the other girl, Makayla Sault, is also relying on Brian Clement. Ironically, she is was not even led to her decision to refuse chemotherapy by following the traditional beliefs of her people in that her father is a pastor at an evangelical church and Sault stopped chemotherapy after reporting having seen a vision of Jesus in her hospital room telling her that she was already healed. She is now critically ill, her cancer having predictably relapsed several months after she stopped her chemotherapy. Again, as I said yesterday, the first chance to treat a cancer is the best chance to cure it. Relapse after partial treatment is bad. Very bad. The chances of curing it go down a lot. If she’s already end stage and her immune system is compromised (as described in the story) because her bone marrow’s been blown out by blasts, she might still be salvageable with chemotherapy, but it will be difficult. I don’t know enough about her condition to judge, but it doesn’t sound good.

I would also argue this. It doesn’t matter how “loving,” “diligent,” and “conscientious” the parents are if what they are doing will kill the child. As I said yesterday, every parent making a decision like this loves her child. Every parent refusing chemotherapy thinks she’s doing what’s best for her child. Every parent who pursues quackery instead of medicine does so because she thinks it’s best for her child. The child will end up just as dead, and that’s what’s very likely to happen to Makayla Sault and this First Nations girl. These chiefs, the same ones who were so vocal about how the Ontario Court should defer to the parents to administer “traditional medicine” because it’s supposedly so integral to the girls’ cultural identity and are now gloating that that is exactly what the court did, bear a share of the blame that these two girls are doomed.

Too bad they felt this was more important:

Forcing a First Nations child to undergo unwanted, mainstream, medical treatment is an affront to the dignity and autonomy of that child, our cultures, and our nations. Had our children been forced into treatment, it would have had a disastrous effect on their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. Instead of being proud of their own traditions, they would learn that the laws, governance, teachings, and medicines of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe cultures were wrong and even dangerous. This is simply not true.

We sincerely hope that this decision is part of an emerging era of healing and reconciliation between Canada and our nations. We hope that our children and generations to come will no longer experience the mistrust, misunderstanding, and mistreatment by the Canadian government that have been our daily reality for over 200 years.

In its application, McMasters Children’s Hospital sought to undermine our cultures and ways of life. We are pleased that the Court refused to participate in this effort and dismissed McMaster’s application.

Six Nations Elected Council and the Mississaugas of the New Credit believe that the decision made by the Court today is one of the many steps necessary to repair the broken relationship between Canada and First Nations people.

I can’t help but wonder what these people were thinking when they drafted this. Seriously. Taking these children away and treating them with effective chemotherapy would not teach them that the “medicines of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe cultures were wrong and even dangerous” because they’re not even using the medicines of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe cultures! Of course, they’d probably be just as dead if they were to use Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe medicine, given that it’s highly unlikely that these medicines have anything that is effective against lymphoblastic leukemia, but they’re not using them. Indeed, they’ve rejected Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe medicines in favor of quackery from a white man who isn’t even a real doctor or Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe traditional healer! The absurdity astounds!

It’s even worse, considering that if the First Nations girl were forced to “undergo unwanted, mainstream, medical treatment,” she’d have a roughly 90% chance of growing up to be a First Nations woman and live a long and productive life. That doesn’t seem to matter, though. To them, McMasters Children’s Hospital, in trying to save the life of one of their children, was seeking to “undermine” the “cultures and ways of life” of aboriginal people, and the key importance of this case was that it was a victory over the Canadian government that gave them the right to use their traditional medicine on their children. It apparently bothers them not at all that at least two girls will likely die as a result of this new-found right and that these two girls aren’t even exercising their cultural prerogative of using their traditional medicine.

Look, I understand, at least as much as a middle-aged citizen of an oppressor nations can, that aboriginal peoples have been treated horribly by the Canadian government, just as those in the US have been by the US government. I know about, for instance, the Canadian residential schools, in which aboriginal children were forced to attend boarding schools away from their families and communities in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. There, aboriginal children often suffered physical and sexual abuse. It’s not surprising that there is a great deal of distrust. It is also not surprising that the Ontario government bent over backwards not to appear to be “undermining” the culture of the native peoples, even to the point of letting a parent medically neglect her child. It was a cowardly decision, but understandable in context.

However, it is a grave disservice to aboriginal children for Six Nations leader to allow that mistrust to lead to their using two innocent children as a weapon in their fight to obtain more autonomy. It is a grave disservice to their children to allow them to be victims of a quack. It is a grave disservice to aboriginal children to allow that mistrust to lead to this:

In the present case the community has rallied around the families of the two girls and fund raisers have provided money to fly the families to Florida for what was supposed to be "traditional healing" but was in fact just another fly by night scheme that will result in the death of two young girls who had put their trust in the adults of the community including their parents - ignoring the concerns of the medical establishment in Ontario.

As I pointed out thus far, the bill is’ already up to $18,000 and counting. As Deyoyonwatheh, who works for McMaster but wasn’t involved in either girl’s care, puts it:

Since the parents opted to go their own way and find "alternative methods", the death of their children will likely weigh heavily on their shoulders for the rest of their lives. How can one live with the knowledge that their poor decisions played the key role in the demise of their own children. The community saw fit to rally around these parents and so must also accept the responsibility for the decisions. It is all so painful, so sad. Vulnerable children who must of necessity rely on the best judgment of their parents and other adults, and being profoundly let down by them - even if well intentioned.

In addition to the parents and the Six Nations and New Credit communities as seen here and here, also "blame" can be directed at the Courts as seen here, and particularly here with the Courts decision to dismiss McMaster's case and permit the parents to continue with whatever form of treatment they deem appropriate. Furthermore the role of the Brant County Children's Aid Society, as seen here and here needs to be carefully considered.

Yes, there is plenty of blame for the impending deaths of these girls to go around, although, the more I read about this story, the more I blame, in addition to the quack Brian Clement, of course, the aboriginal authorities who used these girls as tools of convenience to assert their autonomy from Canada.

As I said, the best interests of the child are all I ever care about in these cases. Race, religion, culture, a past history of oppression, all of these I reject as reasons for letting these girls die. There is a way out, however. The leaders of the First Nations community in which these girls live can act, and act now, to see that these girls receive effective therapy. They can put the best interests of their community’s children over political considerations and historical grievances. Will they do that? I’m not optimistic.

oracknows Tue, 11/18/2014 - 00:00

At the heart of this is an assertion of 'the child' as property, here property of 'the tribe' as opposed to the more familiar 'child as property of the parent'. In both cases though the needs, concerns and beliefs of the adults take precedence over the best interests of the child. It's significant that this is in direct contravention of Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Canada is a signatory. Clearly though abject obeisance to primitivism is a stronger guiding light in Canadian Law than a broad principle of protection that applies the most vulnerable citizens in any society.

Spot on Orac. Yet another case where the 'rights' of a parent to believe in nonsense are put ahead of the interests of a sick child. In this case we have to add in the attitude that past oppression can be redressed by legal exemptions.
For me laws should be applied universally. If it is a necessary law it should apply to everyone, if not it should be repealed.

Great post. As a pediatrician from this area and acquainted with some of the physicians involved, I've been following this case closely and am appalled by the outcome. This is devastating for everyone involved, including the (some, not all) members of the Six Nations community currently celebrating it.

To them, McMasters Children’s Hospital, in trying to save the life of one of their children, was seeking to “undermine” the “cultures and ways of life” of aboriginal people, and the key importance of this case was that it was a victory over the Canadian government that gave them the right to use their traditional medicine on their children.

Spot on. Resisting white men's culture */supporting traditional First Nation culture was unfortunately extended to healthcare choice.

Except for one thing: the traditional/alternative medicine they are opting for is also coming from outside First nation's culture. It may bear some likeliness, but at the end of the day, they still have surrendered to white men's culture.

* I use "white men" loosely. I meant all non-First Nations cultures, so in majority from Europe. But Hindu/Chinese traditional medicine is as foreign to First Nations as mainstream medicine.

I can not relate, seeing how I am white and live on another continent. Still, the logic here is... Well, there is none.

If the girls were undergoing traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe treatment I could at least see where the push against interventions comes from. It would be misguided or perhaps cynical use of individual's tragedy to protect the percieved interest of aboriginal culture. Agreeable, not, understandable, yes.

But all I am getting out of this case, mind you - as a total outsider, is a giant dose of hypocrisy. My juvenile imagination is creating an image of stereotypical injun, headdress and all, saying "We will not listen to the lies of the white man because we have the help and wisdom of the white man." Yes, it is insensitive, but sadly fitting due to involvment of Clement.

Will the parents look on Clements as a fighter for them who lost or as the charlatan that he is?

Not taking bets, just wondering.

I can only presume that the Six Nations of the Grand River and the Mississaugas of New Credit believe she is using primarily traditional medicine. The treatment by the Hippocrates Center is a separate thing altogether, unrelated to the traditional medical treatment.

The UN convention is pretty explicit about the rights of the child being of primary concern: http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

I wonder if that provides a legal grounds for challenge?

Excellent, Orac!

I agree with Smith @5. The First Nations leaders involved have chosen as their hill to die on--more precisely, the hill they will allow these girls to die on--their right to choose a white man's quackery over Western medicine. If the options were traditional tribal medicine versus Western medicine, the First Nations position would at least be self-consistent, even if I didn't agree with the result. The position they have actually taken doesn't even have that redeeming quality. Clement must be happy with this decision, and presumably people who work for him would be, too. I can't see a reason for anybody else to be happy with this.

The problem has come about with this absurd need to avoid anything resembling 'racism' or 'cultural imperialism' (on the liberal side) and 'religious interference' (on the conservative side) we have a whole muddle headed concept that no matter how freakin stupid a culture's ideas may be, they must be respected (as in taken seriously).

Politicians know that if they jump in one of these issues, they're likely to be vilified.

Well said, Orac.

I have some perspective on the First Nations cultures from first hand experience and, ultimately, I'm a little disappointed in their Chief. He could have played this to both support their political cause -and- save a young girl's life.

"Thank you for recognizing our rights to govern ourselves as a First Nations people. Now, you two. Get your ass to the hospital so your daughter can get the treatment she needs. Not because -they- said so, but because -I- said so."

Steven Novella #11 "I wonder if that provides a legal grounds for challenge?"

Probably needs a Canadian Lawyer to answer that but sadly ratification of the UN Charter does not ensure its inclusion in the Law of the signatory countries - rather an additional step of formal adoption into national Law is required. There's much hypocrisy with countries signing these Conventions on the basis that it applies to other(by implication less civilised) peoples, but is not needed by the fine upstanding 'developed world' etc. Canada does have a Charter of Rights which it could be argued implies all the provisions of the UNCRC apply to Cabada, but I suspect it would require someone with the right to represent the child to actually pursue it. Obviously the parents and the tribe will argue they are the childs commanding representatives.

I suspect it would require someone with the right to represent the child to actually pursue it

McMaster University Hospital might be able to (IANAL, nor am I Canadian), but I doubt they will, for the same reason that came up in the Sarah Hershberger case in Ohio: it's a lose-lose situation for them. If the appeal were successful, they would be vilified as monsters for taking the children away from the tribe. Otherwise, they will have spent a considerable sum of money on lawyers (including lawyers for the tribes, since IIRC Canada is a "loser pays" country) that won't be available for treating patients. And that assumes that they would be given leave to appeal the decision, which I believe is not automatic in Canada.

I also suspect that many of Canada's First Nations have not ratified the UN Charter (although they have some degree of autonomy, they are not sovereign states, so I am not sure they were ever expected to do so), so even if the Canadian Parliament has adopted the necessary laws, I am not sure if they would apply to First Nations groups who have not ratified the charter.

As far as my admittedly limited knowledge of Canadian aboriginal traditional medicine goes, I believe that the largest part is shamanistic. There are certainly traditional herbal remedies used, but there isn't a vast array of them, especially when a particular tribe is considered. There has been some spread of certain things in relatively recent times, but in some cases it breaks with local traditions. (Case on point - my brother used to teach on reserves in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. He told of one of the elder women remarking something to the effect of "why are they stinking up the place with that stuff" when she smelled sweetgrass being burned. Sweetgrass burning is an important thing for some tribes, but it was no part of the old traditions of that tribe.)
I strongly suspect the McMaster hospital would collectively bend over backwards to accommodate traditional ceremonies and even traditional medicines for the girl while she was in hospital receiving chemo. But no, so horrible foreign quack had to shove his nose in.

I don't post on Facebook, but I went to look at the page for “Six Nations Elected Council.” Below is their comment policy. The ruling was posted on 11/14, so in theory, comments would be allowed on the FB page. There are only 7 there now. The “about” section lists mail,phone, and address and I think it would be very appropriate to contact the Council.
“The following content will not be permitted on Six Nations Elected Council’s page:
•Comments/posts not related to a posted article/topic/information;
•Business solicitation;
•Profane or inappropriate language;
•Content considered to be defamatory, disrespectful or insulting to anyone including Council staff or representatives
•Content that promotes, fosters, or perpetuates discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, age, religion, gender, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, national origin, physical or mental disability or sexual orientation;
•Sexual content or links to sexual content;
•Conduct or encouragement of illegal activity;
•Any other content deemed inappropriate by the Administrators”

The policy states no business solicitation but I see a post about "bio-mat" quackery, so they aren't enforcing that policy.

I just took a peek at the quack's website and truly, with the exception of three guys of indefinite origin ( Hispanic/ sub-continental Indian ?), it sure looks like a pack of whiteys**.. oops, I mean Caucasian people, to me.

** and yes, I can say that: I'm probably whiter than almost anyone, maybe even Orac.

Another very long post. (sigh) But only the first part addresses the topic. The rest is personal background. If you're inclined to read the stuff about the First Nations case, no need to read below the break unless you really want to...

Yesterday in the SBM thread, anyone who supported First Nations autonomy in any way got accused of excusing/enabling the deaths of these girls. But nobody was doing that. Nobody was saying a parent should have the right to substitute woo for chemo for a kid with leukemia, 'traditional Native' or 'Florida Man wacko'. There were also heavy doses of racism in the comments, not that i imagine the authors are active haters, just making some thoughtless jabs at the First Nations folks in expressing concern for the girls.

Orac states his position pretty clearly above, and has incorporated some proper reflections on yesterdays exchange. He admits he's placing priority on one moral element of the case, rejecting others, and doesn't care if he's criticized for it. That's honest and fair. A lot of the posts in the SBM thread yesterday were simply dismissing the other angles as if hey didn't exist, or were petty, and thus that even mentioning them was endorsing woo and infanticide.

First, let me say I am appalled by what the Sault family has done to Makayla, and if she dies, I would support the Canadian prosecutors in filing criminal charges against her parents, and against Brian Clement. In the hope that it's not too late for the other girl, I urged a social media campaign directed at the First Nations leaders to persuade them the best course to maintain the larger legal principle of autonomy they have just won is to get the girl into chemo so she survives.

But I still have a couple of small bones to pick with Orac. Not attacks or denunciations. Factual issues mainly.

It is argued that the Canadian government today shouldn’t make sure that this First Nations girl receives effective therapy

Well, yes and no. The problem is that "Canadian" is a bit of a red herring. I can only speak with certainty for myself, of course, but I would not at all contest the general proposition "government should make sure First Nations children receive effective therapy." Just speculating, of course, I'd guess there'd be no disagreement with that among other commenters in the SBM thread. The question is 'which government?' The fact is First Nations people, by law are only quasi-Canadian. The Nations (each individually) have a limited autonomy which makes them 'Canadian citizens' in some senses, but not in others. So the legal argument is "the Canadian government does not have the authority to make sure this First Nations girl receives effective therapy." Which is pretty cut-and-dried, and IMHO ought to be mentioned as part of the discussion.

Which still leaves the moral argument "the Canadian government should make sure this First Nations girl receives effective therapy anyway." Which I take to be Orac's position above. That's not cut-and-dried, either way. First, the history of abuse and oppression of the First Nations, including the residential schools program, cannot simply be dismissed. Second, in light of that, a court decision to force the Child Welfare agency to take the girl into custody would be an alarming precedent that would have consequences far beyond the case of one girl with leukemia, and would be a net moral minus, all things considered.

The decision was not cowardly. It was a correct application of the law. And as is always the case in the justice systems of democracy, the higher principles of the law take precedence over the specific case. We do not convict felons if their Miranda rights have been violated. In individual cases, justice is not served as a result. However, the alternative, giving free reign to police to coerce confessions from innocent suspectscoerce confessions from innocent suspects, is far worse.

Going back to the "what government?" question, I don't think anyone in the SBM thread was arguing "the Canadian government should defer to the mother even though the mother’s choice will, unless reversed, lead to the death of her child." I certainly would find such an argument reprehensible.
Unfortunately, the language in Judge Edward's decision does seem to affirm 'parents' rights' in life-or-death decisions, and that's very bad.

The argument then, is that The Six Nations and New Credit bands must — by law, and by moral and ethical standards viewed in the long term — be included in the government apparatus that makes decisions on child welfare interventions on behalf of children from those nations.

Thus, culpability for the deaths that may result from these cases would rest to some extent on the 'governments' of the Aboriginal nations. This is somewhat problematic though, as they don't necessarily have the resources or authority to set up their own child welfare agencies, though that is their stated goal.

Finally, on murkier ground to be sure, there ought to be a distinction between community 'sacrifice' in liberation struggles, and 'sacrifice' to spiritual dogma. This should be moot in this case because the people at risk of death are minor children. It seems Makayla Sault is adamant about leaving her fate in the Hands of God, and not returning to chemo, and if the Lord takes her, that's all part of The Divine Plan so it's OK. I no just world I can imagine do 11-year olds get to make that call. However the discussion fanned out, as one might expect, to any sacrifice to dogma, including adults.

But there is something more than dogma here. Again, we need to look at the political situations of Native peoples with a clear eye. Who among us would condemn James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner for choosing not to stay safely at home, but to work for civil rights well-knowing they might be assassinated by the KKK (which, of course, they were)? If we want to value the lives of Native children, I submit we must look at those lives in toto, not merely in regard to a specific medical decision. As I noted on SBM yesterday, the suicide rate among young Native Americans in the U. S. is more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times on some reservations.

Broad statistics lie, of course, so let me try to unpack that a bit. Tribal cultures in North America are quite diverse. Some tribes, the Navajo for example, have adapted well to living in communities surrounded by and interacting with white society. Other tribes have adapted not at all. When forced not to 'be Indians' their souls wither and they die. The suicides are just the tip of an iceberg of self-destruction. The 3X average is misleading, as some tribes would show no difference of even lower-than-average rates. Where I grew up (Minnesota) the Native population of plains Indians (mostly 'Sioux') were definitely in the 10X category.

I have no idea where the Six Nations and New Credit people fall on the adjustment-to-coexistence scale. If they've generally been adaptable, that matters in taking the Bigger Picture view of the case.

So, leaving those Nations out of it, I must note that the Native people who die when their cultures are forcibly denied them do not do so because they cling hard and firm to some superstition, dogma, ritual, etc. Throughout their history, they have actually been much more adaptable than most whites know. They reacted to white colonization by trying to go along to get along, and reconstructed their lives to adopt many of the white mans ways. But they had their limits, as you might expect, and however much they blended their culture with ours, it was never enough.
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The following may have no relevance whatsoever to the case of the First Nations leukemia patients in specific, or the argument for First Nations rights in Canada in general. I offer it here because I feel an obligation to my forebears to explain 'where I was coming from' in comments I made yesterday, in part to admit that they may well have been off the mark in terms of the present discussion, for which I apologize.

(N.B. 'Sioux' is an umbrella term devised by whites to refer to three groups of plains tribes with similar physical features, and related languages and cultures. From East to West, these people referred to themselves as 'Dakota', 'Nakota', and 'Lakota'. The differences were important to them, as were the differences between the different tribes in each group, but not to the European settlers. The three groups and their component tribes only began to form a united front against colonization in the mid 1860s, after the events described below.)

Yesterday, at SBM, I quoted the speech made by Taoyateduta (aka Little Crow) to the Dakota war council on the eve of the Dakota uprising of 1862. Taoyateduta was chief of the Mdewakanton tribe, but also the de facto leader of the Dakota in general, having gained more respect than the chiefs of the other tribes. Two young Mdewakanton braves had murdered a white family in an honor challenge, an act considered a grievous crime but in some way understandable within Dakota culture, but the worst sort of evil to whites. The Dakota knew retribution would be swift and severe, and militant chiefs had called for a 'first-strike' response that would drive the whites from the Dakota lands they had usurped through 'The Trail of Broken Treaties.'

Taoyateduta, who has been East to visit President Buchanon in Washington, knew war was folly. He called for peace. He could not convince the other chiefs. There was going to be a war whether he liked it or not. To sum up the speech, he spoke eloquently about the impossibility of defeating the whites, and the madness of making such an attempt. And then he said he would die with his people. If he could not live as a Mdewakanton, what was the point?

The thing is, being a Mdewakanton was a lot more flexible for Taoyateduta than Liberty was for Patrick Henry. He made every attempt to synthesize Native and European cultures, generally favoring the latter. He lived in a wood frame house, wore European style clothes, joined an Episcopal church, and attempted to take up farming, as the U.S. government had dictated the Indians must.

Now, the Dakota were no more suited to farming than the German farmers settling in Minnesota were suited to hunting Buffalo, but they gave it a go anyway. They didn't have a change, though. The Feds had crammed them in to a too-small strip of land running along the Minnesota River Northwest of New Ulm, MN. As part of the treaty establishing this territory, the Feds had agreed to provide supplemental food, blankets and other supplies knowing the Dakota wouldn't be self-sustaining in the near future.

However, the government placed distribution of food and supplies in the hands of corrupt traders, who refused to pass them on to the Dakota and tried to sell them on the black market instead. (Yes, free enterprise is always the answer...) The trading posts were protected by Federal troops. With his people starving, Taoyateduta met with the BIA agent and a representative of the private traders to demand the food and supplies the Dakota had been promised. Trader's rep Andrew Myrick replied, "So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung." The BIA agent stood by the traders. It was this that led the other chiefs to advocate for war in the wake of the settlers' murders.

Andrew Myrick was one of the first casualties of the uprising. The Dakota stuffed grass in his mouth and left his body on display outside the warehouse where he had hoarded their food while their wives and children starved. The BIA agent who did more than anyone to precipitate the uprising by backing Myrick with Federal authority fled into obscurity, or at least absence from further historical records.

The war failed, as Taoyateduta knew it would. He attempted to lead attacks on military targets, but was repulsed by superior firepower. Angered warriors refused to accept his commands, split off and committed atrocities among the civilian population of New Ulm. The Dakota surrendered after five weeks of hostilities. 303 Dakota men were sentenced to death for atrocities by a military tribunal, with no legal representation and no understanding of the proceeding. The vast majority of them were innocent of the charges, having being loyalists who stayed with Taoyateduta fighting the military. Some had not participated in the fighting at all, and had risked their lives protecting white settlers from violence. Most of the renegades who had committed the atrocities had fled before the surrender, and escaped capture.

Resisting pressure from Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey, who demanded the execution of all 303, Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 38 — ostensibly restricting the executions to the truly guilty. However, the authorities hadn't exactly been keeping track of who was who, and a number of innocent men were sent to the gallows in place of guilty warriors who had similar names. Among these was Chaska, who had made the most heroic efforts on behalf of the white settlers, and saved the most lives.

On December 26, 1862 the 38 were executed in a public hanging in Mankato MN.* It remains the largest mass execution in American history.

The remaining Dakota were deported to a reservation in Northeast Nebraska, again instructed to take up farming, but this time on sandy soil that yielded little and no real farmer would claim. Predictably, death continued to follow death. The NE land was dubbed The Santee Indian Reservation, 'Santee" being the white name for the Mdewakanton. My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Medora Santee. She never disclosed details of her youth to my father, and only many years after her death did I learn she had been born in Niobrara, NE, the town at the edge of the Santee reservation. Based on this, and a few other scant details from my Dad's memory, we began to suspect she had been of mixed blood. Had this been true, she certainly would have hidden it as she married a German immigrant, and midwestern German-Americans could never forgive the Dakota for the New Ulm atrocities.

In the years that followed, I sometimes considered I might eventually be the last living descendant of one of the falsely convicted men who had their sentences commuted by Lincoln and got shipped off to Nebraska in chains. I never expected my ancestor to visit me in dreams, but I felt some kind of small historical debt.

I thought back to my undergrad days when I would sometimes commute to the U of M by bicycle, passing through the Native American neighborhood on Franklin Ave. Open and friendly during the day, it was filled with bars and became the most dangerous part of town at night. When I went with my friends to the punk clubs off Hennepin Ave. downtown, we'd run into older Native American men hanging out on streetcorners. They were friendly enough, too, but after a minute of conversation deep profound damage would bubble to the surface. I would feel like I was talking to one of the walking dead. At the time, I never imagined we might be tied by blood and forgotten history.

14 years later, the spotty revelations about my grandmother presented the possibility I might be descended in some sense from both sides of this awful war (though my German grandfather hadn't arrived in America until the 1900s). I took an interest in the history of the uprising, and in Native Rights in general. At one point I applied for a teaching post where part of my duites would have been helping kids from the Rez in North Dakota get into college. I sure as hell didn't want to live in Grand Forks, and that would been my reason for accepting it. I didn't get the offer anyway.

Maybe 6 or 7 years ago, after my father's death, I finally took to the Internet geneology resources to see if I could verify my grandmother's heritage. I discovered she actually had no native heritage at all (again, this was just our suspicion, she'd never made any claim of the sort, only referring to herself as "descended from French Huguenots").

It turned out she was actually mostly German herself, her father having been born in Pennsylvania Dutch country with the German surname Sante. When and how exactly it got changed to Santee I do not know, but my guess it was no accident he wound up in Niobrara, where he apparently became something of a big wheel before mysteriously committing suicide. For all I know he may have been using the coincidence of the naming to exploit the Mdewakanton for financial gain. We do know he learned to speak Dakota fluently. His wife was a Christian missionary who apparently worked on the Santee Rez. Maybe they were good people. I don't know. I thought briefly about going to NE to see what might be in the county historical society archives. But it would be a difficult and expensive trip from where I've lived, and in the end, I guess I don't want to know.

Anyway, none of this generalizes to all Native groups, and again the Six Nations and New Credit bands may have very different histories and situations. And, no, even if those bands have similar histories, that would not justify the parents withdrawing their children from chemo, or the Chiefs for supporting that decision, or the Brandt CAWS agency for washing its hands and refusing to act. It might explain those things to some small extent. Or not.

Some folks who comment here seem unable to distinguish explanation from justification. I can't fathom that. If you've read this far, I just want you to know I can't tell this story without crying: for Taoyateduta, for the victims in New Ulm, for Chaska, for the wounded men on Hennepin Ave., for the men drinking themselves to death in the Franklin Ave. bars, for the kids on the Red Lake rez even today who see no future worth living for, for America, for Makayla Sault, and for my inability to make any of this change.

I have read every history of the 1862 uprising still in print and available on Amazon. I know all the details, good and bad — mostly bad. Taoyateduta remains one of my 'heroes'.

I wish no great harm to Daniel Synder, but I'd sure like to see someone stuff grass in his big mouth (alive, of course).

If I believed in spirits, I would pray for the spirit of Taoyateduta to rise in Florida and have a little pow-wow with Brian Clement. After which Clement would be displayed in front of the Hippocrates Health Institute, his mouth stuffed with wheatgrass enemas.

Free Leonard Peltier.

Finally found the judgment, which I did not see noted on either site, and which makes for additional sad but relatively straight forward reading: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/article21…

A revolting webpage of faith-healing Christian's tryng to use the First Nations decision to justify returning an Arizona boy who was taken into custody by CPS for leukemia treatment to his Fundie Mom.

Whereas the alternative treatments, including prayer, were part of the Christian family’s faith and tradition, their heritage was not met with the same tolerance that Makayla’s family found. It is her very faith that the CPS-appointed psychiatrist called “delusional.” Though prayer and healing is an ancient part of Christian doctrine, Christopher’s removal from the mother he has grown up with was based on the accusation that Tonya “continues to cling steadfastly to her bizarre religious beliefs.” She is charged with neglect because she chose to seek alternatives, including prayer and healing, before agreeing to a procedure that her research said was risky and very painful.

Note the blatant lie that the First Nations case involved Makayla. Note also, damnit, that the First Nations decision has nothing to do with "tolerance toward family heritage." It was decided on grounds of constitutional sovereignty.
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A voice of reason, this Canadian author of First Nations descent castigates the New Credits and Six Nations chiefs for siding with 'Alternative' quackery and faith-healing, and stands up for SBM, without tossing Aboriginal rights into the garbage. (Yes, it's on HuffPo Canada, but I think the author's independent and they pulled the story from somewhere else...)

From my point of view it would be gratifying to see the cause of indigenous rights asserted on something actually indigenous, rather than upon the creative practices of a Florida massage therapist or the proposal that Jesus cures. In some hospitals, an intergrationst approach has been taken, in which elders and cultural potocols have been brought into the institution. Belief in a culture doesn't have to manifest itself in absolutist choices between supposed cultural purity and betrayal... The expressed long-term goal of many native communities is a community-developed and community-run child welfare agency that has local support and legitimacy. In my ideal world, this agency would already be in place, and it would be looking unromantically on the dubious claims of this aboriginal rights crusade.
E.g., the right thing to do, as doug has already noted #15, is let the shamans do their incantations and smoke-burning while the kid gets chemo.
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Finally, please, please watch this clip, the last 5 minutes of Arthur Penn's Little Big Man with Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins:
http://youtu.be/QwgnDn8ez9g?t=59s
I don't believe in magic, but if ever have to undergo chemo, I'd want that man in my room.

Ross Miles #20
Thank you so much for that link. It's very disturbing, actually.

The first revelation is that a lot of the discussion in the RI and SBM threads has been off-point due to important gaps in the news stories linked.

Nothing Judge Edward could have done could have saved the child (identified as 'J.J.') Her family had already fled with her to Florida, and even if Edward had ordered Brandt CAWS to take her into custody, they would not have been able to extract her from Florida. This, no doubt influenced his decision to base the decision on the Constitutional rights issue.

The second revelation is that the nature of Brian Clement's quackery seems to have considered not at all, and the result was a decision that appears to this IANACL as utterly wrongly decided, sets a horrible precedent, which ought to be overturned on appeal.

The case law cited in the decision establishes the criteria for a practice to be considered an Aboriginal right:
1: It must be an integral defining feature of the culture in question, such that without this practice, the culture would be "fundamentally altered or other than what it is."
2. The practice must have been integral to the culture pre-contact between Aboriginals and Europeans. The language is a bit vague at different points, allowing for some wiggle-room for evolution or adaptation of practices over time.
3. The burden of proof for both the defining character and the continuity with pre-contact practices falls on the claimant of the rights.

So, you're asking how Brain Clement's quackery meets these criteria, and so am I.

Well, first of all, McMaster Hospital and it's attorneys completely bungled the case. They apparently failed to anticipate the Aboriginal Rights issue and review the case law. They presented the case for forced custody as 'this child will die without chemo, the end' as if she was a 'regular' Canadian citizen. As such, they did not investigate Clement's treatments and distinguish them from from the traditional plant-based medicine of the band. The hospitals application read J.J.'s mother "decided on August 27th to discontinue the [chemotherapy] with the plan to treat [J. J.] with traditional medicines." (my emphasis)

WTF. Ah, but burden of proof remained with CAWS, the bands, and the family. They called, as expert witness, an Anthro Prof. from McMaster named Dawn Martin-Hill to testify about 'traditional longhouse medicine'. I don't have the transcript, but it appears that Martin-Hill spoke only to the long history of plant-based medicines among the bands, dating long before European contact. If any question about how Clement's treatment had continuity with the traditional practices (which I'm guessing they weren't, but just a guess), there's no indication whether she gave an 'expert opinion' on the continuity, or whether Judge Edward made a leap...

The telling thing though is that the hospital did not call an expert witness in rebuttal. As we now know, SBM-literate experts of 'longhouse' descent were available. (Mohawks are included in the Six Nations). They could have looked at Clement's website for a couple minutes, and testify 'no that's not traditional longhouse medicine'. But apparently the hospital did not think to seek them out. (SMH)

So now, because Clement's treatments were not scrutinized, Canada would seem to have a precedent that "traditional medicine" is whatever any single First Nations mother says it is. If a massage and cosmetology parlor has any kind of plant on the premises, hey!, that's continuity with a defining cultural tradition!

IMHO, in the wake of the decision, McMaster Hosital has made another grievous mistake by choosing not to appeal the ruling. Again IANACL, but you'd think they'd have grounds on the 'alternative is not traditional' line articulated by Wayne Spear. But it seems they have prioritized an attempt to save J.J. over the consequences this could have for many, many First Nations children in the future. An appeal would likely keep J.J. and family in Florida, and by the time the higher courts would hear it, J.J. would probably b beyond help. But it's not clear tome whether anyone but the hospital has standing to challenge Judge Edward's decision.

If the ruling stands this is very, very bad. On reading the stories in the Canadian press, I had taken the alterna-woo question as not central to the case, and the Constitutional Rights issues. And in a one way that's true, as it seems it just wasn't brought up in the hearing. But by exclusion, it seems it has actually become central to the results of the proceedings.

Brandt CAWS: Butt covering cowards
Parents: Delusional woo-bait
Chiefs: Unethical sick-child-exploiters
Clement: Monster
Hospital: Clueless
Judge: Hands tied by everyone else's mistakes
Lawyers: Lawyers

So yeah, it looks like Makayla Sault has been sacrificed to Jesus, J.J.'s future is dark... and it's just going to get worse.

What is there left to say/

Orac, I think you should care about the back stories that influence parental decision making. It does matter. And if you take it into consideration, you can make it work for you to benefit the patient, rather than against you.

We aren't going to make any headway against quacks as long as they appear to be the patient's "friend" and we appear to be the enemy. They whisper to the patient, "we're listening to you, we understand you, you can trust us."

When all we have to offer is cold facts, is it any wonder the parents run rather than walk to these despicable people?

Advocacy needs to focus on the quacks, on the actual harm they cause.

Thank you Ross Miles, for providing the link to the Court's deliberations and decisions.

I've provided care for children who were diagnosed with various types of cancer and who are undergoing treatment for those cancers. I can unequivocally state that every child and their families, were provided with extraordinary support services, during their hospitalizations and when they returned home. I have no doubts that the same type and intensity of social services were provided to the two young girls who are the subjects of Orac's blogs.

The hospital and its staff, I presume, are acutely aware of the aborigine groups of people they serve in their community and I am certain that they have effectively provided compassionate care to other members of that group.

I'm dumbfounded by the sheer ignorance of the parents of these two youngsters...which is definitely not due to a lack of education or their intellectual abilities.

The hospital, rightfully so, acted on behalf of their young patient, by notifying the local social services unit, about a case of medical neglect. When that local social services unit refused to intervene on behalf of J.J., then and only then, did the hospital institute a court case, to compel the social services unit to do their job.

The judge, IMO, never fully explored, J.J.'s parents' belief system and never explored the folk medicine which the parents proposed to use to treat her cancer; Brian Clement does not practice "folk medicine".

Yeah....I'm "going there". The parents are medically neglecting their child because they cannot, or will not, deal with the realities of their child's cancer diagnosis. They'd rather stay in denial and deny their child the only chance she has for long term survival.

There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents here. I'm not sure I necessarily disagree, but perhaps the question is much fuzzier especially for none medical people.
I don't necessarily believe for instance that the parents have the same assessment of the probabilites that we do, and cannot therefor be easily accused of medical neglect. They see and hear two sides, from their point of view two doctors, two types of treatment and so forth - how
exactly are they supposed to differentiate?
After all to non-medical people the quacks look like doctors,talk like doctors, have surgeries like doctors,
offer cures like doctors (and charge money like doctors...).

How are the parents supposed to know that even though this guy is allowed to operate and present himself as a bona fide doctor and charge people money for his services really they should know that he isn't one?

Its no use saying but the 'real' doctors said 'X', since as far as they are concerned he is a real doctor and therefore has an equally valid opinion.
And of course real doctors do vary anyway in their beliefs about best treatments and sometimes what works and is efficious and what isn't, and can be motivated
by other reasons (such as economics) (see Ashya King case for instance).

You have to bear in mind also that the plausibility and confidence that conmen use is a key part of their technique, primarily because psychologically it is
exactly what these vunerable people are desparate to hear.

To my mind there are only two culpable parties here - the quack and the system that allows the quack.

Whereas the alternative treatments, including prayer, were part of the Christian family’s faith and tradition, their heritage was not met with the same tolerance that Makayla’s family found.

Which to my mind argues Makayla's family's heritage should have been met with less tolerance, not that the Christian family’s faith and tradition should have been viewed with more tolerance.

@sadmar
First off, it is Brant, not Brandt, and what the he!! is CAWS?

The hospital did what it should have and what is reasonable from its position - ask the court to compel an agency with existing authority to apprehend a child to do so. If the hospital had perused an appeal or gone in with the intent of "making law" it probably would have been and should have stomped on by the provincial and/or federal governments. It is a publicly funded hospital. The job of challenging the judge's ruling should fall on the government(s), not the hospital.

doug
CAWS is either the sound crows make, a misspelling of the word for female bovines, or what comes at the fingers of someone meaning to type FACS (Family and Child Services) when some neurons misfire.*

Had you perused my post and the actual decision more carefully, you'd see how the hospital failed in its pursuit of a protection order.** The petition takes the form of 'J.J. must be taken into custody because X', with X needing to be valid under the applicable law. In preparing their petition, the hospital failed to consider how the fact J.J. is a First Nations child would affect the judgement under law. Worse, they clearly failed in their intellectual responsibility as scientists by conceding that Clement's treatments constituted "traditional medicine."

At the point J.J.'s family fled the jurisdiction, the petition became an attempt not to 'make law' but to clarify existing law. That is, it was about the principle, not the kid, as the kid wasn't anywhere Brant FACS could do anything about it.

As for an appeal, IANACL so I don't know who else might have standing to make one, but the hospital surely does as they were the party that brought the action, and lost the decision. And, uh, the judge IS the government, and I don't get the point about public funding of the hospital. If public funding makes them part of the government, then one arm of government would be challenging another arm of government. But i have no idea what kind of judicial system would let only the government challenge the government.

* There are so many different acronyms for child welfare agencies from state to state, maybe even county to county, I can't remember which is which, or exactly what they all are. I don't think any of them are CAWS, and my brain somehow inserted the 'A" from FACS into CWS — Child Welfare Service.
** That would be my tit for your tat. Or, as we're talkin' Canada here, if you're doug, i'm bob, and I just returned a "Hoser!" to my brother, eh?

lilady:
No problem 'going there' in this case. The parents were given a thorough explanation of the medical issues by the hospital so they were well aware withdrawing J.J. from chemo could lead to her premature death. The only leeway they get is taking away 'could' rather than 'would,' as they have no legal obligation to accept McMaster's opinion. However, in that case, with a credible possibility suggested, the due diligence of being a child guardian demands that investigate further, and give proper interrogation to the credentials of any 'professional' in whom they entrust the care of their child. They could have easily gone to the Web to find other sources on survival rates and treatments for J.J.'s form of leukemia (the diagnoses not have been in dispute). And if they bothered to Google "Brian Clement" they would have discovered Orac's earlier post (and probably a variety of other exposes). IANAL, but if I was the prosecutor in that district, I would be looking to charge them with neglect now, and negligent homicide if J.J. dies. Child sacrifice is not an Aboriginal Right. Again, the practical effect of this may be moot as I can't imagine Rick Scott would sign off on arresting and extraditing the parents. But filing charges would 'send a message' that Ontario's not going to stand for this sh!t.

JCL
IMHO your point about a lay persons gullibility in any field is valid in a very broad sense, but not in every specific instance. If we were talking about an individual choosing a chronic disease treatment for themselves, that would be one thing. But we're talking about people who have a legal and moral responsibility for another human being making a decision they KNOW could have fatal consequences for that other person. You don't need any background in medical science to get that turning care of a kid with leukemia over to a guy on the basis on his assertion of his own competence is flagrantly irresponsible. "How are the parents supposed to know that even though this guy is allowed to present himself as a bona fide doctor that he isn’t one?" The Internet maybe?

JGC
Makayla Sault was not involved in the court case. When she withdrew from chemo at McMaster, the hospital filed a report with Brant FACS, as the doctors felt a legal obligation to notify authorities of possible endangerment of a child. Brant FACS opened an investigation, as they are legally required to do upon receiving such a report, and all but immediately closed it. "We are satisfied that Makayla is not a child in need of protection and we are closing our case and file on the family," The hospital did not pursue the case. There is no evidence that the Sault's Christian beliefs played any role in either decision. A more likely hypothesis is that Ken Sault is prominent enough in the New Credit community that the authorities feared the consequences of intervening.

@sadmar

How do you KNOW what they KNOW? Indeed sadmar, as Im sure you KNOW, whether anyone can actually ever be said to KNOW anything is *the* epistemological question. When you add people with some sort of 'faith' - whereby they allow themselves to 'know' things (I'll stop the caps now..sure you get the point) without (indeed almost because) of the lack of rational scientific evidence, then who knows what they can be said to know or why?
However, we don't need to get too philisophical. You believe that the parents are knowingly doing something that is probably not the best for their child. I believe that the parents may well be doing what they think is best for their child because they have reached the wrong conclusions. I believe this has been substantially aided by conmen doing what conmen always do - being the plausible, confident optimitstic people insinuating themselves into vulnerable peoples lives - and I suspect that once the politics of the tribes got involved and committed to the cause it became extremely difficult for the parents to ever change their minds.

I feel sorry for these people because they have an ill child, and even more sorry because they have made a bad choice for the wrong reasons, fallen in with conmen, and been trapped by a steamrolling political cause - and they will have to live with it.

btw I can't belive that you are suggesting that they know this guy is a crook thrugh the internet! When I google him I get the first 5 results are his stuff, then some smiley pics of him (my god I trust him already - he looks soooo, trusty!) - then no 6 is RI, then the rest seems pretty upbeat about him.

I agree with Orac, when you are dealing with matters of children and medical neglect the rights of the child to life should be the only consideration. The fact that you love your child is unquestionable. The fact you want what is best for your child is unquestionable. But, what is best? Should the evangelical Christian get to reject medicine for prayer? Should the Native American get to reject medicine for a native ceremony? In both counts that answer is no. It has nothing to do with culture, only fact. If you want to add prayer, or wave incense and turkey feathers around while your kiddo gets chemo be my guest. Pray to whatever deity your like, set up an altar, hell sacrifice a chicken it matters not to me. What this is the triumph of parents wants and needs over the wants and needs of the child. And in the case of the tribal leadership the coldblooded sacrifice of a couple of children on the altar of autonomy. CPS services for the most part have been really hesitant to intervene in a lot of these cases, the kids aren't being abused per se, they are well fed, clean, clothed, etc. But it is abuse to deny them medical care that will save their lives just because you happen to 'believe' they don't need it. Parental beliefs shouldn't be allowed to overrule scientific fact. I have thought for a long time that many courts and state agencies were way too reluctant to crack down on these parents because it always plays badly for them on the internet (Sarah Hershberger) but in the end it is the life and health of the child that matters. Those going on about understanding, great, I do understand the background. But when you have made an effort to educate the family, to include their cultural preferences, when they still take their child out of treatment it is neglect and the child should be removed for treatment. Pure and simple.

A more likely hypothesis is that Ken Sault is prominent enough in the New Credit community that the authorities feared the consequences of intervening.

I'd have feared the consequences of not interfering--i.e., the avoidable deatrh of a minor child whose rights we were tasked with protecting--far more. But hey--I'm funny that way: I don't believe people have the right to sacrifice the well-being of their children on the altar of their faith.

But, what is best? Should the evangelical Christian get to reject medicine for prayer? Should the Native American get to reject medicine for a native ceremony?

An adult, of course, can choose to make poor decisions, even those that will in all likelihood lead to suffering and their premature and avoidable demise When one's instead talking about adults who are the guardians of a minor child, a medical procedure that offers that child a 90% chance of survival, and prayers/traditional services that instead offers them as close to a 100% chance of death as attainable, the answer is "No" and "No"..

JGC - just to be clear the quote you took from my post above deals with parents deciding care for minor children. If you are an adult, though I will disagree with your decision quite strongly, you are free to shove wheatgrass enemas where the sun don't shine all day long and I won't stop you. But I vehemently reject woo for children who don't have the capacity to make that decision for themselves.

@Kiiri

'Should the Native American get to reject medicine for a native ceremony?' Do you just mean life and death or does athletes foot count? Less factiously, what about clinical depression - ie where the ceremony might have some effect, but due to no research we have no evidence - gonna force the pills on them?

'But it is abuse to deny them medical care that will save their lives just because you happen to ‘believe’ they don’t need it. '
But is this the case here? The parents believe they don't need it because they believe there is something better on offer. They are wrong, but so is your characterisation. Also, I assume it is the quacks not the doctors who are asserting that the medical care 'will' save their childs life - I don't know what the prognosis with and without the treatment but its not definite life/definite death - I think if your going to force treatments on people you'd better argue from the facts not convenient simplifications.

'...when they still take their child out of treatment it is neglect and the child should be removed for treatment. Pure and simple.'
Ashya King case? The parents wanted a different treatment. The treatment they wanted was in the opinion of their doctors at best no better than the one on offer, the people offering that treatment thought differently - they were doctors too. So it appears that doctors can differ, who gets precedence? You seem to suggest that these parents were rightfully arrested and should have been carted back to the UK to face child neglect charges - pure and simple.

At what levels are we to decide that we can override the parents? For instance, lets say in the current case there is a 5% chance of recovery by natural means (ie no intervention) and 50% with the treatment. So we all agree the child should have the treament.
10%/40%?
20%/30%?
25%/26%
Remembering that these percentages also are not the actual probabilities they are the assessment of one (group perhaps) of people.
Is it just life and death? Do we need to start allowing doctors to decide 'quality of life' issues etc?

The thing is, whilst I agree in this case, my strongest agreement centres on the involvement of the quacks. Surely the solution here is not to be forcing people to do anything it is to remove the spurious options. The law allows quacks to operate, advertise, make money, do public presentations, call themselves scientists and all the rest presumably because freedom blah blah rights blah blah.

Then when some poor parent falls into their hands you want to curtail THEIR freedom and their rights and accuse them of neglect -
don't you think there is something wrong with that picture?

Kiiri has elucidated my opinions about J.J.'s care and the poor decisions made by her parents to discontinue the treatment for her cancer.

J.J. has not reached the developmental stage where she is considered competent to stop the prescribed treatments. Her mother who is her natural guardian has chosen some alternative care in lieu of the treatments which have a documented record of 90 % cure rate.

The treating hospital is blameless because they notified the local social services unit about the situation and when that unit refused to intervene, the hospital brought the case into court.

The judge, according to the Ross Miles' link, never questioned the mother about her folk remedies...in spite of the judge having a common heritage. Folk remedies/medicines/religious beliefs are accommodated by every hospital where I have worked and where family members were hospitalized.

The charlatan Clements is still in business in Florida. If Florida moved against him tomorrow, that will have no impact on the course of J.J.'s illness.

(I,m going back there) J.J.'s mother should have been removed as her child's guardian, because she has gamed the system and is medically neglecting her child.

There.is.no.excuse.for.medically.neglecting.your.child.period.

Gosh, I didn't imagine when I replied to JCL that I was arguing with a tool who'd profess that "they know COULD" is some kind of epistemology fail, and profess not to know how to use Google to check Brian Clements credentials, or the licensing of the Hypocrites Health Institute. My bad. Won't happen again.

@Sadmar
"“How are the parents supposed to know that even though this guy is allowed to present himself as a bona fide doctor that he isn’t one?” The Internet maybe? "

The internet will tell them western medicine is evil, especially that Orac guy. It will tell them vaccines are a toxic soup designed to keep us dumb and sick, and probably infertile. It will tell them antibiotics are useless and actually cause disease. It will tell them less than 2% of cancer sufferers survive five years after chemo. It will tell them there are at least 10 secret cures to cancer - from a 9-volt battery, to herbal teas, to a caustic balm to baking soda and coffee consumed through the wrong orifice - with success rates between 95 and 100%.

The internet is an amazing tool, assuming you already have the critical thinking fundamentals and at least a little trust in science. But without those things, the internet is not a guaranteed path to knowledge, no matter how badly you may wish to find the truth. Surely the worldwide anti-vax movement is ample evidence of this.

A bit more from the National Post Tuesday, including a quote from someone familiar.

@sadmar

way to go - also way to miss the point. You claimed they 'know' something as though this projection of what you know was automatic, in fact I don't see it is - I also fail to see that checking his credentials on the internet actually gets you some form of definite knowledge - it gets you a bunch of opinions from two sides, since they can't differentiate those worth listening to in their immediate vicinity I fail to see how looking on the internet will help them - perhaps you think they'll come to RI read your posts and experience an exegisis ROFL!

My main point here is that whlst this is being characteriszed as 'neglect' I do not believe it is necessarily so - (and this does go to their 'knowledge'). Neglect is taking no action when one should. These parents are taking action - presumably the action that they think is best - IT IS THE WRONG ACTION but it is not negelect. They have failed to realize that in the USA at least having a shiny building out there in public marked 'Cancer Center' with doctory people in it, adverts, presentations and all that stuff, isn't sufficient to differentiate hospitals from quacks. Is there any other area where conmen are allowed to set up and practise in such a blatant manner?

Sadmar - just because you, I and everyone else on this blog perceive our 'knowledge' as obvious doesn't make it a priori or indeed the only possible conclusion. You have to factor in also the lens of subjective perception also. To try to understand the steps that allow them to reach these bad decisions rather than just assuming that they are idiots is I believe more constructive in the long run.

Perfectly rational people are subjected to all sorts of cons all the time, and whole nations of apparently rational people have marched to war based on lies and sociological pressure - but you don't believe it is possible for one average and vulnerable, probably frightened set of parents to be misinformed (deliberately) and caught up in pressures (such as becoming a legal cause celebre), and reach the wrong conclusions?

Given all the sociological tripe you spout I would have thought you at least might have understood this point, but clearly you're the kind of person who reads (and quotes) lots of books, but understands few of the words therein.

@sadmar again
You have quite frequently said on this blog *what can be done about quacks and the 'battle' against them*. You have implied
it is a battle we, the rational people, are losing, possibly correctly.
So I think we with our superior 'knowledge' and intellect could start by examining the vexed question of how apparently rational and well meaning people can end up making such horrendously bad decisions - when we understand that perhaps we can begin to work out what to do about it - though in ths particualr case having some form of 'Cancer Act' in Canada, the US and every other advanced nation would clearly be a rather good practical start

@29 I did read the judgement carefully. It is a sloppy piece of work when it comes to presentation of the information.

My interpretation of the judgement is that it would not have made any difference if the hospital had undertaken to prove the quack is quack and his offerings largely useless, and/or that they have nothing to do with the traditional medicine of the tribe to which the family belonged. Similarly for the traditional medicines. The claim was made that the girl would receive traditional medicine, and it appears that that claim alone was taken by the judge as sufficient to warrant his ruling. There is nothing in the judgement precluding use, concurrent or otherwise, of any other therapy - nor could there be unless it were highly specific.
It is clear that all parties were aware that chemotherapy offered a high chance of survival and that no other treatment of any sort was likely to prevent the death of the child. A claim was made very early in the process that the gild would receive traditional medicine. The judge effectively ruled that the right of the parents to choose traditional medicine, because the use thereof was an defining feature of the culture, trumped everything else, even if it would clearly end in the death of the child. I can see nothing to suggest he failed to understand that the traditional medicine would be ineffective.

It might have been best if the hospital had withdrawn the application the moment the girl was taken out of the country, but I don't know what the implications of that would be. It might bar a renewed attempt to have her apprehended if she returned to Canada while still in need of treatment. It might have put an immediate end to the case without judgement, thereby preventing the judge from making his ruling and so leaving the opportunity for a protracted trial without regard to the case of a specific individual or the encumbrance of the ruling as it now stands.

While the hospital probably could launch an appeal, that just is not its job. It is allocated public funds to provide health care under the existing laws, not to spend vast amounts of money and resources in the courts. Any appeal, I believe, is properly the responsibility of the the governments of Ontario and/or Canada, specifically because there are constitutional matters to be considered and it concerns all aboriginal people throughout the country, not just one person and her family.

"gild" should be "girl"

Had our children been forced into treatment, it would have I have to wonder what Justice Edward's position on female genital mutilation (euphemistically referred to as 'female circumcision) would be--the practice is just as much a cultural practice integral to many cultre's traditions. Would he hold that preventing parents from handing their daughters over to the local barber for infundibulation would similarly have "a disastrous effect on their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being", prevenitng theim for beign proud of their own traditions and possibly learning that this teaching of their cultures was wrong and even dangerous?

Somehow I doubt it., which makes me wonder how he distinguishes between cultural traditions that are contrary to the well-being of minor children we must respect and which we can condemn..

Duh--quote failure. Ignore the initial "Had our children been forced into treatment, it would have" fragment.

The horrible thing about the judge's ruling is that it would seem to amount to a blanket barrier to any outside agency intervening in any health or well-being matter for any aboriginal child, as long as the parents assert that they will use traditional medicine. But I can see potential for great difficulty in overturning or modifying his ruling, which is why I believe that any appeal should be undertaken with great care and originate with an agency with substantial resources and a negotiating position that is very solid - most certainly not a hospital.

Fortunately, I don't think many aboriginal people in Canada reject modern medical care in general. Probably the number that lack good local access to it is vastly greater than the number that would reject it. I fear that this ruling might be used to interfere with protection of kids for whom Big Alcohol has played a big part in the inability of their parents to care for them.

One of the saddest things here is that genuine Native American therapies can be integrated into a patient care plan much the same as any other spiritual practice can be.

Now what's going to happen is when this poor child dies, it will all get blamed on the chemo having "weakened her immune system" even though it's been months since she last had it.

Thank you lilady. I disagree with both JGC and JCL (and one of you needs a new handle because I am mixing you up) about the definition of neglect. If you refuse care for your child that is by definition medical neglect. When you make a point about depression (JGC I hope) and what is essentially spiritual practice, hell practice whatever spirituality you want. As I pointed out, you can burn incense, wave feathers, stand on your head, chant to the Buddha, or whatever else strikes you fancy while your child is receiving their chemo. Hell you can feed her wheatgrass smoothies and vegan food all you want while she gets her chemo. You are basically arguing semantics. That case at hand is that with chemotherapy this girl has a 90% chance at survival. The data shows NO OTHER THERAPY that is effective. None. Zip. Nada. So we are not arguing which drugs to use, we are arguing science versus magical thinking. Think all the magic you want, but if you believe that children should under any circumstances be removed from their parents then medical neglect counts. If you starve your child they will get taken away. But if you decide you'd rather give your child juice rather than chemo then suddenly you have the right to do that. It is beyond hypocritical. In either case the child is doomed. I don't support taking children from parents lightly but in this instance a medical guardian should have been appointed to make decisions in the best interest of the child. Period. Not all cases are so clear cut. I admit that, the real world is often rather messy. In this case the facts are quite clear. In other cases more nuance may be needed to figure it out that is what we have a court system for. I don't advocate for denial of due process, but in this instance a terrible decision was made that essentially sacrifices this girl on an altar of ideals. As for JCL (I think) and FGM I don't care what your culture is carving up your child's sex organs is abuse. The child cannot consent, is harmed in the process, and culture be damned in that case. I also don't necessarily support automatic gender assignment surgery for children born intersex as research is showing that its basically a dice roll whether the child will grow up happy with their assignment. Again, when you are talking about something that can't be reversed and you are doing it to a child then you need some pretty compelling reason and just because we've always done it that way don't cut the mustard.

It takes guts for a parent to accept their child's devastating diagnosis and the responsibility to be by your child through long months of treatment. For the child whose parent cannot or will not assume that role, there is a recourse, yet the local social services agency and Judge Edward refused to consider the plight of the desperately ill child, thus condemning the youngster to a painful and certain death.

I want to share with you all, the sad death of Robin who succumbed to leukemia before there were effective treatments to treat and cure 90 % of childhood leukemias. Her family still mourns the loss of the sweet little girl:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2235807/Barbara-Bushs-heartac…

@Kiiri et la
I seem to be getting a bit vilified for things I havn't said or implied. Let me be plain - I think in this case these children should certainly be required to have the proper SB treatment. I in no way condone 'magical' practises especially for such serious illnesses. I absolutely in no way condone genital mutilation, foot binding or any other parctise that harms children whatever its cultural provenance.

But anyway, it isn't 'tradition' medicine that is at question here - it is pseudo-science quackery, and that can be harder for none science based people to penetrate.

Look we allow this guy Clements to set up a clinic right there in the main street, spout pseudosciency stuff to people who may not be able to differentiate, advertise, get testimonials, fake up studies etc etc. Then he turns up and says to the parents the one thing that real doctors can never say in this situation, the one thing the parents really want to hear, which is ' don't worry, it'll be all right'.
So at this point, from the parents point of view, this isn't a case of a real treatjment against no treatment, this is a case of one treatment against another. That is not neglect - by definition - it is being wrong.
So now we have let this conman do all his stuff, operate publically, turn up and speak reassuring crap to parents, and then for some reason we blame the parents for being conned!
Sorry, but my view here is that the parents are largely a victim of a conman - without whose existence, apparently happily allowed by the state, they simply wouldn't have had the option of choosing such a bad course.

I blame the conman, I blame the system that allows the conman. To what extent I believe the parents are actually culpable here is in my mind open to question, and it doesn't seem to me that this is 'neglect' in the way I understand the word (ie conscious non-action that harms a child) - they are taking action, and I think they believe it is efficous action, therefore it's not neglect, and I'm not going to disregard logical objective analysis of the situation just to dance to the same tune as everyone else.

There were a number of cases in the UK of serious illnesses and at least one death due to Wakefield and his con. At the time, it appeared that Wakefield was a bona fide doctor, concerned for his patients, thinking only of the children, and basing his conclusions on some scientific research published in a respectable journal (very respectable - like the ony one most non-medical people have heard of!).

Due you believe those parents were neglectful?

JCL, stop changing the subject, by bringing Wakefield up.

There are many cases of medical neglect, where the local social services agency and/or a judge has utterly failed to protect a child whose medical needs are neglected by a parent. J.J.'s serious illness and her mother's medical neglect is just the latest case.

Just look at your post at # 36 above, as you argue about intervening without the facts presented by the treating physicians and by Orac. The child has a 90 % chance of total cure with prescribed treatment and a 100 % chance of dying without the prescribed treatment.

You'd do well to check out some facts about childhood leukemia treatments, remission and cure rates, before you defend the neglectful mother and Judge Edward.

@lilady
Hmm, seems you really haven't read what I'm saying. I'm not defending anyone really nor am I arguing against intervention at all. I think I made that clear in #51
What I don't get here is that sure critize the mother, criticize the judge if you want, but look from the OP

"As I described in yesterday’s post, the quack, Brian Clement, was giving talks in the area, one in particular entitled “All About Cancer and Conquering Disease with Living Foods.” The girl’s mother encountered him there. Impressed with his “confidence” she gave him a call. When he assured her he could cure her daughter, she stopped her daughter’s chemotherapy and headed to Florida with her daughter"

So you don't see that as an issue? Dr Brian Clements - practising in Florida in an open (and therefore essentially santioned manner), turns up and says 'hey I can cure that' in a confident,plausible manner and its the mothers fault for not being able to differentiate one doctor with a clinic from another?

Its not his fault for being a conman, or our fault for allowing him to exist and practise and do this sort of thing to people, vulnerable and scared people (ideal marks) at that?

I mean, can't you see who is the villian here? My point about Wakefield was entirely to the question..its not those parents fault they were misled into doing the wrong thing - its his fault and only his fault. This case may not be quite as cut and dried, but seriously, you're all jumping on the parents and not addressing the clear issue of the involvement of a conman, and the very fact we allow him to operate as though he were as legit as the real doctors is in itself confusing for these parents.

So you go burn the parents at the stake if thats what you need to do, seems like they get all your anger. So I'll reiterate again, I believe from the above quote its pretty clear that they have been conned - happens all the time to desparate people facing serious illness - and we allow it to happen - actually in the UK we don't as far as cancer goes, but you 'rational science based' medical types in the USA do - so actually its your fault for sitting on your arse typing judgments on parents instead of doing something proper about it, and allowing your quacks to be exported to prey on vulnerable people. Send him to the UK - we'll jail him.

The clincher surely is they were doing the right thing - getting chemo - until this guy turned up and convinced them he had another way - he is the sine qua non of the situation - he is the criminal, not his victims

JCL, the point is that the child's right to have treatment for her A.L.L. has been ignored by the Judge, in favor of the mother's belief in some alternative treatments.

Stop blaming the charlatan Clement for the mother's medical neglect of her child. If the mother never heard of Clement's spa and opted for treatment from a naturopath, homeopath or chiropractor, she would still be guilty of medical neglect.

What have counterfactuals to do with this? She didn't opt for treatment from a naturopath, homeopath or chiropractor she opted for chemotherapy. If she had 'spontaneously' opted for these kinbd of treatment I would join the bandwagon no problem.

But then Clements turned up and convinced her otherwise - presumably by telling her that he had 100% success rate (better than 90%) and much easier than chemo.
Would you select 100% success rate over 90% - I would. And if I opted for the 90% treatment instead of the 100% then I would be neglectful. The problem is in this case the 100% treatment doesn't exist - its a phoney, con, sham whatever - but how is she to actually know this? Just because you (and sadmar) *know* this doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone else.
Conmen work by being plausible - they have actually fairly low success rate, so they cast a wide net on likely grups til they hook a sucker. Its not nice being a sucker, but it doesn't make you the criminal.

Look, I agree we all have responsibilites to our children, and must do what is best for them, and that includes some due diligence etc - and no doubt it seems this mother was rather quick to jump ship, but I really don't see how we can allow these kind of people to operate - indistinguishable as they may well be from 'real' doctors, and then blame people when they are taken in.
I do blame Clement for this situation - very clearly I blame him - without him and his actions there would be no situation, the child would be getting the chemo and possibly we would have happy ending.

Stop absolving him and treating him like he's secondary. Not everyone knows as much about medicine as you do - these bastards cast a wide net until they hit the right kind of mark, at the right time, in the right way and make a score - and they do that not by convincing people that they have *alternative* therapies they do it by convincing them that they have *an alternative* therapy - there is a difference - just like two real doctors sometimes prescribe different treatments - as soon as these people feel he is a 'real' doctor (and why wouldn't they?) then the course of action he suggests becomes just another reasonable possiblity to them. Thats why I see them as victims not neglectful - but I sense that basically as far as your concerned a wrong choice equals neglect.

Well, the parents aren't completely absolved in my view, but I really do find it strange that you just seem to pass over Clements very active role in this in favour of panning the parents.

The purpose for bringing the case to the court was to determine the parental responsibility toward a very sick little girl. Clement does not have guardianship of J.J.

You have been busy ranting about the itinerant charlatan's competence and not addressing the violation of J.J.'s right to have the most effective treatment for her A.L.L., which trumps the right of her mother to deny J.J. that treatment.

The State has the right, indeed the duty, to intervene and remove the medical guardianship from a parent who medically neglects her child.

I don't address these issues because I agree in toto with all that has been said about them on this blog - I have said this a number of times. I agree the child should have the chemo, I agree the state should intervene if the mother refuses it - I have not said anything different.

The only thing I disagree with is the characterization of the mother as 'medically negligent'. Perhaps 'medically incompetent' or some other phrase should be used here. Perhaps you can give me your definition of 'negligent' because mine requires *willfully* avoiding action, whereas
it is my belief that it is at least possible that this mother was in fact taking the action she thought was best, and that is not negligence, however wrong it is.

You seem to feel that by saying that I am somehow siding with the mother or something, I am not. There is however a difference between someone who causes harm to their child because they wilfully and knowingly do the wrong thing (or do nothing) and someone who causes harm inadvertently believing that what they are doing is the best thing. This is a bigger and more general problem with 'woo' which I am trying to discuss - namely that many of the people inflicting these things on there children seem to geneuinely believe they are doing the right thing. I want to know how they get to a point that seems to me (us!) so clearly wrong, because then we might have some chance of preventing it, and in this case it certainly seems fairly clear that the mother got there because of the direct intervention of a conman.
That I believe is perhaps the situation here. It doesn't alter the fact that the state should take remedial action to ensure the childs health and saftey to the best possible SB technique we have - but it does highlight that perhaps it would be better if the state took preventative action to not allow conmen anywhere near vulnerable parents of sick children.
I don't really know why you are objecting to that statement, or my focus on the person without whom none of this would ever have happened.

JCL:
Yes on #42. Let's talk about what 'what is to be done' rather than 'who is to blame'. The answer to the last question is pretty much 'everybody.' so if we want fewer kids to die, we look to things we might — in some hypothetical way at least — imagine could be changed. And indeed, here we land first and foremost at the door of "the system that allows the conman". I've been digging into Clement and the Hippocrates Institute for a couple days, and each new bit of info generates another facepalm to the effect of "how can anybody stand for this?"

And first on the list of inactive parties is the government of Florida which seems to have no regulatory apparatus at all: not laws, not oversight agencies, not police, not prosecutors. By terms of the legal system as I understand it, Clement and his associates should be serving life in prison. Clement is nothing less than a serial murderer, and after 34 years of cancer quackery, slipping the dying 'guests' quietly out of HHI so the other marks don't see what's likely to happen to them, I put the chances he actually believes in his wheatgrass cure and thinks all the deaths resulted because chemo or some other sbm thing destroyed the immune system or mucked up the innate ability to self-heal are slim and none.

The 'allowing system' isn't just government. Its also the medical profession, which should be up in arms against this guy, running him out of town on a rail, and more importantly putting pressure on governments as every level to put a stop to this sort of thing. Finally there is the business community, which basically embraces this death merchant as AOK because he's a successful merchant of something .

We could start by examining how apparently rational and well meaning people can end up making such horrendously bad decisions. When we understand that perhaps we can begin to work out what to do about it.

100% agreed. That's the position I've taken regarding other cases discussed here, and any assignment of 'blame' I have suggested or will suggest is not meant to negate that at all.

As for prosecuting J.J.'s parents, yeah I think that should be done, not out of some broad principle of 'taking your kid to a quack is neglect' but based on very specific details of this case. I certainly wouldn't advocate the law being hard on them (i.e. I certainly wouldn't want them to serve jail time), and there would need to be an actual crime first — i.e. J.J. would have to pass. i guess at this point we're all with Pastor Sault and his faith healer, hoping some 'Act of God' (i.e. random chance) let's these kids beat the very bad odds.

'Superior intellect' or 'greater knowledge' don't have anything to do with it. I think people get duped for the most part because con-artists exploit their psychological weakness. It's not that they're unintelligent or don't know things in general, but that they're inclined for some reason to think about X rather than think about Y. So, even if I say, 'they should have used The Google to do X,' that's a kind of abstract proposition because there is a reason they did not that does not involve any sort of malice. Just as turning J.J. over to Clement was 'a bad decision' not checking up on Clement first was 'a bad decision.' So yeah, the questions are 'why' and 'what to do' about it. And I do have sympathy for victims of cons. My mom, who was not at all stupid or uneducated was a sucker for all sorts of scams. I used to swear there must be some invisible hobo sign on our front door: "easy mark here!" It wasn't that I was 'smarter', just that as life had tumbled out for me, I was more tuned into those thing than she was. I was able to talk her out of a couple of them before she got robbed blind, but she'd fall for the next one anyway. Thankfully they weren't that financially draining...

Nevertheless, if we take a moral position that includes any notion of 'responsibility', such that we fault quacks for the harm they cause, and fault the system for allowing that harm to occur, it seems we ought to grant that being duped out of your own money is one thing, and being duped into letting your child die is another. 'What to do about it' remains a sticky question with no easy answers, IMHO.

In an imaginary, hypothetical realm where I could make such decisions, prosecuting J.J.'s parents could fall under 'what to do' for the following reasons. This is a 'the whole world is watching' moment, and taking the parents to trial would generate continued media coverage that would serve to inform people about the danger of quakery. Essentially I would put Clement on trial in absentia, making a 'they should have known if they didn't' argument by how thoroughly obvious the scam is to anyone digging a little. The trial would also put pressure on lawmakers in Ottowa DC and FL to do something about dangerous quacks. It would basically all be theater, and I might even seek to collude with the defense council in putting on the show.

My goal would be to secure a conviction that establishes a precedent that First Nations Rights to 'traditional medicine' don't moot a parent's obligation to keep their kid from dying — but then I'd ask for probation/suspended sentence whatever, to keep the parents out of jail. Then I'd play up the mercy/respect angle big time in a press conference with a warning that "if this happens again, the guilty parties are going to stir!" Or something.

Of course, this 'hypothetical' is basically scriptwriting, and IRL there'd be lots of other factors involved, of which we have no knowledge, so I don't know if that could happen or whether it would work.

Personally, I don't believe in retributive justice, attempting to balance some moral scale via punishment, establish some 'deterrent' blah blah blah. People should only be imprisoned when they present "a clear and present danger" to the community.

But, by all means, let's have more discussion trying to puzzle out why and how people get seduced into 'bad' choices, and what might be done to stem the tide.

"The State has the right, indeed the duty, to intervene and remove the medical guardianship from a parent who medically neglects her child."

Yes, in general, but First Nations people are only subjects of the Canadian State in some senses, while in others they are subjects of their aboriginal nation, as a matter of Canadian law. There is a very complex social/legal problem at work here. The 'state' that has the right and duty to intervene in custody is the Six Nations band, but they do not have an apparatus to do so because Canada has allowed them to establish one. Furthermore the FACS does not have an option to impose 'medical guardianship' as no such thing exists under the law. They can put a child into protective custody, but that severs the parents' guardianship completely.

As will eventually post in more detail, McMaster Hospital does bear great blame here. Canada does have a govermental body that can mandate treatment plans for a patient incapable of making their own decisions (e.g. an immature 11-year old with leukemia). It's called the CCB. It was McMaster's choice to seek FACS to take guardianship away from the parents completely, instead of seeking a treatment mandate from the CCB.

errr, "because Canada has NOT allowed them to establish one."
"As _I_ will eventually post" etc. etc.

Application of de jure law is always constrained by defacto situations on the ground. Once Clement got his hooks into J.J.'s parents there was nothing anyone could do to actually force them into putting her back into chemo.

By law, an FACS agency has to do an investigation before putting a child in protective custody. They can't just go grab the kid upon receipt of a notice of possible neglect, which is all a physician can provide. There's no mechanism for custody that doesn't put the parents on alert, and if they have the means and desire to flee the jurisdiction, game over.

'Should' and $2 Canadian gets you a cup of coffee at Tim Horton's.

JCL: The discussion on this thread is directed toward J.J.'s care, not the itinerant or homegrown charlatan(s) who are as common as dirt, and who prey on credulous individuals. If you want to notify the State of Florida about Mr. Clement's activities...then go for it...but it will have no impact on J.J.'s life-saving treatments, which her mother will not provide consent.

"The only thing I disagree with is the characterization of the mother as ‘medically negligent’. Perhaps ‘medically incompetent’ or some other phrase should be used here. Perhaps you can give me your definition of ‘negligent’ because mine requires *willfully* avoiding action, whereas
it is my belief that it is at least possible that this mother was in fact taking the action she thought was best, and that is not negligence, however wrong it is."

There is nothing in the court record to indicate that the mother is "medically incompetent or some other phrase...".

It's not how I define the mother's decision to deny her child life-saving treatment, it's how the law defines "medical neglect".

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/medical-neglect-of-a-chil…

"What is Medical Neglect of a Child?

Medical neglect is defined as a parent’s failure to provide adequate medical or dental care for their child, especially when it is needed to treat a serious physical injury or illness. In some cases, this can also include a failure to provide for psychiatric care if the child needs it. Also, some jurisdictions may hold other parties liable for medical neglect, such as custodians or guardians who have a legal duty to care for the child.

Medical neglect is generally considered to be a form of child neglect, and is usually listed under a state’s child abuse laws. Some jurisdictions require failure to involve emergency circumstances, but some courts may find medical neglect even in long-term, non-emergency situations...."

Perhaps you can give me your definition of ‘negligent’ because mine requires *willfully* avoiding action, whereas
it is my belief that it is at least possible that this mother was in fact taking the action she thought was best, and that is not negligence, however wrong it is.

Ergo, opting for prayer over medical treatment isn't negligent.
So long as it's what the parents think is best.

@lilady
I wasn't actually aware that the thread was so tightly constrained or indeed that you were the arbitor. Generally I see discussion on these threads moving around the issues and what it is directed to is whatever people happen to respond.

But I don't think I was particularly off topic - in fact here is the title:

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer: Who’s to blame?

I am postulating a clear opinon in answer to that question and trying to have an intelligent discussion about that opinion - which is not entrenched by the way, but certainly won't be changed by people calling me names or trying to shut me up because they disagree with me - though I'm not sure you are even making the attmept to understand what I am saying, let alone engage intelligently with it, despite it being a clear answer to the question posed in the title.

I understand that the legal definition of 'medical neglect' may be slghtly different from what I would consider the naive definition of neglect. Looking at that link I see this:

Ignoring medical recommendations by a physician with regards to a treatable condition
Failing to administer medicine to the child as prescribed by a doctor

The problem here is that of course there may be more than one opinion - perfectly reasonably in some cases. So it can't really mean what it says because if I have two mutually contradictory prescriptions from two perfectly respectable physicians
I have to choose one, and therefore not the other, and therefore by the direct wording of this must be neglecting my child.

Now I don't' think that Clements is a medical doctor, but I'm pretty sure that he can
produce them as required to give out his recommendations. Therefore by these definitions, if Clements produces a legally registered physician who recommends his treatments and you DON'T follow it, you are medically neglecting your child. You follow that I assume?
Again we come to this point - if there are two apparently (ie in their perception) equally valid medical opinions, then it is not neglect to choose the one you think is right - it is only neglect to choose neither.
So, either prove that Clements did not provide a medical recommendation from a doctor, in which case you are right in a formal legal sense, or you have to admit that by the wording here she was not negelecting her child.

In fact if Clements was the ONLY person she saw, and he produced a doctor that prescribed this treatment, then she would,according to this, be neglecting her child by not following that recommendation! There is also the problem that in some places quacks such as naturopaths are pushing or even succeeding in being officially regarded as physicians - that means that in a couple of years we could be looking at someone getting done for medical neglect because they didn't give their child a bleach enema as recommended by that 'physician' - and you will have to agree with it!!

So much for the legaleze - I think reading the actual law, and getting a legal opinion would be necessary. I concede that perhaps there is a formal legal sense in which she is negligent, but also in a formal legal sense you would have to prove inadequacy of Clements treatment, which might be harder.
But I am taking about actual culpability of the person, her intententions, her motivations and so on. I am talking about whether she deserves the opprobrium etc that comes with the label, or whether she too is a victim. In other words lilday, I am talking about the topic of the thread.

@sadmar I would like to respond, because I think its a very interesting and relevant topic, illustrated by this story. But I fear I have made the mistake of not parroting liladys opinion sufficiently and must spend my time rereading all of her posts on RI so that I am able to agree with her with more alacrity in the future

JCL: I apologize that you think in some way you are being picked on, that was not my intent. I agree something should be done about the quacks. However, with disturbing and distressing frequency more and more states are opting to give pretty much everyone who shows up carte blanche to open a pseudoscience 'clinic'. There is the abysmal regulation of 'supplements' which only require the oft lamented on this and other skeptical websites quack Miranda warning. Plus you have naturopaths, chiropracters, acupuncturists, and others who are gaining state credentials and opening up shops. We totally agree that it is wrong and should stop. Unfortunately these groups are well funded and well organized. And politicians are cowards. They don't want the controversy so they rubberstamp a bill to give them a license and send them on their merry way to fleece the public. We have railed against it, written our congress critters about it, blogged about it, educated our friends about it. I believe almost every regular commenter on these pages has done one or in most cases all of these things. But we are few, with few resources. And we face the mighty tides of government apathy or outright powerlessness (for example read the many tales of the Texas Medical Board vs. Burzynski). Clement is a charlatan and a crank. However it is doubtful that anyone in any position of authority in FL is going to shut him down. And even if they did I would bet you dollars to donuts he would have a new shop set up in 5 minutes flat. Probably in TX which has become Mecca for quacks the world over. We can do our best but we can't stop them without some kind of political will and at this point it seems sorely lacking.
I take some issue with your seeming support of the mother in this case. Yes, she has been conned. But here is the thing she let herself be conned. She went for the easy way out. You don't have to get very far in this life to begin to understand that when something is presented to be too good to be true that it is. I don't envy her situation it is truly horrible to have a child diagnosed with cancer. Even more horrible to know that they will suffer (for two years) through treatment that grown adults shouldn't have to suffer through. But at that point you have to be the adult you have to step up. You have to hold their hand, and reassure them, and be the parent. Because in the end your child will suffer and you will wish with all your soul to take that suffering into your own body and spare them the pain. But in the end you will have a great likelihood of holding your child in your arms. Your only other option is to be mourning at their grave. To me that's not an option. In this case when the parents were duped by a conman and wanted the easy way out the courts had the opportunity to do their duty and save this child's life and they failed spectacularly to do so. The only person who is going to suffer from this is a young girl who is too young to know better and too young to make her own decisions. And that is what makes me cry. The parents are misguided and deluded and they act out of love but that doesn't excuse it. It doesn't excuse the religious who don't believe in medicine only prayer, and it doesn't excuse those who want pseudoscience over medicine.

So much for the legaleze

That would have been a good choice.

I think reading the actual law

Which one would that be?

I concede that perhaps there is a formal legal sense in which she is negligent

Yah.

but also in a formal legal sense you would have to prove inadequacy of Clements treatment

How do you figure?

@Narad
I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent. Wrong, misguided and so on yes, but negligent, no. I do not believe in any religion, but apparently some people do and very strongly at that. So if these people are acting in a genuine belief that what they are doing is best I don't think they can be called negligent - dangerous, ignorant lunatics yes - negligent no. To my mind negligence is failure to act when it is indicated - and failure to act according to what you think is best - the most any of us can really be required to do. If someone acts in a medical situation by consulting a priest not a doctor because they think that is the best course, I abhor their action, but I do recognise it as an action with the right motivation.

Take the MMR thing again. Some people did not give their kids the jabs because they genuinely believed that there was an issue. They did not take the best action-with some tragic consequences - but they did take the best action as far as their information and perception of the situation and so on went - were they negligent, or just badly misguided?

What if the dodgy decision has been strongly affected by some baleful deliberately acting to confuse and mislead these people - is this still negligence?

This is really a matter of semantics - perhaps this whole 'negligent' thing is actually a red herring, though there does seem to be some sort of psychological thing going on here, where the mother absolutely must be labelled negligent, despite the clear mitigation of being conned - I donno why, maybe its just easier to see things in clear cut black and white or something.
Anyway it actually matters little what their motivations etc are for immediate practical purposes - if they are taking the wrong course of action in such a case then there should be intervention.
I'm not really interested in what we call the mother in this case - I am interested in how we characterise her actions though, and I personally think the active and critically important intervention of an extremely practised conman at the very least mitigates her negligence.

@Kirri
I'll respond in detail in a minute (I'm on fire tonight :), but this stood out:

*Yes, she has been conned. But here is the thing she let herself be conned*

You think? Put 'rape' in there instead of 'conned' and see how you feel about blaming the victim now

In for a penny.... This is U.S.-centric, but JCL's comments seem to lie in the realm of the abstract.

It should be noted that child neglect is a matter of state law. I just took a quick look at Connecticut's summary page, and it makes clear that intentionality is irrelevant.

That takes care of that one. Shall I proceed to the analysis of whether religious withholding of care is comparable to choosing a quack shack?

@Narad

Ok, well thats good and now I know something new and relevant.
As far as deciding whether the state needs to intervene that sems very sensible. I entirely agree that this is as it should be, as I think you'll find I have said.
But what about in the criminal sense? My question stems from the who is to blame part of the OP. I concede if you wish that when people have been using 'medical negligent' they may have been correct in a very legal sense as far as whether care should be foreced by the state. And of course the law has some relevance to the question. But I am really talking more ethically. I'm gonna try to distil the exact question.

A person is pursuing course A which we consider 'good'
A malevolent agent with evil purposes targets A with the intention of changing their course to B, which is to their detriment, and his advantnage
The agent succeeds

Thats the scenario, it covers (or is meant to be an abstration of) murder,rape,theft,conning,assault a huge range of scenarios.
At what point in this does the person become to blame for the outcome?

How for instance is Clements actions different in substance from theft and murder of her child? Someone mugs you in the street and steals your wallet whilst knifing your baby to death. This is your fault?

@Narad again - wrt Shall I proceed to the analysis of whether religious withholding of care is comparable to choosing a quack shack?

Yes please!

"I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent. Wrong, misguided and so on yes, but negligent, no. I do not believe in any religion, but apparently some people do and very strongly at that. So if these people are acting in a genuine belief that what they are doing is best I don’t think they can be called negligent – dangerous, ignorant lunatics yes – negligent no. To my mind negligence is failure to act when it is indicated – and failure to act according to what you think is best – the most any of us can really be required to do. If someone acts in a medical situation by consulting a priest not a doctor because they think that is the best course, I abhor their action, but I do recognise it as an action with the right motivation."

You're dead wrong JCL. Parents who medically neglect their children have been charged and convicted for their medical neglect:

http://whatstheharm.net/children.html

You do realize, don't you, that J.J.'s mother agreed to the treatment, which apparently did not conflict with her aborigine beliefs, practices or aborigine "medicine".

What type of aborigine "medicine" is used within that group? According to the Judge's decision, aborigine "medicine" was not part of the court record. In fact, the only mention of religion was some sort of folk lore about a sky woman...quite typical of the folk lore one hears about from other indigenous groups to explain natural phenomena.

J.J. was on her tenth day of the prescribed chemotherapeutic treatments, when her mother telephoned Mr. Clement, because she "heard" about the therapy (raw vegan diet), he prescribes for his spa customers in Florida. Two days later the mother withdrew her consent and J.J.'s prescribed chemotherapeutic therapy regimen was halted.

Newly elected Chief Ava Hill and the Six Nations Elected Council are elated because they stuck it to The Man by sacrificing Makayla and J.J.:

https://www.facebook.com/Six.Nations.Elected.Council/photos/a.282105425…

@Narad

second last paragraph of my #69 - you will see that this is in agreement with my previously stated views - just sayin' :)

@lillady
I am not in anyway saying that in all cases, or even in this case, people are not charged or shouldn't be charged with medical neglect. Where did I say that? If people are neglecting their children in any sense then damn right they should get done and the state should intervene.
But you are helping me clarify a little here. We all agree that the *intention* of the parents should not be part of the decision in respect to whether the state takes action, forces treatment etc.
What we do disagree with is culpability of people. I don't believe necessarily that this person, or other faith types, or even some more general woo types are in fact negligent in the standard sense of the word - or sall we just say not culpable- depending on many factors such as their beliefs (meant in a general sense).

Some of the people who need intervention have the right intentions but undertake the wrong actions. Some may have gone too far in their religiousness, some may just be intellectually challenged or have other issues, some may have been deliberately mislead. What they need isn't being labelled 'negligent' and criminalized - what they need is to agree action to learn/change, probably supervision.

So in a nutshell:
As far as 'medically negligent' in a civil sense, meaning requiring state intervention and so on. I agree
As far as 'medically negligent' in a criminal sense, meaning culpable, in this case I disagree.
We should intervn and force the treatment. We should attempt to help her understand why her kid is being given this treatment, and what a narrow escape she has had - but as long as the kid has the treatments I actually see no reason-in this specific case, I'm not making general rules here, for pursuing further actions against her (unless there is more to the story).

The involvment of the tribe and making this some kind of test case I view as being very pernicious, especially as it is not a traditional method. I totally agree that this aspect seems very screwed up. It seems that somewhere an opportunity was definiely missed on that basis. And to my mind strikes me as pure politics somewhere. I wonder for instance if Clements helped them to this lidea. I wonder indeed how he ever came to be there, I doubt he chooses his speaking engagements on a random basis. But why do you not see this as further mitgation for the mother? Did she stir up he chiefs? Or did they decide themselves to make this unfortunate person their political tool - and seriously - where was Clements in this process?

But what about in the criminal sense?

With the caveat that I have only recently paid attention to this thread, as it mostly seemed to be an exchange with sadmar, I am confident in stating that this comment is an attempt to change the subject.

@Narad

second last paragraph of my #69

What constitutes a paragraph is unclear in that comment. Let's go with what appears to be the ultimate one:

This is really a matter of semantics – perhaps this whole ‘negligent’ thing is actually a red herring

Then why on G-d's green earth have you been nattering on about it?

I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent.

Which is to say that there is nothing to "construe," the word has no meaning.

But why do you not see this as further mitgation for the mother? Did she stir up he chiefs? Or did they decide themselves to make this unfortunate person their political tool – and seriously – where was Clements in this process?

This is seriously the worst example of JAQing off that I've seen in ages. Try passing Go before aimlessly pondering the value of building a hotel on Marvin Gardens.

@Narad
How so? The question in the title was Who's to blame?

No-one seems to disagree that the state should have intervened, that the tribal politics bit seems a bit screwed, that there have been failures in many places. I would say I was giving the thread relevant body.

btw I must also humble myself by admitting that I have been wrong about the exact meaning of 'negligent'. I see now that it probably doesn't generally imply the intentionality that I'm giving it. I suppose it doesn't help trying to get my point across - sorry..
However, my point isn't actually about the meaning of words its about the attribution of blame in this case. I see this child and her mother, at least to some degree, as victims.
I see her failure as the failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision about her sons life made more difficult by the fact the the whole situation, starting with their being any decision to make at all, and progressing through lies and deliberatel false statements actually designed to decieve her. And decieved she has been.
Now I don't know every full detail here of the whole process of course, but in so far as the scenario is like I have describbed, I hold the mother blameless.

@Narad

Ok fair enough I'll stop nattering defeated as I am by the completeness of your answer. Good point, well made.

You know when I started commenting on this thread I believed that the question of how much the mother was to blame, especially given the active role played by Clements, and there being the characteristics of a con in place, was both relevant, exactly on topic and would possibly lead to some interesting discussion.

epic fail

@Narad #77

Fair enough on the formatting. You took the last pararaph, but completey failed to look at the section:

'Anyway it actually matters little what their motivations etc are for immediate practical purposes – if they are taking the wrong course of action in such a case then there should be intervention.'
which is clearly of direct relevance to your #71

And
'Which is to say that there is nothing to “construe,” the word has no meaning."
Huh? Which word? Yes, grammatically correct would have been 'construe their actions' rather than 'construe them'.

Nitpicking grammer,sematic quibbling,sophistry and paragraph formatting! You certainly are a formidable force to oppose.

I put my new post on 'who's to blame' on the Friday open thread.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/11/21/off-to-skepticon/#comment-…

There's actual information in it that hasn't been posted on RI, should anyone be interested in the facts. I share opinions, of course. Feel free to disregard them as usual.

JCL: lilady and Narad are dogmatic. They think what they think, and express themselves in ad hominem mode. You never have a point. You're just wrong, stupid, heartless, arrogant, stupid, dishonest, stupid. Did i mention stupid. They don't do 'discussion'. They are who they are. This is an open forum. They get to write what they like. So do you. If you want to reply to them, that's your choice. (I try not to. The feeling's mutual, i'm sure.) You're not going to get dialog. But a barb may have it's utility, definition of negligence etc. a valid point buried in the venom and the nit-picking. Narad's knowledgable about legal stuff, among other things. But if you're not 'in' with a certain long-time RI circle, everything you write is going to be taken with the least-charitabe assumptions possible, e.g. that you using interrogative sentence form "to make wild accusations acceptable by framing them as questions" (I didn't now what JAQ was and gad to look it up) not because you want to indicate "well, this is what I think, but I'm not sure and i might be wrong."

Especially wrtiing in these little text boxes, I know I'm likely to frame something as a rhetorical question or joke at one point (i.e. intended as firm statement) and then a few lines down frame something as a question because i sincerely want to ad a qualifier to the thought, because I really don't know. And I'm sure it's difficult for readers to pick up the difference without the tone of voice that would clearly distinguish the two in meatspace conversation.

Most people have some sort of hot-buttons that set them off. lilady definitely has a hot-button for anything that can be remotely interpreted as sympathetic to parents who cause any sort of harm to their child. She sees this as making excuses for unforgivable sin, a moral abdication that can only be met with outrage. My problem with that is I see outrage as having zero utility in any effort to prevent similar harms in the future.

btw: It's 'Brian Clement' no 's'.

To the discussion:

What I see in the thread above is words that can mean different thing, or encapsulate different degrees of similar thing, being interpreted differently by different people. E.g. I take what you mean by 'blame' to be different from i meant by 'blame.' And my guess is there are different meanings AND degrees of 'negligence' being referenced as well, now somewhat cleared up by Narad's note of the legal definition in CT. But 'negligence' may be a more philosophical concept, in which do/did define it around a component of intent, while lilady does not. Not to facilitate JAQ-ing, but I'd suggest clarification requests might be more productive than making assumptions.

I see her failure as the failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision about her sons life made more difficult by the fact the the whole situation, starting with their being any decision to make at all, and progressing through lies and deliberatel false statements actually designed to deceive her.

Can you clarify what you meant by "properly equipped intellectually"? That could be interpreted as pretty demeaning.

Regardless, the word "failure" in "failure to be equipped" suggests one could also succeed in being equipped. Thus, once malice is removed from the definition, I'm having trouble distinguishing your description from 'negligence.' Perhaps you and lilady might agree that by using Narad's definition in the non-legal/philosophical sense the parents' decision to pull J.J. from chemo falls under 'negligence' but disagree about the severity and what consequences, if any, might be in order.

"Now I don’t’ think that Clements is a medical doctor, but I’m pretty sure that he can produce them as required to give out his recommendations."
Highly unlikely. I've been reading up on him. This is not your typical Alt-med practitioner that can get a real MD to front for them. This guy is Murder, Incorporated.

"No-one seems to disagree that the tribal politics bit seems a bit screwed,"
The politics are very screwed, but that is not the fault of the band (I guess that's the Canadian usage, and they don't say 'tribe' as we do in the US).

"Making this some kind of test case I view as being very pernicious."
Not really. It was McMaster that made it a test case. They had no malice toward J.J. certainly, if that figures into your defininition of 'pernicious.' They had a failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision involving custody of a First Nations child, or to be more precise the process that would take place once they set a custody issue in motion.

Yes, Clement specifically targeted this group. I don't know whether he was just targeting The First Nations, or whether there were other ripe marks in that part of Ontario. But it's a good bet Clement knew something about the mistrust of white institutions, including hospitals, among the native population and cynically chose to exploit that. He's the worst racist in the bunch. I have gotten the impression that the Six Nations and New Credit bands are not exactly impoverished. A similar mistrust of hospitals probably exists in poor African-American communities, but being poor they wouldn't offer Clement the profit potential so he headed North.

The parents didn't the lead the chiefs, and the chiefs certainly didn't lead the parents. The chiefs might have been dragged along by the Sault family, as dad's can be assumed to have a certain influence as the Church Pastor in New Credit. The parents were led by Clement. The chiefs were making the best out of a bad situation. By the time they were drawn in, the kids were as good as dead, unfortunately. Clement had the parets, the parents had the kids, they were all in Florida (or could be) no one was letting go. Bad deal all around.

@sadmar

Thanks for the information.I hadn't researched the tribe matter (wasn't that relevant to the point I was trying to make), and it seems to have a different complexion than I thought, fair enough. It did seem to me likely that Clement didn't just arrive there by accident - so really the mother was
compassed by an evil scheme that she had no knowledge of before she ever heard of him.

I personally think here is a valid question here and it doesn't make me a monster for asking it. It seems pretty relevant to the OP question and the whole disucsison viz a viz woo and mothers who practise it on their children, namely (for about the 8th time):

If a person is deliberately targeted by someone intending to deceive them, and they are deceived, to what extent are they to blame for the consequences of that deception?

I can see there can be different view points - I was hoping to elucidate some of them, turned out to be hard work! Lilday and Narad seem to think that its simply caveat emptor and have no problem allowing these con artists to operate and target vulnerbale people - its simply your fault if your conned. I was genunely surprised to find this reaction on this blog.

Re the phrase '“properly equipped intellectually” I was trying
to express that her whole mental aparatus, her logic, knowledge, understanding of science, presence of mind, crticial thinking etc, cultural context, whatever aspects are required, has suffered a failure of some sort to allow her to be conned in this manner. It wasn't meant to be demeaning per se - but unfortunately in cases of being caught up in cons there usually is some failure - even just the failure to 'see the obvious that everyone else sees'. In this specific I off course don't actually know what the factors were. Its not meant to be demeaning per se, but I was struggling to find yet another way to express the same thing. However, the fact is being caught in a con can leave a person feeling pretty stupid and humiliated when it is revealed to them, and in some respects it is a demeaning thing in and of iself. However, that in no way makes it the victims fault.
And yes I have agreed that 'negligence' in the sense used by lilday is right, and tried to focus on the question of actual malice. ie I agree that intentions have nothing to do with negligence - always did as far as taking civil action was concerned, but the point here is not about what word should be used (though I agree it would help if I was able to say what I meant with more precision), but to what extent the deliberate actions of the conman modifies the mothers 'blame' - especially, most especially in this case that without Clement intervention, the whole thing would never have happened. Thats pretty good reason for saying 'Clement caused this situation'.

To what extent the mother is can actually be said to be fault here I don't know. I think it would need detailed investigation and a judge to eventually determin that. Basically the list of 'blame' you wrote on the next thread seemed about right to me.

Oh and btw - thats interesting that you think Clement doesn't have some medical doctor in his pocket. I looked at his clinic site and could only see one guy who might be some form of medical doctor, as usual it hard to get facts.
If he did not in fac have a medical doctor to basically recommedn his treatment, then that probably does shift things a little against the parents. It certainly does shift things badly against the authorities in general (who already appear rather incompetent and appear to have had several failures at multiple levels) - if there can't even be said to be some form of 'differing opinion between doctors' then the whole medical neglect thing becomes much clearer legally (already pretty clear scientifically to most of us).

JCL: Your initial premise that it's hard for people to know who's a real doctor kind of moots the necessity of a quack to have a real MD as a front. Everything about Clement is deception. Naturopaths refer to themselves as NDs. Clement claims to be an NMD. Now, putting that M in there is clearlt meant to muddy the waters, which is why actual naturopaths don't do it. They want to be accepted a legit on their own terms. But then Clement isn't even a real naturopath. He bought his 'NMD degree' from a diploma mill. So from the parents' points of view it could still be a '‘differing opinion between doctors’.

But the parents' choices are still a bit weird, though we don't have enough details to explain them. If we propose that as First Nations folks, they have a distrust of white medical insiitutions, why would they embrace a white guy from Florida uncritically even if they can't tell a fake doctor from a real one. You'd think they'd be suspicious of any paleface promises. (?) But then, this all started with the Sault family, whose identity may be more defined by Evangelical Christianity than by aboriginal heritage. So they could have been seduced more by an appeal to faith, belief in God's miracles.

Unlike J.J., who is reportedly immature, tentative, and defers to her mother whenever asked a question, Makayla Sault evidences her own will, and speaks firmly for herself. What also appears under-reported as the case has gone forward is that Makayla was having severe side effects from the chemo that had put her into the intensive care unit. She felt the chemo would kill her before the leukemia would. So she made pleas to God. Sonya Sault said "I remember I would just watch her, and listening to her pray, ‘Oh, God. Come and get me, come and take me from here'." Then Makayla reported a vision of a long-haired man appeared in her hospital room:

I asked him, ‘Can you heal me,’ and he said, ‘You are already healed,’ and he held out his hands to me and I saw the holes in his hands and I knew that it was Jesus. And he told me, ‘Do not be afraid.’ So if I live or if I die, I am not afraid. God the creator has the final say over my life."

By all reports, the chemo withdrawal was Makayla's idea. She asked her parents to take her out of the hospital. She'd been in intensive care. She said she saw Jesus. What would anyone expect Evangelical parents to do?

Sonya Sault told reporters what the McMaster Dr.s had said about taking Makayla off chemo. They'd cited a 75% survival rate for Makayla's condition, Her doctors told her family that she would have a 75 per cent chance of survival, and, “They basically said she would have 100 per cent relapse and she would die if we discontinued chemotherapy. And that going the route of traditional medicine has zero per cent success rate." Which is why I said earlier they knew the choice could be fatal.

So my guess is it went something like this: the Dr.s hadn't warned the Saults about the level of side effects Makayla experienced. When she went into intensive care, they bagan to question the Docs. The kid said she believed she was dying from the treatment, had prayed to God, and Jesus had appeared in answer to her prayers. So the devout parents aren't just looking for a miracle, they're expecting a miracle.

So they say they're going with traditional medicine because they have to say something. But the 'traditional healers' in the community are probably well known to them, and if they thought those healers were All That, they probably wouldn't have had Makayla in McMasters to begin with. Besides, as Christians, why would they have faith in 'healing' concepts based in pre-contact aboriginal theology? So I think it's just an excuse to justify meeting Makayla's request to get out of chemo, and wait for a miracle.

Enter Brain Clement. He appears out of nowhere, promising 100% cure with no side-effects whatsoever in as polished a presentation as a veteran con man can. He shows slides of HHI in West Palm. It doesn't look like a hospital. It looks better than a hospital. Maybe that looks to the Saults as the sign from God they've been expecting. Maybe Evangelicals don't double-check signs from God.

J.J.'s case seems to have a different dynamic entirely. The National Post had called McMaster's decision to refer Makayla to Brant FACS into question and argued the case should have gone to the CCB two days after FACS closed its investigation of Makayla and announced it wouldn't seek custody. So the whole CCB vs. FACS issue was in the public discussion well before McMaster referred J.J. to FACS, making that choice seem all the more bizarre,

We know a lot about the Saults from press reports. We know little or nothing about J.J. and her family. Those details could move any sort of evaluation of her case quite a bit, one way or another. E.g. was the chemo making her as sick as it had Makayla? What are these parents beliefs?

I have the feeling we're nowhere near the heart of the onion.

@sadmar

So we could say they were predisposed towards looking for something miraculous, and of course going through an emotional crisis. In other words exactly the kind of mental state that leaves them open to professional manipulation.
Clement finds a likely spot to cast his nets, and even though it might have huge holes in it, at least some of the fishies are attracted to the shiny baubly bait and get reeled in.

I expect that Clement like any good business man does his research on likley markets - in his case those might be any group who might be slightly more predisposed to 'woo' or have 'prescientific practises' as still some active part of their lives, who have perhaps some trust issues with general authority, and are potentially able to generate a bit of cash. Them being in a jurisdiction that might allow them to circumvent bothersome legal restrictions on what they can do to their children is certainly a bonus. I wonder how easy it would be to try and track his speaking engagments, or other marketing - have other native americans been victims?

Btw I see this characterzation of the band as being distrusting of *white mans medicine* or similar - and noting the irony of them falling for a white guy - I've seen that a few places on this thread.

Is that actually how the band themselves characterize the situation? I just wondered, because it seems almost like the projection of a (racist?) stereotype onto them. ("Me indian have strongeum medicine than pale man")

Isn't it possible that they are actually more politically sophisticated and modern and its actually just Government and Authority that they have a probem with, especially in regard to the upbringing of their children - and they have moved on from an essentially racial viewpoint on this?

‘Which is to say that there is nothing to “construe,” the word has no meaning.”
Huh? Which word? Yes, grammatically correct would have been ‘construe their actions’ rather than ‘construe them’.

Negligent. If you are going to say that "I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent" (while, as far as I can tell, arbitrarily excluding doing nothing regardless of belief), then you have stripped the word of meaning.

Nitpicking grammer,sematic quibbling,sophistry and paragraph formatting! You certainly are a formidable force to oppose.

I am not the one who elected to personally redefine a legal term. That is not semantic "quibbling" or "sophistry." You would have done better to have simply stuck to this from the outset:

I see her failure as the failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision about her sons life made more difficult by the fact the the whole situation, starting with their being any decision to make at all, and progressing through lies and deliberatel false statements actually designed to decieve her. And decieved she has been.
Now I don’t know every full detail here of the whole process of course, but in so far as the scenario is like I have describbed, I hold the mother blameless.

This would have made clear that the position you were advancing – in the context of a court decision – had no bearing on the law.

Isn’t it possible that they are actually more politically sophisticated and modern and its actually just Government and Authority that they have a problem with, especially in regard to the upbringing of their children – and they have moved on from an essentially racial viewpoint on this?

That's my reading of the chiefs, Judge Edward, and (just guessing) most of the community. Thus, my thought that 'trad med' is but a MacGuffin here. In that sense 'white' and 'aboriginal' now function largely as figurative references to uneven distributions of power. If you look at the statements by the chiefs, they say things like "We're not going to let them take our children away again." That is the use the general pronouns. They don't say "We're not going to let the whites take First Nations children away again."

To any extent First Nations folks may see things in racial terms, that's likely largely a reflection of mainstream society's conceptions of 'race' and policies reflecting that concept.

As I noted back at #19, Native Americans in the U.S. didn't really begin to see themselves as part of any unified racial identity until the mid-19th century. The Mdewakanton thought of themselves as Mdewakanton first, and Dakota second. They would have understood the Lakota as similar, but not the same. Cheyenne or Chippewa? No connection. This is reflected in Little Big Man where the Cheyenne word for 'Cheyenne' translates as "The Human Beings." Other tribes were not "Human Beings".

So, yeah the distrust of McMaster wouldn't be because it's literally 'white.' It's a lot more complicated. But the point remains that however the bands might identify themselves, I don't see how Brian Clement fits. So I'm still thinking the Saults vulnerability was way more a fundie Christian thing than a First Nations thing.

And yes, I think this would have t figure into any moral judgement one might make of the Saults. But the legal case is about J.J. We don't know what her parents's beliefs are. We don't what J.J.'s beliefs are, if she has any of 'her own' in the sense Makayla does. We don't know if J.J.'s chemo had put her into intensive care, or was just routinely painful.

I'm pretty sure, though, that when J.J.'s parents pulled her from chemo. Makayla had returned from Florida, was in high spirits, proclaiming herself 'cured. The leukemia had probably been knocked back by the chemo, and no longer on the IV nasty, she was feeling great. Post hoc fallacy: it must have been the wheatgrass! So maybe J.J. was just the next domino. Maybe more will be revealed... who knows?

^ Although it should be noted that what you've mostly been talking about is neglect, which related to – but not the same as – negligence. The latter is a cause of action after an injury; the former is a basis for state action to prevent injury (as well as to prevent further injury, but that's not what this case is really about).

Seeing Narad's boldface #87 I speculate JCL may have fueled the fire by using the apparently unequivocal 'blameless'. Legal definitions and judgements aside, while on a philosophical basis I'm willing to cut the parents some slack for a variety of reasons, 'blame free"? No. It seems to me that no matter how devout a 10-nyear old may be, a kid that age isn't competent to make her own decisions, and parents have some responsibility to look beyond dogma in a decision qualified experts have told them is a matter of life and death. I'm not prepared to say how much, but it's not zero.

I'm trying to read this discussion with JCL and though I can see the mother was neglecting what was best for her child, I still fail to see much difference with a parent that falls for mr. Burzynski's scheme. In both cases there is a so-called doctor, pretending to be able to cure a disease, and in both cases there is a parent seeing a child suffer and wanting the best treatment. The only difference is that in this case, there is a treatment that has been proven to work and with mr. Burzynski, there isn't.

Renate, there seems to be a vast difference between J.J.'s case where the physicians at the McMaster Children's Hospital, and the well- were able to provide J.J.'s mother with the provable data that the particular type and staging J.J.'s A.L.L responds to chemotherapeutic drugs....as opposed to Burzynski's free-standing clinic without hospital affiliations, without any qualified physicians who are trained in pediatrics, pediatric oncology/hematology

Sorry for the double post...I must have hit the "Submit Comment" button too soon.

Renate, there seems to be a vast difference between J.J.’s case where the physicians at the McMaster Children’s Hospital, who are well-trained pediatric oncologists/hematologists who were able to provide J.J.’s mother with the provable data that the particular type and staging of J.J.’s A.L.L, responds to chemotherapeutic drugs….as opposed to Burzynski’s free-standing clinic without hospital affiliations, without any qualified physicians who are trained in pediatrics, pediatric oncology/hematology and the especially false hope they raised for pediatric and adult patients who have intractable-to-treatment cancers.

Burzynski is a licensed medical doctor, as are his son and the other doctors who work for that clinic. Mr. Clement possesses at N.D. certificate from a diploma mill, whose only "consulation" appears to be a short telephone conversation with J.J.'s mother....yet Judge Edward labeled the vegan diet and some positive thinking mumbo jumbo as evidence that J.J.'s mother is following tribal religious practices.

J.J. and her parents were offered every conceivable service which we have come to expect from a terciary care children's hospital, close to home...as opposed to the downright shoddy care offered at Burzynski's clinic, where the recourse is to haul the patient in a taxicab to a hospital for admission to try and revert the dangerous hypernatramia, caused by the anteneoplastins which Burzynski prescibes to his patients and other chemotherapy drugs which have no proven record of putting patients in remission...or curing those patients. He also only makes those other drugs available through the pharmacy he owns....jacking up their costs to further fleece patients.

Clearly J.J. has been victimized by her parents' medical neglect. If those parents don't bring the child into McMaster (or another hospital) to continue her treatment, she is going to die as a result of that medical neglect.

@Narad etc

Actually I didn't introduce the discussion of the actual legal terms - and I have admitted now several times that I probably have put too much on 'intention' in my original definition of 'negligence', and I have said many times that what I am intersted in generally is:

If a person is deliberately targeted by someone intending to deceive them, and they are deceived, to what extent are they to blame for the consequences of that deception?

and then how whatever the answer to that question applies to this specific case. I find this interesting not least because I'm not entirely sure where exactly I stand on either the general or the specific, and I was under the impression that perhaps people on this blog might be able to help me clarify the issue and the answer.

It doesn't seem like that hard a question to understand, and I think that anyone reading my posts with the intention of trying to understand what I am saying would understand that -though they might admittedly have to contend with some dodgy language useage, and yes in trying to get my point across against a vertiable wall of abuse I have made the mistake of getting into semantic arguments that were, from the point of view of what I am trying to discuss, a bit of a side issue.

Narad you seem to be reading my posts simply for the purpose of finding some semantic quibbles,grammatical nitpicking and so forth, whilst skipping over the content. I'm sure that someone with your intelligence could *choose* to put that effort into trying to understand the point instead of simply trawling through them looking for examples of my misuse of language etc, but you have chosen not to, for reasons I know not, but certainly it diminishes you in my view.

So lets agree that I'm not very good at English, not very good at constructing arguments, in fact generally pretty stupid - lets take that as read. So won't you help the poor ignorant confused person understand the question as posed? Or are you going to once again trawl this post just to expose my grammatical inadequacies?
If your not interested in the question I'm posing, and since you clearly think I'm an incompetent dickhead, why are you even bothering to spend the time replying? Why don't you do something constructive like help me to express myself properly, elucidate the question clearly, or at least give me a clear understanding of why in your view the fact that *at least to some extent* this person has been victim to a conman, you don't feel that *at least to some extent* this mitigates her blame for the situation?

JCL: The subject of "medical neglect" was brought up at the top of the thread and you had ample opportunity to find out for yourself what constitutes "medical neglect"...and you didn't.

When Narad and I linked you to the legal definition of "medical neglect", you apparently do not think that applies in the case at hand. You've come up with a new definition (medical incompetence), to explain the parents action for denying their child a 90% chance of survival.

Nothing that I have stated and nothing that Narad has stated are ad hominem attacks directed at you. When you come up with a cogent argument that mitigates the parents' medical neglect, feel free to state it.

@lilady

Indeed, I made a mistake in the definition of 'medical neglect', thinking that it implied more intent than it does. This error has confused the point I was trying to make. I have held my hands up to this mistake numerous times now.

However:

'When Narad and I linked you to the legal definition of “medical neglect”, you apparently do not think that applies in the case at hand.'

This is simply untrue. I have acknowledged my mistake and most clearly many times said that I absolutely believe that it *does* apply to this case - in fact I agree in toto with almost all your statements in content (I have already said this), and stated this many times also. I believe the state should intervene (already said it numerous times), I believe the state should have intervened earlier (already said it numerous times). I completely believe that in this situation and other like it the state should interven whatever the motives etc of the parents. Said that also many times. I completely concur with:

"Clearly J.J. has been victimized by her parents’ medical neglect. If those parents don’t bring the child into McMaster (or another hospital) to continue her treatment, she is going to die as a result of that medical neglect."

I therefore have no argument about there being mitgation for their 'medical neglect', since I now understand that 'medical neglect' is really an objective statement of the situation and involves no judgement on their intentions or any other factor - I'm not even sure that it is the kind of thing that can even be said to be mitigated. If you should do me the favour of actually reading what I have written, you will undertsand that my point has nothing to do with what should happen viz a viz the children, or what should have happened. I regard these aspects as pretty incontroversial. I have said very explicitly that I don't believe practises of any sort that bring harm to a child should be allowed.

So, are you going to keep beating me up for a past failure - now admitted, corrected, and much regretted and attempt to address the question I have posed?

That question has nothing to do with the definition of 'medical neglect', or whether they can be said to be neglectful, which obviously they are, it has to do with actual fault, blame,guilt etc, on which I think the large part belongs to the conman not the conned.

You may have a different opinion on the matter - I would like to hear it and your reasoning. I think it is an important and potentially difficult ethical and moral issue, which this case highlights.

The conman is not a doctor and under the law does not have the duty to provide care (or agree to the provision of care), that J.J.'s parents have. That, after all, is the crux of the matter.

You raise extraneous issues about the conman and other conman (Andrew Wakefield), and have redefined "medical neglect" as "medical ignorance", in a feeble attempt to defend the parents' medical neglect of their child.

The first story of the unnamed girl that i read was full of PC hooey. Some of the blame goes to the ridiculous sjw mentality that is getting out of hand in Canada.

@lilady

Of FFS.
"That, after all, is the crux of the matter." Its the crux of the matter that you want to talk about - and it seems that you want to constrain anyone else from talking about anything else - its not the crux of the perfectly relevant question that I am trying to discuss. Do you set the agenda round here? If you think its OT or something (its not as faras I can see) why keep replying?

"have redefined “medical neglect” as “medical ignorance”"
Have done no such thing - did you even read my last post? At the point of saying that I was mistaken in my belief of what 'medical neglect' meant and was seeking for a phrase that implied the lack of care without necessarily intention to have lack of care. I have been corrected by yourself and Narad, I have moved on - can't you?

"in a feeble attempt to defend the parents’ medical neglect of their child." Defend? No - I don't defend any kind of neglect.

Understanding how the neglect has arisen, what steps led these people to make these horrendous decisions for their children, that is what I am after doing. I am interested in this sort of thing never arising again - I am beginnning to feel that you are quite happy for it to continue to happen as long as you get to be first in the queue for crucifying the parents

I am not that interested in 'legal duty of care'. Of course the parents have such a duty. The parents were failing in that duty. The state should have intervened to ensure the safety of tha child.
What interest me here is that JJs parents seem to have failed in their duty, in some part due to the intervention of a deliberately lying conman.

He is not extraneous - he is in my view central - you may differ from that view (for some reasons that you choose to keep hidden), but I really, really don't see how holding that view is a matter for vilification - and frankly
except for Sadmar, who does seem to understand what I am talking about - I see no rational engagment from you or anyone else with the question at all.

FFS, indeed JCL. You chose to believe that the parents were duped by the White conman from Florida, when we have proof that the mother sought him out by placing a call to the conman, after J.J. had begun her therapy. The conman definitely does not practice tribal medicine and the parents definitely do not adhere to tribal medicine when they follow the conman's raw vegan diet, cleansing enemas and "thinking good thoughts".

Judge Edward was supposed to evaluate tribal medicine, which he did not, before he issued his decision. The tribal leaders, used both cases to score political points against the Canadian government for past grievances and none of the political leaders has spoken out on behalf of Makayla, who is now dying and on behalf of J.J., who most certainly will die...both human sacrifices to tribal politics.

"He is not extraneous – he is in my view central – you may differ from that view (for some reasons that you choose to keep hidden), but I really, really don’t see how holding that view is a matter for vilification – and frankly except for Sadmar, who does seem to understand what I am talking about – I see no rational engagment from you or anyone else with the question at all."

Heh. Are you accusing me of having a hidden agenda because I don't dwell on the conman...when the court case did not address the conman at all?

I suggest you back off your defense of the medically neglecting parents which is, in fact, the crux of the matter...and the reason why Makayla and J.J. will die.

@ pat: It's all PC hooey, when parents from a minority group uses past grievances as a shield, to deny their child life saving treatment.

@lilady

"I suggest you back off your defense of the medically neglecting parents" Again with the false characterization of what I'm trying to do or anything I have said.- I am only trying to have a discussion about a certain issue. Thats the only thing I'm trying to do - have a discussion about one particular aspect - an aspect that has struck me in a certain way, and soliciting views on that aspect.

Am I not entitled to express an opinon or point out something that seems of relevant interest, or solicit discussion, just because it doesn't happen to be the exact way you want to discuss it, or your view is that its not important enough, or whatever?

"Are you accusing me of having a hidden agenda because I don’t dwell on the conman…when the court case did not address the conman at all?"
No. Don't know how you read that. Look, I see that you view the essence of the matter as being about a court case, actions of a judge, the bands and other actors, what shoud have happened wrt the childs welfare - you see Clement as pretty irrelevant really as far as that goes.

Fair enough, as far as I can see I agree pretty much in total with just about everything you've said on all these matters. I've told you that already.

The only real difference is that I happen to think Clements involvement in certain aspects is more central. Thats my view - but even if he is really quite periphery to the issue, why am I not allowed to focus on that aspect if I want? If everyone thinks its irrelevant, then I just won't get replies and thats the end of that.

Ironically, your last post almost contains what would be a plausible answer.

"You chose to believe that the parents were duped by the White conman from Florida, when we have proof that the mother sought him out by placing a call to the conman, after J.J. had begun her therapy."

Well I don't actually choose any belief here - being fully aware that I am short of facts - in fact we all are.

You propose you have proof that she saught him out rather than vice versa - well thats relevant information pertinent to the question - its not an answer to it, because theres a general scope to the way I have phrased it, but as far as the specific case goes it is certainly relevant to what extent marks are pulled rather than pushed.
Bt we'd also have to discuss th fact *that he confidently assured her thtat he could cure her child*. That bit is the con going in, and I personally would like for instance to hear from some of the pschologically trained minions hereaouts about the effect of confidently presented, opimistic and reassuring statements presented to people who are predisposed to believing it.
If that topic doesn't interest you, or anyone else, why not just leave it alone - no-one here is trying to justify parental negelct.

However, my point isn’t actually about the meaning of words its about the attribution of blame in this case. I see this child and her mother, at least to some degree, as victims.

Who is blaming the mother? Let me remind you of your first comment:

There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents here.

Where the hell was it? In the 25 preceding comments, the only thing close was this statement by lilady:

The parents are medically neglecting their child because they cannot, or will not, deal with the realities of their child’s cancer diagnosis. They’d rather stay in denial and deny their child the only chance she has for long term survival.

The first sentence is unquestionably factually true, leaving the second as the "lot of opprobium" that you stepped in to correct. Since then, you have gone off on a fruitless tangent, complained that nobody's heeding your insistence that your bland observation "lead to some interesting discussion," and done nothing else that I can discern.

Gah, cat-on-arm strikes again. I'll just repost, and if Orac sees this, he can flush the comment from "Marad":

However, my point isn’t actually about the meaning of words its about the attribution of blame in this case. I see this child and her mother, at least to some degree, as victims.

Who is blaming the mother? Let me remind you of your first comment:

There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents here.

Where the hell was it? In the 25 preceding comments, the only thing close was this statement by lilady:

The parents are medically neglecting their child because they cannot, or will not, deal with the realities of their child’s cancer diagnosis. They’d rather stay in denial and deny their child the only chance she has for long term survival.

The first sentence is unquestionably factually true, leaving the second as the "lot of opprobrium" that you stepped in to correct. Since then, you have gone off on a fruitless tangent, complained that nobody's heeding your insistence that your bland observation "lead to some interesting discussion," and done nothing else that I can discern.

So,
'There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents'
'seems' indicates my perception - if it is incorrect then something like:
'JCL I think you are mistaken that there is a lot of opprobrium against the parents' - would have been an answer. Your right maybe its simply subjective view. Coloured no doubt substantially by the fact that I feel personally some anger and disgust to the parents. Funny how no-one has conradicted me and said this - so are you actually saying that you and lilady feel no anger whatsoever against the parents - you don't feel disgusted by them, not even a little bit?

'Since then, you have gone off on a fruitless tangent'
Whether its tangential is debatable - I don't think so, you do - apparently round here its simply not allowed to disagree with you about what might be relevant or interesting to discuss. It is certainly fruitless now - even if anyone wanted to put in some form of actual reply you and lilady have made it pretty plain that thy will be clubbed to death for their temerity in having an opinion or wishing to discuss something not sanctioned by you.

"complained that nobody’s heeding your insistence that your bland observation “lead to some interesting discussion,"
I've mainly complained that my apparently bland,tangential, uninteresting and irrelevnat obvservations are being made the subject of a major shutdown operation - and you know what? I can't even figure out why you regard it as so objectionable.

So, obviously you guys have nothing better to do than spend time reading my posts purely for the purpose of 'catching me out' rather than with any attempt to actualy engage.

I am struggling to understand what you think my motives here are, or what you think you are catching me out at.

I don't think one sentence that you or lilady has written have addressed any of the substance I'm trying to get across, and you have completely failed to give me any idea at all about what specifically you find so objectionable.

@ Narad:
'
As long as it wasn't Marad Sade.

at least my creature doesn't sit on my arm: he sits on the keyboard and/ or the satelllite receiver ( he's large enough to cover both)

I once knew a multi-millionaire who's son was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. The father chose an alternative medicine including gold-enemas and whatever else. The son is alive today (who knows why - bad initial diagnosis?) 40 years later. No one dared question that father's right to decide for his son. And therein lies the question. Should the state decide the fate of a child over the parents? Assuming of course, that the parents are generally of sound mind and honestly believe that their decision is in the child's best interest. This question is fundamental when you consider the miserable consequences when the state made these decisions for aboriginal people in the not so distant past.

Should the state decide the fate of a child over the parents? Assuming of course, that the parents are generally of sound mind and honestly believe that their decision is in the child’s best interest.

There's a lot of detail buried in "generally of sound mind," now, isn't there?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/florida-spa-that-treated-first-nation… "Florida spa that treated First Nation girls with cancer faces lawsuits from ex-staff
Director Brian Clement giving false hope, putting patients at risk, nurse says"

Thanks, jypsy, I was just about to post that link. The interview with the director says all you need to know.

Pugh's complaint, No. 502014CA002611XXXXMB in Palm Beach County, was filed in March. It appears that the others have been consolidated under it.

Orac said (emphasis added):

The statement above is simply untrue, and, given that the chiefs must know that what Brian Clement offers is not traditional medicine, it’s hard not to see this statement as, under the most charitable interpretation, disingenuous as hell, and a lie if you’re not as charitable. (At the very minimum there’s a massive case of cognitive dissonance.) Indeed, the other girl, Makayla Sault, is also relying on Brian Clement. Ironically, she is was not even led to her decision to refuse chemotherapy by following the traditional beliefs of her people in that her father is a pastor at an evangelical church and Sault stopped chemotherapy after reporting having seen a vision of Jesus in her hospital room telling her that she was already healed. She is now critically ill, her cancer having predictably relapsed several months after she stopped her chemotherapy.

Makayla Sault has died. See:
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/01/aboriginal-rights-trump-necessary-treat…

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer

oracknows — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 09:30:09 +0000

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer

A few weeks ago, Steve Novella invited me on his podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, to discuss a cancer case that has been in the news for several months now. The case was about an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who is a member of Canada’s largest aboriginal community. Steve wrote about this case nearly a month ago. Basically, the girl’s parents have been fighting for the right to use “natural healing” on their daughter after they stopped her chemotherapy in August because of side effects. It is a profoundly disturbing case, just as all the other cases I’ve discussed in which children’s lives are sacrificed at the altar of belief in alternative medicine, but this one has a twist that I don’t recall having dealt with before: The girl’s status as part of the First Nations. Sadly, on Friday, Ontario Court Justice Gethin Edward has ruled that the parents can let their daughter die.

The First Nations consist of various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently more than 630 recognized First Nations governments or bands in Canada, half of which are located in Ontario and British Columbia. This girl lives in Ontario, which is basically just next door to Detroit, just across the Detroit River. Unlike previous cases of minors who refuse chemotherapy or whose parents refuse chemotherapy for them that I’ve discussed, such as Sarah Hershberger, an Amish girl whose parents were taken to court by authorities in Medina County, Ohio at the behest of Akron General Hospital, where she had been treated because they stopped her chemotherapy for lymphoblastic lymphoma in favor of “Katie Wernecke, Abraham Cherrix, Daniel Hauser, Jeremy Fraser, Jacob Stieler, Sarah Hershberger, or others, follow a very similar script. It’s a script that on many an occasion has led me to quote Elton John sadly, “I’ve seen that movie, too.” Here’s the basic script:

A child is diagnosed with a treatable, curable pediatric cancer. (Note that most pediatric cancers are among the most curable cancers there are. Pediatric leukemias and lymphomas, for example, have gone from a virtually-zero survival rate 50 years ago to survival rates that approach 90% or even more. Truly, if there is a triumph of science based medicine, it is in pediatric cancers.)
The child begins chemotherapy, going through part of the recommended protocol, and suffers the expected side effects.
The parents, who quite naturally have a hard time watching their child suffer, hear about some quackery or other that promises to treat their child without the side effects of chemotherapy. If they are prone to belief in “natural healing” or alternative medicine, there is a good chance that they will stop their child’s chemotherapy and opt for the promise of the “natural healing” that claims to be a cure without the pain.
Doctors, alarmed at the likelihood that the child will die, report the child to the child protective service authorities, who intervene.
There is a court case. If the court case goes against the parents, frequently they flee with the child, as Daniel Hauser’s mother did, as did the parents of Katie Wernecke, Abraham Cherrix, and Sarah Hershberger, among others.
At this point, one of two things happens. Either the parents are persuaded or ordered to treat their child properly (as in the case of Daniel Hauser); they come to some sort of compromise that allows the child to get some treatment plus “alternative healing” (as in the case of Abraham Cherrix); or, a depressingly common outcome, they win the “right” to let their child die through medical neglect, as has just happened with this First Nations girl with lymphoma.
Through it all, quacks leap on these stories as examples of “fascism,” and “gunpoint medicine” in order to promote their world view of “health freedom” (otherwise known to skeptics as the freedom from pesky laws and regulations outlawing fraud and quackery), as happened in virtually all these cases, but most notably recently for the case of Sarah Hershberger.

How do these stories end? Sometimes they end with the death of the child. Sometimes the child lives (I’ll explain why a little later). Ofttimes it’s very difficult to find out what happened to the child, as I’ve found out to my frustration over the years. For instance, I have not been able to find out much about Sarah Hershberger since March, when Tracy Oppenheimer of Reason.com defended her medical neglect in the name of health freedom. (What are the deaths of some children with cancer compared to health freedom, eh?)

This First Nations case adds a different spin on the subject, but the script remains more or less the same. This time around, the parents have won the right to let their daughter die a horrible death from cancer based on Aboriginal rights.

Aboriginal children now have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment in favour of traditional healing.

The Friday ruling has nothing to do with whether aboriginal medicine works.

Family court heard unequivocally in the case of a First Nations girl refusing chemotherapy that no child has survived acute lymphoblastic leukemia without treatment.

Instead, it’s about Canada’s Constitution protecting aboriginal rights.

Ontario Court Justice Gethin Edward has now expanded those rights to include traditional healing, saying “there is no question it forms an integral part.”

“This is monumental for our people all across the country,” said Six Nations Chief Ava Hill. “This is precedent-setting for us.”

No doubt this ruling is monumental and precedent-setting, but in a very bad way. So, in other words, our neighbor to the south (at least to me in southeast Michigan, which is the only place where Canada is to the south) have declared that letting children die of cancer is an “integral” part of Aboriginal identity. I am not exaggerating. The court apparently didn’t even take into account whether the “natural healing” chosen by the girl’s family works. Meanwhile, Six Nations Chief Ava Hill is exulting over the ruling, apparently unconcerned that it will result in the death of an 11 year old girl. As I’ve said many times before, a competent adult should have the right to choose any form of medicine he likes or even to choose no treatment at all, but children are different. They are not capable of understanding the implications of their decision, and this girl, at 11 years old, isn’t even in the gray area of the later teen years where an argument can sometimes be made for self-determination even though the child is a minor. They need and deserve protection from such outrageously bad choices on the part of the parents.

This case is a complete failure on the part of the province of Ontario and of Canada itself to protect the lives of its most vulnerable members, children, particularly children of a minority group. Even worse, it is an indictment of the First Nations, which, rather than seeking to protect one of the most vulnerable members of its community, a girl with a treatable, potentially curable cancer, instead glommed onto this case as a vehicle to promote its rights vis-a-vis the Canadian government. I don’t think it was cynically done; no doubt the leaders of this particular First Nations community and Six Nations Chief Ava Hill believe in their Aboriginal natural healing. On the other hand, it’s hard not to think that there was some opportunism given that the parents appear not to have even chosen to use Aboriginal “natural healing” techniques.

Instead, they are using the rankest quackery, which has nothing to do with aboriginal natural medicine, administered by Brian Clement in a “massage establishment” in Florida:

A Florida health resort licensed as a “massage establishment” is treating a young Ontario First Nations girl with leukemia using cold laser therapy, Vitamin C injections and a strict raw food diet, among other therapies.

The mother of the 11-year-old girl, who can not be identified because of a publication ban, says the resort’s director, Brian Clement, who goes by the title “Dr.,” told her leukemia is “not difficult to treat.”

Another First Nations girl, Makayla Sault, was also treated at Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach and is now critically ill after a relapse of her leukemia.

Somehow, I doubt that the traditional healing methods used by First Nations people have ever included cold laser therapy or vitamin C injections. Looking at Makalaya Sault, you will see the future of this First Nations girl: Relapse. But what about Brian Clement? It turns out that I’ve written about him before.

In brief, Clement is, in my opinion, a quack. If you have any doubt, start by looking at what he is quoted as saying in this news story:

He’s been giving lectures in and around both girls’ communities in recent months, including one event attended by Makayla’s family this past May.

In a video obtained by CBC News, Clement says his institute teaches people to “heal themselves” from cancer by eating raw, organic vegetables and having a positive attitude.
“We've had more people reverse cancer than any institute in the history of health care,” he says.

“So when McGill fails or Toronto hospital fails, they come to us. Stage four (cancer), and they reverse it.”

The mother of the girl whose identity is protected says she knew as soon as her daughter was diagnosed that she wanted to seek treatment at Hippocrates, a clinic she was familiar with through a relative, but didn’t have the money to go.

After securing financial support from family, she called Clement from the hospital waiting room on the 10th day of her daughter’s chemotherapy.

The story goes on to describe how the mother called Clement while her child was receiving chemotherapy and found how “confident” he sounded. As soon as he said he could help, the mother quit the chemotherapy for her daughter.

It’s all depressingly similar to a story I encountered about a year ago. It was the story of a young mother in Ireland who had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and chosen the “alternative route.” She, like the anonymous young First Nations girl and Makayla Sault, found her way to the Hippocrates Health Institute. The young woman, Stephanie O’Halloran, was only 23 years old, an age range at which breast cancer is rare, but not unheard of.

These are the sorts of things Clement offers through HHI's "Life Transformation Program":

Superior nutrition through a diet of organically-grown, enzyme-rich, raw, life-giving foods
Detoxification
Wheatgrass therapies, green juice, juice fasting
Colonics, enemas, implants
Exercise, including cardio, strength training and stretching
Far infrared saunas, steam room
Ozone pools, including: dead sea salt, swimming, jacuzzi and cold plunge
Weekly massages
Bio-energy treatments
Med-spa & therapy services

That’s not all. Read my old post for more details. Basically, almost every form of cancer quackery known to humans is available at the HHI.

This is the “alternative healing” that the First Nations girl’s mother has chosen instead of effective chemotherapy. In essence, the parents and First Nations petitioned Ontario courts and Justice Gethin Edward acquiesced to letting First Nations parents have the right to let their children die through medical neglect. It might well be that Justice Edward’s ruling was legally correct and he had no real choice, but the end result will be the same: The death of a girl who otherwise would have a very good chance of living a long and productive life. Worse, his reasoning included this:

But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.

“Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?” asked Justice Edward, noting that the girl’s mother believes she is doing what is best for her daughter.

“Are we to second guess her and say ‘You know what, we don’t care?’ … Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.”

Every parent who chooses quackery over effective medicine believes she is doing what’s best for her child. Every single one of them. The same is true of parents who thought that prayer could cure pneumonia or diabetes. That’s not a reason to deny such children protection. More disturbing, however, is Justice Edward’s last sentence, in which he seems to be shrugging his shoulders and saying, “So what if a few aboriginal children die anyway? It’s just their culture.” Or, as Steve aptly put it, using human sacrifice as a reductio ad absurdum of the judge’s argument: “Are we to second guess her and say ‘You know what, we don’t care?’ … Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to survive infancy without being sacrificed for that culture to have value.”

It’s understandable, given Canada’s history of riding roughshod over the wishes of First Nations families, such as the case of residential schools pointed out by Arthur Schafer, that the court would want to bend over backwards to respect the wishes of the parents. However, in doing so, Justice Edward utterly failed to take the best interests of the child into proper account.

How does this sort of thing happen?

Steve also correctly noted that the outcome of such legal battles often hinge on the reasons given by the parents for refusing chemotherapy. If, for example, they simply use medical opinions as a justification (i.e., they disagree with their doctors), the state is usually pretty quick and decisive in taking action. This is the sort of situation that ruled Daniel Hauser’s case, and ultimately Hauser underwent effective chemotherapy and lived. If, on the other hand, religion or culture is used as justification for choosing quackery over effective treatment, courts seem to be much less willing to step in and see that the child receive effective treatment. For instance, in 2009 Catherine and Herbert Schaible in the Philadelphia area to choose prayer over antibiotics for pneumonia for their first child. The child died. The Schaibles received ten years' probation and had to promise, in essence, that their other children, who were not removed from their care, would receive modern medical care. In 2013, a second child, who was 8 months old at the time, died the same way. It took the second death of a child before the state actually took their children away and put them in jail. The same dynamic came into play in the case of Sarah Hershberger, where Medina County authorities were reluctant to be too harsh because they were Amish, and their culture valued “natural healing.” Clearly, the same dynamic has led to Justice Edward’s tragic decision with respect to this First Nations girl.

Also at play is an attitude that ascribes absolute rights to parents over their children. It’s a toxic attitude that is often mixed with a general distrust of government and medical authority that fails to acknowledge that children are separate beings with their own rights separate from the rights of the parents. Those rights include the right to not to suffer from medical neglect. As has been pointed out, parents don’t have the right to kill their children; they shouldn’t have the right to let them die through medical neglect, as the parents of this First Nations child are doing.

For all my railing against the medical system, what’s really critical here is understanding why parents make these choices. Having a child with cancer is a horrible, terrifying thing to go through. Having to watch a child suffer the complications of chemotherapy with the child not understanding why it’s necessary is even harder. It’s very understandable that parents with a tendency toward believing in natural medicine or with just a distrust of medical authorities in general would be tempted by the siren song of quacks claiming that they can cure the child without all the toxic side effects of chemotherapy. In particular, it’s often hard for parents to understand why, after tumors frequently shrink away to nothing after the first couple of courses of chemotherapy, more chemotherapy is needed.

Unfortunately, for most pediatric tumors it takes a lot more than just a round or two of chemotherapy, a lesson painfully learned by pioneering pediatric oncologists back in the 1960s and 1970s. For the type of tumor that, for example, Sarah Hershberger has, lymphoblastic lymphoma, the duration of one standard treatment is two years. For chemotherapy for lymphoma, there are at least three phases. The induction phase is designed to put the patient into remission. Consolidation chemotherapy is given to patients who have gone into remission and is designed to kill off any residual cancer cells that might be present, thus increasing the chance of complete cure. Maintenance chemotherapy is the ongoing, longer term use of chemotherapy to lower the risk of recurrence after a cancer has gone into remission. It's basically lower-dose chemotherapy given for two to three years to help keep the cancer from returning. In Sarah Hershberger's case, her oncologist recommended chemotherapy consisting of five phases: induction (5 weeks), consolidation (seven weeks), interim maintenance (eight weeks), delayed intensification (six weeks), and maintenance (90 weeks), for a total duration of two years, three months. In the case of this First Nations girl, who has lymphoblastic leukemia, the treatment would have involved at least three phases: remission induction, consolidation/intensification, and maintenance lasting a similar amount of time.

It’s thus understandable how parents, after seeing the tumor melt away during induction chemotherapy, wonder why all this additional chemotherapy is needed. It’s quite possible that after induction chemotherapy the First Nations girl had no detectable cancer. If that's the case, it's the chemotherapy that she's received thus far that almost certainly caused that result, not any quackery to which Clement has been subjecting her. If the girl is apparently tumor-free, it also means that failing to consolidation and maintenance chemotherapy greatly increases the chance that her leukemia will relapse. Worse, relapsed cancer is always harder to treat. The first shot at treating cancer is always the best shot, with the best odds of eradicating the cancer. Letting cancer relapse through incomplete treatment breeds resistant tumor cells the same way that not finishing a complete course of antibiotics contributes to the development of resistant bacteria. It's evolution in action.

Some children will be fortunate enough to have had their cancer eliminated completely after induction and will survive to become testimonials used in support of such parents’ actions, but they are the minority. Depending on when the chemotherapy is stopped relative to the complete recommended course, most will not be so lucky. Parents also often have a view that it is the chemotherapy that is the cause of the child’s suffering, believing that if they stopped the chemotherapy the suffering would stop, and even if the child dies it would not be as bad for her as the chemotherapy. Unfortunately, death from cancer is not pretty. It’s worse than chemotherapy. Stopping chemotherapy early might relieve suffering for a while, but only at the price of an ugly death later.

Somehow, there has to be a way to get such parents to see this, to teach them the very basics of cancer biology, why chemotherapy regimens for pediatric malignancies are as long as they are, and what the consequences of not finishing chemotherapy are. Remember, the parents are almost always only interested in what they believe to be best for their child, and they are suffering in a different way as they watch their child suffer the side effects of chemotherapy. When their child is crying that she can’t take it any more, when she’s vomiting and feeling very sick due to the chemotherapy, it’s very hard for parents to see that it’s worth this pain if the tumor is already gone. They need support systems to help them deal with this. Most pediatric cancer centers provide such support, but it isn’t always enough. Again, although my memory is by no means comprehensive, since I started paying attention to these cases ten years ago, I can’t recall a single case of parents who refused chemotherapy for their child until after the child had undergone at least a couple of cycles and suffered the expected side effects. I’m sure such parents probably exist, but they must be rare, because I’ve paid a lot of attention to these sorts of cases over the years, and I can’t recall one.

Finally, when faced with parents wanting to stop chemotherapy, oncologists have to be very careful not to come across as bullying, something I suspect that they sometimes do without realizing it when hearing a parent tell them she is going to stop chemotherapy. It’s understandable that physicians and nurses would react that way. Pediatric oncologists become pediatric oncologists because they want to save the lives of children with cancer, and nurses working on pediatric oncology wards work there for the same reason. It’s understandable that they react with alarm to such pronouncements by parents and might become angry or strident. After all, the child is their patient, not the parents, and the parents have just become an obstacle to saving the child’s life. When parents threaten to stop chemotherapy, it is often a cry for help; they’re telling doctors that they can’t handle seeing their child undergo chemotherapy any more. Sensitivity is required in working with them.

None of this, however, means that, if push comes to shove and the parents can’t be moved with all the understanding and empathy in the world, the interests of the child shouldn’t come first. The interests of the child must come first, and if parents can’t be persuaded to continue treatment of a highly curable tumor, then the state has a duty to step in. It’s a duty at which Ontario and Canada have failed in the case of this First Nations girl. It’s also a duty that First Nations authorities who supported the parents in filing suit have utterly failed to uphold.

oracknows Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:30

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Orac, I'd like to offer another dimension to what is going on in Ontario.

Before I begin, I absolutely agree that what is happening to this child is a tragedy that will lead to a lingering and painful death. I'm banging my head on the table as I write this.

But having worked with First Nation tribes in North Dakota, I have some understanding of their history and culture that explains why Chief Hill responded the way he did. These cultures were systematically targeted for destruction by both the American and Canadian governments in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Children were stolen from their parents and placed in "boarding schools" where they were treated horribly, and punished severely for speaking in their native languages or following their tribal customs or culture.

Both governments systematically violated many, if not all, of the treaties signed with the tribes.

There is a long standing history of mistrust between First Nation tribes and the American and Canadian governments as a result. That mistrust is why Chief Hill sees this as a tribal matter rather than a medical one. I'm not condoning it. I simply understand where they are coming from.

To really get how many of these tribal members feel about paternalistic whites, you've got to meet them. They have an anger about it that is very real and runs very deep. Not all First Nation members feel that way. But many do, and it impacts tribal relations with both the American and Canadian governments; it's real and it can't be ignored or wished away.

And I think the judge gets it as well. I don't think he misunderstands what's at stake here. I think, like the parents, he wants what is best for the child. I think he's trying to balance the interests of justice in a case that has more than one dimension. The fall out is, the child will die. And I think the judge has lost some sleep thinking about that.

Until our governments are willing to crack down on quackery through regulation, these tragedies will continue. Desperate parents will always resort to quackery if it is available because that's what desperate people do: they grasp as straws.

The only solution is to make the quackery unavailable. So we need to develop the political will to do that. And in our current anti-science political environment, that isn't going to happen soon.

That is beautifully said, Panacea. The level of distrust for "paternalistic medicine" that your average crunchy-granola-warrior-mom has cannot hold a tiny candle the inferno of justifiable rage many of the First Nations have for the indignities to which they were subjected. "Paternalistic" would be an Orwellian euphemism for what was done to them; a better word would be "eugenics". And it really hasn't stopped; although there are now laws protecting native children from being taken away by CPS on the basis that being raised native is bad for them, it does still happen. If the child is from a relatively powerful tribe, like the Cherokee, the parents may prevail. Sometimes. It doesn't help that the conditions on the reservation are often quite dire, so the children legitimately are at more risk. But there is a particularly cruel irony to forcing people into horrible living conditions and then taking away their children because they have horrible living conditions.

In this sad case, a child is going to die because the parents are being exploited by a quack; it has nothing to do with preserving their heritage. But I too can sympathize with the chief in this case, and with the judge, who know all too well how slippery the slope is in the case of native children. It has not been long at all since it was common practice to simply seize the children, since it would be "better" if they were raised by good, white, Christian families.

It is the quacks in this case that I hold in the most contempt, and I hope there's a special place in hell for those who prey upon the most vulnerable.

From the quoted article:

Aboriginal children now have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment in favour of traditional healing.

Hah. No, they don't. Their parents have the right to refuse it for them. I wish the press would be more clear on this point, because it's a very important distinction.

Could the state of Florida intervene? As I write this, I realize how completely unlikely that solution is.
Can they shut down the Hippocrates "Health" Center? I suppose not, and even if they could, they wouldn't.
Or even more unlikely, couldn't the federal government refuse entry to the U.S.?

Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?” asked Justice Edward..."

Hell, yes.

<blockquote...noting that the girl’s mother believes she is doing what is best for her daughter.

One wonders if the judge also also find in favor of a fundamentalist parent who wanted to reject standard medical care for their child with leukemia, who wanted instead to go with traditional treatment comprised of laying on of hands and intercessory prayer.

After all, that parent would also be doing what they believed was best for their child.

I am a social worker in Canada. I completely understand the fears of the FN community with regards to imposed cultural practices. The residential school system nearly killed an entire generation.
That being said, if this child was a Jehova's witness, the child protection system would have steped in. The issue here is CPS did not. The university had to take CPS to court to get them to do their job. I have worked for CPS. If this case came on my desk I would not hesitate to step in.
The challenging history between Canada and its FN popuation while complex should not, in my opinion, mean this girl should have to die.
But when you try explaining that to other social workers in my area, I am called a racist. Apparently I am supposed to believe that quackery will work.

THis case really really makes me sad. WHen this girl dies, the family is going to blame the few treatments of Chemo she got instead of the lack of treatment after.

I should add the supreme court of canada decided that as of age 14 the child may argue their competency. This child is 11 years old so she would not be deemed competent to make her own medical decisions. For that reason it comes down to the competency of the parents to make that decision. I would argue that this case is a no brainer and the child should be "removed" to get the treatment she needs to live.

But when you try explaining that to other social workers in my area, I am called a racist. Apparently I am supposed to believe that quackery will work.

When I hear this charge, I like to ask: What's more racist? To fight to save the life of a First Nations girl, or to shrug one's shoulders and say, "Well, it's just an aborigine girl," which is basically what the attitude of letting these parents choose comes down to?

But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.

Yes indeed, aboriginal minds cannot comprehend what you call "statistics." Aborigines no doubt think that "science" is white-man's magic and electricity is demons in the wires. Our cultures are so different, they cannot and should not be expected to think rationally like we do.

I'm sorry, but how is this attitude anything other than racist? I don't care whether it's coming from the judge or the native leaders.

"it’s about Canada’s Constitution protecting aboriginal rights"

You'd think the right to life would be protected in there somewhere.

Here's the end of Stephanie O'Halloran's tragic story (the young Irish mother mentioned in Orac's previous posting on Hippocrates Health Institute). The end would have been the same without HHI, of course, except the money raised for Ms O'Halloran might have gone somewhere where it would have done some good.

http://www.rip.ie/showdn.php?dn=226463/StephanieO_HALLORAN/Garryowen/Li…

Does the Six Nations tribe not have anything comparable to our social services? Is removing a child from a dangerous situation over the wishes of a parent just not done?

I looked into this Friday, when it came up on the Dose of Woo thread. Orac seems to have distorted the issue before the court in the OP above. The politics surrounding the specific case seem pretty complicated. The Toronto Star noted the judge was ruling on an application by the hospital “to have the girl apprehended” by the government chartered Family and Children’s Services Agency in the area “and forced into treatment.” However, the agency had refused to intervene, and it’s executive director supported the family in the trial.

So the case was about jurisdiction in the last analysis. To rule other than he did, the judge would have been saying the court has the authority to compel the FACS to forcibly apprehend a First Nations child and place her in protective custody, against not only the will of the parents, but against the decision of the FACS agency.

The First Nations communities obviously had reasons to oppose that having nothing to do with medicine. Six Nations Chief Ava Hill said, "“We have a right to look after our own kids, We’re not going to let anyone take our kids. This is a big boost for this.” The mother of the girl the hospital was seeking to force into treatment said, ""As a member of the Six Nations Confederacy, I will not have my decisions of health care for my child debated and judged in the Canadian judicial system.… The Canadian judicial system does not have the authority to determine our law or practices, which predates the existence of Canada, valid or otherwise."

The Star also noted Hill and the leader of the other major tribe in the area, New Credit Chief Bryan LaForme, are raising the prospect of the First Nations creating their own child welfare agency.

What's not clear from the few news stories I've seen linked is how the First Nations communities as a whole, and especially the leadership, actually view 'alternative medicine.' Why would the leaders seek to create their own child welfare agency unless they were concerned that children may need protection from their families?

It’s not clear from the few news stories I've seen linked whether the First Nations communities in question actually support the families’ decisions to withdraw their daughters from chemo, or just oppose Canadian government intervention. I've seen no indication that Ava Hill believes in Aboriginal healing as a cancer cure, or is "unconcerned [the ruling] will result in the death of an 11 year old girl."

Rather than appeal the decision, the hospital is trying to “reach out” to the family. I’d guess they figure that’s the best way to get the girls back into chemo, which suggests they have reason to believe the parents might be persuadable, perhaps by working through the Chiefs. With Makalaya Sault having gone into relapse the parents may come to take a more skeptical view of Brian Clement's scam promises. It's premature to assume these children are doomed.

Again, I have no idea how woo-ish Hill, LaForme of other influential members of the New Credit or Six Nations communities may be. They would have to VERY woo-ish to misunderstand the political situation. They have just won an important ruling on self-determination that will come under severe threat if Makalaya Sault or the girl in the court case die without seeking chemo. Having established jurisdiction over their communitiy's children, they now face considerable political pressure to act in those kid's best interests. The decision will be validated if the First Nations get the girls back into treatment at McMaster and they survive. The consequences may not be lost on the parents either.

On numerous occasions I've witnessed a 'kill the messenger first, then consider the message' phenomenon. An institution or individual with authority has established policy X. A subordinate presents a forceful argument that X is misguided, leads to results undesired by all, and urges implementation of reforms Y. Seeing their authority challenged, the powers that be not only reject Y, but push the subordinate out for failure to conform. After a short interim of forced forgetting once the unruly subordinate has departed the scene, some version of Y is implemented by TPTB, having been magically transformed now into their idea.

I wonder of the same thing might be happening here. I wouldn't be surprised if Judge Edward understands this, and the case is more political theater than it may appear on the surface. It might even have been a done deal from the get-go, with the tribes letting Edward know that if he ruled against the McMaster petition, they'd provide him political cover by doing what they can to get the kids back into chemo. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if both McMaster and the family in the case were in on the deal. Why didn't McMaster apply to get Makalaya Sault forced back into chemo in the first place, and why did they not include her in the application just denied by the court? Could everyone involved have understood the Sault's Evangelical commitments to spiritual healing are so strong, Makalaya would indeed be doomed once the judge made the only ruling he could make without totally shattering the legal framework of Aboriginal rights? Could the un-named family in the case even have been recruited exactly because they would be willing to put their daughter back into McMaster once the court established the Canadian authorities did not have the power to force them to do so?

Obviously, I don't know the answers, and any speculation may be wishful thinking. But I've seen enough politics play out to know that things are often not what they seem. This affair may not be over, and a happier ending may emerge than the one Orac has envisioned.

I’m sorry, but how is this attitude anything other than racist? I don’t care whether it’s coming from the judge or the native leaders.

It's been pointed out to me elsewhere that Justice Edward is partly of aboriginal descent and that he's been a champion of aboriginal rights, including having worked to get a separate court for them. Now, on the one hand, I could understand why Ontario might have chosen a judge like this, but on the other hand he strikes me as anything but unbiased.

Also, methinks Sadmar is engaging in seriously wishful thinking if he thinks this was a "done deal" from the get-go and that the docs or social workers at McMaster will be likely to persuade the parents to resume chemotherapy. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I don't think I am. As tragic as Makalaya Sault's case is (even if her family resumes chemotherapy, now that she's relapsed it's much less likely to be successful than the first time around given how breaks in chemotherapy allow resistant cancer clones to arise), maybe it will be the prod in the posterior the family needs to see what is going to happen if they don't treat their daughter with known effective chemotherapy regimens.

I wouldn't bet on it, though.

In Italy, hundreds of court sentences have decided to put many childrens on pseudoscientific stem cells treatment.

http://brescia.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/14_giugno_06/stamina-sentenz…

Aside from the death of a child who could be saved, there is another thing that make me ragey in this article.
Here it is:

"But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said."

This is utter and complete bullshit.
This is like saying that the idea that the Earth is a spheroid is contrary to aborigenal culture (I don't know if it is , using a metaphor here).
This is the sort of post-modernist BS that imply that science is "western stuff".
No.
It isn't.
I bet that a First Nation person could become an amazing scientist. There are scientists everywhere, in Asia and Africa and South America and Oceania. GOOD scientists, who do science because science is for EVERYBODY.
It is not something that belongs to this or that culture. Yes, it was invented in Europe, but that is it. It is like me saying that I shouldn't study algebra, because that has been invented by Muslim and as such is not part of my culture.
It is utter bollocks. Period.

4. Doctors, alarmed at the likelihood that the child will die the parents would allow the child to hit the hashpipe to alleviate some *side effects*, report the child to the child protective service authorities, who intervene.

fixed it for him.

It’s been pointed out to me elsewhere that Justice Edward is partly of aboriginal descent and that he’s been a champion of aboriginal rights, including having worked to get a separate court for them. Now, on the one hand, I could understand why Ontario might have chosen a judge like this, but on the other hand he strikes me as anything but unbiased.

I suppose the reasoning behind chosing him, could be, that if he wouldn't decide in favour of the parents, they were less likely to accuse him of racism.

If I look at the pictures of the team of the Hippocrates Health Center, I mostly see white people. So apparently white quacks are better than white doctors.

Last month I went to my niece's wedding. Dancing at the wedding were the 7 year old twins, her sister's kids. Several years back one of the twins was diagnosed with leukemia. Now he's in remission, he's keeping up with his twin, and it was joyous to see them and their terrible little boy dancing.

There is no question the treatment was horrible at times. The fear was real. The pain, unthinkable. The boy's mom describing how she had to hold him for the spinal taps. Really, it takes strength that not everyone has--or thinks they have.

But it's over, and it worked. And I stood watching them and wondered what it would have been like if they had bailed on the treatment. It would have been decades of sadness at all the family events, and this kid would not have been there. Now he has a chance at the rest of his life, and I hope we will dance at his wedding someday.

I wonder if there are outreach videos from parents who made it through. I hope so. I am sure it will never be easy, but maybe if they heard from other parents....

Sigh.

In case I haven't mentioned it, Sarah Hershberger's guardianship is still in effect a month after the October 17 motion hearing (the nature of which isn't specified on the docket).

Has anyone heard how Sarah Hershberger is doing? I haven't been able to find anything out, even with my mad Google skillz. Is she OK? Has her cancer recurred?

As I mentioned above, the most recent news I could find was that execrable Reason.com apologia for health freedom.

On February 13, there was an "Order Establishing Media Coverage Conditions," so that may have something do with the lack of stories.

Oh, and it appears that the motion hearing was likely on the June 18 motion to terminate guardianship.

^ Or the July 21 motion to terminate. I find the Medina probate site rather difficult to parse.

The other Aboriginal child,Makayla Sault, is terminally ill.
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5028666-aboriginal-girl-who-refused-c…

The Band also raised money to send her to that butcher in Florida. He should be in a lockup in that State. I used to practice in Florida and was amazed at that quackery that was there, and that was in the late 70s and early 80s. What happened in Ontario will just repeat itself until our legislators face up to their responsibility to our children. It doesn't matter that she is an Aboriginal.

Here is a view from an Aboriginal healthworker from the area. She is shocked at what happened and the irresponsibility of the Band and her family, not to mention the courts.

http://deyoyonwatheh.blogspot.ca/2014/11/criminal-negligence-two-local-…

BTW, HIN has a recent, garbled story (the years don't match the "Free Christopher" FB page) on an allegedly similar story. I say "alleged" because a search of the Maricopa County probate court docket search turns up nothing.

In the United States, Native American reservations officially have the legal status, in many ways, of separate countries - notwithstanding relatively recent FBI murders, ongoing land thefts, etc. Tribes are considered to be nations that have the right to govern themselves, and though that right has been seriously limited by various federal actions, the principle of tribal sovereignty prohibits most state government interference on lands where tribal laws apply. This is why various tribes were eventually able to make a living by running casinos or selling cigarettes in ways not permitted on white-ruled lands surrounding them.

If this girl belongs to a group with such recognized sovereignty, saying that the state, or province in this case, had the right to come and take her away for medical treatment would be like saying that an American or Canadian court could send armed officers to Mexico to take a Mexican child away from parents who were not choosing the correct treatment. I am not familiar with the legal status of the First Nations in Canada, but if this group is legally a separate nation, their sovereignty must be the first principle considered. No lower-level court has the power to abrogate a national treaty or order what might technically be an act of war.

Think it's complicated to have different people living on the same continent who have different sets of legal rights? Well, that whole invasion, rapine and ethnic cleansing thing paid off big-time for white folks - but it had consequences, and one of them is that now you have to accept that some of the survivors of the indigenous people live among you but are NOT you, don't want to be you, and now don't have to try.

On this subject, I don't know whether you're aware of the latest developments in the Ashya King case. Steven Novella had a post on this in September:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ashya-king-and-proton-beam…

However it has recently become apparent that the parents have refused adjuvant chemotherapy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-29944626

This is perhaps not surprising given some of their previous statements in the media, (particularly these interviews with the Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2772994/They-locked-left-Ashya-… http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774361/The-final-insult-Police… ) but the family played a PR blinder by making this about proton vs conventional radiotherapy.

There is concern over how they have managed to coral the media and political and public opinion to get around the usually robust systems in the UK, that make sure that children get appropriate, evidence based treatment:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30038007

It would be interesting to get your input on this, since you have an interest in paediatric chemotherapy refusal. Perhaps not insignificantly, the parents are Jehovah's Witnesses.

now you have to accept that some of the survivors of the indigenous people live among you but are NOT you, don’t want to be you, and now don’t have to try

When 'not being like me' means 'wanting your kids to die,' I have to say that I've reached my breaking point when it comes to cultural tolerance.

90+% chance of survival vs 0% chance of survival. I'm not Arabic, but I will break from my heritage enough to understand their numerals.

On this subject, I don’t know whether you’re aware of the latest developments in the Ashya King case. Steven Novella had a post on this in September:

h ttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ashya-king-and-proton-beam-therapy/

However it has recently become apparent that the parents have refused adjuvant chemotherapy:

h ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-29944626

This is perhaps not surprising given some of their previous statements in the media, (particularly these interviews with the Mail: h ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2772994/They-locked-left-Ashya-frighte… h ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774361/The-final-insult-Police-chief-… ) but the family played a PR blinder by making this about proton vs conventional radiotherapy.

h ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30038007

It would be interesting to get your input on this, since you have an interest in paediatric chemotherapy refusal. Perhaps not insignificantly, the parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

jane are you actually gloating about the plight of this young girl who most certainly will die, because her parents have denied her the chance for a total cure?

Tribes are considered to be nations that have the right to govern themselves, and though that right has been seriously limited by various federal actions, the principle of tribal sovereignty prohibits most state government interference on lands where tribal laws apply.

I was going to start in on the Indian Child Welfare Act, but fortunately, it occurred to me that the whole comment would have only had bearing on tribal lands.

So, Jane, is Brantford, Ontario, sovereign territory? If so, one could proceed to ask where the tribal court failed.

Let me just reinforce this before I play Mr. Natural Does the Dishes:

If this girl belongs to a group with such recognized sovereignty, saying that the state, or province in this case, had the right to come and take her away for medical treatment would be like saying that an American or Canadian court could send armed officers to Mexico to take a Mexican child away from parents who were not choosing the correct treatment.

This is where it all falls apart. Unless Brantford is sovereign territory, the correct simile would be the notion that, say, Canadian law should govern in the case of an "ethnic Canadian" living in the U.S. being haled into court in the U.S. on charges of child medical neglect.

^ To be more precise, change "living in" to "domiciled in."

OK, I can't resist.

Well, that whole invasion, rapine and ethnic cleansing thing paid off big-time for white folks – but it had consequences, and one of them is that now you have to accept that some of the survivors of the indigenous people live among you but are NOT you, don’t want to be you, and now don’t have to try.

From the original article:

"Sault said she saw a vision of Christ in her hospital room telling her [Makayla] was already healed."

How "NOT" "white folks."

Eight months later, Sault's chemo, rather than the disease, is being blamed:

"As many of you know Makayla suffered a major infection and had to be hospitalized (Nov 5)," read the post.
"At that point because of her weakened immune system from chemo (that she stopped 8 months ago) the doctors gave her 24 hours. She is home (Nov. 8)..."

Engage sarcasm mode:

If chemo weakening the immune system is the preferred excuse, do these quack clinics give the parents accurate survival figures based on the woo being able to counteract the chemo as well as cure the cancer?

Disengage sarcasm mode:

You know what else weakens the immune system? Leukemia, particularly end stage.

@ Mary M:

I know the feelings you're describing-
I play tennis at an indoor facility where a 40-ish guy occasionally teaches kids: he always seemed to look down and keep to himself rather unlike the other pros who are outgoing and perhaps over-friendly ( seeking out potential students as it were). Months later, I found out why - he brought his ( 12 year old?) son who was emaciated, frighteningly pale and had lost his hair. I learned that his son was being treated for Leukemia.

About a year later, his son was back, looking much more average- the treatments were a success. Now, a few years down the road, he sometimes takes a lesson, is 6 feet tall, average weight, has hair and his father looks happy.

From the article by the aboriginal Health Care worker Dr. Polevoy provided a link to:

This is not about culture, it is about physiology.

This! Just this!.

lilady and Roadstergal, your total reliance on pitiful slanders for "argument" shames only you. In today's news, the US House of Representatives' vote to force the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, with a planned route through the Rosebud Sioux reservation and without the prior approval of the tribe, is being termed an "act of war" by the tribe president. He has vowed, if necessary, to close the borders of the reservation and resist incursions by white pipeline-builders. And they have the right under international law to do that, because by treaty, the meager lands left to them constitute a sovereign nation.

Now, my personal opinion happens to be that it would be Good for this girl to accept more chemo - those who cannot argue without ad homs, please note that - and Bad to construct the pipeline. However, international law trumps the desire of judges to ensure that individuals make good choices. I do not know what the law is regarding tribes in Canada, but IF this girl and her parents are technically citizens of a separate nation, the fact that they have set foot on white-ruled Canadian land would not make them ordinary Canadians who are fully subject to Canadian law wherever they may go in future. Neither would the fact that, as a result of the past forced imposition of Western beliefs on First Nations peoples, they are Christians.

However, international law trumps the desire of judges to ensure that individuals make good choices.

The judge whoupheld the rights of the parents to to discontinue chemotherapy and seek alternative treatment for their child didn't cite retrictions due to international law in his ruling, and I'm not aware that any principles of international law which would have prervented him from finding instead against the parents.

And clearly the parents and their tribal leaders have no issue with the court's authority to decide the issue--they've enthusiastically embraced the judges ruling.

The court heard "an application by McMaster Children’s Hospital to have the girl apprehended by Brant Family and Children’s Services and forced into treatment" because "[t]hat agency had refused to intervene/"
Brant FCS had full legal authority to apprehend the girl without any order from the court and almost certainly has apprehended many First Nations kids before. In this case they decided not to and the hospital asked them the court to compel them to do so.
Canadian courts are not in the habit of hearing cases over which they have no jurisdiction.
In the neighboring province of Manitoba, there are something like ten thousand aboriginal kids "in care."

I will point out that the residential schools in Canada, while funded by "the government" were mostly operated by the Catholic and Anglican churches. Astoundingly, many aboriginal people still embrace those very churches.
While much is made of the abuse the kids suffered in the schools, the horrible impact of breaking the chain of mothering skills rarely gets mentioned. Its hard to learn to be a mother when your children are gone. It is hard to know what to do as a mother when you have grown up where the children are "cared" for by a bunch of nuns and priests.

"lilady and Roadstergal, your total reliance on pitiful slanders for “argument” shames only you."

Hell no, jane. Your dumb insensitive comment about the plight of these young girls, who are condemned to painful, unnecessary deaths, shames you.

It has already been pointed out to you, that Indian nation status does not protect you from charges of medical neglect of your child.

What are those native Indian treatments the parents of both girls are using in lieu of proven "Western/White" treatments which have a verified record of total cure at ~ 90 %-versus-0% cure, jane?

I do not know what the law is regarding tribes in Canada, but IF this girl and her parents are technically citizens of a separate nation, the fact that they have set foot on white-ruled Canadian land would not make them ordinary Canadians who are fully subject to Canadian law wherever they may go in future.

I'm not interested in investigating your attempt to slip in the distortion "set[s] foot on," as it has no bearing on my earlier comment. In the U.S., if one is domiciled outside of tribal land, the state has jurisdiction.

The judge whoupheld the rights of the parents to to discontinue chemotherapy and seek alternative treatment for their child didn’t cite retrictions due to international law in his ruling, and I’m not aware that any principles of international law which would have prervented him from finding instead against the parents.

For that matter, international law has about as much bearing on disputes between states and individual tribes as it does on disputes between U.S. states themselves, i.e., none. Federally recognized tribes are "domestic dependent nations," not foreign countries.

I would further note that Jane's absurd construction of international law directly implies that in the case of a crime committed by a foreign national, a country's only option is deportation, which is trivially false.

In today’s news, the US House of Representatives’ vote to force the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, with a planned route through the Rosebud Sioux reservation and without the prior approval of the tribe, is being termed an “act of war” by the tribe president.

That seems to have been a bit premature.

Ah, well, Orientalism never sleeps.

Jane:

I realize this is months late but you said "However, international law trumps the desire of judges to ensure that individuals make good choices." Actually, no it most certainly does not. In the US at least, international law has absolutely no standing in court, whatsoever. National law trumps international law. Only when a specific portion of international law is signed and ratified as a treaty and even then, treaties do not trump statutes. If the US congress passed a law in violation of a treaty the US was a signatory of, the treaty would be considered abrogated by the subsequent legislation. I do not know with 100% certainty if the Canadian constitution is the same in this regard, but I highly suspect so, as this is something that is true in most countries. Particularly those descended from the British tradition.

The "Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014": Pernicious "health freedom" nonsense that degrades human research subject protections

oracknows — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 07:00:39 +0000

The "Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014": Pernicious "health freedom" nonsense that degrades human research subject protections

I was torn about what to blog about today. There were lots of things floating around that caught my eye and appear worthy of of a little taste of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, so much so that I couldn't decide. None of them really stuck out. Then I saw this news story pop up in my Google Alerts, Houston-area doctor grateful for time spent with Pope John Paul II:

My first thought was that Stanislaw Burzynski must have one hell of a publicist. Either that, or he has a good buddy at KHOU in Houston. My second thought was of a bill that was recently introduced into the House of Representatives by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA), known as the Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014, because it's a bill that's intimately related to Burzynski because basically it would free him from all the hassle of the FDA regulating his administration of antineoplastons to terminally ill patients. Before I get to the bill (HR 4475), I note that, not being from Houston, I had never heard of Jacqueline Crea, the reporter who did the story. I mean, I know that local news often has to do local human interest stories that are tied into big news events like the canonization of Pope John Paul II, to give them the "local angle," but holy hell, KHOU was scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one! I know that Burzynski met the Pope back in the 1990s, and there were rumors that he was being treated for colon cancer and wanted Burzynski's input. Those rumors turned out not to be true. Other rumors were that Burzynski had been summoned to treat a prominent Cardinal, but that’s probably not true, either. More likely, the Pope just liked Burzynski because he was (and remains) a prominent Polish Catholic, just like John Paul II.

In any case, surely there must have been someone else in the Houston area who had an audience with Pope John Paul II. It's not as though such audiences are "rare" (JP had lots of them). In any case, if Burzynski has a publicist who pitched this story, that's one awesome publicist. If it's a KHOU producer who happens to be a Burzynski supporter, for shame.

Then I saw this from our old friend, Stanislaw Burzynski's propagandist Eric Merola, Laura Hymas loses her battle with cancer; An Antineoplaston Phase 2 study is now published in the peer-reviewed literature (April 23, 2014). You'll remember that I noted Laura Hymas's death last week. Apparently it's finally hit the media in the UK in the form of a story in Kent Online, where we find out that Hymas's cancer had actually recurred in November, a mere three weeks after her fairy tale wedding to Ben Hymas after they had thought that her cancer was gone for good. Hymas, unfortunately, is a woman who was extensively used by Burzynski and his allies as a "success" story "proving" that he could cure brainstem cancers. Sadly, she turned out not to be. Not surprisingly, Merola is going to blame the FDA for Laura's death, because it placed a partial clinical hold on Burzynski's clinical trials due to the death of a child (Josia Cotto) in 2012 and numerous violations of FDA regulations with respect to clinical trials found in an inspection in 2013 and detailed in an FDA warning letter in December.

From the newspaper article:

Ben, 34, said: “When we found out the cancer had come back we asked for the same treatment [Antineoplastons] but Laura was denied it [by the FDA]. We were in contact with her doctor in America [Burzynski] and he applied for the legal right to treat her again but this was declined [by the FDA]. We could have fought it legally but we just didn’t have time.”

And from Merola:

It's impossible to know if Laura would have survived her cancer a second time, if she were allowed to have access to these medications again. It certainly doesn't change the fact that denying cancer patients the right to choose their own therapy when no other therapy has been proven safe or effective—is an act of violence upon a cancer patient.

That's going to be the spin placed on poor Laura's death by Burzynski and his allies. Poor Laura could have been saved if the nasty FDA hadn't prevented her from getting her antineoplastons. Look for it: The concept that there are all sorts of "cures" out there but that the FDA is keeping people from using them. It's coming up next. (Oh, and Burzynski met the Pope who will become a saint; so he must be good.)

All of which brings me back to yet another manifestation of the pernicious influence that is the "health freedom" movement, or, as I like to call it, the freedom of quacks to prey on desperate individuals unhindered by pesky things like consumer protection laws. (I need to think of a catchier phrase to boil that concept down to a term as pithy as "health freedom.") In any case, this brings us back to the Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014, a bill championed by the Alliance for Natural Health USA, a "health freedom" group that has yet to see a pro-quackery bill it doesn't like and that has defended Burzynski vigorously before, as well as attacked any attempt to regulate "alternative" therapies.

In any case, as the time I originally wrote about this bill, HR 4475, its text hadn't yet been published to the Congressional website. The bill has been floating around for a while in various forms (for instance, former Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) apparently introduced it.) Now it is, as Guy Chapman has noted. He calls it a "quack's charter," and he's only off by a bit. The bill doesn't go quite as far as he believes, but the bill is still plenty bad, man. If enacted, HR 4475 would amend the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by inserting after section 561 (21 U.S.C. 360bbb) the text of HR 4475. This section of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is entitled Expanded Access to Unapproved Therapies and Diagnostics, and it's the section of the act that regulates exactly that. The interesting thing is that this particular section of existing law is the framework under which the whole system of single patient INDs (also known as "compassionate use exemptions") is already based. As I've described before, single patients can receive promising unapproved drugs under what's known as a single patient IND, which has to be approved by the Institutional Review Board and the FDA and allows single patients to receive unapproved drugs. You can (and many have) argued that the single patient IND process is too cumbersome and restrictive, but HR 4475 seeks to (mostly) nuke this requirement. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

First, the law states that:

Nothing in this Act or section 351 of the Public Health Service Act prevents or restricts, and the Food and Drug Administration shall not implement or enforce any provision of law preventing or restricting, the manufacture, importation, distribution, or sale of an investigational drug or device intended for use by a terminally ill patient in accordance with subsection (b).

Guy Chapman went a bit beyond what the law would actually permit it wrong in his analysis, I'm afraid. HR 4475 clearly does not authorize the use of quackery like Hoxsey therapy, Gerson therapy, or anything else like that in terminally ill patients, although I suppose it is theoretically possible that advocates could get an IND for one of these quackeries and then carry out a phase I clinical trial, after which the quackery would fall under the definition of an investigational drug or device according to HR 4475. (In this, perhaps the Gonzalez protocol would qualify, given that it's undergone two clinical trials, the last of which was disastrously negative, but it was a clinical trial.) HR 4475 does, however, basically allow unfettered access by "terminally ill" patients to any "investigational" drug or device, which is defined as a drug or device that "(1) has not yet been approved, licensed, or cleared for commercial distribution under section 505, 510(k), or 515 of this Act or section 351 of the Public Health Service Act, and cannot otherwise be lawfully marketed in the United States; and (2) is or has been the subject of one or more clinical trials." In other words, it's very much like one of those "right to try" laws that are such a horrible idea but nonetheless popping up like kudzu in state legislatures.

The difference is that "right to try" laws in states would have little or no effect, because the FDA would still rule supreme over drug approval, and federal law trumps state law. HR 4475 would in essence codify "right to try" in the federal law under which the FDA works, which would do many orders of magnitude more harm to cancer patients and terminally ill patients. Basically, this law would allow any "terminally ill" patient access to any investigational drug with an IND that's gone through at least phase I trials. I've explained before in great detail why that's such a horrible idea, but it's worth mentioning again briefly this. Most investigational drugs that make it past phase I trials still end up failing. The chances for doing harm far exceed any chance for benefit. Drugs with seemingly miraculous activity against cancer, like Gleevec, that show up in phase I clinical trials are exceedingly rare. Indeed, HR 4475 says nothing about whether the clinical trials the investigational drug or device being to be used in terminally ill patients has undergone even need to show promise or not. Under HR 4475, a drug that completely failed in phase I clinical trials by showing unacceptable toxicity (for example) could be distributed to a terminally ill patient as long as the patient is told that the drug failed phase I clinical trials.

Next up in HR 4475, there's this:

(b) Patient Requirements.--In order for an investigational drug
or device to be intended for use in accordance with this subsection,
such drug or device must be intended for use by a patient who has--
``(1) been diagnosed with a terminal illness by a licensed
physician;
``(2) been informed by a licensed physician that no drug or
device that is lawfully marketed in the United States is likely
to cure the illness; and
``(3) executed a written informed consent document that
states--
``(A) the known and potential risks and benefits of
such drug or device; and
``(B) any indications of the illness for which a
drug or device is lawfully marketed, or for which
treatment is otherwise available, in the United States.
``(c) Prohibition on Requiring the Disclosure, Collection, and
Reporting of Certain Information by Food and Drug Administration.--
``(1) In general.--The Commissioner of Food and Drugs may
not require the disclosure, collection, or reporting of--
``(A) any information related to the delivery,
administration, or use of an investigational drug or
device pursuant to this section; or
``(B) any information related to the clinical
outcomes experienced by a terminally ill patient
supplied an investigational drug or device pursuant to
this section.
``(2) Exception.--Nothing in this subsection prevents the
sponsor of a clinical trial from voluntarily disclosing,
collecting, or reporting information to the Food and Drug
Administration.

One notes that "terminal illness" is not defined. I could go all Orac-style snarky on you and point out that life itself is a terminal illness (one that's sexually transmitted, as well). We all die eventually. On the other hand, there are other diseases that are arguably terminal that can take a long time to kill. Even metastatic breast cancer is now potentially survivable for several years, even longer if it's an indolent type with a low volume of metastatic tumor. Where do you draw the line in defining "terminal"? Normally, for purposes of laws, "terminal illness" is defined according to a certain estimated prognosis for life expectancy, be it six months, a year, or whatever. Even Abraham's law did that. My guess is that this is to allow the widest number and variety of people with "terminal" illnesses access to unapproved treatments as possible. All you have to do is to find a doctor to say you're terminal and there are no approved drugs or devices that can save you, and you're good to go! Really? Any licensed physician, regardless of specialty? Moreover, under these circumstances, as described in this bill, "informed consent" is a joke, a cruel parody of real informed consent. In clinical trials, even in single patient INDs, the informed consent process is lengthy and detailed. In any event, the bill reads as though it were written specifically for Stanislaw Burzynski, as it would allow someone like him to abuse the IND process without even the threat of the FDA bothering him.

Now here's the kicker. One of the criticisms of "right to try" laws is that drug and device companies won't want to allow patients to have access to their investigational drugs or devices because adverse outcomes might affect their application for approval to the FDA. HR 4475 has that covered:

(c) Prohibition on Requiring the Disclosure, Collection, and
Reporting of Certain Information by Food and Drug Administration.--
(1) In general.--The Commissioner of Food and Drugs may
not require the disclosure, collection, or reporting of--
(A) any information related to the delivery,
administration, or use of an investigational drug or
device pursuant to this section; or
(B) any information related to the clinical
outcomes experienced by a terminally ill patient
supplied an investigational drug or device pursuant to
this section.
(2) Exception.--Nothing in this subsection prevents the
sponsor of a clinical trial from voluntarily disclosing,
collecting, or reporting information to the Food and Drug
Administration.

In other words, the drug and device companies who allow "terminally ill" patients to use unapproved drugs and devices don't even have to collect data on the outcomes patients who take their unapproved drugs or use their unapproved devices under this law, and, if they choose to do so, don't have to report those outcomes to the FDA. It's all voluntary. It's hard to imagine a provision more irresponsible than this. Add to the parody of "informed consent" in this law the fact that the law basically makes any reporting of patient response or adverse events completely voluntary. Basically, if you're a terminally ill patient, this law strips away all the copious protections for human subjects in research that the law currently provides. You're completely on your own, and the drug company is not responsible for anything, so much so that the law even ends with this provision:

Except in the case of gross negligence or willful misconduct, any
person who manufactures, imports, distributes, prescribes, dispenses,
or administers an investigational drug or device in accordance with
section 561A shall not be liable in any action under Federal or State
law for any loss, damage, or injury arising out of, relating to, or
resulting from--
(1) the design, development, clinical testing and
investigation, manufacturing, labeling, distribution, sale,
purchase, donation, dispensing, prescription, administration,
or use of the drug or device; or
(2) the safety or effectiveness of the drug or device.

In other words, if something goes wrong, the terminally ill patient or his surviving relatives can't even sue, unless there's obvious gross negligence or willful misconduct, whatever that is, even if there turns out to be an obvious defect in the design of the drug or device. In other words, terminally ill patients, you're completely on your own. Masquerading as a "health freedom" law that will let terminally ill patients have access to experimental drugs under a process less difficult than currently existing IND procedures, HR 4475 is a stealth assault on the very heart of clinical trial ethics. Remember, one of the main principles of the Common Rule and other statements of principles regarding human research subject protection is that vulnerable groups need more, not less protection. Those particularly vulnerable groups are traditionally defined as children, prisoners, and students, the former of whom rely on parents to exercise judgment and the latter two of whom are subject to potential coercion. I would argue that terminally ill patients are a particularly vulnerable population in that they are desperate and prone to grasp at anything represented as having a chance of saving their lives. If anything, they need more, not less, protection.

Basically, HR 4475 is a solution in search of a problem. It's based on the assumption that there are just oodles and oodles of new investigational drugs out there that could save the lives of lots and lots of terminally ill patients, if only the government would get out of the way and let the people have access to them. This is libertarian magical thinking at its most pernicious; there's no compelling evidence for this assumption and plenty of evidence against it. (And, no, my characterization of this assumption underlying HR 4475 is not a straw man.) Even if you view the IND process as being in dire need of liberalization, it's still a "solution" that won't fix the process but will, in essence, destroy the process. It's also clearly one of a number of attempts by the health freedom movement to get a "foot in the door." If successful, then similar arguments will be made to expand the "right to try" principle and decrease regulation on investigational agents for larger and larger populations. Although HR 4475 is clearly not explicitly designed to aid quacks who peddle treatments like the Gerson therapy or the Gonzalez protocol, it would be a godsend to someone like Burzynski, and it could potentially be a boon to unethical drug and device companies, who would be free to peddle their investigational drugs and devices, both promising and even those that failed, to that most vulnerable of patient populations, patients with no hope of survival. Health freedom, indeed. Apparently "health freedom" means the freedom of pharmaceutical companies to provide treatments whose efficacy is unknown and that are unlikely to make a significant difference in outcome (or even might be toxic) without actually having to learn anything from the exercise.

oracknows Fri, 04/25/2014 - 03:00

Tags

cancer

Clinical trials

complementary and alternative medicine

Politics

Quackery

Alliance for Natural Health USA

antineoplastons

Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014

complementary and alternative medicine

Politics

Would be really interesting if that law would overrule the drug schedule, especially the call 1 classification. Medical cocaine anybody?

Unfortunately, it seems there is more credence to the theory that someone at KHOU is in Burzynski's pocket. I did a search of the site and found a couple of videos from an appearance Burzynski made on their morning show, "Great Day Houston," featuring an unbalanced softball interview with Burzynski and two of his "researchers" from the Burzynski Clinic. There is a good reason Burzynski and his minions were the only people to appear: the segment was sponsored by the Burzynski Clinic. The links are here:

http://www.khou.com/great-day/gdh_051210_seg2-93591594.html

http://www.khou.com/great-day/gdh_051210_seg1-93591354.html

So Burzynski paid KHOU to give him a morning's worth of good publicity on their show, and refered their viewers to Burzynski's website and toll-free number. I get the idea that KHOU is doing these puff pieces on Burzynski he is a sponsor and they don't want to offend him.

It'd sure be nice if MD Anderson wold take out ads slamming Burzynski, but I'm sure there's a greater chance I'll win powerball tomorrow.

@Mu: That's an interesting emphasis on something I noticed: once a therapy has qualified as an experimental therapy, the only way to remove that status seems to be if it becomes a legally available therapy. IOW, thalidomide would also be legally available this way.

The portions of the law Orac quoted are also badly written. In order to qualify for such a treatment, the patient must simultaneously have "been informed by a licensed physician that no drug or
device that is lawfully marketed in the United States is likely
to cure the illness" [(b)(2)] and signed a consent agreement which discloses "any indications of the illness for which a
drug or device is lawfully marketed, or for which
treatment is otherwise available, in the United States." [(b)(3)(B)] How do you satisfy both of these points simultaneously?

I also find it strange that there is an exception allowing voluntary reporting to the FDA [( c)(2)], since section ( c)(1) merely prevents the FDA from requiring the collection or reporting of this data but places no restrictions on the purveyors of such treatments.

shall not be liable in any action under Federal or State law

Kind of flies in the face of Griffiths' and Hanna's states' rights routine. (Although Griffiths apparently thinks the states should be able to "veto" federal laws, so perhaps it would be a wash in his ideal world.)

Would be really interesting if that law would overrule the drug schedule, especially the call 1 classification.

I looked at this a week or so ago, and it doesn't appear to. Definitely not with respect to importation, since its scope is entirely within the FDCA/Public Health Service Act.

Curiously I opened this post thinking I had already read about the bill, but no, it turns out the same legislation is being proposed in the UK:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2014/04/the-saatchi-bill-a-quacks-chart…

Considering you can't prove a negative, would there be any way to stop any experimental medical treatment, ever? In other words, there could be any number of trials with negative outcomes, but they would just fall under "unproven" and trials could continue (as long as the money was there, which of course could be provided by the patients, ethics be damned.)

@Lancelot:

There are significant differences between the Saatchi bill and HR 4475, and they don't actually favor HR 4475, which, unlike the Saatchi bill, doesn't require that there be opinions from experts in the field that it is reasonable to try the unapproved drug or device before the drug or device can be tried. In other words, if the Saatchi bill is a bad idea (and I believe it is), HR 4475 is by comparison even worse, a horrible idea.

"IOW, thalidomide would also be legally available this way."

Thalidomide is used to help control multiple myeloma - perfectly legitimate and science-based.

Very, very much OT, but I know there are commenters here with a lot of autism experience - any recommendations of supportive but science-based blogs/resources for parents of high-functioning autistics? I know Autismum, but would love some more.

I don't like this proposed law, and the prohibition on reporting outcomes is appalling, since it means patient after patient can be conned into submitting to an experimental treatment with no ability to find out what happened to previous users. But in terms of "health freedom", I have always found it peculiar that unproven, experimental surgical procedures that do not involve device implantation can be done and billed for freely (and devices can be approved with less testing than drugs - then used with little or no clinical evidence of net benefit, cf. vena cava filters). Unproven surgical techniques have been implemented by Burzynski-level quacks not just in terminal cases (bone marrow transplant for breast cancer) but in elective situations (a guy pushing his own type of extreme surgery for endometriosis that had complications I can't even write about before lunch). Right now there is a guy pushing a procedure for Alzheimer's that involves moving part of the omentum inside the skull (yes, really).

If you take a drug, approved for the relevant indication or not, and it makes you sicker, if you have enough backbone you can tell the prescribing quack where to stick it. If you undergo a surgery and it makes you worse, you can't reverse the damage yourself, but only with the consent and aid of the folks who did it to you, or more likely, not at all. This isn't necessarily to say that drug practice should be deregulated to match surgical practice - maybe the latter should be more regulated - but it's hard to see why a patient should be able to consent to have a major surgery that's never been shown in a randomized trial to do more good than harm, but should not be able to consent to swallow a pill that has the same status.

I want to get upset about this bill, but just can't do so. Sure beefing up the reporting requirements and informed consent sections would be good. But I just can't get worked up over allowing terminally ill patients with no available treatment options being allowed to try an experimental drug.

I'm not a doctor, or even in the medical profession, but how would a randomized trial for surgery work? Would it be something like 'Dr. Smith, your next operation will be with technique A, and Dr. Jones, you will use technique B'. Then, after a year, you add up.... what?

Has there ever been a randomized surgery study?

I don't think anyone would suggest 'placebo surgery', would they? Because that would be silly

Mike @ 12
That makes sense if you're defining "experimental drug" as something that 1. has a chance in hell of working and 2. doesn't cost the patient hundreds of thousands of dollars while making the doctor rich.

Johnny: FYI placebo surgeries do exist. Because of confirmation bias, patients may report surgeries as making them feel better, even if it doesn't do anything.

I don’t think anyone would suggest ‘placebo surgery’, would they? Because that would be silly

It's been done. There aren't a lot of surgical RCTs.

Has there ever been a randomized surgery study?

Quite a few. There have, however, been very few randomized clinical trials with sham/placebo surgery because of the dodgy ethics of cutting a patient open without doing anything therapeutic. In any case, it's not as though I haven't written about this topic multiple times before:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/02/08/surgical-research-tinkerin…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/05/08/when-popularity-outpaces-s…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/08/10/vertebroplasty-for-compres…

You can also do a randomized trial without an indistinguishable placebo and measure total outcomes - e.g., the studies of stenting vs. bypass surgery or of optimal medical management of atherosclerosis vs. stenting.

Orac, you have written about fishy surgeries before - but where the legalities are concerned, do you think the present situation, whereby it's much easier to consent to those than to a trial of an unproven drug, can be sustained? Thanks.

Well, ignorance has been fought.

It was a good day.

It seems to me that for Burzynski to provide truly informed consent, he has to provide more accurate statistics to his prospective patients. For example, we saw Liza Cozad's husband and a CBS newscaster telling the viewing audience that the antineoplaston therapy had a 27 percent chance of saving her. As recent posts on this blog have shown, the true number for actual glioma is probably more like zero percent. That's after you subtract out the one patient who had something else in Burzynski's recent paper on his phase 2 trial.

Failure to provide informed consent and subjecting patients to painful and potentially lethal procedures is grounds for malpractice litigation in most places. Perhaps the more effective method of exposing Burzynski and providing some level of justice to wronged patients (and their heirs) is to deal with the matter through civil litigation for malpractice or wrongful death. A courtroom is a more controlled environment than a congressional hearing room chaired by an illiterate zealot.

Orac has criticized the Texas medical board for failing to protect patients from Burzynski. I would like to suggest that this is fairly common throughout the country, and that civil litigation more often than not is what has had an impact on incompetent surgeons and other physicians.

Of course the medical profession doesn't like to recognize this painful truth, but to the outsider, it tends to look like a failure by the profession to police its own ranks. Considering the large number of competent doctors in Texas, or even just in Houston, it's surprising to the outsider (ie: the rest of us) that the medical profession has not been more outspoken about regulating incompetent physicians.

There seem to be lots of people who had relatives who had the Burzynski therapy, and some enterprising attorney ought to collect a hundred or so of them and file a hundred or so lawsuits. Then all of the competent oncologists will have a chance to testify as expert witnesses, along with government agencies and pathologists.

Something's amiss. I only hit the submit comment button one time, and my comment immediately went up double. If this one also goes up double, we'll know for sure.

I know that nobody is likely to get an IND for Laetrile, but to my reading the Bill does not reference INDs. It only talks about an investigational drug, though of course as an act amending the FFDA it may be that investigational drug is defined by inheritance, a point I'd neglected.

So:

This bill allows a drug manufacturer or provider to throw anything some fool will buy into a corner of the marketplace populated by the desperate +/or arrogantly stupid

It's supported by the crowd who considers drug manufactures, anyone board-certified as an MD and apparently anyone who is in bio research to be part of a giant weevil reptilian conspiracy feeding off the unknowing sheeple.

I know that nobody is likely to get an IND for Laetrile, but to my reading the Bill does not reference INDs

Sure it does, albeit admittedly indirectly, when it instructs that the text of HR 4475 be inserted after the specific section in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act that covers expanded access to INDs. HR 4475 also references the part of the Food and Drug Act that defines an investigational drug or device. That section defines INDs them thusly:

In this section, the terms “investigational drug”, “investigational device”, “treatment investigational new drug application”, and “treatment investigational device exemption” shall have the meanings given the terms in regulations prescribed by the Secretary.

That section of the law gives the FDA the regulatory power to definite what an IND is, and the use of the same language ("investigational drug") means the same thing as in the currently existing Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act.

Ironically, if HR 4475 were made law, it would basically convert that section of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act on expanded access to investigational drugs to a rather confusing mess. First, the original part of the law would still say that the FDA director may grant compassionate use exemptions for an IND intended for serious diseases, and then, right after that section, the text of HR 4475 would say that the director can't deny any such compassionate use exemption for terminally ill patients without defining "terminal illness" according to the usual ways it's defined. Good times for lawyers. Not so good times for patients or the poor FDA officials who have to figure out how to apply such a badly conceived law. Hopefully it will never pass.

How do we stop this bill?

How can we defeat this bill? A poison pill would be to make it illegal for drug suppliers, clinics, doctors etc. to receive any compensation in these cases. If only we had that much power.

The FDA kills people by distraint. The problem with the bill is that it protects the quack physician's interest. It should protect the motivated patient and their family from the FDA. Say you have refractory aids or cancer.

Proposition 1
The terminal patient should have the direct right to import foreign approved drugs and devices upon executing some affadavit that shows an informed status. Whether a drugs or device has a domestic or overseas IND might be worthy of more restriction, a later secondary discussion.

Proposition 2
Whether the patient has the right to self manufacture. Grind, encapsulate, sterilize peach pits or items of commerce, or use their enhanced Gilbert science kit if they had organic chemistry.

Here, the physician is the advisor, or incidentally, the administrator of the drug the patient acquires personally, independent of the MLM or MD. The first issue is the patient's rights in extremis, not the doctor's or the drug company's privileges under license or registration.

Does one have to be valedictorian, National Merit or a CalTech PhD to have a full set of personal rights?

How do we stop this bill?

By keeping it from getting out of committee. The members are here. I've got Bobby Rush, who would likely be sympathetic to spiking it. The Republicans are probably open to observations of the infringement of state's rights.

Roadstergal OT @ #10: Some possible start points for you might be Emily Willingham's writings, The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism and lbrb (http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/). Hope these are useful.

reader, how exactly does one arrive at informed consent if there is no data to inform? If a patient has no ability to determine whether or how much a medicine will make him suffer, he or she is at the mercy of any poison salesman in the world.
Are all foreign approvals equal? If they're not, who decides which ones meet an acceptable standard.
Either we have oversight for everyone or the whole damn thing falls apart.

Commercial goods seldom exist in a data vacuum, albeit data often different than FDA approved summaries. This proposition would protect the buyer's access to normal commercial sources without US medical claims, not advertisers with claims or doctors with financial interests in the treatment. Advertisers still have their regulatory burdens and liabilities.

who decides - those with the most to gain or lose. Such a user necessarily takes a larger responsibility including to consult with knowledgeable sources or take the added risk.

Either we have oversight for everyone or the whole damn thing falls apart.
The patient work and knowledge requirements without the highly advertised providers tend to keep the idle away. Traditionally, Americans repudiated officious oversight for everyone.

Commercial goods seldom exist in a data vacuum

I infer that you are unfamiliar with the history of Florida real estate. Quite a few sellers of commercial goods don't want prospective buyers to know what they're buying--not all, mind you, but a large enough fraction that we've had to pass laws against that sort of thing. Caveat emptor may work in small communities with a limited variety of goods, but it doesn't scale well. And in an economy as large as the US, there are more buyers than sellers of any particular kind of goods. The sellers might consider it "officious oversight", but the buyers are more likely to regard it as making sure that the product works and is not harmful. Galt's Gulch is fantasy.

this isn't a rhetorical question: Do physicians normally discuss financial risks of treatments in anything but broad strokes? Do informed consent documents go into any financial details about various treatment outcomes?

@#10 Roadstergal: "Thalidomide is used to help control multiple myeloma – perfectly legitimate and science-based."

ummm…yes, it is legitimate and science-based, but there were a lot of controls associated with this drug when I took it. Do we want powerful, dangerous drugs freely circulating without oversight? I had to attend monthly briefing sessions regarding birth-control and proper storage of the drug in my home when I took it in a a clinical trial. I was post-menopausal at the time but HAD to attend the session if I wanted to stay in the trial. I wonder if patients who aren't in clinical trials, who get it through a prescription, have to follow those rules? I thought it all made sense - thalidomide is dangerous stuff- I respected the seriousness of the situation. I didn't carry it around in my purse. It isn't something you want everyone to have access to.

reader -- I believe Proposition 2 in your post already exists. The law doesn't regulate what you can manufacture and consume yourself (with a few notable exceptions -- it's illegal to manufacture banned substances like meth, and you can also get in trouble for making things that are dangerous to your neighbors, like fireworks or nuclear reactors). But I believe it is entirely legal to mess with peach pits in your own home. Just don't sell them or administer them to other people; that's when you'd get in trouble.

Eric, my Prop 1 didn't even legitimize the Dallas Buyers Club activity, patients and family only allowed. When you effectively remove the promoter in the middle, and involve personal patient effort, abuse is far less lkely.

Eric, Galt’s Gulch is fantasy - 1776, 1789 and 1791 were not

Marie, dangerous drugs freely circulating with individual patients only, direct purchases with affadavits don't necessarily imply freely circulating large quantities of drugs.

Calli, Prop2...post already exists in many cases that's right. In other cases, politics will strike on mere possession or manufacture without extensive slow paper approvals for substances that are nutrients or break down to natural human substances. A one-two year batch of quantities for home consumption might conflict with others' presumptive ideas of sale and use.

Narad @30: Does it make sense to write to the representative from my state who's on the committee if they aren't "my" representative, and are going to be able to guess that I have very different and opposing views from them? I'd hate to push them towards it just because I'm against it.

Does it make sense to write to the representative from my state who’s on the committee if they aren’t “my” representative, and are going to be able to guess that I have very different and opposing views from them?

Beats me. I think the objection can be constructed to appeal to either side of the aisle, though.

Why are antivaccinationists so at home with Libertarianism?

oracknows — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 07:00:01 +0000

Why are antivaccinationists so at home with Libertarianism?

Rats.

Everyone's blogging about all the studies showing (as if it needed to be shown yet again) that vitamin supplementation is not necessary for most people, nor does it decrease the risk of heart disease or cancer, and I can't, at least not yet. Why not? Because my friggin' university doesn't subscribe to the Annals of Internal Medicine! I know! Can you believe it? And, you, my regular readers, know that I never blog a study (or three studies) without having the actual studies in front of me. Abstracts alone, as I've shown time and time again, can be deceiving. So, until one of my partners in crime elsewhere sends me copies of the articles, I'm kind of stuck. [ADDENDUM: I got them overnight.]

Fortunately, even though I hate to be left out of this party, even if for a day or two, there's always plenty more blogging material out there. It's even appropriate, given how recently I wrote about the politics of the antivaccine movement, and how antivaccine quackery is the quackery that knows little in the way of political boundaries, with both sides being prone to antivaccine ideas. True, the right and the left seem to come to their antivaccine ideas from different directions. For example, lefty antivaccinationists tend to come to their views from crunchy beliefs in an idealized concept of what is "natural" and in "natural healing" combined with a major distrust of big business, in particular big pharma. In contrast, righty antivaccinationists tend to come to it through the idea of "health freedom," in which anything resembling government coercion is to be resisted and any attempt to regulate medicine is viewed with suspicion. Besides, after experiencing such an awesome lovefest from my readers due to my belated mention of my ninth blogiversary, it's time for some Insolence again that's likely to tick off someone at least. Orac just can't handle such universal niceness for long. This post is likely to fix that for some, while others will pump their fists and shout, "Hell, yes!" Which are you? Let's find out.

It all started, as it not too infrequently does, when post over at that happy home for wanderingly daft antivaccinationists, the Age of Autism caught my eye a couple of days ago. (Yes, I know it's a bad idea to expose my neurons to such neuron-apoptosing nonsense as the regular content of AoA, but it is at times a convenient source of blog material and my neurons are hardened from years of regular exposure.) It was by a contributor of whom I had never heard before named Adriana Gamondes, entitled Libertarian Backlash against Reason Magazine’s “Corporatist,” “Pseudolibertarian” Compulsory Vaccine Campaign. In particular, Mrs. Gamondes is touting an article published at a website of which I had never heard before, Police State USA. Actually, I must just not have remembered her, because she's definitely contributed to AoA before on several occasions. Indeed, her "work," such as it is, rivals the looniest of the crew at AoA for sheer brain death (of both the writer and the reader, alas). She fits right in, given that according to this post from 2009 she is "the mother of twins who are currently recovering from vaccine-induced GI disorders."

What's interesting is this passage from Gamondes:

Age of Autism is a politically agnostic forum but not apolitical. To quote Herman Melville, “There seems no reason why serviceable truth should keep cloistered because not partisan.” There are rare exceptions to unilateral mainstream news compliance with government demands that critical views of vaccines be censored. PSUSA has done an elegant job ignoring the memo and explaining why compulsory medicine cannot be legitimately argued from a liberty position.

Except that I would argue that AoA is not exactly politically agnostic. After all, several of its members are prominent in the Canary Party, an antivaccine organization that advocates against vaccines, to the point of buying off politicians and lobbying. Fortunately, it has not had a lot of success thus far, but it keeps trying. It also has forged ties with at least one Tea Party-affiliated group in California. Heck, Mike Adams even endorsed them. In other words, AoA tends to lean right, towards the Libertarian end of the spectrum, and Gamondes' likes rhetoric that could have been written by Mikey himself.

But first, let's take a look at what set Police State USA off. It's an article from a couple of weeks ago by Ronald Bailey over at Reason Magazine entitled Refusing Vaccination Puts Others At Risk: A pragmatic argument for coercive vaccination. Now, believe it or not, I actually read Reason. I used to read it more regularly, but then my politics drifted away from that direction, to the point where reading that magazine would actually annoy me. However, this particular article by Bailey actually made sense. Basically, he claims that Libertarianism is not a justification for putting others at risk:

There would be no argument against allowing people to refuse vaccination if they and their families would suffer alone the consequences of their foolhardiness. It would be their right to forego misery-reducing and life-preserving treatments. But that is not the case in the real world.

Correct, and that's what those of us who promote vaccination have been saying all along. Indeed, we've been pointing out that antivaccinationists endanger everyone because they promote the degradation of herd immunity. Bailey agrees, and he dutifully discusses the Project Tycho, which, as I pointed out, shows how well vaccines have worked over the last century. He also debunks some common antivaccine talking points, such as the highly intellectually dishonest trope that "vaccines didn't save us," while listing how much children owe to vaccines, including the newer ones that antivaccinationists like to dump on, such as the rotavirus vaccine and the chickenpox vaccine. Based on herd immunity, Bailey asserts (and I agree):

People who refuse vaccination for themselves and their children are free-riding off herd immunity. Anti-vaccination folks are taking advantage of the fact that most people around them have chosen the minimal risk of vaccination, thus acting as a firewall protecting them from disease. But if enough refuse, the firewall comes down and other people get hurt.

Oliver Wendell Holmes articulated a good libertarian principle when he said, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Holmes’ observation is particularly salient in the case of whooping cough shots.

And:

To borrow Holmes’ metaphor, people who refuse vaccination are asserting that they have a right to “swing” their microbes at other people. There is no principled libertarian case for their free-riding refusal to take responsibility for their own microbes.

I'd agree that there's no "principled Libertarian case," but that doesn't mean that there isn't a Libertarian case. It boils down to, basically, "Screw you. I don't care if my decision affects others." Come to think of it, a whole lot of Libertarianism boils down to this in actual practice, the highfalutin rhetoric of the more practical Libertarians like Bailey notwithstanding. Don't believe me? Take a look at how Police State USA puts it. First, it equates the ability to refuse vaccinations with free markets and any sort of mandated vaccination as being anathema to a free market. This is very critical to understanding this sort of thinking. Libertarianism appears to worship the free market above all. Consequently, all a Libertarian like those at PSUSA has to do to justify anything is to try to link it to the free market somehow and link what it dislikes to crushing the free market. Why? Because to this brand of Libertarianism the free market is a Good That Shall Not Be Questioned. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The other Good That Shall Never Be Questioned is utter unfettered individual rights without consideration for others. Indeed, PSUSA complains about any form of collectivism, anything that is instituted for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, specifically objecting to the use of the term "herd immunity," likening it to cattle. I'm only impressed that this anonymous writer refrained from using the word "sheeple." That would have been the perfect topper to this little screed. As it is, I'll have to amuse myself with passages like this:

The only thing more full of holes than Bailey’s doctrine is his ridiculous argument against people having “a right to swing their microbes at other people.” His implication is that the spread of germs is an initiation of force from one person against others, therefore justifying state intervention to mitigate that initiation of force. This cheapens the definition of force to an utterly ubiquitous level. A single person picks up and loses an incalculable number of microorganisms per day. This is done invisibly, without a person’s knowledge, whether he is healthy or sick, without malice, without intent, and without the ability to stop it (even if you try). No one can know how many billions of microorganisms were exchanged in a given day, nor who will be susceptible to them. No one can prove beyond reasonable doubt which person dropped which microorganism.

The stupid, it doth burn. Of course, we all carry microbes and exchange them with each other every day. However, there's a difference between just microbes and microbes that cause serious diseases that can be vaccinated against. If you can prevent endangering others with microbes that you carry or prevent your children from endangering other children by taking a simple precaution that is incredibly safe for you and your child, then why wouldn't that be an assault?

Of course, Reason readers tend to think along the same way that Police State USA thinks, namely, "Screw you! I don't care if what I do hurts you." Just take a look at the Facebook post for Bailey's article. It's peppered with comments like:

Explain how not getting a vaccination yourself puts someone else at risk. If you get sick and they are vaccinated then they won't get sick because they a vaccinated against it right? Oh, vaccinations don't actually protect against getting sick?!? Then why do we get them.

The stupid, it burns. And I do mean you, Parrish Miller, whoever you are.

And:

Herd Immunity is more Bullshit from Big Pharma with NO logic behind it!

And:

How about "I DON'T WANT TO!"? That's about as libertarian as it gets. There is no such thing as a positive obligation in libertarian philosophy and that includes an obligation to be vaccinated.

Which is as good a reason as any as to why I shucked my Libertarian tendencies. (Well, that, and my increasing realization over the last 15 years that an "unfettered" free market is not a panacea.)

Sadly, Ronald Bailey is fighting a losing battle. On vaccines, he really appears not to be in tune with his fellow Libertarians, who are all too prone to denying science when it inconveniently clashes with their worship of the free market and individual freedom above all. As I've said time and time again, the entire "health freedom" movement (a.k.a. the freedom of quacks from having the government interfere with their plying their quackery), of which the antivaccine movement is but a part, is very much at home within the Libertarian movement. Indeed, one can say that it's as pure an expression of Libertarianism as there is: Don't regulate quackery, as the free market will take care of it all (you know, much the way it did so effectively before the creation of the FDA and other regulatory agencies, with wandering snake oil salesmen and pharmaceutical companies bringing drugs to market without testing them) and no one can tell me what I can and can't put into my body (never mind whether it's based on misinformation and false claims or not). Don't require me to do anything that will benefit me and my fellow citizens, such as vaccinating. And, above all, don't discuss the delicate balance between personal liberty and what benefits and harms society. If you do, you'll get the kind of reaction that Ronald Bailey got. That's the problem that Libertarians trying to take a reasonable position with respect to medicine run into that they don't want to admit. Quackery and antivaccine views go together with Libertarianism like show trials and dictatorships. The more scientifically inclined Libertarians know that, and it bothers them. Unfortunately, they are very quickly reminded of it by their fellow Libertarians when they try to make a "principled Libertarian case" for vaccine mandates, as Ronald Bailey was.

oracknows Wed, 12/18/2013 - 02:00

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

complementary and alternative medicine

complementary and alternative medicine

Politics

I've gone 'round and 'round with some of my Lib friends on this issue.

IMO they're using the label of Libertarian to justify being sanctimonious, selfish aholes.

Yes, yes, it's your right to determine what you do to your body - but that doesn't give you the right to intentionally risk the health of others via your execution of that right - which is what refusing vaccination does.

I have one (now ex) friend who actually said that, "If my not vaccinating myself or my kid causes someone else's kid to die - that's just too bad for them. They should have been healthier. It's not my fault nor my problem."

I was actually speechless.

Stopping after the first paragraph to post this: on twitter, the hashtag #icanhazpdf with the citation often leads to good results.

The reality of this argument against is, "Since people can't tell I'm free-riding on herd immunity, my choice that harms others is perfectly acceptable." They just don't want to admit they are behaving that way.

@Orac - actually, I find Libertarians to be definitely at odds with the "Free Market" i.e. the Corporations and businesses that they presume to support....as a CEO, I would certainly mandate that my employees get all of their vaccinations (in a Libertarian Paradise) and stay up to date or I would fire them.

Unvaccinated employees endanger my profits, since sick employees aren't contributing to the bottom line & certainly put my other employees at risk of the same - so, as an unfettered business man, I should make it a condition of employment to get vaccinated (and if you can't get vaccinated for medical reasons - all the better that all of the other employees who can, do).

If the employees don't like it, they can quit and work somewhere else, right?

Well, I'm happy this morning because 2 hospitals in Tucson swatted this type of nonsense out the door w/r/t flu vaccine for health care workers: http://azstarnet.com/news/local/ua-health-network-makes-flu-shots-manda….

Well, this made me mad, but not at you.

Like Lawrence, I'd argue that not vaccination hurts the "free market" more than it helps, except for maybe those who make money from hospital stays and long-term antibiotics or antivirals, makers of hearing aids, CIs, caskets, and funeral homes. Plus, I tell our employees all the time, while it may be your "right to decide what goes in your body" it is your privilege to work at this hospital.

No one can prove beyond reasonable doubt which person dropped which microorganism

When did "reasonable doubt" become part of epidemiology? Oh, wait, like they are wont to do, they're looking at this from a legal standpoint of how much they can personally get away with, rather than contributing to someone's needless death. It requires entire brain-shifts to think like them, and god it hurts.

The Ron Paul/Rand Paul/Les Paul crowd would have a better shot of justifying their beliefs on the basis of libertarianism if they weren't also chock full of pseudoscientific nonsense.

"I’d agree that there’s no “principled Libertarian case,” but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a Libertarian case. It boils down to, basically, “Screw you. I don’t care if my decision affects others.”

A quoted followup comment states it even more succinctly ("I Don't Want To") but to capture the full flavor of the mature and highly reasoned Libertarian position, it should read "I Don't Want To And You Can't Make Me".

It's basically a spoiled three-year-old's approach to living in society.

a few things...

Gamondes has been around - I've read a few of her more bizarre entries.

ah yes, the free market- tells us about what a stabilising force it has been in earlier days..

lord! next they're being dragging in their fav economic theories to jusify their selfishness
( -btw- low taxes mean that the general population often is ill-educated and public services deteriorate or are non-existent- who wants to live in a place like that? Higher taxes mean that I live in a more civilised environment- AND I have been to semi-tropical, small government 'paradises'- not my cup of tea)

the idea of western democracies being 'police states' is an everyday meme at PRN and NaturalNews

If you want to visit a black hole / sinkhole/ quagmire of libertarianism applied to vaccine ( dis) information, see Robert Schecter's The Vaccine Machine facebook page ( and separate blog). It's hugely popular and very activist.

Mikey takes on the newest research about supplements.

Hello Mrs Woo, glad to see you.

@ Chris Hickie:

I'm glad to hear that! Don't you live in sort of a libertarian-friendly area? -btw- when Adams returned after his hiatus in Ecuador, he lived in Tucson prior to moving to Austin.

Lawrence @4: You imply that Libertarianism is a coherent political philosophy, which assumes facts not in evidence. About the only coherent philosophical underpinning I have been able to discern in Libertarianism is IGMFY (the first three letters stand for I Got Mine; I assume most RI readers can figure out the rest).

No one can prove beyond reasonable doubt which person dropped which microorganism

Funny thing is is that we can in a lot of cases with molecular epidemiological techniques and contact tracing.

A couple of points:
There is a long tradition of societies coping with infectious disease by quarantining infected individuals. If you have the right to refuse vaccines, then we have the right to exclude you from schools, workplaces, etc. Perhaps a bell around the neck might be useful to warn others that you are a potential hazard.

Your choice to refuse vaccines does not obligate the rest of society to pay for the expense of the consequences. People who refuse vaccines for non-medical reasons could have a clause in their health insurance that denies coverage for illness resulting from that choice.

@Science Mom "Funny thing is is that we can in a lot of cases with molecular epidemiological techniques and contact tracing."

:) That makes it interesting. So libertarians would have no issues with a person who is harmed from microbes dropped* from unvaccinated libertarians suing them through the courts for pain, suffering, ongoing medical treatment, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of earnings potential, etc?

*for some reason, this phrase has me thinking of Hansel and Gretel and breadcrumbs. It's early morning and I have had little sleep.

@ Denice--I live in one of the zaniest states in the country. Don't get me wrong--I was born in Arizona and I love it here, but there is almost nothing consistent or predictable here when it comes to politics. And yep, there's a libertarian/conspiracy theorist railing away online right now in the comments section on that article I cited above.

And yep, there’s a libertarian/conspiracy theorist railing away online right now in the comments section on that article I cited above.

It could be worse. In the state where I live, these types are too frequently elected to the state legislature. When you have one legislator for every 3200 residents, and more state reps than polling precincts*, it's easy for these people to slip under the radar.

*Our state constitution restricts where district boundaries can be drawn (they must coincide with township or ward boundaries), so multi-member districts are inevitable.

Touching on the vitamin question, I just wanted to be the first to say the phrase 'expensive urine' which was funny when I was first taught it at medical school 37 years ago (but that was in the UK and the vitamin craze never took off there like it did in the US), and is still an excellent way of describing what the average multivitamin provides.

Do you read what is in the vaccines and are you aware of how much it profits pharmaceutical companies to sell more, and are you aware of the success rate or lack thereof of all of these vaccines and the harmful affects of some of the contents of the vaccines? Learn that before commenting that we need all of these vaccines pushed at us. For instance, research, the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine. For instance. vaccine manufacturers know that shingles (same virus as chickenpox and herpes) can be knocked back by Lysine, an amino acid found in foods. Are we told this? No, it would hamper vaccine sales.

Libertarian believe in following our Constitution. If you think that is whacky, then you are part of the problem that has this country in shambles.

And while we are here, let's look at the difference between Republic and Democracy. The USA is a republic. That means we follow our Constitution. Democracy men as we follow the popular vote. They are not the same. Democracy can sway the whole basis the country was founded upon.

Oh look. Somewhat fresh meat. *Yawn*

Not quite a coverall, CJ, but at least a diagonal in AV bingo.

Now, which ruling determined the constitution included the right to endanger the health of others? I'm on a smart phone, so it's impractical for me to find the one that ruled it wasn't in the constitution, but I'm sure others will.

Also, a hearty [citations needed]

Adriana Gamondes is a poster artist and does much (if not all) of the pictorial layouts for Age of Autism, The Canary Party and its affiliates:

https://www.google.com/search?q=posters+adriana+gamondes&client=firefox…

Who could ever forget this example of Gamondes' talent...which somehow got pulled from Age of Autism?

http://skepacabra.wordpress.com/tag/adriana-gamondes/

A lot of these comments I'm reading are based on the flawed idea that all vaccines are good and do what they are purported to do.

BTW, here are the ingredients, from CDC, of your flu vaccine: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/vaccine-decision/ingredients.html

If I followed western medicine, instead of doing what is right for my health, I would be on at least five different pharmaceutical prescription drugs? Because of looking into how my body works, along with the help of a nutritionist, SpectraCell Labs intracellular testing (not costly), and a couple of Naturpoathic doctors, including Joe Mercola, OD, I am very healthy and pharmaceutical free!

For instance, instead of taking a pharmaceutical drug for slow thyroid/hypothyroidism, I found, from Mercola's site, that our thyroid sneed iodine. The Endocrinologist I saw said nothing about that. She just wanted to write a prescription. I went home, researched, and now take a kelp supplement, chock full of iodine. My hypothyroid symptoms and problem are gone and given the thumbs up from same endocrinologist.

ADD symptoms are gone, along with yearly ear infections and high blood sugar after going off of gluten and dairy. I found this info with the help of a different endocrinologist, and ENT doctor and another Naturopathic/endocrinologist OD, MD.
I had been offered for that block of problems two different amphetamines, a diabetic drug, antibiotics and surgery on my deviated septum.

Many of the comments in this string sound like you accept what you are told without question. If your car repairman came to you asking for money to go to the fix your car, do you just hand it over without question? Or do you think about the variables and everything surrounding it. I do the latter. And I, likewise, do the same with government and with doctors and you should think things through more, too.

I would just like to say that reading the comments made my day. Most people I am around on a daily basis view libertarians as "reasonable" and "not hurting anyone".

And the ones I know that ARE libertarians are or have been on government assistance, pay piddling amounts of taxes, are on Medicare, the whole ball of wax.

A few years back I worked for a company whose psychotic CEO literally had every Ayn Rand bucket of tripe on the shelf... a company started with a government grant.

Oh sweet Jesus I hate libertarians.

I don't think you can correlate beliefs in "natural healing" or other forms of the supernatural with either the political left or right. I don't believe they differ in how they come to their beliefs. There are some things which are orthogonal to politics, and this is one of them. If anything, I'd say that a strong belief in "health freedom" may drive people toward libertarianism, rather than the other way around. Always be careful where you point that arrow of causation. It's sharp!

Lawrence,

I find Libertarians to be definitely at odds with the “Free Market” i.e. the Corporations and businesses that they presume to support,

I would hope you'd never find someone who believed that a company could base its internal policies on purely libertarian principles. A single craftsman working at his/her/its bench or with an assistant, perhaps. Larger companies are run in a way that would, if they were governments, be referred to as communist.

I'd thought that would be obvious to the most casual observer, but I haven't checked with Libertarians on their view of such things.

To be an assault the person would have to know they or their child is ill and intentionally expose someone else.. Like a parent taking a child to a chicken pox party and then to school, exposing others so that they'll get natural immunity (and in torts you'd call it battery). Just not taking the precaution is negligence. For an example not in the vaccine context, from the laissez faire days, see Smith v. Baker, 20 F. 709 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1884) - infection with whooping cough.

As a point of discussion, how far does the principle go?

Let's assume the general proposition that by not getting vaccinated (in the absence of mitigating circumstances) one has, in effect, swung one's fist far enough to at least brush the tip of another person's nose. Refusing to pay one's taxes (as determined by current tax law - though I make it clear that this would not include taking every deduction and opportunity to reduce one's taxes allowed) might be also be considered in the same vein.

What other behavior might the government be justified in mandating/restricting for the same reason?

"If your car repairman came to you asking for money to go to the fix your car, do you just hand it over without question?"

No, I go to random websites and listen to advice from people with no training in car repair, plus uncorroborated anecdotes from Internet forum posters.

My car's wheels were loose and wobbly and terrible noises were coming from the engine compartment. But after pouring Miracle Glurge into my crankcase, I not only solved those problems but turned my old Saturn into a Porsche!

And you can't prove me wrong.

Slight correction: The Canary Party has collaborated with Tea Party groups outside California. About a year ago, the Canary Party participated in a "Maine Liberty Summit" that also included the Maine Tea Party Patriots, the John Birch Society, and the Young Americans for Liberty (i.e. Ron Paul supporters). Ginger Taylor helped organized the event and promoted it on her Facebook page.

Speaking of Ginger, her Facebook profile lists her as **the** campaign manager for Mike Wallace, who was a Republican candidate for Maine's state senate in the 2012 election. He was defeated.

Cj: "If I followed western medicine, instead of doing what is right for my health, "

So you should be okay with the DTaP and varicella vaccines since they were developed in Japan. Also Japanese researchers worked on statins and colonoscopy.

The term "western medicine" is fairly racist.

Also Marcela is not an optometrist (OD), but an osteopathic (DO). Though now he is just pseudoscience shill.

@Darwy,

“If my not vaccinating myself or my kid causes someone else’s kid to die – that’s just too bad for them.

I am very curious - had the person said "What if I vaccinate myself or my kid and I get an honest to gosh vaccine injury that leaves me scarred, arthritic, or dead (say from anaphylaxis)?", what would have been your reaction?

Note: the odds of any such occurrence are very small and and based on relative risks well worth the risk. And I have certainly gotten plenty of immunizations over my life. But I'm curious what the answer would be.

Stupid tablet autocorrect, "Marcela" was supposed to "Mercola."

In other anti-vax news:
(@ PRN) Null and Gale critique Project Tycho, in a new article which the former read aloud
a. they find it lacking
b. Null doesn't know how to pronounce 'Tycho'; wonder what he does with 'Brahe'?

If your car repairman came to you asking for money to go to the fix your car, do you just hand it over without question?

No, based on my "research" I'd first try chelating the car every three or four hours for years to remove the mercury that no one can convince me is not responsible for the problem, but if my car is a nonresponder I might try using industrial bleach just in case it's worms.

Oh goodie, a live one.

Do you read what is in the vaccines

Yes.

are you aware of how much it profits pharmaceutical companies to sell more

Yep: not a whole lot. You are aware that the profit margins on vaccines are so crappy the government has had to pay them to keep making them, right? As far as volume, they are not even in the top 10. Statins and dick pills, that's where the money is.

You could have looked that up. Either you are lazy or you are a liar. Which one is it?

and are you aware of the success rate or lack thereof of all of these vaccines

Yes. I noticed a distinct drop in sales of iron lungs since the 1960s, for example. Or the eradication of smallpox. Or the drop of measles deaths and permanent disabilities. I can do this all day.

and the harmful affects of some of the contents of the vaccines?

We all see how you phrased that, weasel. Yes, there are awful things in vaccines that you can die from in the right dosage. Like water. On the other hand, none of the ingredients and pollutants and contaminants and byproducts present in vaccines are in a high enough dosage to do harm.

But again, you could have looked that up. Lazy or liar?

the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine.

Oh for crying out loud. Do we really have to throw in basic statistics for you? No vaccine is 100% effective. Let's say it's 80% effective. Let's take a 100 people and give the vaccine to 98 of them. Now let's expose all of them to the virus. Assuming no herd immunity, and 100% communicability, you'd see 19 vaccinated sick people and 2 unvaccinated sick people.

Which group do you want to be in?

For instance. vaccine manufacturers know that shingles (same virus as chickenpox and herpes) can be knocked back by Lysine, an amino acid found in foods.

They know no such thing. The people that "know" this are usually places that sell Lysine supplements. What does that tell you?

Libertarian believe in following our Constitution.

...when it suits you. We know cupcake.

If you think that is whacky, then you are part of the problem that has this country in shambles.

Please explain how the country is in shambles, and specifically how not following the constitution is responsible for that.

And while we are here, let’s look at the difference between Republic and Democracy. The USA is a republic. That means we follow our Constitution. Democracy men as we follow the popular vote. They are not the same. Democracy can sway the whole basis the country was founded upon.

This is pig-ignorant in so many ways I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Are you saying democracies do not have constitutions?

Are you saying democracies do not have checks and balances?

Are you saying the constitution cannot be changed?

Are you saying that in a republic majority votes do not affect the constitution and its application?

A lot of these comments I’m reading are based on the flawed idea that all vaccines are good and do what they are purported to do.

But they do. This is not really up for discussion, moron. Seen a lot of neurologically damaged children limping down the street in braces because of polio lately?

This is a random, bald assertion that vaccines do not work as advertised, and until such time as you attempt to provide ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER contradicting the mountains of basic statistics of disease incidence decreasing after vaccination for them was instated, you are just blowing smoke.

BTW, here are the ingredients, from CDC, of your flu vaccine: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/vaccine-decision/ingredients.html

Yes, and you still haven't really gotten to what's so scary. Is it all the dihydrogen monoxide?

Let me guess. It's formaldehyde, right? Aluminum? Which one scares you the most, cupcake?

If I followed western medicine, instead of doing what is right for my health,

Holy false dichotomy, Batman!

But hey, you, intrepid warrior of the 101st Keyboarders, have found out that the real mission of every medical school is to NOT do what is right for the patient's health.

Do you even realize how deeply insulting that is?

I would be on at least five different pharmaceutical prescription drugs

[Citation seriously fucking needed]

Because of looking into how my body works

Oh, hang back people -- this is one of the Special Snowflake(TM) contingent, whose body works differently than anybody else's.

along with the help of a nutritionist, SpectraCell Labs intracellular testing (not costly), and a couple of Naturpoathic doctors, including Joe Mercola, OD, I am very healthy and pharmaceutical free!

And you are totally NOT shilling for properly capitalized SpectraCell(R) Labs(TM) intracellular testing. Also, Joe Mercola does not make any money shilling things. Also, I am very healthy and pharmaceutical free, but a doctor would totally prescribe a drug rather than a supplement. The doctor has a COI, not Joe Mercola or SpectraCell(R) Labs(TM), who are totally not costly. Did I mention they are totally not costly? You should totally check them out.

For instance, instead of taking a pharmaceutical drug for slow thyroid/hypothyroidism, I found, from Mercola’s site, that our thyroid sneed iodine.

There are other things in your body that need iodine, jackwagon.

The Endocrinologist I saw said nothing about that. She just wanted to write a prescription.

I am sure you asked her if there were nutritional options rather than sitting there like a muppet, going home and raping Google in an attempt to prove her wrong. I'm positive. You seem so unbiased!

I went home, researched, and now take a kelp supplement, chock full of iodine.

I do hope you go back for actual tests every now and then, because by doing this you're putting yourself at risk for hypothyroidism and autoimmune thyroiditis.

My hypothyroid symptoms and problem are gone and given the thumbs up from same endocrinologist.

Oh, never mind. Good.

ADD symptoms are gone, along with yearly ear infections and high blood sugar after going off of gluten and dairy

So you found out you have allergies! Bully for you, cupcake!

I found this info with the help of a different endocrinologist, and ENT doctor and another Naturopathic/endocrinologist OD, MD.

Yes...?

I had been offered for that block of problems two different amphetamines, a diabetic drug, antibiotics and surgery on my deviated septum.

Maybe you should learn how to talk to your doctor. Also, in what universe does a gluten-free diet cure a deviated septum?

Many of the comments in this string sound like you accept what you are told without question.

All together now:

IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION.

How much have you questioned what SpectraCell(R) told you? Or Joe Mercola? It sounds like you didn't question what they told you at all.

If your car repairman came to you asking for money to go to the fix your car, do you just hand it over without question?

No, but you do. Good thing SpectraCell(TM) is so affordable. Good thing Joe Mercola is always right.

Right?

Or do you think about the variables and everything surrounding it. I do the latter.

Bull fucking shit you do. You found an article that said "thyroid issues? buy our kelp!" and what did you do? You sure as hell didn't think about variables. You didn't think about anything other than a nice, easy, clean fix that did not involve them evil western medicine doctor people or the government. Because that's what you wanted to believe in the first place.

Stop lying to yourself. You're not fooling anyone else.

And I, likewise, do the same with government and with doctors and you should think things through more, too.

(Holy hakalela. I swear, I did not even read ahead. How about that for predicting a thought process?)

Why distrust the government and every single accredited physician but not SpectraCell(TM) and Joe Mercola?

Where do you buy your kelp supplement?

Do you read what is in the vaccines”

Yes, I have. In addition to antigens specific to the infectious disease they are designed to address. they contain known amounts of preservatives, adjuvants and other excipients which improve their efficacy, as well as trace amounts of some chemical entities remaining from their manufacture None of which are present at concentrations demonstrated to be toxic or otherwise endanger health.

and are you aware of how much it profits pharmaceutical companies to sell more

yes: not very much. The return on investment assoiciated with vaccines is less than that for other pharmaceutical products. It would at much more profitable for a company to sell the antibiotics needed to treat infection once acquired than it is to sell vaccines to prevent the infection from occurring.

and are you aware of the success rate or lack thereof of all of these vaccines and the harmful affects of some of the contents of the vaccines?

Yes-- in terms of saving lives and preventing suffering vaccines are arguably the single most successful medical intervention we as a species have ever developed. (The only intervention I can think of that might challenge for the lead would be the development of surgical anesthesia.)

Adverse events associated with vaccines are both quantifiable and well understood: those that are common are minor and transient (soreness at the site of injection, mild fever, etc.) while those that are serious (GBS, encephalopathy) are all but vanishingly rare.
Any rational risk versus benefit assessment overwhelmingly indicates that the risks of being vaccinated are orders of magnitude less than the risk of remaining vulnerable to infection.

Consider measles: measles infections cause encephalopathy in about 1 out of every 1000 cases, while the risk of encephalopathy associated with the MMR vaccine is less than 1 out of every one million vaccinations(seehttp://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00046738.htm).

Learn that before commenting that we need all of these vaccines pushed at us. For instance, research, the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine.

I’m sorry, but this statement is false. During an outbreak children who’ve been fully vaccinated against pertussis are 6 times less likely to become infected than children who have never been vaccinated against pertussis (and when they do become infected they typically experience less severe illness than those who have not been vaccinated).

What’s confusing you is that because so many more children have been vaccinated than remain unvaccinated the absolute number of cases in vaccinated children may exceed that in unvaccinated children.

For instance. vaccine manufacturers know that shingles (same virus as chickenpox and herpes) can be knocked back by Lysine, an amino acid found in foods.

Citation needed.

Libertarian believe in following our Constitution. If you think that is whacky, then you are part of the problem that has this country in shambles.

If that were all they believed in there’d be no problem. Unfortunately, they seem also to oppose the government’s constitutional authority to regulate commerce, provide for the welfare of the nation’s citizens, etc., should be ignored.

And while we are here, let’s look at the difference between Republic and Democracy. The USA is a republic.

Actually the US is a constitutional democratic republic. While representatives are democratically elected to govern a constitution defines how the government is structures, establishing checks and balances, limiting government powers and authority, vesting citizens with individual civil rights, etc.

Oh goodie, a live one.

Do you read what is in the vaccines

Yes.

are you aware of how much it profits pharmaceutical companies to sell more

You could have looked that up. Either you are lazy or you are a liar. Which one is it?

and are you aware of the success rate or lack thereof of all of these vaccines

Yes. I noticed a distinct drop in sales of iron lungs since the 1960s, for example. Or the eradication of smallpox. Or the drop of measles deaths and permanent disabilities. I can do this all day.

and the harmful affects of some of the contents of the vaccines?

But again, you could have looked that up. Lazy or liar?

the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine.

Which group do you want to be in?

For instance. vaccine manufacturers know that shingles (same virus as chickenpox and herpes) can be knocked back by Lysine, an amino acid found in foods.

They know no such thing. The people that "know" this are usually places that sell Lysine supplements. What does that tell you?

Libertarian believe in following our Constitution.

...when it suits you. We know cupcake.

If you think that is whacky, then you are part of the problem that has this country in shambles.

Please explain how the country is in shambles, and specifically how not following the constitution is responsible for that.

And while we are here, let’s look at the difference between Republic and Democracy. The USA is a republic. That means we follow our Constitution. Democracy men as we follow the popular vote. They are not the same. Democracy can sway the whole basis the country was founded upon.

This is pig-ignorant in so many ways I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Are you saying democracies do not have constitutions?

Are you saying democracies do not have checks and balances?

Are you saying the constitution cannot be changed?

Are you saying that in a republic majority votes do not affect the constitution and its application?

A lot of these comments I’m reading are based on the flawed idea that all vaccines are good and do what they are purported to do.

But they do. This is not really up for discussion, moron. Seen a lot of neurologically damaged children limping down the street in braces because of polio lately?

This is a random, bald assertion that vaccines do not work as advertised, and until such time as you attempt to provide ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER contradicting the mountains of basic statistics of disease incidence decreasing after vaccination for them was instated, you are just blowing smoke.

BTW, here are the ingredients, from CDC, of your flu vaccine: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/vaccine-decision/ingredients.html

Yes, and you still haven't really gotten to what's so scary. Is it all the dihydrogen monoxide?

Let me guess. It's formaldehyde, right? Aluminum? Which one scares you the most, cupcake?

If I followed western medicine, instead of doing what is right for my health,

Holy false dichotomy, Batman!

But hey, you, intrepid warrior of the 101st Keyboarders, have found out that the real mission of every medical school is to NOT do what is right for the patient's health.

Do you even realize how deeply insulting that is?

I would be on at least five different pharmaceutical prescription drugs

[Citation seriously fucking needed]

Because of looking into how my body works

Oh, hang back people -- this is one of the Special Snowflake(TM) contingent, whose body works differently than anybody else's.

along with the help of a nutritionist, SpectraCell Labs intracellular testing (not costly), and a couple of Naturpoathic doctors, including Joe Mercola, OD, I am very healthy and pharmaceutical free!

And you are totally NOT shilling for properly capitalized SpectraCell(R) Labs(TM) intracellular testing. Also, Joe Mercola does not make any money shilling things. Also, I am very healthy and pharmaceutical free, but a doctor would totally prescribe a drug rather than a supplement. The doctor has a COI, not Joe Mercola or SpectraCell(R) Labs(TM), who are totally not costly. Did I mention they are totally not costly? You should totally check them out.

For instance, instead of taking a pharmaceutical drug for slow thyroid/hypothyroidism, I found, from Mercola’s site, that our thyroid sneed iodine.

There are other things in your body that need iodine, jackwagon.

The Endocrinologist I saw said nothing about that. She just wanted to write a prescription.

I am sure you asked her if there were nutritional options rather than sitting there like a muppet, going home and raping Google in an attempt to prove her wrong. I'm positive. You seem so unbiased!

I went home, researched, and now take a kelp supplement, chock full of iodine.

I do hope you go back for actual tests every now and then, because by doing this you're putting yourself at risk for hypothyroidism and autoimmune thyroiditis.

My hypothyroid symptoms and problem are gone and given the thumbs up from same endocrinologist.

Oh, never mind. Good.

ADD symptoms are gone, along with yearly ear infections and high blood sugar after going off of gluten and dairy

So you found out you have allergies! Bully for you, cupcake!

I found this info with the help of a different endocrinologist, and ENT doctor and another Naturopathic/endocrinologist OD, MD.

Yes...?

I had been offered for that block of problems two different amphetamines, a diabetic drug, antibiotics and surgery on my deviated septum.

Maybe you should learn how to talk to your doctor. Also, in what universe does a gluten-free diet cure a deviated septum?

Many of the comments in this string sound like you accept what you are told without question.

All together now:

IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION.

How much have you questioned what SpectraCell(R) told you? Or Joe Mercola? It sounds like you didn't question what they told you at all.

If your car repairman came to you asking for money to go to the fix your car, do you just hand it over without question?

No, but you do. Good thing SpectraCell(TM) is so affordable. Good thing Joe Mercola is always right.

Right?

Or do you think about the variables and everything surrounding it. I do the latter.

Bull fucking shit you do. You found an article that said "thyroid issues? buy our kelp!" and what did you do? You sure as hell didn't think about variables. You didn't think about anything other than a nice, easy, clean fix that did not involve them evil western medicine doctor people or the government. Because that's what you wanted to believe in the first place.

Stop lying to yourself. You're not fooling anyone else.

And I, likewise, do the same with government and with doctors and you should think things through more, too.

(Holy hakalela. I swear, I did not even read ahead. How about that for predicting a thought process?)

Why distrust the government and every single accredited physician but not SpectraCell(TM) and Joe Mercola?

Where do you buy your kelp supplement?

As a follow-up to Science Mom's post...we are able to determine the "index case" in a measles outbreak, via trace back investigations and by genotype:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6013a6.htm

"....The investigation determined that the index patient was a U.S.-born child of Somali descent, aged 30 months, who developed a rash February 15, 14 days after returning from a trip to Kenya. The patient attended a drop-in child care center 1 day before rash onset; measles developed in three contacts at the center and in one household contact. Secondary and tertiary exposures occurred in two congregate living facilities for homeless persons (four patients), an emergency department (two patients), and households (two patients). A virus isolate from the index patient was genotyped at CDC as B3, which is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa...."

We are also able to determine the "index case" during tuberculosis outbreaks, via DNA fingerprinting of a culture positive sputum specimen and by SNA (Social Network Analysis):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3650219/

Who could ever forget this example of Gamondes’ talent…which somehow got pulled from Age of Autism?

Not only is that poster offensive, but it's also a completely crappy photoshop job that wouldn't pass muster at Fark.com.

While my long answer is in moderation, just for entertainment, read this page without guffawing (I dare you)

http://www.spectracell.com/patients/patient-micronutrient-testing/

I'm guessing that by "mandatory" vaccination they actually mean vaccine requirements for attending taxpayer-funded schools, right? Wouldn't the Libertarian position be that there shouldn't be taxpayer-funded schools to begin with? You have the kids, its your responsibility to pay for their education, not mine. Also, most of the Libertarian philosophy I've read states that the gov't has a responsibility to protect its citizens from force or fraud, and that definitely includes regulating claims made by people pushing supplement and other forms of woo.

I have been interested in Libertarianism off and on for awhile now, but keep running into the same problems repeatedly mentioned above: it sounds good in principle, but its easy to see that pure Libertarianism would have profoundly negative consequences in practice. And after you've made exceptions for all of the things for which pure free-market Libertarianism wouldn't work - health care, protecting the environment, the rights of children, etc - there's not a whole lot left.

CJ, none of the ingredients listed at the link you provided have been shown to be harmful at the exposure levels you could receive as the result of vaccination.

For example, aluminum is one of the most ubiquitous elements on the planet and infants are exposed daily to much, much greater amounts of aluminum from dietary and environmental sources than they could possibly receive as the result of immunization. To put it in perspective, over the first 6 months of life an infant could be exposed to a maximum of 2.5 mg of aluminum as the result of routine immunizations. During those same 6 months it would be exposed to 10 mgs of aluminum if breast feeding; if receiving formula instead we're talking about a 40 mgs of aluminum, and as much as 120 mgs if it's receiving a soy-based formula.

The theoretical maximum exposure to formaldehyde from immunization would be at the scheduled 6 month visit, when the child could potentially receive up to 4 immunizations (HepB, DTaP, IPV and possibly influenza). This would expose them to around 310 ug of formaldehyde. That's less formaldehyde than you're exposed to simply as part of a normal diet (10,000 to 20,000 ug/daily) and in fact less than you'll receive when by eating a single apple, (between 430 and 1100 ug formaldehyde). A normal liver produces more formaldehyde daily than you’d ever see due to vaccines.

Egg proteins? IF you’re allergic that would be a problem, which is why people with egg allergies cannot receive some vaccines (and which is why the rest of us can should be vaccinated, to maintain the herd immunity those with allergies rely on to avoid infection).

@Sarah: the very easy checklist you can use:

What about
- National defense
- Fire deparments
- Police
- Hospitals
- EPA
- OSHA
- Car safety regs
- NTSHB
- Building codes
- Local environmental code enforcement
- ATF
- FDA
- Educational standards (look up ACE)

Heck, there's more, but start with those.

It was by a contributor of whom I had never heard before named Adriana Gamondes

Oh, no, you've heard of her.

Orac wrote:

vitamin supplementation is not necessary for most people

The usual response to which, IME, is "how would I know I'm not one of the exceptions? Better to take supplements to be on the safe side."

(Going to a doctor and getting tested for deficiencies could be one way of finding out, but doctors, being motivated solely by money derived from pharmaceuticals and not at all from such derived from supplements*, would likely lie about any positive tests in the hope you end up with a serious condition requiring prescription meds.)

(* No, I don't know why supplements prescribed as treatment for a deficiency wouldn't count as "pharmaceuticals".)

BTW, The Federal government and States do have "police power" for involuntary quarantine/isolation of patients infected with highly infectious diseases:

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-quarantine-and-isolation-stat…

I've actually seen cases of MDR TB where the patient is non-compliant and put under court order. Police officers are directed to pick up the patient and deliver him/her to the County hospital to be placed in strict respiratory isolation with 24/7 guards outside the hospital room.

As a libertarian parent, I give my baby the choice to eat lead or non-lead paint chips. After all, it's in the spirit of personal choice/freedom and a free market economy.

Larger companies are run in a way that would, if they were governments, be referred to as communist.

Actually, they would be called dictatorships, though I will grant you that this is how nominally Communist governments generally operated in practice. This is because Communism, like Libertarianism, is a political belief system which sounds great in theory but whose successful implementation depends on counterfactual assumptions about human nature.

re my # 32 above:

The article is called ' Bill Gates' Project Tycho and Vaccine Voodoo" which can be found at Green Med Info amongst other places.

I wrote a long post responding to the criticism of Bailey. He's absolutely right on this one. I'm a libertarian and believe in free markets but I don't see that free market has anything to do with this. It's just a mantra being thrown out to justify rotten behavior. Jeffrey Singer wrote a response to Bailey that Reason hosted but I had trouble following it because it seems like just a bunch of libertarian words strung together.

This is what happens when people chase good idea into a corner, when they decide that they have to be the absolute purest brand of X, whatever political philosophy X is.

Did CJ remember to list dihydrogen oxide on the list of "toxins"?

I'm Libertarian. I also have Tea Party sympathies (the "Taxed Enough, Already" part, mainly).

That said, I was vaccinated as required by the laws in place during the 1960s. And I vaccinated my kids.

As I see it, an unfettered free market isn't a Libertarian tenet. Neither is the 'right" to refuse vaccinations. To think otherwise only reveals radical thinking. I find those individuals at both ends- and the middle- of the political spectrum.

In the end, it's all about the greater good vs. utter stupidity.

On vaccines, he really appears not to be in tune with his fellow Libertarians, who are all too prone to denying science when it inconveniently clashes with their worship of the free market and individual freedom above all.

I have often said that this is exactly the reason why so many libertarians are global warming deniers. In particular, there is no natural way in which CO2 emission creates a cost signal, so there's no way the free market alone can address this problem successfully -- "market-based solutions" only work if governments step in to create artificial disincentives. This is anathema to free-market fundamentalists, and the effect is to push them into wild contortions of motivated reasoning, so that the karma doesn't run over their dogma.

Excellent. Out of mod @36 (currently).

I'd like to say, once more, that people should realize that this is one of the least moderated blogs dealing with vaccinations in existence. AND THIS GOES BOTH WAYS. What other blog would tolerate #17,, #21 and #36? AoA sure as Shinola would not.

As I see it, an unfettered free market isn’t a Libertarian tenet.

Then, by the definitions currently used by self-styled libertarians in the US today... you, sir, are No True Scotsman(TM).

That being said, what are your views on the random set of issues as I threw out @42?

Stu and JGC, thanks for your thorough takedown of Cj. I only had time a quick response before turning off the tablet, and getting to the mall to pick something up just as it opened and there was parking. Only to have the person in front of me refuse to drive his car through the four-way stop intersection. At least until I and all the cars behind me honked our horns. AAargh.

By now I have an image of Cj, as the libertarian driver who decided to stake out his own spot next to one of the four stop sighs. Because driving rules are to be ignored, just like public health rules.

Can't even use the tablet as an excuse: "stop sighs" is "stop signs"... sigh.

Even as a libertarian, I'd say the reasons most people have for adopting that political philosophy aren't very rational, or at least well thought-out. Someone said, "nothing hurts more than a bad argument for a position you hold dear". I cringe every time I see anti-vaccination rhetoric coming from libertarian publications, primarily because it identifies them as being illiterate, intellectually lazy, and biased in the extreme. The truth is that their opposition to vaccination is based primarily on their political bias and not on any research showing harm or inefficacy (those are cherry-picked, as an afterthought). It's a very similar thing to the Liberal's and GMO's.

Reason has touched on vaccines in the past - back in 2010, they did an expose on the vaccine-autism myth http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/06/reasontv-do-vaccines-cause-aut which got a lot of comments from the usual crowd, including a fellow who used to post on this blog at length.

It's worth noting as well that the libertarian Popehat blog was one of the supporters of Kathleen Seidel when antivaccine activists tried to silence her some years back.

P.S. Cj - thanks for reminding us that government regulation requires that the ingredients of vaccines be printed on the insert, you big old state-worshipper you....

Two things:

With regard to the idea that refusing vaccination and shedding potentially fatal microbes at random is okay because there's no aggressive intent toward the people who get sick, there are the concepts of criminal negligence, involuntary manslaughter, and depraved indifference to human life.

As for the worshippers of republics and haters of democracy: Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Franco's Spain were republics. Canada and Spain today are democracies and not republics. I know which ones I'd choose.

P.S. Cj – thanks for reminding us that government regulation requires that the ingredients of vaccines be printed on the insert, you big old state-worshipper you….

Just the CDC isn't to be trusted! Liars! Pharma shills! Cover-ups! Brainwashing! Well, except for the VAERS, of course. *sarcasm*

@AOP - or anything related to the CDC or FDA that they feel supports their position.....

@ Stu - Is the list at #42 supposed to be a list of things libertarians would have a problem with? B/c I know they don't have a problem with national defense or police (both come under the rubric of protecting citizens from force), and I imagine some agencies such as the FDA would be considered an acceptable part of the government's responsibility to protect its citizens from fraud. As for firefighters, hospitals, etc - citizens would be free to provide those services either for profit or on a volunteer basis, but I think most libertarians would object to paying for them using tax dollars (at least at a federal level.) Of course, I'm still talking about abstract libertarian philosophy. In practice, it seems most people who call themselves libertarian want to keep the things that benefit them while getting rid of the things they don't want to pay for/answer to. For example, all those mom's over at AoA want the government to fund public schools and special ed programs for their kids, but they don't want to accept government stipulations on attendance (like taking reasonable precautions to not get other people's kids sick.)

Why do anti-vaccination and libertarianism go together? Neither requires intelligent thought.

But a question: how can arguments about how the great free market will raise all boats (if you are deserving, anyway) be coupled with a decrying of vaccinations because "big pharma makes tons of money from it"? Do those people not recognize how transparently stupid they are? (80% rhetorical question there)

After re-reading that last post, I just want to make it clear that I'm just stating libertarian philosophy as I understand it - I don't necessarily agree with it. For example, at #40 I characterized the libertarian attitude towards education as "You have the kids, its your responsibility to pay for their education, not mine." Which seems perfectly reasonable, until you reflect that the reason I have the option to not have kids (without causing the extinction of the human race) is that other people are having kids at more than replacement rates. B/c others have decided to take on the expense and self-sacrifice of having children, I'm free to invest my time and money elsewhere while still having a society to live in. So it seems only fair that I should contribute towards some of the expenses that children entail. But that's complicated. Libertarianism is simple, and I totally understand the appeal of that, b/c I hate politics. When I first encountered the libertarian philosophy, for awhile I thought I'd found the answer, and that's a very powerful, very seductive feeling, and very difficult to give up once you've found it. Perhaps that's why there's so much overlap between libertarians, antivaxers, and woo-pushers (not to mention fundamentalist religious types) - they're all looking for easy answers to hard questions.

Well, as usual The Onion nails it.

On ideological influences of antivaccinationists, I think religion can't be ignored: "Left-wing" antivaxxers correlate fairly strongly with Eastern, neopagan and/or "New Age" influences, while the "right wing" correlates predictably with conservative Christianity. It's also my observation as an "insider" that "New Age" style ideas and practices seem to be making inroads in otherwise religiously conservative Christian groups.

Sarah A - that seems remarkably convoluted. Why not just say that you have a libertarian view of procreation (i.e. a person may have as many or few children as he/she/it pleases and can manage to support) while having a collectivist view of public education?

Why would anyone have the responsibility to procreate in the absence of, say, a post-apocalyptic dystopia?

Why not just say that you have a libertarian view of procreation (i.e. a person may have as many or few children as he/she/it pleases and can manage to support) while having a collectivist view of public education?

Because I have no idea what that means ^-^* Seriously, that long-winded explanation wasn't some disguised political opinion, that's just exactly how convoluted politics seems to me.

On the plus side, this thread has reminded me of my long-standing intention to educate myself about politics, which in turn has led me to discover that there is, in fact, a "Politics for Dummies," which I shall be reading forthwith.

Learn that before commenting that we need all of these vaccines pushed at us. For instance, research, the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine.

Pick me! Pick me! I can respond to this one!

Like my sister, who hadn't received her booster shot for WC, who called me as she'd been diagnosed with it. Needed to inform me as I'd been visiting her. But I'd had the booster, and I, and my niece and nephew who are under 12, and therefore still under the protection of their first shot, have not developed it.

So, as my story has 4 people, and yours only 1, I win. That's how it works, right?

That’s how it works, right?

IMO, yes.

Alain

imr90: There is a long tradition of societies coping with infectious disease by quarantining infected individuals.

It'd be interesting to look at the long quarantines of 1918-1919, and see what effect they had on the local economy. I'd be willing to bet that the economies experienced a huge slowdown.

@ PGP:

Actually there were downturns 1919-1920( see Post WWI recession, Depression of 1920- wikipedia) but I don't know how much quarantines had to do with either one because the war's end may have been the greatest contributing factor.

Still, I imagine it wasn't neglible - even events like bad weather can affect local economies.

How could I live if not told what to do, wonders the collectivist parasite.

Who would cut my meat for me if there was no government? Who would set a bed time for me? Who would lay out my clothes?

Mr. Schecter, you are incoherent and confused as always.

Sid, Schector, Shecky, Sh****ad, something like that.....in your case having someone as a guide in your life would be an improvement. They can keep you away from the keyboard until you are sober.

How could I live if not told what to do, wonders the collectivist parasite.

That blazing strawman is visible from Jupiter.

Considering that siddy boy depends on government for his job (supposedly he is a firefighter) as well as using government services (roads, garbage, police), and depending on others for herd immunity, his comments just smacks of hypocrisy.

@ novalox: Sid Offal is not a firefighter; that job takes guts, which the hit and run poster has none of.

Offal has a degree in "fire science" from a fourth tier college; well suited, I suppose, to become an "investor".

Just a quick thought before I go- you'd think libertarians would actually encourage any measure that limits the possibility of quarantines, since quarantines are far more restrictive than any possible mandating of vaccines could ever be.

Learn that before commenting that we need all of these vaccines pushed at us. For instance, research, the people most likely to develop whooping cough are those who received the vaccine.

I’m sorry, but this statement is false. During an outbreak children who’ve been fully vaccinated against pertussis are 6 times less likely to become infected than children who have never been vaccinated against pertussis (and when they do become infected they typically experience less severe illness than those who have not been vaccinated).

What’s confusing you is that because so many more children have been vaccinated than remain unvaccinated the absolute number of cases in vaccinated children may exceed that in unvaccinated children.

To give an illustration of the principle: if we checked the handedness of all the victims of a pertussis outbreak, we'd find that the majority of them are right-handed. But that doesn't mean that handedness has any effect on whether or not a person contracts pertussis; it just comes from the fact that there are more right-handed than left-handed people in the general population.

"Considering that siddy boy depends on government for his job (supposedly he is a firefighter) as well as using government services (roads, garbage, police), and depending on others for herd immunity, his comments just smacks of hypocrisy."

A pretty ridiculous argument. It's like saying a communist shouldn't go shopping, or buy food from any privately run business. People have to survive where they live, regardless of their ideals. Just because you think a system can be better doesn't mean you shouldn't participate.

If he's *forced* to pay taxes why doesn't he have the right to use government services? Should he relinquish his wages AND refuse to benefit from them in any way? It's his right to recover at least some of what was taken from him.

@Sarah:

Call it a list to gage the level of libertarian purity... how far from the "pure" libertarian position one has strayed (usually in order not to sound completely callous and clinically insane).

B/c I know they don’t have a problem with national defense or police (both come under the rubric of protecting citizens from force)

This is already mildly schizophrenic. A government-run police force to protect the people from force? What about force from the government? Why privatize everything else but not the cops?

and I imagine some agencies such as the FDA would be considered an acceptable part of the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens from fraud.

What I hear more often is "legalize all drugs, remove the FDA, the market will weed out the bad drugs and if people can get hurt they can sue".

As for firefighters, hospitals, etc – citizens would be free to provide those services either for profit or on a volunteer basis,

And this is where things go off the rails. What irks me is that libertarians pretend this hasn't been tried before.

This is how things turn out until the government steps in:

The first Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value.

As for hospitals, why do you think hospitals treat uninsured people currently? The kindness of their hearts? Without "force", how many of them do you think would throw away money like that?

(I believe the right answer is "well, they should've gotten insurance then")

"This is how things turn out until the government steps in:

The first Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history..."

Because one instance of a privately run fire department is representative of all possible instances... just like any one instance of a State institution is representative of all such institutions?

I think his point, Gene, is that it took exactly no time for the concept of private fire services to go wrong. There are plenty of modern-day examples too, in communities which cannot afford a municipal or volunteer fire department. Precisely the same thing happens, apart from the bit about buying their property at a discount afterwards. If you don't have a contract with them, they will literally drive to your house and then watch it burn unless you agree to pay them.

@ Gene Linet: I think that novalox's comment was based on Sid's past history here of callous commenting on vaccines and his "reluctance" to pay his fair share for municipal services (for schools, fire and police protection, hospitals, etc.).

Here, under his real name Robert Schecter, he was interviewed about "pox parties" on BBC Radio, about his anti-vaccine activities on Facebook:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15647434

Should he relinquish his wages AND refuse to benefit from them in any way? It’s his right to recover at least some of what was taken from him.

There's no particular reason to think that Schecter doesn't recover more than whatever he pays in taxes, given that he's demonstrably unable to think, and therefore nowhere close to being self-sustaining, and enough of a whiny asshοle that nobody would want to deal with him if he found himself delivered into the State of Nature that he piteously bleats abouts being deprived of.

You don't see Bobby making any efforts to emigrate to a more copacetic locale, do you?

A government-run police force to protect the people from force? What about force from the government?

And this, like the example of Crassus' fire department, is something with which the Romans had direct experience. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

re governmentally run fire departments and regulations:

If you visit London or San Francisco, you can take an architectural tour that will succinctly illustrate what happens when there aren't rules about fire- there was a fellow named Christopher Wren who got a lot of work afterwards; also a few paintings around-.
And if you, traipse around SF, you'll notice that all of those quirky, ornate Victorian houses are strangely absent in Chinatown- which has Edwardian brick buildings.

You can't view many 17th century buildings in New York because the entire town apparently burnt to the ground.

Oh right, those miserable, liberal cities with their fascistic laws clamping down on our sovereign freedom..

Well Schecter looks like a nut, but I was responding to the general argument that anyone who takes a Libertarian stance should abstain from public goods and services. A very weird thing to say, since I don't recall people calling liberals hypocrites for buying private health insurance. We all have to abide by the status quo, even if we don't like it.

@Calli "I think his point, Gene, is that it took exactly no time for the concept of private fire services to go wrong."

I think there is a double standard here. The (countless) instances in which the government displays wanton corruption and disdain for human life... do they impugn all State institutions?

Many things fail out the outset; these failures don’t always demonstrate a flawed *principle*…. rather poor *execution*. If I were to hold the State to same standard you hold private endeavors, given its history of corruption and mass genocide, I would have to conclude that the idea of a beneficent government is hopelessly naive and idealistic (an accusation often made of me). Yet even I am willing to consider that Government has been poorly executed, but might be successful in principle.

@Stu-

You mean this?

I have no problem with most of this (with one notable exception- a draconian EPA used as a weapon by the current admin). Again, the greater good. Like building roads and bridges in order to further commerce and trade .That's a no brainer. My philosophy is this- as long as I do no harm to others, keep the government as far away from me as possible. I think that's pretty simple.

I believe this- anything the government touches, it ruins. See AHCA (as a network admin, I know a little something about that), SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, etc, etc,. Government's role should be traffic cop. Nothing more.

But I digress- at the core, my libertarian views don't trump science. Simply, anti-vaxxers are complete idiots who REFUSE to accept modern science, a science that saved the life of my wife (3A BC).

Oh, one more thing- Oswald killed Kennedy.

Oh please, can we get more rich white male opinon on how bad the government is because it's not committed solely to their Free Free Freedom of Free Freedomness? Surely that's an underrepresented viewpoint on the Internet.

@ Gene Linet: I'm a Liberal and I purchase health insurance and long-term care insurance. What's hypocritical about that?

If I can afford to pay premiums for insurance, wouldn't it be cheating, for me to go uninsured by not paying insurance permiums, and have others in our society foot the bill for my medical care and nursing home care? See we didn't elect Ron ("Let em die") Paul who would bar a critically injured person, who did not have health insurance, from receiving care in a hospital.

@ Jeff M: What would be your suggestions to replace SSI, Medicare and Medicaid?

OT, but not really:

The Commissioner of Health in NYS (Dr. Shah) just declared prevalent, widespread influenza in NYS, effectively meaning all official hospital personnel must mask when they may come into contact with a patient unless they've been vaccinated. Lobby, cafeteria, hallways, it's all covered and it has started.

I can't wait for the screaming to begin.

If I were to hold the State to same standard you hold private endeavors, given its history of corruption and mass genocide, I would have to conclude that the idea of a beneficent government is hopelessly naive and idealistic (an accusation often made of me).

So now all nation-states are some sort of amorphous blob?

Funny about those dietary supplements fixing hypothyroidism:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Thyroid/43501?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_…

The sellers just lace their products with a little T3 or T4, and bingo, you've got an over the counter thyroid supplement that is unregulated.

Also of interest, a few years ago, someone looked at various nutritional supplements and found that a lot of them were laced with cheap generic anti-diabetes drugs. In retrospect, it's not surprising that the AM radio informercial hucksters would talk about some dietary supplement curing diabetes. I remember listening to some radio informercial for Sea Silver one morning, and the list of ailments it was supposed to help was incredible. The announcer sort of forgot to mention people turning blue from taking too much.

Because one instance of a privately run fire department is representative of all possible instances…

Oh for crying out loud Gene. This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is either willful ignorance or glaring cognitive dissonance.

Five minutes on Google (links hobbled to save Orac some time modding this)

h_ttp://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/#.UrM7WfRDsXU

h_ttp://www.webpronews.com/fire-department-charges-family-20000-after-their-hom…

@JeffM

I believe this- anything the government touches, it ruins. See AHCA (as a network admin, I know a little something about that), SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, etc, etc,.

*spittake* *headdesk* *facepalm*

Goverment TOUCHED SSI, Medicare, Medicaid etc.? It created them. Please stop talking until you go look up WHY these things were created.

h_ttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9b0cefde1e38f930a15752c0a9639c8b63

Yes, by all means let's abolish SSI, Medicare and Medicaid. Things were much better when the elderly and disabled died like dogs.

Why do you think I hate libertarians?

And as for the AHCA: yes, it's a piece of crud. It's an insurance handout and the controls it tries to imposed are both intentionally hobbled and nigh impossible to enforce precisely because the entire system is a sick, fetid, pathetic joke.

It doesn't go nearly far enough, but at least it is a first attempt to get more people insured. Please explain to me how that's a bad thing. Also, please explain how less regulation is better.

[ Anecdote alert ]

I used to have a colleague who was 25 at the time. He had had a tumor in his leg during his teens, which was removed. For 8 years there had been no sign of cancer. In the free, libertarian, no force from the government marketplace only one insurance company would give him coverage.

Well, no, that's not true, only one company would give him coverage THAT COVERED CANCER. Dozens were more than happy to offer sick joke drug discount and HSA programs of course.

The one company even WILLING to accept him wanted $2,139. A month. For him alone.

So forgive me if I have no sympathy for your AHCA woes in IT (let's leave aside that two years ago I was dealing with it every day -- and the government side was a damned sight more competent than the average amongst the 185 providers in the program I was working on)... personally, I'd be happy to take a 1% increase in Fed taxes JUST to get rid of the barbarous practice of denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

[ Another anecdote ]

Being an immigrant, it was interesting to see the near riots in my home country (specifically an old friend) when health insurance rates increased from ~$90 to $150. The incredulity when I told him that my rates at the time went from $635 to $1100 (this is all per month) was... interesting.

@ lidady...Where did I say I would replace those programs? Think major reform, not replacement. I'm enough of a realist to know those big three are encased in political kryptonite.

But since you asked, I would stop funneling SSI payments to the General Fund, where the government has been steal...er...borrowing from same for almost 50 years. Yes, and I would create IRAs or all- I know, I'd be handing my retirement to those Wall Street Evil-Doers! Oh, wait...I've been doing that with my 401(K) funds for two decades! And ya know something? Not only are the funds valued at four times what I've contributed to SSI, I get to keep it all and if I die, leave it to my heirs. Not so with SSI, which will pretty much be my golfing money when I quit working, anyway.

Medicare and Medicaid? I don't know, honestly. I didn't start considering this until AHCA came along. But I do know the programs are poorly adminned and rife with corruption and fraud. Par for the government course. Privatization is the first thing that comes to mind. I think even a lib like yourself accepts the fact that the private sector operates far more efficiently than the government.

Anyway, I think we've veered off course here. Grist for the future.

@Stu- You have a nasty habit of taking things out of context- or worse, misrepresent another point of view.

So I will assist you.

AHCA ensnared the entire US health care system in one, inefficient incompetent swoop. Why not deal with the (state your number) uninsured first. Along with pre-existing? I understand how insurance works as regards to risk, but with PE, exceptions have to made. See, my wife falls into that category- twice (BC, Crohn's).

What's your answer? And I'll leave aside my Govt. funded social services employer...

"Five minutes on Google (links hobbled to save Orac some time modding this)"...

I guess I should link to every article demonstrating instances of failed emergency responses from public agencies, and once directly *instigated* by public agencies (ahem 911), but I doubt it would convince you, since you only apply standards of excellence to institutions you deem illegitimate. My point regarding the invalidity of that argument escapes you.

"So now all nation-states are some sort of amorphous blob?"

Of course not... neither are all private firms. Precisely why it's invalid to generalize based on a single instance of failure.

"I’m a Liberal and I purchase health insurance and long-term care insurance. What’s hypocritical about that?

Nothing. It's no more hypocritical than a Libertarian calling the Fire Department, or applying for a college grant.... or *just as* hypocritical... however you want to think about it.

@ Jeff M: I don't think I ever stated that government programs are perfect. You need to get your government programs straight, however. You seem to think that SSI is the Social Security retirement benefits program which you and every wage earner paid into; it is not. SSI is in place to help indigent and disabled people purchase food, clothing and shelter.

http://www.ssa.gov/pgm/ssi.htm

If we privatize Medicare Parts A, B and D, which health insurance company would be willing to take on millions of elderly people to provide coverage for hospitalizations, physicians' bills and drugs...after retirement when most employers no longer provide health care benefits? You do know don't you that all the insurance companies are for-profit businesses listed on stock exchanges and they are responsible to their stockholders for dividends and profit returns?

http://www.wikinvest.com/wikinvest/api.php?action=viewNews&aid=5454539&…

once directly *instigated* by public agencies (ahem 911)

Care to expand on this?

I was catching up on the SGU last night and heard Chris Mooney and Indre Viskontas interviewed about their new podcast. Chris described antivaccinationism as being predominantly a disorder of the Left. That surprised me, since I feel as if have heard far more anti-vaccination loonery from the Right, e.g. AAPS / Schlaflys. Is this just my imagination?Has anyone done a good quantitative study?

@AdamG...Care to expand on this?

Not a conspiracy theory... I'm just suggesting it's the result of aggressive foreign policy.

@jre:

That's odd, because Mooney has argued in the past that there is probably no significant difference in the prevalence of antivaccine views between the right and the left.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/09/motivated-reasoning-and-th…

JeffM in comment 101 said:

"Medicare and Medicaid? I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t start considering this until AHCA came along. But I do know the programs are poorly adminned and rife with corruption and fraud. Par for the government course. Privatization is the first thing that comes to mind. I think even a lib like yourself accepts the fact that the private sector operates far more efficiently than the government."

The question is not correcting you, it is where to start. You have so many things wrong, typical for a gLibertarian. (Does that put us on par, given your disdain for "Libs"?)

1. Medicare is not poorly administered. The overhead cost for Medicare is about 2%, as compared with about 17% for a private insurance company. That is extremely efficient. http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-tha…
2. The fraud rate for Medicare is pretty much the same as for private insurance, roughly 5-6%. Note that the vast majority of fraud is committed by the health care (false or over-billing) and health insurance industries (denial or underpayment of claims), not patients. [Medicare Advantage uses private insurance companies.]
3. Private companies are not more efficient than government. You made the claim, you should back it up (like all of your other wild claims), but I will show one item on my side: The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) released a report earlier this year showing that contractors cost the government about 1.8x what a federal employee would cost for doing the same job. The government doesn't have to pay huge salaries, bonuses and stock options to the CEO & managers and dividends to shareholders, just provide services.

More Medicare myths:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-column-miller-medicare-idU…

@ Gene Linet: How would a privatized emergency response agency do any better than the centralized "911" system...which has access to publicly funded and trained police, fire, rescue and paramedics/EMTs aboard ambulances?

You still "don't get it", do you Gene? My local, State and Federal tax dollars are apportioned to those safety net programs for the indigent and disabled (SSI and Medicaid). I have the resources to pay for my health insurance and long-term care insurance, so that I don't need to use those safety nets.

@Denice - thank you so much for the hello. Good to be visiting again.

@Jeff:

But since you asked, I would stop funneling SSI payments to the General Fund, where the government has been steal…er…borrowing from same for almost 50 years.

So essentially you are saying you have a problem with how Congress allocates budget. I don't think there's a person in this thread that would disagree with that.

That is also completely besides the f*cking point whether something like SSI is worth having. Your weaseling is duly noted.

Yes, and I would create IRAs or all- I know, I’d be handing my retirement to those Wall Street Evil-Doers!

That you think someone making $9 an hour has an IRA, or the means to put in enough to even cover the servicing fees, says a lot.

Oh, wait…I’ve been doing that with my 401(K) funds for two decades!

Ehm, yay? You do know this exuberant "screw everyone else, I did things right" line of reasoning only makes sense to sociopaths like you, doun't you?

And ya know something? Not only are the funds valued at four times what I’ve contributed to SSI

TODAY. My in-laws, for example, were SET. Then they lost $1.2M over three months. Did you or did you not read the fine print on your investments?

Or are you truly so callous as to say "well, it's their fault for not picking a better portfolio"?

Pick. It's one or the other. Either you got lucky or you feel that people not as smart as you deserve to not have heat in the winter.

I get to keep it all

Ah! I'm sorry, I assumed this was something other than a giant middle finger to those less fortunate than you.

and if I die, leave it to my heirs.

Who have not earned in any way. I thought you guys were all about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? No, that's for OTHERS, isn't it? YOUR kids deserve to land in a bed of down feathers. If others don't have the same opportunities your children have, well, that's their own damned fault for being born to poor parents.

You DO realize this is EXACTLY what you are saying, right?

Not so with SSI, which will pretty much be my golfing money when I quit working, anyway.

While for others, it might mean, oh, I don't know... food.

This is why I say "scratch a libertarian, find a sociopath". You are a miserable excuse for a human being. The same reasons you are not ashamed of saying this out loud are the same reasons I am by all reasonable definitions justified in calling you a sociopath.

You are disgusting.

Medicare and Medicaid? I don’t know,

Oh, how telling. Five comments ago you were more than comfortable in condemning these programs as essentially doomed because the Gub'mint messed them up. Now, all of a sudden, you don't know. You had all sorts of opinions until you were called out, but as a typical libertarian you realize you don't want to look TOO asinine, so now "you don't know". Should've applied the same thinking to SSI... maybe you would've done the same "well, herpa derpa" backpedaling there. But you didn't. We all know what you are now, and no amount of this claptrap is fooling anyone.

honestly. I didn’t start considering this until AHCA came along.

Which makes you willfully uninformed.

But I do know the programs are poorly adminned and rife with corruption and fraud.

Oh, this is precious.

Several questions for you, and you will have to answer all of them before you are even allowed to speak on the matter.

1) Admin overhead % for Medicare
2) Admin overhead % for VA
3) Admin overhead % for Medicaid
4) Admin overhead for private insurance

Par for the government course.

If you wave your hands any harder you will take flight.

Privatization is the first thing that comes to mind.

No, it is the first thing fed to you by the think-tank funded websides you frequent.

think even a lib like yourself accepts the fact that the private sector operates far more efficiently than the government.

*guffaw*

Answer the above numbered questions first, then we'll talk.

@Gene

I guess I should link to every article demonstrating instances of failed emergency responses from public agencies

Your attempt at false equivalence is duly noted. Please list your examples of public agencies refusing service for failure of payment, or admit that you were trying to confound because you were wrong.

and once directly *instigated* by public agencies (ahem 911)

Please list all instances that public agencies instigated... wait, what? What the f*ck are you talking about, clown?

you only apply standards of excellence to institutions you deem illegitimate.

This is so clinically insane I don't even have a response.

My point regarding the invalidity of that argument escapes you.

It sure does, sweetheart. As soon as you make an actual argument, I'll respond.

It’s no more hypocritical than a Libertarian calling the Fire Department, or applying for a college grant

Obvious and stupid lie. Liberals, on average, do not apply for services they are putting all their political clout into abolishing. Liberals, on average, do not attempt to destroy services they themselves enjoyed.

Libertarians do.

Did you or did you not at any point in your life use public education? Public roads? Emergency services of any kind?

Thank you both, by the way, for displaying exactly why I hate libertarians.

@Stu - I actually "guffaw'ed"

Thank you for making my evening.....

It is more than a little disingenuous to accuse readers of Reason of being ignorant and then use Facebook comments to back that assertion up. This is especially mendacious because Bailey's article has comments on it from Reason readers. Idiocy on Facebook is more common than pig tracks in the woods.

If you are curious, my comment on Bailey's article is posted under the same name as I posted here.

@stu.
Okay, now I what creature I'm dealing with. The Mean Spirited Parasite, er, socialist. One who, more than likely, hails from somewhere in the dying British Commonwealth. But I could be wrong.

Take care of your own house before criticizing others. I did.

Consider yourself on ignore. Sayonara, MFer!

@Stu - fascinating that, when confronted with arguments against his self-absorbed opinions, he decides to ignore them.

It was kind of consoling to read your response, and it also reminded me that, when I was a healthy, hard-working person (single mom though, who didn't make enough for investing, but enough to have a small house and support two kids on my own) I often dismissed those struggling, because I had it hard but survived, so I didn't think it was fair for people to give up just because things got difficult.

Now I can't even clean my house without help. The programs that JeffM denounces as fraud and government stupidity keep me from starving to death and being homeless. I will never become wealthy off of them. In fact, I'm not quite sure what will happen if I come to a car repair that pretty much requires car replacement - I know it's impossible for me to ever acquire/afford another one on my income.

The smug, self-satisfied answer of, "You should have prepared for that" ignores people who never have the means to have prepared in the first place, or who are so blind-sided by something unexpected (and expensive) that it takes what little they might have had aside for their future.

Having some responsibility and care for the rest of humanity does not make one a socialist. It makes them a feeling human being.

@Stu -

As for hospitals, why do you think hospitals treat uninsured people currently? The kindness of their hearts?

While I take your point, I think you've overstated it. There are indeed now and historically hospitals that treat uninsured people out of the kindness of their hearts. You've never heard of the Shriners Hospitals for Children? How about St Jude? Or the City of Peace in Calcutta? If you look up charity hospitals I'm sure you'll find at least one that doesn't require coercion to help the uninsured.

JeffM,

I would stop funneling SSI payments to the General Fund, where the government has been steal…er…borrowing from same for almost 50 years.

You might want to look up The 2013 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds. If you do, you'll find that SSI payments do not go to the general fund. I personally have some issues with their accounting choices, but it might be useful to be informed about what happens to your SSI payments.

Mephistopheles:

You’ve never heard of the Shriners Hospitals for Children? How about St Jude? Or the City of Peace in Calcutta?

In a way, you have just made my point for me. I am not a child, and I'm sorry -- Calcutta is a long way to crawl if my femur just shattered.

@Stu - I gave examples, you can find charitable hospitals in every major city. If I made your point for you, you've obviously misstated your point.

When I went to the emergency room with what turned out to be a badly inflamed gallbladder that they had to remove, I was given paperwork explaining how to apply for charity care. This was an ordinary big-city hospital, which I went to because it was the closest emergency room to my home.

I didn't ask for charity care, because I had reasonable health insurance: but this wasn't at St. Jude's, it was Columbia-Presbyterian in New York City, one of many not-for-profit hospitals that take whoever turns up.

@Jeff:

Okay, now I what creature I’m dealing with.

Well, sweetheart, it's a good thing you're not dehumanizing and othering people. You having to call me a 'creature' tells us everything about you we'd ever need to know,

The Mean Spirited Parasite, er, socialist.

Several.

You think that everyone who is a socialist is a parasie.

Duly noted.

You think that everyone who is not a libertarian is a socialist.

Duly noted,

Random aside: I double-dog dare you to define what a socialist is.

One who, more than likely, hails from somewhere in the dying British Commonwealth. But I could be wrong.

Sweetheart, you are so wrong it is impossible to be more wrong on purpose.

First off, you are not very bright.

Second, I am willing to bet good money on me paying taxes over the past few years in excess of your entire gross income.

(Jeff, bless his heart, seems to suffer from the same apopleptic realization Fox "News" does whenever they report on Soros... how could anyone not requiring government assistance be in favor of it?)

Take care of your own house before criticizing others. I did.

Bullsh*t you did, liar. Again, I will put down good money betting that you or someone in your family is being benefited by government largesse. Are all your children in private schools? Did you receive all your education through private schools? Do you take a private helicopter to work?

Wait, do you even work?

Consider yourself on ignore.

So you have a custom GreaseMonkey script for this forum? Awesome. You know, you might be able to make money off of--- oh for f*ck's sake who am I kidding here. You're a goddamned moron. You're going to pretend to not read my comments for a day or two and then start right over.

Sayonara, MFer!

I will take this as tacit admission that you A) had no idea what you were talking about on IT issues with the AHCA, B) don't have the faintest clue how healthcare works in other countries C) don't give a sh*t about being correct on any of the issues, D) don't care to google for five minutes to figure out the issues so E) are a pathetic 101st Keyboarders
Warrior who doesn't need facts, as long as they have the truth.

The sad part is that I'm afraid you have actual dependents.

The blockquote fails and typos should not be too disruptive. Apologies.

@Mephistopheles: Apologies, that was far too dismissive. I wasn't necessarily implying that there aren't any charitable hospitals, just that if the full load of uninsured and indigent were dropped on them (by, oh, I don't know, removing the legal requirements for all hospitals to serve the uninsured, details like that), they would be swamped to a ridiculous extent.

For-profit hospitals already throw patients in cabs to be dropped off at charity locations. Every day.

@Vicki: that's kind of what I meant earlier. I dare you to try to explain the concept "apply for charity health care" to your average European.

Think Occupy was bad? Go look up what ACTUAL protests look like. France, Greece, South Korea... you know, democracies.

@Stu - and on that we can agree.

Things are getting a bit heated in here, but I need to ask an honest question and get a helpful, as non-condescending-as-possible answer ("Politics for Dummies" is on back order.) What is the justification for the government using taxes (money that's taken by force if need be, right?) to pay for things like healthcare? Is it the fact that the government is elected, which in theory implies that the majority of people are agreeing to have their money used in this way? But even ignoring things like low voter turn out, etc, does the majority have the right to decide how the minority spends their money? I want everyone to have access to healthcare, and I'm terribly afraid that if we relied exclusively on voluntary charity many people wouldn't get it (though I'd like to believe otherwise), but does that give me the right to force someone else to contribute?

It comes down to how you define a public good.

For some, that includes healthcare.

I know, I’d be handing my retirement to those Wall Street Evil-Doers! Oh, wait…I’ve been doing that with my 401(K) funds for two decades! And ya know something? Not only are the funds valued at four times what I’ve contributed to SSI, I get to keep it all....

Unless you need to draw on it early, of course. I'm not sure what the point of the comparison with what you've paid in payroll taxes is.

@Lilady...I stand corrected on the SSI. Social Security TRUST Fund.

I'd like to continue this but, others on this forum have made the experience here most unpleasant. Nevertheless, you seem to be stable, reasonable and open to polite discourse. I'd be open to another forum as long as our resident psychopath doesn't follow.

@ Sarah A: There are plenty of cases in the courts where people *think* they have the Constitution on their side to avoid paying Income Tax...none of them have been successful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_constitutional_arguments

I believe this- anything the government touches, it ruins.

Of course the true believer neither offers nor requires evidence.

I wonder how many of these glibertarians have worked for a large corporation. I have and there is incompetence and corruption aplenty. I have a conditioned reflex to lose consciousness during Power Point presentations since they have usually meant "Management will now lie to you for the next 30 minutes while their their golden parachutes are being packed".

@MOB

Larger companies are run in a way that would, if they were governments, be referred to as communist.

Did you ever work for Amoco? They even had 5 year plans and a near Soviet level of red tape, centralization and bureaucracy.

Who is the bigger parasite, someone on a low income who takes advantage of a government program or the bankster who collects multi-million dollar bonuses for creating opaque financial instruments.

@Narad. The 6% I paid, as well as the 6% my employers paid to Social Security (Source- "My Social Security Statement") over roughly 32 years is the comparison. I contributed to my 401(k) from 25 to 39, when I went back to school to earn my degree. After that, I put my kids through college (pay as we go) over the next seven years. Since then, we've taken advantage of the "Catch Up" provision of the law, which allows my wife and I to save beyond the limits set forth by Congress.

You're correct, I can't draw before 59 1/2. By the same token, I can't draw Social Security until 62. And more than likely, that will be raised before I retire.

@ Jeff S. M. I don't think I want to continue this discussion with you about paying payroll taxes. You still are blathering on about the AHCA...which is the Florida agency that handles Medicaid.

Do you mean the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Oh and Jeff, trust me, you don't want to get into a discussion with me about Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, or the PPACA...here or on another forum.

@Militant Agnostic...

I worked for a large air-ground shipping company for 20 years. Our rival was..not the postal service, but another air-ground company.

The USPS was a competitor and was ground to dust in the express and small package market. Unlike its competitors, who saw early on the potential of the Net, USPS, a government entity, is now teetering on insolvency.

@Lilady.

Affordable Healthcare Act. My bad. Sometimes I work too fast for my own good.

Fair enough. See ya!

Interesting how JeffM/Jeff S. M. ignored my comment that had links backing up my numbers, refuting his preconceived gLibertarian strawman fantasies about wasteful big gubmint. I was even reasonably polite, well, at least somewhat less sarcastic and caustic than my usual. All that effort wasted.

The 6% I paid, as well as the 6% my employers paid to Social Security (Source- “My Social Security Statement”) over roughly 32 years is the comparison. I contributed to my 401(k) from 25 to 39, when I went back to school to earn my degree. After that, I put my kids through college (pay as we go) over the next seven years. Since then, we’ve taken advantage of the “Catch Up” provision of the law, which allows my wife and I to save beyond the limits set forth by Congress.

I'm not sure how IRC §§ 402, 414 were not "set forth by Congress," but this is neither here nor there. You seem to be, on the one hand, complaining about the returns you're getting on payroll-tax contributions and, on the other, trumpeting your tax-deferred 401(k) returns.

Do you think everyone else is going to do so well with a 401(k)? Can you guarantee yourself an ~4.5% rate of return over the long term? If you can do better, why aren't you investing your acumen in a Roth IRA?

@narad...I get no return on my SS contributions. Just a promise that I'll receive x amount of dollars when I choose to retire. As a matter of fact, if I fake an injury and prove disability (I can- I underwent reconstructive knee surgery in 1975- I have the S-utility cut, with manual dislocation to prove it, ), I'd receive $2500/mo, which is more than I would receive if I postponed my retirement till 65.

4.5%? Say, over 20 years? Easy. One just has to be disciplined in the down years, such as 00, 01 (after 9-11) and 08. In other words, don't bail when the market crashes. That's just closing the corral after the cows have escaped.

"Buy low, sell high." Still works.

My portfolio lost 40% on paper in 08. ON PAPER. I didn't bail. The market recovered, and so did my portfolio.

Nevertheless, I could have bailed and still outperformed my contributions to Social Security, since that's a big, fat zero.

@Jerry- I have responsibilities. I'm not sitting in front of a screen in my underwear all day. Give me little time, hey?

Thinking about today...Learned a few things. That's for sure...but somehow, I feel I'm wasting my time with a load of lefties who have no clue to how things work in the private sector and even less on Wall Street.

[S]omehow, I feel I’m wasting my time with a load of lefties who have no clue to how things work in the private sector and even less on Wall Street.

You do? Let's take a look.
MOB @ #34:

Larger companies are run in a way that would, if they were governments, be referred to as communist.

This matches my own experiences.
Stu @ #124:

For-profit hospitals already throw patients in cabs to be dropped off at charity locations. Every day.

Militant Agnostic @ #132:

Did you ever work for Amoco? They even had 5 year plans and a near Soviet level of red tape, centralization and bureaucracy.

A lot of people commenting here actually work in the private sector. That you so glibly dismiss us as " a load of lefties who have no clue to how things work in the private sector" speaks volumes for your ignorance and closed-mindedness.

but somehow, I feel I’m wasting my time with a load of lefties who have no clue to how things work in the private sector and even less on Wall Street

If you can weather a market plunge (hell, I had the sense to buy mid-/small-cap value in 2001), this shouldn't be that much of a challenge. Moreover, I'm the wrong person to be bringing up SSI with, as I know someone who is genuinely disabled and receives the FDR. That's $710 a month. A regular bonanza.

Now, my original question was why you were using a 401(k) rather than a Roth, which would let you reap the gains of your financial acumen with fewer fetters of The Man. I seem to have missed the answer to this. I understand that you are irritated by having to participate in a slightly-above-inflation-rate annuity program.

@ Julian Frost: I think Jeff S.M. wants us to compliment him for not faking an injury...he's busy while adjusting his posterior chapeau, patting himself on the back because he doesn't fake a 38 year-old-injury. (I'm willing to bet that he's already been to an attorney for "advice" on that 38-year-old injury).

"…but somehow, I feel I’m wasting my time with a load of lefties who have no clue to how things work in the private sector and even less on Wall Street."

Many of us presently work in the private sector and many of us have prior work experiences in the private sector...and most of us know a lot more than Jeff "how things work on Wall Street".

@Jeff - on the verge of leaving a "Big Corporation" - i.e. today is my last day, I can echo the sentiment that corporations are not more efficient, and in most cases, even more inefficient than Government Agencies....the political infighting, intrigues, reorganizations, and huge amount of bureaucracy is a sight to behold....

I'm not anti-business, but I'll tell ya, letting corporations have free reign will cause many more problems...with no means of changing them (because they aren't beholden to anyone anymore, except large shareholders).

Small to medium-size businesses have all my respect - they are the ones that truly get things done and are innovative....

@Sarah A

I want everyone to have access to healthcare, and I’m terribly afraid that if we relied exclusively on voluntary charity many people wouldn’t get it (though I’d like to believe otherwise), but does that give me the right to force someone else to contribute?

The point about voluntary charity is very good, and it's something I wanted to point to you the other day.
From what I understand, the Libertarian point-of-view is not just about having local, private initiative to provide services in place of a centralized organization (a.k.a. big government), but it'a also about letting people having a complete freedom of choice on how much they contribute to any of these services (a.k.a. paying taxes).
On the former point, a surprisingly high number of people may agree, including citizens from communist France like me (note: sarcasm). You don't have to tell me about the evils of centralized management, we know about it. Our kings (Versailles anyone?) and emperors and presidents spent more than 5 centuries centralizing political and economical powers around the capital. On the plus side, it did strengthen the country into a nation, not just a bunch of disparate people each with their own type of cheese. On the negative side, well, bureaucracy inertia is a reality.

On the later point, forcing people to contribute, I'm afraid it's a necessary evil, if only for practical reasons: how do you do to ensure that only those paying for a service get this service, then this service has repercussions on the whole community?
My favorite example is firefighters: let's suppose I am free to pay a local chapter of volunteer firefighters. I did pay, the guy next door didn't, for whatever reason. Maybe he is jobless. Then I do a BBQ and, having two left hands, I put my house on fire, and by the time the firefighters came the other guy's house is on fire as well. What should the firefighters do? Save my house but let the other one burn (which could be very dangerous and tricky to do)?
Now, what about if he is the one dong the BBQ?
Sure, we can sue one another to death afterward. Wait, did I pay for the building of the local tribunal? Did he?

tl:dr; If you belong to a community, then maybe there are a certain number of things every member should do to ensure proper social interactions. Paying something for common or near-common services is.
Of course, what should be regarded as founded by the community (i.e. paid for by everybody, even those who don't believe they need it) is a very complex debate. As a single man, should I be able to say I don't want my tax money be used to pay for women's health programs? Or for children vaccination? Or adult education? Personally, I would feel very self-centered by saying so, but I would agree we should't pay for everything. Where to draw the line?

Another celebrity bites the dust: Donnie Wahlberg RT'da tweet of JM's re: an event tonight in Chicago to support Generation Rescue. Apparently, they're dating. It's a shame, I loved him on Blue Bloods, and I think he's got a pretty rabid female following. :/ Funny thing is, apparently all ticket levels are still available: https://generationrescue.org/events/jenny-mccarthy-s-holiday-bash/view/…

@Narad - I'm not Jeff S. M., but I can think of three reasons one might use a 401(k) instead of a Roth IRA:
1. Employer match - many employers will contribute money (either a match or some other mechanism) to a 401(k); they won't do that for an IRA.
2. Current year tax benefit - as you know, standard 401(k) contributions are pre-tax; Roth IRA contributes are after tax.
3. Contribution limits - the amount one can contribute annually to a 401(k) is higher than the amount one can contribute to an IRA.

It makes perfect sense to contribute to the 401(k) at least to the extent needed to get the full employer match. It may also make sense to contribute if one has more money to invest in retirement savings than one could put into an IRA, though i personally would put that into standard investments that have no tax benefit.

If one's employer were to offer a Roth 401(k), it might well be wise to put some money there for the sake of the tax benefits in retirement.

@Militant Agnostic,

Who is the bigger parasite, someone on a low income who takes advantage of a government program or the bankster who collects multi-million dollar bonuses for creating opaque financial instruments.

I think you've used the wrong word with regards to the banker. The correct term depends on the intent, effect, and legality of what the banker did.

If the banker developed such a financial instrument with the intent of helping his/her/its customers profit and it works and is legal, then the banker is either lucky or a genius. If the same applies but it doesn't work then, well, either the risks went badly or the banker's competence is in question.

If the instrument was developed with the intent of profiting the bank at the expense of the customer and is legal, then the banker is unethical at the least and may get the bank sued.

If the instrument is illegal, then the banker is a felon, regardless of intent or other consequences.

Sarah A,

does the majority have the right to decide how the minority spends their money?

I think there are two separate issues here - one traditional and one relatively new.

The traditional one is the question of how the government determines what goods & services it will pay for and how it will pay for them. In many countries including the US, the answer has very clearly been that the majority determines how money will be spent and how it will be collected for that purpose. This is the law.

The second, in the US anyway, has been whether the government can require individuals to acquire goods and services on their own for their own benefit. An example is the individual mandate of the affordable care act, though one could argue that such mandates have been in law for some time. As an example, the government requires you to wear clothes in public - unless you collect the fiber, spin the thread, weave the cloth, and sew the clothes yourself, odds are you are effectively required to buy some portion (or look for someone else who will provide those for you gratis). Laws require private individuals to purchase fire suppression systems under certain circumstances.

Interestingly, in the case of the ACA, the Supreme Court notes that while there is an individual mandate, that mandate does NOT require a person to purchase a good or service. A person may choose not to purchase insurance and would then pay a tax.

@Jeff S. M. -

I get no return on my SS contributions. Just a promise that I’ll receive x amount of dollars when I choose to retire.

And this would be different from, say, an annuity how?

Sarah A - FWIW, some years ago I did some work with a charitable group that has a major annual funding campaign. This is an umbrella organization which provides money to multiple independent charities. Some people had problems with some of the charities that were funded for, say, their positions on sexuality. To counter this, the donor card allowed one to state that all of their contributions would be provided to or withheld from certain charities. These instructions were duly noted and recorded.

Of course, the actual effect of such designations was precisely zero. The allocations were determined based on financial analyses done before the campaign. Presumably if enough people decided they didn't want to fund a particular charity, that might have gone into the next year's budgeting, but I have no evidence for that one way or another.

The justification was that if person A said "please withhold all my money from this charity" then you could give it all to another charity and take what would gone to other charities from person B to make up for it. The request was followed to the letter, but since most people did not make such requests the effect was nil.

The same can be done, if you like, with taxes. A person may choose to decide that all of their tax money went to expenses they agree with and were withheld from expenses they disagree with. And this could be, in a sense, perfectly true since in general there is no way to track which dollar paid for which service.

It makes perfect sense to contribute to the 401(k) at least to the extent needed to get the full employer match.

True enough; I was viewing it through the lens of a certain research institution with the highest-paid president in the country this year, which also happens to have a crappy flat 6% 403(b) contribution.

Helianthus: If you belong to a community, then maybe there are a certain number of things every member should do to ensure proper social interactions. Paying something for common or near-common services is.

The thing is, libertarians don't believe in a 'community.' They have a virulent dislike of anyone outside their families, and believe that everyone else operates the same way. To them, humans are not social animals.

Narad - an employer pays 6% regardless of contribution? That's sounding better and better these days.

I used to work for a company that started out with a 6% annual contribution and it went up every few years to ~22% after 25 years. Sadly, they've cut their contribution these days, but it's still one of the best I've seen.

That’s odd, because Mooney has argued in the past that there is probably no significant difference in the prevalence of antivaccine views between the right and the left.

... and that's more in line with what I've read of Chris' -- thus my surprise. It was SGU #434. I'll have a re-listen and see if he really said what I thought I heard.
http://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_434

Narad – an employer pays 6% regardless of contribution? That’s sounding better and better these days.

If you're ever offered the choice between TIAA-CREF and Vanguard, pick the latter. The minimum employee contribution was 4%.

Thanks for all the insight, everybody. I obviously have a lot of reading/thinking to do. Its too bad taking the time to try and understand the issues doesn't make your vote count for any more than if you'd just flipped a coin.

@Sarah A - "It's too bad taking the time to try and understand the issues doesn't make your vote count..."

Yes and no. I sometimes wonder if our votes count at all anymore, BUT, if they do, the more people willing to rationally examine the issues and the more they inspire others to do so, the more we might actually make a real change.

It might be rather naive of me (and in my old age, too!), but I still have hope.

One reason to be dubious about a government with the power to compel vaccinations is that it could easily reverse course and ban vaccinations.

Interesting cartoon on the editorial page of a national newspaper: Two people sitting at the breakfast table. One says "Imagine a place where there's no spending, no taxing, no government and no caring". The other replies "You don't need to - just move to Somalia."

For the strict Libertarian crowd places already exist in the world that are closer to their ideals - only thing these places don't seem to be the popular utopias one would expect...

DELETED AT DELYSID'S REQUEST.

Who let the foul-mouthed substance-impaired dental student in?

Are you sober now Delysid?

Are you ready to apologize to Lawrence, Narad and me for the filthy porn that you posted at us?

@lilady

lol. I'll apologize right after you do.

You keep using this word "porn." I don't think you know what it means.

If being sober means being like you, Lawrence, and Narad, I'LL PASS.

Delysid - I'm confused by your first paragraph. Are you saying it is a good thing that your previous posts did not have the effect of making people understand why libertarianism is a good and valid philosophy? You'd like to think that people who discussed the topics with you remained unmoved? I'm not quite sure why you'd like to think that you are in some way responsible for people continuing to believe things that you disagree with.

But I'm not going to tell you what to do or think.

"Who let the foul-mouthed substance-impaired dental student in?"

Oh my heavens! A "lady" who pretends to be proper is offended!

http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/betty-faint.gif

"Mike Adams, for instance, is an anti-corporation left-winger through and through."

Not in the slightest, unless you think seeing government as the embodiment of evil, being ferociously anti-regulation and warning of federal conspiracies to seize websites and guns makes you a typical left-winger.

He's also lavished gushing praise on Ron Paul.

Sounds like another of the goofball libertarians that more rational libertarians try to sweep under the rug.

Delysid @159 - TLDNR.

Plus, after the last interminable go-round, unquestionably information-free.

Delysid: How about you explain to us why you think the comment you made at # 1066 directed at me and your link to a porn site, is appropriate?

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/09/26/in-which-antivaccinationis…

@MB

If I don't succeed in swaying people about libertarianism (of which I have a great track record but you can't win 'em all), then I'll take pissing them off as a consolation. I've been reading RI for a while (though not as much lately), and this is by far the least intellectual post Orac has ever written. He seems to be rattled. He is justifiably opposed to alternative medicine nonsense and I agree with him 100% about it, but I'd like to think that I had at least a small influence in rattling him about libertarianism as a political ideology.

Realization often starts with anger. I have been in some heated debates with people (online and in person), only for for them to come to me months or years later and confide to me that they have since come around to the libertarianism.

@ Dangerous Bacon: It is not the case that the dental student made any cogent arguments about Libertarians' viewpoints; he didn't.

Every poster from all over the political spectrum on the previous thread, had to spoon feed him what Libertarians' political philosophies share in common...which definitely is not his unique political viewpoint. Tsk, tsk, where was he when lessons in various forms of government and lessons in American History were taught?

@lilady

Thanks for reminding me that you accused me of being a liar. You calling me a liar is FAR MORE OFFENSIVE than any of the things I said to you.

I'm waiting for an apology.

@lilady

You had to "spoon-feed" me my own beliefs? You have the arrogance to spoon-feed me concepts that I have a far deeper understanding of than you do?

GTFO with your proper, lady, high class easily-offended facade. You are the epitome of everything disgusting with the left-wing mindset. Look in the mirror.

@lilady

You educating me on libertarianism reminds me of Dianne Feinstein "educating" the public on assault rifles while pointing it at the audience with her finger on the trigger. The ignorance is ignored with rampant arrogance.

@Delsyid - perhaps you'd taken the time off to consider my very simple question (which you have refused up to now to answer)....please point out where your philosophy has been tried and shown to have been successful?

Otherwise, your "clutching at pearls" has gotten very old and tiresome....but I'm sure you'll keep making baseless assumptions as to our own political or philosophical beliefs and go after a bunch of strawman arguments as well....

@Lawrence

I have answered this question several times. Please stop begging the question and make an attempt to understand.

Libertarianism is voluntary association. It is everywhere, all the time. Anytime you make any purchase or agree to any contract you are engaging in libertarianism. You are asking for an example of a libertarian government. The primary example is the United States government under the Constitution. It wasn't perfect, but it worked quite well until the Progressive Era when idiotic despots turned the US into a Nanny State.

But of course Lawrence I'm sure you are going to close your eyes and ears and chant NANANANANNANA there are no libertarian governments therefore libertarianism can't work!

@Delsyid - that's not an answer.....because if it had been the "good old days" then there would not have been a reason to change it, right?

@Lawrence

Another logical fallacy. "It was changed because it needed to be changed."

Uh, NO.

So the British government banned pornography because it was necessary right? Uganda is about to make homosexuality because there is a reason, right?

*capital punishment

Progressivism is rooted in deceit. Before Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Richard Nixon and the other progressive despots rescued us with glorious government intervention it was chaos, IMMA RIGHT?!

You don't consider that an answer because you are begging the question. Typical.

The government is the alpha and omega. Before the government there was chaos. Without the government there would be chaos.

So, if I'm reading this right, you believe that pre-1900 US was a libertarian paradise...correct?

And that the "natural" state of society is libertarianism, correct?

@Lawrence

If I'm reading this right, you only know how to think in logical fallacies. Nice strawman.

Yes, the natural state of society is libertarianism. Freedom is a natural state.

You are saying the natural state of society is slavery, correct?

Meanwhile, back on topic.

Reuben at The Poxes blog has provided us with some insight and proof about the vile John D. Stone U.K. editor at AoA.

Yup, Stone actually contacted Reuben's employer.

P.S. My offer still stands for Dan Olmsted, or any other AoA critter ($1,000/per/comment), to come here with every comment I supposedly posted on Katie Couric's websites

@Delsyid - I'm trying to understand where you are coming from, but you really only seem interested in hurling insults - I'm sure you convert people left and right with that attitude....

With my interest in history, I see few if any instances of societies throughout the course of human history that reflect your philosophy.....seems like there has always been some manner of central authority as far back as we can tell (even primitive tribes have a hierarchical structure)....so I really don't see how you can claim that your particular ideas have been the norm....

Mike Adams, like his avatar, Gary Null, calls himself a "health freedom" advocate- they support a few issues that overlap with Libertarianism:

- they are against governmental mandates ( e.g. for vaccines, enforced treatment for minors whose parents choose alt med options for cancer, insurance etc )
- they oppose most governmental regulation ( e.g. over who can call him or herself a doctor, diagnose and treat, which therapies are selected, controls over supplements, guns, drugs etc)
- they are against large, centralised government, bureaucracy and high taxes. They ridicule governmentally sponsored education.
- they oppose any governmental intervention in economic matters ( e.g. 2008-2009 crises)
- they characterise the federal government as a "police state" and as being "fascistic"

They both also decry states/ areas which have more regulation:
Mike moved to Texas; the other woo-meister may be setting up a health retreat/ spa/ ranch there as we speak. Both despise areas with a more liberal outlook and "too many laws" ( Null on NY etc) and are not particularly avid fans of Mr Obama. They think that the Pauls are the bee's knees.

Both sound rather libertarian to me.

Of course, Delsyid's comments do show, that because he things pre-1900's USA was his model, that there are legitimate areas in which the government can and should be providing guidance, supervision, and control.....so perhaps he isn't so black and white after all.....though I find his overall attitude to be that of a giant douche (and he's probably not a very nice person to hang around with in general).

@Lawrence

My model is NO GOVERNMENT. If I had to choose the least horrible government, it would be pre-1861 US (if we ignore slavery problem).

Government seems to be an eternal plague on mankind. Unfortunately the bad people who statists insist need to be controlled inevitably end up as the controllers. I.E. 99% of politicians.

Whenever I see discussions about Libertarianism I can't help being reminded of those nature documentaries about the migration of the wildebeest in Africa. You know.... the way they all pile up on the edge of a crocodile infested river before some unfortunate animals takes the plunge. The rest then pile in while the crocs are distracted and get across safely. The free market principle in action, the few are thrown to the crocodiles in order that the many can learn a lesson. Of course, if the wildebeest had a central policy on safe river crossings, maybe involving working together.......

Delysid: "My model is NO GOVERNMENT. If I had to choose the least horrible government, it would be pre-1861 US (if we ignore slavery problem)."

Please, please, please move to Somalia. Or some other section of the world where this "no government" utopia exists.

But, please, just go leave your brain droppings somewhere else. Especially since I was reminded how "lovely" your pre-20th century was by reading the 1939 biography of S. Josephine Baker. Some of us who lack a Y-chromosome do not really care much for your utopia.

Yes, the natural state of society is libertarianism. Freedom is a natural state.

No, it's not, because people don't magically spring into existence as fully formed adults. The "natural state of society" is one of interdependence starting with family groups and yielding clan and tribal hierarchies. You are not going to evade social power structures by fantasizing them out of existence.

@Delsyid - then I will ask again (because you really haven't answered the question & you just admitted as much), when in human history has your philosophy been adopted and proved to be successful?

Because your answer above is a non-answer, because it violates your own statement in #186

Delsyid sounds exactly like Karl Marx & the earliest Communists, who believed their "theories" were the natural order of society & it was "inevitable" that communism would replace capitalism as a course of history.....

Of course, theories are great, but they tend to fall apart when put into practice (because people are people).

And Delsyid's claims are interesting from the standpoint that the ultimate goal of Communism was elimination of all government as well.....

Delysid @167

If I don’t succeed in swaying people about libertarianism (of which I have a great track record but you can’t win ‘em all), then I’ll take pissing them off as a consolation.

You already accomplished this in the comments earlier this year.

Thank you for your honesty.

But could you do us a favor and think your comments through before you post instead of going with three or four content-less comments in a row? All that’s doing is filling up the “Recent Comments” list, and it looks like you are talking to yourself.

Of course, if you are still going for “take pissing them off as a consolation” – again: mission accomplished.

Or maybe not. At this point I just find your comments boring.

MOVE TO SOMALIA

The most sophisticated argument ever formulated by a liberal, followed closely by "You're a racist!"

The sanctimonious bleeding heart-ism, it burns!

If all of the pinkos would please move to China and take their government with them.

@Chris

You don't have a Y-chromosome? That makes sense. Last time I was here I remember thinking "this guy Chris sounds like a radfem feminazi."

Delysid @186 (my emphasis)

If I had to choose the least horrible government, it would be pre-1861 US (if we ignore slavery problem).

(if we ignore insert problem of choice mentioned by anyone else.

That’s the whole problem, though, isn’t it? You have this awesome, spectacular, absolutely perfect model for government if we ignore all the problems with it!

Thanks for the laugh.

@Chemmomo

Being a progressive means ignoring all problems with government. Have you ever heard a progressive defend a government program?

Have you ever heard a progressive criticize a government program? LOL That's like seeing an albino unicorn.

Everybody -- just stop it.

Now Lawrence is comparing to communists. There is so many layers to both the insanity and stupidity around here that is impossible to tackle.

In Orac's insane asylum words do not have meaning. Logical fallacies do not exist.

Yeah but those libertarians are the problem.

@Delsyid - you are certainly an idiot...and sound a lot like the anti-vax people who come here & try to claim that we say vaccines are 100% effective and 100% safe (and no one has ever suffered a vaccine reaction).

What a huge burning strawman you put forth....is government perfect? Of course not - I find that government programs fail to take advantage of new processes (and technology) to become more efficient - and that programs that have outlived their usefulness should be shut down.

I would like nothing better than a full audit of government programs & an open and honest discussion about what is needed vs. what is not....of course, what you are advocating is a complete removal of government, without any evidence to say that it would work better than the current system we have (with its flaws).

Which is why I continue to ask the question - where in human history has this been attempted & it proved to be successful?

Lawrence,

Be careful what you wish for. A full audit of government and HONEST discussion about what is needed versus not would reveal that government in its entirety (or the vast, vast majority) is completely unnecessary and unethical.

Libertarianism is the only ideology that makes any sense is not hypocritical with belief that we should be free do what we want as long as we don’t harm others.

That's half right. Unfortunately, when Libertarians say 'other people,' what they actually mean is 'other white men.' So if they harm women, kids, or people who aren't white, that harm doesn't count because, obviously, those other humans aren't people to them.

Also, Delysid, do you believe humans are solitary animals or are happier in a community? And if they are in a community, are they obligated to follow the rules or just do whatever they want, no matter if it harms someone else? And which would you rather have, a mandatory quarantine or a mandatory vaccine?

Since you can't actually proposed anything better that is backed up with proof that it would work....then we'll work with what we have....

@PoliticalPIG

Glad to hear from the resident racist and misandrogynist.

WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN WHITE MEN

Delysid, your brilliance is underwhelming. Let us all go back to the days when no one cared about Criminals are producing your “health” supplements. Remember, even in 1937 it was not illegal to put diethylene glycol into cough syrup for kids.

Anyway, keep up the humor, we need a bit of lighthearted laughter at your expense. I loved that you whined " followed closely by “You’re a racist!”"... then followed after what I wrote sunk into your noggin with “this guy Chris sounds like a radfem feminazi.” Pure comedy gold. Almost as much fun as Little Augie's brain exploding when he found out I was both an aerospace engineer and a mother.

Others, Delysid's utopia reminds of the first part of Philip Jose Farmer's book Riverworld. I appreciated that the SyFy's miniseries updated it a bit to include a young lady who had been one of the engineering students shot during École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in 1989 (still just an okay program).

By the way, Dr. Baker's autobiography Fighting for Life is very witty, and reveals some interesting notes on health, public health, and some weird thinking of the day. Shortly after the creation of the Federal Children’s Bureau there was some congressional testimony on funding. One New England doctor who was opposed to the funding actually testified saying:

“We oppose this bill because, if you are going to save the lives of all these women and children at public expense, what inducement will there be for young men to study medicine?”

Needless to say, at least one congressman was shocked.

It was a good read.

@Lawrence

Prove to me why shouldn't be my slave.

Go ahead. Prove a negative. Until you can give me a detailed explanation based on evidence about why you shouldn't be my slave we just have to assume that is the best way.

Delysid @197

Being a progressive means ignoring all problems with government. Have you ever heard a progressive defend a government program?
Delysid @197
Being a progressive means ignoring all problems with government. Have you ever heard a progressive defend a government program?
Have you ever heard a progressive criticize a government program? LOL That’s like seeing an albino unicorn.

Have you ever sat back and seriously thought about the criticism posted in response to your words on this blog, or do you just automatically reply with insults, assumptions, and tangents?

Apologies for mangling html @209 and hoping Delysid actually listens this time.

Delysid @197

Being a progressive means ignoring all problems with government. Have you ever heard a progressive defend a government program?

Have you ever heard a progressive criticize a government program? LOL That’s like seeing an albino unicorn.

Have you ever sat back and seriously thought about the criticism posted in response to your words on this blog, or do you just automatically reply with insults, assumptions, and tangents?

@Delsyid - actually, I have history to show why that is a bad idea...

What do you have to show that yours is a good idea?

Again, the communists had a great theory that they said would fix everything - of course, when it was put into practice, it didn't work out the way they thought....so, unless you can show some real world applications of your theory, you are doing nothing but talking out of your ass.

I think the direction of this comment thread was best described by the late Johnny Cash ---

I went down, down, down as the flames went higher ...

@Chemmomo

Yes, I have thought quite extensively about poltical matters. That is why I went from being ignorant liberal in college who probably would have been a part of the angry mob on RI to a libertarian.

All of the criticism directed towards me has pretty much been the same things over and over again.

1. Name and example of a libertarian society (logical fallacy)
2. Who would build the roads and put out the fires(logical fallacy)
3. Anarchy = chaos (fallacy)
4. I'm a racist and I hate the poor (straw man)
5. I should move to Somalia (which had a socialist regime and currently has a government)

Delsyid just assumes that his way is better, regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that it would be (and we have volumes of historical references that show that abuse of power is ubiquitous)....

Is government the only answer? Of course not - over time, there have been many instances of mass movements that forced change to occur (though ultimately, like the Sufferage and Civil Rights Movement - their successes were codified into law & enforced by the government).

What we have found, is that some combination of public and private involvement produces the best results we've seen to date - unfettered industrialization provided a lot of economic success and growth, but the vast majority of the wealth and power was consolidated in a very small number of individuals, while the bulk of the workers were treated little better than serfs....and businesses tended to want to limit competition, so we saw the growth of monopolies in various industries.

As a result, there was a reaction to these abuses - and it is hard to argue that economic activities were curtailed to any detrimental amount - given where we've ended up today.

Again, is government the answer to all problems - of course not, but to say that it is THE problem, ignores the historical evidence.....

Delsyid can argue theory all he wants....but he has given us no reason to believe that his way would produce more positive results than what we have seen historically to date....he might as well be arguing with Karl Marx over which one of their "theories" would prove to be the most successful.

(oh, except those Karl's theories were put into practice - and we know they don't work....mostly because people don't act the way you want them to).

Delsyid only finds it convenient to dismiss arguments that he has no answer for......

@Lawrence

You are still not getting it.

I'm not a central planner. The free-market is not a central planning body. The free-market is us. The market is plans by the many, not by the few.

It's like you are asking "how is the free-market going to be a government?"

@Lawrence

You still haven't proven to me why you shouldn't be my slave. I see that you find it convenient to dismiss arguments that you have no answer for.

I can prove, Lawrence, that if I force you to clean my apartment then it will get done. The free-market isn't magically cleaning my apartment.

Prove to me why I shouldn't force you at gunpoint to clean my apartment like a slave. That will get the job done, correct?

@Delsyid - you haven't proven a thing...all you have is some "not-so-grand" pronouncements that the "free market" will solve everything....

You don't seem to see the flaws in what you are saying, at all.

What leads you to believe that you way is better?

@Lawrence

You still are ignoring my question. How is my apartment going to get cleaned if I don't force you to clean it at gunpoint as a slave?

Answer my question using evidence and historical examples to prove why you should be free.

With as much time as I spend in the 19th century, I have never understood the attraction it holds for some who seem to regard it as some kind of Paradise. It was – if one happened to be male, white (and not just white but of Anglo-Saxon descent), educated, and the member of one of the mainline Protestant sects.

Oh, and already in possession of an adequate supply of money.

(And post #220 makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The opposite of a free market economy is coercion at gunpoint?)

@Shay - Delsyid continues to make little to no sense....

Again, his "theories" are just that - nothing but a set of ideas that appear great on paper, but have little or no relation to reality.

@Shay

The opposite of voluntaryism is aggression or coercion.

It's like when statists use the stupid argument that taxes aren't voluntary. "You are free to either pay your taxes, or go to jail!"

@Shay

Oh and you spent a lot of time in the 19th century, eh? You have personal first-hand experience of it?

Or let me guess, you read whitewashed history and muckraking like The Jungle?

@Lawrence

For the 5th time, answer my question. Why shouldn't you be my slave? Why are you avoiding it? It should be pretty easy to prove, right?

Well, I don't know about you, Lawrence, but any attempt by to force me to do something at gunpoint is going to result in somebody lying dead in his (uncleaned) apartment.

Seriously..."You still haven’t proven to me why you shouldn’t be my slave. " WTF?

(sigh) You have a conveniently short memory, D. I am a military historian, which means I spend my time researching in primary sources.

What, pray tell, are the documents corroborating your belief that life in pre 1860's US was so desirable?

@ Shay:

And I imagine that you are familiar with the term 'boom and bust' and its significance in the culture of the 19th century.

I come from a long line of business folk who live/lived in two different countries which BOTH changed governmental policy since the 19th century becoming dens of socialism. Why didn't most citizens rebel against this?

BTW, my current reading list includes "A Rebel War Clerk's Diary," "The Diary of a Confederate Girl," and "A Journal of Hospital Life in The Army of the Tennessee."

@Shay - someone is "whitewashing" history & it certainly isn't us....

@Shay

Oh you are a war historian? Oh you must be so knowledgable! There is nothing more truthful than matters dealing with war!!!!

But I at least give you credit for reading The Diary of a Confederate Girl. Sarah Morgan at least describes Lincoln's soldiers as being the raping, murdering, pillages they were. (Not that the Confederates were much better).

"There is nothing more truthful than matters dealing with war!"

Actually, there isn't. But I kinda doubt that's what you intended to say.

Try again, you seem to be having trouble expressing yourself.

The first casualty of war is truth and history is written by the victors.

Maybe in terms of strategy there is truth, but not when it comes to war itself.

Delysid @213, I think you missed my point.

Yes, I have thought quite extensively about poltical matters. That is why I went from being ignorant liberal in college who probably would have been a part of the angry mob on RI to a libertarian.

I’m not asking you about how you formed your political views. I am asking if you if you are taking any time to consider anyone else’s point of view and arguments now.

The next comment you made

All of the criticism directed towards me has pretty much been the same things over and over again.

suggests that you are just dismissing them with no more consideration beyond a mental categorization.
And I think you are doing that because if you took the time to think about what others are saying, you’ll have to give up your illusion that you are successful in swaying people about libertarianism.”

One more piece of constructive criticism: you’ll learn a lot more if you are not quite so convinced of your own awesomeness.

Anyone who believes history is written by the victors hasn't studied the American Civil War.

BTW, could you provide the source documents for my question @228?

I enjoyed The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Woods and Hawthorne's biography of Franklin Pierce (our best president FYI). I've read Thoreau and the many of the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain.

Please tell me what was so horrible about pre-1864. Life was pretty damn similar to today except with far less taxes and less technology.

Christ I've read plenty of ancient Roman and Greek literature and they wrote about the exact same shit we do today.

I don't know why anyone would be feeding The Troll, who has proven himself over and over again to be incapable of civil discourse.

Just go away Troll, and the next time you speak with your mommy, refer to her in the same filthy terms as you have referred to the female posters on Respectful Insolence.

@Chemmono

You seem to be under the impression that the criticism people are giving me are original. The arguments against libertarianism on RI are identical to the hystarical ranting by high schoolers on the political section on reddit.

Statism is the world's most popular religion. It's the same justificaiton in every country.

Interestingly enough, in thousands of years of human history, we haven't seen a single society embrace the "free market" as the sole basis for their civilization.

LIbertarians hear the same tired arguments constantly. I've been told to move to Somalia hundreds of times by now. I've been asked "who will build the roads" just as many times. I can't count how many times I've been told to read The Jungle.

I've been lectured over and over again about robber barons and child slavery.

Every time a progressive repeats the universal pro-government memes they think they have reinvented the wheel. It's the same arguments everywhere. I've heard it all and no one here has presented anything new. Perhaps new details to the same general fallacies, but it is more or less the same.

Oh yeah and when it comes to internet debates, the most voracious, relentless, incorrigible defenders of government are usually women over men, and usually Brits and Canadians over Americans. The pattern has gotten pretty predictable.

I can't figure out why Brits and Canadians get so passionate and angry regarding American politics. That would be like me getting involved in the affairs of the Mexican Congress, but I digress.

Delysid: Please tell me what was so horrible about pre-1864.

Gee....where do we begin? The deaths of thousands of people from malaria and yellow fever before widespread mosquito control (brought to you by the government) That married women had their assets confiscated upon marriage and couldn't own property? The fact that women couldn't vote or that free men, if they were the wrong color could be abducted and sold into slavery, and also couldn't vote?
Finally, bub, I'm white. I can't be racist against my own race.
Also you haven't answered my question: which of the three is more desirable- an epidemic, a mandatory quarantine or a mandatory vaccine?

Delysid @239

You seem to be under the impression that the criticism people are giving me are original.

You seem to be under the impression I’m only discussing criticism of your political views. I’m also criticizing your presentation of your views, and the way you respond to what other posters communicate to you. For an example, see your exchanges with Shay starting at about comment #226. In particular, you posted @232 ( http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/12/18/why-are-antivaccinationist… )

Oh you are a war historian? Oh you must be so knowledgable! There is nothing more truthful than matters dealing with war!!!!

You complain

The arguments against libertarianism on RI are identical to the hystarical ranting by high schoolers on the political section on reddit.

Yet, your own debating style is, frankly, childish and ineffective. Unless, of course, your goal is just to be provocative for its own sake, in which case: congratulations! You have provided plenty of amusement this afternoon.

@politicalPIG

Disease is not the fault of the free-market.

I don't care what ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, or even species you are. You are a disgusting animal. It terrifies me that you vote.

Oh yeah and nice false dilemma.

Do you prefer to be raped by white men in the vagina or in the rectum?

The herd effect is not a legitimate argument. Although it is true that a non-vaccinated person poses a non-zero threat to the rest of the population, this is also true of a vaccinated person. It’s a null argument.

This is a nonargument. Expulsion of the diseased, which is neither more nor less than protection of the "herd," goes way, way back. There are only so many slots available for the susceptible before R > 0, and some of those are taken by people without any choice in the matter. Handwavinng about a "null argument" is just that.

You are an asset to your cause Delsyid...I'm surprised people aren't flocking to your banner.....

@politicalPIG

Disease is not the fault of the free-market.

I don’t care what ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, or even species you are. You are a disgusting animal. It terrifies me that you vote.

Oh yeah and nice false dilemma.

Do you prefer to be raped by white men in the vagina or in the rectum?

Kid, if you're going to try to get away this kind of shıt, I'm going to be willing to address you by the name your mother gave you in order to memorialize your character for posterity.

Delysid @ 246

Oh yeah and nice false dilemma.

Do you prefer to be raped by white men

Yes, I’m sorry, I can’t bring myself to connect my screen name with the rest of those words in context even if I am quoting. Go ahead and call me a prude.

This is exactly what I’m trying to get through to you: this sort tactic might be effective in discussions with those hysterical ranting high schoolers, but all it does when debating with adults is show that you are emotionally immature and cannot present a logical argument.

@Narad

Better call the police.

Delysid: "Please tell me what was so horrible about pre-1864. Life was pretty damn similar to today except with far less taxes and less technology."

Obviously he managed to graduate from high school without reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I still have memories in my head over the horrors of the family feud that Huck got caught in. Just one of the scenes that had nothing to do with slavery that showed what kind of people that populated the country in the middle of the 19th century.

@Narad

Better call the police.

Nice non sequitur.

I think the direction of this comment thread was best described by the late Johnny Cash

How high's the water, Momma?

Do you prefer to be raped by white men in the vagina or in the rectum?

Alright. That's enough. Into the automatic moderation queue you go until you prove that you can restrain your baser impulses. I'll still let your comments through, but not when you indulge in misogynistic asshattery like this.

"Please tell me what was so horrible about pre-1864. Life was pretty damn similar to today except with far less taxes and less technology."

You truly have benefited from a very narrow reading in American history.

Pre-1864, there were very few jobs open to me, due in part to my unfortunate ethnic heritage, and those employers who might have risked hiring me were not required to see that I had a safe work environment, or that I got the same pay for the same work done by another employee. I would not have had the freedom to "vote with my feet" and find better employment because there wasn't any.

Let's say that by some miracle I did find employment that paid a living wage, I still would not have been able to purchase a home or property, in part because I would not have been legally able to enter into a contract but also because there were no equal housing/equal lending laws.

(And you know what, Delysid? You would have been in the same boat. Because discrimination against atheists in ante-bellum America was common and perfectly legal. I might have been a member of a despised racial and religious minority, but you would have been utterly beyond the pale).

There would be no guarantee that the water I drank or the food I purchased would not poison me (and if you don't think the connection between sanitation and disease was recognized pre-1864, please go read up on Gail Borden), and if I became ill and needed medicine, there were no regulations governing the manufacture thereof.

But I guess that, apart from the whole employment/housing/food/medicine thing, life pre-1864 wasn't all that bad.
.

Even if you were rich & white (and Protestant), live still wasn't easy & god forbid you come down with some horrible disease...based on the state of medicine at the time....for everyone else, well, it might well have been tolerable, but it certainly wasn't good or easy....and if you were Black or a Woman...well, history speaks for itself.

Thanks Orac.

Back on topic. Here's the Speaker's List for the 2014 Quackfest.

http://www.autismone.org/content/list-speakers

Jake Crosby is a "Featured Speaker"?

Wow.

I wanted to share an anecdote I found (which was shared with another one by someone who got a seriously unhappy case of pertussis as an adult). It gave me hope that there are anecdotes for vaccination by those who had to survive all those 'harmless' childhood illnesses. Messed up the link so it could get through without being moderated...

ht_tp://www.voicesforvaccines.org/growing-up-unvaccinated/

Sorry to drift to the vaccine part of this topic... ;-)

I was mocking PoliticalPig's incessent racist misandry.

So Orac you tolerate her bigotry but it's offensive when I use the same language?

Also I ifnd forced vaccination and forced quarentine to be just as serious and offensive as rape. You don't have any right to inject any chemicals into a person's body without their consent, whether it is a vaccine or semen.

@Delysid: Enough with the rape analogies. And I don't see any racist misandry. But I do see despicable misogyny coming from you. So knock it off or go away again for an extended period of time. Your choice.

@Mrs Woo - thanks for bringing things back around.

@ Orac # 255

Hear, hear.

But you'll probably be called a fascist or suchlike.

But you’ll probably be called a fascist or suchlike.

Not at all. Our "friend" is calling me a hypocrite. :-)

You truly have benefited from a very narrow reading in American history.

I have a strong suspicion that his reading of Camus is going to prove to be even better.

@ Shay:

I'd guess that you're Irish.
Shea?

I have to admit to debating about posting it - it seemed that you were all debating with someone who had no interest in hearing argument. I realize the purpose is to be sure that rational discussion is shared, but worried that things might not come back to anything else.

Usually I find most libertarians to have a blind eye to the lack of compassion inherent in the philosophy - it ignores that life can be unfair, and to some extent all of society benefits if we reduce poverty, disease and similar issues. Every time I hear that everyone has the same opportunity at birth I have to wonder what sheltered place they were raised in.

Thank you for stepping in, Orac.

Chang and Eng lived peacefullyin the antebellum south

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_and_Eng_Bunker
And racism wasnt solved by your godvernment and the preistacians. In fact

Mrs Woo,

It's okay, much more refreshing. Nice testimony by the way.

Alain

Jake Crosby is a “Featured Speaker”?

That should ruffle some feathers.

The Progressive Era gov. doubled down on racidt policies. Woodrow Wilson made it oart of his platform and administration.

@Narad - interesting mix of speakers there....seems like AoA might be "distancing" themselves from the event....one way or the other.

Denice -- and Catholic (shudder). MacMahon on one side and Conway on the other! Actually, I've been known as Shay since I enlisted, a shortening of my given name which too many of my brothers/sisters in arms found unpronounceable.

The point can be made that medical knowledge at the time (1st half/19th century) was still pretty primitive, yet doctors and the general public accepted that vaccination prevented disease, and starting with the Philadelphia yellow fever in 1793 , the connection was being made between disease and sanitation (incorrectly, in that case, unfortunately).

From Irwin Bell Wiley's Life of Billy Yank: "“It is strange to see (captain) Bell’s company, 83 strong – rough backswoodsmen with 15 men sick, several serious cases, while (captain) Widdis’ just along side, delicate, citybred men, 85 strong…have but 3 sick men all light cases. The difference is no doubt mainly due to the great care Widdis forces his men to take in cleansing and airing their tents and blankets and ditching and policing his street, while the country officers almost entirely neglect this."

Not at all. Our “friend” is calling me a hypocrite.

Oh, dear, not too clear on the underlying "my server, my rules" principle? Not able to "defend his honor" or something?

Socialists csre about the poor and libertarians are anti-socialist, therefore libertarians hate the poor. QED.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/penn-jillette-on-government-social-…

Actually, I’ve been known as Shay since I enlisted, a shortening of my given name which too many of my brothers/sisters in arms found unpronounceable.

Even though my patronymic is only two syllables, the USMCR milieu forced a vowel and consonant change before I arrived on the scene.

"Chang and Eng lived peacefullyin the antebellum south"

Cheng and Eng were conjoined twins, and were exhibited as side show oddities. They were not typical of minorities in the south. A friend of mine had grandparents who immigrated from China to Mississippi. Her father has marked on his birth certificate that he was "white" because there were only two choices. So they joked he was the only white person born in their family!

"And racism wasnt solved by your godvernment and the preistacians. In fact"

History on the constitution seems to elude you. You must be ignoring every amendment passed in the past 150 years.

Delysid @ 261

So Orac you tolerate her bigotry but it’s offensive when I use the same language?

Yes. Your comment @ 246 is extremely offensive. If you cannot understand this, I hope you re-think participating in a career in which you deal with the public on a daily basis.

There has only been one truly "offensive" commenter in this thread....painfully obvious who that person is.

@ Lawrence:

Interestingly Jake is being identified with 'advocacy"

And racism wasnt solved by your godvernment and the preistacians. In fact

I can't wait to find out what this neologism is supposed to mean. Or when racism was "solved," for that matter. Was it the dentacians?

Orac I'm assuming you deliberately summoned me and the wrath of the devil with the word libertarian in the title. I always take the bait even if I see the hook.

Orac I’m assuming you deliberately summoned me and the wrath of the devil with the word libertarian in the title. I always take the bait even if I see the hook.

You really think way too highly of yourself. I didn't even give you a thought when I wrote this post. But it amuses me that you think I'd bother, as I had pretty much forgotten about your existence before you made your obnoxious return.

Score some pot while you're attending the 2014 Quackfest

"MEDICAL CANNABIS (MARIJUANA) & HEMP COMING TO AUTISMONE

Cannabis stops seizures heals body and mind

Hemp legal in all 50 states - medical cannabis legal in 20 and counting

National Push Begins in May"

http://www.autismone.org/Important-Information-Autismone-Conference-2014

Priestatician is a portmanteau of priest and politician.

I'm sorry, my tidy middle-class Middle-Western mind equates hemp with doormats. But hasn't someone (and I don't know if it's a reliable someone or a lunatic fringe someone) made some claims on behalf of medical marijuana in re: autism?

Also I ifnd forced vaccination and forced quarentine to be just as serious and offensive as rape. You don’t have any right to inject any chemicals into a person’s body without their consent, whether it is a vaccine or semen.

I see that the Natty is really kicking in. Where is the "forced vaccination"? How is "quarentine" tantamount to rape?

But hasn’t someone (and I don’t know if it’s a reliable someone or a lunatic fringe someone) made some claims on behalf of medical marijuana in re: autism?

Julian Pursell would probably be an improvement over D.

Me at #108 and Orac at #154:
I said "Chris described antivaccinationism as being predominantly a disorder of the Left."

... and I was wrong.

It's on SGU #434 at 59:40, and he clearly says it's 9/11 Trutherism, not antivaccinationism, that preferentially afflicts Lefties. It was a brain bubble on my part. Please instruct the jury to disregard the testimony, and I will go off and take some gingko biloba or something for my faulty memory.

@ Shay: That would be Jacob and his hundreds of sock puppets a.k.a. The Pothead Troll whose M.O. was similar to the dental student's.

Priestatician is a portmanteau of priest and politician.

In that case, it's the most incompetent attempt I've ever seen at the exercise.

Delysid @ 286

Priestatician is a portmanteau of priest and politician.

A+ for alliteration.
F in term of making any sense at all.

^in terms of

D., perhaps this will help in your future endeavors. GG is close to the last place I would go for advice about the nominal subject matter, but Johnson's observations might give you some practical tips on how to work around your frankly abysmal language skills should you feel compelled to persist in snorkeling in the deep end.

@Narad

Thanks for the advice.

I have a source that will help you in your future endeavors.

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-where-to-begin/…

Because it wouldn't be Christmas at Respectful Insolence....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyBK9UdxbcM

Score some pot while you’re attending the 2014 Quackfest

If that's Nathan Coombs/Rhonda Morris ex Derrick McFabe, it wouldn't be the first appearance.

OH GAWD. I had forgotten the traditional annual Lutefisk conversation.

Delysid: Do you prefer to be raped by white men in the vagina or in the rectum?

And you wonder why I despise libertarians. They're all like you, and they're all disgusting. For the last time, being critical of white men is in no way being racist or misandrist. And being critical of you is just common sense you disgusting pig.
And just so we're all straight- my name comes from the common domestic cavy which is a rodent. They are very clean and pleasant animals, far superior to you.

OH GAWD. I had forgotten the traditional annual Lutefisk conversation.

In related news, I accidentally purchased a grocery-story "deli" potato salad today, in a shopping-while-hungry moment, that tastes of nothing but... dill. I thought the green stuff was a combination of parsley and scallions.

I do wish the "G-dverment" would step in here with some labeling requirements.

Delysid, 261

Also I ifnd (sic) forced vaccination and forced quarentine to be just as serious and offensive as rape. You don’t have any right to inject any chemicals into a person’s body without their consent, whether it is a vaccine or semen.

Delysid, for someone saying something is "just as serious and offensive as rape", to then equate rape with injection of semen without consent is like equating a plane crash with lost luggage.

You, sir, are a jerk of the highest order.

@PGP: there are other threads on this site I've been teasing out the true nature of libertarian denialists... scratch just below the surface and the FYIGM, misogyny and racism just shines through. This one is particularly odious, but I think he's trolling more than anything now.

Narad: "In that case, it’s the most incompetent attempt I’ve ever seen at the exercise."

I rather like “Aluminati”. We need to use it more as it seems to be the "toxin du jour."

Did someone say lutefisk?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQAZ4IKcncw

Did someone say lutefisk?

Not me. What is lutefisk?

Have a good night lilady :)

Alain

"What is lutefisk?"

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/LutefiskHistory.htm

Alain, it's tastier than surstromming. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming#cite_note-10

Stu: no surprise. I bet a lot of them wear fedoras too. (It's a crying shame that something so snazzy has been reduced to a sign of an asshole.)

Stop, please with the food talk; we have no lefse in the house, and that's a crying shame this time of year.

Also I ifnd forced vaccination and forced quarentine to be just as serious and offensive as rape.

Did you hear what they did to poor Typhoid Mary? What would the libertarian solution have been, I wonder? I suspect that in a libertarian society she would have voluntarily isolated herself, or submitted to medical treatment for her condition, because in a libertarian society everyone accepts personal freedom and responsibility. It's only in the real world that a substantial number of people do not.

By the way, Typhoid Mary's case makes interesting reading, if you're unfamiliar with it, and serves as a sort of reductio ad absurdum of arguments against compulsory vaccination and isolation. Mary Mallon spent almost thirty years locked away in total, merely because she was spreading typhoid and refused to take measures to prevent this:

Under questioning, Mallon said she rarely washed her hands when cooking and felt there was no need to do so. Cultures of Mary's urine and stools, taken forcibly with the help of prison matrons, revealed that her gallbladder was teeming with typhoid salmonella. She refused to have her gallbladder extracted or to give up her occupation as a cook, maintaining stubbornly that she did not carry any disease.

The free market solution to the problem presumably would have entailed Mallon eventually being lynched by an angry mob of bereaved relatives of those who had died from typhoid.

Talk of lutefisk reminded me that while rooting about in the freezer section of my local Chinese food store recently, I came across some durian fruit. Sadly I'm entirely lacking my sense of smell at present, so it seemed pointless buying any, but the curious might find a similar exercise fruitful (pun intended).

Actually I think the free market libertarian solution to Typhoid Mary would be to allow her to carry on working as a cook. She has the right to refuse to wash, or accept treatment if she wishes. She should be allowed to do what she likes. The best that could happen would be to warn people until word got around enough that she ran out of people who would employ her. That's the natural law of the market.

I'm affraid warning people for Typhoid Mary wouldn't be that easy, considering, she also renamed herself and with a common name like Mary Brown, warning for a certain Mary Brown wouldn't be very productive.

Chuff,

The best that could happen would be to warn people until word got around enough that she ran out of people who would employ her. That’s the natural law of the market.

She changed her name to evade detection, and frequently changed jobs (as soon as people started going down with typhoid). I find it hard to imagine how this could have been dealt with without recourse to measures that libertarians would regard as an affront to personal freedom.

The natural law of the market often seems to involve an awful lot of death and human suffering.

Delysid: "I (find) forced vaccination and forced quarentine to be just as serious and offensive as rape."

Meryl (No-one-ever-died-of-whooping-cough) Dorey of the Australian (Anti-)Vaccination Network agrees with you. Nice company you're keeping.

http://peterbowditch.com/wp/2013/09/meryl-dorey-and-the-rape-analogy/

I have a feeling Chuff is being ironic.

@ PGP:

You are correct about fedoras: very snazzy and thoroughly wasted on idiots. I was given one a few years ago but never wear it because it's brown which doesn't work wih my skin tone at all. *Quel dommage*.

re Norwegian foods-
my cousin, Mu, experiences the mixed blessing of living within 1000 feet of a well-regarded Norwegian bakery which is the death of any diet she attempts to follow.

@PGP @Denice

At the risk of starting a true rift, fedoras should be illegal for anyone under 50. Dudebros my age have got it into their heads that they're Sam Spade. NO.

My model is NO GOVERNMENT.

So, what, Deadwood in the early days?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadwood,_South_Dakota

The US government had no authority, because it was on 'Indian land', no state government, because it wasn't a state, and the indians weren't strong enough to throw them out. It sounds like 'Libertopia' by your definition.

@ AOP:

Oh, agreed. All of my gentlemen ARE over 50.... currently. AND I would wear it if it were grey. And Dudebros are poseurs.

@ Johhny:

I always imagine Libertopia to be like the Iceland depicted in the saga of Hrafnkel, Freysgodi- altho' that is probably a novel, it has an authenic ring.
People make their own rules, win 'court cases' by having the entourage that shouts the loudest and murder can be resolved by a sum of money. AND it has no bureaucracies, regulations,high taxes for schools and health care.

@Shay #315

Yes. I was being ironic. Sorry, doesn't always come across well in text and I have no idea how to quote posts etc. As Krebiozen says, the natural law of the market can cause a lot of death and suffering. History shows that people spend a lot of time being complete b#$tards to each other. Why libertarians think this will change after the removal of all regulation to prevent it, I will never understand.

There was a statement by Walter Williams in the newspaper recently that had a line (in a different context) that strikes me as applicable:

I acknowledge that capitalism fails miserably when compared with heaven or a utopia. Any earthly system is going to come up short in such a comparison.

I acknowledge that pure libertarianism, assuming that everyone is intelligent, fully informed, and acts in a way that is consistent with both their own self interest and the interest of the community as a whole sounds really inviting and any governmental system that restricts someone from acting in that way would, by comparison, come up short. The odds of people acting that way on a consistent basis are nil, unfortunately, and thus government has its purposes.

@Everybody

Here is all of your arguments in a nutshell...

People are bad so we need a government made of people are bad so we need a government made of people are bad so we need a government made of people are bad so we need a government made of people are bad...

Let me try to rephrase it...

PEOPLE ARE BAD SO WE NEED A GOVERNMENT MADE OF PEOPLE ARE BAD SO WE NEED A GOVERNMENT MADE OF PEOPLE ARE BAD SO WE NEED A GOVERNMENT MADE OF PEOPLE ARE BAD...

When I'm not on RI I'll just spend time arguing with this picture. Same thing.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/87257311501847167/

Or put another way...

"I got an idea! Why don't we give a small group of the right to kidnap, prison, harass, steal, steal from, and kill people so that we are protected from people who kidnap, prison, harass, steal from and kill us?!"

Or wait I know what you are thinking. People in government are good and people in the free-market are bad, imma right? Because in the religion of statism and through the magic of democracy, bad people in the market transform into good altruistic people when they are voted into office!

It's so logical! Libertarians are dumb and progressives are smart!

Well, if this "no government utopia" included you, Delysid, we'd know for sure it would have one terrible person who could not be trusted.

You have not quite shown yourself to be worthy citizen in any domain.

Well, that's a bit simplistic but we have two chouces

@Chris

You don't know me. You might feel like a keyboard psychiatrist, but you are talking to someone you have never met and know nothing about. It's extremely amusing watching you laptop dictators pontificate about politics like you are queen of society.

You advocate for a government you have zero control over. You pretend to have expertise in subjects you know nothing about.

Do you feel important, citizen?

Unfinished post. Then I realized, what's the point, already been said.

imma right?

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free a dentist that your very existence is an act of rebellion includes hanging around on the Ron Paul forums, making an ass of yourself in blog comments, and dropping references to the pathetically sad Pinterest."

FTFY. Want some better Camus quotes, you "rebel" you?

It’s so logical! Libertarians are dumb and progressives are smart!

Delysid, life is never simple. You're the one who keeps trying to make this a black and white issue; the rest of us here are trying to make the point that you're missing all of the shades of grey.

@ delysid

*fighting my way out of strawmen* Actually, it's not that we are believing/arguing.

People in government are good and people in the free-market are bad, imma right

Your problem is that you believe that there are good people and bad people. The reality is, there are only bad people. Simply, there are not on the same side.

With "the magic of democracy", you can at least change the composition of the government. To some extent. Of course, if the voters keep putting back in charge scoundrels and thieves... One has the government it deserves.
Good luck having your CEO out of his office.

Actually, explain me this:
The usual structure of a private enterprise is hierarchized: it has a main manager (or a group of decision-makers), a board of delegates with specialized jurisdictions (in a number of businesses, one of these jurisdictions is the management of a small group of people with the specific right to "harass" other people - it's called "Security") and the majorities of the workers don't have much say in the decisions taken by the top members.
How is this different from the government of a city or a nation? More precisely, why wouldn't a board of directors be susceptible to the same mistakes and temptations of misuse of power as a government?

Or more simply: OK, you don't want a government, I get it.
So, how do you pretend to stop people around you from misbehaving? No cheating: your answer cannot be to delegate to anyone the "right to kidnap, prison [...] or kill people".
If you are keeping watch all by yourself, good luck having anything else done.
If you are living in the wilderness, that's cheating: I want to know what you will be doing in a situation with a lot of people around you.
Tell me you are organizing a local militia, I will point to you that this is a government in the making. A small one, but as History has shown time and time again, it will grow. Remember Rome? It started as a small village of peasants.

@Narad

I see you have figured who I am Scooby Doo. Congrats. Any idiot with 5 minutes of time could have done so, considering I'm not hiding. I don't care enough (and I am quite certain you are a nobody) to return the sleuthing about you.

I see you have figured who I am Scooby Doo

I see that you appear to have had a memory lapse after your buffoonery yesterday.

Delsyid seems to think, that despite thousands of years of human history, that "no government" is the natural state of things.....yet he has provided no evidence that this is so.....

Government = bad, yeah we get it. Unfortunately, whatever you decide to call the alternative (a corporation, collective, company, gathering, etc) there will always be some kind of hierarchical structure - whether it was the paleolithic tribes, early farming civilizations, Greece / Rome, city-states, or modern nations....I find it funny that you think that any type of governmental structure = slavery, while no government = freedom....because history hasn't borne that out, ever.

Again, point to an instance where your ideas where successful - anywhere, at any time. Otherwise, you are doing nothing but espousing a bunch of theories that may sound good on paper, but you have no idea if they would work in the real world.

@Delysid

Actually, I am rather curious how you would propose dealing with someone like Typhoid Mary. What would the Libertarian response be to someone like her, and do you have any examples of this in action?

@Narad

And by the way, I don't use this term loosely, but you are creepy. Extremely creepy. I am fine with my identity being public, but I am uncomfortable that you are a creepy weirdo.

@Todd W.

Typhoid Mary is an interesting case. Times have changed since the barbaric way of handling those situations. Lepers are no longer quarantined, for instance.

The anarcho-capitalist/libertarian way of handling those situations is banishment (as opposed to forced quarantine or forced medication). I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, as I would support a rudimentary court system to deal with people who harmed others (including infecting them with a disease).

A good example in my opinion are those currently infected with HIV Hep C. It is a criminal offense to knowingly infect others with those viruses. These situations occur, but in the scope of everything they are quite rare.

So in summary, I'm not sure.

Folks, Delysid already admitted on the other thread that no evidence and no logic would change his mind.

That's pretty much the end of the discussion.

Delysid: "You don’t know me."

I only know you from your comments. The comments have shown a misogynistic buffoon who constantly gets basic history wrong. Take a hint with the fact that you are one of the very few persons that Orac has had to put into automatic moderation. Actually your comments starting at about #190 had me wondering if Medicien Man/Rob Hood had slithered out from under the ban hammer again pretending to be you.

In short, you have shown yourself to be a very bad person.

@Khani

Because some things have more factors than evidence.

I think murder is wrong ethically. I don't need to have any evidence to support my position. Even if murder had never happened before, I would be theoretically opposed to it.

I feel the same way about the force of government.

@Delysid,

Everyone know we need autistic peoples running for government. Bad ain't a binary variable between not bad and bad, there's over 4 billions shades of grey in between and at one extreme of the bellcurve, there are autistics and at the other extreme, there is you.

Alain

You pretend to have expertise in subjects you know nothing about.

Like "praxeology," which you were completely unable to muster an intelligent response about? Hell, you haven't demonstrated a shred of ability to do that with respect to any of the comments here. Of course, one can also point to the foregoing example:

"Cannot it be said that even this trade-unionism is ineffectual? The answer is simple: it is this movement alone that, in one century, is responsible for the enormously improved condition of the workers from the sixteen-hour day to the forty-hour week. The ideological Empire has turned socialism back on its tracks and destroyed the greater part of the conquests of trade-unionism. It is because trade-unionism started from a concrete basis, the basis of professional employment (which is to the economic order what the commune is to the political order), the living cell on which the organism builds itself, while the Caesarian revolution starts from doctrine and forcibly introduces reality into it. Trade-unionism, like the commune, is the negation, to the benefit of reality, of bureaucratic and abstract centralism. The revolution of the twentieth century, on the contrary, claims to base itself on economics, but is primarily political and ideological." —Camus

"But if a union member applied to work for me, I would just laugh." —Guy who didn't understand why this statement doesn't even make sense, advances as a motto a Camus "quote" that doesn't appear to have any genuine attestations, and doesn't understand The Rebel

But if a union member applied to work for me, I would just laugh

Rather short-sighted, since unions can offer prospective employers the assurance that their members have the necessary training and licensure to actually perform their jobs.

Oh, right...market forces will eventually drive unlicensed/unqualified workers out. If you can wait that long.

Krebozien: The natural law of the market often seems to involve an awful lot of death and human suffering.

Well, that's the point of libertarianism. They fundamentally lack any empathy, and don't think people that aren't them (or like them) are worthy of surviving.

Delysid: It's kind of rich that you're calling Narad creepy. Also, lepers ARE still quarantined, for your information. So are people with bubonic plague.

Delysid @326
I note that you have ignored my earlier comments, which does not surprise me.

Do you feel important, citizen?

Do you?
Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want to feel important, and proclaim your superiority over all those who do not subscribe to your brand of the political philosophy of “freedom.”

Go ahead, feel important. But please keep in mind as you go forward that insults are not arguments.

What's the difference between banishment and quarantaine?
In the first case, someone is put outside the community, in the other case the person is prevented to get in contact with the community. I don't see much difference between those.

@Deylsid

The Dairy Farmers Association called - could you please leave some straw for their stalls.

@Delysid

The anarcho-capitalist/libertarian way of handling those situations is banishment (as opposed to forced quarantine or forced medication). I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with this, as I would support a rudimentary court system to deal with people who harmed others (including infecting them with a disease).
...
So in summary, I’m not sure.

Who would do this banishing? What if some in the community support Mary's right to employment within the community? Who would enforce Mary's banishment to prevent her coming back in? And where would you banish Mary to? Into the wild? Into another community?

Also, in terms of a rudimentary court, who would administer it? Who would grant authority to and enforce its rulings?

I think delysid is saying that vigilante pitchfork mobs are market forces at work (ergo, good), and government by consent is force (ergo, bad).

To risk skirting the rim of Godwin, he is essentially implying that pogroms were a good thing.

The anarcho-capitalist/libertarian way of handling those situations is banishment

I.e., precisely the 14th-century solution of Viscount Bernabo that preceded by only three years the establishment of the basically identical trentino, which is what gives us the word "quarantine" after being extended to 40 days. By the way, who's going to build walls around the city and man the gates in the absence of a governing agent, genius?

And by the way, I don’t use this term loosely, but you are creepy.

You appear to use terms loosely more or less to the exclusion of any other fashion. Let's have your analysis, peaches. I'm not the one who couldn't get through his first sentence without the phrase "circle-jerking each other" and went straight downhill into automatic comment moderation.

Delysid @326

I am fine with my identity being public

You are on record stating that you think mocking someone by use of the threat of sexual assault is a valid form of argument.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/12/18/why-are-antivaccinationist…
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/12/18/why-are-antivaccinationist…

You are fine with that?

OK; a Minnesota woman walks into a hardware store. The owner asks if he can help her.
"Well, it's those skunks under my porch, dontcha know. I just can't get rid of 'em."
"Well, now, you just get some of that lutefisk, and put it under your porch there, and see if it don't get rid of them skunks."
A week later she's back in the store.
"Hey, did ya try what I told ya about that lutefisk?"
"Ya, I did."
"And didn't it get rid of them skunks?"
"Ya, it did, but now what do I do about the Norwegians?"

vigilante pitchfork mobs are market forces at work (ergo, good), and government by consent is force (ergo, bad).

This needs to go on a tee-shirt, or something. :)

Clicking one of the links Dyspeptic Delysid provided above, I was shocked to see a page headed "Penn Jillette on Government Social Welfare". Even someone as talented and well-known as Penn Jilllette is vulnerable in a recession, I thought, shaking my head in disbelief.

Then I read further, and realized that Jillette was railing against the US Government for providing social welfare for the poor, apparently because, "you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right".
I'm not sure what to make of someone who thinks the sole purpose of helping the needy is to get "moral credit". I'm not even sure what "moral credit" is. If I accumulate enough does that mean I can do something reprehensible without losing any sleep over it?

Anyway, I think there are other reasons for helping the needy, such as compassion and empathy, a dislike of having to step over sick, dying and dead bodies in the street and, even if you believe altruism is a fiction, saving money in the long term through crime reduction and preventing disease.

"There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint", says Mr. Jillette. Personally I have always felt good knowing that some of my taxes go towards supporting those who need it; resenting doing something good just because you are compelled to seems a bit mean-spirited and contrarian to me. If it really bothered me I would imagine all my taxes were going towards nuclear weapons, or whatever, and resent that instead.

I have a modest proposal for Mr. Jillette. We could all club together and agree to put a proportion of the money we earn towards helping those in need. Obviously we would need some people to help administer this, to decide who is truly in need and who is not. Perhaps we could call it a 'welfare' or 'social security' system or similar. Just imagine the great joy we would experience!

I suppose there's the problem of those who don't want that "great joy in helping people". Should we have some way they can opt out of this system? Or should we tell the selfish b@stards to go fnck themselves vote to see if the majority of people agree that this would be the best system?

Politics is difficult, and anyone who claims otherwise is usually talking out of a poorly adapted orifice.

Let's not forget the filth that the pig posted at me.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/09/26/in-which-antivaccinationis…

"Delysid
October 19, 2013

@lilady

Now you are calling me a liar? You can take your ignorant raging idiocy and fvck yourself in your your senile, menopausal cvnt. I just wish I this was in person so I look you right in the eyes and smirk in your rhytidal face when I tell you to suck my potent d!ck.

I might be an a$$hole, but I am not a liar."

(Please leave that comment up there Orac. When people look up his 'nym or his real name, I want them to understand what a sick pervert he is.)

@Kreb

resenting doing something good just because you are compelled to seems a bit mean-spirited and contrarian to me.

Or toddlerish.

I once heard a comedian say that white supremacists were the best argument against white supremacy. He said that if you were going to call yourself a supremacist, you should at least be able to spell it. The same seems to be the case with Delysid. A society with minimal government and populated by people so morally impaired that they equate "forced" vaccination with rape would break down immediately. Funny how so many libertarians' concerns about autonomy and the use force end where someone else's vagina starts.

@Everyone

No one has learned anything I see.

Once again we are back to the circular argument "people area bad so we need a government of people are bad so we need a government of people"

So you are all worried about an angry mobs? What do you think DEMOCRACY is? It is 51% controlling the 49%. Pogroms were government actions. The Red Army was the government army. The Nazi's controlled government.

What you are all saying is that

WE NEED A GOVERNMENT BECAUSE ALL OF THE HORRIBLE THINGS THE GOVERNMENT DOES MIGHT HAPPEN WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT!

All of the terrible things being described that will happen without government is all conjecture. The evils committed by governments are endless and real and undeniable.

Statism is the world's most popular religion and the brainwashed gibberish being spouted here demonstrates why. Everyone here sounds like cult members describing the hellish consequences of not being in the cult. Anarchy is the equivalent of a fire and brimstone hell. "Without government to protect us every evil that we can imagine will happen!"

And then you use atrocities committed by governments as your examples of what will happen without government. Unbelievable.

I really hope that someone else reading this is unconditioned and free-thinking enough to see what should be obvious to all but is not saying anything. I don't know whether to be laugh or slap my head in frustration.

Funny how so many libertarians’ concerns about autonomy and the use force end where someone else’s vagina starts.

Or any type of non-white skin, or God forbid, poor skin

I mean, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuwwww.

Some quotes that people need to seriously ponder before repeating the same circular arguments to me...

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe themselves to be made of finer clay than the rest of mankind?" Bastiat

"No matter how disastrously a policy has turned out, you can always expect to hear: but what would you replace it with? When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?" Sowell

“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” Higgs

*shrugs* I've seen the havoc that so-called "anarchists" wreaked within/via the Occupy camps of Oakland and San Francisco. I wasn't impressed.

The closest thing I've seen tot the utopia sought by some folks in these parts would be Burning Man, but that's an event of short duration, nor is it society-wide...

Delysid,

Do you agree about taxes?

I'm not speaking about government but simply, taxes?

Alain

@Delsyid - yes, it is entirely conjecture on your part that what you propose would be better......that, at least, is something we can agree upon.

- Denice Walter

I always imagine Libertopia to be like...

That happens a lot.

I hear about Libertarianism, and it sounds good. Less government, more freedom - hey, what's not to like?

But when you ask about the details of what life would be like, how things would work day to day, or how the government would work, you never get the same answer twice, if you get an answer at all. Delysid seems to be in the 'no answer' camp. He's really short on details on how life would be, other than 'better'.

Delysid said he likes the idea of no government at all, and about the only example of people living like that that I know of is the early days of Deadwood, SD. If he agrees that's the type of society he wants to live in, we'd have an idea of what life would be like in his world.

For some reason, I'm reminded that Orly Taitz is a dentist..

(Though I hasten to add that my own dentist seems quite normal and does extremely good work.)

Actually, Communism was complete conjecture until it was actually tried on a national (and international level) - and we found that it didn't work...I don't think we want to go through the same exercise with what Delsyid wants, unless there is some evidence or proof that it would in fact be better than what we have today or whatever incremental changes we need to make to promote better and more efficient processes (both with government and private enterprise).

@Johnny - correct. Delsyid has decided that government is so bad that whatever replaces it must necessarily, always be better.....but, of course, he has no way of knowing that.

And he's been so venomous that I have no doubt that libertarians in general, if they are anything like their "self-appointed spokesmen" Delsyid, will never get any real traction - because of their collective douchebaggery.....

@Alain

I oppose taxes, particularly the income tax and "sin" taxes. The vast majority of taxes are completely unnecessary for financing even a huge federal government.

"... lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."

If the United States would stop going to war over and over again... But I'm a dreamer. Governments suck at everything except for war (and they suck at that too).

@Lawrence

You are truly a philosopher. You and PoliticalPig are outstanding progressive thinkers.

Johnny: "Delysid said he likes the idea of no government at all, and about the only example of people living like that that I know of is the early days of Deadwood, SD."

And another example until last year was Somalia. We know how well that did, well most of us here do. But, showing his total lack of history knowledge he responded to that suggestion with:

MOVE TO SOMALIA

The most sophisticated argument ever formulated by a liberal, followed closely by “You’re a racist!”

It is interesting how he is trying to claim some high ground, yet so much flies right over his head.

No one has learned anything I see.

Well, you've reinforced what we already knew; that you're no good at explaining yourself. You might go back and re-read the excellent advice offered to you by Chemommo.

Johanna@#352 -- I'd buy that t-shirt.

Delysid: The reason governments are preferred is that they can be held accountable by the people who created them. Ever heard of checks and balances? Recall elections? Heck, juries? All created by society because we recognize that people need rules, and there needs to be some sort of enforcement- and also that the people who make the rules need to be checked occasionally.
The reason I don't think I could ever support libertarians is that-well, first of all most of them are jerks, and most of them just want to basically, get away with murder (or whatever their preferred crime is.)

I am fine with my identity being public

Oh, we can have a lot more fun than that, if you really insist.

Some quotes that people need to seriously ponder before repeating the same circular arguments to me…

Your fondness for trotting out an aphorism about which you immediately proceed to completely fail to advance the slightest indication of having a grasp of the underlying subject matter of as a diversion from what has gone before has already been demonstrated, thanks.

Nobody "need[s] to seriously ponder" someone who effectively starts intoning from Bartlett's when push comes to shove.

@Narad

"Oh, we can have a lot more fun than that, if you really insist."

That is extremely creepy.

Chris, speaking of people living with no government -

another example until last year was Somalia.

Well, sorta, but not really. With the civil war there, government was ineffective, often changing, fractured, and sometimes ignored, but there was a government.

Also, any mention of Somalia is ignored by Delysid, so I thought I'd try a different example.

Johnny: "Well, sorta, but not really. With the civil war there, government was ineffective, often changing, fractured, and sometimes ignored, but there was a government."

Oh, rats! Wikipedia was wrong. Thanks for the correction.

Though an ineffective government often gets the same results as no government: fiefdoms presided over by the one with the most guns or money. It has happened throughout history (like the early kingdoms in Egypt, Greece, etc.), and it is a common theme in fiction (like Riverworld and Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle). But Delysid would not know that since he seems to fail at history.

"Also, any mention of Somalia is ignored by Delysid, so I thought I’d try a different example."

Thanks for that. I had not known about it other than references in certain movies.

I oppose taxes, particularly the income tax and “sin” taxes. The vast majority of taxes are completely unnecessary for financing even a huge federal government.

What about financing disabled peoples?

Alain

P.s. I was listening to a movie.

Every person in this thread needs to take a course in Logic. This thread is logical fallacy after logical fallacy.

1. Palindrom- "Orly Taitz is a dentist" GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION
2. Kreb- "I feel good about taxes and how they help people" MORAL HIGH GROUND FALLACY
3. Chris- "Somalia" FALSE ANALOGY
4. Militant Agnostic "...where a vagina starts" RED HERRING
5. Shay- "you’re missing all of the shades of grey." ARGUMENT TO MODERATION
6. Stu- "pogroms" REDUCTIO AD HITLERUM
7, lilday "I'm such a proper and delicate lady and I'll accuse Delysid of being a filthy monster over and over even though I called him a liar and dished out my own insults like a crass prostitute" - JUDGMENTAL LANGUAGE

I'm still waiting for an apology from lilady for calling me a liar.

Should I keep going? There is plenty more lgoical fallacies in pretty much every comment here.

And by financing, I mean a base salary of 1000$ per month and college level education.

Alain

*** CHALLENGE FOR DELYSID ***

Name one law, one government program or one government institution that was NOT created to address a direct, current problem.

I can name 20. You go first.

@Stu

My butt currently itches. WE NEED A LAW IMMEDIATELY TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM.

Alain: I don't necessarily agree with that. In the sense that that should be limited to the disabled. Please elaborate.

I oppose taxes, particularly the income tax and “sin” taxes. The vast majority of taxes are completely unnecessary for financing even a huge federal government.

So much for the Federal highway system.

@Stu

"Not every human problem deserves a law." Jerry Brown

Uber liberal JERRY BROWN himself gave provided this priceless wisdom.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that every single law in the United State, all 500,000 or so of them, were made because something happened. This does not justify their existence.

Alain: I don’t necessarily agree with that. In the sense that that should be limited to the disabled. Please elaborate.

It's not limited to the disabled but I'm working on having him agree on that first. Just wait.

Alain

@Chris

The Federal HIghway System has nothing to do with income tax or sin taxes.

It is paid for in gasoline taxes (an excise tax). I don't know what point you were trying to make, but you failed.

Oh and Stu, I apply ABA sized piecemeal to the issue, after all, Delysid's a young kid.

Alain

What about financing disabled peoples?

Send "them into the fields, there to recover or die."

Oh, wait:

"The priestaticians were required to examine those that were diseased, and point to special commissioners the persons infected, under a penalty of the confiscation of their goods, and of being burned alive."

@Alain

Accoring to Narad, disabled peple were thrown out into the streets before 1965 (Medicare). Narad is the smartest human being to grace planet Earth, so you can believe that this claim is 100% true.

Here is a reinactment of libertarian healthcare!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gQrqHDBQ4o

If any of you end up posting on any website where the filthy-mouthed Troll posts, you have my permission to quote the misogynist Troll's filth that he has posted at me, and about me.

@lilady

Hey lilady that is the crass language I love hearing from you!

Still waiting on that apology from you. You can call me all of the naughty names you want except for being a liar.

Narad, not different than eugenics as practiced by US of A from at least 1910 to 1935. And the Nazi put it in practice with Operation T4....after all, they had to test it on a select clientèle at first before going wide with the Jews. One of the thing that the Nazi where is that they where by the peoples for the peoples. Was it similar in the US at the time?

Alain

@lilady

Ok.

Alain

@ Chris: Yeah, the Troll opposes "sin" taxes for the booze he consumes. Is LSD taxed?

http://www.dailypaul.com/comment/3086922

"Delysid is the trade name of LSD

Submitted by Delysid on Sat, 05/25/2013 - 21:44. Permalink

I not only advocate eliminating the War on Drugs, I openly promote the use of psychotropics, particularly phenethylamines like MDMA and tryptamines like LSD, for medicine and recreation.

I used the trade name because of the implication of capitalism. I support the pharmaceutical industry (but not corporatism). I'm the opposite of a chemophobe."

If any of you end up posting on any website where the filthy-mouthed Troll posts, you have my permission to quote the misogynist Troll’s filth that he has posted at me, and about me.

Oh, in that case, this might come in handy.

Thanks Narad.

I forgot that there are some creepy sickos at there. The last thing I need is a creepy psycho like you harassing me.

I openly promote the use of psychotropics, particularly phenethylamines like MDMA and tryptamines like LSD, for medicine and recreation.

Done.

Narad the best prediction I ever made was calling you out as an autofellatiator. I know you were a creepy psychopath just from your language, but you have prove yourself to be creepier than I guessed.

Go ahead, keep it up, show everyone on RI your true colors. Narad, creepy psychopath.

#339 Delysid: "I think murder is wrong ethically. I don’t need to have any evidence to support my position. "

Except real philosophers actually do talk about murder, killing and war, and whether each is wrong and under what circumstances. Whether "murder" is wrong depends on how "murder" is defined.

Simply saying "Murder is wrong, duh," isn't really acceptable in philosophy, nor does it mean much without a definition.

"Government is wrong, duh" isn't different. We're still left with the same discussion--what does "government" mean, what behaviors are and are not included in that definition and how to differentiate it from other like things..

Except you've already admitted you're not interested in doing any of that, and that nothing rational could ever change your mind.

@ Narad: IIRC, the Troll stated on the other thread that he "didn't believe in State licensing for dentists". Um, I don't think the Troll will have that to worry about.

Back to "pulling toilets" to pay for his drugs.

Delysid: "The Federal HIghway System has nothing to do with income tax or sin taxes."

So why the transfers from the General Fund? ... A quote:

From the General Fund of the Treasury— [§ 40251, 26 USC 9503]
$6.2 billion to be deposited in the Highway Account in FY 2013
$10.4 billion to be deposited in the Highway Account in FY 2014
$2.2 billion to be deposited in the Mass Transit Account in FY 2014

Oh, and that does not include the transfers from the "Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund." It has been in the news for years that the federal highway system is leaking cash because cars that use less gas per mile fund much less per mile on average than they did years ago. Somehow you missed that little detail.

Narad the best prediction I ever made was calling you out as an autofellatiator. I know you were a creepy psychopath just from your language

But you can't articulate why, just like basically everything else that pours forth from you, and are stuck with the moldy remnant "autofellatiator." You haven't even apprehended the "state of nature," and you're already whining.

Me:

Name one law, one government program or one government institution that was NOT created to address a direct, current

problem.

This direct challenge was answered as follows:

My butt currently itches. WE NEED A LAW IMMEDIATELY TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM.

Asinine, juvenile, dismissive and predictably content-free.

Okay let's just chalk that up to juvenile asininity and go right to delisyd's unsolicited second attempt. Seems even our clown

shoe realized that was first one was just too vapid.

Even for him. Ponder on that.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that every single law in the United State, all 500,000 or so of

them, were made because something happened. This does not justify their existence.

AWWW. DIRECT AND UTTER FAIL.

I asked you to name ONE, just ONE law, program or institution that (by inference of my definition) was created "just because". I

asked for just one. Just one of the (often implied) many ludicrous things the government is, does or enforces -- and what does

our new luminary of libertarian thought come up with?

0. Nothing. Delysid, you have at this point already admitted that you have no argument. If you did, you would have thrown it out

at that, the easiest of challenges ever.

You are pathetic, as is your ideology. One direct challenge, and look what happens -- you are two steps ahead of Brave Sir Robin.

Pathetic.

But I think you actually made it through debate club, judging from the following. Doop-dee-doop, let's see.

Palindrom- “Orly Taitz is a dentist” GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION

First off, you're not even working on the right fallacy. "Orly Taitz hangs out with dentists" would be guilt by association.

"Orly Taitz is a dentist", at best, would be an ad hominem.

Doop dee doop (is it a prerequisite for Internet tardmuffins to assume people cannot scroll up?) -- oh hi, here's the quote:

For some reason, I’m reminded that Orly Taitz is a dentist.

Sentient slugs would take this as a slight on her ability to inflict pain. But no, maybe it IS a slight on dentists!

(Though I hasten to add that my own dentist seems quite normal and does extremely good work.)

Ah. No, no it isn't. It is a pure quip implying that Taitz imparts pain, and from context it is not physical.

So your first, your top, your prime accusation is not wrong, it is not even coherent enough to be wrong.

You are too fucking stupid to do this. Save yourself embarrassment and leave. -1 so far.

2. Kreb- “I feel good about taxes and how they help people” MORAL HIGH GROUND FALLACY

No, STATEMENT OF PERSONAL FEELINGS.

It very much implies that if you feel that you hate taxes and feel they don't help people, you should bring an argument -- any,

and I am not kidding, any -- to say that taxes that help people are a bad thing. If you were mildly less dense than you are, you

would throw out another accusation (shhh, guys, don't help him).

Not even a -1 -- this is an incomplete. So 0 for this one.

3. Chris- “Somalia” FALSE ANALOGY

False how? Is Somalia not a country without all the laws you profess to hate so much? From everything you've said so far, you

hate government force with a principalled force that would lead anyone to say that yes, a fairly lawless nation such as Somalia

is, in fact, an apt analogy. If you were arguing in good faith, an you truly felt Somalia was not or even a poor analogy, you

would have given one example of how Somalia and your libertarian paradise were fundamentally different. You did not. You chose to

whine. That tells us more than any sad attempt at a counter-argument ever could.

Another fail. -2 so far.

4. Militant Agnostic “…where a vagina starts” RED HERRING

Are you seriously suggesting you are NOT a raging mysoginist? Do we REALLY have to quote your own sickening tripe back at you?

Proven, obvious and stupid lie. You ARE a raging mysoginist, and someone bringing that up is not a red herring. Attempting to

derail the conversation by accusing others of it is, but, crap, I don't know -- we all know you're lying through your teeth here,

but hey. I'll grant you just a deduction rather than instant fail. -3 so far.

5. Shay- “you’re missing all of the shades of grey.” ARGUMENT TO MODERATION

Oh for fark's sake, you cannot possibly be serious. Why are you so confident the only people reading this are the ones too stupid

too scroll up?

Let's just recap, you lying weasel. Let's, oh, I don't know, scroll up and see.

#323: Whine, whine, whine, how dare you call me on my crap, and oh, there it is! Right at the end! It’s so logical!

Libertarians are dumb and progressives are smart! (The only one true thing you have ever said, but hey -- that's my personal

opinion).

This was you, fetid douchecanoe. I know it must have been shocking when someone dared to reply to that particular outburst of

libertarian wit. I mean, how dare they, right?

Still, Shay had the temerity #329: life is never simple. You’re the one who keeps trying to make this a black and white issue;

the rest of us here are trying to make the point that you’re missing all of the shades of grey.

To attempt to label that as "argument to moderation" is... wait, I have... wait... oh forget it. It does not even deserve to be

considered. If this were a court room, nobody would be laughing with you.

6. Stu- “pogroms” REDUCTIO AD HITLERUM

Oh, oh no. This is SO CUTE!

Here is what deputy dipsh*t is talking about (see #348):

To risk skirting the rim of Godwin, he is essentially implying that pogroms were a good thing.

This was in reply, of course to #336 and #339 primarily, but also #322, #326 and every other motherfarking thread you've ever been on, you sad-sack sociopath.

(Just in case anyone was wondering if delysid is rational, this is a guy who said "Because some things have more factors than evidence." Think about that one for a minute.)

7, lilday “I’m such a proper and delicate lady and I’ll accuse Delysid of being a filthy monster over and over even though I called him a liar and dished out my own insults like a crass prostitute” – JUDGMENTAL LANGUAGE

lilday? What the hell is wrong with you? Aren't you a libertarian superman?

Also, you are actually calling people out on judgemental language? Have you no shame or sense of irony?

Narad, did you just conflate approached and comprehended?

Narad, did you just conflate approached and comprehended?

No, I think the mixture of perceiving-in-fact and capture of (in this case, purported) fugitive driven underground is pretty standard.

Fair enough -- I might just have to nap until my (current, for me) 402 comes out of moderation. I mean, really, how much of a life does a box of blinking lights have?

Fair enough — I might just have to nap until my (current, for me) 402 comes out of moderation. I mean, really, how much of a life does a box of blinking lights have?

Depend on the parts but assuming reliable SSD storage + 20°C running temperature and no overclocking, 20+ years at least.

Alain

Do I see weasel words? Can we play a game? Find weasel worded post and gain at least 15 points per weasel posts. This is open to anyone :)

Alain

I see a weasel post at post #389: the poster is unable to answer a straight question from me.

15 points

Alain

@ Stu: Did you forget to substitute a "v" for the "u" in certain words?

I did the substitution, when I was quoting the Troll's remarks @# 354 and I got stuck in moderation for an hour.

I think I got kicked to mod because I used "t*rd" -- and not the u version, either. It was in a contraction, and to someone who deserved it, and I really love the word, but crap, I have to mind my invective.

At least, that's what I think did it. No links, no nuthin.

@ Delysid

You lose.

You said, re: Typhoid Mary:

The anarcho-capitalist/libertarian way of handling those situations is banishment (as opposed to forced quarantine or forced medication). I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with this, as I would support a rudimentary court system to deal with people who harmed others (including infecting them with a disease).

Right after saying, in a sarcastic/mocking tone:

Why don’t we give a small group of the right to kidnap, prison, harass, steal, steal from, and kill people so that we are protected from people who kidnap, prison, harass, steal from and kill us?

How do you have banishment or a rudimentary court system without giving a small group of people the "right to kidnap, prison", etc.?
Actually, how is banishment any different from forced quarantine, in terms of denial of freedom?

Re: Anarchists and mass murders, ask Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria about it. And the 9 millions of deaths which followed his.
I will grant you you need organized nations to have war, genocide and other mass events. But it's like saying a thousand people can do more damage than a single one. Sure, an anarchist community is less likely to engage in conflicts which result in nationwide wars, but historically small communities have had their share of horrors in the form of family feuds, hotted disputes over properties (fields, water access) and lynch mobs, regardless of the type of leadership. To some extent, it's just a difference of scale.

Actually, you know what? I'm all for private initiative and local decision-planning.
It's just that I don't see how things could be done on the scale of a city or a nation without some sort of board of decision-makers coalescing into place.
In short, I see you complaining about the same old arguments being thrown at you (roads, firefighters...), but I don't see you refuting them.

BTW, after your rape analogies upthread (just discovered them - my apologies myladies), you are not really in a good position to call other commenters creepy or complain if they don't like you, so stick to your arguments, if you have any.

I'm curious, who represents a libertarian America on the world stage? Or would it be impossible? Maybe America would withdraw from international politics completely. After all, you can't have representation without some form of central coordination. Could you use internet poling? Everyone votes on everything via the net. Nope that wouldn't work, you'd still run into the 51:49 conundrum. Voting doesn't work in a pure libertarian society......errrrm......I mean geographically close but totally separate individuals. Probably easier not to bother.

I can see it now, after a few years the rest of the world gets together, "Haven't heard much from America lately, go on Mexico, you're pretty close, knock on the door and see if they are ok".

@Heliantus:

I don't think you understand. The innate libertarian position is "the market will take care of it, and if anyone messes up, the victims can sue, which will hurt them in the market, so problem solved."

The idiocy of this position is so multi-faceted it is always hard to know where to begin. This is, of course, by design.

My initial reaction used to be to put in a DVD of Erin Brokovich, but it only seems to encourage them. Nowadays I just show the heart-breaking videos of people suddenly able to set their well water on fire and start asking questions.

Go ahead, keep it up, show everyone on RI your true colors.

Perhaps some variety of state-dependent learning will allow you to figure out that these are all your words. If one may be allowed the luxury of another plainly genuine Camus quote,

"Justice in a silent world, justice enslaved and mute, destroys mutual complicity and finally can no longer be justice. The revolution of the twentieth century has arbitrarily separated, for overambitious ends of conquest, two inseparable ideas. Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. No man considers that his condition is free if it is not at the same time just, nor just unless it is free. Freedom, precisely, cannot even be imagined without the power of saying clearly what is just and what is unjust, of claiming all existence in the name of a small part of existence which refuses to die. Finally there is a justice, though a very different kind of justice, in restoring freedom, which is the only imperishable value of history. Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely."

It's a funny thing about public words: One can, if proper, reject them as erroneous or inappropriate, but the relation of "ownership" is asymmetric. You received fair warning on multiple occasions, but I suppose these may have been geared for someone who purports to have integrated Mises' absurd* attempts at Axiomatization Of The Perceived World into the very fiber of his being.

But if it helps untwist your übermenschlich panties, I did have the courtesy at the outset to cross-check against an image search, which yielded nothing even vaguely related to that to which you previously averred indifference. In other words, you could have dismissed the whole thing rather than bumbling headlong into an instantiation of a very well known Hobbes remark.

You state that you "would support a rudimentary court system to deal with people who harmed others," yet you didn't see fit to define "harm." Or "rudimentary." Well, meet the latter: Your words attached to a picture of a guy showing some jowl growth sticking his fingers in what the average person of a certain age would remind someone of a certain Goldfarb–Glass** novelty item. Oh, dear, oh, dear, suddenly you're Louis XVI.

* No, I don't expect so.
** Marvin Glass's contributions will be immediately recognized, I think, by a certain generation.

@ Stu

The idiocy of this position is so multi-faceted it is always hard to know where to begin.

Yeah, I feel like I'm looking for logic where there is none.

@ Chuff

Maybe America would withdraw from international politics completely.

If memory serves, it was president Bush (junior) position before 9/11. Not a libertarian himself, but free market and isolationism are part of the shared political platform of republicans and libertarians. Along with the motto that less government is better government.
On the latter, I was under the impression that Mr Bush increased the government, both in term of size and spending.
On isolationism, I believe History showed that you can try to forget about the outside world, but that won't stop the outside world from remembering you and come knocking.
As we say in my country, facts are stubborn.

^ "what might well remind the average person of a certain"

Too many moving, rephrasing-in-situ parts, sorry.

I will grant you you need organized nations to have war, genocide and other mass events.

Then again, organized nations of a certain scale are essentially the only actors who actually exist in D.'s "natural state" of "freedom." Perhaps he could provide the correct settings for the dials that are required for libertopia to spring forth from Zeus's head and peachy-keen up the operation.

Simply saying “Murder is wrong, duh,” isn’t really acceptable in philosophy, nor does it mean much without a definition.

Proceeding on the unlikely basis that D. actually has some sort of handle on Camus' ethics, extraction from the Aristotelian polis is impossible. He is, however, almost certainly forced to reject Camus at the end and therefore stuck with some form of "Nature"-driven virtue ethics.

@ Chuff / Narad

in a pure libertarian society……errrrm……I mean geographically close but totally separate individuals

Perhaps he could provide the correct settings for the dials that are required for libertopia to spring forth from Zeus’s head

The only settings I can think of where full-freedom, no-gov ideology could work are either isolated farming compounds in the countryside (like the Australian bush described by Arthur Upfield) or close-knitted monoindustrial societies like a mining factory (again, isolated, like in the asteroid belt).
Holywood description of Farwest settlers would count, although for some reason there always seem to be a rancher family or a railroad baron to deprive the locals of their freedom.

Of course, come the the issues of industrial level, education and innovation. Wouldn't it be cheating to establish a libertopia, but to depend on one of these nasty government-sponsored cities for building material, spare parts or brand new technologies?

Would Christiania fit Delasyd's ideas of a true free society?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
I'm afraid it would be to collectivist for his taste.

If he accuses us of repeating "government is good", which is hardly what I read, since there is more than enough critising the government, even from progressives, like me, I think his arguments burn down to: "government is bad, absense of government is good."

I still wonder what would absense of government looks like. As soon as there is someone leading a group of people, one could consider it as some form of government.

@Heliantus:

If memory serves, it was president Bush (junior) position before 9/11.

What he wanted or thought (ahem) did not matter one whit. Half his top brass were PNAC signatories. Iraq was going to get hit no matter what. I giggled at Richard Dreyfuss' clinically insane Cheney in W for a minute until I realized it actually was pretty damned true -- the one bigger psychopath in power during the past decade than Cheney is his wife.

close-knitted monoindustrial societies like a mining factory (again, isolated, like in the asteroid belt)

Bullpuckey. I'm re-reading Heart of the Comet at the moment, and the factionalism in there rings far too true.

@Delysid

Hmm, you seem to have missed my followup questions. Here they are again, regarding how to deal with a Typhoid Mary-type of situation:

Who would do this banishing? What if some in the community support Mary’s right to employment within the community? Who would enforce Mary’s banishment to prevent her coming back in? And where would you banish Mary to? Into the wild? Into another community?

Also, in terms of a rudimentary court, who would administer it? Who would grant authority to and enforce its rulings?

I eagerly await your answers to these questions.

The closest image I can come to a libertopian image is a pirate ship, but even that was not libertarian. That was more akin to a pure democracy and was fraught with problems (mutiny, murder, despotism, marooning, etc.), to say nothing of the problems they inflicted on everyone outside the ship.

For some reason last night I was thinking about divorce (yes, the spousal unit went skunk-hunting with my brother in law again) and it occurred to me that, in a state with no central courts, who enforces custody and child support issues?

That's a serious question btw. I'm guessing that the divorce itself could be handled by one of the small localized courts that are considered acceptable by Delysid, but if one or the other party refuses to be bound by that decision, who then has the authority to enforce it?

@ Shay: Wow what a coincidence. Narad went skunk hunting as well and was quite successful.

Delysid, care to comment on a few scenarios in a libertarian society you would accept.

1) I write a really cool novel. Being first time author I published it as a inexpensive ebook, and it seems to be selling quite well, and is well on it's way to becoming hugely popular. A guy who owns a book printing facility buys a copy of my book and starts printing it by the thousands. When I contact him he says when he bought the book he owns it, and he can copy and resell stuff he owns. He makes a ton of money selling my book, and when I contact him again just threatens me with better lawyers than I could ever afford.

In your society of choice, does he actually own the right to print and sell my book without my consent? Is there a venue I could use to complain about his actions? What actions could that venue take to enforce it's eventual decision?

2) My neighbor decides it is a good idea to start breeding chicken in the back yard. I object to the noise, the stench and the unhygienic conditions right next to the place my kids play. What can I do if my neighbor chooses to ignore my complaints.

3) Who would have control, launching capacities and the maintenance responsibilities of the nuclear warheads currently owned by the US government?

4) Thirty years from now, the Socialist Dictatorship of Canada decides it needs more lebenstraum and mounts a surprise military campaign in order to "annex" the northern states from the newly formed United Libertatian States of America. What would happen?

(and I did misspell my name last time (gast), sorry for involuntary "sockpuppetry")

gaist: The short answer is usually that you can sue. Get plagiarized? Sue. Get poisoned by a quack? Sue. Private firefighters let your house burn down? Sue.

Most of the time it won't help you, but the idea is that doing it will take the offender off the market, keeping it shiny and perfect.

gaist: The short answer is usually that you can sue. Get plagiarized? Sue. Get poisoned by a quack? Sue. Private firefighters let your house burn down? Sue.

Sure, in some versions of Libertopia. But Delysid says his perfect world would be no government. If there is no government, there can't be a court system, unless the courts are you and four or five of your closest friends bringing Justice to those who offend you.

You'd be amazed how most libertarians define "no government". Usually it is some variation of "no government except the parts I like".

@Stu - which is what Delsyid has been saying all along, whether he knows it or not.

It was pointed out to the Troll, months ago, that his OSU Dental School tuition is paid with loans backed by the Federal government.

That must be one of the parts of government he likes.

That must be one of the parts of government he likes.

No, he whined about it while claiming that HIPAA requirements are changing by the minute, or something, incongruously in the context of billing Medicaid. That's why he'd prefer to drop out and just beome an apprentice dentist somewhere.

I'm going on to more important topics now.

I just received an E-mail from Elburto, who is sending warm holiday greetings to you all. Her Android is fixed now and she is recovering from her health issues. It's going to be a great New Year, when Elburto rejoins our happy little group.

I've got a whacky recipe for cooking the 6 lb. boneless rib roast for Xmas dinner. The recipe directs the chef to fire up the stove to 500 degrees F. and put the roast on a rack in a roasting pan to roast for 1/2 hour, then shut the oven off. It stays in the oven (no peekies!) for 2 hours and should rest for 20 minutes for done-to-perfection rare.

I'll let you know how successful the whacky recipe is; I'll never live it down if I mess it up.

@lilady: Amazingly, I've talked to people who are against government subsidy or oversight of education of all kinds. Usually, this opinion forms a few years after they do their 12 years of primary education and 4 years of college in government-funded institutions. 100% FYIGM, but when called on it there even seem to be attempts at justification of such glaring hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance -- usually a combination of how they are different than those other freeloaders now in school, that the school system is failing -- now -- and oh my god what a jerk you are for bringing it up in the first place, but that's par for the course for us NWO UN OWG tax-loving freeloaders. I mean, redistribution is unfair in general principle, think about it. The argument thus one, they climb in their car (which their parents pay for); preferably with an insightful and/or witty collection of stickers such as "The War In Iraq Keeps American Families Safe" or "One Million People Went To Obama's Inauguration -- Only 14 Had To Take Off Work".

(Yes, those exist. I saw both of them on a single pickup truck last week.)

I just received an E-mail from Elburto, who is sending warm holiday greetings to you all. Her Android is fixed now and she is recovering from her health issues.

Good to hear.

I’ve got a whacky recipe for cooking the 6 lb. boneless rib roast for Xmas dinner. The recipe directs the chef to fire up the stove to 500 degrees F. and put the roast on a rack in a roasting pan to roast for 1/2 hour, then shut the oven off. It stays in the oven (no peekies!) for 2 hours and should rest for 20 minutes for done-to-perfection rare.

That's not too oddball, although it's the sort of thing where a temperature probe would come in handy because of oven-to-oven variability. The Art of Cooking, for a 7.5 lb, seven-rib roast, goes for 30 minutes at 425F, 1 hour at 375 (for an internal temperature of about 75F), and an hour with the oven off, which is a bit more forgiving.

Franklin Pierce is the best president is something I've literally never heard before.

Delysid reminds me of the group I put in one of my books who believed that everyone had the right to do whatever they wanted all the time. To them, your right to swing your fist didn't end. If the person you punched then killed your whole family and burned down your house, well, they have the right to do that too.

Lilady, thanks for the update from elburto, I was starting to worry about her.

lilady, forward my anonymous and I-promise-it's-not-creepy Internet love to elburto. (That's the best kind of love, isn't it?) She's been missed.

Add my best wishes to the cloud of goodwill headed elburto's way. :-)

Thirty years from now, the Socialist Dictatorship of Canada decides it needs more lebenstraum and mounts a surprise military campaign in order to “annex” the northern states from the newly formed United Libertatian States of America. What would happen?

That would freakin' rock!
(Disclosure of Potential Conflict of Interest: I'm Canadian)

@TBruce - I'd buy the novel, that's for sure.

I am so not into the Troll's devolving into a drug-addled Libertarian crank...starting ~ comment # 50 here:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/09/26/in-which-antivaccinationis…

How sad is it, that Orac and the RI Regulars praised the Troll for taking on Ginger Taylor and her pseudoscience about vaccines...for him to to throw away that goodwill?

So, here's the deal with the rib roast. It is boneless, purchased at Costco early yesterday. I did a wee bit of trimming and trussed that sucker with butcher's cord and it is air-drying in the refrigerator on a V rack (to sorta replicate the air drying for "Prime" grade beef cuts). I've been air-drying my thick T-bone and loin steaks during the past year for the barbecue and they are divinely juicy, rare and tender.

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/930t306j/rapid-roast.html

I'll let you know how my whacky recipe works out. :-)

Can't wait to hear lilady. Tomorrow someone else is cooking. We did a turkey on Sunday. Sadly, with two teenaged boys and then a third snacking on it, there is less than two pounds of a twenty-two pound turkey left (when I saw J carrying 2/3 of one breast on a plate I almost fell over). Today is apparently the 2nd annual dump a dog near the Woo house day, and a Rottweiler mix has invaded our backyard. Attempting to find owners and/or rehome across social media.

Never ending festivities in the land of Woo!

Happy Holidays and best wishes to all.

Thanks for the Elburto update!

TBruce @443 -- why the hell not, we already all have hockey teams.

@ Mrs Woo: Would "J" happen to be Mr. Woo? (You just cannot trust the men in your life, when it comes to a roast turkey)...or the Bumpis' dogs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPRdj1Ce4ao

I'll be tuned into the 24-hour-loop of A Christmas Story.

So, here’s the deal with the rib roast.

It's unclear to me what rubbing a 6 lb. roast with a clove of garlic is supposed to accomplish (or what the instruction actually means in the first place). I certainly wouldn't put minced garlic in a 500-degree oven for half an hour.

Jacque's Rib Roast Claire has 2 T oregano, 1 T each thyme and paprika, 2 tsp black pepper, 1/16 tsp cayenne, and 1/2 tsp salt. I used this to good effect on a mamesh-prime rib roast from Fox & Obel before it collapsed.

@lilady - no, "J" is my 15-year-old. Of course, it would get confusing if I used first initials for friends, because they are J's, too, or at least the ones here the past few days.

Sadly I am worried that this place is turning into the Bumpis' - the extra dog here today makes it three, and it is obviously a house dog, so we're uncomfortable making it stay overnight outside. He's a young, athletic male, which doesn't make his antics any easier to put up with. He is middle size between the terrier mix we rescued after it was dumped last year and my Great Pyrenees mix.

I do my best to always refer to the Mr as Mr Woo. ;-)

Oh, jeez. People are using mixed upper- and lower-case, and clearly no one cares about lutefisk anymore. I have no idea what this thread is coming to. So I'll just toss in John and Belle's irrefutable justification for why Libertarianism is the one true answer for anything: EVERYONE GETS A PONY!
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html

But I already have an Arabian gelding. And a saddle.

@ Narad: Absolutely, positively....no garlic. A wee bit of olive oil perhaps and Kosher salt with cracked pepper (Tuscan style).

I'm missing the in-laws' Christmas eve feast:

http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/z/topics/history/the-feast-of-the-seven-…

From JRE's link

In general, if thoughts of the Eastern Congo intrude, I suggest waving them away with the invisible hand and repeating "that's anarcho-capitalism" several times.

And here I thought the invisible hand was only good for matching supply and demand.

I would have thought that everyone knew about the proper attitude toward ponies among those of a libertarian bent who can, you know, think.

P.S. "Let's be independent together!" Yes, Robert May connected dentistry and Camus' sociopolitical philosophy nearly 40 years ago.

lilady: "Where's Chris...for that Lutefisk recipe ???"

Sorry, the one time I tried it turned to glue. Though I have been told by a store that sells it that all I have to do is poach it. The lye has been removed already.

We are also having a boneless rib roast. I also plan to do a quick cook starting at high temp. But we will be cutting it down to three to four pounds since only four of us will be partaking in the beef. It will have a spice rub, and accompanied with a spicy cherry sauce.

Chris, I must eat at your house some day. You always seem to be cooking something delicious.

Thank you.

You can blame my father, he was always trying something new and different. I could use chop sticks by the time I was six years old, which is about the time we were telling my little sister the hearts of artichokes were only good if you were older.

;-)

which is about the time we were telling my little sister the hearts of artichokes were only good if you were older.

Gotta find them first.

Glad to hear something about Elburto.

Adding my thanks to lilady for the update on Elburto. Oh, and merry Christmas, Channukah tovah, happy holidays and a happy new year to everyone.

I look forward to Elburto's return and her contributions to my lexicon of profanity and abuse.

@ hdb

I thought you came here for an argument...

Happy Holidays, all! :-)

Many years ago, when I first started reading about radical politics and economics I was very confused by references to 'the invisible hand'. For some reason I thought it referred to the biblical story* about the hand that wrote on the wall at King Belshazzar's banquet, when he made the mistake of using the Holy dinner service he stole from the Temple in Jerusalem (Daniel 5); it's where the phrase "The Writing on the Wall" comes from. Looking it up, I see it wasn't an invisible hand, but a disembodied one, which is really creepy now I think about it.

I still can't help associating the invisible hand of the free market with a warning against messing with JHVH's cutlery, which is one way of making economics more interesting.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy happy festivities of whichever ilk tickles whatever parts you prefer - trolls, antivaxxers and libertarians too. Do try to get through the ordeal without assaulting any of your relatives.

* No I'm not a religious fanatic, we had an old cartoon version of the bible when I was a child, which I loved - such gruesome tales! I read it cover to cover.

Franklin Pierce single handidly (by vetoing the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane) stopped the creation of a Federal Welfare State and socialized medicine for nearly 60 years.

His defense of the decision is one of the most epic explanations of the proper role of government under the Constition that has ever been written. Compared to the immature chatter here (ie "libertarians want you to die in the streets blah blah blah) it is comical.

Let's see Oprah recommend this transcrpt to her sophisticated readers.

http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/misc/1854-pvm.htm

@Krebizoen

Speaking of radical politics, there is nothing more extremist than Marxism/Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism/SOCIALISM. The New York Times publishes some of the most radical, extremist propaganda in the history of mankind daily. Our society is so far off the deep end and so conditioned to blindly submitting to arbitrary tyranny that extremism is the status quo.

Look at your people's paradie of the United Kingdom. Now pornography is censored. for an entire country DOES THAT SOUND LIKE NORMAL POLITICS?

His defense of the decision is one of the most epic explanations of the proper role of government under the Constition that has ever been written.

Citation please?

Alain

And what has the situation in the UK to do with socialism? As far as I know the UK government is the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. No socialists in sight.
But we know, government is bad, no government is good. Repeat at nauseam.
I don't think anyone here is saying all governments are good, or above any critisism.

#468 - University of Hyperbole, grad. with hons.

Delysid,

Our society is so far off the deep end and so conditioned to blindly submitting to arbitrary tyranny that extremism is the status quo.

You sound just like me when I was 15 years old, full of p!ss and wind. I don't think you would know "arbitrary tyranny" if it bit you on the backside.

Look at your people’s paradie of the United Kingdom. Now pornography is censored. for an entire country DOES THAT SOUND LIKE NORMAL POLITICS?

I have no intention of defending the current government of the UK. However, you may have been misled about pornography being "censored for an entire country", though pornography laws here have always been stricter here than in other countries, it isn't something I'm particularly concerned about.

The only internet pornography that is censored here is "extreme"; that means pornography that includes acts of extreme violence, children and animals, as Cameron put it, "the vile images of abuse that pollute minds and cause crime". I don't have a problem having access to that kind of material restricted, any more than I object to those acts being illegal in the first place. Do you?

You may be referring to the voluntary filtering systems that our ISPs now are obliged to include, enabling families to restrict access to pornography, which I also have little problem with. I'm concerned about the effect that easy access to pornography is having on children. I wonder what effect this is going to have on our societies in the long-term.

How would your hypothetical libertarian society deal with child pornography and other extreme material? What about the sort of material that is used to recruit terrorists?
These are the difficult areas where civil rights and abuse of our personal freedoms collide. There are no easy answers, and certainly none that will please everyone.

@Kreb

"voluntary filtering systems"

Voluntary. Right. You are free to do what we tell you. You are free to do what we tell you. You are free to do what we tell you.

Guess what,Kreb, at 15 I sounded just like you. "I feel so good about paying my taxes knowing they go to help people." Those were my exact words to my Dad (and yes I was working at that age). What a joke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mssKE_b48k&feature=player_detailpage#t=…

"No socialists in sight in the UK"

LMFAO. How far of a left-wing extremist does one have to be to not see any socialists in the UK?

Those freedom-loving conservative Brits. If only they were more liberal, imma right?

I just saw this comment ranting against libertarians on reddit. This is RI-grade material if I have ever seen it. I think he actually quoted some people in this thread.

"When you fall down your flight of stairs that aren't built to code, and die waiting for your private ambulance that doesn't think you can pay your bill, you'll probably have a different opinion. Oh, what's that? You say you've got money? Why didn't you say so! (Suffering and death, after all, are for poor people.) You paid extra for good stairs? Ok, well, you can carry on to your meal cooked with inspected meat... oops, your world doesn't have meat inspectors. Now you have Salmonella and need a private ambulance. Oh, what's that? You can afford your private ambulance? Ok, well, you can be safely conveyed to a hospital... oh wait, your world doesn't have those. Because they're staffed with people educated with public money. Oh, what's that? You can afford private health care staffed with people educated in a private school where they independently derived all of the historical achievements of publicly funded science on their own. Ok, well, you can be safely conveyed there on the perfectly safe road... oh wait, your world doesn't have those. Because they're planned, analyzed, and interconnected by public employees. Oh, what's that? You'll pay extra for the air-ambulance to your private hospital. Ok, well, you can be safely guided there by aviation control... oh wait, your world doesn't have that either. Or weather monitoring, or GPS, or anything the government has ever been involved in. Well, it's starting to sound like you'd better seal yourself in a bubble filled with money and stocked with private air and water. Oh wait, money is a government construct... your world doesn't have that either. Your philosophy is laughable. Your point of view is despicable. Your selfishness is obvious. Grow up."

Speaking of radical politics, there is nothing more extremist than Marxism/Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism/SOCIALISM. The New York Times publishes some of the most radical, extremist propaganda in the history of mankind daily.

Thanks, J. Edgar.

,,,,,,,I was also worried about the Great White Queen of Northumberland- I'm so glad that she's alright- her comments would be enlightening on this thread......,

Since I peruse health freedom/ anti-governmental material on a daily basis ( esp PRN, NN), I am afraid to report that there's nothing new here: "too many regulations/ laws, high taxes, 'unnecessary' expenses, the nanny state, lack of freedom, police state" et al.

One solution these sites suggest is to move away from the cities and suburbs into rural areas and become self-sufficient and 'self-sustaining' - far from the madding crowd and the ever-tightening control of central authoritarian jackbooted dictatorship. Much of their programming involves frightening their advocates about how awful the future will be as the situation progresses from bad to worse.

Now how feasible is going back to nature/ the simple life/ more freedom for most people?
It's easier if you don't need a job and are healthy with no children or elderly in your care. Self-employment and tons of solitary hobbies are also useful.

Right now I am concerned about a relative who moved out to the middle of nowhere and got sick. He has money because he sold his moderate sized business and is married. But he lives far away from medical treatment and the social network he used to enjoy-
thus treatment means a daily, long drive or hospital stays where his spouse has to travel back and forth 30 miles or so; services are not the same far from the cities. He did well for a while and recovered but a very recent relapse has seriously weighed both him and his wife down: they're having a hard time and their money cannot fix what's wrong- the isolation is harmful to them. Even the bonds of deeply entrenched socialism break down in the wilderness.

Freedom, self-sufficiency and anarchy work out very well on paper.

"Speaking of radical politics, there is nothing more extremist than Marxism/Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism/SOCIALISM. The New York Times publishes some of the most radical, extremist propaganda in the history of mankind daily.

"Our society is so far off the deep end"

I prescribe irony deficiency supplements for you too, Delysid.*

*no mandatory shot yet, but it's coming. Eeek!

@Denice

What gave you the idea that anarchy means a solitary existence? You are basically repeating the "isolationist" myth.

Cooperation is an essential aspect of the market. It is the best way to accomplish goals. This brings us back to the I, Pencil example. Here a guy attempts to make a toaster from scratch (it's impossible to make something great by yourself).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw

Libertarianism is VOLUNTARYISM. It means voluntary relationships. You are accusing libertarians of wanting no relationships. Some libertarians are interested in self-sufficiency and do-it-yourself lifestyle, but they are just a segment ,like the pro-recreational drug use group or the health freedom group.

We can't have a real honest debate if people keep projecting their own false beliefs onto the ideology.

@Delsyid - right back at you...my irony meter just exploded with that last post.

Voluntary. Right. You are free to do what we tell you.

No, voluntary as in you are free to not do what we tell you, since you can turn the filter on or off as you wish. Is an internet filter you can turn on to control what your children access such a bad thing? Is that really what you call tyranny?

Guess what,Kreb, at 15 I sounded just like you.

You must have been a strange 15-year-old. I did have a job at that age, but I spent most of my money on alcohol, punk rock and books. Since then I've gained a bit of life experience; I had to deal with life-changing illnesses and deaths in my loved ones, got married a few times, had some children, traveled the world, suffered a chronic illness and lost my job, among other things. Somewhere along the line I found I had changed my opinions.

I found it's difficult dealing with real life problems and coming up with practical workable solutions, but oh-so-easy to rage and criticize. What happened to you? What changed your opinions?

Hmmm, I was under the impression that Americans were the prudes. Or is that just the advertising on tv over there? Anyway, I'd like to reassure Delysid that we Brits can access plenty of pornography if we so desire. It's so nice that he cares enough to keep tabs on us. Shame his info is inaccurate.

Reminds me of an old political cartoon, character visits America or an American army base and the guard asks him if he's ever been a member of any leftist, pinko scum organization such as any British political party.

Franklin Pierce single handidly (by vetoing the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane) stopped the creation of a Federal Welfare State and socialized medicine for nearly 60 years.

Right, by vetoing a land sale, which you can't even reproduce the title of properly, Fainting Frank, who supported the expansion of slavery, bears fundamental responsibility for threatening to take Cuba by force if Spain wouldn't sell, had his first annual address described as "the weakest, most inane and unsatisfactory document, that ever emanated from the head of the nation," couldn't govern effectively, and basically tanked his own party in the process of laying the groundwork of the Civil War, becomes in your mind "our best president." Gotcha.

His defense of the decision is one of the most epic explanations of the proper role of government under the Constition that has ever been written.

Oh, c'mon, there's always this bit of his Consitutional insight: "I believe that involuntary servitude, as it exists in different States of this Confederacy, is recognized by the Constitution."
This is nothing but a long-winded, flowery slippery-slope argument, which I suppose is why you consider it to be "one of the most epic" such items "ever written": you can't understand anything more complicated.

At least, to his credit, Pierce was similarly too dim-witted to realize that federal land grants were going to be necessary to construct a transcontinental railroad. Too bad he didn't have the opportunity to "stop the creation" of that for 60 years.

Compared to the immature chatter here (ie “libertarians want you to die in the streets blah blah blah) it is comical.

As opposed to your contributions and interminable subject-changing? Note that you didn't say anything intelligent about Pierce's words, you declared them to be "most epic," brah. You also didn't compare them, and have not given any sign of being able to, with anything else, just a vague "ever written." Fantastic, Narcissus.

LMFAO.

Voluntary. Right. You are free to do what we tell you. You are free to do what we tell you. You are free to do what we tell you.

I just saw this comment ranting against libertarians on reddit.

Yes, when presented with actual responses to your remark, your rhetorical skills rise to textspeak, empty evasions, and copypasta from the cesspool of Reddit. Color me suitably impressed.

@Lawrence: yeah, mine too. Delysid doesn't realise that we have safety nets for a reason.

Libertarianism is VOLUNTARYISM.

With "banishment," of course.

We can’t have a real honest debate if people keep projecting their own false beliefs onto the ideology.

No, "we" can't have "a real honest debate" with someone whose first words have mysteriously become "DELETED AT DELYSID'S REQUEST" with no statement in the meantime despite numerous other comments and who demonstrates no actual interest in or understanding of the concept, the subject of which really isn't "swaying people about libertarianism [or] pissing them off as a consolation" in the first place.

@Julian Frost

Safety nets exist to trap the poor in poverty (whether intentional or not).

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

For example: What do you think happens to food prices when millions of people are on food stamps? The answer: price inflation of food.

Allow me to expound a bit further. You have two possible observations that are on point: (1) "That's not representative of professed libertarians." This is weak, as the post was about the affinity, not the concept. (2) "I reject unethical medical practices, such as ... mandatory vaccination."* This is also weak, as there are no such mandates outside of voluntary relationships unless you want to argue against participation in the funding of public schools, which isn't really what the antivax crowd is on about.

* In which D. also expresses John Stone–level admiration for Tomljenović and doesn't seem to have bothered to understand the response in the BMJ.

Hmmm, I was under the impression that Americans were the prudes.

That's the Союз Kанадский Социалистических Республик, which actually impounded copies of High Times at the border in 1977. One might suggest that this is protectionist, perhaps explaining why, say, Hustler has an independent Canada operation.

For example: What do you think happens to food prices when millions of people are on food stamps? The answer: price inflation of food.

That's got to be the dumbest G-ddamned thing I've heard in ages. The source of the money doesn't affect the price of food. You want to live on $133.08 (FY 2013, average individual; $274.99 per household) per month for food? That restricts the flow of currency into the market.

And you are squealing like a stuck pig over "libertarians want you to die in the streets blah blah blah"? You have just advanced the argument that the failure to allow poor people to experience more hunger is making your groceries significantly more expensive.

@Krebiozen:

Is an internet filter you can turn on to control what your children access such a bad thing?

This hearkens to the controversy over the "V-chip." As a strong civil libertarian, I would say that a government mandate is indeed overreach. There's no obvious reason that ISPs who offer raw data pipes (my strong preference) as added value should be excluded.

One more:

Safety nets exist to trap the poor in poverty (whether intentional or not).

Leaving aside the grammatical one, do you understand the logical failure in this utterance? It appropriately rhymes with "speleology."

@Narad

No, I don't understand whatever insane point you are trying to make. Please expand on how safety nets help the poor.

If the Welfare State is successful then why are over a hundred million Americans on welfare? Isn't the point of welfare to GET PEOPLE OFF OF IT? The Welfare State works so great that it expands infinitely!

Go ahead, keep it up, show everyone on RI your true colors. Narad, creepy psychopath.

Sure, in your wet dreams numpty.

My rib roast and Yorkshire pudding were perfection. Do not sear your meat in the beginning; that's for poultry. Alton Brown has the best method in my opinion by dry-aging, slow roast at 200F (internal temp 118F) then sear at the end. Of course there is a prep with an oil, salt and pepper massage.

@Delysid

Still not answering my followup questions? I guess you just missed them again. Here they are so you don't have to go through the onerous task of searching for them. What are your answers to these questions, following up on the Typhoid Mary stuff:

Who would do this banishing? What if some in the community support Mary’s right to employment within the community? Who would enforce Mary’s banishment to prevent her coming back in? And where would you banish Mary to? Into the wild? Into another community?

Also, in terms of a rudimentary court, who would administer it? Who would grant authority to and enforce its rulings?

I'm waiting on the answer to my divorce/child custody question, as well, Todd.

(I'm not holding my breath, either).

Science Mom, we had the traditional Midwestern turkey and fixin's and I find that things run more smoothly if I let the spousal unit prepare everything but the cranberry sauce. He doesn't write a five paragraph frag order. for it but I'll admit he starts with a detailed list ("H-180 ... sweet potatoes into slow cooker").

It's kind of fun to watch.

If the Welfare State is successful then why are over a hundred million Americans on welfare?

Citation definitely needed.

Delysid how would a libertarian society with an absence of regulation result in anything remotely resembling optimal recovery from a retrograde condensate reservoir?

Approximately 1 in 3 Americans are on welfare?
Source, please.

Seriously, if your welfare is similar to ours, there's no way the average american can live on it. How much is the living allowance provided on welfare (here, 600$/month).

Alain

how apropos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlmezywdxPI

Enjoy
Alain

Leaving aside the grammatical one, do you understand the logical failure in this utterance? It appropriately rhymes with “speleology.”

No, I don’t understand whatever insane point you are trying to make.

That's because you're linguistically challenged. The magic word is "teleology." The problem with "Safety nets exist to trap the poor in poverty (whether intentional [sic] or not)" is that it ascribes purpose rather than effect. You further failed to address the substantive point, which is that the effect of SNAP on food prices, to the extent one it exists at all, is likely to be deflationary, unless your "point" is that the poor aren't hungry enough at $33 a week.

Please expand on how safety nets help the poor.

That wasn't the semantic payload of your incompetent utterance, now was it? But if you insist on having your overt sadism held up for wonder, I'd suggest not having to choose between food and medical care. Hey, you're really proud of how you're going to "give back to society," right? Maybe this will penetrate the necrotic layer of your frontal cortex.

If the Welfare State is successful then why are over a hundred million Americans on welfare?

If you mean "why are 47 million Americans receiving food stamps," the answer is because of what you advocate, Quiz Kid, which is the absence of a meaningful minimum wage.

Isn’t the point of welfare to GET PEOPLE OFF OF IT? The Welfare State works so great that it expands infinitely!

PRWORA has already happened, but perhaps you missed it while laboring on the junior tennis circuit. It didn't quite pan out as promised. Some people, moreover, are actually disabled rather than merely being severely disadvantaged. The only thing "expand[ing] infinitely!" is the holes in the safety net, with the churlish rejection of PPACA Medicaid expansion at no cost to the individual states that hasn't already been funded by like-minded asshοles only moving around the deck chairs.

So here's where you get to have something nailed into your fυcking pea-brain: I happen to have a very close friend who is most genuinely disabled. He's too proud, or afraid of the stigma that worthless shıts such as yourself are happy to advance, that he won't apply for SNAP. You know what happens as a result? Hospitalization.

Do you happen to know how long it takes for Medicare to kick in if one suffers sudden, complete, total blindness? C'mon, guess.

Colorado, naturopathy, and "health freedom": Devolving into a quack wonderland?

oracknows — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 01:07:22 +0000

Colorado, naturopathy, and "health freedom": Devolving into a quack wonderland?

It's just one more cut on the road to the proverbial death by a thousand cuts.

I'm referring, unfortunately, to last week's development in the state of Colorado. Specifically, I'm referring to the Colorado legislature's truly boneheaded decision to license naturopaths, thus giving the imprimatur of the state to quackery and, in essence, legalizing a whole lot of that quackery. It's been a long time coming, and, say what you will about Colorado naturopaths, they're persistent and disciplined. As a result, after years of effort, they finally got what they wanted, although apparently not all that they wanted in that they didn't get the full scope of practice that they wanted. Although some supporters of science-based medicine (SBM) had hoped that the governor might veto the bill, I had little doubt that he would sign it, and sign it he has. Not surprisingly, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) is crowing over this development:

Governor John Hickenlooper today signed into law a measure to allow naturopathic doctors to register with the state to legally practice naturopathic medicine. Colorado becomes the 17th state to do so, along with the District of Columbia.

“I am proud that Colorado has taken the lead in ensuring that well trained naturopathic doctors, appropriately regulated, become a viable health care option for the citizens of our state,” said Rep. Joann Ginal (D-Ft. Collins), the bill’s lead sponsor. Sen. Linda Newell (D-Littleton), the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, commented that “naturopathic doctors are going to be a key component in health care, saving the state millions of dollars through their focus on disease prevention and natural treatment, such as nutrition, lifestyle counseling and botanical medicine.”

Naturopathic doctors are trained to prevent and treat chronic conditions associated with lifestyle – such as hypertension, weight gain, obesity, and diabetes – as well as most other illnesses. The law will enable Coloradans to distinguish between naturopathic doctors and lay or traditional naturopaths, who lack extensive graduate-level clinical training. The law allows naturopathic doctors who have completed a 4-year post-graduate program at an accredited naturopathic medical school and have passed a national science and clinical board exam to register with the state.

If I've pointed it out once, I've pointed it out a million times (well, actually not a million times, but a lot): Naturopathy is a hodge-podge, a cornucopia of quackery. Indeed, it's the very essence of "integrative medicine" in that it "integrates" quackery with conventional medicine. Actually, I should put it the other way around. In reality, naturopathy is mostly quackery but co-opts some science-based medicine, sprinkling it on the same way people will spritz air fresheners in a bathroom that hasn't been cleaned for a while to mask the rancid odor. In the case of naturopathy, that rancid odor comes from quackery and pseudoscience. Indeed, it galls me to no end to hear naturopaths claim that they are some sort of "experts" in nutrition and lifestyle changes. Naturopathy and what SBM says tend to overlap only by coincidence or only because naturopaths have tried to represent parts of SBM, such as diet and exercise, as being somehow "alternative" and part of naturopathy when they aren't. Meanwhile, as I have described before, you can't have naturopathy without The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy, because all naturopaths are trained in homeopathy and homeopathy is even part of the Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations (NPLEX), which is required in states that license naturopaths. Indeed, homeopathy is part of the Core Clinical Science Examination.

That alone ought to tell you all you need to know about naturopathy, but there's more, so much more, to demonstrate that it's pure quackery. Ironically enough, the first place I looked to give you some examples is on the very website of the AANP. Specifically, it's the web page for the 2013 AANP Annual Conference and Exposition, which is being held, appropriately enough given the developments in Colorado, in Keystone this year from July 10-13. Bummer. That overlaps TAM, which means I can't go, as I'll be speaking at the Science-Based Medicine workshop, doing a talk to introduce a panel discussion, and, of course, participating in that very panel discussion. Oh, well, I'll live. To help me, though, look me up if you plan on going too.

But I digress, as I am wont to do.

Let's compare and contrast a bit. Let's take a look at what AANP says about itself in its press release about naturopath licensure in Colorad compared to what it presents at its annual conference. First, here's what the AANP claims about this new law:

“An increasing base of scientific research is affirming that naturopathic medicine is useful in the treatment of numerous chronic illnesses,” observed Jud Richland, MPH, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). “A good example is the recent study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, documenting that naturopathic medicine may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease among people at high risk. Naturopathic medicine, with its emphasis on self-responsibility and body’s inherent self-healing capacity, is effective in many cases of preventable illness, which affect a vast and increasing number of Americans.”

Not surprisingly, I've discussed that study before. It's nothing more than yet another beautiful example of how naturopaths "rebrand" SBM modalities as somehow being "alternative" and part of naturopathy when they are not. More importantly, it is ludicrous to claim that an "increasing base of scientific research" supports naturopathy for the treatment of chronic disease. To help demonstrate that, why not go straight to the horse's mouth, so to speak, and examine what sorts of "science" is being presented at the annual AANP conference? Let's take a look at the speaker list, for instance.

One thing that caught my eye immediately is a guy by the name of Glen Nagel, who is billed as "assistant profession and NCNM Zidell Healing Garden Curator" who "teaches Botanical medicine and Naturopathic Vitalism and naturopathic philosophy at NCNM." For those who try to deny that naturopathy is based on prescientific vitalism, I always find it entertaining to point out that vitalism it taught in naturopathy schools and that there are even classes on it. Vitalism, for those not familiar with the lingo, is the belief that there is something different about living matter such that it contains some non-physical element that animates it, that makes it "alive" rather than inanimate. That element is often given names such as the "vital force," the "life energy," or "life force." In China, it is called "qi," and that's why so much of traditional Chinese medicine is considered vitalistic. Acupuncturists, for instance, explicitly claim that sticking needles into certain lines on the body known as "meridian," through which, it is claimed flows qi, redirects the flow of qi to healing effect. Not surprisingly, here in the West, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, promoted a vitalistic view of health and disease. Much of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) is a throwback to prescientific vitalism, which has far more basis in superstition and religion than it does in science. Think reiki, which is faith healing substituting Eastern mysticism for Christian beliefs. Think other "biofield" therapies, such as therapeutic touch. Science has moved on, to the point where vitalism is no longer considered a viable belief, much less a viable hypothesis or theory. Yet naturopathy remains rooted in it.

Indeed, at the AANP conference, naturopaths let their vitalistic freak flag fly, so to speak, with a talk by James Sensnig, former Academic Dean and Vice President for Education and Services at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine, the founding Dean of the College of Naturopathic Medicine at the University of Bridgeport, the founding President of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP), the former Chairman of the AANP Government Affairs Committee, the founding President of the Institute for Natural Medicine, and Senior Editor on the Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine Project and textbook. That's right. Mr. Sensnig is not just your average naturopath. He's a big name in naturopathy. And what's the title of his talk? "BACK TO THE FUTURE: Why Vitalism is the New Medicine." It's described thusly:

Naturopathic medicine cannot simply be understood as being rooted in "Nature", but rather "Nature" as understood by the vitalist tradition. This world view defines THE difference between the currently dominant school of medicine and naturopathic medicine. It holds that "Nature" is intelligent, orderly and purposeful and that the physician's role is support the inherent tendency toward order. This view of the universe is beginning to be articulated by the science of our time after coming full circle from a materialistic model. Articulating this paradigm demonstrates that naturopathic medicine and the vitalist thinkers have not only understood the "Laws of Nature" but have presaged by millennia the "New" medicine.

Dream on, Mr. Sensnig. Dream on! The science of our time is most definitely not "coming around" to vitalistic naturopathic views, no matter how much you might wish to present naturopathy as somehow being ahead of its time and SBM as only just now coming around to views embraced by naturopathy.

As for the rest of the speakers, I see very little there resembling science. The closest I see there to any sort of "cutting edge" science is a talk by Mark Davis entitled "Fecal microbiota transplantation." However, I have no doubt in a naturopath's ability to woo-ify virtually anything. Disappointingly, there is one real scientist there, Edward J. Calabrese, who is an expert on hormesis, an aspect of pharmacology in which certain dose-response curves can actually show more potent effects at lower doses. Although homeopaths often try to claim hormesis for their own as a justification for their quackery, it is not. What's really depressing is that Dr. Calabrese appears to be buying into the whole "hormesis as homeopathy" scam:

This presentation provides an assessment of hormesis, a dose-response concept that is characterized by a low-dose stimulation and a high-dose inhibition. It will trace the historical foundations of hormesis and its relationship to homeopathy, its quantitative features and mechanistic foundations, and its risk assessment implications.

Somehow, I doubt that the "relationship to homeopathy" hormesis has will be presented as it really is: Homeopaths deceptively using hormesis as an "explanation" or "rationale" for homeopathy. I'd love it if he did, but I rather suspect he won't.

As for the Colorado law, Jann Bellamy points out that naturopaths didn't get the full scope of practice that they wanted, which was to function as primary care physicians. I doubt they're worried. They'll be back again and again and again and again until they do get what they want. Count on it. In that they'll be aided and abetted, no doubt, by a "health freedom" bill that was also signed into law in Colorado. It's a law that Jann Bellamy has quite appropriately labeled the "quack full employment act," as it lets virtually anyone practice medicine, as lon as it's "alternative" medicine.

Truly, in two quick strokes of the pen, Colorado has become a happy home for quacks. Let the Colorado patient beware.

oracknows Mon, 06/10/2013 - 21:07

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Organic, herbal, naturopathic cookie please.

That's legitimately terrifying, given the number of Americans lacking access to affordable healthcare.

All it takes is for 'Groovy Gary's Quack Shack' to open up shop as a "doctor", offering low, low prices, and BAM! The vulnerable people, who are typically economically barred from accessing regular GP or urgent care, think they finally have access to affordable services. Give them some positive stroking about their 'decision' to utilise 'natural care', and it's all fun and games until something terrible happens.

Someone with an undiagnosed seizure disorder offered homeopathy to... I dunno, soothe the mind, takes out a crowd at a bus stop.

Baby given (ugh) an 'adjustment' to help with crankiness and fractiousness,dies that night of damage caused during said procedure, or of missed meningococcal septicaemia.

Oh, and as for vaccination against VPDs... yikes.

How the hell can anyone think that letting these vitalistic, superstitious, patchouli-drenched fantasists assume the mantle of 'Doctor'?

Letting the Bastyrds play doctor is like allowing the local butcher to perform organ transplants in humans, and letting his friend Kenny the *ahem* "chemist" take care of the anaesthetic, using whatever he's acquired from Mickey the Mule, who's just returned from Koh Samui.

Mindbogglingly stupid.

Colorado over recent years has become a bit of a haven for alties. The legislature has shown itself happy to accomodate them, with new legislation if necessary.

“BACK TO THE FUTURE: Why Vitalism is the New Medicine.”

Well well. "Pre-modern and proud of it!" What next? Why Paracelsus was right? Why the Four Humours are the New Medicine? How to expel the Evil Ailment Spirits?

Enjoy your new Dark Age.

Calabrese is not a real scientist. He has been called the ideological toxicologist because he misrepresents science using numerous fallacies. He has formed his own pseudo-scientific organization called the International Hormesis Society....ooops, hormesis has no scientific backing, so he changed the name to International Dose Response Society.

founding Dean of the College of Naturopathic Medicine at the University of Bridgeport

That institution rang a bell, so I went off to check Wikipedia and found that my recollection was accurate: The University of Bridgeport was bailed out in 1992 by an organization affiliated with Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and to this day it has extensive ties with the Moonies. Many of the faculty severed ties with the university as a result, and the law school became part of Quinnipiac University. The Naturopathic Medicine program was added in 1996.

Something else at Wikipedia I hadn't known: UB offered the first university-affiliated chiropractic program, although that one can't be blamed on the Moonies, as it started in 1991.

I don't know how deeply the Unification Church is into medical woo, but it would not surprise me in the least.

More on Calabrese:
http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-2010-calabrese-synthese.pdf

He recently made headlines claiming that Nobel Laureate Hermann Muller lied:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110920163320.htm

Muller didn't lie, Calabrese did.

Per ND James Sensenig and vitalism, if you really want a magic carpet ride, I recommend his lecture

"The Heart of Naturopathic Medicine: The Power of Vitalism" at treefarmdownloads.com from the 2011 NorthWest ND conference, which I recently transcribed.

Some highlights:

vitalism via a lot of quotes from Lindlahr, Hahnemann;
"flat earth allopathic medicine";
Benveniste as martyr [!];
god galore;
"the new religion of the 21st century, science";
"no, no, no. No vaccinations."

-r.c.

I still think the major breakthrough in homeopathy research in the last 200 years was the realization that it doesn't work independently of what bible you use to succuss the dilution on.
Oddly enough, the religious connotation has been removed from the Wikipedia article on Hahnemann, one wonders why.

Cheap competition sucks. Just ask the price leader.

1. Most (all?) people I've ever met that went to a naturopath or similarly oriented MD struck out with several regular MDs first. And often have unexpected success or long lasting improvement in that "quack nutrition" sector. So naturopaths may be potentially a relief valve, or court of last resort, with a free style menu. Caveat emptor.

2. For any unfortunate incidents Orac cites, I see corresponding medical disasters except more agonizing deaths, and $1+m bills. Last one wasn't cancer either.

3. I suspect that some of the support for non-biologically based CAM comes from the financial sector. Many really don't care what works, they simply want a piece of expanded or chronic economic activity.

Note: I've never directly paid for ND services. The closest is that I bought what was the leading cancer pharmaceutical in Japan but is a supplement in the US from a buyers club with NDs. What did we talk about most? Off label use of another US pharmaceutical in a broader class that they had recommended over 15 yrs ago. Several years later now, regular US medicine may be starting to see the light in recent small scale trials with a large change over expected survivals. Or as seems to happen, 1-2 more standard MDs may become redefined as "alternative" after it becomes generic. Standard oncology patiently waits or ignores everything in the meantime.

I saw a nice drop in CEA and inflammation in the blood results, lowest ever in 3+ years over several months with residual disease . Am I going to wait 5-15 yrs for standard oncologists to pull their heads out of their ASCO, if ever? Nah.

Although I have been in many alt med, new agey places **, I think that Boulder is probably packs the most woo per square inch.

There is a main street called, "Pearl St" ( why anyone would name a street that at the foot of the mountains rather than at the seaside is beyond me- perhaps it's after Mr Pearl?) which purveys every type of fantasy-driven business scheme you can imagine- herbalists, yoga studios, vegan cuisine, feng shui, quasi-medical services of all stripe,Tibetan buddhist sanctuaries,
transplanted Afghan teahouses, crystal/rock shops- you name it. The restaurants run the gamut of ethnic - third world delights. Celestial Seasonings is based there.

They have a tree shaded pedestrian mall - no cars allowed- where musicians play and wandering artisans peddle their wares.
I bought myself silver celtic knot earrings from a hippie girl ( who looked as though she money for food) who assured me that they enhanced luck - well, the plane back didn't crash. I guess she created powerful magic with her silver wire benders and clippers- and that's why my life is good and celts like me.

Unfortunately, Boulder is a lovely place that attracts woo but it also has a university, science ( NOAA) and i business set in spectacular visual beauty - you follow the creek to the canyon to the mountains where there are even more hippies in their own little town.

I now realise that South Park is not a parody- it's a true-to-life documentary illustrating the half hippie/ half backwoods-backwards nature of this very odd state.

** including one with druids. I rest my case.

prn:

And often have unexpected success or long lasting improvement in that “quack nutrition” sector.

I'm sure that is what they perceive as having happened. But history tells us not to be satisfied with "unexplained success". And as the Doctor once remarked to Leela, "to the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable -- only unexplained." That science has not explained their cases does not mean it is impossible to explain them, nor that the nutritional efforts of their NDs were responsible. Alas, nutritionists are seldom interested in going that far. They are content with the appearance of success, and leaving the details unexplained even though they will let that experience guide their future practice. Doctors are by no means immune to the same sort of wooly thinking, but that's hardly an excuse.

The Endarkenment continues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Endarkenment

"vegan cuisine... They have a tree shaded pedestrian mall – no cars allowed- where musicians play and wandering artisans peddle their wares."

I love all of these things. I just wish they could be divorced from woo, so I could properly enjoy them. :\

"Boulder began as a supply town for gold miners in the mountains, and Pearl Street is believed to have been named for the wife of one of the town’s 54 founders. "
(from promotional material for a Boulder Business improvement district assoc)

Naturopaths won't alleviate physician shortages. They all want to live in hip, cool places that already have plenty of physicians. There aren't many hip cool people in sparsely populated farming and ranching communities, and the ones who are go to Santa Fe for shopping and woo.

Naturopaths won’t alleviate physician shortages. They all want to live in hip, cool places that already have plenty of physicians.

Part of that is wanting to live in places where there are people who will pay for their services. That's why New Hampshire's woo providers tend to congregate in Seacoast towns like Exeter and Portsmouth, rather than the big (by our standards) cities of Manchester and Nashua. And that's why Colorado's woo crowd will congregate around places like Boulder and Aspen, which are two of the most expensive places in the state to live. (The celebrities and the super-rich have largely taken over Aspen, but it was a hippie town a few decades ago, and much of the local workforce still consists of hippie types who ride the bus 30 miles to work--yes, Aspen has a public bus system, and a rather extensive one for such a small US city.) It's hard to make a good living as a simple country doctor, whether you're an MD or an ND.

I know this is a callous thing to say, and I will undoubtedly regret it tomorrow, but maybe it's a good thing. When a sufficient number of people have their lives ruined or ended by naturopaths in spectacular ways, the backlash will either shut them down or force them to go the way of the osteopath; here in New York, DO's have the same license as MD's and have to take essentially the same curriculum and pass the same exams and licensing requirements. In fact, many (maybe most) DO's here went to osteopathy schools because they didn't get in to medical schools.

^ ORD - The difficulty with that approach is that the woo-ful seem immune to data.

On a complete and utter tangent, Ken Burns is taking on Emperor of All Maladies:
http://www.emperorofallmaladies.org/

Does this bill force insurance companies to pay for the services of the registered NDs?

That’s legitimately terrifying, given the number of Americans lacking access to affordable healthcare.

And most of Colorado's pols want to keep it that way. I feel about it the same way I feel about Arizona, Florida, and the Dakotas: lovely states, the only thing keeping me from visiting is that I don't want any interaction with the denizens there.

Sounds like the author of this article has an ax to grind and has presented a very superficial evaluation of this profession. Better luck next time.

@ Roadstergal:

Right. I relish all that stuff- not a vegan though.

A travel writer from CA wrote about how these places come to be:
artists are poor and go to out-of-the-way scenic places with cheap rents, then tourists come to see the art and scenery, then rich people come in and buy up housing thus destroying the low rent factor; established artists stay and sell their work.... younger artists find other places to live and truck in their wares ( like the hippie silversmith/ wire bender);
you might also see the phenomenon in cities- artists and hipsters go to poor areas, make them trendy then they can no longer afford to live there.

The alternative/ outsider outlook and the money both bring in woo.

http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/05/appeal-to-chicago-autism-community-a…

I realize this if off topic but the story of this autistic child is very disturbing and was wondering if anyone here was aware of it? Today it was reported that this child, who had been hospitalized for quite a while (and apparently for good reason), was stabbed multiple times and killed (yesterday I believe) . His mother and caregiver were found with his body. They were not harmed. I believe they are being investigated.

What is very disturbing to me is for many weeks now AOA has been posting this story (see one of the posts above), and having all of their nutty commenters call Loyola to complain that the mother's rights were being ignored, he wasn't being treating in a biomed fashion and so on. It seems to me Loyola may have known this poor child had no good caregiver to go home to. Well, it appears he did go home after all (was it possibly after many complaints to the hospital?) and what happens? He is murdered! AOA has some blood on their hands IMO if his mother had anything to do with his death. If you look back, you will see several posts on this poor kid in Loyola on AOA and Kim and company bitching up a storm that his rights were being violated, clearly NOT knowing the true situation at all. AOA also posted his death today and the commenters are still blaming the system! Sickening!

@ Roadstergal
Maybe not on such a different tangent.... One of the supporters of the Ken Burns documentary is Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

@Doctor1 (or is it Not a Doctor1?) - would you care to lay out your rebuttals, or do you just wish to poke your tongue out at our esteemed host?

Alternative "medicine" practiioners are fond of telling us that medical errors are the 3rd (or 6th) leading cause of death in the US. I'd very much appreciate an article on that. IMO, since most people with chronic diseases die at home or outside hospitals, and since most conditions are treated successfully in hospitals and discharged, this is probably likely - one can perhaps say that medicine has in this instance become a victim of its own success? however, comments, references etc. will be appreciated

Sounds like the author of this article has an ax to grind and has presented a very superficial evaluation of this profession.

You want more depth? This blog has a search function. Use it and enjoy.

#20 Too late. I'm here.

Santa Fe, NM rivals Boulder, CO for woo-woo practitioners per square meter. I always enjoy the ad in the local weekly wherein a photo of a lovely woman is accompanied by the identification "Jane Doe, DOM." I suppose that means "Doctor of Medicine," but one might hope for something more interesting.

@ AOA= so disturbing:

I've been following it but not in great detail. I'll refrain from commenting about the heart of the matter for now.

Sounds like Doctor 1 (presumably not William Hartnell) has an ax to grind and has presented no evaluation or useful thoughts. Better luck next time.

I’m sure ["...unexpected success or long lasting improvement in that “quack nutrition” sector"] is what they perceive as having happened. But history tells us not to be satisfied with “unexplained success”

Actually a lot of their success in the nutritional-digestive arena is explained in unused sections of post graduate medical texts and meandering themes in medicine going astray. It's corruption in regular medicine that this is not recognized.

They are content with the appearance of success, and leaving the details unexplained even though they will let that experience guide their future practice

I have to acknowledge that I don't know what is typical for NDs. At least some of their "renegade MD" authors can have both a cogent theory of practice based on medical literature and a predictable, measurable, superior result in the nutritional-gastro area.

I think this nutritional-gastro area concerns a number of rabbit holes that medicine has allowed itself to be sucked into pharmaceutical and nutritional Wonderlands. Accepted societal carb load levels of the 1990s and proton pump inhibitors might qualify as two of the rabbit holes.

An example of the inefficiency and indifference of regular medicine to gastro issues are the celicacs, one of the accentuated forms of nutritional malabsorption. Some have written that 97% of the celiacs are undiagnosed, and the ones that got diagnosed went through over a dozen doctors and an average of 7-11 years to get positively diagnosed.

my reply@31 is to Calli Arcale@12 above

@ AoA=So Disturbing: I, for one, have been following the ongoing unfolding drama of the serialization of Alex Spourkalakis and his mother Dorothy on AoA.

I've been posting on RI for weeks now, about the latest crusade by AoA, Lisa Goes, Andrew Wakefield and other assorted groupies, to use Alex's developmental disabilities to trash the care he received at a Chicago hospital. I questioned weeks ago, about the deplorable "coverage" (publishing pictures of
Alex buck naked, in restraints, with an adult diaper on him), and his mother's insistence that he needed MRIs and invasive colon scoping...as well as Lisa Goes' and his mother's "expertise" in diagnostic tests...the online "petititions" and the fundraising (supposedly because Alex and his mother would have to go to a public shelter, once Alex was released from the hospital).

IMO, Lisa Goes, AoA and Wakefield are trying to spin Alex's problems and his stabbing death...now that he was stabbed to death in a locked apartment, with his mother and his grandmother/godmother/caregiver (the story keeps changing), unconscious nearby with a 3-page handwritten note located in that apartment.

I will not comment further, until more information is available from the medical examiner and police officials.

Unfortunately...the flow of information about Alex's life and Alex's death, has not been forthcoming since late last night.

Let's not derail Orac's naturopath post. Come on over to this thread, where we are commenting:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/05/30/can-antivaccinationists-kn…

As my grandpa used to say, as long as you have your wellness.

Wow, Dr. 1, you sure showed us! But, of course you're a chickensiht drive-by commenter and you'll not be back with anything more substantial than the flounce you stuck.

well trained naturopathic doctors, appropriately regulated

With Colleges of Naturopathy having existed for so long, regulating and enforcing professional standards, does anyone know how many naturopathic doctors have been stripped of their membership for malpractice and failure to meet those standards?

Why pick on Colorado?
Why pick on Naturopathy?

Americans love quack medicine!

There are acupuncturists, chiropractors, faith healers etc. all over---every town---every state.

#38, yes, they're everywhere.

But Colorado's new law sb215, just created a paradise for them.

herr doktor @ 37 -- I believe I've commented before, that were a naturopath to be faced with a malpractice suit, the expert witnesses would engage in a War of the Woos that would provide a rich, rich vein of --- COMEDY GOLD!

Naturopaths should aspire to real medicine, like reported in Nature, that 90% of preclinical oncology drug trials are not replicable.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html (This is sarcasm for you who do not :get it")
If you believe conventional medicine has the answers, God have mercy on your body.

This came in under the radar, at least for me. The last article in the Denver Post was back in March, indicating that the bill was in some trouble for health safety reasons. Now we have a new law.

The fear of something that you don't understand comes through with every blog about cam
Just because you & all those sheep that follow your every blog don't understand something doesn't mean it's not real.
We know what you think of all cam practitioners
Tell us what you think of people who seek their services?
There are more and more everyday
Do you think they're all lying about improved health/conditions?
People don't trust MD's anymore
Because they don't have people's best interest
At heart .Its all about pushing pharma drugs
That 1)don't work
2)cost to much
3) and can kill you
Lets face it with MD's at the helm pushing more and more useless drugs on behalf of pharma they haven't rmeally done a whole lot of good for mankind have they?
Doctors were once pillars of the community.
HEROES even, somebody you could trust,but not anymore now most of them are a bunch of money hungry middleman pushers that reach for the prescription pad quicker than you can sit down
How can you blame pharma for it ?
You can't
When all they see standing between them and
Billions of dollars in profit is some tiny little man with no backbone or morals to stand up to them,well it was only a matter of time before yesterday's heroes gave way to
Today's sorry excuse for a doctor
You expect big corporations to put profits before anything else
But not the very people who we turn to in time of need
In time of vulnerability .To be betrayed by a person who is in a position of great trust is I think a warning to everybody
JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE WEARING A WHITE COAT
DOESN'T MEAN A THING .THEYRE NOT HEROES &
ALOT OF THEM DONT ALWAYS HAVE YOUR BEST INTEREST
AT HEART
Ps surgeons are worse ,think about it
How can 12.5 %of all operations end with something being left inside the patient ?
That's how much they really care about patients
What a disgrace
What about you GORSKI
HOW MANY TIMES YOU LEFT YOUR WATCH INSIDE SOME POOR BUGGER?
Any surgeon that does that should be publicly
Whipped 100 times by patient
And salary for a year donated to charity

Paul - could you please:
1. quote the statements that you think show fear.
2. provide the data that says that people get an actual clinically significant improvement from CAM, being specific on the condition, the type of treatment, and what the general progression of that condition are.

As has been discussed many times, people are able to see patterns even when the patterns do not exist. If you get some form of treatment when you feel bad (which is the most likely time, after all) and later you feel better - hey, the treatment must have worked. Never mind that many conditions go away on their own, or that how you feel varies from hour to hour or day to day. If you get a course of, say, acupuncture for a cold and a week later your cold is gone - wow! Acupuncture cured your cold. The fact that normally colds only last a few days doesn't enter into it.

They're not necessarily lying. They may be simply wrong.

Tell us what you think of people who seek their services? There are more and more everyday Do you think they’re all lying about improved health/conditions?

Not necessarily lying, just that they're wrong when they attribute improvements to CAM therapies, rather than other confounding effects (concurrent standard therapy, placebo effect, confirmatio bias, the fact that their illness was self-limiting, etc.)

At heart .Its all about pushing pharma drugs That 1)don’t work 2)cost to much 3) and can kill you

Please be aware that claiming drugs don't work doesn't constitute an argument that CAM therapies do. That said, exactly which drugs are you claiming don't work? Be specific--surely you're not saying that ALL drugs are ineffective.

As for 'costs too much', this isn't an argument that CAM therapies work but instead an argument that the price of drugs be set other than is done now and national health policies be established enacted other than exist now, to make drugs more affordable/available.

As for "can kill you", once again this isn't an argument that CAM therapies work, only that risk versus benefit be accurately assessed when prescribing.

How can 12.5 %of all operations end with something being left inside the patient ?

Intentionally, or unintentionally? Are you including stents, drains, pacemeakers in your statistics? That's the only way I could see the figure 12.5% as realistic.

If not--if you're claiming that items are unintentionally left behind in 12.5% of all surgeries, citations are desparately needed.

Seems to me that in general naturopathy is simply the balance to allopathy. In allopathy, the cause of a malady is typically ignored in favor of treatment based on reductionist principles. In naturopathy, the cause of a malady is typically targeted via holistic practices in support of the body's own ability to heal. Is not the conventional argument against homeopathy and faith healing that, when perceived to be effective, it is actually the body healing itself and not the treatment?

In allopathy, nutritional education is woefully lacking. In naturopathy, it is critical.

Unfortunately, allopathy is reductionist in most aspects. Bodily systems are treated as individual and isolated from the rest of the organism, which is pure fantasy. Furthermore, herbalism is fundamental to naturopathy. In allopathy, many drugs are synthesized from herbal isolates or their metabolites. Again, this is flawed reductionism as relying on isolates ignores co-factors that often mitigate side effects while supporting the benefits of the herbal treatment.

There is no shortage of unscientific claims and practices in allopathic medicine, so attempting an argument against naturopathy in favor of allopathy based on a perceived lack of scientific support is nothing more than bias and a total disregard for objectivity.

It is clear to me that both modalities have their rightful place in a comprehensive treatment and disease prevention regimen.

APC:

Seems to me that in general naturopathy is simply the balance to allopathy. In allopathy, the cause of a malady is typically ignored in favor of treatment based on reductionist principles. In naturopathy, the cause of a malady is typically targeted via holistic practices in support of the body’s own ability to heal.

Cool. Now explain what major breakthrough has been accomplished by naturopathy in the treatment and prevention of the following conditions, accompanied with a PubMed indexed study:

syphilis
leprosy
Type 1 diabetes
measles encephalitis
obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
cystic fibrosis
pancreatic cancer

Seems to me that in general naturopathy is simply the balance to allopathy.

The barbarous neologistic plot thickens.

in general naturopathy is simply the balance to allopathy

The principles of balance require that anything which works should be accompanied by something which doesn't work.

How can 12.5 %of all operations end with something being left inside the patient ?

This seems to be the source of the claim. The authors actually say that discrepancies in keeping track of utensils (sponges, needles and so forth) occurred in 12.8% of the operations they surveyed, requiring "on average 13 minutes" to find the misplaced item.
Number of items actually left inside patients = 0.00%.

How can 100% of internet trolls fail at basic reading skills??

"Cool. Now explain what major breakthrough has been accomplished by naturopathy in the treatment and prevention of the following conditions, accompanied with a PubMed indexed study:

syphilis
leprosy
Type 1 diabetes
measles encephalitis
obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
cystic fibrosis
pancreatic cancer"

I am forever amused by the mantra of 'show me the study.' The reliance on what is known prohibits the discovery of the unknown. Regardless, the premise of your question is flawed. Naturopathy and allopathy are practices not methods of clinical research. Published studies are sources used by these practices not the basis of them. There are lots of published studies demonstrating the efficacy of herbal treatments used by allopaths. Does the fact that naturopaths also use these studies in deciding their treatment regimens render them void?

But on your line of thinking, what major cures have been accomplished by allopathic physicians in the realm of heart disease? Statins? How many MDs recommend a high fat low carbohydrate diet to address type-2 diabetes? Or for dementia? The science supports it, but conventional dogma does not. How about mood or psychotic disorders? Antipsychotics? Anticonvulsants? These address the symptoms, but how many allopathic doctors prescribe a gluten-free diet?

When it comes to disease and disorder, allopathy is largely concerned with symptom management. No doubt, when I break a bone or need a vaccine, I'll go to my MD. When I need surgery, I'll go to a surgeon. But if, Science forbid, I should be diagnosed with a chronic condition, I'll favor the professionals trained in supporting my biology over those more concerned with suppressing it.

"The principles of balance require that anything which works should be accompanied by something which doesn’t work."

Indeed.

APC:

But on your line of thinking, what major cures have been accomplished by allopathic physicians in the realm of heart disease?

Septal myectomy for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Okay, I answered your question, even though you refused to answer mine. Now, go on, tell me the great naturopathy.

Also remember I specifically said Type 1 diabetes. It is a completely different disease. What is the naturopathic preventive or cure for that? Would it be back to the diet designed by Dr. Frederick Allen at his Physiatric Institute?

Now, while we are at it, how would naturopathy prevent tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis, measles, mumps, polio, and rubella? Provide some proof that they work.

APC, it must be nice to live in your little fairy land where no one has any real medical issues. Obviously you have never had to call 911 when a child had tonic clonic seizures, or recurrent strep throat being passed from child to child. Or any of the other things on my list.

APC,
Firstly, you should be aware that the word "allopathic" was made up by homeopaths as an insulting term for conventional doctors at a time when they had little more to offer than bloodletting, mercury and arsenic compounds and purges. It isn't an appropriate term for modern medicine, and on a science blog people are much less likely to take you seriously if you use it.

I am forever amused by the mantra of ‘show me the study.’ The reliance on what is known prohibits the discovery of the unknown.

Precisely what unknowns have naturopaths discovered in their use of unsupported, unproven treatments? I'm forever amused by people claiming that CAM treatments are effective and that the lack of evidence to support them is because the evil allopaths won't fund the studies, when NCCAM and OCCAM have spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars every year doing just that for decades, and have found nothing of any real significance.

There is actually a lot of evidence that strongly suggests that most of the treatments used by naturopaths are ineffective or even dangerous.

[...] How many MDs recommend a high fat low carbohydrate diet to address type-2 diabetes? Or for dementia? The science supports it, but conventional dogma does not.

Low carbohydrate perhaps, but I would love to see the evidence that a high fat diet is beneficial to patients with type 2 diabetes or dementia. High fat low carbohydrate diets have long been thought, with good reason (e.g. the calorific value of fats is higher by weight than carbohydrates), to cause type 2 diabetes.

How about mood or psychotic disorders? Antipsychotics? Anticonvulsants? These address the symptoms, but how many allopathic doctors prescribe a gluten-free diet?

Leaving aside my horror at the thought of naturopaths treating psychosis or epilepsy with a gluten-free diet, too many people believe this nonsense, it has spawned a huge industry that preys on the worried well, despite a lack of convincing evidence that a gluten-free diet benefits anyone but celiacs.

As a note, celiac disease seems to be overdiagnosed in some portions of the population.

I had several years of gastrointestinal symptoms that flared up and died down for no apparent reason. I tried everything, including various alleged alternative treatments and even psychotherapy and counseling in case some unconscious psychological problem was responsible, none of which helped at all.

I also experimented with diets to see if it was a food intolerance. I ended up avoiding various foodstuffs, including gluten, for years, never entirely convinced it was helping, but never entirely convinced it wasn't. In the end I found out I had a chronic giardia infection, and a long course of anti-protozoal drugs ended my symptoms for good.

This experience taught me now easy it is to attribute changes in variable symptoms to whatever you are avoiding (or taking).

As an aside, I set up a database in which I recorded everything I ate and drank every day, and my symptoms, for several months. I extracted all the data to a spreadsheet graphed it out, and looked for correlations. I did find correlations between my symptoms and wheat consumption, but realized that the wheat consumption followed the symptoms, not vice versa. It seemed I was more likely to indulge in foods that I had been avoiding when I experienced a flare up (pizza, bread, pasta) despite keeping to a strict and rather tedious diet. I hadn't noticed this until I put it on a graph.

@ Krebiozen:

A few things:

Are you sure you're not a cat? A veterinarian told me that often cats' unresolved infections with micro-organisms and other parasites are the cause of their IBD/ IBS problems.

There are complex woo-tinged diets for kittehs as well as for us ALL OVER THE NET.

James Laidler discovered that restrictive diets weren't effective for his child's ASD ( Autism Watch) when said child ate the wrong foods and didn't have a setback.

Now dietary woo for ASDs has gone beyond GFCF to GFCFSF ( S for soy). ( see TMR esp).

Some woo-meisters believe virually all people are gluten intolerant ( see PRN).

I once suffered from severe GERD-like symptoms and tried various OTC products which all helped a little. However, going away from the vexing situation which concerned me most for a few days worked so much better. I also kept a chart of sorts: I assume it was stress.

-ahem!- VIRTUALLY

In allopathy, the cause of a malady is typically ignored in favor of treatment based on reductionist principles.

Ah, germ theory and molecular genetics, it was nice to have known you but now we can move on to the real cause of maladies.

Denice,

Are you sure you’re not a cat? A veterinarian told me that often cats’ unresolved infections with micro-organisms and other parasites are the cause of their IBD/ IBS problems.

I have wondered this myself on occasion - they do seem to like me a lot, I was harassed by a stray in the street just a couple of days ago, and I have given up trying to stop our neighbor's cat climbing in our window, onto my lap and going to sleep when I'm working on the computer at home.

I'm sure the horrible half-decomposed things cats insist on eating are responsible for their parasitic infections, and there are some interesting things we can catch from cats, like toxoplasmosis, which may (or may not) affect human behavior. The 'madness' of the stereotypical cat lady may be the result of her fondness for cats, not a cause. My diet is a little more refined than that of cats. I know exactly where and when I picked up the giardia - falafel from a fast food stall in Luxor, Egypt - as it was the only thing I ate that my traveling companion did not. She was fine, me not so much.

The gluten free thing is vaguely plausible, as grains only entered human nutrition relatively recently (but so did goji berries), but I don't think there is anything particularly different about gluten as compared to other plant proteins. I have seen the claim that partially digested gluten can be absorbed through a leaky gut, cross the blood brain barrier and cause neuropsychiatric symptoms, but the evidence for this is very thin indeed.

Krebiozen - There is a definitive test for one's cat-ness. When you see an empty box on the floor, what do you do?

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien:

Hah!
I have to try that test- I know a person who keeps rubbing against me.

When you see an empty box on the floor, what do you do?

[Narrows eyes suspiciously] I sit in it, like any normal person would.

I know a person who keeps rubbing against me.

I advise a knee in the groin, unless the rubbing is solicited, of course.

I had to laugh when I first saw Mephistopheles' comment because- no joking- I currently have a 22x23x17 inch ( right, I measured it) appliance box next to my table because the giant cat likes to sleep in it and it consoles him when I leave him alone.

Kreb, believe me, there are more than a few people in my life about whose genetics I truly wonder- and that one is numero uno.

I know a person who keeps rubbing against me.

One mourns the demise of hat-pins.

@ Shay:

But seriously, I do have to say a word on behalf of the hybrid feline/ men creatures: they rub against you, sit in boxes, beg for salmon, they don't do any real harm to anyone.

Krebiozen - I see, a marked tendency towards cistatropism. Interesting..

Denice Walter,

I do have to say a word on behalf of the hybrid feline/ men creatures:

Did you ever see Cat People? That might change your view.

M.O'B.,
You have to understand I don't feel compelled to sit in the box. I could give it up any time I wanted. Probably.

Denice,

they don’t do any real harm to anyone.

Some of us do have a habit of crapping in your slippers when you're not looking, but no one's perfect.

Krebiozen - you just find it very comforting? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTGZKmdfdzI

When you see an empty box on the floor, what do you do?

There are enough resident cats here at Maison d'Etre that the concept of box emptiness remains purely theoretical.

herr doktor bimler - I love the name "Maison d’Etre".

M.O'B.,
Precisely, just a minor compulsion.

HDB,

There are enough resident cats here at Maison d’Etre that the concept of box emptiness remains purely theoretical.

I just hope none of the boxes are rigged with poison gas pellets triggered by quantum decay processes.

If I fit, I sit!

But seriously, it's always struck me that naturopaths want all of the credit, but none of the responsibility.

Our cat bit me a couple days ago. Usually not a big deal, but the next day I see the "red streak of death" running up my forearm. I've been given the MD stinkeye more than once for various ailments/injuries that I've kinda blown off, and eventually resolved on their own. But "red streak of death" somehow triggered me to haul my sorry stubborn butt off to Urgent Care.

After 3 doses of Augmentin - standard of care for cat bites - the lymphangitis streak is gone, and I still haven't turned into a newt, so I suppose I'll be OK.

Since I'm otherwise in reasonably good health, it's possible I would have been just fine with a carrot poultice, or ingesting lots of raw garlic. But I did eat a nasty and tasty fast-food cheeseburger - with fries and a shake to boot - 2 weeks ago....

That's the kicker, isn't it? If the "natural self-healing remedies" don't work, then off to "allopathic" medicine you go. As stubborn as I am, I'd just as soon skip the magic and go for the science. Cat bites are not to be messed with.

The naturopathic narrative is quite convenient, methinks...

I just hope none of the boxes are rigged with poison gas pellets triggered by quantum decay processes.

Well, if they are, just don't look inside. As long as you don't open the box, everything should be fine.

@ Infuriatingly Moderate:

"If I fit, I sit!"

How does 22x23x17" sound?

Some of us do have a habit of crapping in your slippers when you’re not looking, but no one’s perfect.

Beats leaving a pregnant mouse. Remember, the little ones dessicate. The big ones deliquesce.

Our cat bit me a couple days ago. Usually not a big deal, but the next day I see the “red streak of death” running up my forearm.

Wait, you got the Calvin Coolidge, Jr., without obvious local infection?

@DW #76: Sounds good - though I'd have to take out a side.

@Narad: I had a vague memory that it was one of Lincoln's sons that died of sepsis from a minor foot wound - apparently got my Presidents mixed up. So much for my memory....

Actually did also have mild redness and swelling, plus the joint was getting sore....

People look to NDs for hope. I have a daughter with cystic fibrosis. CF is a lung and pancreas disease that shortens the lifespan. We were prescribed ensure, a mix of corn syrup and canola oil, for weight gain. Weight gain correlates with lung function. Makes sense, right? The insurance pays for it. Corn syrup feeds infection, canola oil feeds inflammation. Oops. Prescribed by Childrens Hospital of Denver. Look it up. Talk about Quackary. They almost started delivering insulin with her ensure before I got some help.

@jen

Corn syrup feeds infection, canola oil feeds inflammation.

Citation needed.

Do you not know Calabrese uses shady statistical techniques and literature reviews as alleged evidence for hormesis? He fits right in with those he links himself to in your article.

Battling antivaccinationists at FreedomFest

oracknows — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:00:32 +0000

Battling antivaccinationists at FreedomFest

Like so many other skeptics, I just returned from TAM, which, despite all the conflict and drama surrounding it this year, actually turned out to be a highly enjoyable experience for myself and most people I talked to. As I've been doing the last few years, I joined up with Steve Novella and other proponents of science-based medicine to do a workshop about how difficult it is to find decent health information on the Internet, and how the "University of Google" all too frequently puts quackery on the same level as reliable sources of medical information because all that matters for most search engines when it comes to ranking search results is the number and kinds of sites that link to a given site.

One of the best things that happened at TAM was also one of the most unexpected. it could also have been the worst thing that happened there, but fortunately it turned into a major skeptical win. Yes, I know that's a bit of a spoiler, but the fun of this story is journey, so to speak, not the outcome. Wednesday evening, I happened to run into Evan Bernstein, who informed me of something that Steve Novella was going to do the next day, right after our workshop. Basically, I learned that Steve was going to debate an antivaccinationist. Evan didn't know any details other than that Michael Shermer had arranged it and that Steve had been tapped at the last minute. He didn't even know who the antivaccinationist was going to be or what the event was. Naturally, I was intrigued.

So, the next morning I asked Steve about it. I turns out that the event was FreedomFest, a right-wing/Libertarian confab that happened to be going on at the same time as TAM up the road a piece on the Strip at Bally's. Steve didn't know who the antivaccinationist was going to be either, which made me marvel at him. I don't know that I'd have the confidence agree to walk into the lion's den with less than a day's notice not even knowing who my opponent is. Steve invited me along. Clearly, this was was an opportunity that I couldn't resist. So we met up with Michael Shermer, and it was from him that I learned that Steve's opponent would be Dr. Julian Whitaker.

My eyes lit up.

To my surprise, neither Steve nor Michael knew who Dr. Whitaker was. Being more than happy to give them some background on Dr. Whitaker, I told them. Regular readers here might remember that I've mentioned Dr. Whitaker before. First off, he's a big fan of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, serving as the primary pro-Burzynski medical "expert" in that propagandistic paean to the brave maverick doctor, Burzynski: The Movie:

Dr. Whitaker is also big among the "alternative medicine" crowd for his claims to be able to cure diabetes "naturally," without food or drugs (of course!). In doing so, he claims that metformin doesn't work, antibiotics don't work (because, apparently, they don't succeed in saving every diabetic foot) and that, in general, conventional medicine doesn't work. If you really want to know all you need to know about him in a nutshell, Dr. Whitaker is apparently one of Suzanne Somers' doctors and was featured prominently in her cancer quackery book Knockout.

But how did this whole event come about? According to Shermer, apparently the doctor who was originally going to be Dr. Whitaker's opponent, a local pulmonologist, became ill at the last minute and couldn't appear. I rather suspect in retrospect that Dr. Whitaker probably now wishes that his original opponent hadn't been forced to bow out. (You'll see why soon enough.) The next question I wondered about was: Why was this pseudodebate going to be held at FreedomFest? That's easy. If you look at the FreedomFest program and scroll down to Dr. Whitaker, you'll note that he is the founder of the Freedom of Health Foundation, which is, as you probably guessed, an organization designed to promote "health freedom" (or, as I like to call it, freedom for quacks from pesky government interference directed at protecting the public).

So, the stage was set. Michael Shermer invited us to hop into his car, and we headed up to the strip to join the battle.

The debate

We arrived at Bally's about 45 minutes before the debate was scheduled, wending our way through the casino and hotel to easily find the convention area where FreedomFest was being held. Even though we hadn't registered and didn't have a badge, the organizer Mark Skousen was more than happy to let us wander around the exhibit area until it was time for the debate. It was an...interesting experience. Not unexpectedly, there were various publishers and authors pushing books that either claimed that President Obama is destroying America, blamed him for the economic meltdown, made apocalyptic predictions about our health care system in the wake of the passage of "Obamacare" (properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), and in general attacking anything "socialist," which apparently includes the entire Democratic Party and a lot of Republicans as well, all aided and abetted, of course, by the "liberal" media. Peppered in among the right wing literature, there were also various conservative and libertarian activist groups trying to get people to join up and stop Obama from destroying America. (I notice that Obama destroying America seemed to be a major theme running through a lot of the exhibits I saw at FreedomFest.) There were also a lot of investment companies that I had never heard of before, such as Sovereign Investment services (one wonders if it meant this "sovereign"), as well as that old popular standard, companies hawking gold coins or gold bullion as a hedge against the day the economy completely collapses.

Don't get me wrong. There were a lot of respectable exhibitors there, too, such as Reason Magazine and others, but there was a lot of dodgy stuff there as well. Naturally the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and Heritage Foundation were there to promote anthropogenic global warming denialism, among their other causes. It wasn't just politics and economics, either. There was also a bit of the old woo, as well. Prominent among the woo was a company selling hair loss remedies. (Given the setting, the jokes practically write themselves.) Then Michael Shermer showed us a booth selling pendants that supposedly provide "hidden meanings." We spoke with the proprietor a while. She was very friendly and cordial to us, but it rapidly became clear that this hiddenmeanings jewelry fused an unholy combination of The Secret, numerology, and Bible Code-like readings of—you guessed it—hidden meanings in the symbols and text that can be found in the symbol in the jewelry. Let's just put it this way. One of the slogans of the company is "It can mean Anything to Anybody at Anytime!"

I'm sure that's probably true.

As the time drew near, we ceased our odyssey through libertarian commerce and headed over to the Silver Room, where the debate was to be held. I immediately saw that something else was wrong. As we entered the room, we immediately encountered a woman passing out a newsletter, Dr. Whitaker's Health & Healing: Your Definitive Guide to Wellness Medicine. It was the September 2011 issue, and, emblazoned across the page was a large headline Vaccinations: The Destruction of Our Country. This does not bode well, I thought, as I thumbed through the newsletter, which packed pretty much every major antivaccine trope into a single article to produce antivaccine pseudoscience so dense that it collapsed into a black hole, beyond whose event horizon no science, reason, or critical thinking could escape. I could feel the pull on my neurons, which cried out not to be sucked down into the black hole. Fortunately, Orac is made of sterner stuff than that. I did, however, take a picture of the newsletter for your edification because I didn't want to give Dr. Whitaker my e-mail address to get his online newsletter:

As you might imagine, I immediately recognized Dr. Whitaker. He's not hard to miss, being a rather large, gregarious, and somewhat imposing man, who immediately came up to greet Michael Shermer, who introduced him to Steve and myself.

Then I saw the moderator.

My first thought was that she looked very, very familiar, but I just couldn't remember who she was. Then, hanging in the background given that I wasn't the featured speaker and was basically tagging along for support, I saw her introduce herself and Dr. Whitaker to Steve and Michael as Leslie Manookian. It was then that I knew that this was going to be a typical pseudodebate about pseudoscience. Before Steve went up on stage, I warned him that I thought Dr. Whitaker was probably pretty slick and might well be able to do the Gish gallop with aplomb. I also warned him that the moderator was a die-hard antivaccine propagandist, having made—you guessed it!—a propaganda movie that I reviewed last year, The Greater Good. I later learned that there were going to be two screenings of the movie at FreedomFest, one at 8 PM that night and one the next afternoon. Lovely, I thought. The health freedom wing of the Libertarian movement is flaunting its embrace of antivaccinationism at one of its big conferences. Marvelous.

And so the debate began. Manookian started out by saying she never questioned vaccines until "she met a guy." Apparently, this guy believed that his child had been rendered autistic by vaccinations, having regressed within a fairly recent time frame after a round of vaccines. She then "did research" and became increasingly appalled by what she found, which, from what I could tell, were mostly anecdotes and the usual pseudoscientific arguments used by antivaccinationists. As a result, Manookian became an antivaccinationist—sorry, a vaccine "skeptic"—so much so that she went on to make an antivaccine propaganda movie, to which I subjected myself in order to review.

She then went on to start the debate out by asking Drs. Whitaker and Novella why there is a "debate" about vaccines. At this point, my teeth immediately began to grind, to the point where I feared for my molar enamel. This is a typical framing of what I (and many others) like to call a "manufactroversy." Basically, the word manufactroversy is short for "manufactured controversy" and is basically a pseudocontroversy that is created to oppose conclusions overwhelmingly supported by the evidence and/or science. Examples abound, of course: Anthropogenic global warming, vaccines, much of alternative medicine, "9/11 Truthers," and "birthers." The bottom line, is that there is no scientific controversy over whether vaccines cause autism. The question has been asked multiple times and answered multiple times: No. Of course, being a scientist, I have to qualify that just a little bit by saying that "no" means that we can't detect an effect above the noise level of the epidemiological studies that have been done. In other words, even if there is an effect, it is so small that it can't be detected by current epidemiological methods, which can detect pretty darned small effects. For all intents and purposes, as far as science can tell, vaccines do not cause autism. Neither does the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that until 2001 was used in many childhood vaccines. They just don't; scientists have moved on, regardless of what antivaccinationists claim.

Dr. Whitaker started out with what was essentially the same old tropes, including confusing correlation with causation, harping about how autism prevalence has skyrocketed since the 1980s and 1990s. He made the claim that almost no child was developmentally disabled 30 years ago but now one in 88 children are diagnosed as having an autism spectrum disorder. During this segment, he also went on about how chronic diseases are skyrocketing along with autism and that it must be the evil vaccines. OK, I added the "evil" part, but it was quite clear that Dr. Whitaker thinks that they are evil. He made that very clear. So did Manookian, for that matter.

This was just the warmup. Steve, as you might imagine, easily demolished these arguments, pointing out that correlation does not equal causation. He also discussed how there have been several very large studies that controlled for relevant variables have failed to find even (as I like to put it) even a whiff of a hint of a correlation between vaccination and either autism prevalence or onset. He discussed how we as humans are hard-wired to infer causation from observed correlation, which makes it very understandable that people mistakenly conclude that vaccines cause autism? Why? Because, as we've discussed time and time again here, autism is often diagnosed in the age range when children receive a lot of vaccines, which means that by random chance alone we will often see diagnoses made in close temporal proximity to a round of vaccinations. Moreover, it was easy for Steve to point out that diagnostic criteria were broadened in the early 1990s, that schools started screening for autism, and that schools also got funding from the government to help autistic students. Again, Dr. Whitaker's arguments were softball pitches, easily hit out of the ballpark as Prince Fielder hit balls out of the ballpark three days earlier in the pre-Allstar Game Home Run Derby. In essence, Dr. Whitaker made the same sort of ignorant arguments that Dr. Jay Gordon regularly makes, as exemplified in the comments after this excellent post by Emily Willingham why the "autism epidemic" is almost certainly no epidemic at all.

There is one point that I would have added that Steve didn't. It's a general rule in medicine that the more you look for something, as in launching mass screening programs, the more you will find it. Always. Consider ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which is a premalignant precursor of breast cancer, a certain percentage of which (not fully known) will progress to become breast cancer. Back in the early 1900s, DCIS was rare because by the time it grew large enough to be a palpable mass, it almost always had become invasive cancer. Now, thirty years after mass mammographic screening programs became prevalent, DCIS is a common diagnosis. Indeed, approximately 40% of breast cancer diagnoses are in fact DCIS, and a recent study found that DCIS incidence rose from 1.87 per 100,000 in the mid-1970s to 32.5 in 2004. That’s a more than 16-fold increase over 30 years, and it’s pretty much all due to the introduction of mammographic screening. This sort of thing should not be surprising to doctors, but apparently sometimes it is.

Dr. Whitaker emulates Penn Jillette, but not in a good way

It was at this point that Dr. Whitaker lived up to the name of Penn Jillette's Friday night party at TAM: He brought the stupid. Oh, man, did he bring the stupid! First, he stated unequivocally that he thought that vaccines were the primary cause of autism, scoffing at the idea that it was primarily genetic in nature or that vaccines were not causing it. As bad as that was, worse was to come, and it did when Dr. Whitaker showed this graph:

I reproduced this graph from his newsletter because I instantly saw that it was the same graph:

I want you to sit back for a minute and drink in the utter silliness of this graph, the utter lack of science, the utter nonsense. It's been a long time since I've seen its like. I'm sure many of you can figure out what's wrong with it on your own, but my duty as blogger demands that I explain, and I'll give it exactly the time it deserves. Take a look. Notice how Dr. Whitaker extrapolates from a small dataset to produce curves that go right up to 100/100, or 100%. Steve's jaw (and mine and, I daresay, Michael Shermer's jaws) dropped in astonishment. That's right. Dr. Whitaker produced a graph that predicted that by the year 2032 all boys will be diagnosed with an ASD and that by 2041 all girls will also have autism. I kid you not. Lest you think that this wasn't Dr. Whitaker's intention, that he didn't know the implications of his extrapolation, I will quote from the relevant section of Dr. Whitaker's newsletter discussing the graph:

Let's do some simple math based on these solid statistics. Beginning in 1990, when the mass vaccination program took off, the incidence of autism and autism spectrum disorder in children exploded. The projections indicate that by the year 2031, virtually all male children will be diagnosed with autism or autism spectrum disorder, followed by all girls in 2041. Autistic kids will surely outnumber normal kids in the relatively near future. How will our society function if all kids age 10 and younger are so disables. This is the most frightening projection I can imagine, and it is simple math!

What is going on? The one obvious and absolute constant for these skyrocketing numbers of autistic and learning disabled children is vaccinations. Over the last 25 years, the number of vaccinations forced on our children has virtually exploded. Why? Are measles, mumps, chicken pox, and flu really that dangerous? In my opinion, irrevocable harm caused by vaccinations is infinitely worse than the diseases we vaccinated against.

Later, Dr. Whitaker writes:

There are only two things that can stop this madness. First, parents must have the right to decide what is injected into their children. Second, laibility must be borne by the pharmaceutical companies.

If these two things happen, we might recover from this nightmare. If they don't, armed guards will be escorting our children to vaccination centers, and, within a few decades, our children—and our country—will be destroyed. Many of you will live to see this devastation. But most of your children and grandchildren will be so damaged by vaccinations that they will not notice it. They will be lost to autism. That, my friends, is simple math.

So, is Obama destroying America, or are vaccines destroying America? I get so confused.

Apparently Dr. Whitaker doesn't recognize the difference between "simple" and "simple-minded." I do rather admire the apocalyptic imagery for its sheer loony excess, combining antivaccine misinformation and anti-government conspiracy theories into a highly toxic brew. Fortunately, Dr. Whitaker did manage to restrain himself from using imagery quite as overblown during the debate, although it probably would have been more entertaining if he had not.

To cap it off the stupid, Dr. Whitaker scaled the Y-axis to go up to 120. This was so bad that I almost felt sorry for Dr. Whitaker. When Steve explained why these graphs were so silly, the audience "got it" instantly, and it was at that point that Dr. Whitaker began to lose the audience, which became fidgety when he spoke. Some of the audience even started muttering about how bad he was, and I'm not referring to Michael Shermer and myself. We were doing more than muttering about how pathetic Dr. Whitaker's performance was. We were outright saying it to each other in those low voices people use when they have to say something but want to avoid disturbing others.

It was also at this point that I realized that I could actually do what Steve does. On balance, I knew how to answer all of Dr. Whitaker's arguments as well as he did. In some cases, Steve did better than I probably could have. In other cases, I think I could have demolished Dr. Whitaker's arguments even better than Steve did. What I lack is Steve's preternatural ability to stay calm and not openly reveal his contempt for such a silly argument. Maybe I need to learn that. (Or not. I am, after all, Orac.) In the meantime, I was content to serve as Steve's bulldog, which is why I went up to the table to see Dr. Whitaker after the talk and ask some pointed questions about how he generated the graph.

We didn't pull any punches, either. We asked pointedly where he got the data, how he generated the data, what mathematical model he used to produce the graph, how he fitted the curve, how he could justify extrapolating so far from such a limited data set, how he decided what curve to fit, and how he can justify a curve that goes to 100% when there is virtually no condition that 100% of the population will suffer from except for (eventually) death. His answers were—shall we say?—not exactly convincing, and we kept trying to get a straight answer out of him. With only one exception, we failed. That exception was that Whitaker said that the data were from the CDC (fair enough, although it would be interesting to know the reference). How his group had created the graph, we never really found out. All he kept saying was that he just projected from the existing data. He had no clue, however, what mathematical model was used, what computer software was used, or what assumptions were made. He took my email address and promised to get send me the information. I have yet to receive it, despite sending Dr. Whitaker a friendly reminder on Twitter (@WhitakerMD; so feel free to "remind" him). To be fair, I will post about this again if he ever comes through. In the meantime, I really need to train myself to be more like Steve in these situations.

And all the rest

But enough of my shortcomings. How did the rest of the debate go? Well, it actually went pretty much like the first part of the debate. Steve basically mopped the floor with Dr. Whitaker. There was nothing left, not even a stain on the chair—metaphorically speaking, of course. It was actually rather painful to watch, in the way that it's painful to watch one baseball team get pummeled by 12 runs, even when it's a baseball team I really detest, like the New York Yankees. However, there was no "mercy rule" in debate. Basically, Dr. Whitaker trotted out a number of antivaccine "greatest hits," and Steve pummeled him for it. For instance, Dr. Whitaker showed this graph:

Yes, this graph is yet another example of one of the oldest and most deceptive antivaccine tropes, one that I like to call the "vaccines didn't save us" gambit. Basically, this intellectually dishonest—downright deceptive, actually—tactic involves pointing out that mortality was falling from a given infectious disease before a vaccine for it was introduced. In this case, it was measles and a few other diseases. The implication that antivaccinationists want people to draw is that hygiene, sanitation, and the like were the "real" causes of the decrease. The long version of the rebuttal this gambit is here. The short version is that disease incidence does not equal mortality and that measles incidence plummeted after the introduction of the vaccine. The reason mortality was falling before the vaccine was for other reasons. Medical care was getting better, and a smaller percentage of people who got the disease died from it. In fact, Dr. Whitaker explicitly stated the false premise behind this gambit, saying at one point that incidence equals mortality. Quite appropriately, Steve called him out on it, and did it in a way that the audience understood it.

Other issues that came up included some dubious antivaccine studies that we've covered at various times before, including some dubious antivaccine studies that we've covered at various times before. Dr. Whitaker also called for a "vaxed vs. unvaxed" study, but completely misunderstood the issues involved. He apparently thinks that such a study would could consist of just looking at vaccinated versus unvaccinated children without controls for various confounding factors. However, at times he seemed to be calling for a randomized "vaxed vs. untaxed" study, because at one point he complained about studies not having placebo controls. Steve pointed out that such a study would be unethical. Dr. Whitaker also complained about randomized studies of new vaccines because the placebo control wasn't just saline but had all the other ingredients besides the antigens, including adjuvants, seemingly not realizing that, scientifically speaking, that is an even more appropriate control than saline.

Finally, the bulk of the last one third of the debate was more about politics than about science. Dr. Whitaker brought up a Supreme Court decision last year related to vaccines, specifically Bruesewitz v. Wyeth. He didn't call it by that name, however; but it was obvious that that was what he was talking about. Not surprisingly, he also misrepresented the decision as stating that parents cannot sue vaccine manufacturers for vaccine injury. This is, of course, nonsense. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, established a no-fault compensation system, paid for by tax dollars, for children injured by vaccines. It created a new special court, the Vaccine Court, through which claims for compensation have to go through first.

This law was necessary because a flood of lawsuits was threatening the very foundation of the vaccine program, and Congress feared that there would be no vaccine manufacturers left in the United States because liability concerns would drive them out. Reasons for the law aside, not only do parents who think their children have been injured by a vaccine have recourse to the Vaccine Court, where, win or lose, their attorneys’ fees are paid by the government, parents who do not prevail in Vaccine Court can then sue in regular courts. The law simply says that they have to go through this special court first. The Vaccine Court also happens to have easier rules of evidence (i.e., not applying Daubert tests to expert witness testimony) and in essence bends over backward to try to compensate children injured by vaccines. Not only that, but the Vaccine Court reimburses claimants for reasonable attorney and court costs and, as a result, has become a bit of a gravy train for a certain group of lawyers who represent parents in front of the court. In any case, although there are a bunch of nuances about product liability and other issues, when you boil it down to its essence, all Bruesewitz v. Wyeth says is that the law as written currently prevents parents who do not prevail in Vaccine Court from suing in state court. They have to go to federal courts.What Dr. Whitaker harped on is what antivaccinationists always harp on about this decision is a line from the dissent by Justice Sotomayor about vaccines being "unavoidably unsafe."

That was the CliffsNotes version of the ruling. You can find out more here and here.

The final question was a simple one: Should there be mandatory vaccination? Obviously Dr. Whitaker railed on about "health freedom" and how parents should have the right to control the health care of their children. I also rather suspect that this was the main reason most people attended, because the audience definitely got antsy when the discussion veered away from this topic after the question was mentioned. Steve wisely took the tack that this is a political question, not a scientific question. He then reiterated that the science is clear: School vaccine mandates lead to higher vaccination rates, which lead to lower rates of vaccine-preventable illnesses. It is thus up to us and the political process what we wish to do with these scientific findings. And that's what I usually say, too. Science informs policy, but it is the political process that determines policy. School vaccine mandates work, and at the very least it should be as hard to get exemptions, be they religious or philosophical, to such mandates as it is to follow the vaccine schedule. But that's just my view.

When all is said and done, I must admit that I was actually rather shocked at the outcome of this debate. I say that not because I don't have total faith in Steve's abilities and didn't expect him to acquit himself well, but rather for the same reason that I've always thought it was a bad idea to debate pseudoscientists. I realize that not everyone agrees with me about this, and, because Steve and I work together, I thought it was my duty to support him in any way I could. Be that as it may, I expected Dr. Whitaker to be much slicker and harder to handle than he in fact turned out to be. Quite frankly, he was painfully bad, and I felt really stupid for having overestimated his abilities so massively. On the other hand, it's always better to overestimate your opponent than to underestimate him. In any case, Dr. Whitaker made easily rebutted arguments, couldn't even Gish Gallop very well at all, was ignorant of the science, even bad studies that purport to show a link between vaccines and autism, and appeared completely flummoxed by obvious points that any halfway decent debater would expect his opponent to make. In short, he looked every bit as though he had expected a cakewalk and as though he is used to adoration, not challenge.

Steve gave him that, and more. From the reaction of the audience, I'm also pretty sure that he got through to some fence sitters.

Unfortunately, it's not a surprise that this sort of nonsense showed up at FreedomFest. Antivaccine quackery is not just for crunchy well-off liberals living in enclaves on the coasts. It's quite popular among the "health freedom" movement, and the health freedom movement is very much sympathetic to the Tea Party movement, as I've pointed out recently mentioning a post by Kent Heckenlively at the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism in which he bragged about connections between the Canary Party (which is rabidly antivaccine) and the Tea Party in California. One also notes that in the comments after that post, Jake Crosby extensively parroted Tea Party talking points.

I will finish by pointing out that it's one thing for an antivaccine "party" like the Canary Party to link up with a local Tea Party organization. It's quite another thing when a national meeting in which many of the luminaries of conservatism, libertarianism, and the Tea Party movement go to pow-wow together starts giving a platform to antivaccinationists. It is disturbing in the extreme that what has become a major conservative meeting every year would allow such rank antivaccine quackery a prominent place in its program, with a "debate" and two screenings of a movie that is nothing more than antivaccine propaganda disguised as a "tell both sides"-style "balanced" documentary. It's not the first time this has happened, either. I found last year's list of speakers, and Dr. Whitaker was there, giving a talk entitled Vaccines: Good or Bad?, and in 2010 he presented a talk entitled "Treatment for Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Cancer; the good, the bad, and the stupid." This seems to be a relatively recent development, too. I checked the 2008 and 2009 speaker lists, and there was no Dr. Whitaker, nor were there any talks on vaccines. Given this recently added "feature" of FreedomFest, all I can say to Mr. Skousen is: For shame!

oracknows Sun, 07/15/2012 - 21:00

Categories

Policy

Dr. Whitaker is a Scientology doctor. He claims he's not a member himself, which I believe, but he is one of the most prominent people behind the Scientology anti-psychiatry group CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) and their "Industry of Death" anti-psychiatry museum in LA. They claim, among other things, that psychiatrists were really responsible for the Holocaust, putting Scientology up there with the Holocaust deniers.

Scientology is full of medical quackery and Whitaker promotes a lot of their nonsense. For instance, they believe in massive doses of niacin and other vitamins instead of medical intervention and to "detox". Whitaker endorses these ideas in the mainstream world. He is also good friends with Rashid Buttar.

Several DAN! doctors are also scientologists, as they share common quackery.

For more on the connection between Scientology, autism and Whitaker, I recommend this article. It includes a mention of Dan Olmsted who used to work for a Moonie newspaper.

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2006/11/07/autism-scientology-and-the-…

Oh, I wish I could have been there!

I am also very curious about that graph. Typically on a graph you put larger graphics (points) to designate those locations that you have actual data. The line would only be the estimated fit for the graph. This is why the graphs actually have points that are not on the line, and you hear the terms "R-squared" and "nonlinear regression."

In other words: extrapolate past the available data with caution. Especially if you think going to 120 out of 100 is actually feasible. I actually like imaginary numbers, but that is ridiculous!

I want to know where those big fat points come from. Especially the ones that actually show a change of exponential slope above 90%. Why does it decelerate then?

It is really an example of making stuff up that has no relation to reality.

It's a Spinal Tap graph. "It goes to 11!"

(I couldn't put the umlaut over the a in Spinal.)

Is there footage!! Seems to have been an awesome encounter. Wonder what Whittaker and Manookian thought of the whole fiasco.

Maybe we should send a big thank you to the pulmonologist who dropped out (Why you would call a pulmonologist to debate vaccines beats me- would have thought someone trained in infectious diseases would have been better.

On the mortality chart wish they showed things like smallpox, polio etc. Vaccination is seriously non trivial especially in third world countries where, unfortunately, the anti vaccine cranks are creating doubts and confusion.

Wow. That graph is really impressive in awe-inspiring way. The sheer stupidity is hard to top. The only way to make it more ridiculous would be if the curve looped back along time axis.

Especially the ones that actually show a change of exponential slope above 90%. Why does it decelerate then?

It doesn't. The points are in one year increments and the apparent slow-down is an artifact - second to last increase is more than 10 percent point and the last increase has to stop on the 100% mark - so for the last year there is just last few percent points to go.

Actually, the problem is that there should be a slowdown close to 100%. If the curve was plotted based on the data resulting from an actual simulation you would expect an S-curve - with plateau closing to 100% but never reaching it. Somewhat like vertically and horizontally flipped first half of the curve, rather than perfect geometric parabolic shape we have here. Hence, my educated guess is that this data was pulled out of somebody's nether regions - somebody took the rate of increase of autism incidence and geometrically extrapolated it resulting in this ridiculous curve.

Oh, one more thing - I just realised that all three curves were plotted independently from each other. Take a look at the year 2028. Autism incidence among boys reach 50%. So you would expect that general population incidence would be more than 25%, right? Nope, here we barely got to 20%. Apparently, within decade there is going to be twice as many girls as boys.

One of the slogans of the company is “It can mean Anything to Anybody at Anytime!”

Cripes, I could have shown up with a pallet of copies of the Bollingen I Ching and cut this fellow off at the knees.

Wait, but if autistics become 100% of new births, I won't be disabled anymore! Awesome!

Cecil Fielder

Dude. [/pedantry[

It's even stupider than that--according to the graph, autism diagnoses are due to reach 100% in the general population 3 years or so before they reach 100% in girls. Apparently by that time the epidemic will have reached such heights that MORE than 100% of boys will be autistic.

If Steve managed to explain what was wrong with that diagram without using the word "stupid", he's a better man than I.

Science marches on & anti-vaccinationists are still stuck in the late 1990's. Jeez, don't these guys get new talking points at all?

I would have loved to have seen that - and that type of audience, probably young, Ron Paul supporters (amongst the group) aren't stupid - they are pretty well educated and have a good grasp of the Science involved. The Canary Party might think they are allies, but if they ever got down to the "crazy" I have a good feeling which side those guys will come down on (the RP guys, I mean).

@MFII - Point of pedantry - in Spinal Tap, the umlaut is over the "n". :-)

The saddest thing: you probably didn't convince a single anti-vaxxer, not even the moderator. Their minds are too closed.

"First, parents must have the right to decide what is injected into their children. Second, laibility must be borne by the pharmaceutical companies."

What is unscientific about this orac?

"However, at times he seemed to be calling for a randomized “vaxed vs. untaxed” study, because at one point he complained about studies not having placebo controls. Steve pointed out that such a study would be unethical."

Why is this unethical orac, there are plenty of people who don't vaccinate, is it unethical to prove that vaccines don't work?

"This law was necessary because a flood of lawsuits was threatening the very foundation of the vaccine program, and Congress feared that there would be no vaccine manufacturers left in the United States because liability concerns would drive them out."

So does it no interest you that the flood of lawsuits may be because there is a problem with vaccination per se?

"On the mortality chart wish they showed things like smallpox, polio etc. Vaccination is seriously non trivial especially in third world countries where, unfortunately, the anti vaccine cranks are creating doubts and confusion."

Burrahobbit maybe you should check out the happyness status of all those Indians who now have Bill Gates' new version of polio, twice as deadly since the vaccine campaign and a brand new name to boot.

Dr Whitaker brought the stupid, and much hilarity ensued.
The first thing I noticed about his chart was that it goes to 120 of 100 per 100. Which 3rd graders does Whitaker have on staff. Is one of them named Cartman, by any chance?

"He made the claim that almost no child was developmentally disabled 30 years ago"

Really? That's within memory of a lot of people. Me, for instance. I don't remember there being almost no developmentally disabled people in 1982.

My grandmother had two developmentally disabled cousins born in the 1880s. From her description, they may well have been autistic. My father had a developmentally disabled cousin born in the 40s.

I donate to a charity for developmentally disabled people in group homes, many of whom are in their fifties.

Did he really expect people to believe that claim?

What was that Mark Twain quote about extrapolation of data? How if we extrapolate the data from the rate of growth of the Mississippi Delta, in a few hundred years, the delta will be fully within the state of Nebraska?

I love the "improved sanitation" argument against the success of vaccines. It works so well for explaining why Somali cattle no longer suffer from rinderpest.

Katherine Lorraine, he also said that if you extrapolated into the past, that it was once over a million miles long.

@Old Rockin' Dave:

I was looking for the quote, but putting '"Mark Twain" + "Mississippi River" quote' in Google... yea... that don't work very well.

Also, are you indeed old and rockin'? Cause that's cool.

Assuming there aren't more than one Shawn Siegel prominently "researching" vaccines, the graph was made by this guy http://www.blogger.com/profile/18299865859313681027.
His qualifications seem to be 2 years of google-U, so don't be surprised by the quality of his junior thesis.

@ Katherine:

Adding "extrapolation" to the search brings it up readily.

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

From http://www.twainquotes.com/Mississippi.html

If I had been Dr N, I would have first noted to the audience that the moderator was indeed not at all moderate. If you have a debate, the moderator should not be party to one side and ESPECIALLY should not be the creator of a biased film that trumpets that one side's beliefs.

But then again, what do you expect from these people- sense and fairness? It's not gonna happen: their entire position is scaffolded upon half-truths, semantic tricks and crappy graphs that dynamically illustrate meaningless concepts pictorially.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
our very own Lawrence ( a/k/a Brian) went forth the battle other anti-vaccinationists- @AoA- to spectacular results: while Jake's post complains about LBRB's address, Lawrence gets to the heart of that issue.And beyond, i.e. AJW. Interestingly, they allowed his comments over several days.

Yeah among other things I don't buy, "there were almost no developmentally disabled children 30 years ago" is pretty high on the list. Anecdotally, in my cohort at my school district of ~50 kids, there was 1 who was classified then as "retarded" and I don't know what he specifically would be classified with now.

I guess by antivaccine standards, it used to be 2% Progress!

Chris @0357: It looks to me like somebody has fit an exponential to each of those curves separately, and belatedly noticed that the percentage of the population with some condition cannot exceed 100%. There is a well-known quote to the effect that anybody who thinks that exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a finite world is either an idiot or an economist. Dr. Whittaker, AFAIK, does not claim to be an economist.

As for why the axis goes to 120: That looks like a standard Stupid Excel Trick. Excel defaults to giving axes a larger range than needed to plot the data contained in the plot. It also explains why the projected points look exactly like the data: whoever produced the graph plotted the fit values as a function of time.

I first saw this graph just before I was going to bed at a much too late hour. It just smacked of being made up by someone who is incompetent.

I loved this so much! Kudos to Dr. N, and thanks for writing this up Orac. I'm sure Whittaker was dismayed when he realized that this "last minute substitution" was an incredibly sharp and knowledgeable speaker/debater. Wish I could have been there.

Here's the full schedule from the Freedom Fest:

http://freedomfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FF-2012-Agenda-Grid.p…

"Dr. Whitaker is also big among the “alternative medicine” crowd for his claims to be able to cure diabetes “naturally,” without food or drugs (of course!). In doing so, he claims that metformin doesn’t work, antibiotics don’t work (because, apparently, they don’t succeed in saving every diabetic foot) and that, in general, conventional medicine doesn’t work."

Too bad you missed Dr. Whitaker's Saturday, July 14th Schedule to catch his lecture "Heart Disease and Diabetes: More Effective, Less Expensive, Safer Therapies".

The Pulmonologist that Dr. Novella replaced is Dr. Jonathan Baktari, who runs "The Vaccine Center" in Las Vegas, which looks to be a "Travel Medicine Clinic" for vaccinations necessary for foreign travel, and for dispensing vaccines for college entry. It doesn't seem that he takes insurance for his college entry students, and there is no insurance coverage for vaccines required for travel. He's hardly an "expert" on vaccines...but he can read the Recommended Childhood and Adult Vaccine Schedules and the CDC Yellow Book:

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/yellowbook-2012-home.htm

"“He made the claim that almost no child was developmentally disabled 30 years ago”

Really. When my son was born 36 years ago, there were a slew of developmentally disabled kids. I was able to get a place him for him in an infant stimulation program (he was 14 months old), at a school for the severely physically handicapped...which he was. I opted for that program rather than other programs because he needed a lot of the stimulation offered at that program.

Poor baby flunked out of that program, as he was obviously profoundly mentally retarded as well. I visited a number of classrooms in a number of "special" day schools and was able to secure a pre-school program for him at the local AHRC chapter.

Too bad Whitaker wasn't with me when I visited the local warehouse/developmental center when I saw the locked wards where 3,000 children and adults resided. I then wrote an article for the regional newspaper about the deplorable conditions that existed there, when the State tried to avoid the Federal-court order to place these severely and profoundly disabled people in community based group homes, by tearing down the large institutions and building mini institutions on State land. (I got paid $ 100 for the article, which I promptly donated to the family of a young infant born with biliary atresia)

Another reason why the chart should not extrapolate to 100%. Don't these kooks ever pay attention to their own propaganda? I thought the antivaxers were winning! By 2030 no-one will be vaccinated and no-one will have autism!

Regarding the prevalence of autism 20-30 years ago:
we know that the current prevalence in adults of ASD is 1%, so the prevalence in kids a generation ago must have been that or even higher (some autistics may just have had developmental delay. We just were not identifying them properly.

Woo-meisters like debates:
the set-up enables them to manipulate data and people. Grand Poobah of Woo Null tells his enraptured audience that he won EVERY single debate he ever participated in and that now the Orthodoxy, Powers-Wot-B- whatever they call SBM these days, are frightened to debate him. Just like the media are frightened to explore the REAL issues that his 'network' steeps itself in ( actually his lead-in/logo says so).

Where would woo be without cheating? Manipulating data and conducting amateurish research are the pillars of woo, thus they are necessary in a debate and quoted ad infinitum. The Gish Gallop, flooding the debates with tons of material- related or not- to distract them, is a popular tactic; extraneous details are tossed into the mix and emotionally loaded speech is par for the course- histrionics keep the audience hyped up if they are unprepared. Linguistic tricks and *leading* language are common. Because woo has gone political ( I venture that Dr N's debate, sponsored by a rightist political movement, ran deep with this undercurrent), irrelevant details about "freedom" and "liberty" might pop up as well. They try to make the audience angered that they are being treated unfairly by 'the other guys' and thus, side with their woo-ful protectors.
Having a moderator that is either in-experienced or sides with you doesn't hurt.

Hilariously, commenters at RI who counter SBM use similar techniques to "bring the stupid"... I guess that they are capable of learning and emulating role models: unfortunately they've chosen the WRONG set.

Yeah, why should we let the Government make us get our kids vaccinated? They're our kids, after all.
And while we're at it, why should we let the Government tell us what side of the road to drive on? It's my car. My taxes paid for both sides of the road, didn't they? And if I get in an accident, it's my body, isn't it? And my kids too!

“First, parents must have the right to decide what is injected into their children. Second, laibility must be borne by the pharmaceutical companies.”

What is unscientific about this orac?

He didn't say it was unscientific because it isn't a matter of science; he said it was political and partially, factually incorrect. He explains this quite clearly in his post. Please read before commenting.

“However, at times he seemed to be calling for a randomized “vaxed vs. untaxed” study, because at one point he complained about studies not having placebo controls. Steve pointed out that such a study would be unethical.”

Why is this unethical orac, there are plenty of people who don’t vaccinate, is it unethical to prove that vaccines don’t work?

The ethics of a randomised vaccinated/unvaccinated study is explained quite well here: http://silencedbyageofautism.blogspot.com/2011/03/vaccinated-vs-unvacci… and explained numerous times here. You would also need to require citations for your claim that vaccines don't work as there are hundreds, if not thousands of studies and analyses that demonstrate quite definitively that vaccines do work.

“This law was necessary because a flood of lawsuits was threatening the very foundation of the vaccine program, and Congress feared that there would be no vaccine manufacturers left in the United States because liability concerns would drive them out.”

So does it no interest you that the flood of lawsuits may be because there is a problem with vaccination per se?

I guess your Google U edumacation is failing you miserably. The problem isn't with the vaccines; it's with the perception of them by parents and hysteria drummed up by lying, ignoramuses like Barbara Loe Fisher and Andrew Wakefield.

“On the mortality chart wish they showed things like smallpox, polio etc. Vaccination is seriously non trivial especially in third world countries where, unfortunately, the anti vaccine cranks are creating doubts and confusion.”

Burrahobbit maybe you should check out the happyness status of all those Indians who now have Bill Gates’ new version of polio, twice as deadly since the vaccine campaign and a brand new name to boot.

Again, please provide evidence of your drivelling claims.

Mu,

Shawn Siegel is likely the person who made this comment:: "Any vaccine is over vaccination" (http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2010/07/cdc-vaccine-recommendati…)

Puts things in perspective.

The data in those graphs are not based on CDC data. The CDC does not collect incidence data on autism (but likely the author doesn't understand the difference between incidence and prevalence anyway). The CDC also does not issue data annually. Instead data reports are every two years.

My guess looking at the graphs is that they used an exponential and just capped it off at 1. The approach to one is somewhat disjointed. A sigma function would have been more smooth.

““He made the claim that almost no child was developmentally disabled 30 years ago”

What a load of crap. I guess that's why they closed down all those institutions, no one to fill them? Begs the question of why they built them in the first place.

there are plenty of people who don’t vaccinate

Unfortunately for your purposes, "plenty" is not the same as "enough."

My mother-in-law worked at a state school for developmentally disabled children, although that's not the language that was used at the time. (It's one of the few that's actually still open today, though she doesn't work there anymore, having moved when my father-in-law was relocated by the military.) The place opened in 1902, specifically to treat the developmentally disabled, which is quite clear when you read their charter.

That's the South Dakota Developmental Center. I happened to see it a couple of day ago, though only in the distance; I was in town for a funeral. They were quite overcrowded when my mother-in-law worked there, but reforms have changed that -- the very same reforms that lilady was involved with.

Has Thingy returned under the new name 'Bouquet'?

Renate, I thought the same thing!

Is this some new antivaccine trope I haven't come across?

Bill Gates’ new version of polio, twice as deadly since the vaccine campaign and a brand new name to boot.

"Why is this unethical orac, there are plenty of people who don’t vaccinate, is it unethical to prove that vaccines don’t work?"

Its extremely unethical to have a randomized trial where some people are purposefully left susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases.

I realize that to a death worshiping Malthusian cultist like yourself, the prospect of someone else dying to a preventable disease is something that you'd pleasure yourself to as if it were actual pornography. However, any one with even the slightest bit of morality should recognize the problem with it.

Not to mention that the loss of a sufficient level of vaccination would destroy the shared benefit we all have from the whole thing and would actually put the rest of us at risk as well.

bouquet definitely had the distinct aroma of Thingy at first but I doubt they're one and the same. Thingy's too full of herself to change 'nyms, and she definitely knows how to blockquote.

So does it no interest you that the flood of lawsuits may be because there is a problem with vaccination per se?

The flood of lawsuits only shows that many parents perceive events to be vaccine-induced, not that vaccines actually cause such events.

Dr. Whitaker has weighed in on California AB 2109 and also *mentioned* his upcoming debate at the Freedom Fest:

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

I just posted there, but I'm stuck "in moderation".

Is this some new antivaccine trope I haven’t come across?

Bill Gates’ new version of polio, twice as deadly since the vaccine campaign and a brand new name to boot.

It's the same old non-polio AFP routine. The circulating reference appears to be to this.

Orac: "Again, Dr. Whitaker’s arguments were softball pitches, easily hit out of the ballpark as Prince Fielder hit balls out of the ballpark three days earlier in the pre-Allstar Game Home Run Derby"

The only problem with this is the propensity of antivaxers to keep recycling the same balls into play over and over and over again. You keep knocking 'em out of the park, your averages look great, you lead by an insumountable margin but your opponent is fanatically convinced that he's winning.

Speaking of which, I have no doubt that Whitaker and his fans are self-delusionally certain that he whupped Novella in the debate and that there was no answer for Whitaker's "100%" graph.

Been away a while, and wondered if the usual entertainment was still here. No (at least in this thread so far), but hey - we have a bouquet to brighten up the room! Where to begin, where to begin...

“First, parents must have the right to decide what is injected into their children. Second, laibility must be borne by the pharmaceutical companies.”

What is unscientific about this orac?

Uh, rights and liabilities have to do with law and politics, not science. Hope you weren't a library science major.

Why is this unethical orac, there are plenty of people who don’t vaccinate, is it unethical to prove that vaccines don’t work?

Did the word "randomized" not catch your attention there? This would involve not giving treatment to people who want it, and treating people who don't want it without informed consent. Get it now?

So does it no interest you that the flood of lawsuits may be because there is a problem with vaccination per se?

That's right, any time there's a lawsuit it proves there is a problem per se. So the next time someone sues the City of San Francisco for a fall on a cable car, it will prove that falling over turns you into a nymphomaniac. (
http://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/california/san-francisco/… )

Yes lilady he testified against AB 2109 for the Senate Health Committee. I lost track of the misstatements and lies about vaccines half-way through his testimony.

Dr. Whitaker has weighed in on California AB 2109 and also *mentioned* his upcoming debate at the Freedom Fest:

On his FB page, he only posted a picture of his "debate" with Dr. Novella, not a word about the content. I guess just showing up is good enough for the anti-vaccinistas.

@ Narad: Your link to that PubMed citations about NPAFP (Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis) has been *touted* on all the crank websites.

(At the risk of prompting the *SFB* Troll)...here's a complete article about NPAFP in India:

http://www.medicalchannel.pk/downloads/vol16/no3/03-CAUSES%20OF%20NON%2…

From Bouquet's post:

"However, at times he seemed to be calling for a randomized “vaxed vs. untaxed” study .

Uh, untaxed? Anybody but me notice what might be a "Freudian slip?"

Anyways, it was a standard joke in my manufacturing days that you draw your curve first, then plot your data - but don't try it on your peers, or they'll rip to shreds. Do it ONLY in reports to your boss's boss who's on some kind of tangent they read about somewhere but has no clue how stuff actually works - but does have an MBA. Hopefully it'll distract them/satisfy them long enough to buy you enough time to figure out what's really going on and actually fix it - or, if it's not feasible, that they'll forget about it and move on to the next fad.

Right. The anti-vaxxers and woo-meisters just luv hatin' on the Gates and their foundation: they're gotten a lot of mileage on the topic- more fodder for blog posts and rants.

All the more reason to support the Gates.

Dr. Whitaker has his own Facebook page and he has a picture of himself (only), taken during his debate with Dr. Novella:

http://www.facebook.com/WhitakerMD

Too bad I don't "do" Facebook

puppygood @439 AM, and anyone else who likes a light serving of math --

To my eyeball, it looks as if Whitaker fit a straight exponential to the points and "just assumed" that it would continue forever, which is ludicrous.

We would have looked ever-so-slightly less stupid if he'd fit a logistic function, or sigmoid to the data. But all it would have done is added a slight patina of mathematical respectability to a dumb, dumb argument.

Egads, in the 3:20 comment read "HE would have" instead of "WE would have".

I'm sure we all look stupid from time to time, but I hope never quite THAT stupid.

@ Science Mom: I see you *got there* first (Whitaker's Facebook page). No I am not Science Mom and I am not Orac, nor are they "lilady".

How anti-vax logic works...
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2673#comic
I really wish SMBC would devote a few panels specifically to the nuttiness that is anti-vax.

Not only are vaccines a giant conspiracy, so are numbers, a fact to be revealed in 2032, when 40% of males plus 20% of females equal 100% of the population.

Heh. Sadly, for some reason I didn't notice that little part of the graph. Perhaps I was too blinded by the sheer flaming stupid of the rest of the graph.

Hm, got crossed with the similar blue graph lines for "Gen'l" and "boys". As others have noted, the ratio of boys to girls flips drastically in coming years. It must be so, it says right here on this chart ...

btw, the chart also proves Young Earth Creation; the world was created in the year 2000.

Prove me wrong ;-)

here’s a complete article about NPAFP in India

Ah.... http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=F…

The actual site appears to have had some code injected.

@ Spectator:

Aha! That flipping ratio** ( of boys to girls) indeed is part of the conspiracy - much like the flipping of the geomagnetic poles that shall occur right. about. now.- in 2012- it will serve to confuse people- catch them of fguard. I have heard tell that the Great Reallignment itself will happen in 2032..... in Glastonbury.
Prove me wrong.

** which is flipping lunacy.

@ Narad: I just tried that link again...and it *works* for me ????

http://www.medicalchannel.pk/downloads/vol16/no3/03-CAUSES%20OF%20NON%2…

Oh, I'm sure it works. Do me a favor and look at the source. Check for a blob of seemingly random characters right at the bottom.

Check for a blob of seemingly random characters right at the bottom.

Sorry, the site, not the PDF. I'll check it out myself later.

GroovyKinda:

Well played, sir!

(You are dealing with a totally inept computer techie here, Narad)

I see no "blobs" at the bottom of the article. The source of the article is here:

http://www.medicalchannel.pk/

@DW - funny you should mention flipping of the magnetic poles. Someone close to me got into a tizzy about it after listening to late night talk radio (I think it was Coast to Coast) - and that was a couple years ago. Her head is usually screwed on tighter than many other people (including mine), but you never know.

Unfortunately at the time I didn't have much knowledge at hand, other than vaguely recalling from some science show that the "flip" had occurred several times before, based on geological evidence, without undue catastrophe to life, and that my only concern would be the danger to modern satellite telecommunications, etc. - and/or not being able to rely on a traditional magnetic compass.

Later looked into it further and found the actual process of "flipping" takes 1000 to 10,000 years - which is hopefully enough time for migratory birds, satellite engineers, etc.
to adapt.

But the real science of digging through rocks and measuring gradual changes in alignment of naturally occuring magnetic minerals is boring. All or nothing catastrophes make much better sound bites.

@ Infuriatingly Moderate:

As usual, woo-meisters and altie new agers take information based in reality and screw it up phenomenally,

Here is more crap**:
right now we are entering a new age that occurs only every 260K years - HOWEVER the New Golden Age itself will take about 20 years to REALLY get going when the planet's own heart chakra will open.. in Glastonbury. I have no idea why.

I have personally been told by a new ager told that the flipping of the magnetic poles will bring about many awful phenomena and widespread devastation so I'd better get prepared... but I forget what I had to do.. it must have been really flipping awful and I repressed it all...

-btw- since the hosts of the debate Orac visited are goldbugs and hoarders, I wonder of the New Golden Age will involve the Gold Standard?

** as imagined by a Ms Cooper

Please tell me somebody recorded this, and that it will be available on YouBook or FaceTube or the like?

I knew that Bill Gates was using vaccines to reduce the world's population by 90% at his reptilian masters' bidding. I didn't realize that he personally had genetically engineered polio virus so that it doesn't show up as polio in any diagnostic tests so it can be mislabeled as acute flaccid paralysis. Just wait until VAPP SP3.

Katherine Lorraine, I don't have the exact Twain quote, but that was the essence as best as I remember.
As for being old and rocking, I am like in the Jethro Tull song, "too old to rock and roll but ...too young to die." I am actually comfortably ensconced in middle age, but I do get to rock out now and then.

lilady, you can actually read the comments left at Dr. Whitaker's facebook page. Here is one of the comment:

I would have LOVED to have been there to watch you!!! I'll bet you were quite impressive...How'd it go? Did you get anywhere? Did you film it?

Any bets if he will post a video of that debate?

Glastonbury?
I think they mean Cardiff.
"The 21st century is when everything changes. And you've got to be ready."
--Capt. Jack Harkness

"...almost no child was developmentally disabled 30 years ago"
In 1880, no one was autistic, bipolar, schizophrenic, or a psychopath. Now millions of people fall into one of more of those diagnoses. The way they have mushroomed in the last 130 years means that, by my calculations, 189.3% of the world's population, and at least 89% of extraterrestrials, will fall under every diagnosis in the eventual release of DSM LXXII.
I love statistics. One day I will even figure out what they mean.

Denice Walter tells us "I have personally been told by a new ager told that the flipping of the magnetic poles will bring about many awful phenomena and widespread devastation so I’d better get prepared… "
It will be awful indeed. All the vril will fall right out of the entrance to the hollow Earth at the North Pole, with catastrophic consequences. The Loch Ness monster will swim over to Holy Loch, swallow a thermonuclear warhead, and swim through the underground ocean to blow itself up in Stonehenge. Unless we stop vaccinating now.

Yup, just as I expected; the anti-vaccinistas don't even care about his actual performance and information, just that he showed up and debated the big bad pharma dude. Between this blogpost and his less-than-stellar debating, I doubt he will feature the video (if there is one) on his FB page. Any takers?

I notice that the first graph was provided "courtesy of Shawn Siegel". Don't suppose that would be this handsome lad:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/18299865859313681027

He describes himself has having a "4 grandkids and a modicum of common sense". A modicum indeed.

Science Mom

I doubt he will feature the video (if there is one) on his FB page.

However, I am certain he will continue to use that stupid graph. Professional associations need to do more to purge their ranks of morons who somehow managed to memorize their way to a degree. This is a problem in engineering as well as medicine.

I look forward to usual anti-vaxx suspects flinging that graph around willy nilly. When they do, their attempts to answer pointed questions should be hilarious.

@Cynical Pediatrician: I suspect this is what DW was talking about.

http://www.dianacooper.com/keys-to-the-universe/cosmic-heart.php

@Old Rockin' Dave: You rock. Never mind scientific literature - Victorian literature (Bronte, Dickens, et. al.) made it very plain how "weird people" were actually treated. Plus the books that tried to turn suffering and death into a blessing ("Little Women", "Little House on the Prairie", et. al). They had no choice. In 2012 we do.

It saddens me that the generations who remember how the so-called "good old days" really weren't that good are dying out. Like my SO's grandmother, who died at 99 in 2001 and was totally PO'd at anyone who thought she lived through a "Golden Age".

Infuriating: I think it was Otto Bettman, as in Bettman Archive, who wrote a book called "The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible". And all too often they were. When we imagine ourselves in medieval society (for example), we always see ourselves as knights and ladies and romantic (Hah!) minstrels, not one of the large number of shit shovelers, dirt diggers, and drudges who provided their luxury. For most people for most of history, daily life was dirty, itchy, and smelly, with disease and death lurking around every corner. It just was part of life, just as you say.
When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Asperger's Syndrome, so no one knew what to make of me. I was just strange, and picked on (Ironically, I would probably have done well in the shtetls and ghettos of my ancestors - a perfect Talmud scholar, devoting all his time to studying and disputation.). Autism was pathetic kids who didn't talk or do anything much else, who had to wear helmets to keep them from bashing out their brains. Bruno Bettelheim authoritatively told us all that it was all due to "refrigerator mothers", but of course there were fewer vaccines then. I and many people I know were just odd pieces from some other jigsaw puzzle. We didn't fit in and we couldn't be thrown out, just in case we might fit somewhere.
I don't know what all this has to do with antivaxers and other woo-peddlers, but sometimes it does make Orac's posts more fun, doesn't it?

The source of the article is here

When clicking on that, I am directed to a Russian-language craptacular under the "free-mobi dot net" imprimatur.

@Infuriatingly Moderate

Please tell me that Diana Cooper site is a poe. Wait a minute - you can actually buy stuff there - surely it must be pure scam, nobody can believe that much bullshit and live.

Great essay today - I don't think I would have the patience to engage in a "debate" of this sort and my hat is off to anyone who can enter the fray and remain upright.
On a local, personal note: There is a pertussis outbreak in the Pacific Northwest. I got my booster shot last week & posted on Face Book urging my friends to do likewise. Thanks to my daughter-in-law who's expecting a baby soon and wants all who come in contact to be current in their vaccination status. The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) ran an editorial today: "Get a Shot, Save a Baby", urging all adults to be vaccinated.
Again, I've been enjoying Orac's old and new posts since I discovered this site a couple of weeks ago and I very much appreciate the erudite & educated people who also contribute comments.

@ Infuriatingly Moderate:

I swear! I get all sorts of bizarre clippings, books, articles... sometimes just a *name* because people around me know that I relish this nonsense... about 90% of them are on the same side of the fence that I am on- *however* a few are serious- like he who warned me about the great metamorphosis headed our way.
.
.the Diana Cooper stuff was from a few months ago: someone gave me a new agey magazine article clipping about her work and mission...reading through her website, suddenly a tune comes to mind: Mr Donovan Leitch waveringly intoning... "Hail, Atlantis!"

Cynical paediatrician
There are parts of cardiff where it's still 1980

Presumably they'll all be Elvis Impersonators too

Using this graph for year 8 Graph Interpretation Assessment, 'What's Wrong With This Graph?'. This is 120% GOLD!

@Infuriatingly Moderate - Mr Woo was "catching up" on his "Coast to Coast" (another protector of troof) and making it incredibly difficult for me to hear "Eureka" and "Perception" tonight while I was catching up on blogs and posts in the support group I run. He was sleeping through most of it. I was kind of happy for that - at least there was less of it for him to get wrapped up in, at least.

He listens to a regular gold-hawking radio show, too. They have assured him the economy is collapsing in three months for as long as I have known him and he is still believing them! You would think that after awhile he would notice that three months ended a long time ago. I don't mind as long as he doesn't spend too much on it, though.

What I do mind is all of the anxiety and upset it causes him. When the world is as evil as it can be portrayed in all of these alternative websites, radio programs, newsletters, etc., you end up feeling quite alone even if you do possess all that 'secret knowledge." You almost have to feel sorry for them. I know that it is a psychological trick to try to feel in control of an uncontrollable universe, but it almost seems like the more they try to imagine control of it the more they find imaginary dragons to slay in the first place.

Reality just seems a lot less frightening to me for some reason.

Denice Walter on Diana Cooper

reading through her website, suddenly a tune comes to mind: Mr Donovan Leitch waveringly intoning… “Hail, Atlantis!”

I was thinking more along the lines of Lambert Hendricks & Ross singing Twisted. I wonder if Ms Cooper refuses to ride on double decker buses because there is no driver on the top. I now what you get when you take every new age idiocy and toss them in a blender. My chakras are now thoroughly discombobulated.

Neq to this site and found this discussion very interesting.

Not as brilliant as so many of you but I couldn't help thinking about my mother herding all 7 of us to the community center in the 50's to get the little sugar cube that was to prevent polio.
Now polio is not so common anymore.

Measles, one by one we all got it. Not so common anymore. I still remember that awful smell of that pink stuff we got slathered with but can't remember the name.

I guess someone knew what they were doing.

Very much enjoy reading the discussion.

The first word was supposed to be "new". Fumble fingers.

Burrahobbit maybe you should check out the happyness status of all those Indians who now have Bill Gates’ new version of polio, twice as deadly since the vaccine campaign and a brand new name to boot.

Bouquet It so happens that I am Indian, and I live in India. I am yet to see "Bill gates new version of polio, twice as deadly...."

What I do see is a bunch of anti science idiots who are living in a comfortable, reasonably disease free world projecting their paranoid fears on the world with serious effects on the health of millions (see the effects of AIDS denialism in Southern Africa)

PS. How the hell do I italicise comment...

Burrahobbit

PS. How the hell do I italicise comment…

For a quote -
[blockquote]Stupid staement b the antivax loon[/blockquote]
Replace the [ with the less than symbol and ] with the greater than symbol.

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Thanks Militant Agnostic

seems to work

suddenly a tune comes to mind: Mr Donovan Leitch waveringly intoning… “Hail, Atlantis!”

You should be careful with this sort of thing, as you never know when you might run into someone who has put together a video of the song with footage from Spencer Tunick shoots and so forth.

There have been some vaccinated vs unvaccinated studies done. There's one quite old one I came across an account of recently, on malaria and typhus. The doctor leading the study was one Josef Mengele. Perhaps Bouquet could go look up that work first, before deciding that we should replicate it.

After an extensive search on U-Google I haven't been able to find any video of this debate. Did no-one film it? Those of us fighting in the trenches that are not scientists would have loved to have a video of this debate to refer anti-vaxers to. Hopefully someone did and it will show up some time soon.......please.

@ Redloh:

"Measles, one by one we all got it. Not so common anymore. I still remember that awful smell of that pink stuff we got slathered with but can’t remember the name."

Look up "Calamine" lotion :-)

There have been some vaccinated vs unvaccinated studies done. There’s one quite old one I came across an account of recently, on malaria and typhus. The doctor leading the study was one Josef Mengele. Perhaps Bouquet could go look up that work first, before deciding that we should replicate it.

I somehow doubt that bouquet even understands why "find a bunch of kids whose parents won't vaccinate 'em and a bunch of kids whose parents do vaccinate 'em and compare" would not be the randomized vax vs. unvax study that is being talked about.

Here's Orac's blog on the retrospective Vaccinated-vs-Unvaccinated study...the so-called "German Study":

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/03/11/for-the-anti-vaccinationis…

I do feel a bit sorry for Julian Whitaker though.

His situation brings to mind an ex-minor league pitcher who joins a carnival, going from town to town challenging the top local hitters with stunts and trickery. At one stop, he finds out the high schooler he was going to throw against couldn't make it, but a kindly stranger in town offers to fill in. The stranger turns out to be...Albert Pujols.

Ouch.

I was in Beantown yesterday at the MOS and Fenway for the Sox vs Sox game so I missed this post. Whitaker's a quack and I sincerely hope that Steve got through to the fence sitters and they got a good look at the woo surrounding them and said, "OMG, WTF?"

@ Mrs Woo:

The gold hawkers! Tell me about them! I follow them because I manage my own money and advise several older cousins ( my late father did this previously- I inherited the "job"): oddly enough, a few of he woo-meisters I survey also tell their covens to stock up on gold and silver. A trend-caster tells his followers to do similarly ( Gerald Celente)- some of this stuff veers off into contrarian theories of economics ( econo-woo) of which there is, unfortunately, an endless supply. I could go on but I am expected elsewhere presently.

of which there ARE, unfortunately, an endless supply...

@Roxee

As far as I know, no one recorded the debate, and they didn't ask Steve to sign a release that I saw.

"there is virtually no condition that 100% of the population will suffer from except for (eventually) death."

Errm...the common cold?

Gerald Celente drives me absolutely up the wall! Mr Woo, of course, is completely taken with the guy (after all, he predicted 9/11 - he says he did, so it must be true!) and is now convinced that the Euro will be dead tomorrow and the rest of the European union will dissolve into a mess that will emerge being led by a new Hitler at this point.

Oftentimes I can laugh it off, but when he listens to some of these people too late into the night, or they say things that are too frightening, he ends up with terrible anxiety worrying about how his loved ones will all survive and I get so angry at them. I can't figure out how many drink their own Kool-Aid vs. how many laugh all the way to the bank at the fact there are people out there in the world trusting enough to believe in them.

Orac,

According to Freedomfest.com the debate you so eloquently recounted here never happened:

"Dr. Julian Whitaker and Dr. Steven Novella (Yale) on “Vaccines: Good or Bad?” It would have been a good debate, but Dr. Novella was a “no show”!"

http://freedomfest.com/2011/2011/08/over-2300-attendees-celebrate-freed…

I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the copywriter on the website just had a misunderstanding regarding who didn't show up.

@PsyberDave - Or it could be a case of Libertarians being very "free" with the the truth.

OMG! They DID! Can't wait to see what kind of blogs that comment makes?

@PsyberDave

Really? That's some Chutzpah right there....

Well, I posted a comment on that article linking to the SBM blog article, and mentioning that even Dr. Whitaker said he debated with Dr. Novella on his Facebook page.

It looks like it may need to be approved. Perhaps some of you others have politely mentioned that the debate did occur.

My comment was still in moderation when I last looked.

So is mine. Perhaps we should tell them that even Dr. Shermer does not believe libertarianism means you ignore the data.

I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the copywriter on the website just had a misunderstanding regarding who didn’t show up.

That's awfully generous of you but how can you not know that a debate happened? Although we shall see if they make a correction very soon.

@chris

So is mine. Perhaps we should tell them that even Dr. Shermer does not believe libertarianism means you ignore the data.</blockquote

Except apparently when it shows that deregulation causes a financial crisis.

Blockquote Fail

should have been

So is mine. Perhaps we should tell them that even Dr. Shermer does not believe libertarianism means you ignore the data.

Except apparently when it shows that deregulation causes a financial crisis.

I hope I have not italicized the thread

My take on the "no show" is that to Freedomfest Dr. Whitaker "won" the debate, not that it did not happen.

They closed the comments on that article. I have a feeling that they didn't not like being corrected.

According to Freedomfest.com the debate you so eloquently recounted here never happened:

“Dr. Julian Whitaker and Dr. Steven Novella (Yale) on “Vaccines: Good or Bad?” It would have been a good debate, but Dr. Novella was a “no show”!”

That was last year's FreedomFest. Look at the dates on the top. Interestingly, I wonder now if they tried to get Steve last year; I'll have to ask him.

I see the comments being open, but 0 made?

Odd, if Dr. Novella had been invited to debate Dr. Whitaker last year, you would think he would know about Whitaker.

Sorry, for the error. Though it is odd.

Have you guys checked Whitaker's Facebook page. He's "bought it big time", now that some posters have linked to Orac's blog and some of the RI Regulars are posting...

http://www.facebook.com/WhitakerMD

@ Mrs Woo:

Celente is a piece of work: he has often appeared on the Progressive Radio Network as a guest of the Idiot-in-Charge- who since 2008 has also become as economic expert.

Celente has been predicting hyperinflation and total collapse *just around the bend* for years now. Both of these geniuses encourage people to take money out of banks, stocks, bonds and other reasonable investments and talk up precious metals and rural land.

I'm not an economist but I have had formal studies and come from a family that *does* this forever ( 2 countries) and I've had to manage money since my father became ill ( 2000). I know that it's hard work and lots of study: to make moderate gains, you need to be cautious, do research and realise that it doesn't happen overnight- more like decades.

Medico-woo is paralleled by econo-woo: and their ideas make it all sound so easy. It's as unrealistic as some of the woo treatments for serious health conditions discussed by Orac AND it similarly manipulates the vulnerable as it capitalises on fear. During the lows of 2009, I heard advice that, if followed ( "get out of stocks, bonds, banks,; buy gold and silver"), would have lost people real money - stocks bounced back ( even a dead cat bounces if dropped from a high enough place) ; altho' I trembled and quaked as libor and vix rose through the roof ( Fall 2008 ) I hung on and everything came back with gains. I did the opposite of what these 'experts' were telling people: my cousin got out and has since lost the equivalent of a year's salary because she sold at the lows ( she had a similar growth fund to mine/ different company).

These people are grandiose and believe their own press. If Celente were correct and did really have the inside track, why isn't he a billionaire?

Sweet Jeez...I just posted on Dr. Whitaker's website and it got through:

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

lilady,

Did you look at his online store? He sells almost as much crap as Mercola.

I don't know one legit doctor anywhere who has a commercial website or sells his own branded line of supplements. Yet every day on these boards we find quacks doing just that.

I hope they don't delete your post and that others echo your comments. You were very polite and diplomatic.

On his Facebook page the first half of the comments about the debate are ass-kissing "you go Dr. J" until the tone suddenly, and dramatically shifts.

I've been following his Facebook page and he has gotten a whole lotta grief...unfortunately I don't "do" Facebook.

Why don't you comment on his website...I'll know you got past "moderation" if you post using "Marc" as your 'nym.

(It is so tempting to dish out the snark...but I'll hold off...for now).

MSII, why did I hear you read the last few words of your post in Terry Jones' voice? :-)

Mr. Creosote? Which Python routine are you referring to?

I saw Terry Jones live once at the Montreal comedy festival. His act culminated with him throwing real fish (dead) into the audience. I'll never forget that.

I saw Eric Idle live too, more recently. I'm a major MP fans, like all self-respecting geeks.

If I posted I'd love to confront him about his anti-psychiatry work with the $cientology front group CCHR. They have a museum on Hollywood Blvd. in LA called "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death."

I don't know enough about the vaccine controversy to post.

And as a supporter of Burzynski I'm sure he'd love to see my full screen name! (I should change that now--the real MS hasn't been around for months and I signed up here in the throes of his threatening days. I was really hoping to draw him out, as juvenile as that sounds.)

@Denice & Mrs. Woo
CBC Radio has a summer season show called The Invisible Hand

For their second episode the looked at the gold standard and they asked economists which would be better have in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse - Gold or Chickens - the economists all chose chickens. Here is a link to the podcast.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/invisiblehand_20120704_53131.mp3

The collapse of major currencies seems to be predicted as often as the Second Coming/Rapture or the demise of the Canadian Football League. At least Harold Camping had the good sense to quit after being wrong for the umpteenth time.

@Marc Stephens Is Insane

I should change that now–the real MS hasn’t been around for months and I signed up here in the throes of his threatening days. I was really hoping to draw him out, as juvenile as that sounds.

I think it's a great nym. It serves as a constant reminder. Also, for the uninitiated it may encourage further investigation.

@ Militant Agnostic:

Unfortunately, those I survey revel i providing bad economic information as well as bad medical information. I have also heard/ read loyal followers ask for specific advice about investment, where to move, what business to start...pathetic.

@ iilady:
I couldn't get to the comments at his site: it just stopped at "3 comments"; could you provide a synopsis, svp?
however, the Facebook ones were great! Imagine that! Rene and Lord D duet!

@Militant Agnostic - that's great, I've got chickens! However, the woman interviewed is wrong - chickens are lousy for gardens. You are better off with guineas, and the best idea are ducks and geese for your garden - they are less likely to dig up plants and eat weeds once your garden plants are established. My chickens killed one of my scented miniature roses that I planted this spring - in less than two weeks.

@Denice - drives me crazy - hubby is inheriting money and trying to figure out which kind of farming to get into since we'll have to be entirely self-sufficient and work every day to not starve to death and support his entire family. With social security disappearing with the pending economic collapse and money being worthless, we need to have "other options" to not starve to death. To temper his craziness I'm attempting to get him to invest the money into land to lease to others for farming, because he will then make enough on the leases to make the difference between current income and what income will be with social security for both of us. Then he has it as a fallback if the world economy does collapse, but has a more reasonable option if life continues as normal.

@MSII - I like it just because it reminds me of all the craziness that happened with that. It is especially good to realize exactly how off the wall crazy some alt-med supporters can be. Legal threats with no basis, etc. - I still end up wondering if he was originally sic'd on bloggers by Dr. B or just took it upon himself. Would be wonderful to know that answer one day!

@ Denice Walter: I just went to Whitaker's blog and now there are 5 comments...the latest one is from one of his fans. Try this..

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

I saw the dynamic duo Rene and His Lordship...simply brilliant.

I've just posted another comment Denice, you're going to like it.

@ lilady:
That worked! . FIrst Dr N @ Bally, now he gets it at home on Facebook and his website. Woo hoo.

@ Mrs Woo:

I hear/ read so much self-sufficiency/ sustainablity nonsense; a common thread- GMO crops will take over so get back to natural products AND they just happen to sell 'heritage' or 'heirloom' seeds ( Adams) or products for dealing with disaster ( trusty flashlights; also Adams) . First scare them, then sell them.

Usually those who promote scenarios like this either sell products ( including books about it) or are trying to make a name by out-guessing all of the real economists out there- it's like woo-meisters: they know more about medicine than REAL doctors and more about psychology than REAL psychologists. These guys know more about the economy.

The number one rule for all investors is DIVERSIFICATION- don't have all of your eggs in one basket ( oh... that saying may be literally true as well as figuratively in your case).E.g. have money in banks, stocks, bonds, funds as well as real estate. Within stocks ( or bonds) there should be further diversification: suppose you buy all bank stocks and then there's a banking crisis? Thus, more than one sector/ industry. You invest in things that people use that withstand economic tides - people use certain products even in hard times. So you invest in a range that encompasses good times and bad. You also diversify by level of risk ( low to high) and locality- e.g. more than one country.

General information like this is available via financial television and books by reasonable people, i.e. not doom sayers. Read columns from someone like Paul Krugman.

MSII: I was actually thinking of the narration of the middle of the Sir Robin scene on the MPATHG record...

Yes, I'm at THAT level of MP geekery. You should have seen me at the original Broadway run of "Spamalot."

Well, our chickens definitely aren't money-makers. I don't travel well or often, so getting the eggs to a place where I could sell them for a reasonable price to cover expenses isn't happening. Instead I sell them at church for enough to cover the cost of the supplemental feed so the birds at least "pay their own way." Our flock is maybe 30 total birds including the guinea fowl. :)

What all of this does is prey on fears and uncertainty and the very human desire for control (even if there is no real way to have that control). The more you increase the fear, the bigger your sales are. I often wonder if the people making money off of all of this believe it, as well, or if it is nothing but a type of marketing scheme to them in the first place. When Mr Woo is laying awake at night trying to figure out how to afford gas and what to pay for it with when the dollar no longer exists and how he will function if he cannot have gasoline for a tractor to be able to plow, etc., and/or to get to town to buy what we can't make for ourselves here I get so angry that he listened to it in the first place. Can't get him to quit because he has listened to so many of them (and they all reference each other, making all of them look more "legitimate") that he has been convinced their spin is reality and he and only those who have listened to them and believe have this secret knowledge that our government is actually going to go down in flames and there will only be anarchy left.

At the same time, almost all great civilizations have had a collapse. Still, with history to teach us and a bit more knowledge, I suspect it is actually in all leaders' best interest to keep their economies as stable as possible and maintain order. Tanking the economy on purpose to grab power makes no sense to anyone with a rational mind. This is explained away, of course, by the money-woo people with the whole "Illuminati/Bilderberger conspiracy" thing where there are a small number of families who want all of the wealth and power of the world for themselves and have plans to kill a large percentage of the population and enslave the rest. The fact that such a thing will allow them to grow no more wealth and reduce consumers to sell things to just doesn't stand up as an argument to Mr Woo for some reason (or the fact that if someone was that power-hungry and money-grubbing they would have a hard time trusting anyone else to help them take over the world in the first place - basic human nature).

I suspect the best I will get him to do is to sink it into acreage. My big worry is keeping him from buying everything for a farm, because I really don't believe he has any clue how much work there really would be in cattle ranching. He's just guessing from various things he has heard and seen over the years from other families actually doing it. It's like people who believe they can know everything a doctor does from Google U - when you don't know enough, anything looks "easy."

@ Mrs Woo:

IIRC, Mr Woo is trained in a profession that is necessary and usually reasonably well paid .He has thus, a better chance than most as the population ages. Nurses perform all sorts of tasks and work in many diverse situations. Training in new areas is relatively easy to access for them.
Ask lilady for details.

Even if there is 'total collapse', his services would certainly be important. I wouldn't sink all my money in land, what if *less* people rather than more, want to farm? Young people are fleeing to the cities. If there is a crisis, could people *afford* beef?

I just posted on Dr. W's website. Nothing about vaccines, I just questioned his credibility vis-a-vis $cientology and the anti-psychiatry movement.

I bet my post gets deleted.

I'm going to post more links to what his organization CCHR has done to enable a child molester in Australia.The fact that Eastgate "got away with it" is a travesty of justice in general and a black mark on the face of the Australian judicial system. And Whitaker endorses these criminals.

For anyone wondering who Jan Eastgate is, here's a link to Tony Ortega's anti-$cientology blog at The Village Voice. It does to $cientology what Orac does here to quack medicine. And the cult member sockpuppets who post there with their arguments are exactly the same as the alties who post here. They even use the same methods and tactics of argument.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/06/jan_eastgate.php

Dr. Whitaker replied directly to me and I have posted a rather long comment replying to him, about the VAERS reporting system and the real time reporting on the Vaccine Safety Datalink database. I'm stuck in moderation.

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

Can anyone preserve the comments on Whitaker's blog..."screen shots" perhaps...in case the blog or my comments "disappear"?

MSII:

On his Facebook page the first half of the comments about the debate are ass-kissing “you go Dr. J” until the tone suddenly, and dramatically shifts.

His Facebook article about debating Dr. Novella has been deleted. He left in the article where he says he will debate Dr. Novella, and it only has the fawning comments from his admirers.

Dr. Novell has explained what happened last year on his blog. It seems that the Freedom Fest "organizers" watied until the last minute to contact him with details. Because "Freedom" means not planning for someone else's schedule.

lilady,

I posted three nasty comments about the doctor's beliefs, and maybe some of his supporters will see what he's really all about. I'll take a screenshot because I'm sure my posts will be deleted.

I also posted on the Village Voice's blog encouraging others, especially all the ex-$cientologists who have been hurt to post as well. Should be fun to watch over the next few hours.

Ha ha! He blew me off! Told me to stay on topic about vaccine injuries. I can't believe none of my comments went into moderation; I've never posted there before.

I have a screen shot up to 12:30 p.m. ET. We'll see when the Village Voice crowd starts posting what happens.

lilady,

You're out of moderation hell chez Whitaker.

@ Marc...I saw your comments. You say you are not to certain about arguing the merits of vaccines.

Please, be my guest, to cut and paste any of my comments that have appeared on RI or on this other site that I post on...to post on Whitaker's blog. (Just leave off the commentary about my/your public health experience) :-)

http://shotofprevention.com/2012/07/13/so-much-more-than-just-the-histo…

@Denice - Mr Woo is an LPN, not an RN, and in his mid-60s. He raised four sons with no child support so never had a great deal of money for investment. He has a few investments here and there, but none that will make a regular income that he is comfortable with and, of course, since he is told they will all be worthless, is planning for them to be useless. Since he listens to finance woo, the only "real" things he can be sure will "save" his money is property ownership and precious metals. If he gets the "right kind" of land around here (well fenced, cleared with water available) it will usually be in demand for farm lease, either as crop land or cattle land. Crop land actually pays higher lease rates. No matter how bad things get, people will always need to eat. Now, whether they're eating cheap bread or range-fed beef or soybean meal depends on how poor they are.

I would love to talk him into reasonable investment. He is so far down the rabbit hole, though, I think that if I can get him to buy leaseable land at least he can have an income even if he chooses not to work it (when life continues to go on and governments continue to try to control their economies). It will maintain a real value based on the value of the dollar pretty much, and nothing else (unless a lot of suburbanization moves this way from Kansas City, about an hour away, at which point its value would increase).

I would love to have it in a diversified well-managed portfolio, but it's unlikely if not impossible to change Mr Woo's anxiety at this point. He has listened to too much from Gerald Celente, Alex Jones and the precious metals shills...

lilady,

I'm sure I'm about to be banned over Dr. Whitaker's happy little self-serving website, but if not I'll pull out some nuggets of your wisdom and post them later this afternoon.

It's not that I don't believe in the merits of vaccination, I'm just nowhere near as knowledgeable, qualified or articulate as you and others here to argue on the subject.

I was waiting for the news on TV last night and switched over, only to find the new Jenny McCarthy reality show hadn't ended yet. Even though I only had to wait 2 minutes, I couldn't stand the sight of her (and speaking as a fully-functioning, red-blooded heterosexual male, that says a lot!)

Has anyone read the Playboy cover story? She claims she only agreed to pose nude in order to further her "medical" agenda. Plus it's a massive stroke to her precious little ego.

I did think she was super hot a couple of years ago on Two And A Half Men. Chuck Lorre really likes casting nutbars (beside Sheen): he had Jenny on TAAHM, and Mayim Bialik on TBBT. Is there an anti-vaxxer in the cast of Mike & Molly?

@ Mrs Woo:

Well, you have a good head on your shoulders and will probably manage despite his ideas. Best wishes to you.

Thank you, Denice. I really appreciated your input and just getting to vent. In a weird way, if you're logical and rational, constantly having these alternative viewpoints shared and declared "truth" repeatedly feels almost crazy-making. I think the reason I got to a point where I interact so much here is that it kind of reassures me that my rational thinking is not what is crazy in this house.

I just keep pondering a way to maybe help him let go of a little of this here and there when I can, and try to figure out how to protect him from this as much as I can. I would love to have a day when he decides that these people are all self-serving mouthpieces with no real knowledge and can quit listening. The reduced stress would be such a good thing for him.

Please, please, please tell me...that some one is preserving all the comments that I posted on Whitaker's blog...and his replies.

My last comment go "through" where I lambasted him about the ridiculous charts he used during his debate with Dr. Novella.

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

I made a big oops when I said:

is Facebook article about debating Dr. Novella has been deleted. He left in the article where he says he will debate Dr. Novella, and it only has the fawning comments from his admirers.

It is still there, it just moved to the right side of the page. I apologize. I am going to blame the old laptop I use outside of the house.

As predicted, all my comments on Whitaker's site have been removed.

My minions at the Village Voice are starting to treat Dr. W. to some insolence of their own. I'd suggest subscribing via e-mail or RSS because those comments will eventually come down.

I "expanded" the comments on Whitaker's Facebook page and they are all still there...62 of them...including Rene's and Lord Draconis'...and some other "choice" ones, as well.

http://www.facebook.com/WhitakerMD

In case any of you were wondering where "Augustine" has been been...this is what he just posted at Whitaker's blog:

Augustine

Dr. Whitaker,
Lilady is a vitriolic hateful skeptic who seeks to make fun and insult you. She does not come in earnest. She has a history or cyberstalking anyone who comes in her path. She is a pro mass vaccination ideologue.

She is a groupie of self aggrandizing David Gorski, MD who has continually insulted you.

(I wouldn't "touch" that comment with a twenty-foot pole)

lilady,

Do you have a "friend" named Augustine? He or she is looking for you over at Dr. W's site.You've been outed...oh noes! You're a proponent of mass vaccination!

Marc, I have a comment here on RI "in moderation" about Augie. I'm not touching that troll's comment with a twenty-foot pole. I'd appreciate it, if you just ignore my personal stalking troll, as well.

lilady 1:53 pm

Please, please, please tell me…that some one is preserving all the comments that I posted on Whitaker’s blog…and his replies.

Done. You can use "Save page as" on your browser to save the webpage (easiest) or for a screenshot of the page, press Shift + Print Screen and paste the image into paint/document.

D'oh Sauceress...you are communicating with me...an absolute idiot when it comes to anything about computer functions. (Ask "Chris" how long it took me to figure out how to link to an article)

Dr. Whitaker has finally made a statement about the debate with Dr. Novella and an "explanation" about those *charts*...enjoy.

http://www.drwhitaker.com/new-legislation-seriously-misleads-parents-ab…

(Someone please do a screenshot!!!) Thanks.

Which internet browser do you use lilady?

Sauceress...I use the latest version of Mozilla Firefox.

Oops, within the last five minutes, after his *swan song* about the debate and charts, Dr. Whitaker closed down his blog for additional comments....damn it.

Find some bare space on any webpage and click right hand mouse button on it. Choose "Save as..." using Chrome or "Save page as.." using Firefox. I don't know but expect similar with IE.

Here's Whitaker's latest response:

I realize that this entire discussion is one that's fraught with opinions and emotions--and I thank those of you who respectfully cited your views. But comments that did not stick to the discussion at hand, or included profanity, have been removed since that's not within the climate of this blog.

Now, for everyone here who has inquired about the “Projection: Autism Incidence in US Children” graph I cited in my debate with Steven Novella, MD, at FreedomFest, here's my response:

I understand that the projected rate of 100 percent seems unreasonable. However, the graph is based on estimated autism rates of 1 in 5,000 in 1982 (a rough estimate based on the fact autism rates were not routinely recorded back then) and 1 in 91 in 2009 http://pediatrics.aappublicati..., for an average yearly increase of about 14 percent. (Current statistics reveal that 1 in 88 children are now affected. http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/auti...

The graph reflects the assumption that the current rate of autism diagnoses continues in this upward trend unabated. According to these numbers, autism spectrum disorder will saturate the pediatric population by 2040. Anyone who does the math will come to the same conclusion.

Again, the fact that it goes to 100 percent is certainly alarming and hard to believe. Confounding factors include the likelihood that not all children will be vaccinated, the potential for changes in autism diagnostic parameters, and the possibility that rates of increase will decline. (On the other hand, rates may also increase.)

For those who take issue with this projection, check the relevant data I’ve provided and do your own projection.

Once again, I wanted to thank everyone who participated in this spirited discussion.

Best of health to each of you,
Dr. Whitaker

What a load of crap. Clearly this guy does not understand the nuance needed to produce proper projections.
His response translates to 'it went up so it'll keep going up until it's really high! It might not be perfect but if you want a better one go do it yourself.'

He clearly does not understand the huge problems with that graph. It is not that it goes to 100% that the only bit that is unbelievable, the fact that it shows all children being autistic before all of the girls become autistic.

I wonder if he will answer the question of who gets to pick up the bill for sick kids if the parents get a vaccine exemption.

@ AdamG

Julian Whitaker - ignorant moron and proud of it.

@ AdamG:
He cites a scare-mongering graph to please the
woo-bent then, when he gets called on it, maintains that it's hard to believe. And closes down criticism simultaneously.
Game, set, match.

Game, set, match.

Yes, clearly much was learned from this "spirited discussion"

Dr. Whitaker has finally made a statement about the debate with Dr. Novella and an “explanation” about those *charts*…enjoy.

Oh my, that's just so precious. I feel some RI coming on.

OT
Not sure if this has already posted, but I wanted to share a link I picked up over at the "Loosing in the Lucky Country" Skeptics site.

Parents make a dash for jab cash

Opponents to childhood vaccines say it is unfair to be denied Federal Government cash because of their beliefs, and are exploiting a loophole to claim more than $2000 a child after registering as "conscientious objectors"

I thought all the comments slamming these sleazy antivaxxers were worth reading to brighten up one's day.

@lilady: Oh, little Augie is over there? Wish I'd seen that earlier - I would have gone right over there and asked him if he'd learned anything...(evil grin..)

Well, perhaps we all shouldn't rest upon our laurels YET...
supposedly alternative media ( Info Wars, Natural News) has *blown the lid off* Big Pharma's bribery network ( @ Natural News, today) and whistle blowers *par excellence* Gary Null and Steve Kohn ( David Lewis' BFF) are revealing the details of the FDA's surveillance of scientists ( @Progressive Radio Network)- their investigation has gone viral....

I hope this won't lead to a cut in this year's bonus.F@ck!
Where's that grey ops fellow, now that we NEED him?

@DW - I feel so sorry for my primary care physician - I'm pretty sure that no one has been telling him about this. He doesn't even drive a nice car (he explains that it comes from putting kids through college and the type of doctor he chose to be - family physician as to why he doesn't drive BMWs, etc.). He volunteers once a week at a free clinic and two different two-week intervals overseas.

They're missing a huge market here in rural Missouri. I know they aren't "reaching" him - every single medication I get is generic!

Wow - maybe I should alert Lord Draconis?

Hm. Propublica.com shows a whopping $10.00 for our esteemed host. I'm really worried about his bias now.

Dr. Whitaker did shut down comments about the debate debacle, but he didn't shut down the other THREE articles on his blog, that I commented on...

http://www.drwhitaker.com/hpv-doesnt-require-yet-another-mandated-vacci…

http://www.drwhitaker.com/the-untold-truth-about-vaccines-and-children

http://www.drwhitaker.com/a-new-study-concludes-shingles-vaccine-is-saf…

Enough RI for you, Science Mom?

@ MI Dawn: I'm so glad that you didn't dish out the snark at Augie. I just *knew* the little b*sta*rd has been lurking here for months, waiting to stalk me on another blog.

@ Sauceress: Conscientious Objectors? Is that like the Conscientious Objectors that refused to be drafted...then wanted to claim benefits under the G.I. Bill, after World War II?

lilady
One of my favourite comments there was from:
Show Me The Money of Brisbane (Posted at 11:06 PM July 14, 2012)

I am an objector to all Family Incentive Payments - I don't have a child so I feel like I am being unfairly punished. I would like to know where I can get my $2000++ for objecting to the Government forcing me to have a child. Thank you.

Stupid government. I am in full favor of firing everyone in washington and replacing them with vultures. At least the vultures look better, smell better, and can make better decisions for freedom. Then again we have a few vultures in washington already.

I did not write this post, just by the by, and I have the static IP to prove it.

Nor the one stamped 9:45 pm.

@ Sauceress: Good grief, I hope the Government Incentive doesn't encourage "Show Me the Money" to breed. Think of the gene pool, if these conscientious objectors actually decide to have a child...heh...heh.

Would someone please give me a two-sentence summary of who or what an Augustine is? As a relative newbie I don't think I've ever encountered any posts from that 'nym. I could use the search box and go back and reach older posts and figure it out myself, but it would be so much easier if someone else would do it for me... :-)

Looks that moronic racist Ham from Dismal Seepage is impersonating Narad.

It does go to further highlight the robustness of the system, I suppose.

The "real" Narad:

You mean someone posts under your 'nym and makes you look crazy? Can't this blog platform prevent that, by requiring unique user names? Like once someone uses Narad no one else can ever use it. They'd have to use Narad2 or something.Or just use "guest" or "anonymous". That would protect the first person to "register" a 'nym.

It's sickening that someone would do that. It makes all posts suspect of not being genuine.

Are you really in Canada? Care to narrow that down? We might be neighbours (with a "u"!)!

I thInk I've taken care of the problem for now. Will monitor.

It was Medicien Man/Dr. Smart again.

MSII, you can Augustine in action here. He is often called "Little Augie" due to his juvenile behavior. He seems to be obsessed with transgendered people. We have no idea why.

[blockquote]I understand that the projected rate of 100 percent seems unreasonable. However, the graph is based on estimated autism rates of 1 in 5,000 in 1982 (a rough estimate based on the fact autism rates were not routinely recorded back then) and 1 in 91 in 2009 http://pediatrics.aappublicati…, for an average yearly increase of about 14 percent. (Current statistics reveal that 1 in 88 children are now affected. http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/auti…[/blockquote]

So, he's basing his graphs on an 'estimated' autism rate - because there wasn't hard data.

That's textbook stupid right there.

...and someday I'll get my text right.

But today isn't my day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.

MSII, this thread has some wondrous bits with Little Augie's transgender obsession.

Wow--thanks for those Auggie links. That's one big can of mixed nuts...

Marc...You just got a small taste of Augie and the Pothead Troll.

You really need to get up to speed here, about the sockies, the trolls and other assorted characters :-)

One thing I've learned here in a few months, sort of covers everything I seen:

It's a big, strange world out there with a lot of different people.

We should do some kind of mock awards presentation once a year. The Astra Star Child Strangest Thread, Best Use of All Caps in a Spittle-Filled Screed, The Hulda Clark Humanitarian Award for Most Useless Electronic Gimmick, The John Of God Award for Original Screenplay for a Comedy or Fantasy, and of course The Marc Stephens "You Can't Say That On The Internet" Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Bullying.

We could also include the The Silliest Graph. This year's winner would be Shawn Siegel for creating the graph, and Dr. Whitaker not understanding that if every kid is autistic by a certain year, then the 100% intercept for the girls would not come several years later!

Another contender would be Obomsawin.

That would be Best Use of Graphics or Visuals to Justify Ludicrous Claims

The Eric Merola Visual Achievement Award for Commercial That Looks Most Like A Documentary

The Joe Mercola Online Merchandising Pinnacle Award for Most Products Sold at a Website

The Jim Humble Innovation Prize for Most Misused Household Cleanser in the Quest To Heal

The Jim Sheridan Holy Cross for Best Exploitation of Religion to Promote a Cure

I could go on...

The Mark and David Geier Family Trust Endowment for Best Actor in a Supporting Role

The Jenny McCarthy Golden Bust for Least Significant Actor Stirring Up Vaccine Hysteria (Rob Schneider has already won this year)

The Mayim Bialik Post Graduate Scholarship for Having Beliefs that Most Conflict with Science Education

The Gary Null Legend Award for Most Ironic Name

The Mike Adams Siver Screen Award for Sensationalistic Website of the Year

The Jake Crosby Rising Star Award for Nerwcomer Under 25 of The Year

The Max Gerson/Starbucks People's Choice Award for Most Imaginative Use of Coffee

On the topic of doctors with strange Libertarian beliefs, I just heard from a friend that one of his high school friends from the small Texas town on the Gulf Coast where they grew up (near where she still lives) is suing her doctor because he had been ranting to someone else about Obamacare and how he wasn't going to make as much money because of it, then when she told him she wasn't going to have health insurance for a month because she's changing jobs and her new job doesn't start until a month after her last day of the previous job, he allegedly flips out and says he can no longer have her as a patient because she's going to be temporarily a dirty jobless person or something. She says he actually told her "we don't serve your kind here" or words to that effect (these are two white people, BTW).

So the friend-of-a-friend wrote down everything he said and called a couple of lawyers and also found another doctor right away. It strikes me as amazingly unprofessional for a doctor to be parading his political beliefs in the office like that, but this is rural Texas, so not completely unexpected.

The only explanation I could think of for refusing a patient and then getting into a huge argument with them for not being employed for a month, is that maybe with the recession going on as long as it has, and people being out of work and living in their cars, etc., that if you're the type of "up from your bootstraps" person who blames others for their misfortunes, eventually the cognitive dissonance is going to grow to the point where you either have to a) start showing some compassion for the less fortunate, or b) double down on the Tea Party Kool-Aid and start looking for traitors and freeloaders around every corner.

@Jake - the ridiculousness of that is that she said she as going to be without insurance for one month. Being a cash payment for a month is not a big deal. Yes, there's the possibility of needing one doctor's appointment or having an emergency that you might have to pay off (and that is a scary thought), but many get by a lot longer as cash pay only without it being a big deal. My doctor's office gives cash patients a discount if they pay their entire bill at time of service because they save money with cash vs. insured patients because of the reduced cost of processing the paperwork.

Sometimes I suspect that libertarians come from people who only believe they have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. If you've ever had to choose between unemployment vs. working two jobs to make ends meet and leaving your too young to babysit themselves children at home alone and worry about whether or not you'll lose them to social services and get through it, you still learn from that experience that sometimes bad things happen to perfectly good people and that there is more than temporary circumstance that measures a person's worth.

Maybe the lawsuit will wake him up a little.

Lilady, MSII, Augustine has been posting a lot over at ERV

Another poster seems obsessed with polio like symptoms in India, I wonder who that could be?

OT but I must say it is very refreshing coming here and not having my intelligence insulted by the likes of Augie, Dr Smart or crazy thingy. This new platform is great :)

It's good to see that science based people don't shy away from a debate with quack&woo – I wish climate scientists would the same braveness and not chicken out of similar debates on anthropogenic global warming.