Apr 29 2009
The Huffington Post’s War On Science
It is unfortunately a common human reaction to respond to criticism by attacking those leveling the criticism, rather than addressing the points being made. This is especially true if the criticism is legitimate and one cannot reasonably counter it.
Substantive criticism is also a central part of the scientific endeavor, and so the culture of science has developed a tolerance for harsh criticism and a general understanding that the only proper response is with logic and evidence. Examples of exceptions are legion, human frailty being what it is, but you cannot live in the world of science for long without learning the rules of the game. Peers are expected to pull no punches when criticizing the errors or countering the arguments of their colleagues. Everyone is expected to be their own harshest critic (criticize your own data before someone has a chance to). And when criticized yourself, acknowledge what is legitimate and make appropriate corrections, but feel free to defend yourself against weak criticisms by pointing out additional data, interpretations, or errors in the arguments of your critics.
This meat grinder approach to scientific discourse works. Slowly, bad ideas and claims are beaten down, and only good ideas have the stamina to persist.
But here at science-based medicine we engage not only with the scientific community, but also with the public, and with those on the fringes of science. This means we often engage with those who do not play by the rules of science. A recent example is that of J.B. Handley from Age of Autism. David Gorski and I (and later Mark Crislip) wrote blog entries criticizing their 14 studies website with a detailed analysis. Handley responded with a full frontal personal assault sprinkled with irrelevant accusations. He ignored the vast majority of our actual criticisms, and those few he took on he completely botched.
Sometimes the targets of scientific criticism respond with another tactic – the diversion. Rather than make an obvious ad hominem attack, they try to distract the public (often the real target of the exchange) from the points of the criticism with a series of non sequiturs. They try to “re-frame” the discussion to make it about something other than the scientific evidence.
Creationists recently have been masters of this latter tactic. On scientific grounds, there is no debate about evolution. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community agrees that evolution happened, there is common descent, and natural selection is a dominant mechanism. Creationists cannot win this fight scientifically (though they keep trying), and so they try to distract from the science by trying to make it a political debate. So they accuse scientists of being dogmatic, of trying to exclude creationists from the debate, or for unfairly eliminating supernatural explanations from consideration. First they tried “teach the (fake) controversy,” and now they are trying “teach the strengths and (fake) weaknesses” of evolution.
Those who promote unscientific claims in medicine are no different. When scientists bother to examine their claims and level the sort of criticism typical of the scientific community at them, they often respond with some combination of personal attacks and distraction. Last week I criticised the Huffington Post for running a series of blogs and articles that are promoting dangerously pseudoscientific medical claims. I specifically commented on an outrageous article by Kim Evans, promoting the absurd claim that all cancers are caused by fungal infections, which in turn are caused by antibiotics. Evans has responded (sort of) with this week’s column, in which she addresses her critics, without naming anyone in particular.
Her response is right out of the pseudoscientific health claim play book, under “how to distract from legitimate criticism with logical fallacies and misdirection.” We have literally heard it all before, and have even answered much of it in detail. I will therefore not reiterate points that have been made before but will link to them.
She begins:
In a recent post I got a lot of flack for not speaking like a scientist. Something in that rubs me the wrong way because it presumes that only by a very narrow method can we come to any valid conclusions or make any new discoveries about the world we live in – while also presuming that only a tiny portion of the population, with a very specific set of skills and communication methods, has the ability to do so.
Here she is combing two common tactics – the claim that her critics are being elitist and that science it too narrow to encompass her wisdom (and she goes much further on these themes in the following paragraphs). Rather, she was criticized for promoting a dangerous health scam and not even attempting to justify it with anything resembling acceptable scientific evidence. In response to this criticism she did not either acknowledge the lack of evidence or provide references to such evidence – instead she “reframed” the criticism as being equivalent to saying that she is not in the club – an obvious appeal to elitism. (Handley, by the way, pulled the exact same ploy.)
She might as well have written that we were trying to “expel” her from the scientific discussion, because what she is doing is exactly the same as the Intelligent Design proponents tactics used in the movie by that name.
First she states that she was criticized for not behaving like a scientist, then she states, essentially, that science is not all its cracked up to be anyway. At least she is being openly anti-science.
This attitude derives from the premise that the methods of science are optional – just one way of knowing how nature works. This is, in my opinion, the core of the struggle between science-based medicine and everything else. But which rules of science, I wonder, would Evans recommend we abandon when it suits us? Should we ignore inconvenient evidence rather than take a systematic approach, use ambiguous criteria that are susceptible to bias, or not control for confounding variables?
There is nothing magical or arbitrary about the methods of science – they are merely careful observation and intellectual honesty rigorously applied. To say this is a “narrow” approach is to misunderstand science or a deliberate distraction.
Next she launches into the toxin gambit:
A study in 2005 found that newborns are being born with literally hundreds of chemicals in their bloodstream, many of them known to cause cancer. Most people eat pesticides and herbicides in their every meal. I don’t need to tell you that these substances are designed to kill living organisms, because you already know that, but might I remind you that you, too, are a living organism. Rocket fuel has been found in milk. Drugs and birth control have been found in the water.
The only evidence she provides to support her claims is a link to a Newsweek article. This is acceptable form in general for a blog, but does not do much to bolster her claims. The referenced article does site several studies that found detectable levels of various chemicals in the general population, but it also cites two NIH reviews of this data. The first found that there was little cause for concern, and the second that, based on animal data, there may be cause for concern and further study is necessary. This hardly supports the alarm bell Evans is ringing.
First, this does not have anything to do with the criticisms of her original article, which was about antibiotics and cancer. But that aside, her hysterical warnings about toxins, like most health care pseudoscience, has a kernel of truth. There are toxins in the environment, and it is plausible that some of them may reach levels that have health effects. We should be eternally vigilant about what substances we put into our environment and our bodies and monitor their health effects.
On the other hand – toxicity is always about dose. Most substances decried as toxins are in such low doses that they likely do not have any health effects. For some we do need more evidence, and maybe even changes in policy. This is likely to be forever a moving target as technology and industry advances. Policy should be based on evidence – not vague fears.
Also, her use of the word “chemical” is misleading. The environment is loaded with naturally-occurring chemicals. We are made of chemicals. It is not enough to say that chemicals exist in our environment.
And keep in mind all of this is to promote her health claims – that cleansing toxins has health benefits. That is an entirely separate claim that is not supported by evidence or much plausibility.
Next up is the claim that doctors and mainstream medicine kill patients.
So, while all of this looms and is largely unaccounted for in the standard health care equation, critics judge harshly alternative views and hail a system that’s been found to kill almost 200,000 people a year due to preventable errors. The same system has been found to kill another 100,000 annually with drugs, and seriously harm another 2.1 million each year by the same means. They hail “proven” methods for cancer that are known to cause significant damage to the immune system, and are even known to be carcinogenic, which means to cause cancer. So, I ask, “Is this rational?”
Harriet Hall has already dealt with this claim. First, it is a tu quoque logical fallacy. We all want better safer medicine. Failing to meet that goal in one arena does not justify pseudoscience in another. Further, these numbers are highly misleading (and almost certainly overstated) because they only consider the harm of intervention. But medical decision-making is about risk vs benefit. We need to know if the interventions in question save more people than they harm.
The standard in mainstream medicine is that each intervention should be backed by high quality evidence that its benefits outweigh its risks. Further, we are always trying to minimize risk whenever possible. And the principle of informed consent dictates that we give that information to patients and let them decide if the benefits outweigh the risks for them. Evan’s claimed treatments do not meet that standard, but she tries to distract from that criticism with the above non sequitur.
She concludes:
Oh wait, that’s exactly where we are now… So, in light of the numbers above and all of the proof that’s literally walking around next to us, maybe it’s time we started looking at and thinking about things a little differently. Because if a reliance on proven demonstrated science has gotten us exactly to the situation I describe above, perhaps a shift of focus to rational is the best move we can make.
Many of the commenters for this entry pointed out that science-based medicine has doubled the human life expectancy – that is also part of the situation. But again – at least she is flying her anti-scientific flag high and proud. Evans wants us to abandon science at our whim, certainly long enough to buy her book. She somehow twists logic to argue that this is “rational”, but she gets there only by abusing the evidence – by exaggerating risks and ignoring benefits.
Evan’s rant, typical of those in her camp, is once again just another long rationalization for not wanting to play by the fair and honest rules of science because logic and evidence does not support her claims.
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227 Responses to “The Huffington Post’s War On Science”
Sounds like you’ve really touched a nerve (pun intended)! Seems to me that as Evans and others become increasingly shrill, calm argumentation must look a little more attractive.
Nice post.
I’ll keep updating my “General Bullshit Defense” wiki page. It seems like good examples just keep coming.
HuffPo is out of control. I don’t care what they write in their political pages—those are supposed to be ideological. But allowing all of this dangerous, deceptive, and wrong info, most of which is selling something—it’s shameful.
Applause. This post does an excellent job at explaining how scientists think and what goes into the scientific method using Evans’ article as an example. It is a post like this that confirms why I like this blog and why I have no trouble referring my non-scientist friends here. Thank you Dr. Novella. Two-thumbs up!
Did you happen to catch Jim Carrey’s post from this Saturday on the HuffPo:
The Judgment on Vaccines Is In???
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-carrey/the-judgment-on-vaccines_b_189777.html
Although it’s mostly the normal bag of tricks, I was waiting for a SBM writeup about it =)
You got one–sort of:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/04/fire_marshall_bill_discusses_vaccines.php
I think the problem was that none of us could keep a response to Carrey’s nonsense “high brow” enough for SBM.
“science-based medicine has doubled the human life expectancy”
That’s your old marketing PR, and utterly misleading, as you must know. A small number of major medical breakthroughs (such as antibiotics) have actually contributed to health and longevity. But MOST of our increased life expectancy (relative to when and where is not specified!) is accounted for by things like improved sanitation and decreased cigarette smoking). And infant mortality has been brought down from its naturally high level to near zero — this dramatically increases average lifespan without improving the health or life expectancy of adults at all.
Determining how much our health and longevity (for adults) improvements result from modern medicine would be difficult. But you cleverly imply that the new drugs have played an important role — where is your evidence for that?
This kind of statement is always used when trying to silence critics of current mainstream medicine. You try to convince us that if we’re over 40 years old we wouldn’t even be alive without it, and that our health depends on it. That is ONLY true, possibly, if our life has been saved by antibiotics or certain types of surgery.
It is ILLOGICAL to imply that cholesterol and blood pressure lowering drugs, for example, are making us healthier. Or many of the new cancer drugs. Where is the evidence for that?
And there are medical treatments that do prolong life for several months or weeks for terminal patients, but that can hardly be considered a triumph.
pec,
What is misleading about the statement that the life expectancy has doubled thanks to scientific medicine? If this doubling is due to a reduction of childhood mortality, then so be it. Nothing in Steve’s post mentioned the “health of adults” that you’re going on about. In fact, Steve didn’t really make the claim at all! He merely mentioned that many comments at HuffPo brought it up.
Thus, your comment wasn’t even warranted based on this post. You just saw an excuse to spit out your typical knee-jerk anti-SBM response to an entry here, and happily took the opportunity.
pec,
Your examples prove the efficacy of science based medicine!
If it is true that most of the increase in life expectancy is due to better sanitation and a decrease in smoking ( got any figures to back that up?) this happened because of systematic examination of the causes of disease. The focus on sanitation came through the development of germ theory; the link between cancer deaths and smoking came from studying the issue in a scientific manner.
Alternative medicine has so far been resistant to taking a systematic approach to disease problems, one that must begin without preconceived ideas. Medicine is more than drugs, as I’m sure any of the doctors here would be the first to admit, but it should be based on evidence and efficacy.
I agree, medicine has played a marginal role in life expectancy increases over the last century. Socioeconomic factors like better nutrition and less violence (war and other kinds of armed conflict, which have decreased homicide rates by 90% over the last century) probably account for most of the variance.
Most life expectancy increases came between 1900 and 1950, when, simply, economic, social and sanitation factors improved significantly. Since 1950, life expectancy increases have slowed, while medical advances have increased exponentially. It’s to the point that some economists, like Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen, argue that the marginal utility of modern medicine is zero. That is, spending more on medicine, and getting more medical care, doesn’t increase your life expectancy at all.
“If this doubling is due to a reduction of childhood mortality, then so be it.”
But what if the new drugs are NOT making us any healthier? Then what is the whole point of “science based medicine?” You find out that a new statin drugs extends life for a small minority of patients, relative to an older statin drug. And you know VERY WELL that saying life expectancy doubled because of science-based medicine will NOT be interpreted to mean decreased infant mortality. It is a political strategy to mislead people into thinking the deadly modern lifestyle and the poisoned air and water are not relevant, because we are living longer healthier lives anyway.
The idea that lifestyle makes a difference, and that environmental toxins can make us sick, comes from alternative medicine, not from mainstream medicine. Recently they started to go along with some of the ideas that are obviously true — physical exercise is necessary for health, for example.
But the mainstream emphasis is still on drugs and surgery — so when they take credit for our longer lives, they STRONGLY imply it’s because of drugs and surgery used on adults.
pec, as usual, missed my point. Evans gave a cherry-picked description of the modern “situation” and blamed it, without evidence or really any logic, on scientific medicine. I was just pointing out that a doubling of life expectancy is also part of the modern “situation” – this was to emphasize her cherry picking and simplistic assumption of cause and effect.
I did not get into the complex claims of what factors have lead to the increase in life expectancy. However, since that point was raised – of course there are many factors. But a consistent rise in life expectancy has followed the adoption of modern medical practices throughout the world.
Also – you have to look at all the data that shows that people with specific diseases, like cancer or diabetes, live longer with modern treatments. Vaccines prevent deaths from infectious diseases, as do antibiotics. You add it all up and you get a significant effect.
Crediting CAM with lifestyle and environmental medicine is absurd and a complete rewriting of history for propaganda purposes. Risk factors for common diseases and preventive measure are all part of scientific medicine. It is CAM propagandists who have tried to steal it, so they can wrap their implausible woo in something reasonable.
And – the notion that advances in medicine have no benefit is also absurd. The evidence contradicts this. It may be true that we are getting diminishing returns as we bump up against the upper limit for life span, but there is still room to increase the percentage of the population that makes it there. And also you have to consider quality of life – much of modern medicine is designed to improve quality, if not quantity, of life. That is harder to measure.
“But the mainstream emphasis is still on drugs and surgery — so when they take credit for our longer lives, they STRONGLY imply it’s because of drugs and surgery used on adults.”
Correction, you infer what you believe they imply.
pecon 29 Apr 2009 at 12:33 pm “The idea that lifestyle makes a difference, and that environmental toxins can make us sick, comes from alternative medicine …”
That is so bad it is not even wrong. Their ideas that are right are appropriated from medicine, and the rest are just wrong. AM pushers have not contributed anything to health.
Not smoking- mainstream; exercise- mainstream; healthy diet- mainstream; sanitation- mainstream; vaccinations- mainstream. Generalized detoxification- quackery; supplements- (as practiced by n-paths and chiros) quackery; subluxations and spinal adjustments- quackery; iridology and applied kinesiology- quackery.
“the notion that advances in medicine have no benefit is also absurd.”
Exactly which advances are you talking about? The major diseases that cause the most death and suffering still have no cures and the new treatments may have only slight benefits. And most of the new drugs have side effects that DECREASE quality of life. The public is encouraged to rely on their MD and the new drugs, even though in many cases they are probably not necessary and only increase suffering.
It is only relatively recently that mainstream medicine has bothered to study lifestyle effects — and I am very glad they did — and now they weakly encourage patients to try a bit of exercise.
MDs do not always understand important concepts such as metabolic syndrome — which DID come from alternative medicine. They mistakenly think their patients’ high cholesterol and heart disease are genetic, when most of the time it’s from physical inactivity and refined carbohydrates. So their patients get statins and the drug companies get rich.
The whole idea that a more NATURAL lifestyle is healthier comes from alternative medicine. The whole idea that there is intelligence in nature is utterly foreign to a medical philosophy which has been strongly influenced by materialist philosophy.
Do you have evidence for ANY of your claims?
“It may be true that we are getting diminishing returns as we bump up against the upper limit for life span”
Wow that is just incredible. You believe your own PR. The major killing and disabling diseases are still killing and disabling. Hardly any progress is being made! And you don’t even know it!
Alty Python’s “The Life of pec”
REG: All right, but apart for the sanitation, the antibiotics, insulin for diabetes, recommendation against smoking, recommendation for exercise, an understanding of nutrition, transplant surgery, and other life saving surgical interventions such as appendectomys, what has modern medicine ever done for us?
XERXES: Eliminated smallpox.
REG: Oh. Smallpox? Shut up!
And by the way, I am not criticizing mainstream medicine for not finding effective treatments for cancer, heart disease, etc. I am criticizing them for BSing the public into thinking great progress has been made and cures are around the corner.
sanitation
antibiotics
insulin for diabetes
recommendation against smoking
recommendation for exercise
an understanding of nutrition
transplant surgery
appendectomies
What? I don’t see any of the new drugs on your list. And, as I explained, lifestyle recommendations were adopted by mainstream medicine after being recommended by alternative medicine for decades.
So the only new thing there is transplants — yeah most of us owe our health and longevity to that.
“It is only relatively recently that mainstream medicine has bothered to study lifestyle effects — and I am very glad they did — and now they weakly encourage patients to try a bit of exercise.”
Relatively recently relative to the age of the human civilization, yes, but then again, modern medicine is a relatively recent development
“Weakly”? Hardly weakly, I’d more accept the word”weekly” than “weakly” in the second half of that sentence.
I know people who don’t like going to the doctor because every time they do the doctor tells them they need to loose weight exercise more, and eat healthier, and they don;t want to hear that message.
Karl,
Until recently MDs were taught nothing about nutrition in medical school. And holistic health magazines were talking about benefits of exercise for decades before mainstream medicine ever thought about it. It’s only very recently that the deadly effects of inactivity are being acknowledged. And patients still get the impression they can choose between improving their lifestyle and taking a pill. This partly the fault of TV drug ads, but MDs are as brainwashed as the public.
And these misconceptions largely rest on the belief that without modern medicine we would be old and decrepit and barely alive at age 40. And that nature is mindless and evolution did a poor job of designing our bodies.
“What? I don’t see any of the new drugs on your list.”
I intentionally left drugs off the list so you couldn’t claim I was making a straw man argument for you, not because I don’t believe drugs have been beneficial. I also note that you used the phrase “new drugs”, shifting the goal posts a little bit. I guess old drugs like antibiotics and insulin are OK, or maybe insulin doesn’t count as a drug
” And, as I explained, lifestyle recommendations were adopted by mainstream medicine after being recommended by alternative medicine for decades.”
As we have explained, scientific medicine has been advocating “lifestyle recommendations” for a long time without any impetus from alternative medicine.
What, no acknowledgment of the eradication of smallpox through vaccination?
“So the only new thing there is transplants — yeah most of us owe our health and longevity to that.”
Granted, I personally only know one person whose life has been saved through a transplant, but that’s aside from the point.
Are you now looking for NEW things in medicine that extend life, appendectomies are OK because they’ve been around for a while, but what has modern medicine done for us lately?
And what about all the injuries one can sustain these days that are repairable though surgery that would have been fatal or permanently deforming 100 years ago?
“Until recently MDs were taught nothing about nutrition in medical school. And holistic health magazines were talking about benefits of exercise for decades before mainstream medicine ever thought about it.”
LOL,
I’ll just have to defer on these points to someone who has actually attended medical school and gotten their MD, preferably sometime prior to the last 10 or 20 years.
I wonder if we can find anyone around here that meets that criteria.
I graduated med school in 1991 – I had a full course on nutrition, and nutritional information was part of most clinical rotations.
It is CAM propagandists who have tried to steal it, so they can wrap their implausible woo in something reasonable.
I think it’s more that their mental model of “allopathic medicine” simply doesn’t allow for “allopaths” to recommend exercise/diet/etc, ergo they don’t.
pec on 29 Apr 2009 at 1:23 pm “What? I don’t see any of the new drugs on your list. And, as I explained, lifestyle recommendations were adopted by mainstream medicine after being recommended by alternative medicine for decades.”
I don’t see any contributions from quacks on the list, either. As far as medicine catching-up to quacks on lifestyle; I doubt you have documentation. Sure, quacks have been talking about it; but were their recommendations reliable? I don’t think so.
How about giving us a list of specific things (with citations), that were proven to a high standard by quacks, before they were adopted by health care professionals. That is your claim, the burden of proof is on you.
I graduated from medical school in 1999. We had a full semester on nutrition that was just nutrition and did not include all the other teaching we received on exercise and healthy eating in all our other rotations. To say that medicine is focused only on surgery and drugs is frankly disingenuous and misleading. Alternative medicine sure as hell did not come up with the idea of lifestyle change.
Every time I see a patient who would benefit from a change in their lifestyle, I counsel her/him on it. I do family medicine. That counseling includes changing diet, getting more exercise, stop sitting in front of the TV, losing weight, and not picking up the cigarette. Every single fricking time. Some of my patients don’t like to see me because they know that is what they will hear, but hear it they will. Part of that counseling includes the risks of not making the lifestyle changes in which I include death, heart attack, and stroke. Part of the counseling about benefits includes my discussion that if my patient makes the changes, I can get them off the medication(s), and ultimately it costs my patient less. I give them handouts, I give them resources, I show them videos, I offer to send them to nutritionists, whatever, in order to get them to change their lifestyles.
The overwhelming response I get is that lifestyle change is too hard, requires too much work, that my patient can’t do it, my patient lacks the willpower, and/or my patient doesn’t care. My patients want the pill, the surgery, because making lifestyle changes is too hard. They will not problem-solve with me. They do not want to hear that to lose weight they have to work at it, put in some effort, and actually try and fail multiple times before they might succeed. They rather take the pill, so they get the pill because part of my job is to try and prevent what long term complications I can.
So when I read your comments, pec, I have a strong urge to reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4. That or you are welcomed to come to my practice to try and convince my patients to change their lifestyles. I wish you luck.
Oh and if you have the temerity to suggest that I’m just doing it wrong, that if I just gave my patients the right information in just the right way that they would change their lives, I will reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4. More than once. With extreme prejudice.
[their mental model of “allopathic medicine” simply doesn’t allow for “allopaths” to recommend exercise/diet/etc, ergo they don’t.]
Lifestyle has never been the focus of the allopathic philosophy. Now that the scientific evidence is overwhelming they are going along. The allopathic approach has always been to diagnose and fight diseases, rather than prevention or following a more natural lifestyle.
There is nothing wrong with diagnosing and fighting diseases. But mainstream medicine has historically been allopathic and has generally ignored lifestyle and disease prevention.
That seems to be changing somewhat, but the idea of natural lifestyle and preventing disease comes from the holistic health philosophy.
“I have a strong urge to reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4.”
You are very violent and I am so grateful you are not my doctor.
And furthermore I feel this blog is becoming dangerous and here is another reason I stay anonymous.
But of course this raging violent MD won’t get banned.
Give me a break, pec. It was obvious he was being metaphorical in expressing his frustration with you. There was nothing there to suggest to me that he actually wants to literally whack you upside the head with a 2 x 4. Indeed, note what he said right after:
Perhaps he shouldn’t have used such colorful language. Personally, my favored term is to say I’d like to knock someone upside the head with a “clue stick,” which is more explicitly metaphorical. In any case, given your maddening inability to get the point of what Steve says, I can kind of sympathize. (No doubt from that you’ll next rant that I “sympathize” with wanting to do violence to you, which is not the case. I can sort of sympathize with people who are irritated enough by your obtuseness to use such language, though.) In any case, everyone knows who we at SBM are. It’s right there on each of our contributor pages. No one knows who you are. You have nothing to fear.
Moreover, both here and at my other blog, if you want threats and harassment, I have been subject to attempts, beginning in 2005, to get me fired through complaints to my bosses. The first time around, I was relieved to see that my bosses didn’t care what I did on my own time. My Chair even called the idiot who threatened to sue (a laughable threat) an “idiotic bully.” Still, it was a chilling event.
Most recently, either J.B. Handley, someone from AoA, or an antivaccinationist who read J.B.’s last rant about me (I can’t be sure which is the case) contacted my boss. He wasn’t perturbed either. But I can never be sure where I will be working and who will be my boss in the future, given that I have at least 20 years expected left in my career. Even if I stay in the same place the rest of my career, my chairman is likely to retire within 10 years. Still, if you want to see which “side” is more interested in actual discussion and debate, as opposed to trying to silence the opposition, I can’t think of a better example than my very own blogging history.
Huffingtonpost is a terrible site, more interested in pageviews than the truth. During the election they invited all sorts of liars to write for them, not because Huffington *believed* them, but because they would stir the hornets’ nest.
Oh, the pageviews and ad-impressions such arguments took in!
The commenters since its inception have just gotten more and more stupid, barely rising up past the level of your average gossip-blog.
Let alone the strict moderation on any “controversial” subjects. Deepak Chopra let loose his usual pseudoscience-filled blather on a bunch of entries, none of my polite but questioning comments were ever approved.
“You are very violent and I am so grateful you are not my doctor.
And furthermore I feel this blog is becoming dangerous and here is another reason I stay anonymous.
But of course this raging violent MD won’t get banned.”
And yet, through all this provocation, you’re never ever stating anything of interest or worth. Trolling internet message boards is something people do when they have nothing else to do, It’s sure as anything not to educate others or themselves.
“Lifestyle has never been the focus of the allopathic philosophy. Now that the scientific evidence is overwhelming they are going along.
It’s impressive that pec can continue to get so much wrong in so few words when he/she tries hard enough.
Let’s, for the sake of argument, treat this as a factual statement, even though that has already been rebutted. Would you prefer MDs “go along” with a practice BEFORE there is overwhelming scientific evidence to support it, or when there isn’t overwhelming scientific evidence to support it?
“The allopathic approach has always been to diagnose and fight diseases, rather than prevention or following a more natural lifestyle.”
Same old tired and false argument we hear over and over from the alt med community. Why do doctors bother with vaccinating or weighing patients if they only care about treating disease?
“Give me a break, pec. It was obvious he was being metaphorical in expressing his frustration with you.”
Yeah it is really amazing and shocking what you think is perfectly ok, as long as they agree with you. I have NEVER been physically threatened at a blog before, certainly not that directly and explicitly. And you think it’s just fine. And it was only because I tried to explain logically why current mainstream medicine is not responsible for the increases in longevity — lowered infant mortality, antibiotics and appendectomies are not exactly new. And no one could provide a logical argument against what I said. Only violent threats. Sure he is frustrated — he feels threatened and doesn’t have an answer. So he goes into a frustrated rage attack, and you sympathize. Well that says a lot about you.
pec -> You see that bit above about reframing the argument? That’s what you’re doing now. Last I heard there were no ‘ether’ translatable 2×4s, or means to transmit a physical force across the internet.
Antibiotics actually -are- ‘new’ drugs. The quinolone antibiotics, notably ciprofloxacin have only been in wide use since 1987, which is fairly new by any standards, and newer versions have been introduced since. The Sulfonamides and beta-lactamases aren’t exactly ‘new’ by most standards, they’ve been in use for less than a hundred years. Antibiotics are one of the most active areas of drug development.
Oh, nevermind the analgesics, anesthetics and antibiotics that make those appendectomies something an actual human being can survive.
pec,
You’ve completely derailed all conversation about Steve’s entry because you didn’t like how he cited other people’s comments on another site. You used that trivial point to launch into a baseless and repetitive rant about “allopathy,” and have continued throwing an e-fit rather than offer anything of substance. And now, someone sarcastically mentions hitting you upside the head, and you take that trivial point as an opportunity to act like a martyr.
You’re pathetic, and impossible to take seriously. By all means, feel free to use that sentence to: accuse me of looking down on you and being elitist, accuse me of ignoring your “points” because I don’t have good responses, resorting to an ad hominem attack, or any other drivel you’re compelled to dump on this comment thread.
Pec, get a grip. Reaching through the ether with a 2×4 is not possible, I promise, so there is no reason to feel threatened. You really should learn to distinguish between plausible and implausible claims.
pec – have you ever considered reality? Didn’t think so.
pec,
“And no one could provide a logical argument against what I said”
Of course, you didn’t provide any supporting evidence for your position, either.
“…I tried to explain logically why current mainstream medicine is not responsible for the increases in longevity — lowered infant mortality, antibiotics and appendectomies are not exactly new.”
Perhaps you should define when “current mainstream medicine” began so we can better understand what you are saying and what we are expected to refute and be sure the goalposts won’t magically shift when we respond to what we understood you to be saying.
Indeed. All her self-righteous huffing and puffing about some overheated rhetoric does serve as a convenient distraction from her getting pummeled on facts, science, and logic, though.
It’s typical behavior for her. Whenever she’s getting her tuchas handed to her in the comments, she seems very good at finding something to become all self-righteous about.
1991? Old farts like me, who graduated med school in 1983, had nutrition education. and the benefits of exercise.
course, we did bleeding and purging to alter the ballance of the three humors. and we had 4 channels of black and white tv. and I wore an onion on my belt, as was the style of the time. oh the good old days.
Okay, here’s a contribution of modern “allopathic” medicine which is undeniably brand new and undeniably beneficial: the biologic drugs. Insulin no longer comes from pigs, it comes from bacteria. New, more effective chemotherapies are being developed everyday. And perhaps most remarkably, the TNF-a inhibitors have turned auto-immune diseases like Crohn’s, RA, and AS from permanent disabilities to mild annoyances in a few short years.
“Naturopaths” offer us tumeric and cherry juice, while Big Pharma has offered us drugs that treat our diseases, reduce or eliminate permanent damage before it starts, and give us our lives back.
“pec” has defined “allopathic medicine” as:
Fortunately, “allopathic medicine” isn’t currently practiced by anyone in the world. In fact, the term “allopathic” was coined by early homeopaths in order to define what they were NOT.
Real medicine, on the other hand, was actively involved in prevention, lifestyle modification and nutrition before they became “alternative”. In addition, real medicine treats the “whole person” and “individualizes” therapy, as opposed to most “alternative” practitioners, who treat everybody with the same regimen (ever go to a chiropractor and get a recommendation for something other than “spinal adjustment”?).
What “pec” has done is try to define (”frame”, if you like) “mainstream medicine” as something it is NOT. She/he calls this “allopathic” medicine, which is a convenient way for us to realize that she/he is talking about a straw man and not some real medical practice in the real world. It makes for an easier argument, but not one that based in the real world.
There may be real doctors who only use drugs or surgery in their practice, who never tell their patients to lose weight, exercise more, eat better (or less), stop smoking, cut down on the booze, etc. There may even be some real doctors who prescribe only the latest and most expensive drugs in order to get more cheap drug company pens and note pads.
There are always people in every field who fail to meet the minimum standards of their profession. The existence of a few “mainstream” physicians who don’t consider lifestyle, prevention and nutrition in their practice does not mean that this is the “norm” or even an accepted variant. It’s not what they were taught and it’s not what their peers are doing. Even my surgeon asked me about smoking (I don’t) and exercise (I do) and weight loss (I should) at every pre-op and post-op visit.
The “allopathic” straw man that “pec” has constructed may represent a vanishingly small number of physicians, but it is not an accurate picture of even the average “mainstream” physician.
On the other hand, it would be hard to argue that the vast majority of chiropractors believe that spinal manipulation can’t cure anything beyond a sore back. Or that most homeopaths don’t believe in the “Law of Infinitesimals” or that most acupuncturists don’t believe that they are somehow “unblocking” the flow of mystical “chi” (that unmeasurable and undetectable “vital energy”).
It is not a straw man to say that “alternative” practitioners believe in – and base their “therapies” on – things that are not only have no data to support them but actually have data that refutes them. How indulging in fantasy remedies will improve people’s health is beyond me.
Make-believe medicine generally only works for make-believe disorders. Someone who claims that homeopathy cured their [fill in ailment] is living proof of the placebo effect. Ditto for people who had their [anything but constipation] “cured” by a “high colonic”.
Prometheus
pec,
“And most of the new drugs have side effects that DECREASE quality of life. The public is encouraged to rely on their MD and the new drugs, even though in many cases they are probably not necessary and only increase suffering.”
Where do you get this idea, that most of the new drugs decrease quality of life? This is the kind of statement that someone pulls out of thin air, based on perception only. Unless you actually do have something to back this up?
“You’re pathetic, and impossible to take seriously. By all means, feel free to use that sentence to: accuse me of looking down on you and being elitist”
No I would never accuse you of looking down at me. I would accuse you of resorting to insults since you have nothing logical or scientific to say. Which is all too typical in pseudo-skeptic culture. Feel threatened, get enraged, blast childish insults.
People who need a solid foundation of certainty get very scared and very angry when confronted with logic and evidence.
My experiences with fundamentalist Christians and with materialist “skeptics” have been similar. Both get wildly emotional if their certainty is endangered.
Yikes, straw men in Stedman’s.
Stedman’s medical dictionary entry for “allopathy”: Regular medicine, the traditional form of medical practice. Cf. homeopathy Syn: substitutive therapy, heteropathy 2
Yes, there is the comparative notation with reference to homeopathy.
“Real medicine”: Sorry, but the Stedman’s Online Medical Dictionary doesn’t recognize this term.
The OED does credit Hahnemann as the originator of the term.
“Where do you get this idea, that most of the new drugs decrease quality of life?”
So you haven’t heard about side effects? I am surprised, since some of them are even listed in the ads. Patients are often given a drug to treat side effects of another drug — for example a blood pressure medication may cause depression, so an anti-depressant is prescribed, and the anti-depressant may cause high blood pressure. I don’t remember every detail I have read about side effects but some of it would almost be funny, except for all the real suffering that is being caused. This is especially true for elderly patients who are often on multiple drugs with all kinds of interactions and side effects.
It is impossible to believe that you have not heard of this.
I am not saying none of the new drugs are needed, but very often they are prescribed routinely and unnecessarily. And even if a patient does need a particular drug, their quality of life will be decreased by the side effects. But never mind, they can always take another drug for the side effects, and another one for the side effects of that one, etc.
And besides, as some commenters besides myself have acknowledged, we have no evidence that we are living longer healthier lives thanks to the newer drugs. That is a myth promoted by the medical industry in the hope that everyone, including children, will be drugged. And it’s working.
And there is a trend in mainstream medicine to encourage prevention and healthy lifestyles, but my point was that this originated with holistic/alternative health theories and was not emphasized in medical schools until relatively recently. It did not originate with the mainstream medical profession.
Those package inserts are really legal documents. Even something that has a very slim chance of occurring needs to be listed.
What you said is that MOST of the drugs lower the quality of life. The great majority of people will not experience these side effects. (Seriously, if walking was a drug, they would have to say that you could get hit by a car and die, or breathe air pollution and get lung cancer. You probably think I am exaggerating, but I’m not. This does not mean that taking regular walks is going to lower your quality of life.)
I just wanted to know how you came upon this conclusion. It is one thing to know all of the possible side effects, it is another to say that most drugs lower the quality of life.
All drugs have risks. Anyone believing otherwise is naïve. Package inserts include all identifiable adverse events, even when they are probably not as a result of the drug or device. It is required by law not to scare anyone, but just in case it becomes more prevalent when used in a large population.
I’m frustrated by pec’s comments, because they are truly childish in nature and because they don’t further the conversation here. I ignored pec when he decided to employ the pejorative term, allopathic. How quaint.
Drug companies only have to list the side effects that showed up in testing, which is usually not long-term. Some of what I learned about side effects came from patient report web sites, while researching for sick friends and relatives. I found out that not only my sick friends and relatives, but many many other people, are adversely affected by some of the most common drugs.
And the side effects are not always severe, but may still affect quality of life. For example, patients may feel constantly tired and depressed. And very often (not always) this is because of drugs that are not actually improving their health or prolonging their life.
“I’m frustrated by pec’s comments, because they are truly childish in nature and because they don’t further the conversation here.”
Yeah they kind of dampen the old team spirit sometimes. Sorry.
Let us not forget that people are people and not statistics.
I am only myself. One of me is not enough to tip life expectancy statistics. I am nothing but an anecdote.
To everyone but me, and my family, that is. I am alive right now because of scientific medicine. At some point in the past the heart attack I had back in 2000 would have killed me.
But, thanks to the wonders of modern drugs and hear surgery and operating rooms and – well, of lots of things – I am here, able to read blog comments knocking scientific medicine.
“For example, patients may feel constantly tired and depressed. And very often (not always) this is because of drugs that are not actually improving their health or prolonging their life.”
Hmm. The drug is not prolonging their life? How are they able to let you know that if they are dead? I thought you knew that only homeopathic and naturopathic meds claim to improve a person’s health. If I can think of any drug that improves a person’s health, I’ll let you know.
I am curious pec,
If you were diagnosed with hypertension, asthma or other medically treatable conditions (including hyperlipidemia), would you refuse treatment?
We assume that you are already living a healthy lifestyle. If you had these conditions, would you take medications under the supervision of a physician?
I mean, you seem to think that medical treatments do not prolong life.
Pec, you are still not answering the question on how you came up with the conclusion that most new drugs decrease the quality of life for those who take them. Just because you know a few people who have had adverse side effects you think this is true. I could say the same thing – that I have relatives who take drugs that have improved their quality of life and not given them side effects, so these drugs must do that for everyone based on this information alone.
You think people are getting frustrated with you because you are presenting a different opinion, but it is really because you are basing your conclusions on perceptions instead of actual data.
Also, I know you say you look at patient report web sites, but I find it hard to believe that you have looked at every single new drug, and determined that the number of reported side-effects was happening in the majority of people taking the drug.
You also say that testing is not long term. Even after a drug is released, testing is continued to determine any longer-term side effects. Also, through complaints more side-effects can be added to the insert. It is not that only the side-effects found in the initial testing are reported.
@Mark: To get to medical school, did you have to climb uphill? Both ways?
@Prometheus:
If you ignore the actual remedies that homeopaths produce (pure water) and look only the the preparation of the remedies, then homeopathy provides perhaps the most individualized form of treatment around, since the “mother tincutres” that they prepare is matched to the exact set of symptoms their patient has at the time. And I recall reading somewhere that some homeopaths vary the recipe for their mother tincutres based not just on the symptoms, but on the personality of the patient, which is even more individualized, and could be interpreted as treating the “whole person”.
@Michael:
Actually, I was the first one to bring up the word “allopathic”.
“And there is a trend in mainstream medicine to encourage prevention and healthy lifestyles, but my point was that this originated with holistic/alternative health theories and was not emphasized in medical schools until relatively recently. It did not originate with the mainstream medical profession.”
This is another uninformed opinion that is complete bull. I am probably older than most of the people on this blog and studied before some idiots came up with the concept of CAM aka quackery. Prevention and a healthy lifestyle was known and taught and I believe it still continues to be taught.
Of course we do not have cures for all diseases and we haven’t found out how to conquer death, and maintain youth. I think we would be closer to those goals if we hadn’t diverted scarce funding into CAM nonsense for all these years to satisfy the fantasies of some deluded idealogues who know nothing of medicine.
@Khym Chanur.
In the snow.
Oh my Ed, Mark, that must have been in Minnesota! My time spent there taught me to never wish for a White Christmas ever agan!
I promised myself that I wouldn’t feed the troll, but…
“In a recent post I got a lot of flack for not speaking like a scientist.”
Not relevant to the topic, but when did “flak” become “flack?”
Not having actually graduated med school, I may not be qualified to enter the race with Mark Crislip, but since I happen to teach at one I have access to the archives of courses held in the past.
We had a course about the beneficial effects of nutrition and excercise on our curriculum in the forties. No doubt, we have the CAM movement to thank for that.
Be gentle with pec. Because she is someone who believes in immaterial things, the idea that a 2×4 could whack her through the ether is something (I presume) she takes quite seriously and may actually be frightening to her.
Regarding improved life due to modern medicine, maternal mortality during childbirth is something that modern medicine has had dramatic effects on. Deaths due to puerperal fever didn’t drop until the 1930s.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/1/241S
If you look at table 3, only two of the leading causes of maternal death in the 1870s are among the top 8 in the 1970s. The total number of maternal deaths is down considerably, from 23,051 to 393 over superficially similar time periods (though the number of women at risk is likely considerably higher now than a century ago.
If modern medical interventions were stopped, the death rate during childbirth would go back to what it was before those interventions brought it down. It is disingenuous nonsense to suggest otherwise.
People, people… I think we’re all missing something that Pec said early on. “But what if the new drugs are NOT making us any healthier?” Thank you, Pec. And more questions abound. What if coffee and bananas, taken rectally, is vaccination against cancer? What if heart disease can actually be cured by Space Flu? What if the dung of pink elephants causes diabetes?
We need to be willing to ask the hard questions.
pec,
Did I read somewhere that you are a chiropractor?
If you discovered that subluxations do not exist and that many chiropractic claims about preventing disease by back-cracking are nonsense, what would you do?
Just a hypothetical question, of course.
One point no one has commented on yet – drugs are monitored after market (so-called phase IV studies) and when new adverse effects come to light the FDA mandated package insert is updated. In fact I frequently get these updates, as do all physicians, alerting us to the changes.
Regarding side-effects of drugs reducing a patient’s quality of life, pec apparently has chosen to ignore any improvement in a patient’s quality of life, thus producing a net improvement. For instance, with life-saving drugs, I would argue that most people would prefer some modest discomfort to death. (Obviously there are limits, which is why actual doctors recommend turning off life support and/or going into hospice at some point, because there does come a time when the gain from the therapy does not justify the side effects.)
The Blind Watchmaker asks pec:
If you were diagnosed with hypertension, asthma or other medically treatable conditions (including hyperlipidemia), would you refuse treatment?
Since you mentioned asthma, I will use that to illustrate my point for pec.
I have asthma. I carry a rescue inhaler. The drug is albuterol, which is a fast-acting beta-agonist and, when inhaled, acts as a bronchodialator. From personal experience, I can say that it’s effect is quite dramatic. I go from gasping for breath to a wonderful, fabulous state of being able to breathe in and out freely. There are definitely side-effects, though, such as tachycardia (racing heart) which can be distressing if you’re not expecting it. And you can’t sleep, or at least I can’t, because I feel unpleasantly wired. I don’t like that side-effect. And then there’s the tremor. I have a tremor; it runs in the family, and for other family members, responds well to beta-blockers. Albuterol is a beta-agonist, so it has the opposite effect — my tremor gets significantly worse.
But being able to breathe again . . . oh, that is heaven, and well worth the shakes and the racing heart and the wired feeling! Plus, I do like being alive. While my asthma is not severe, there’s no telling when I might get a really bad one. Usually, I don’t need anything more than the rescue inhaler; a few squirts on a really bad day, and then I’m fine. Once in a while, though, my lungs get chronically inflamed and then I need steroids to get them to settle down again and stop the cycle of asthma attacks. (Beta-agonists don’t actually treat asthma; they just relieve acute symptoms.) Lately, I’ve come to like Advair for that; it combines an inhaled steroid with a long-acting beta agonist (salmeterol) that’s better targeted than albuteral (so no shakes or tachycardia). The combination reduces the risks of both drugs, because you need less steroids with the salmeterol, and the steroids mean that you don’t have to worry so much about salmeterol covering up worsening asthma. (Alas, I’ve tried Singulair, and it was not effective for me. Pity, because it’s even safer.)
Despite the side effects, these drugs have GREATLY increased my quality of life. I’m especially aware of this now, as we move into my peak asthma season — the rainy, polleny springtime.
My grandma has battled asthma for decades, and is a living testament to the improvements that have been made in asthma treatment in the past half century. When she was first diagnosed, the only real treatment was oral or intravenous steroids. As a consequence, her skin is shockingly fragile. She had her knee replaced a few months ago, and her skin tore a good two to three feet down from the knee. A simple procedure became quite complicated as they had to summon a plastic surgeon to repair the damage. But without the steroids, she would not be alive to have her knee replaced today. Her asthma is severe; if she hadn’t accepted the rather serious risk of those side effects, I probably would never have even met her. And until recently, she’s enjoyed a very high quality of life, despite her asthma. She was a full-time teacher, specializing in American Lit, drama, and remedial English, retiring only in her late 60s. (Firebrand, too; even the worst ruffians in her classroom quickly learned to respect her.) She’s traveled the world with her husband (who also owes a great deal to modern medicine). Indeed, she lived a very active life until very recently, when a combination of aging joints and a case of West Nile Virus knocked her down a few notches. She’s grateful to have inhaled corticosteroids, but she doesn’t regret the decades of prednisone, even though they’ve caused her some serious health problems. The balance has been overwhelmingly positive.
Getting back to the actual topic of this thread, it is quite true that there are those who resort to personal attacks (particularly tu quoque, as if “well, medicine kills people!” is any justification for letting alternative medicine kill people) when they don’t have actual substance to back up their claims. This is usually because, despite their confidence in their claims, they don’t actually understand them or the topic anywhere near as well as they think. Unfortunately for her, pec is demonstrating this all too well, and is utterly oblivious to the irony of doing so in a post discussing how foolish this strategy is.
“she is someone who believes in immaterial things, the idea that a 2×4 could whack her through the ether is something she takes quite seriously”
daedalus2u,
Threats of violence should always be taken seriously. What world are you living in? I ignore the moronic insults at these pseudo-skeptic blogs, but death threats cross the line. Too bad the authors and moderators here think moronic threats of violence are just fine — as long as the target isn’t someone on their own team.
pec,
Why are you afraid of an index card?
pec, context is key.
Personally, if I were given the above two options, I’d prefer the etheric 2×4 engineered to whack sense into my head. It sounds quick and painless. Convincing patients to change their lifestyles is neither.
If I had threatened anyone with that kind of physical violence the reaction would have been outrage. But since I threaten your worldview, you think bashing my head is not unreasonable. You are so biased and intolerant of alternate ideas here, it shades right into evil.
pec, you are not threatening anyone’s worldview. Interesting that you keep talking about this imaginary 2×4, but still are not answering anyone’s questions. Yeah, you are a real threat.
Last night my son complained that his heart was racing.
He has a genetic heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with obstruction (it is occurs in about 1 in 500 people, see information about it at http://www.4hcm.org/). His is pretty bad, the mitral has been damages by increased pressure, which is why he takes atenenol every day for it. Unfortunately he ran out before the refill was delivered by the online pharmacy (being an almost adult he is not very good at telling me he is running out). He skipped just one evening dose and he could feel the abnormal heartbeat.
Fortunately (since I know the kid) I had a stash to tide him over until the next 90 day supply arrives in the next day or so.
So, pec, what do you think is a better treatment for this condition than the beta-blocker? How should have we prevented the abnormal growth of the heart muscle? Is there some kind of “energy” medicine that should be waved over the other two children to prevent the possibility of their hearts adding extra cells (according to my son’s cardiologist it can happen anytime between birth and well into adulthood). What does your vast (and ever changing) education tell you about real medical issues, like genetic conditions that until the advent of echo-cardiograms were most often diagnosed after sudden cardiac death? Come on, give me a clue-by-four on how terrible the beta-blockers are and what would be better for his heart!
I NEVER said mainstream medicine should not be used to save lives and I NEVER said it is useless. I said the claim that Americans are living longer healthier lives because of recent advances is a myth and is used as marketing PR. I said the idea that in all previous eras people were sickly and old at age 40 is part of that myth, and that you have no evidence to back up your myths.
And a small number of readers acknowledged that longevity data is hard to interpret and that we really don’t know how much, if at all, recent advances may have helped the average person. Saying we are now living twice as long is a common refrain, which purposely distorts reality by not mentioning infant mortality.
And no, I don’t want infants to die, but a percentage of offspring in most species are expected to die, and this could be seen as nature’s mechanism for keeping species healthy.
Modern medicine has successfully disabled this mechanism, dramatically increasing average lifespan. But that says nothing about the health and longevity of non-infants.
And that was my point, which no one could argue against and some agreed with. That constantly repeated triumphant claim is not based in reality, but it does convince millions to trust their MD and swallow barrels of pills with questionable value and possible harm.
And it is very surprising that no one here has noticed anything wrong with the big drug companies’ marketing campaigns and the overuse of medications.
Getting away from pec’s rantings and back to the topic, HuffPo’s war on science:
Marianne Williamson is telling HuffPo readers to “pray away” swine flu.
What horse pucky.
sorry — must have munged up the link to the article.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-williamson/pray-away-the-swine-flu_b_192004.html
pec said “no one here has noticed anything wrong with the big drug companies’ marketing campaigns and the overuse of medications.”
Once more she demonstrates her inability to read. We HAVE noticed and we have spoken out. Just two examples:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=126
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=461
Yes, drug companies are out to make money and some physicians over-prescribe. That doesn’t mean the drugs don’t help people when used appropriately.
I know that the plural of anecdote is “anecdotes”, not data. That said, pec’s (and others’) claims that science-based medicine didn’t recognize lifestyle (diet and exercise) changes until alternative medicine came along have at least some anecdotal counterpoints.
I’ll cite one that I’m intimately familiar with: my grandfather, who was told in the 1930’s that he needed to eat more vegetables and grains, and go for regular walks (constitutionals) for his heart.
Modern medicine may be advertising the need for healthy diet and exercise more today (in part because health trends demonstrate that people are ignoring the advice), but that kind of advice is as old as the medical profession itself.
“That doesn’t mean the drugs don’t help people when used appropriately.”
I agree. But they are very often used inappropriately and one reason is the PR claim that average lifespan has doubled thanks to recent advances. That was my whole point and no one has found anything illogical or unscientific about it. But I still get violent threats — do they want to smash my head because I have an “inability to read” Harriet? Or could there be other reasons?
Nope. Nothing unscientific about making claims without evidence. Perfectly logical.
Once again, pec demonstrates how much she understands science. (To wit – not at all.)
qetzal,
There was a recent post here or at neurologica where the author listed the causes of increasing life span, and no one objected. This information has been stated in many places and is generally agreed on. You can’t believe it because you don’t want to believe it. You need to see current mainstream medicine as a story of constant progress in all areas.
“You need to see current mainstream medicine as a story of constant progress in all areas.”
First correct thing you’ve said.
Pec said: “Modern medicine has successfully disabled this mechanism, dramatically increasing average lifespan. But that says nothing about the health and longevity of non-infants.”
Pec, I think you’re mixing terms here. Yes, it’s true, decreased infant mortality rates have had a significant impact on increasing the average life span (or the mean amount of time that humans survive). However, “modern medicine” (including better understanding things that contribute to health, i.e. sanitation, diet, exercise) has also increased average life EXPECTANCY (the amount of life left to live) among all age groups. In other words (and i’m blatantly making up numbers here because my friend currently has my biology of aging textbook) a twenty year old alive today will live another 60 years or so, whereas someone who was 20 in the early 1900’s may only have lived another 45 years. Sorry… no real argument here, just information. Someone with more knowledge on the subject than I can probably find good citations without a textbook next to them.
[ “modern medicine” (including better understanding things that contribute to health, i.e. sanitation, diet, exercise) has also increased average life EXPECTANCY]
Christie,
You are defining “modern medicine” as an understanding of sanitation, diet and exercise, so your comment is not really a response to what I was trying to explain. Yes, understanding sanitation, diet and exercise, and knowing how to test their effects on health scientifically, gives us a great health advantage. But there is a lot more to modern medicine than sanitation, diet and exercise — in fact most people would define modern medical advances very differently, primarily in terms of pharmaceuticals and surgical technology.
My point has been that mainstream medicine has not necessarily been progressing in all areas, and more recent advances should not be credited with increasing lifespan.
So it depends on exactly how you define “modern medicine.” The statement that modern medicine has greatly improved our health and longevity is usually interpreted as meaning the newer drugs used for treating high cholesterol, hypertension and cancer, for example, are responsible for the increasing average lifespan. But I have not seen evidence for that, and most MDs will probably admit that it’s an unscientific assumption.
And we hear that statement very often, and most people do not question it. The result is too much faith in drugs and surgery and not enough focus on lifestyle. Emphasis on lifestyle has always been typical of the holistic health perspective, while mainstream non-holistic medicine has usually focused on drugs and surgery.
After all, you don’t need an MD to explain the basics of diet and exercise, but you do need an MD if you require drugs or surgery.
Serious epistemological question: How do you know that there are no other ways than the scientific method of knowing how nature works?
(Trivial example: Assuming the existence of a God who created everything, then He presumably knows how everything works, having designed it; however, it is implausible and presumptuous in the extreme to suppose that He used the scientific method to come by that knowledge.)
Incidentally, I wouldn’t spend too much time enthusiastically blowing each other over how many people medicine, science-based or otherwise, has saved over the history of humanity; the simple, bald truth is that engineers, particularly civil engineers, have saved orders of magnitude more lives and improved quality of life by orders of magnitude more than any doctor – MD, naturopath, chiropractor or otherwise – ever achieved in his most spectacular wet-dreams. Yeah, that’s right: the humble math geek with a pocket protector and calculator has done more for humanity’s health, in any given five years of his working career, than 99% of MDs will ever do or have ever done over the course of an entire lifetime. (MDs like Jonas Salk are by far the exception to this rule.) The engineer’s screwups, should he commit them, are orders of magnitude more deadly than any screwup any MD ever makes, too. Doctors kill their patients one at a time, generally, or a handful at a time if they’re spectacularly incompetent; engineers do it en masse and without warning.
Clean running water saves more lives on a regular basis than any medicine, vaccine, or procedure ever did. If you doubt this, look at some of the loathsome pits on this Earth where you don’t *get* clean running water, then tell me whether the people who live there would benefit more from a decent well and water-processing system or a pallet of drugs.
Shit, the lesson Ignaz Semmelweis taught in the 19th century – arguably one of the most important lessons of modern health and medicine, namely “Wash Your Fucking Hands”, an admonition that takes on a special significance as a loathsome plague works its way across the world – is routinely ignored, as demonstrated by the appalling MRSA rates in hospitals from Kalamazoo to Karachi. The irony of medical practitioners causing harm by lackadaisically neglecting to use (*ahem*) *scientifically-proven* hygienic practices enabled and provided by hard-working engineers is not lost on me, though I suspect it will be lost on most of the crowd. I humbly suggest that perhaps MDs could spare themselves some self-congratulation and focus some of that wasted energy on personal fastidiousness, and on encouraging that habit in their colleagues who are sorely lacking of it.
“engineer and proud of it”
-SD
pec,
Leaving aside my personal opinion regarding the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of metaphorical threats of violence, if you honestly feel your life has been threatened, or you have been seriously threatened with bodily harm, and you honestly fear for your safety, report it to the police and file a criminal complaint. Request a subpoena for the logs of science based medicine to determine the identity of “gaiainc”. If the courts and the police take you seriously on this one, we’ll likely do the same.
Until then and otherwise, just post a complaining comment that you don’t find the comment appropriate or in good taste, note how such comments affect your opinion of the poster and anyone who agrees with them, and knock off all the phony pretense about fearing for your safety, and move on.
pec did exactly what I expected. She defended her claims about lifespan by claiming things like “no one objected” to some previous post (uncited), and “This information has been stated in many places and is generally agreed on” (again uncited).
She didn’t attempt to defend her even bigger unscientific claim: that drugs are “very often” used inappropriately because of the supposed false claims about general longevity increases.
In all seriousness, I have no doubt she thinks her statements are entirely logical and scientific.
P.S. I don’t have a strong opinion about the general effect of drugs on longevity. Certainly some drugs have had a huge effect on some patients (insulin for type 1 diabetics, antivirals for the HIV-infected, etc.). But I don’t claim to know what the aggregate effect really is, and the reason I don’t claim that is because I haven’t seen the evidence!.
See, I always thought science meant drawing conclusions from evidence. “No one objected,” it’s been “stated in many places,” and it’s “generally agreed on” are not evidence.
“just post a complaining comment that you don’t find the comment appropriate or in good taste, note how such comments affect your opinion of the poster and anyone who agrees with them”
I thought that’s what I did.
“and knock off all the phony pretense about fearing for your safety”
I didn’t pretend anything like that. I thought it was horrifying that no one thought threatening to bash someone’s head was an offensive comment. Gorski thought it was perfectly understandable — if you disagree with someone of course you get so frustrated you feel like killing them, in his world.
It shows how evil the online environment can become, and how people are used to it and don’t seem to mind. At least not here. When people are crazed by politics and ideology they can become evil.
The person who threatened me seemed to disappear and good riddance. If they had continued then I would be scared.
Pec, …seriously?
[ “modern medicine” (including better understanding things that contribute to health, i.e. sanitation, diet, exercise) has also increased average life EXPECTANCY]
Pec: “You are defining “modern medicine” as an understanding of sanitation, diet and exercise, so your comment is not really a response to what I was trying to explain.”
I said that to AVOID debate on that subject because you all have already had it out. And I wasn’t TRYING to respond to that part of what you were saying. I was just adding that life expectancy and life span are two completely different things and that changes in them have different causes. Adhering to these definitions would allow everyone to phrase their arguments more clearly, and yet you completely ignored my point.
pec,
Not to introduce a false dichotomy, but I personally can only see 2 possibilities here: You are either genuinely unable to distinguish reality from metaphor, or you are lying about being afraid.
NOBODY threatened to kill you or do you physical bodily harm unless you believe in the metaphysical/ paranormal ability of someone to “reach through the ether”. Nobody stated they felt like killing you, that is a position you invented to further your persecution complex and better sell it to anyone who would listen.
>>> “I have a strong urge to reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4″
>>> “I will reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4. More than once”
I dare say that nobody, probably not even yourself, took these statements as literal intention to do actual physical harm. You have done what you do with most other statements you reply to here, you have distorted and exaggerated a statement to lend support to your personal position, in this case that the posters here are crazed by politics and evil, and out to get you
I personally wouldn’t have made statements like that. I understand what the writer intended, I understand the underlying feelings that the writer was trying to convey, and I certainly understand the writer was not threatening you in any way, but I would have found a different way to phrase the expression of my frustration with you.
If you still maintain that you take those statements as a legitimate, serious threat, you need help. You either need to contact the authorities, or you need to see a psychiatrist:
!!!Anyone who legitimately feels their life has been seriously threatened is a fool if they do not contact the authorities!!!
>>> “I have a strong urge to reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4″
>>> “I will reach through the ether and whack you upside the head with a 2×4. More than once”
You can go on making excuses for your team mate, but if you think those aren’t expressions of violent impulses then you must be from some other world.
“You either need to contact the authorities, or you need to see a psychiatrist:”
And you need to go stick your head in a pig. And I mean that literally, not metaphorically. And I am done with this insult fest.
“and yet you completely ignored my point.”
Oh christie, big deal, I didn’t get your point. Sue me.
“And you need to go stick your head in a pig. And I mean that literally, not metaphorically. And I am done with this insult fest.”
My red badge of courage! A direct condemnation from pec, I hardly feel worthy, given the lofty posters and bloggers who share this honor. I’d like to thank my parents, James Randi, Dr Gorski…….
I feel scared that pec is going to come shove a pig over my head, which could lead to suffication and death! I maintain that she is crazed by politics and evil, and out to get me.
——————————————————————————
By the way, pec, at NO TIME did I ever make excuses for “my team mate”. I believe I even implied I did not agree with his choice of words.
And, one last time, put up or shut up: You either need to contact the authorities, see a psychiatrist, or just shut up on this topic.
If you really believe your life was threatened, you are a total and complete idiot if you do not go to the authorities, period.
Pec, says,
This really falls into the “Well, duh” category.
It would be surprising indeed if the major diseases that cause the most death and suffering were the ones with cures, now wouldn’t it?
We don’t see much suffering these days from polio, or tetanus, or bacterial infections, but these were all once major sources of human suffering. And even for some diseases that are still incurable, such as diabetes, suffering has been reduced.
And yes, drugs have side effects. But not everybody experiences side effects; indeed, for most commonly used drugs, the incidence of side effects is on the order of a few percent. People take these drugs because they improve their quality of life. Since almost all side-effects are reversible, there is a simple solution: if the drug doesn’t improve your quality of life, you don’t take the drug.
trrll,
“It would be surprising indeed if the major diseases that cause the most death and suffering were the ones with cures, now wouldn’t it?”
Very witty, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it when I first read the comment, but for some reason it came to me right away when read the quote in your reply, and laughed out load when you wrote exactly what I was thinking.
Did you also know that the vast majority of all deaths in the US are due to fatal causes?
Nonono. You totally misunderstand her. You see, of course she doesn’t believe she was physically threatened, she is merely alarmed that someone could disturb the aether with negative thoughts about her!
pecon 30 Apr 2009 at 3:44 pm
“and yet you completely ignored my point.”
Oh christie, big deal, I didn’t get your point. Sue me.
No, I won’t, but I will question your intellectual honesty and integrity. You chose to cherry-pick the one sentence in my statement that you could disagree with and start ranting rather than consider what I was saying and reframe your argument based on new information. That just tell me that you’re on here to fight and have no interest in what anyone else has to say.
christy put it best in regard to pec:
“I will question your intellectual honesty and integrity.”
There aren’t enough clue-by-fours to go around, everybody please share.
oops, christie, mea culpa.
Pec “The idea that lifestyle makes a difference, and that environmental toxins can make us sick, comes from alternative medicine, not from mainstream medicine. ”
That is the perception that AM is trying to sell. The reality is quite different.
Not only is the above not true (whenever did AM perform long-term prevention studies on large populations or seriously assess the effects of defined “toxins”?) but AM has definitely been steering the public down the wrong paths: vitamin supplements rather than a healthy diet, crank diets rather than evidence-based ones, useless Detox for insignificant toxic exposures rather than emphasizing the critical role of alcohol and tobacco and a sedentary lifestyle in poor health.
Alt. sources commonly went even further (without being contradicted by the major gurus) so as to claim that vitamins and other measures could actually counter the effects of a poor diet and smoking. We now have solid evidence that supplements do not have the same effect as a good diet.
Watch it shadowmouse
One more slip like that and I’ll have to… wait… we don’t need any more threats on this thread, never mind.
Quoth pec:
Alright, pec. I’ve tried to be patient. I really have. I’ve even tried to ignore you completely, lest I feed the troll that you are more than I and others already have. But enough’s enough. Editor or no editor, SBM blogger or no SBM blogger, there comes a point when I have to call you out for your nonsense. It’s time for you to stop lying about what I said. I never said anything of the sort. This is what I said:
Reasonable readers can glean my intent easily, which was a rather weak understanding of why someone would get so annoyed with you. It’s also a long stretch from saying that I didn’t like Steve’s choice of language but that I can “kind of” sympathize with getting so frustrated with your obtuseness that one might use overly vivid language to saying that doing so was “perfectly understandable” or that if you get frustrated it’s OK to “feel like killing someone.” Only because you love playing the persecuted martyr so much can you so misconstrue the connotation of my comment.
Sprach Cde. Gorski:
“It’s also a long stretch from saying that I didn’t like Steve’s choice of language but that I can “kind of” sympathize with getting so frustrated with your obtuseness that one might use overly vivid language to saying that doing so was “perfectly understandable” or that if you get frustrated it’s OK to “feel like killing someone.” Only because you love playing the persecuted martyr so much can you so misconstrue the connotation of my comment.”
Ah, to watch pots berating kettles.
“black much?”
-SD
It isn’t her obtuseness that I find objectionable, it is the injurious and willfully ignorant and false ideas that she spouts. P Moran has it right. pec is practicing revisionist history to claim that AM is responsible for the current emphasis on exercise and a healthy diet not modern medicine which is (thankfully) becoming increasingly science based (if we can keep the CAM out).
pec is spouting an ideology that if people followed it they could be (likely would be) harmed. That is what this blog post and comment thread is about. It is about dangerous, harmful, and merely useless practices being promoted as if they were helpful while the promoters get rich off of them by exploiting the vulnerable.
pec wrote:
“And there is a trend in mainstream medicine to encourage prevention and healthy lifestyles, but my point was that this originated with holistic/alternative health theories and was not emphasized in medical schools until relatively recently. It did not originate with the mainstream medical profession.”
I am looking at a 1928 edition of The Sexual Education of the Young Woman, by Dr. David H. Keller (Assistant Superintendent of Western State Hospital, Bolivar, Tennessee), from The Sexual Education Series, Roman Publishing Company, New York. In it I find recommendations for “good, healthy food, plenty of sleep, moderate exercise, the avoidance of fatigue and nervous tire and a quiet happy home.”
Just sayin’.
“That is what this blog post and comment thread is about. It is about dangerous, harmful, and merely useless practices being promoted as if they were helpful while the promoters get rich off of them by exploiting the vulnerable.”
And all I am really saying is that there are dangerous, harmful and useless practices in all branches of the health industries. You all act like the big drug companies are run by innocent angels who just want to make people healthy, while alternative medicine is nothing but greedy malicious profit-seekers.
You seldom look at both sides. I think alternative medicine is full of scams and mistakes and failures, but so is mainstream medicine, and everything else that human beings are involved in. Mainstream scientists are not exalted gods and keepers of the truth.
I happen to agree with some of the alternative theories, so I am considered an adversary here. But I am not a promoter of any kind of CAM treatments, and I never say that all mainstream medicine is useless.
I try to bring a different perspective when I see a post that is one-sided and biased — and many of them are. Many or most of them are angry, derisive, disrespectful and close-minded.
You ridicule serious scientists and physicians, not just scammers, just because they are not on your materialist/atheist team. It really irks you that there are so many non-materialist/non-atheists in the world. So you decide we are all idiots deserving verbal, if not physical, violence.
SD makes an interesting point about the contribution of engineers to increased life expectancy.
David Cutler, a Harvard economics professor, has written a few papers which give a larger perspective on the topic of increased life expectancy.
Here http://www.princeton.edu/rpds/papers/pdfs/cutler_deaton_lleras-muney_determinants_mortality_nberdec05.pdf Cutler describes 3 historical phases of mortality reduction in the economically “rich” nations: Phase I from mid-18th century to mid-19th century due to improved nutrition and economic growth; Phase II from the closing decades of the 19th century into the 20th century due to public health, first negatively, because of high mortality in cities, then positively in the delivery of clean water and removal of wastes and improved hygiene practices; Phase III dating from 1930s on he calls the “era of big medicine” which includes vaccines and antibiotics. (According to another Cutler paper, http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8556.html
US life expectancy at birth has increased from 60 years to 75 years since about 1930.)
Cutler breaks down 20th century US mortality reduction this way: exclusive of tuberculosis, reduction in direct infectious disease mortality accounts for 3% of total mortality reduction. Antibiotics and reduced cardiovascular disease mortality account for the bulk of the decrease in mortality rates, while he attributes 19% to decreased infant mortality.
pec,
You really, really are straw-manning. I sense that you are angry.
Don’t you just want to reach out an hit us on the head with a 2 x 4?
Man…this “pec” dude is really crazy! are you a republican? ’cause your milliseconds away from going on TV and saying that the Mexicans are responsible for the Swine Flu and they want to destroy America!!!
lol…I am just cracking up. Only an ignorant, arrogant, delusional illiterate will say the nonsense you have said thus far.
I want to name some events and drugs for you since you seem to think that you are holier than thou…you know…people are being nice to you dude…be a little grateful for that. They are giving you the time of day to explain to you why you sound so freaking dumb…and no avail…haha…this is awesome.
1. Recombinant Insulin: without which we had to wait for someone to die to get it from their pancreas.
2. Any anesthetics: imagine having to endure surgery while being awake.
3. Blood clotting drugs: Hemophilia is as old as time. At least these people won’t die of a knee scrape at the age of 5.
4. Discovery of Anti-scorbutic Factor a.k.a. Vitamin C: Don’t tell bull that its a vitamin and comes from fruit and therefore Alternative Medicine…blah…blah…blah… It was a doctor and essentially a scientist who discovered that the bleeding disease and death of sailors was not due to daemons, but to lack of nutrition. A British surgeon named James Lind. He studied his discoveries for 6 year before he published them and established a strong irrefutable logic that without Vitamin C Scurvy is inevitable.
5. Penicillin (and other anti-bacs): which saved so many people from a variety of bacterial infections such as: Syphilis (also as old as time), Staph (highest deaths post op due to secondary infection in hospitals up to a decade ago), Strep….
6. Statins: Of course they elongate the human life. Without Statins, high Cholesterol can cause heart attacks. This is not a speculation, it is an inevitable fact. The kicker is you can have high Cholesterol due to genetic make up and not because of life style choices. So you can’t even begin to blame it on a fast food and junk like that.
7. Blood Pressure Meds: without which heart attack is inevitable.
8. Clot dissolving meds: without which a stroke patient is as good as dead if not treated right away (within half hour)
9. Alcohol: the most basic and fundamental sanitation item in the history of man…PERIOD. Discovered for its medicinal properties by Zakaria Razi, who was incidentally Iranian (I am Iranian). He was a scientist, physician, alchemist, philosopher and a teacher. This is modern medicine. Modern does not refer to a time restriction. It refers to the practices are found based on logic, scientific reasoning, experimental data and analysis…
10. Polio Vaccine: eradicated Polio from the majority of the world. Only 4 countries might have the wild type virus, out of 192 countries worldwide. Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria.
11. Small Pox: eradicated period. Now asinine people who don’t get vaccinated threaten the whole population by being susceptible to a come back of these viruses.
12. Hepatitis C Virus: noted in the 1970s, but was proven in 1989. By now 150-200 million people are infected due to lack of knowledge about the virus and supplying the blood banks with dirty bloods back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
13. Clean births: less dying infants and mothers
14. Testing for viruses and infectious agents that cause congenital defects. These are: CMV, Herpes, Toxoplasma and Rubbella: more healthier babies
15. Discovering that Vitamin A is teratogenic: causes severe abnormalities in the fetus if the mother overdoses on any forms of it…such as pills, night creams, face washes….
I want to end with this:
Modern medicine has explained a lot of misfortune, devastation, tragedy and loss through out the thousands of years. Considering the fact that a girl will now have the opportunity to know what caused her baby to be deformed, aborted, still-birthed…is reason enough for me to be grateful that my life is so much better in quality and quantity.
I cannot even imagine what it would feel like being blamed for a genetic/environmental malformation of the child, simply because it was customary to blame the mother since she harbored the fetus.
Are you kidding me?!
This is for “pec” too:
Dude, you are proving the exact point that this article has made. That people like you only divert from the criticism instead of challenging it. You talk about modern medicine and then equate it with the Big Pharma?
No one is arguing about the pharmaceutical companies’ sincerity or lack thereof. But you are diminishing someone’s life work and effort (doctors, scientists…) just to divert attention from the fact that you are in a hole so deep, I don’t think a naked mole rat is going to be able to find you.
You don’t want modern medicine, then don’t go to the doctor.
You don’t want modern medicine then don’t do any of the following, because if you do you will be nullifying your own argument:
-don’t eat yogurt
-don’t eat rising bread
-don’t take any kind of medicine
-don’t drink anything with caffeine in it that is not tea or coffee
-don’t use any kind of antiseptic
-don’t use alcohol in anyway
-don’t use ice if you have a bruised muscle
-don’t take a hot shower if your body aches
-don’t eat cereal grains, fruits and vegetables to gain from their benefits
-don’t take any supplements
-don’t have any surgery even if your life depended on it (haha)
Maybe you will get it after all of the above…
SD: You might enjoy reading this about the importance of clean water technologies in mortality reduction. I agree with you on this.
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/files/cutler_miller_cities.pdf
For instance, with life-saving drugs, I would argue that most people would prefer some modest discomfort to death. (Obviously there are limits, which is why actual doctors recommend turning off life support and/or going into hospice at some point, because there does come a time when the gain from the therapy does not justify the side effects.)
I will just add my opinion: I would accept a decent pain killing drug, even with the knowledge that it likely would shorten my life by a year or two.
Wow. I had no idea that my metaphor was going to cause a furor. My apologies to pec that she actually feel threatened. My apologies to SBM for this whole thread getting hijacked. That wasn’t my intent, though now I know and knowing is half the battle. If Drs. Gorski and Novella wish to reprimand me, I accept their reprimand penitently. I definitely could have chosen a better way to express my frustration.
For the record, though, I am a woman, I am not violent, and I have no intention of doing any harm to pec or anyone at this blog. I also have priorities other than this blog.
Pec, I am very glad that you are not my patient as you are glad I am not your doctor. I respectfully ask that you read the first three paragraphs of my post. What I argued against was your quite frankly specious and wrong argument that medicine does not promote a healthy lifestyle and that only started after alternative medicine started making noise about it. Yeah… wrong. So very wrong. Nothing about medicine’s ability to prolong and improve quality of life or whatever else you thought I was arguing. It was all about how much healthy lifestyle counseling happens day to day in medicine. Every single fricking day. Whether my patients want to hear it or not. You are still welcome to try and convince my patients to change their ways. Have fun with that Sisphyean task.
I’m impressed with pec’s statement: “And all I am really saying is that there are dangerous, harmful and useless practices in all branches of the health industries. You all act like the big drug companies are run by innocent angels who just want to make people healthy, while alternative medicine is nothing but greedy malicious profit-seekers.”
Ummm… where did anyone say that pharmaceutical companies are run by innocent angels who just want to make people healthy? Seriously. Show me where. I know pharmaceutical companies are not angels. I call them the evil drug companies (along with the evil and stupid insurance companies) to my patients. However the drug companies make a product or products that make my life, my family’s life, and my patients’ lives on the whole better, not worse, and thus I have to deal with them. Yes, drugs have potential side-effects. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t be working. In general the benefits far outweigh the risks, so I use them. My patients always have the option to say no. They have free will. My job is not to browbeat them. My job is to inform, recommend, and counsel. They have to take the med. They have to decide to follow or not follow my advice and they have to live with the consequences of their decisions. They don’t always like the latter part, but it’s a part of learning to be a grown-up, to accept responsibility for one’s actions.
And I’m going to stop because at this point, I don’t think that pec cares or is even willing to listen. She’ll just change the argument to try to argue something else, which is what seems to be happen again and again and again. Which kind of proves Dr. Novella’s whole point in his post. Heh.
Just an anecdote, but some of the oldest jokes around are about outliving the doctor who kept telling me to quit smoking, drink less, get more exercise, and eat more vegtebles.
It seems to me that doctors have been saying this for a very long time.
Weatherwax – for decades in fact.
Gaianinc – You make excellent points, and thank you for the clarification. I wouldn’t feel too terribly bad. Pec was either using that statement to beat the discussion senseless with a red herring, or genuinely could not tell the difference – which is profoundly disturbing.
The point you make is absolutely valid, this is a point that has come up over and over in various lectures and discussions I’ve had with faculty who are practicing MDs, particularly in the topic of human pharmacology. While you certainly can provoke some positive biological change by the cavalcade of lifestyle interventions commonly touted, it’s murky as to how much, if it’s enough, if the patient is capable of it. But on top of that it is -profoundly- difficult to get a patient to maintain a major lifestyle change over the kind of time period necessary. The only time they’re really willing to do so is after a direct brush with death, or perhaps an experience of profound self-loathing or disgust.
Stop smoking. Drink less/stop drinking. Get some exercise, eat a better diet. This is a message that has been shouted for so long from every source, be it physicians, or the mass media. And yet it continually falls on deaf ears. That sort of profound reengineering of a life is something most people, I dare say most of us here couldn’t manage. Not for the timeframe necessary. Not for months, years, decades.
Characterizing drug companies as conspiratorial, some shadowy overarching conglomerate dictating all medicine with malicious intent is unwarranted. While it is without debate that they have engaged in many deceitful or outrageous practices, when they do so they frequently get punished. The Olanzapine lawsuits and the Gabapentin lawsuits are examples enough of that, where slimy marketing tactics have gotten companies like Eli Lilly and Parke-Davis burned, and burned severely. Yet at the same time they are subject to enormous scrutiny, large amounts of public pressure, and beyond that, what they make is absolutely necessary.
It’s becoming a trend lately for the large pharmaceutical companies to do a relative minority of their own product development. What we’re seeing more and more of is small groups of biomedical researchers forming their own companies, using techniques like rational drug design, high throughput compound screening and such to develop small molecule drugs, which they drag through early stage testing, and then sell promising candidates to the larger companies, in some cases the entire company.
By and large, the research and development being done, is being done by academics, doctors, lab techs, graduate students, people not necessarily in the path of the marketing villainy. One of the most bloated, ever expansive all consuming projects at my university, that has snared faculty like some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare god that demands unending new resources is an attempt to rationally design a potent anti-tuberculosis medication. I wouldn’t say that profit is their overwhelming desire at all, especially since it’s a product that would be of most use to a portion of the world’s population that’s poorer than dirt. I doubt that money is their primary motivation, and if it was they certainly wouldn’t be doing it a public university.
And part of working in medicine is that you’re going to see a lot of cases where it’s too late for lifestyle interventions. The classic teenager who goes into denial about their type 1 diabetes. No amount of diet, lifestyle change, exercise or nutrition is going to restore nerve function to their legs. Schizophrenia, bipolar, conditions that left unmanaged wreak unholy havoc on lives and families.
So do you give your bipolar patient Lithium, fight for the obligatory few years to get them to stop deciding they don’t need it in fits of poor decision making? Or do you let them walk down the lovely path of substance abuse, uncared for offspring, face the gradual and significant worsening of their condition and an atrocious suicide rate down the road?
Clozaril, and maybe a chance to have a job, friends and a life for a schizophrenic? Or let them gradually degrade to a point of homelessness, incoherence and despair?
Benefits versus risks.
Hmm. It’s late, so I hope that all makes sense and came out sanely.
Beyondtheshortcoat has referred to it as the grey fallacy–the notion that when two people disagree, the truth must be somewhere in the middle. As Isaac Asimov pointed out in an essay entitled “The Relativity of Wrong”, one person may think the earth is perfectly round, and the other may think that the earth is perfectly flat. Strictly speaking, both are wrong, but they are not equally wrong–because the theory a round earth, while not perfectly correct, is close enough to correct for most navigation.
So it is certainly true that medicine has been known to, and to some extent occasionally still does, commit some of the sins of pseudoscience–basing therapies on false or untested theories, anecdotes, or testimonials–the key difference is that modern medicine has established clear, objective standards of evidence, while the purveyors of pseudoscience still persist in arguing, “Nobody knows everything and nobody is perfect, so therefore one guy’s idea of how to treat disease is just as good as anybody else’s.”
The fact is that when it comes to alternative medicine, the balance of truth is pretty much in one direction. No major modern alternative therapy has moved into standard medical practice based upon convincing, objective evidence of safety and efficacy. And the therapeutic approaches that “alternative” therapists and MDs agree upon have been part of standard medical practice for generations.
*happily waves the oxcarbazepine flag, cheering Eric’s post from the sidelines!*
I lost a friend this way. On top of his denial, his mother was into treating his diabetes with “alternative” therapies. It was not a good way to die.
May I add dialysis to the list of great medical tech? My son has had a kidney transplant (Pec does acknowledge them) and after nearly two decades he needs another one. Hey, Pec, the very drugs he took to prevent rejection may have contributed to damage to the kidney. Powerful drugs. With his next transplant the drugs are different because we have learned more, invented new drugs. Transplant medicine is all sciency. Until a kidney is available for him, he has dialysis. Is it physically stressful? Risky? You bet! Is it perfect? Not at all. Would he be dead in a few weeks without it? Absolutely.
And before you assume that lifestyle changes would have prevented his renal failure, let me tell you that his first transplant was when he was 5 years old. The kid was born with CRF, and it was fancy shmancy medicine that kept his meagre kidney function adequate for 5 years. And, on behalf of those other folks at the dialysis clinic, most of whom lost kidney function to high blood pressure or diabetes, (which alties LOVE to consider completely preventable diseases), I have to give the alties a big bird flip. You would not effing believe the idiotic suggestions our family has heard from well-meaning, dangerously ignorant alties about kidney health.
As for prevention, well, pec, that is the soul of much of dental care, as well. Where I work we deal with the most prevalent chronic disease: pediatric dental disease. Tooth decay is preventable, and the causes are clear. And yet we see beloved children from well-to-do families with severe caries and even draining abscesses because the parents are afraid of any fluoride use. Do we teach? Demonstrate? Every visit? Yes, yes and yes.
We have other kids who, after many episodes of education, demonstration, frustration, still do not adequately care for their teeth during orthodontics. In that case, the braces come off early, but the specialist is not going to risk tooth destruction. These are kids who have demonstrated the ability to do the homecare, but they are busy, lazy, whatever; they made a contract with the orthodontist and assistant and they broke the deal. Is the ortho incomplete? Yes. Can that compromise future form and function? Yes. And there are no refunds in most such cases.
As for adults, we can usually either cure or arrest early periodontal disease, but, like a nice Harley, you need to maintain it. Some folks won’t. We can teach and give them the tools, but many will not floss or brush well, even though they can. And we discuss tobacco use at each visit with smokers/chewers.
@Mark Crislip: I use that Grandpa Simpson reference and usually get puzzled silence, so I wanted to say thanks.
Um, correction…”the most prevalent pediatric disease” is what I meant to say. Preview is my friend, and I shunned him again, alas.
“it is -profoundly- difficult to get a patient to maintain a major lifestyle change over the kind of time period necessary. ”
Aside from quitting smoking, changing to a sensible lifestyle is not difficult. Eat more natural food and less processed junk, do some walking every day. Why is it so impossible to get your patients to do that? (aside from quitting smoking which does take will power). One reason they won’t listen is because they have been brainwashed into thinking modern medicine is constantly finding ways to make our lives longer and healthier, and that there are, or soon will be, pills and surgery to cure every disease.
Metabolic syndrome is a major cause of the most common serious diseases, and it results from the typical American lifestyle. We don’t need pills to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, we just need a moderately sensible lifestyle.
If your patients think they will have to live on brown rice and seaweed and spend 4 hours a day sweating at the gym, they might decide living longer is not worth it.
At the risk of getting slammed with a 2×4 through the internet, I will say that the American public would not be suffering the miserable and deadly effects of metabolic syndrome if they knew how simple it is to prevent, and if they knew that modern medicine has no good treatments for it or its results.
I remember when — not long ago at all — MDs were recommending 20 minutes of exercise 3 times a week to prevent heart disease. That is NOT enough to prevent obesity, which (along with smoking) is a major cause of heart disease (through metabolic syndrome and resulting type 2 diabetes).
A sensible lifestyle is simple. It takes more than an hour a week, but if your patients cut back their TV watching a little they will have plenty of time.
I DO NOT believe you are educating your patients correctly if they cannot make these simple changes (again, aside from cigarettes which they may need all kinds of help to quit).
I DO NOT think you should continue brainwashing the public into thinking we are living longer healthier lives thanks to the new drugs. They will, quite logically, conclude that lifestyle doesn’t matter very much.
Oh no, here come the 2×4s! But I really do hope you will see the seriousness and the danger I am trying to point out. I have close friends and relatives who have been victims of this brainwashing, who listened to their MDs (pills for everything) instead of me.
Right. I am going to continue to tell my patients that they do not need to exercise, eat right, sleep right, or stop smoking. We have pills for all their ills, thanks to big pharma, so there is no need for work on their part. (And if you believe that, I have a bridge on sale just for you.)
weing,
I know you aren’t telling them that directly, but it is implied every time we hear that we are living twice as long thanks to modern medicine. People are thinking “Ok my lifestyle is unnatural, but I would have been dead by now if I were living naturally. So maybe a more natural lifestyle wouldn’t be so great for my health.”
And, as I said, they might think a healthy lifestyle means eating twigs while doing 80 pushups.
OK, I reach across the ether and slap you upside the head with a wet noodle. Don’t do it again.
Yes, your verbiage was somewhat over the top, but no one other than pec misunderstood you. pec tried to take the proverbial match and turn it into a raging inferno by pouring the gasoline of persecution complex all over it.
Also, don’t feel responsible for pec’s hijacking the thread. It’s what she does. If it hadn’t been you, she would have found another excuse.
[...] Speaking of woo, rightists aren’t the only ones who can have it in for science. [...]
I await your statistics showing that people who don’t believe in the power of modern medicine to cure every disease live healthier life styles. I used to know a guy who rejected medical advice to quit smoking because he had little respect for “Western” medicine. He believed that he was not at risk because he led an otherwise active, healthy lifestyle, ate a healthy diet, and smoked only “natural,” additive-free tobacco. Great guy. Dead now of lung cancer, unfortunately.
trll,
You knew one guy like that. That’s real convincing and scientific. You know, I very explicitly said that cigarette smoking is a problem. Smokers are addicted and in denial, or else just not able to quit. Aside from smoking, I said, having a reasonable lifestyle is not so hard and I think it would be much more common if the public were not brainwashed to put their faith in drugs.
You can tell your patients something like this:
“You really should improve your lifestyle so you won’t need so many pills. Now I want you to spend a thousand dollars a year to join a gym where you can sweat and suffer every day. And you have to stop eating anything that doesn’t taste like sawdust. Of course, if you can’t stick with all that, you can always stay on the life-saving drugs.”
And they will choose the drugs.
Some of the messages are direct and others are subtle. But Americans as a whole are still ignoring the recommendations. And I think I am giving some plausible reasons for that.
Again, we are NOT living twice as long thanks to statins!
What an impressive straw man!
Noone talks to patients like that. We always discuss healthy choices with out patients. Infact when I was on family medicine, the majority of my time was spent educating patients about either healthier eating choices, or about how to get exercise into their routine.
It’s not an either or thing. I can suggest you get exercising, AND prescribe you a statin!
We certainly aren’t living twice as long because of CAM, so commenting that it’s not because of statins is gibberish.
pec,
You telling us that is like a kid teaching grandma to suck eggs.
Of course we are not living twice as long because of statins. At least not yet. They’ve only been around since the late 1980s.
“Of course we are not living twice as long because of statins. At least not yet. They’ve only been around since the late 1980s.”
So it sounds like you have great faith in statins. Even though genetically high cholesterol is very rare and metabolic syndrome is an epidemic.
No. It means, I will wait for the evidence. If you’re talking about familial hypercholesterolemia, where kids died of MIs by 12, there may be evidence for the doubling of their lifespan already. I would have to do some checking. I was talking about the rest of us.
pec, you have the idea that changing to what you consider a “healthy” diet is easy. You have that idea because you were able to do it, and if you are able to do it, then “anyone” can. That idea can be formulated as a hypothesis that can be tested.
When that is done, the data on the majority of the population falsifies that hypothesis. If it was easy, then everyone would be doing it. Everyone is not doing it. Rather than correct your false idea that it is easy, you cling to that idea and generate ad hoc ideas out of whole cloth to rationalize why it is easy but still many people can’t do it.
Your idea of why everyone is not doing it is because “the medical establishment” is supremely expert at being deceptive, at telling people to eat a healthy diet and exercise but with a wink and a nod implying that there will be a pill that will fix what ever problems come from a poor diet or not enough exercise. So how come there are obese MDs? How come MDs have family members that are obese?
In reality, it is your premise that is flawed. Changing to a healthy diet is not easy. Why that is not easy is an interesting aspect of physiology. My hypothesis is that it relates to a flawed metabolic setpoint. That the “setpoint” the body is trying to reach via dietary intake is skewed such that it can never be reached. When that setpoint calls for too high a caloric intake, people eat until they weigh many hundreds of kg because the “setpoint” that tells them to stop eating, that they have “enough” is never reached. People feel like they are “starving”, even when they have hundreds of kg excess depot fat. There are many redundant protective mechanisms to prevent organisms from dying of starvation when there is abundant food around, so people who’s “starvation setpoint” is out of whack can’t keep themselves from eating no matter how much they weigh.
When the setpoint is too low, people don’t eat and die of anorexia. They come up with all kinds of crazy rationalizations as to why they can’t eat.
There pretty much has to be a variety of different setpoints for various dietary nutrients. Organisms have to eat what it is they need to survive and need to have physiological mechanisms for regulating the quantity and quality of what they eat. If there were no such mechanisms, then eating anything would satisfy the appetite, including dirt. Eating dirt doesn’t satisfy various types of hunger; there must be physiological mechanisms that couple food choice with physiological needs.
My hypothesis is that food choice is part of the “setpoint” of oxidative stress. When one is in a state of oxidative stress (which happens to be any state of stress), people choose foods that are low in antioxidants to spare the body the metabolic need to destroy those antioxidants physiologically. That is the reason (my hypothesis) why all of the large, long term, placebo controlled studies of supplemental antioxidants have shown no positive effects. That is consistent with all of the large, long term diet studies that have shown very robust positive effects of eating foods rich in antioxidants. All of the diet studies are with self-selected diets. With no prospective and blinded diet studies, it is not clear if diet is the cause of the poor health or the effect of the poor health.
Does anyone besides pec buy into the belief that the reason people don’t eat better and exercise is because they have been brainwashed to put their faith in drugs?
If so, please do speak up and I will post a response to this position.
Otherwise, why bother? Dialog with pec can be a fun mental exercise, but you eventually grow tired of it because it ultimately goes nowhere.
Each time pec posts, I hear the Scarecrow’s song from “The Wizard of Oz”…
‘…if I only had a brain…’
Go figure.
Karl,
I can’t buy into that. Most of my patients don’t want to take any drugs. Some complain, that they would have to stop smoking, and eating less, in order to afford the drugs.
daedalus2u,
I am not disagreeing with you, but I want to add that the metabolic set point you mentioned is very much influenced by physical activity. Inactivity causes the metabolism to slow down, but the appetite does not necessarily decrease — this is a major cause of obesity in our society. The other major cause is addiction to refined carbohydrates.
Once you get patients to understand these two simple concepts, i think they can dramatically improve their health without too much trouble. They have to stop being physically inactive and stop eating refined carbohydrates.
Those two changes alone will get rid of most metabolic syndrome, the cause of many if not most serious health problems today.
Obesity and related health problems is not primarily a genetic disorder. There are genetic components, as with anything, but we know that the American, or Western, lifestyle dramatically increases obesity and type 2 diabetes.
You are the one who made the claim that people who believe in the efficacy of modern medicine are less willing/able to adopt more healthy lifestyles. Remember, I asked you for statistical evidence to support your claim. Obviously, one person is not statistical evidence of anything, merely an example to illustrate the point that one must be cautious in making assumptions about how people’s opinions regarding medicine will affect their behavior. Which is why I’d need to see real statistical evidence to make any conclusion one way or the other.
So do you have any?
For that matter, considering how critical you are of the medical profession’s record of success in convincing people to change the habits of a lifetime, I presume that you have some statistics proving that alternative practitioners are far more successful in producing this kind of behavior change?
So if we aren’t all living to age 140, then statins are worthless? It’s interesting to look at what has happened to cardiovascular disease death rates since the statins were introduced in the ’70’s. Do you suppose that this is because everybody is now exercising more and eating a more healthy diet?
And by the way, I happen to have a close relative with hypercholesterolemia. So while I probably will not live twice as long due to statins, he very well might. Or would you advise him to stop taking his statins and exercise more?
Govorit’ Cde. Gorski:
“Yes, your verbiage was somewhat over the top, but no one other than pec misunderstood you. pec tried to take the proverbial match and turn it into a raging inferno by pouring the gasoline of persecution complex all over it.”
O! sweet, sweet, irony, thy name is Comrade Gorski.
best. black. pot. EVAR.
Don’t ever change the act, man. It’s comedy GOLD.
“the things, you say… you’re unbelievable, oh!”
-SD
“considering how critical you are of the medical profession’s record of success in convincing people to change the habits of a lifetime”
I said I didn’t think it should be a physician’s job to educate patients about lifestyle. I said that Novella’s comment, that our lifespan has doubled thanks to medical science, is a misleading and often repeated myth. It tends to give the public an unwarranted faith in medical science and its potential to cure disease. We can see that people are always raising money for diseases, assuming that cures can be found if enough money is spent. But in fact little or no progress is made with some of the worst diseases, regardless of how much money is devoted to studying them.
Again, I am not saying mainstream medicine is worthless. I have said many times that it can save lives when antibiotics, drugs or surgery are needed.
But there are also things mainstream medicine is not good for.
“if we aren’t all living to age 140, then statins are worthless?”
Statins were not involved in the increase from 35 to 70, or whatever exactly it was. Statins are overused and poorly understood, and we can’t assume they are saving lives and improving health.
Statins are just a typical example, because they are recommended for everyone with high cholesterol (even children), even though most of the time high cholesterol results from metabolic syndrome, not a genetic disorder. We also don’t even know if statins prevent heart attacks because they lower cholesterol or because they reduce inflammation. And we don’t know how they effect all the organs of the body after many years of use.
“I happen to have a close relative with hypercholesterolemia.”
Just because there is a small minority of patients who need statins does not mean millions of Americans should be taking them.
Because I am reading “The ghost map” I can’t help but compare it to the one sided debate here. Snow had his hands full fighting the miasmatists. Fortunately he had William Farr and his “Weekly Returns of Birth and Deaths”. He impressed Farr enough, even though he was in miasma camp, to add the crucial variable of ‘where they got their water’ to the report.
This story is doubly applicable in that it is a fine example of the scientific method and a testament to the value of civil engineering (clean water and sewage disposal).
pec, you are incorrect. Obesity accelerates metabolism. The basal metabolic rate of the obese is higher than the non-obese (on a lean mass basis). When the obese lose fat mass their metabolic rate decreases.
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/134/6/1412
It is a complete myth that the obese have lower energy expenditure, it is actually higher.
daedalus, interesting study. But one study does not scientific consensus make. Has it been replicated and expanded upon? What about people who are just moderately overweight? For the sake of curiosity, is it a fairly linear correlation? If no one here has an answer, I’ll search myself, but I know so little about the field, I’d hardly know where to begin.
I love your over-the-top libertarian schtick, too, man. It’s comedy PLATINUM.
Heres a few interesting things to add to the “creation vs evolution” portion of this blog.
First of all, there is no way to win this argument.
Also i just want to add something interesting…
If there was no survival of the conscience after death, and we
just faded into eternal dreamless sleep, does that not bother
any of you? Does the thought of surviving after death not bring
some sort of comfort?
I for one would think that if there was nothing spiritual to life
that there would to tough moral choice for every being on this
septic tank of a planet. Think for a minute, would anything you
do really truly matter at all? If you just fade into nothingness
what would be the point of doing right or wrong? Once your gone there is nothing right? Then why bother living by the rules
of life or even doing decent things? Once you’re dead nothing
matters anymore. In a few years you’re just forgotten anyways
so why not do what the hell you want?
I know some of you might have a typical response for this
type of post.
Such as, Its the right thing to do, its for the better of man,
its about doing for those who you care for when your gone
blah blah blah, heard it all before…
Just think about it for a few minutes, to just be gone forever
is really a fucked up notion… To prove the existence of “God”
or anything spiritual you have to be willing to look outside of
what you have learned and realize that there might be some
things in this Universe that cannot be measured by Science.
I cannot prove that “God” is real and i am willing to admit that.
But i will also admit that there is a lot we do not know yet
and anyone arrogant enough to suggest evolution is fact
then perhaps its time to do a little paranormal research on
a large scale to find out once and for all.
People are doing it on a daily basis.
If i can remember the name of this book i read, Duke Uni did
a paranormal reseach study and came up with tons of chilling
results and different things that kinda made me think when i read it. If i can remember the name of the book id be happy to point
anyone interested to it.
Thanks for your time!
Cristie, yes the result is very robustly observed. It isn’t linear, but then nothing in physiology is.
The mechanisms behind it are not fully understood. I suspect a major component is increased slip in mitochondria due to fewer mitochondria producing the same ATP but at a higher mitochondrial potential where they are less efficient. NO is what triggers mitochondria biogenesis, so chronic low NO will eventually cause fewer mitochondria and will cause them to generate ATP less efficiently, that is fewer molecules of ATP per molecule of O2 consumed.
I think there is also an increase due to more glycolysis for ATP production which increases flow through the Cori cycle which is also less efficient at generating ATP.
I think the increased reliance on glycolysis for ATP is the major mechanism behind how people become morbidly obese. It takes 19 times more glucose to make ATP via glycolysis than via oxidative phosphorylation. If your body shifts 5% of its ATP production from oxidation to glycolysis, it takes twice as much glucose to accomplish it. The vasculature can’t deliver 2x as much glucose without increasing glucose concentration (hyperglycemia) and increasing extravascular flow by increasing pressure drop across capillary beds (hypertension). The glucose level that is important to cells is the glucose level they are exposed to in the extravascular fluid they are bathed in, the value in bulk blood is relatively unimportant (except as in how it affects the levels in the extravascular space). Glucose transport into cells is active, I think so that it can saturate (become glucose resistant) so that the cells closest to the capillary don’t consume it all. Similarly cells become insulin resistant so the first cells don’t consume all the insulin.
If the cells too far from a capillary don’t get enough glucose, they will send out starvation signals, screaming for more glucose. If they can’t get it because the capillary spacing is too far apart (also regulated in part by NO) then they will never stop screaming for it no matter how much carbohydrate is consumed.
If there are not enough mitochondria in the liver to recycle all the lactate being produced by glycolysis, the lactate has to go some where. There are no mechanisms for excreting lactate, but every cell can use it to make lipid. When lactate is made from glucose, reducing equivalents are consumed. Utilizing that lactate requires producing reducing equivalents that must then be consumed by the cell doing the utilization. If glycolysis is being done because there is insufficient mitochondria capacity (mitochondria have unlimited capacity to consume reducing equivalents and generate ATP via oxidation), then the lactate has to be exported to a tissue compartment that does have enough mitochondria. Effectively that is moving the consumption of the reducing equivalents from where the lactate is generated to where it is utilized. But if there is no need for the ATP that could be generated by oxidizing those reducing equivalents, what to do with them? My hypothesis is that the body then uses them to generate lipid in the tissue compartments that have excess mitochondrial capacity. First in adipose tissue to generate depot fat, next in the visceral space, next in the liver, next in skeletal muscle, eventually in the kidney (if you live that long).
However this depot and ectopic fat is completely useless for supplying glucose. Glucose cannot be made from lipid, and unless you are in ketosis, the nervous system has an absolute need for glucose. If the cells too far from a capillary in the brain are not getting enough glucose, they will compel consumption of carbohydrate.
And who, specifically, do you imagine to be making that argument?
Who reads Huffington?
Oh, never mind, just visited and caught a bit of that site’s intellectually stimulating flotsam; “Miss California’s breast implants funded by pageant: Confirmed!”
As for the earlier references to Evilution, I believe it was the great sage of our time, George W. who once quipped, “well, the jury’s still out on that one…”
To which I can only reiterate the sentiments of Lewis the Black in saying; “the jury’s still out?! what jury?! which fucking jury are you talking about ?!, are you fucking crazy…?!” or something to that effect.
‘Scuze me, Mr. Scopes gave me this fossil and I was wonderin’…
Can you believe that we actually elect these idiots?
Last and least we have God, gods, Allah, mana, whatever…
Just pass me the opium pipe please. I doubt that the narcotic has been responsible for as many atrocities as the insanity and flim flam of organized religion.
The gist of it is that ya gotta believe. It’s all about faith in something that you can’t see or hear or touch…like life insurance. It makes people who knew you feel better when you’re worm food.
Now if any one of ‘dem groups could just master the one idea of treatin’ each other the way they want to be treated…well then we’d really have something wouldn’t we. And if there is a hereafter, I’m pretty sure that just living by that one precept’ll get ya in the door no matter whose runnin’ the acid test that day.
Sorry, that damn scientific method makes me cranky.
Mmm, re the setpoint business, etc, obesity and/or the deleterious effects associated therewith seem to cluster in the Western poor, do they not? And also in the West, anorexia clusters in younger women, not to mention being steeped in a culture of said. So while the mechanism may be explorable as a physiological phenomenon, it seems too difficult to ignore the prospect that the causes are in some measure cultural and economic and prone to alleviation by such means.
One of my biggest problems with CAMism is the huge reliance on individual prevention. I believe that many of these chronic problems are social and collective diseases, or the difficulties associated with them can be alleviated by collective changes (eg neurodiversity movement). A lot of CAM seems to believe we can achieve wellness at low cost and without much tax expenditure or regulation. Hmm…
Mandos, I am not sure what your point is. Ultimately everything that happens in and to and with the body is a consequence of physiology.
The urban poor in every developed city are obese. The rural poor in every undeveloped region are not.
In regions that are developing, that is regions where the rural areas are undeveloped and the urban areas are developed show a large obesity gradient between the rural areas and the urban areas. The food is coming from the rural areas and many of the urban obese are migrants from the rural areas who (presumably) maintained their customary dietary habits.
My interpretation is that the setpoint changes when moving from a rural area to a developed area. My explanation is that the NO/NOx status as reflected by commensal surface bacteria of a certain type is an important component of what that setpoint is. Stress is another. High stress moves the setpoint in the same way that low NO does, I think for the same reasons. Stress is a low NO state. Obesity is a low NO state too. If it gets too low, there is no way that physiology can compensate and you are SOL unless you can find another way to raise your NO/NOx status.
daedalus2u,
You steadfastly deny the obviously important role of physical activity/inactivity. That is the variable that makes the difference — physical inactivity is a major cause of obesity. And it seems to me that almost everyone knows this, except the urban poor and you.
Is there data that the urban poor are less active than the rural poor? Does everyone who does not exercise become obese?
How do infants become obese? Infants are unable to walk. The level of physical activity of pre-mobile infants has not changed in 100,000 years.
I know that many people think that exercise is important, and enough exercise will cause weight loss and prevent obesity. But there are non-obese people who exercise less than people who are obese, so exercise is neither necessary or sufficient to prevent obesity.
I am not denying the role of physical activity, I am just pointing out that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to prevent obesity.
My point is that solutions to things/prevention of chronic diseases that seem to cluster consistently in socioeconomic categories probably don’t entirely lie in what doctors tell their patients, CAM or otherwise
worknfool (an apropos nym if ever I’ve seen one):
Ah. ho. kay.
First, I’ll suggest that it’s a little easier to believe in your correct understanding of and valid opinion about the scientific method if you don’t spell the word “evilution”. Unless you’re trying to be clever. In which case, um, you shouldn’t. Because you’re not. Just sayin’.
That aside, listening to discussion about evolution is funny. (I will use the common summary of the concept of “speciation as the result of a continuously-operating long-term process of random generation of heritable mutations resulting in differences in survival advantage which are selected for or against proportional to advantage conferred” as “evolution” henceforth.) It’s funny chiefly because you invariably hear that tired old trope get whipped out, “the science is settled”. I will say it again, in big bold capital letters, for all the fanbois: RULE ZERO OF SCIENCE IS THAT ‘THE SCIENCE’ IS *NEVER* “SETTLED”, ON *ANYTHING*, *EVER*. DATA CHANGES. THEORIES CHANGE. CONCLUSIONS CHANGE. Someday, somebody may actually take this to heart, and stop pompously spouting off thought-terminating soundbites, possibly even somebody here.
I am not holding my breath.
Although it certainly passes the plausibility test better than its alternatives, and the evidence is reasonable, evolution as a model *does have* some holes that are not adequately explained, and it is a disservice both to science and to the theory itself to pretend they don’t exist. (Dawkins is vaguely amusing but not convincing, please do not trot him out.) I especially find the all-or-nothing arguments against incremental evolution of complex systems to current states particularly interesting, and especially given the remoteness of the probabilities involved in this process in the first place and the estimated lifetime of the Sun and of life on Earth in general. It feels as though there are too many zeroes to the right of the decimal point in the first number to be made up reasonably with the zeroes left of the decimal point in the second. That’s just me, though. (Are there any arguments pro/contra evolution from a rigorously statistical point of view, or failing that, estimates of the actual time required to produce the complexity of speciation observed today based on purely random mutation and selection?)
Still, ignoring the question of the origins of a given complex system, anybody who has even a rudimentary understanding of statistical mechanics can visualize evolution as a reasonable and plausible mechanism for observed changes in that system over time. Is that the only possible mechanism of such change, though? Answer: Who knows? The clever and wily scientist, realizing the epistemological minefield here – that these changes require “randomness” in order to operate (is it *really* random? whose thumb is on this scale? how do you tell?) and realizing the dearth of sufficiently encompassing data, particularly measurements of visibly evolving systems and active *experiments* to explore the mechanisms of evolution with (can we run two “evolution” experiments on identical planetary or ecosystem-level complex systems and see if they produce the same result? can we run one with a change and one as a control group to see what happens? prokaryotes don’t count, guys, or at least not anywhere near as much as eukaryotes do) – hesitates before making absolute pronouncements, remembering the potential for epic embarrassment in allowing one’s mouth to run away with one’s reputation.
And finally, evolution and intelligent design are not mutually scientifically exclusive, because the presence of intelligent design is not a question decidable using the scientific method without some physical means of detecting the existence of a God, which we don’t have. (If you don’t believe that this question is not decidable, then explain how the existence of evolutionary change in a system constitutes proof of the nonexistence or noninvolvement of God with respect to that system. Yeah, that kind of doesn’t work; God can do whatever the hell he wants to do, pretty much by definition. That, in a nutshell, is why he’s God.)
So, from a scientific perspective, there is no real controversy, or at least the controversy is muted and predictable. Neither is there controversy from a religious perspective, really. (”Okay, schmott guy,” says the old rabbi, “if you’re so schmott and God doesn’t exist, den who shtarted the whole ting up in the first place, eh?”, any answer to which invokes either infinite regress or an answer of “it happened jus ‘coz”, the lamest and most unscientific answer to the question of cosmology ever conceived. The rabbi leans back and chuckles.) The main problem is that the fight of evolution vs. intelligent design is neither a scientific fight nor a religious fight, but a political fight.
So what is this political fight? What, precisely, *is* the controversy? Or, as Bugs Bunny asked, “What’s all the hub-bub… bub?”
The controversy is one ineluctable consequence of “democratic” solutions to public problems, where we all take a vote and then the losers shut up and do what they’re told, whether or not they even wanted to participate in the first place: that children in public schools, which derive their funding from universal taxation, are to be taught some principle to the exclusion of others, regardless of both the wishes of at least some of the purchasers of this ostensible service (the taxpayers) and those ultimately responsible for making decisions about the children’s welfare (the parents), and regardless of the lack of unanimous or even supermajority consensus on this issue among all the so-called “stakeholders” of this system. The controversy’s root is that ID adherents line up on what is commonly styled the “right” of the political spectrum, and that evolutionists derive the majority of their support from the “left”, and the evolution issue is a convenient bludgeon for each to use to smack their political enemies around (albeit for differing reasons).
(I will hereafter, solely for the purposes of being a complete dickhead, use the term “Intelligence Denialist” to refer to a proponent of evolution, and “Intelligent Designer” to refer to a proponent of, well, Intelligent Design. Also, please note that I am using the terms “left” and “right” in their customary usage, although I find the terms extremely misleading in practice.)
“See,” crows the average Intelligence Denialist, “lookit the stupid redneck-retard Krishuns, teaching their kids about how their imaginary friend farted the earth out seven thousand years ago! Hooooee, what morans! Everybody knows that evolution made the universe!” The more articulate, clever, and evil Intelligence Denialist – realizing that the concept of “evolution over billions of years” is a wedge that can be driven into the minds of other people’s children to encourage them to turn away from their parents’ Judeo-Christian mythology by encouraging a fallacious literal comparison with orthodox Judeo-Christian belief, which can be interpreted as saying that the Earth was created six thousand-odd years ago directly by the hand of God – finds in this attack a way to sow discord between the generations of his political enemies, and of disrupting the transmission of their religious doctrine, and of interfering in the education of other’s children to his own great benefit by shoving his worldview up their ungreased asses. This person is, statistically, a Democrat, and essentially always an unabashed international-socialist.
On the other side of this coin, the average Intelligent Designer, interpreting this (correctly) as an attack on his religion and overall belief-system, turns that attack around, and crows: “See! Lookit the gawdamned Godless commie bastards, trynta throw Jeezus outta our skools! Not in *my* America, buddy! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” The more articulate, clever, and evil Intelligent Designers – realizing that a “bunker-under-siege mentality” encourages fervor and squelches dissent and inquiry about leadership perks, goals, and effectiveness – finds in responding to this attack a way to effectively frustrate his political enemies’ ambitions (depending on environment), and of regaining ground in the power structure(s) controlling education (who controls this ground controls the framing of discussions twenty years hence; as the Jesuits say, “Give me a boy up to the age of six”; many of them even actually complete the saying as originally intended, “… and I will give you the man”), and possibly even gaining sufficient ground to begin shoving *his* worldview up his enemies’ and their childrens’ ungreased asses. This person is, to a somewhat lesser level of confidence than his opposite, a Republican (though increasingly Libertarian or non-aligned as well), and when Republican is frequently, but not always, at least a crypto-national-socialist.
This is, in short, a King-of-the-Hill power fight; no more, no less. Who becomes King of the Hill gets to have his way. Who fails in this task gets to watch helplessly, his nose rubbed firmly in the fact that (The gawdamn pinkoes are teaching corruption and filth){or}(The evil regressive science-hating rednecks are “teaching the controversy”) to Our Children! Hooray for the demos, Source Of All Good And Wisdom, and hip-hip-hurrah for demos-ocracy. I can sleep safe this evening knowing that I can choose from a menu consisting of both Frick *and* Frack, that I may align myself with either Tweedledum *or* Tweedledee. Indeed, I am blessed – twice, even! – with Choice. Yay, Choice!
Is it any wonder that from such a vintage of strife is pressed such a bitter wine?
Now, the libertarian perspective – “A pox on both their houses; let each family teach their children as they please, in such schools as the parents wish voluntarily to send their children to, and let it be paid for voluntarily and not through taxes, and we shall see then which schools and which ideas survive in the long run; stop stealing people’s money for your pet projects and let people choose to do with their own property what they please” – is considered “crazy” and “excessive” and “radical” and “impractical”. Instead, in a practice that is considered “reasonable” and “effective” and “pragmatic” and “realistic”, mimicking the educational forms designed and perfected in such human paradises as Prussia, “that” Germany and the Soviet Union, kids are rounded up inefficiently from huge geographical areas and sent to homogenized, centralized schools; paid for, in the main, by people who variously have either no kids in those schools, or who actively loathe the curriculum taught, or who live elsewhere in the county, state, or even nation; which schools are staffed largely by teachers who generally arrived at the life task of pedagogy after failure in training for other fields of endeavor, and many of which will either confess to or can easily be shown by their history to be motivated by lackadaisical indifference, pure avarice, or actual malice when their intent is examined; and which schools, finally, when their repeated failure is made manifest at all levels, e.g. when high school graduates are unable to sum a pair of two-digit numbers without reaching for a calculator (and who still screw even that simple task up), e.g. when college students show the reading and composition skills of eight-year-olds of the 19th century, yes, these very schools and teachers are then “bailed out” with large and fresh increases in their income stream, all at public expense. This system of endlessly rewarding failure with largesse is considered an efficient, just, and humane way of accomplishing the desired goal of instructing children to be sane and reasonable members of society – as opposed to, say, just letting them play in the street – a theory I remain unconvinced of owing to spectacular lack of credible available supporting evidence.
(SD dons sandwich sign, “END EDUCATION BAILOUT ECONOMICS!”)
So, in closing: if you’re tired of the fight over evolution, if you are tired of hearing palpable bullshit shoveled three feet deep in the public discourse, then the cure for that is to remove the topic from public discourse, or at least that portion of it which involves the disposition of stolen money (”taxes”). How you accomplish this: Stop buying in to the false promise of triumph in using the power of the State to shove your views up the asses of those who don’t agree with them, regardless of how floridly idiotic the views they *do* hold are, or how goofy the reason they choose not to adopt your views (”Jeezus told me so!”). If you’re right, you’ll win in the long run anyway – the round-Earth theory won in the end, didn’t it? – and if you’re wrong, then clearly it wasn’t a good idea to do things you way, was it now? Support the “demilitarization” of these topics so that, once the heat and noise dies down, Reality and Truth can quietly continue their march across the world.
“not holding his breath”
-SD
I’m not in the medical field – I’ve never gotten the message from the medical establishment that I can be ‘as bad as I wanna be” because a pill will fix it. And I LOATHE drug company ads. Right – like my doctor is going to give me a ’script cause I saw it on the TV. I rarely get a prescription for anything and am as annoy as the next moron when I pay $80 and come away with a recommendation to get rest, take NSAID as needed, etc. Just give me a pill, dammit! That’s what I paid you for!
I have always been insulted on behalf of those below the poverty line that people like pec think the solution is that they should eat healthy, organic, non-processed food. I can see pec getting angry at the food industry (Big Farma?) for cranking out tons of cheap, over-processed, nutrient-poor food. Doctors can’t be expected to fix that. Why are people ignorant of the obvious? Perhaps this is more a matter of education – why are schools failing to ingrain this knowledge at an early age (I’m a teacher, and this matter is more complicated, too)?
The initial article was about throwing out modern medicine with the bath water – not about doubling life spans.
“exercise is neither necessary or sufficient to prevent obesity.”
That is true, and I agree that carbohydrate addiction is also an important factor, and of course genetics is involved. It’s hard to know whether refined carbohydrates or inactivity have that greatest role in obesity and metabolic syndrome, but it’s pretty obvious that both are important factors, and both are central to the American/Western lifestyle.
I don’t know how poverty is related to this, but there might be a correlation between education level and obesity (as well as cigarette smoking). I don’t understand why — every child probably learns the simple basics of a healthy lifestyle so you don’t need a college degree to understand it.
Maybe a person with more education, and more money, cares more about their future and therefore has more desire to get rid of, or not start, bad habits?
There’s a correlation between poverty, education, obesity, disease of various kinds mental and physical, etc, etc, etc.
There are lots of ways in which poverty is connected to poor diet and poor health. But a rich fat man is very much likelier to live his four score and ten than a poor fat man. Even if the rich fat man inherited his wealth and flunked out of college and coasted for most of his life.
Here’s one of many pathways: regardless of what education you give people who are poor, the options (in terms of time and money) for the pleasurable things in life are few. Frequent trips to MacDonalds (which in some places is no more expensive than the grocery store, unless you are willing to agree to live on rice and beans for the rest of your life) are a source of change, pleasing to kids who otherwise have little else to do in unsafe neighbourhoods. Eating MacDonald’s all the time has some deleterious effects I’m told.
That’s just one example. But seeking change in terms of individual habit modification is unlikely to be successful when the universe is conspiring against that.
I also think as American we expect something from a service. I have not had insurance for most of my adult life (I have poor insurance now). If I break down and go to the doctor, I have this desire to come away with more than a pat on the back – I want a magic pill. I don’t think I’m unusual, and I have a feeling this is why so many people like CAM – they will always send you away with something, be it a spinal adjustment, a tincture, or a crystal or what have woo, I mean you.
I think it’s not the fault of the medical community that we expect something for something. I’m not saying it’s right, but I think it’s a factor.
The difference between scientists in the field of evolution and IDers is the difference between football players and the Monday morning quarterbacks.
“regardless of what education you give people who are poor, the options (in terms of time and money) for the pleasurable things in life are few.”
That theory makes sense, maybe. If a person’s life is generally dreary then they might be more vulnerable to addictions, including cigarettes and junk food. Of course lots of successful people are probably addicted to prescription drugs, or shopping, etc., so I don’t know, maybe it’s just that different subcultures prefer different addictions.
I wonder what kind of people get addicted to blogs.
Lamed Weing thus:
“The difference between scientists in the field of evolution and IDers is the difference between football players and the Monday morning quarterbacks.”
Uh, weing, remember this part (assuming you actually read the post, and didn’t just key off a couple of words):
“Someday, somebody may actually take this to heart, and stop pompously spouting off thought-terminating soundbites, possibly even somebody here.”
Yeah. I was talking about you, basically.
Way to fanboi with the Twitter answer, weing. Do you actually *know* anything, or are you just, like, a parrot?
“awk!”
-SD
“I for one would think that if there was nothing spiritual to life
that there would to tough moral choice for every being on this
septic tank of a planet. Think for a minute, would anything you
do really truly matter at all? If you just fade into nothingness
what would be the point of doing right or wrong? Once your gone there is nothing right? Then why bother living by the rules
of life or even doing decent things? Once you’re dead nothing
matters anymore. In a few years you’re just forgotten anyways
so why not do what the hell you want?”
Don’t really know what this has to do with Huffpo.
Do you think rhesus monkeys not pulling a chain that gives them food if the act of pulling gives a painful shock to a monkey in another cage is driven by the belief in an afterlife?
Masserman JH. Wechkin S, and Terris W. 1964. “Altruistic” behavior in rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Psychiatry 121: 584-585.
SD,
That’s for you to figure out. Oh, I forgot. I’m so sorry. You’ve already made up your mind. No need to think.
Sprach wang:
“SD,
That’s for you to figure out. Oh, I forgot. I’m so sorry. You’ve already made up your mind. No need to think.”
Yup, I have made up my mind. That’s because all I’ve seen is plenty of evidence that you *are* a reflex-posting keyword-scanning fanboi parrot, and none at all that you are not. I therefore believe that that is all that you are. See how that “science” stuff works? >;->
“fanboi parrot, awk!”
-SD
That really was a thought-stimulating as opposed to thought-stopping soundbite…. Not!
[...] news blog has become a haven for quackery, even going so far as to entitle his followup post The Huffington Post’s War on Science. And he’s absolutely right. The Huffington Post has waged a war on science, at least a war on [...]
That theory makes sense, maybe. If a person’s life is generally dreary then they might be more vulnerable to addictions, including cigarettes and junk food. Of course lots of successful people are probably addicted to prescription drugs, or shopping, etc., so I don’t know, maybe it’s just that different subcultures prefer different addictions.
I’d be really surprised if “successful” (read, mostly lucky) people’s addictions were equally as deadly as “unsuccessful” people’s addictions.
My scenario was intended as an illustration of one pathway by which poverty contributes to poor outcomes. We are not beings of pure Will, consequently amelioration of many of our problems are likely to involve collective efforts.
vargkill said:
“Heres a few interesting things to add to the “creation vs evolution” portion of this blog…
…If there was no survival of the conscience after death, and we
just faded into eternal dreamless sleep, does that not bother
any of you? Does the thought of surviving after death not bring
some sort of comfort?
I for one would think that if there was nothing spiritual to life
that there would to tough moral choice for every being on this
septic tank of a planet. Think for a minute, would anything you
do really truly matter at all? If you just fade into nothingness
what would be the point of doing right or wrong? Once your gone there is nothing right? Then why bother living by the rules
of life or even doing decent things? Once you’re dead nothing
matters anymore. In a few years you’re just forgotten anyways
so why not do what the hell you want?”
First, this is not an argument of evolution vs intelligent design, it’s an argument about belief in the existence of God and/or an afterlife, which is not the same thing; some people just can’t figure that out. So you’re basically saying the reason to belief in God is because it is comforting and the alternative is an unpleasant concept?
It seems to me that what we do in life has LESS meaning if you believe in God and an afterlife, because nothing matters beyond the minimum requirements (whatever they are) to qualify for the good part of the afterlife, whereas, if you believe this life is all that you have, everything that you do during it matters that much more. Why bother living by the rules? Well, if this life is all that you’ve got, you don’t want to screw it up.
I’m always amazed by all the people who believe in God that basically maintain that without God, there’s no reason to be a decent person; they apparently don’t want to be good; they’re only good because God tells them to be good.
SD said:
“And finally, evolution and intelligent design are not mutually scientifically exclusive, because the presence of intelligent design is not a question decidable using the scientific method without some physical means of detecting the existence of a God, which we don’t have. (If you don’t believe that this question is not decidable, then explain how the existence of evolutionary change in a system constitutes proof of the nonexistence or noninvolvement of God with respect to that system. Yeah, that kind of doesn’t work; God can do whatever the hell he wants to do, pretty much by definition. That, in a nutshell, is why he’s God.)”
Evolution vs intelligent design is only tangentially related to the discussion of the existence or non-existence of a god. Although a god is pretty much required for intelligent design, a god is not excluded by the concept of evolution.
However, there’s no scientific evidence that God has ever been involved in anything. If there is a god, it doesn’t seem to have it’s finger in the pot, and it seems to have left the universe alone after it started the marble rolling at the big bang.
The thing is, your God doesn’t seem to do whatever he wants; everything he “does” seems to fit in with the natural laws of the universe he supposedly created, such that his “actions” are indistinguishable from natural occurrence. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence he has used any cheat codes in the video game he wrote that is the universe.
SD said:
“So, from a scientific perspective, there is no real controversy, or at least the controversy is muted and predictable. Neither is there controversy from a religious perspective, really. (”Okay, schmott guy,” says the old rabbi, “if you’re so schmott and God doesn’t exist, den who shtarted the whole ting up in the first place, eh?”, any answer to which invokes either infinite regress or an answer of “it happened jus ‘coz”, the lamest and most unscientific answer to the question of cosmology ever conceived. The rabbi leans back and chuckles.) The main problem is that the fight of evolution vs. intelligent design is neither a scientific fight nor a religious fight, but a political fight.”
Once again, evolution has nothing directly to do with the belief in God, and has nothing to do with the origin of the universe or even the origins of life itself.
Science doesn’t say, “it happened jus ‘coz”, it says we don’t currently have an answer to that question, and we may or may not ever have an answer to that question, but we are not going to invent an answer just to fill in the gaps of our understanding of the universe.
You’re not happy with the science’s lack of an answer for the origin of the universe, but you’re OK with the concept of a god that always was without beginning?
The problem is that intelligent designers are using politics to try to wedge religion into science, rather than just letting science stand on its own.
Karl Withakay
The point is, in the end it won’t matter if you’re just forever
dead. I think that is a simple concept. Its a rather frightening
concept to know there might not be anything after we pass on.
To be real honest, having the knowledge that there is
a god and survival of conscience does bring inspiration to
be a better person or to do better things in life. Its hard to
find the motivation knowing it might just all be gone one day
so im sure in a lot of eyes its pretty simple to assume that
screwing it up does not matter at that point.
You might hate that concept or dislike it but i think in many
eyes its a very true statement. I dont see anything wrong with
feeling that way considering this is a crazy world we live in.
SD
I very much enjoyed your view point on the whole “science vs creation. I think its very true as to what you had to say and
it is very sad as well, but trut nevertheless.
Weing
“Don’t really know what this has to do with Huffpo”.
I was refering to the little area in the post that was refrencing
the whole arguement of “creation vs science”. Hello?
‘Do you think rhesus monkeys not pulling a chain that gives them food if the act of pulling gives a painful shock to a monkey in another cage is driven by the belief in an afterlife”?
Maybe im reading this out of context, but you see we are human
and well, monkeys are monkeys. Not sure why you refrenced
that, but ok…
Are you comparing our thoughts to monkeys?
If so WOW…
vargkill,
Just think about why monkeys would do that? Do you think they are doing it because of the rewards in an afterlife? Or have these traits been necessary for the survival of the species? Since we are closely related to the monkeys, we may share traits that have been necessary to our survival. Postulating a God and an afterlife is just a rationalization for our behavior. We don’t need a belief in an afterlife to have us do the right thing because doing the right thing is what we are about.
weing,
Im not sure where i to start picking apart your reply, but im going to keep this simple and to the point.
I understand the metaphore you are attempting to use, however the difference between monkeys and humans is
that a monkey is still a monkey and not a human.
We as humans have a far greater ability to comprehend
our existence and question our existence, which is where
it pretty much all started. So i think to use an animal has a
point of refrence to a human beings questioning or reasoning
is extremly stupid and simply does not work in context. Does
a monkey think about god? No im sure a monkey thinks about
things that monkeys think about, like bananas, mating, where
the next vine to swing from is, who knows? for that matter
who cares? Ill tell you that is does not take a rocket scientist
to even begain to ponder what we as humans think about.
So again, why you would compare us to an animal is beyond
me… Further more, im willing to bet you think we evolved from
monkeys as well right? Would not suprise me…
“Postulating a God and an afterlife is just a rationalization for our behavior. We don’t need a belief in an afterlife to have us do the right thing because doing the right thing is what we are about”.
So humans have always inherently knew right from wrong?
Whats funny about that statement is that what is “right” back
in the day is “wrong” now, so i think that refrence was really
bold and asinine and arrogant on your part to just assume that
we as human beings are all about doing the right thing. I dont’
even think i need to continue on that part of it. Unless of course
i misconstrued what you posted, but it seemed plain as day
to me, yet i admit that perhaps i indeed missread it.
All i can really say is this,
What sounds better to you, Survival of the conscience? Or
eternal dreamless sleep? Of course people take comfort in
knowing that there could be a god and an afterlife. Why would
that not comfort almost anyone? I know that the journey continues beyond this earthly realm is a neat idea. Then there
is the alternative, Nothingness… That does not sound to good
to me.
Bottom line, We cannot prove nor disprove the existence of
god or an afterlife.
“The problem is that intelligent designers are using politics to try to wedge religion into science, rather than just letting science stand on its own.”
I believe I said as much, but I think you neglect the fact that Intelligence Denialists are using the politics to wedge science into others’ religion – when the two are not even really in opposition, no less – which is where this problem comes from in the first place. Which is, um, what I said.
I suspect most Intelligent Designers would be more than happy to “let the science stand on its own”, since they have little use for it, and would prefer to simply send their kids to schools where Intelligence Denial is not part of the curriculum or at least is taught in a way more to their liking. That they don’t get that option is the root of this problem. Cure for problem: end tax-funded education, depriving the prospective Kings of this particular Hill the actual hill over which to fight.
Who’s with me?
“… anybody? bueller? bueller? …”
-SD
SD
I hear you on that man!
The problem with that is that it would be the “simple solution”.
Oddly enough the simple most hassle free solution is the path
that is never taken and it really is sad.
Then again i have been talking to a bunch of people who
believe our existence is just a random occurrence and that
thinking maybe something came along and created life or had
some role in it is just 100% bullshit to most of these folks.
I guess subscribing to the notion of evolving from nothingness
into what we are today seems to be logical thougt. HAHA!!
One last thing, i really dig the whole “Natural selection” thing…
Its funny that there are plenty of ugly and stupid people as well
as animals in the world, so i guess that seems to be working
out real good hey?
vargkill:
I don’t see how sucking up to some sort of big boss in the sky is moral. Suck-ups are two-faced losers.
Just do good works because you love the goodness of them, because you want to share moments of kindness and compassion while you can, while you’re alive.
You don’t need to figure out the ultimate reality of the universe to enjoy a lovely breakfast of fresh coffee, cereal with yogurt instead of milk and topped by fresh strawberries and blueberries. Yum!
Oh, and as I eat, a pair of nuthatch are nesting in the birdhouse out my window. They’re gently honk-honking to each other. One is hop-creeping around the trunk of the tree. Guard-duty, I reckon.
I must remember to put an orange slice out – heard an oriole for the first time yesterday.
Life goes by faster than summer vacation. Every moment is precious. There are no do-overs. Every action is forever.
One chance at the plate. That’s what you get. Pretty fucking meaningful and motivating, if you ask me.
SD:
Let them teach intelligent design at church or in philosophy class. But they can’t teach ID in science class. It’s not science.
Precisely. It is the ID people who are trying to wedge ID into science class. I daresay virtually none of us who oppose ID have a problem with its being taught in religion, history, or philosophy classes–which is where it belongs. It does not belong in a science class because it is demonstrably not science.
vargkill
“Its a rather frightening
concept to know there might not be anything after we pass on.
To be real honest, having the knowledge that there is
a god and survival of conscience does bring inspiration to
be a better person or to do better things in life.”
Once again, you are arguing from consequences. Your argument is essentially that life in a universe without a god and/or an afterlife is scary and meaningless. This is not support for the existence of god, this is a reason why belief in a god could be considered beneficial, independent of whether that god actually exists.
If you want to believe thing because they make you feel better and give you a reason to live, that’s apparently your choice. I, personally, have a hard time believing something just because I want to believe it. I have a problem with rationality getting in the way most of the time. My belief in something is generally a consequence of the facts and information I posses, and not an active choice of decision.
SD
“I believe I said as much, but I think you neglect the fact that Intelligence Denialists are using the politics to wedge science into others’ religion – when the two are not even really in opposition, no less – which is where this problem comes from in the first place.”
It’s amusing that way you wield the word denialist as if it were delivering some crippling blow. Are you a flat earth denialist? Maybe you are a bigfoot or alien abduction denialist?
I’m not sure how you think people who don’t subscribe to ID are trying to wedge science into other people’s religion. Is anybody advocating that Sunday schools teach evolution?
As long as certain religions continues to contradict science, they will be in conflict with science. As long as a faith requires certain phenomenon to be the result of supernatural, divine intervention, that faith will deny well supported scientific explanations of those phenomenon.
It seems that your underlying agenda here isn’t so much concerned with religion vs science anyway, as much as it is an extreme version of Libertarian government vs people.
Hey let me start off by saying, i am not a bible pusher, nor
am i a christian. I am just someone who finds the idea of
not having an afterlife or having the conscience survive death
a somewhat disturbing concept. I am not really trying to say
that everyone has to fear “God” or do right because there
is a “God”. I am saying who knows? There is no way to know
but yet there is an equal possibility that “God” or an “afterlife”
is just as tangable as the “Theory of evolution”. Since there
is no way to disprove “God” or evolution there is only one real
truth to this whole thing…
When we die we will know the truth! Until then everything is
just a theory right?
Dr Benway
I enjoyed what you had to say because it makes sense to some
people. But your notion is your notion and someone else might
find inspiration within it. Im not saying that the concept of being
happy because life is ours to live, I funny am aware that that
is the only option, either that or taking yourself out of this
life if we cannot handle it. What my point is, for some people
who think long and hard that still might not be enough. That for
someone life me who is on a mission to prove to himself what
life really is, it is hard to think that all the great things we see
around us, all the great people, all the beautiful things that
are there for us to embrace, could maybe be all just a random
occurence! That does not sit well with me and im sure a lot
of people for that matter. So many emotion, so many people,
all with their own stories, So many great things that take place
and yet so much ugliness and rotten deeds done with hardly
a sense of justice a lot of times. I could go on for hours here.
I think you get my point.
Their are people who think this is all just a random accident.
That one day the Universe decided to have some huge explosion
or whatever and then millions of years later here we sit with
the ability to stir up emotions from however far away in the world. We just so happen to be the most intelligent animal
right? Yet we are still the most vicious because of our abilities.
Everything we are able to do is just a random occurence right?
Even those birds outside of your window hey?
Im sorry if you want to think that i respect you defend your
right to believe what ever it is you wish, but for me? I cannot
see how this is just a random accident.
I truly wish i would have taken the time to go over my post
and correct my type-os, sorry for that guys!
vargkill,
“There is no way to know
but yet there is an equal possibility that “God” or an “afterlife”
is just as tangable as the “Theory of evolution”. Since there
is no way to disprove “God” or evolution there is only one real
truth to this whole thing…”
Let me repeat it yet again, since you seem to keep missing the point. The arguments are intelligent design/ creationism vs evolution, god vs no god, or afterlife vs no afterlife.
The theory of evolution has nothing to do with the belief or non belief in a god or afterlife.
It is possible to believe in a god and/or an afterlife along with evolution without conflict. There’s no point in discussing them as if it’s one or the other, that’s a false dichotomy. Evolution does not even address the origins of life, only the origins of species.
What support do you have for saying there is an equal possibility that god or an afterlife exists as anything else? Just because you can list two possibilities does not justify ascribing equal probability to both.
“When we die we will know the truth!”
Only if you’re right. If I am right, once we are dead, we don’t exist anymore and are therefore not capable of knowing anything.
“Until then everything is
just a theory right?”
You don’t really have a theory, you have a speculation based mostly, if not entirely, on what you would like to be true.
“it is hard to think that all the great things we see
around us, all the great people, all the beautiful things that
are there for us to embrace, could maybe be all just a random
occurence! That does not sit well with me and im sure a lot
of people for that matter. So many emotion, so many people,
all with their own stories, So many great things that take place
and yet so much ugliness and rotten deeds done with hardly
a sense of justice a lot of times. ”
Explain to me how this is anything more than wishful thinking and personal incredulity on your part? Do you have any actual support for your belief other than you find it hard (or don’t want) to think otherwise?
vargkill:
Yes, I think I do get your point. And I share your feelings.
It’s not easy being a tufted titmouse. Just when you figure out where the choice grubs hide, and just after you stumble upon another tit willing to make a little music with you, if you know what I mean –that’s when the sh*t happens. There’s a loud noise and one of your nestlings jumps in fright, falls to the ground and breaks a neck. Or the crows raid your nest. Or the cats are at your throat.
Me mum would say, “Life isn’t fair.” Truer words never spoke.
The titmouse clan dream of a heaven filled with peanuts, sunflower seeds, and fresh water. It’s a green and sunny place without a cat in sight. No bird need ever fall from the sky or grow tired on the wing. The songs there are so beautiful, if you could imagine them your heart would break.
Ah, let the titmouse dream. A little escapism can be a kindness. But too much escapism becomes a life lived inside one’s head rather than the world. And that’s a kind of death, a very lonely kind.
Karl Withakay,
I don’t need a fucking “Theory”. Is anything on the level
not wishful thinking? Of course i want to subscribe to the
notion of an afterlife, that was my whole point! Im not trying to
convert your beliefs am i? No im simply making a statement
on how i believe having no afterlife would be pointless, what
do you not understand about that?
Does anyone have any support to a claim of this nature?
When did i ever say an afterlife or God was a fact other then
i would hope it is? Think about it for a moment Karl Withakay,
if anyone had support for their wild beliefs, would we be needing to have this conversation? No i think we would be
able at that point to prove Gods existence or other paranormal
research for that matter.
“The theory of evolution has nothing to do with the belief or non belief in a god or afterlife”.
I think you’re missing my point… Which is really not that
complex since i was mostly making my opinion known that
if there is nothing when we die, life seems kinda pointless.
There it is in Laymen’s terms for you.
The whole point of the theory of evolution is that we evolved
from microorganisms, or the gradual process in which something
changes into a different and more complex or better form.
My other point is that most scientists, people or scientist nut huggers
usually believe in one or the other. I know that is not the case
with everyone, i for one admit that they too can co-exisit, but
that is not the focal point of the dicussion. The focal point
is, Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? How can this all
be a random occurence?
“What support do you have for saying there is an equal possibility that god or an afterlife exists as anything else? Just because you can list two possibilities does not justify ascribing equal probability to both”.
Do i need support? Does anyone else have support on this
for that matter? If i did i think i would be the first one sharing
it with the world because then maybe i could lay the rest
this great debate. What support does science have to teach
Evolution as a fact to us all on their science shows? Sure there
is evidence that can support some things but we still cannot
prove that it is indeed a fact can we? Just as there are many
things to point out that stories in the bible where in fact historically correct. Does that mean i can prove that god exists?
No i cannot. Let me state again that i am not a bible pusher
nor am i advocating that anyone else believe in God who does
not already.
“Only if you’re right. If I am right, once we are dead, we don’t exist anymore and are therefore not capable of knowing anything”.
You have every right to believe in which you choose to believe.
However you can only speculte on what you believe is
the truth. As you said, you are not capable of knowing anything.
How do you know that? What about all of the unexplained paranormal research that science cannot seem to debunk?
Reason i say that is its kinda interesting to know there might
indeed be something after we die.
Two things will happen when we die…
1. Your conscience will survive and you will know the truth.
2. Eternal dreamless sleep.
Can we at least agree on that?
vargkill,
“I don’t need a f——g “Theory””
No need to get touchy, you are the one who used the word theory when you posted, “Until then everything is just a theory right?” implying that we both had theories.
“I think you’re missing my point… ”
It’s easy to do when you use the mixed dichotomy of afterlife vs evolution.
————————————————————-
“What about all of the unexplained paranormal research that science cannot seem to debunk?”
Which paranormal research would that be?
________________________________________
As long as you insist on equating apples and oranges, scientific evidence to support the theory of evolution is overwhelming.
What evidence do you provide in support of your speculation of an afterlife or the possible existence of a god. EVIDENCE, not reasons why you want it to be true or why you find it personally unsatisfying or unacceptable that there isn’t one.
—————————————————————–
“Two things will happen when we die…
1. Your conscience will survive and you will know the truth.
2. Eternal dreamless sleep.
Can we at least agree on that?”
Uh, no, we can’t agree with that. Perhaps you didn’t read my post.
My belief is that when you are dead, you cease to exist, just as you did not exist before you were born, so will you not exist after you die. No consciousness will survive, no ability to know anything will exist.
Karl Withakay,
The work “theory” yes, not my theory. The theory of evolution,
or of creation, not my theory but ones around long before i was born. So i used the word theory in that context, never that
i had a personal one.
“Which paranormal research would that be?”.
Do your research, iv dont mine, go do some research on the
subject if you have not already. There is a book out there
and if i can remember the name of it i will post it back to you.
I read it and its pretty interesting. What i do remember is that
it involved Duke university doing a paranormal reseach study.
Pretty chilling stuff in it.
The problem Karl is that when doing paranormal research
you have to use a different type of science because for something of that nature requires a different approach.
That is what people fail to understand.
“Uh, no, we can’t agree with that. Perhaps you didn’t read my post”.
You’re correct Karl, i only have the ability to make posts in here
but its not programmed into my head how to read anyone
else posts.
You still dont know if cease to exist. Prove it to me? Hows that?
I will ask you to do something that you cannot and see how
you like it.
You know Karl, In my opinion i think you are a fool!
All due respect, SIR!
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were interesting and quite enjoyable books. They both described paranormal phenomena and used a different type of science, aka magic.
Karl:
“It’s amusing that way you wield the word denialist as if it were delivering some crippling blow. Are you a flat earth denialist? Maybe you are a bigfoot or alien abduction denialist?”
You don’t have much in the way of a perception organ for irony, do you?
(NB: “irony” does not mean “tastes like iron”, so the answer is not “your tongue”.)
“I’m not sure how you think people who don’t subscribe to ID are trying to wedge science into other people’s religion. Is anybody advocating that Sunday schools teach evolution?”
You’re right, they don’t. But the Monday-through-Friday schools do. Is it fair to demand that someone pay for a practice – instructing children in the ways of iniquity, broadly speaking, as viewed from a Christian perspective – that they find appalling and evil? Do you expect Christian parents who send their children to those schools to simply roll over and go “Okay, you can teach that, no problem!” Do you expect them to acquiesce in a program calculated to destroy the transmission of their culture to their children, and to create an environment hostile to its existence?
Or, do you expect them to get pissy, on the theory that along with paying money into this system comes a certain amount of control over its disposition? Do you expect them to pass up the chance to seize the machinery and framework provided by their enemies to go on the offensive and push their own agenda instead?
To beat you to your next punch: no, I am not a Christian, but I can understand the mindset.
“As long as certain religions continues to contradict science, they will be in conflict with science. As long as a faith requires certain phenomenon to be the result of supernatural, divine intervention, that faith will deny well supported scientific explanations of those phenomenon.”
Well, no it won’t, actually, but as I despair of ever convincing you of that, and don’t really care what you think anyway, you can harbor that belief if it please you. Free country and all that.
“It seems that your underlying agenda here isn’t so much concerned with religion vs science anyway, as much as it is an extreme version of Libertarian government vs people.”
My initial answer is a resounding “WELL, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!”, but there is a little more to it than that; I am also enumerating the hidden dynamics of these conflicts, along with the phenomena that drive them and their easiest cures. So, to that “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!”, I have to add a “… and you missed about half of the point, too!”
“hey Sherlock, can you tell me who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?”
-SD
Weing,
“Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were interesting and quite enjoyable books. They both described paranormal phenomena and used a different type of science, aka magic”.
How damn stupid are you people?
Ill bet you think you’re a funny and witty guy for coming
up with that one hey! How long did it take?
Who said looking at paranormal things had to be magic?
That is what you assumed i meant.
You know Wang, i mean Weing, When you “assume” you
make an ass out of yourself.
SD,
I love it how you make such a good point each and every time
and no one can even come close to derailing you.
Keep those crushing posts coming!
“Who said looking at paranormal things had to be magic?’
Uhh. You did.
“The problem Karl is that when doing paranormal research
you have to use a different type of science because for something of that nature requires a different approach.
That is what people fail to understand.”
That much has been obvious for some time, at least with regards to the mindset of the fundamentalist variety of Christian.
Dr. Benway:
“You don’t need to figure out the ultimate reality of the universe to enjoy a lovely breakfast of fresh coffee, cereal with yogurt instead of milk and topped by fresh strawberries and blueberries. Yum!”
Or, in some cases, to put the yogurt and coffee in your butt to “cleanse” it, then rub the raspberries and blueberries on your skin to “fight aging”, and to take the cereal and eat it in a capsule.
But hey, to each their own. >;->
“… not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
-SD
Dr. Benway:
“Ah, let the titmouse dream. A little escapism can be a kindness. But too much escapism becomes a life lived inside one’s head rather than the world. And that’s a kind of death, a very lonely kind.”
Y’know, I liked this post. Very lyrical. Well done.
“two thumbs up”
-SD
Govorit’ Cde. Gorski:
“That much has been obvious for some time, at least with regards to the mindset of the fundamentalist variety of Christian.”
Ah, Comrade, you’re so clever. Of course you know that this crack opens you up for comparisons with the Taliban, right? Just sayin’. >;->
“science-wannabe jihad! kill the infidel! alalalalalalalalalalalalala!!!!”
-SD
weing,
Uuuuhhhh No i did not.
“The problem Karl is that when doing paranormal research
you have to use a different type of science because for something of that nature requires a different approach.
That is what people fail to understand.”
So im sure you know that when i say “Paranormal” im not
refering to magic tricks or anything like that. I am refering
to spiritual aspects of the paranormal. Please tell me you
knew that? Pretty please? **Tosses some sugar on top**
Anyone with a brain could tell due to the nature of the conversation that that is what i meant.
Yes yes i am well aware as to what i posted, however i am
having trouble finding where i ever said that going outside
of “Science” was magic. You are assuming that is what i meant
because you are stuck thinking within the box, or that dare
you venture outside the bunker doors that might find something
else could maybe work.
SD,
Now that was some funny shit! Keep them posts coming!
Dr Benway,
That was indeed a nice post you made.
I kinda got a good laugh out of it.
@SD:
Religion should be taught in religious education classes, science in science classes, end of story. Creationism and its poorly disguised twin, ID, are not science because neither propose a theory, methodology, nor means to test/falsify the hypotheses they espouse. Can you imagine an exam paper on ID?
Q: Explain why birds do not have nipples, and mammals do not have feathers
A: Because that is how our Lord decreed it.
Q: How do we know that the bacterial flagellum is a designed feature?
A: because it looks complicated and I cannot imagine how it could have evolved from pre-existing structures.
Q: Sickle-cell aneamia is a potentially fatal genetic disease caused by a homozygous recessive gene, where both recessive alleles are inherited from both parents. Why does the Sickle-cell allele still persist in modern populations, especially those that derivve from or live in areas of the globe where malaria is prevelant?
A: Because the Lord is a terrible and vengeful God and those afflicted undoubtedly deserve his wrath.
3/3 – well done! Although I would have accepted Goddidit for all three.
Need I remind you that the problem only arises because a small minority of religious zealots (the heretical, inerrant-bible type) insist that the theory of evolution is antithetical to their own wacky beliefs? Why should this small, vocal minority be allowed to ruin the education of the majority? The educators are not (on the whole) trying to destroy the beliefs of their charges, but if their beliefs are so fragile that they are so easily shattered by reality then I do not think the problem lies with reality.
Also, you harp on about the adults rights to impress their beliefs onto their children but what about the rights of the children? Don’t they have a right to learn the truth about the world around them and come to their own conclusions with regards to religion?
vargkill,
Time is tricky business. In the world of very small things like quarks, time can go backwards. In the world of very large things like planets, gravity warps time.
Titmouse live in a middle-sized world where time seems to travel forward like an arrow through space. So we can’t wrap our heads around backwards time or warped time.
But if it were possible to see the universe beyond our middle world, we might find that this moment you and I are sharing is actually forever.
And so: “O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?”
SD
“you can harbor that belief if it please you. Free country and all that.”
You don’t need a free country to believe what you want; you need a free country to safely express those beliefs.
“My initial answer is a resounding “WELL, NO S–T, SHERLOCK!”, but there is a little more to it than that; I am also enumerating the hidden dynamics of these conflicts, along with the phenomena that drive them and their easiest cures. So, to that “NO S–T, SHERLOCK!”, I have to add a “… and you missed about half of the point, too!””
Perhaps you missed my point, which was not explicitly stated, which is that as long as you don’t believe in the value of public education, a discussion with you of what is appropriate science curriculum for public education is roughly analogous to discussing whether to drive to work or take public transportation with someone who advocates living off the land in the wilderness and not having a job.
vargkill,
“Do your research, iv dont mine, go do some research on the
subject if you have not already”
Gee, I’ve done my research too, and have never come across any scientifically compelling evidence to support any paranormal claims.
Now that we’ve both thrown out conflicting statements and not provided evidence to support our positions, who wins?
“The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” -Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace
“when doing paranormal research you have to use a different type of science because for something of that nature requires a different approach”
It does if you want to support paranormal claims. So do we agree that paranormal claims do not hold up to “normal” scientific rigor? Which type of science does one need to use to investigate paranormal claims?
“You still dont know if cease to exist. Prove it to me?”
Do you really want me to prove it, or is your point that since neither one of us can prove our point, that each position holds equal weight? (which is a non sequitor)
You have made an extraordinary claim, that there is some sort of afterlife, without any support other than that the alternative is unthinkable. I have expressed my belief that there is no afterlife. My belief is consistent with a lack of any evidence to the contrary; if you have any evidence to the contrary, please provide it.
“You know Karl, In my opinion i think you are a fool!”
Oh, ouch, my pride…someone I don’t respect has called me a fool. Not since pec told me to stick me head in a pig earlier in this thread have I been so hurt..
By the way, that’s somewhat redundant phraseology. “Would you ever think in someone else’s opinion?
Karl Withakay,
First off, when and where in any of my posts did i make a claim
that there is an afterlife other then i was hoping there is an
afterlife? I never once came in here and yes there was only
what i hoped for. I think this truly proves you are truly reading
what i am saying because that surefire statement never pass
my fingertips.
“Gee, I’ve done my research too, and have never come across any scientifically compelling evidence to support any paranormal claims.
Now that we’ve both thrown out conflicting statements and not provided evidence to support our positions, who wins”?
No one wins. Im not trying to win because there is no way
to win this arguement. We are 2 people with 2 different opinions hashing it out in a SBM blog. I dont think winning is
the point, i think the point is that we can all come together
on here and express different view points. That in itself holds
a certain beauty. That we are that complex that we can have
this conversation. No other life form can do what we are doing
and that in itself is an amazing concept that makes me thing
again, how can it all be so random? So does anyone really
need to win? If so whats the benefit?
“It does if you want to support paranormal claims. So do we agree that paranormal claims do not hold up to “normal” scientific rigor? Which type of science does one need to use to investigate paranormal claims”?
Of course we agree! That is why i said the method needs
to change. Ever hear that you cannot mesaure faith? If there
is a “God” how could science mesaure something so powerful?
Get my point? Do you think if i knew what science was needed
to measure paranormal stuff i would share it with the world?
I think we would be working on this stuff already. For all you
know we already are and no one is saying anything to prevent
the public on a grand scale from knowing the truth, not a far
fetched concept if you look at who our goverment is…
Thats a whole different conversation…
You have made an extraordinary claim, that there is some sort of afterlife, without any support other than that the alternative is unthinkable. I have expressed my belief that there is no afterlife. My belief is consistent with a lack of any evidence to the contrary; if you have any evidence to the contrary, please provide it.
So many unexplained paranormal stuff, Out of body expirences,
Spirit sightings, near death expirences, people being put down
for surgery and recalling the entire process and conversation
from across the room, telling back to the doctors what they
used in the sugery, and doctors being dumbfounded. This
is the best i can do and still it proves nothing. For all you know
Karl you might die your conscience might survive. How would
you feel if it happend? You might remember this conversation.
Would it not comfort you to know it could happen?
“Oh, ouch, my pride…someone I don’t respect has called me a fool. Not since pec told me to stick me head in a pig earlier in this thread have I been so hurt”..
Well seeing as you felt the need to defend your honor by
not only quoting what others have said but also to make
it known that your pride is not hurt would show that a simple
statement evoked some kinda emotion out of you. You Dont
need to convince me, convince yourself that your pride is not hurt.
“…when and where in any of my posts did i make a claim
that there is an afterlife other then i was hoping there is an
afterlife? I think this truly proves you are truly reading
what i am saying because that surefire statement never pass
my fingertips. ”
You know when you frequently use relatively poor grammar and don’t proof read before clicking ‘Submit Comment’, it makes it really hard to be sure if you mean to say what you said, or if you left out a word like “not” by mistake.
If I assume correctly that you did leave out “not”, I suspect (thought I freely admit I could be wrong) that you are playing word games with that statement. The body of your statements in this blog strongly implies a belief in an afterlife. The following statement alone implies as much, “To be real honest, having the knowledge that there is
a god and survival of conscience does bring inspiration to be a better person or to do better things in life.”
“If there is a “God” how could science mesaure something so powerful?”
I don’t really consider this to be a particularly good reply, but science could probably detect when the laws of physics are being violated in a random, unreproducible, and unpredictable way as to beg supernatural influence for causation.
“That is why i said the method needs
to change.”
But you have not proposed any changes to the method. You’ve basically used an argument that reduces to “science doesn’t work for the paranormal, so science can’t disprove it.” You seem to either be unaware of, not understand, or are willing to ignore the various logical fallacies that are required to set science aside and believe in paranormal phenomenon, including, but not limited to, argument from ignorance, appeal to widespread belief, confirmation bias, appeal to authority, personal incredulity, burden of proof, argument from consequences, etc.
http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Logic_and_Logical_Fallacies(index)
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
“So many unexplained paranormal stuff, Out of body expirences,
Spirit sightings, near death expirences, people being put down
for surgery and recalling the entire process and conversation
from across the room, telling back to the doctors what they
used in the sugery, and doctors being dumbfounded.”
So many claims that have been successfully debunked or failed to stand up to to reasonable scientific scrutiny…
Here’s a good start to near death experiences:
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=381
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=382
“You Dont need to convince me, convince yourself that your pride is not hurt.”
You are mistaken if you believe I need to convince myself my pride was not hurt. I wouldn’t need convince you otherwise either way; I can continue to live fine if you think I was hurt.
I was more amused at the notion of being called a fool by someone whom I believe holds foolish beliefs, but that I do not call a fool.
I’ve had out of body experiences for years and they are just lucid dreams.
conscience – a noun
conscious – an adjective
consciousness – a noun
—————————————-
Once you get this figured out, maybe there can be a discussion.
Karl Withakay,
Yes i do post sometimes before proof reading and i have called
myself on it many times. No i am not playing word games, what
i have been doing is posting my notions and sharing them
as what ifs and opinions on how i feel of the whole thing.
What you are doing is playing rhetorical games with words.
What i am saying is simple… Im not sure why you cant seem
to grasp what i am saying.
“The body of your statements in this blog strongly implies a belief in an afterlife. The following statement alone implies as much, “To be real honest, having the knowledge that there is
a god and survival of conscience does bring inspiration to be a better person or to do better things in life.”
If i was trying to say that then why would i not come out
and say it in plain english? I am saying i am hoping for an
afterlife. Do you finally grasp that concept? Or are you really
just that stupid? Are you picking through my posts and trying
to find a reason to argue? That is what it seems like to me.
“If there is a “God” how could science mesaure something so powerful?”
“I don’t really consider this to be a particularly good reply, but science could probably detect when the laws of physics are being violated in a random, unreproducible, and unpredictable way as to beg supernatural influence for causation.”
A good reply? What kinda reply would be good enough?
Want me to say i know the answer and then make up some
bullshit and post it to make you happy? Ok give me a few days
to think of something and ill do that just for you!
So many claims that have been successfully debunked or failed to stand up to to reasonable scientific scrutiny…
Ok still does not address how some folks having this expirence
recall many things they should not be able to while being passed out, such as tools, conversations, color of shoes, ect.
Let me ask, why does the possibility of an afterlife seem to
bother you so much? Do you find comfort knowing we might
be gone forever one day? You see i even admit that this
is possible.
“I was more amused at the notion of being called a fool by someone whom I believe holds foolish beliefs, but that I do not call a fool.”
Again my friend, when did i ever say i fully believed in anything?
I only expressed a want, not that i thought these notions
where fact, so try again pally! Apartently you’re not reading
what i am saying and it shows!
Yes i think you are a fool because you don’t listen, instead you
like to pick apart things and try to build an ocean out of a fucking
grain of sand, such as someone elses notion.
“But you have not proposed any changes to the method. You’ve basically used an argument that reduces to “science doesn’t work for the paranormal, so science can’t disprove it.” You seem to either be unaware of, not understand, or are willing to ignore the various logical fallacies that are required to set science aside and believe in paranormal phenomenon, including, but not limited to, argument from ignorance, appeal to widespread belief, confirmation bias, appeal to authority, personal incredulity, burden of proof, argument from consequences, etc.”
What am i supposed to propose? Im not a paranornal researcher, Im not a scientist, I have never tried this myself.
What i am saying is whoever has the power to develop methods
should go on and keep studing the paranormal. In Laymen’s
terms, you have to think outside the box if you are going to
prove the existence of a spirit or God or anything of that nature.
What do you expect me to do? All i know is there are newer
and better scientific methods being developed as time goes
on and maybe someone will come up with something. I do have
a basic understand of the scientific method, but i do not think
personally that most of it can apply to something this extream.
Im just an IT pro, thats all…
khan,
Come on man! Add something better to the conversation!
vargkill,
“If i was trying to say that then why would i not come out
and say it in plain english? I am saying i am hoping for an
afterlife. Do you finally grasp that concept? Or are you really
just that stupid? Are you picking through my posts and trying
to find a reason to argue? That is what it seems like to me”
I grasp the concept fine. You seem to have missed my point. I was essentially saying you are refusing clearly state your belief regarding an afterlife even though your statements heavily imply that you do believe in one. I accuse you of engaging in a disingenuous argument by refusing to take a position and instead taking what amounts to a “I’m just saying” statements that you seem to feel allow you to make statements that don’t need to be defended because they aren’t positions.
“Again my friend, when did i ever say i fully believed in anything?
I only expressed a want, not that i thought these notions
where fact, so try again pally! Apartently you’re not reading
what i am saying and it shows!”
Word games. I never said you FULLY believed in anything. First see above before the last quote, then let’s clarify. It is possible to believe in something without being absolutely certain you are correct. Do you or do you not believe in an afterlife? Just to be clear, I’m not asking if you are absolutely sure of an afterlife, just whether you believe in one. If you prefer me to phase the question differently: Do you believe an afterlife is more likely or less likely than no afterlife.
“Yes i think you are a fool because you don’t listen, instead you
like to pick apart things and try to build an ocean out of a f—–g
grain of sand, such as someone elses notion. ”
Nice mixed metaphor: ocean out of a grain of sand, indeed.
Non-sequitor: How can I pick apart what you say if I don’t listen to you.
I’m not making an ocean out of a grain of sand (or a desert out of a grain of sand or a ocean out of a drop of water either), I’m claiming that you mansion is a house of cards.
If you’re not comfortable with your positions being methodically deconstructed, construct better arguments and build them on firmer foundations.
Karl Withakay,
“I grasp the concept fine. You seem to have missed my point. I was essentially saying you are refusing clearly state your belief regarding an afterlife even though your statements heavily imply that you do believe in one. I accuse you of engaging in a disingenuous argument by refusing to take a position and instead taking what amounts to a “I’m just saying” statements that you seem to feel allow you to make statements that don’t need to be defended because they aren’t positions.”
What is the problem? I understand and even respect your
point just fine Karl.
I am not sure at this point what i believe. The whole afterlife
thing and God for me is a “want”, not a belief. Therefor i cannot
state my belief because i cannot be sure at this point. I only
have a strong “want” and i never intended it to imply otherwise.
Therefor again, i cannot really take position only that i think
it would all seem so random and pointless otherwise. You get what im saying? I don’t need to defend my statement simply
because that is how i feel or what i want. Im not in here
trying to push anything i “want” as a fact.
“Do you believe an afterlife is more likely or less likely than no afterlife.”
I am not sure at this point in my life. Im sorry if that answer is
not to your liking but that is the truth and i am being honest.
Again, i would like there to be. So if you consider that to be
“word games” then thats fine with me but never my intention.
I don’t need to come on here to play word games, there would
be no point in posting otherwise.
I never really had an arguement as much as i had an opinion.
“How can I pick apart what you say if I don’t listen to you.”
Very simple, you can read what i post and then not really
take it in and just find points to argue. If this was not the case
you would fully see that what i have is “want” or a hope.
“If you’re not comfortable with your positions being methodically deconstructed, construct better arguments and build them on firmer foundations.”
Again Karl, and it pains me to keep saying it…
I am expressing a want and or a hope. How can you argue
against that? If i want or hope to win the state lottery someone
could just say “the odds are against you!” But will that take
away from someones hope in wanting that?
I will say it one last time here…
I hope and deeply want an afterlife because it would make
more sense to me as to why life is so complex.
I am unsure what i believe only what i hope for.
You believe there is not a god or afterlife and i fully respect that.
What is left to argue?
varkill,
I fail to see how an afterlife would explain why life was so complex. (Life meaning either the human condition or biological life in general, being either literally or metaphorically complex) I could see how the existence of a god could help with that.
I want there to be an afterlife too. Not because it would make more sense to me, or give any additional meaning to this life; it would simply be comforting to believe that death wouldn’t be the end of existence. Unfortunately, I don’t have any reason to believe in or have hope for an afterlife beyond that I’d really like for there to be one. All the evidence I can find either points to the contrary or isn’t there, and thus it seems unlikely to me.
I’d also like there to be some sort of supreme being out there who has even the slightest passing interest in my or anyone else’s well being and has the ability to influence the universe to our benefit. Again I don’t see any reason to believe or have any hope that there is one, and all the evidence I can find points to the contrary, or isn’t there, and this also seems unlikely to me.
hope:
–noun
1. the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best: to give up hope.
2. a particular instance of this feeling: the hope of winning.
3. grounds for this feeling in a particular instance: There is little or no hope of his recovery.
4. a person or thing in which expectations are centered: The medicine was her last hope.
5. something that is hoped for: Her forgiveness is my constant hope.
–verb (used with object)
6. to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.
7. to believe, desire, or trust: I hope that my work will be satisfactory.
–verb (used without object)
8. to feel that something desired may happen: We hope for an early spring.
9. Archaic. to place trust; rely (usually fol. by in).
—Idiom
10. hope against hope, to continue to hope, although the outlook does not warrant it: We are hoping against hope for a change in her condition.
All these definitions imply some degree of confidence, belief or trust, unless you use def 7 excluding the possibility of the words other than desire,as in “to desire”. Perhaps you can see how your use of the word hope could have caused someone to infer some degree of certainty, belief, or confidence even if one was not implied or intended.
I can readily accept that you don’t know what you believe in regards to the probability of an afterlife, but find it difficult to accept that you don’t have the slightest leaning one way or another given you comments about what no afterlife would mean to you.
No commitment is required, just a leaning- no opinion with a feather’s more weight one way or the other?
I press the issue on the question which I acknowledge you have already answered because your statements to the effect that you find the thought of no afterlife would make life meaningless and depressing suggest that if you don’t consider life meaningless and depressing, you have a leaning towards a belief in an afterlife, and I am seeking clarification.
Karl Withakay,
Ok Karl im glad you are able to tell me what i really think.
I think perhaps you could call Randy and win that Million dollars!
What you are doing is digging to deep into what i am saying.
I didn’t think i was being to linear with what i posted but i guess
being simplistic was tooooooo subtle for you perhaps? You are
an educated man and anyone who reads SBM can clearly see
that, but what gets me is how i cannot explain something so
simple as to where i am coming from without you having to make
it a bigger issue then it really is.
I do not know what i believe at this point and nothing i have
posted should give you that impression. I think i made it clear
what i meant in what i posted and if you decided to interpret
it in your own way then that is on you.
“No commitment is required, just a leaning- no opinion with a feather’s more weight one way or the other?”
No Karl, im directly in the middle. I know that bothers you
but im not going to tilt just to make you happy.
So we agree that an afterlife would be nice and a god would
be nice. Ok so we found some common ground.
vargkill,
I don’t recall ever telling you what you really thought. I said that I find it difficult to accept that you have no slightest leaning one way or another in regards to an afterlife. I was seeking to clarify if you had a leaning that was perhaps so slight that you were not comfortable with expressing it.
So, I’ll ask a slightly different question because I’d really like to understand your thought process. You have expressed how worrisome and troubling the thought of no afterlife is, and how consoling and reassuring the though of the existence of an afterlife is.
The last time I asked, I approached the question with the assumption that you do not consider life to be possibly meaningless; do you assign equal probability to life being pointless as you do to it not being pointless? Does your hope and despair exactly balance out? (This is an honest question.)
While I don’t consider the concept of no afterlife to make life meaningless, I personally would find that balance far more troubling than the concept of a pointless life. At least once you’ve made your decision on whether life is meaningful or not, you have a point to move on from.
Karl Withakay,
My problem is i do not know what i believe in. Im kinda stuck
right now as far as that goes. Most people at some point have
probably gone through this very thing of not knowing and the
worst part of it is that there really is no way to know. As far
as i am concerned we can only go by what we can see and feel
or prove and disprove.
“The last time I asked, I approached the question with the assumption that you do not consider life to be possibly meaningless; do you assign equal probability to life being pointless as you do to it not being pointless? Does your hope and despair exactly balance out? (This is an honest question.)”
That is a good question. I can only assign myself to living day by day until i find the truth for myself. If i knew for a fact that life
was just one big coincidence i would find that to be troubling,
the flip side to that is if i knew there was an afterlife i would
feel much better. Some folks might refer to this as an existential crisis or something of that nature.
I guess that is just how it is put on the table in my head.
No afterlife, pointless life. Afterlife, meaningful life. Yet i am in between.
I have personally exprienced some paranormal things in my life.
One noteably being my run in with Mr Wu whom we talked about
on the CAM thingy. Im sure you remember. Other then that there are other things from when i was younger that i do not
see there being any logical explination for which im not sure
if going into detail on that would be a good idea right now.
But still is not enough to answer the underlaying issue here.
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