Science is (Not) Science.

A rather lengthy but worthwhile excerpt from Jackson Lear's new article at The Nation on Sam Harris' latest book:

Though they often softened their claims with Christian rhetoric, positivists assumed that science was also the only sure guide to morality, and the only firm basis for civilization. As their critics began to realize, positivists had abandoned the provisionality of science’s experimental outlook by transforming science from a method into a metaphysic, a source of absolute certainty. Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the “fit” and the sterilization or elimination of the “unfit.”

Every schoolkid knows about what happened next: the catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the systematic slaughter of innocents on an unprecedented scale, the proliferation of unimaginably destructive weapons, brushfire wars on the periphery of empire—all these events involved, in various degrees, the application of scientific research to advanced technology. All showed that science could not be elevated above the agendas of the nation-state: the best scientists were as corruptible by money, power or ideology as anyone else, and their research could as easily be bent toward mass murder as toward the progress of humankind. Science was not merely science. The crowning irony was that eugenics, far from “perfecting the race,” as some American progressives had hoped early in the twentieth century, was used by the Nazis to eliminate those they deemed undesirable. Eugenics had become another tool in the hands of unrestrained state power. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued near the end of World War II in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the rise of scientific racism betrayed the demonic undercurrents of the positivist faith in progress. Zygmunt Bauman refined the argument forty-two years later in Modernity and the Holocaust: the detached positivist worldview could be pressed into the service of mass extermination. The dream of reason bred real monsters.

The midcentury demise of positivism was a consequence of intellectual advances as well as geopolitical disasters. The work of Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss and other anthropologists promoted a relativistic understanding of culture, which undercut scientific racism and challenged imperial arrogance toward peoples who lagged behind in the Western march of progress. Meanwhile, scientists in disciplines ranging from depth psychology to quantum physics were discovering a physical reality that defied precise definition as well as efforts to reduce it to predictable laws. Sociologists of knowledge, along with historians and philosophers of science (including Karl Mannheim, Peter Berger and Thomas Kuhn), all emphasized the provisionality of scientific truth, its dependence on a shifting expert consensus that could change or even dissolve outright in light of new evidence. Reality—or at least our apprehension of it—could be said to be socially constructed. This meant that our understanding of the physical world is contingent on the very things—the methods of measurement, the interests of the observer—required to apprehend it.

Science, A Matter of Belief.

Tom Junod, in the latest issue of Esquire writes:

We are not going to live forever. We are not going to have our life spans scientifically amplified to biblical lengths. We will not be able to take pills that will give us the musculature of superheroes or allow us to gorge ourselves while enjoying the health benefits of starvation. We will reach our limits, and, with some hard-won variation, those limits will be — they will feel like — the same limits we humans have always had. We will remain human where it counts, in our helpless and inspiring relation to our own mortality.

Does this sound obvious? It shouldn't. Indeed, what I should have said from the start is that I believe that we are all going to die, in that science increasingly believes otherwise — and science increasingly has become a matter of belief. Its logic, once pointed at the eradication of disease and infection, is now inexorably pointed at aging and death, which is to say the ultimate questions that were once left to religion. Over the past six years, I've written several science stories for Esquire's annual Best and Brightest issue, and most of them were about scientists who began contending with a particular disease but wound up contending with aging and death as disease — as something that can be cured.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/brightest-2010/year-science-1210#ixzz16cmSCONw

(h/t Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic)

The Virology Journal Retraction: Desecrating Faith, Incapacitating Science

My other hat is subsidized by NYU, so when the recent controversy about an article at Virology Journal -- a diagnosis of apostle Simon Peter's mother-in-law using the passages from the books Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the bible, by Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers -- came across my screen, I couldn't help but think about a not-so-long-ago case of journal retraction. Hark back with me to 1996 when a seemingly-devilish physics professor from NYU, Alan Sokal, decided to test a little grumble of his. As Sokal eventually explained, with a quote and a statement, at Lingua Franca:

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.

-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)

For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.

To test his inadequacy, Sokal wrote a parody article for a special "Science Wars" issue of Social Text, a reputable publication, titled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." It was published. You can read his account of the so-called "Social Text Affair" here. There was some ugly fall-out, accounts and recounts (some of the noise, I imagine, owing to the fact that Sokal chose a pub edited by peers of the same university, NYU). It wasn't quite a mass scandal but it was pretty damn ugly.

As the modest (new and green) editor of a modest (non-scientific) publication on religion and media, I'm apt to see the editor's side in a small way. I edit and approve some stuff that I would never designate as representative of my own views. It's good to have diversity of opinion; what shakes out in the curation and discussion is sometimes insightful and instructive. But social science -- nor faith, nor "tolerance" -- isn't science.

Some months ago now I had a post here about a Christian Science Monitor story that made the case for increased training of doctors in "spirituality sensitivity." As I stated in the piece, I found it absurd that -- necessary interpersonal skills aside -- doctors should, when making diagnoses, account for the 75% of Americans who think God can heal them. Be sensitive to a patient's beliefs but don't short a patient of the facts simply because they (and you) want to hold out hope for a miracle. A diagnosis (however variable) is a diagnosis, regardless of whether the patient (or doctor) believe in God or Allah or the green monster.

I grant that the body is inexplicable; I've seen patients who have outlived their diagnoses, whose pain defies drug research, whose will to live makes them indomitable. But these are the rare cases that don't make the rule, and if science can't explain a 96 year old woman with inoperable cancer, on a respirator for 3 years and still, if not kicking, alive, I accept it as proof that there are too many variables for us to make sense of it all. We don't know everything (nor do we have to) but we do know what has been scientifically proven.

So when a story like the "research" of an illness experienced 2000 years ago makes the pages of Virology Journal and then is noisily retracted, I think Sokal was onto something. He writes, again from his Lingua Franca piece:

While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of these matters.

In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.

It's the premise of the Virology article (more on the retraction here) that I have issue with. With little evidence (well, actually, none) beyond bible verses, the researchers go through a litany of potential afflictions, ruling out the most obvious, then decide that they've identified the earliest recorded case of influenza. Writes, Tara C. Smith at Aetiology:

They go on to dismiss a significant number of other viral pathogens, as well as demonic influence (phew! Those are so hard to get rid of):

One final consideration that one might have is whether the illness was inflicted by a demon or devil. The Bible always tells if an illness is caused by a demon or devil (Matthew 9:18-25, 12:22, 9:32-33; Mark 1:23-26, 5:1-15, 9:17-29; Luke 4:33-35, 8:27-35, 9:38-43, 11:14) [1]. The victims often had what sounded like a convulsion when the demon was cast out. In our index case, demonic influence is not stated, and the woman had no apparent convulsion or residual symptomatology.

It's hard to see how a scientific investigation can be conducted using un-proven conclusions or assumptions -- particularly one's that involve the casting out of demons by Christ.

Yet, the point of this post isn't to brow-beat Virology Journal or to praise Sokal for his "gotcha," but to point to a prevalent use of faith (or political ideology or social objective) to address (and distort and refute) scientific issues. From Intelligent Design (read Lauri Lebo's recent article at Religion Dispatches about the Discovery Institute's continued efforts to distinguish intelligent design from creationism for the sake of having it taught in science classrooms), to abortion (faith that a fetus is a person entitles a fetus to constitutional rights?), from global warming (unbelief in things seen is faith in capitalism) to end-of-life rights (accepting that elders will die is somehow a denial of the "sanctity of life," and a last shot at redemption through suffering) political ideology, faith, and ignorance of scientific fact, continue to make scientific inroads.

Why make faith into a science? (I get making politics into a science and even making ignorance into a science, power is a splendored thing) Isn't one of the beauties of faith that it is free? That it's inexplicable and magic, outside explanation? That it's changing and personal and untethered to things like gravity and research, location and law? And isn't that the beauty of faith? I can't help but feel that the merging of faith and science -- not as a study of intersections and influences but a reliance on one to somehow prove or disprove the other -- somehow desecrates the former and incapacitates the latter.

Who Wants To Die? Belgium and Junk Studies.

Fox news and other outlets are reporting that Belgium, long the recipient of scorn for being one of the few nations where assisted suicide is legal, is killing the dying. A survey (of some sort) was conducted of (a very limited number of) nurses on how often they euthanized (however you wish to define that term, type of drug insignificant) a patient (their health status not included in the article) without the patient's consent (written? verbal? what about the family's or the doctors?).

It's the perfect proof of a slippery slope! Give that "culture of death" an inch and it will take your mama!

From the story at Fox:

In interviews with 248 nurses, a fifth admitted they had taken part in a euthanasia procedure based on the “assumption” that the patient wanted to die. Almost half of the nurses confessed to “terminations without request or consent.”

Sure it sounds terrible and scary. Fifty nurses running around offing patients whenever they feel like it, often doing it for the doctor who couldn't be bothered. And what's a vulnerable patient to do when they can't protect themselves and they don't want to die?

I expect it's all rubbish. Britain and Canada, where the primary stories come from, are in the midst of a harsh and unsavory battle over the legalization of assisted suicide. Any story that starts off using the term euthanasia, even one that is about a country in europe, without first clarifying the terms is coming already from a particular position on the issue. Neither article has a link to the original study, nor the name of the study organization - it could have been conducted by the Catholic Church for all we know.

Two of the story versions (here's a British one) quote Peter Saunders of Care Not Killing, an "anti-euthanasia" organization. In both, nothing is said about how the study was conducted, nor is there a description of what is meant by euthanasia. Were the nurses all clear in their answers and using the same definitions? What kinds of hospitals did the nurses work in? From what regions? How old were they? How long had they been nursing? What is consent? Were they trained in palliative care? Do they think that morphine ends lives?

Unfortunately, these types of unsubstantiated stories still move emotions. Just read the comment sections on any of them.

Smith False History and Leaps of Faith.

It's hard to believe that Wesley J. Smith has been watching the assisted suicide movement for the past 17 years and still has to publicly ask the question, "Why Now?" Yet this is the shallow and disingenuous hook on which he hangs his new article at the Catholic magazine Legatus. After spending three paragraphs spinning the recent history of the aid in dying movement as a powerful force railroading the sanctity of life -- and seemlessly sliping in a new usurpation of social activism terminology, "sanctity/equality of human life"! -- he writes:

A question amidst all of this Sturm und Drang naturally arises: Why now? After all, 100 years ago when people did die in agony from such illnesses as a burst appendix, there was little talk of legalizing euthanasia. But now, when pain and other forms of suffering are readily alleviated and the hospice movement has created truly compassionate methods to care for the dying, suddenly we hear the battle cry “death with dignity” as “the ultimate civil liberty.”

With respect to Smith's long years on the euthanasia beat, this is a laughable misrepresentation of history -- and one that he certainly knows better of. While Smith's essay concoctions are typically junk-science based, they're at least sincere. But, as any reader of Ian Dowbiggin will tell you, the roots of the aid in dying (or euthanasia or assisted suicide) movement are far longer and deeper than Smith is letting on. Simply noting the rise of Christianity's condemnation of suicide and assisted suicide doesn't change the rates of each in pre-, modern, and post-modern society. Condemnation of practice is necessarily precluded by said practice....

He writes that there are two reasons why the aid in dying movement has scored some successes since 1994 (Death with Dignity is legal in two states, Oregon (1994), Washington (2008) and in Montana (New Year's Eve, 2009) the Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the state constitution prohibits doctor prescriptions of legal drugs for the terminally ill). Well, really he gives three:

First, the perceived overriding purpose of society has shifted to the benefit of assisted suicide advocacy, and second, our public policies are driven and defined by a media increasingly addicted to slinging emotional narratives rather than reporting about rational discourse and engaging in principled analysis. Add in a popular culture enamored with social outlaws, and the potential exists for a perfect euthanasia storm.

I've bolded the points. For someone lamenting the lack of "principled analysis" and "rational discourse," Smith seems to rely heavily on some "emotional narratives" himself! One can't combat poor logic with more of the same (The media promotes assisted suicide? Kevorkian (the assumed social outlaw, noted at the start of the article) is a boon to the assisted suicide movement?) Nor can one condemn "slinging emotional narratives" when advocating for Terri Schiavo's family and touting the "discovery" of Rom Houben, clear examples of Smith's own effort to sling "emotional narratives."

But let's play Smith's game of "Why Now?," but use facts like: the relatively recent advent of widely accessible palliative care and pain cessation; the lightening-quick advancement of technologies like defibrillators and respirators which have changed the definition of death (once the almost simultaneous cessation of lung, heart and brain function, now something that happens when machines are removed); the prevalence of CPR, 9/11 and other resuscitating procedures that, despite public understanding (thanks in part to medical shows) work about 15% of the time (to be released from the hospital) and often leave surviving patients with broken ribs and/or in persistent vegetative states; the rise of patient autonomy activism to give patients the ability to make their own decisions regarding health care, against the prevailing influence of a paternal medical system (women in the 70s were often given full mastectomies without being consulted); a medical and social culture that condemns dying patients as weak, unable to fight, and doctors as failures, as if death can be put off indefinitely; a "survivor" culture that celebrates those who recover from debilitating disease and, as with breast cancer, thus focuses fundraising and research on cures rather than preventions.

Yes, these developments have all occurred since the 1970s. Yes, they have jeopardized our economic stability by reducing health care to a privilege. Yes, they have been ignored by ideologically motivated individuals like Smith who would rather go on about emotional narratives, the fall of man, the horrors of media and Jack Kevorkian, a decline in human virtue, and the "culture of death." Yes, the powerful "pro-life" groups that have supported the rise of the Medical Right and the Legal Right have continued to cry persecution as they've worked to impose their idea of morality and ethics on the whole of society.

Smith's proof that he's right about the three causes of the movements recent escalation? Suffering! Virtue!

Social commentator Yuval Levin, a protégé of ethicist Leon Kass, described the new societal zeitgeist in his recent book Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy. While not about assisted suicide per se, Levin hit the nail on the head when he described society as no longer being concerned primarily with helping citizens to lead “the virtuous life.” Rather, he wrote, “relief and preservation from disease and pain, from misery and necessity” have “become the defining ends of human action, and therefore of human societies.” In other words, preventing suffering and virtually all difficulty is now paramount.

Smith's extrapolation from that elegistic longing for (persistent) paternalistic, white, Christian-dominated, authoritarian times? "In such a cultural milieu, eliminating suffering easily mutates into eliminating the sufferer." How? He doesn't say. And he doesn't show examples beyond his own fact-less assertions. But he is toeing the same illogical line that we often hear from those who find glory in suffering (of the dying, of sexually active teens, of coerced women, of gays.) "If we could only save these sinners from themselves?!" he seems to say. Because ultimately, Smith and those who refuse to examine the effects of their "pro-life," discriminatory advocacy are really working to make all of society ascribe to their values, their rules, their false narratives and their beliefs. The fight over aid in dying (and abortion and gay rights, etc.) is really a fight for power; power for a select and moralistic few to tell all the citizens of our country what we should be doing.

As Tony Judt writes, there's another objective behind obscuring facts and thwarting serious, statistics-based discussion in the public square:

Today, we are encouraged to believe in the idea that politics reflects our opinions and helps us shape a shared public space. Politicians talk and we respond—with our votes. But the truth is quite other. Most people don’t feel as though they are part of any conversation of significance. They are told what to think and how to think it. They are made to feel inadequate as soon as issues of detail are engaged; and as for general objectives, they are encouraged to believe that these have long since been determined.

The perverse effects of this suppression of genuine debate are all around us. In the US today, town hall meetings and ‘tea parties’ parody and mimic the 18th century originals. Far from opening debate, they close it down. Demagogues tell the crowd what to think; when their phrases are echoed back to them, they boldly announce that they are merely relaying popular sentiment.

Ultimately, Smith tries to accomplish a number of things in his article, though his success is reliant on his readers' lack of curiosity about the real changes that have heightened discussion about futile care, aid in dying, living wills and advance directives, provider refusals, patient autonomy, organ donation and discrimination in health care. If he can paint them all as an offense to the "sanctity of life" he mis-frames and misleads the discussion from the facts. The agenda of his article is:

- make a case for "virtuous" suffering, as if "virtue" and "suffering" are clearly defined by all members of our racially, culturally, functionally diverse society

- conflate Kevorkian with the aid in dying movement when, while supporters of each may overlap, they are hardly a monolithic advocacy movement

- usurp rights, equality, and autonomy language (long the province of left-leaning advocacy) to his own "pro-life" purpose; this conflation of terms (particularly regarding abortion and feminism) has proved a successful "pro-life" juggernaut for true rights advocates

- stymy meaningful, substantive public discussion by narrowing, limiting, falsely framing the ways in which we discuss human autonomy, suffering, futile care, life, faith, and death; Smith has no interest in examining the facts surrounding superior end of life treatment and planning in states where Death with Dignity is legal; in looking at the ways medicine has until recently failed those who faced painful deaths; no facts on the cases of suicide or mercy killing that occur in the US because of extreme suffering; no discussion of futile care "tracks" that push suffering patients into one unhelpful treatment after another

- he pretends that history is static, that the idea of "traditional values" actually once represented the whole of society; an old tactic by those who wish to continue discrimination against gays, women, elders and those who do not live by dominant culture's rules

I often tackle Smith's vacuous, over-simplified articles; we can hardly ignore him when he has so much influence and plays such an important -- if self-aggrandized -- role in the "pro-life" movement. But I think singling out Smith is instructive for those of us who believe in human rights and liberty. He represents the larger thinking in anti-choice movements; he works for the Discovery Institute, a well funded promoter of bunk science like "Intelligent Design"; and he serves as a case study for how organized, influential, well-funded and well-promoted foes of individual rights are. He and others can cry persecution all they want; but I'm hopeful that the increasing prevalence the aid in dying (and other human rights) movement(s) will help the public discourse. We can't deny death forever.

Lancet Retracts Study That Started Autism-Vaccine Movement.

At Science Progress, Chris Mooney writes that the British medical journal Lancethas retracted a 1998 study it published that kicked off a movement against vaccinations for children. The paper showed that MMR (measels, mumps, rubella) vaccine could cause intestinal problems. This finding was extrapolated into conjecture that the vaccine (and others) could also cause other behavioral disorders. Mooney writes:

The 1998 paper hit the British public like a thunderclap, triggering a decline in use of the MMR vaccine as well as a resurgence of the measles. It was the opening shot in the vaccine-autism controversy that still rages today (albeit in varied forms, not all of which still focus on the MMR vaccine). But the credibility of Wakefield’s work has since taken a steady stream of hits, culminating in this last devastating blow.

That steady stream includes a number of studies that undermined Wakefield’s findings, including a debunking series in The Times of London, and 10 of the 12 co-authors of the original study backing away from it in 2004. Mooney explains why systematically disproving Wakefield’s study has done nothing to quell the anti-vaccine fury:

Let’s pause for a moment here. We’re talking about a single, small study—on just 12 children—that stirred a mass anti-vaccine movement and a trend away from vaccination that threatens public health in some wealthy counties. Already, you should be wondering how it could be possible to build so much upon such a slender reed. But if you then consider the subsequent fate of the study, and the scandal that has attended it, a reasonable person would surely conclude that the original scare about the MMR vaccine and autism had no serious foundation whatsoever.

Here’s the thing, though. It seems obvious to all recent commentators—myself included—that the latest Wakefield news will have virtually no impact on Wakefield’s passionate followers, the anti-vaccine ideologues in the UK and United States who have long cheered him on, and will continue to do so. If anything, it will probably only make them still stronger in their convictions.

Following its original efflorescence in 1998, modern vaccine skepticism has taken many other forms than a focus on the MMR vaccine. In the United States, there has probably been much more concern about the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which used to be in many vaccines (however, thimerosal has long since been removed from most vaccines, and autism rates have not dropped). The movement is much bigger than Wakefield; but the continuing allegiance to Wakefield, despite all that has occurred, shows that we’re really dealing with something very irrational here, what Michael Specter calls “denialism.”

Mooney, co-author of the book Unscientific America: How Unscientific Theory Threatens Our Future, cites the primary causes of “denialism” as the “remote and haughty” medical industry and “conspiracy theory thinking.”

To this list I would also add our inability as a society to discern sound scientific reasoning from junk or pseudo-science. As we’ve struggled to keep intelligent design out of schools, to promote scientific education and the teaching of critical thought, and work to curtail the media’s overzealous touting of the outrageous, our foundational knowledge of scientific practice has woefully suffered.

The mother of an autistic child understandably needs someone to blame. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccine movement has curtailed search for the real cause of autism in order to promote purveyors of junk science.

Lifenews Discredits Palliative Care.

Lifenews published an irresponsible and misleading article yesterday by writer Mary Ann Kreitzer that uses friend-of-a-friend conjecture and emotion to discredit palliative care. Like Bill Frist diagnosed Terri Schiavo by video, Kreitzer uses a telephone conversation to determine that her friend's father was "killed" by palliative care.

Irresponsible: because millions of elders are now facing end of life care and planning and require fact-based, scientific, medically sound advice on what their options are for their dying and death. This article plays on fear of death, the taboo of discussing end of life choices, and religious convictions to damage patients' understanding. It is a horrible disservice to seniors.

Misleading: In short she gets all the facts wrong simply because she is not medically trained, is not intimate with the medical facts of the man's death, does not understand that dementia and alzheimers not only damage the mind but the body, has little knowledge of what palliative sedation is, and in short, contributes to fears that elders already have about end of life issues.

I wish we could say that this type of egregious misinformation and fear-mongering was rare, but unfortunately it's not. While 75% of elders say they would like to die at home, 80% die in health facilities, often without any control over their end of life decisions, financial arrangements, or knowledge of patients' rights. Over the past thirty years, the sort of work that Kreitzer is doing with this post has reduced elders to victims, not in control of their end of life decisions or care. Kreitzer demeans the autonomy of elders by reducing their agency in their own health care decisions.

But there's something else at work in this piece: grief is a complicated and nuanced emotional process that, when stymied by blame and anger, however unjust, can damage the grieving of those who have lost a loved one. Kreitzer's damage is not only to those seniors who must face the dying process without guidance and accurate information but to the loved ones who in the wake of death are faced with the work of their own grief.

By using only the barest outline of a man's death, Kreitzer makes the case that the nebulous "culture of death" is out to kill our vulnerable seniors. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Only accurate information, medically sound decisions, advanced planning, and acceptance of impending death will empower our seniors to die the way they want to. Kreitzer deserves grave criticism for working to distort our human right to a good death.

From Lifenews:

I spoke to a friend this morning whose father was murdered by terminal sedation (aka "palliative" care). Her father suffered from Alzheimer's and his mind was pretty well gone, but physically he was in great shape.

He and his wife lived with one of my friend's children who took him for a long walk every day and knew how to manage all his grandfather's moods. They were good buddies. My friend lived nearby and spent as much time as possible visiting her parents and enjoying her father's company.

But the rest of the family (including my friend's mother who had power of attorney) decided to put him in a nursing home where he was difficult to control because he wanted to be released. My friend told me that every time she went to visit him he was trying to escape -- pulling at every door and even the bookcases looking for a way out. Three nursing homes and several months later he pretty much gave up.

When she went to see him he would be sitting in a wheelchair slumped over and drooling. He got an infection and ended up in a hospital "palliative" ward where he was denied food, water, and antibiotics. Within several months, he went from an elderly man who was walking two miles a day with his grandson, to dead from dehydration and terminal sedation. It was Terri Schiavo and Hugh Finn without the publicity.

My friend considered trying to get guardianship at one point, but she was familiar with the earlier cases and knew it would be a lengthy legal battle and the result would be the same. He had also deteriorated so much she didn't think he could recover. With a number of young children still at home, she didn't think she could deal with the fight. So here was a faithful daughter (and her husband) willing to care for both her parents until they died, who had to watch while her faithless siblings and her mom murdered her father.

Welcome to the realities of the culture of death.

Terminal sedation is abortion for the elderly. You have dementia and get pneumonia? Like Rahm Emmanuel says, Never let a crisis go to waste. See it as an opportunity for a quick exit. No antibiotics and terminal sedation. Abortion completed. Your loved one is healthy but brain damaged like Terri Schiavo and Hugh Finn? No problem. Starvation, dehydration, and terminal sedation. Call it late-term abortion.

You think I'm exaggerating? The New York Times ran an article on December 27, 2009 on the practice. It is common in hospice programs. Hurry the patients along for the peace of the family and to empty the bed. Saves everyone anxiety, money, and hassle. Except, perhaps, the patient. But he is drugged so whatever objections he may have had, you'll never have to hear them.

Sometimes, as in my friend's case, though, things aren't that smooth. Far from bringing peace to families it brings terminal strife and family breakdown. And in the case of my friend's mom, will children who killed their father, hesitate at doing the same thing to the their complicit mother? After all, she had no objections to killing dad; so how can she object to her own quick exit? It's for the children (and their inheritance?).

I wish I could say this is the only case I know of the deliberate murder of elderly parents, but it isn't. It's common practice in some hospices with or without the complicity of the families. Situations like my friend's are also becoming more and more common as the baby boomers, who often gave their children nothing in the way of faith, face the results of their hedonistic lives. "Hey, Mom put me in day care for most of my childhood and aborted my siblings; I'll put her in a nursing home and pull the plug as soon as possible." So much easier for everyone.

The worst part, however, is that while the body is being killed, the souls of the killers are dying as well. How does God who said, "Honor your father and your mother," look at the deliberate murder of parents? It is mortally sinful! And that's the greatest suffering for my friend. She would like to see her family in heaven, but fears that this life on earth may be the only common ground they ever share.

Please pray for all those in danger of death today from terminal sedation and for those who will carry it out and enable it. It's a soul-killer for sure! You can call it quick and painless, but in the end the palliative care ward, like the abortion mill, is literally hell on earth.

A "Reverse Version of the Scopes Monkey Trial" in Ohio

An Ohio town has been divided for more than a year over the case of a school science teacher who has kept a bible on his desk, posted the ten commandments in his classroom, asked students to refer to the bible for science research, and taught that homosexuality is a sin.

The teacher's supporters are claiming he is being persecuted for his religious conviction. The school board has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a hearing on the teacher's case. Some residents have even sold their house and moved.

From the NY Times article:

Mr. Freshwater, an eighth-grade public school science teacher, is accused of burning a cross onto the arms of at least two students and teaching creationism, charges he says have been fabricated because he refused an order by his principal to remove a Bible from his desk.

After an investigation, school officials notified Mr. Freshwater in June 2008 of their intent to fire him, but he asked for a pre-termination hearing, which has lasted more than a year and cost the school board more than a half-million dollars.

The hearing is finally scheduled to end Friday, and a verdict on Mr. Freshwater’s fate is expected some months later. But the town — home to about 15,000 people, more than 30 churches and an evangelical university — remains split.

To some, Mr. Freshwater is a hero unfairly punished for standing up for his Christian beliefs. To others, he is a zealot who pushed those beliefs onto students.

“Freshwater’s supporters want to make this into a new and reverse version of the Scopes trial,” said David Millstone, the lawyer for the Mount Vernon Board of Education, referring to the Tennessee teacher tried in 1925 for teaching evolution. “We see this as a basic issue about students having a constitutional right to be free from religious indoctrination in the public schools.”

Pseudoscience: Opioids, Contraception, Abortion and Cancer.

It's a great day for ideologically motivated pseudoscience!

From BeliefNet, a new study that, against all odds, establishes a link between contraception, abortion and cancer.

And from the super GeriPal, a debunking look at the swelling but false meme that opioids like morphine cause cancer growth.

Why is it important to not leap to the conclusion that opioids cause cancer growth? Two recent examples come to mind: hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women and vitamin E. Early retrospective studies (in humans, not mice) seemed to demonstrate that hormone replacement therapy led to reduced mortality. Unfortunately, large prospective cohort studies showed the opposite to be true! When researchers went back to re-examine the earlier studies, they found those earlier studies failed to account for important baseline differences in women: those who were healthier were more likely to take hormone replacement therapy, and therefore had better health outcomes that were attributed to the drug. Similarly, there was a great deal of excitement about vitamin E, including bizillions of laboratory studies that showed plausible mechanisms by which vitamin E could reduce heart attacks (antioxidant properties, etc). Again, large studies showed the opposite: people who do not take vitamin E live longer and have fewer heart attacks than people who do take vitamin E. In both the case of hormone replacement therapy and vitamin E, patients were taking the drug and health care providers were recommending treatment based on early evidence. And people died.

snip

As Christian Sinclair (of Pallimed) noticed, if you Google search "morphine cancer" the fourth hit is "Pain drug morphine may accelerate cancer growth | Reuters." Think of all of our patients and caregivers who, seeking information, are clicking on that link.

Let's set the record straight.

The world is full of suppositions and pseudoscience that is meant to support an ideology - the media plays sucker again and again. Got your own examples? Post them in comments!

Pseudoscience, Junk Science in Politicized Discourse.

The ubiquitous Jill Stanek, great lover of babies, abstinence and God, has a column at WorldNetDaily titled, "Under Obama, STD Super Strains All the Rage." It's an absolutely star example of unscientific, unreasoned fear-mongering in politicized media, meant to make the point that the evil Obama administration - and liberal policies in general - are infecting citizens with increasingly untreatable strains of diseases. Stanek scribbles:

Recalling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once famously accused the "government … [of] inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color," it is ironic that his protégé, Barack Obama, along with other carriers of the deadly diseases of political correctness and liberal ideology, would actually be the ones guilty of spreading not only HIV but other plagues.

Political correctness is loose conservative code for anti-discriminatory language or tolerance or something like that. It developed to make racists aware of how ignorant and discriminatory they were. Liberal ideology is as nebulous a term. For conservatives, it can stand in for anything found objectionable. And the reference to Jeremiah Wright is a great starter for Stanek's like-minded readers who know exactly were the article is going without reading it. Wright's paranoid accusation that HIV was unleashed to kill blacks, perfectly linked to the left and the sitting president, is taking a (black) exception as representative of all thought on the left regarding disease - not credible.

Stanek cites three news reports about resistant strains of disease, the first on resistant strains of tuberculosis, the second about the rise of sexually transmitted diseases, and the third about the ban lifted on HIV positive travelers into the US. She claims that while these three stories have nothing in common - and they don't - that she will prove they do.

Her non-argument:

To begin connecting the dots, Homeland Security Today on Dec. 29 reported on the scale of diseases resistant to drug treatment:

[P]hysicians and researchers around the world are expressing growing alarm over the disturbing escalation of a variety of antibiotic-resistant diseases they say are rapidly mutating. Some … fear these diseases will evolve into dominate strains for which we have no new antibiotics to treat the level of resistance that we are now witnessing.

Why is this happening? The Associated Press reported in the aforementioned Juarez piece:

Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet – TB, malaria and HIV among them – are mutating at an alarming rate, hitchhiking their way in and out of countries. The reason: Overuse and misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us.

Just as the drugs were a manmade solution to dangerous illness, the problem with them is also manmade. It is fueled worldwide by everything from counterfeit drugmakers to the unintended consequences of giving drugs to the poor without properly monitoring their treatment.

Then she throws in scary reports of drug-resistant malaria in Cambodia and Africa (as if it's one country) and the rise of animal-to-human cross-over diseases. Scared yet? If any recent report mentions disease or drug-resistance, apparently she's determined to cobble them together to prove that the Obama administration is working to perpetuate policy that aids the spread of these diseases.Then Stanek breaks into the nether realm of illogic:

So states legislating the distribution of antibiotics for unverified cases of sexually transmitted diseases are only making matters worse.

Speaking of, England's Venereal Diseases Act of 1917 defined three: chancroid, gonorrhea andsyphilis, all bacterial.

Today there are over 25 viral (incurable) and bacterial (with hundreds of strains, many antibiotic resistant) STDs.

Interestingly, widespread use of the birth-control pill beginning in the 1960s is being partially blamed for the spread of STDs for two reasons, the increased number of sexual partners and decreased use of condoms.

Today contraceptive advocates suggest using condoms in conjunction with birth-control pills. They also recommend stocking morning-after pills in the medicine cabinet for feared failure of the first two as well as keeping a dental dam (don't ask) in the night stand to guard against infections caught from oral sex.

Meanwhile, they call abstinence education stupid.

Get it? Birth control is the cause of new strains of drug-resistant diseases around the world! From Malaria to TB, from gonorrhea to syphillis. Stanek concludes the poorly-strung piece with a quote from Homeland Security Today that reports on the spread of drug-resistant TB. The report, by Anthony Kimerly, states only that those with HIV are more susceptible to TB because their immune system is weakened by the former. She concludes with:

Political correctness and liberal ideology both cause and aggravate the spread of communicable and sexually transmitted diseases.

And these people want to take over the American health-care system.

According to Susan Jacoby, there are five primary characteristics of Junk Thought. There are:

1. Confusion of coincidence and causation:

Stanek comes to the information with an already-formed premise: that the Obama administration's policies are bad for the health of the nation and lethal to quality health care. Running the conservative screed, she also wants to show that current foreign policy is deadly. The information she gathers to make this point has only tangential applicability to the rise of TB in the world (the 1917 British Venereal Disease Act? Health Care Reform? The birth control pill?)

Her assertion that the advent of the birth control pill caused an increase in venereal disease infections (nobody in Westernized countries loses a nose to siphillis today), more sexual partners (actually a change in social mores, divorce rates and women's equality since the sixties - and by the way, alone not a bad thing), and decreased use of condoms (the use of which has been hampered by abstinence teaching and funding here and around the world) are all conjecture. She doesn't have a single fact to back any of it up and she confuses advent of the pill with these issues, ignoring that other factors had an impact as well.

2. Appropriation of scientific-sounding language for emotional stories that are used as representative of fact but are unreasoned:

Citing credible sources but using faulty logic to string them together, she throws out the AP (not always credible, I should note), the World Health Organization, Homeland Security Today as though provide her premise with legitimacy. But her effort is to cause an emotional reaction of fear and anger in her readers that masquerades as science. The peppering of numbers and dates make it look like she knows what she's talking about.

3. Innumeracy, or sloppy numbers:

Despite a plethora of credible studies that conclusively show that abstinence education causes increased spread of sexually transmitted disease in the US, she makes her own conclusions based on ideology - because she does not want to believe in the facts. She prefers to cling to unproven but "pure" ideas of abstinence and human behavior.

4. Definitions so broad as to be meaningless:

Disease, sexually transmitted viruses, global politics, abstinence education (quite different in the US than in Uganda, Kenya or Cambodia): Stanek neglects to differentiate between sexually transmitted and air-born viruses, global travel issues (she's got no facts on how many HIV travelers will come to the US, nor on how many of those have drug-resistant TB but uses fear of infection to make the possibilities credible). And she conflates STDs and HIV infection.

5. Expert-bashing which keeps the public confused on the legitimacy of science and facts and prevents clear distinction between pseudo science and good, tested, provable science:

By criticizing policies unpopular among conservatives, health care reform and immigration, she has an audience ready to take her assertions at face value. That the smart people in government can't see the facts plays into existing fear of a black president, terrorism, and health concerns. Never mind that she's got no way to prove that all these disparate factors - coincidence of HIV and TB infection, the lifting of the ban on HIV travel, the revision of health care, and abstinence education - are in any way related.

We're not encouraged to logically or scientifically analyze news information. We live in an environment that runs on outrage, fear and conjecture. Were common readers able or willing to assess the information that passes their way on it's scientific and factual merit, they would better grasp the ideological motives behind such "reports." But in a culture where intelligent design is taught in schools and man is considered to be made in God's image, proof too seldom plays a role in how we govern our actions and our country country.

For all the science that have proven abstinence education doesn't work, Stanek and her contingency cling to the belief that it will solve social problems like teenage pregnancy, the spread of STDs - and sadly, the move to treat women with equality in society. But facts and current human behavior prove otherwise.

If her objective is to reduce these challenges in society (STD infection, teenage pregnancy, HIV), logically Stanek would be the greatest proponent of birth control on the planet. Condoms again and again have been proven to work. But, sadly, that's not her objective. And sadly, she's still spreading unfounded ideology far and wide.