Science-Based Medicine

I am writing this because a colleague of mine has been attacked, specifically, our fearless leader Steve Novella. J.B. Handley, Founder of “Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s Autism Organization – Generation Rescue” (whose usurpation by Jenny and Jim was apparently done in an opportunistic fashion but has had a consequence that must be galling to J.B., namely that some interviewers apparently think that Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, not J.B. and his wife, are the true founders of Generation Rescue), did not like something that Steve wrote and in his characteristic fashion, has responded with a vicious ad hominem attack. Normally I wouldn’t feel obligated to put my two cents in, as Steve is more than capable of taking care of himself in a scientific argument and quite able to refute anything J.B. can throw at him. Moreover, whenever J.B. Handley attacks someone in a fashion this nasty, it is an excellent indication that the person he is attacking has scored some serious points against him. Indeed, I have twice been on the receiving end of J.B.’s tirades on the Generation Propaganda blog Age of Autism. On one occasion, he referred to me as the “worldwide wanker of woo,” and on another occasion seemed to think that I criticized Generation Rescue so harshly because I “don’t like full page ads,” rather than because I hate pseudoscience and anti-vaccine nonsense. When criticism really hits a nerve with J.B. Handley, he lashes out in a characteristic fashion. Clearly Steve’s reasoned, level-headed criticism of the latest Generation Rescue anti-vaccine propaganda initiative did just that.

In this case, however, I feel some explanation is in order because I feel a bit responsible for having brought J.B.’s wrath down upon Steve. First, a little history (albeit recent history) is in order. As I described in detail last week and the week before, Generation Rescue, with Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey at the fore, sometimes with J.B. himself, has mounted an impressive anti-vaccine propaganda effort. It started with a media tour promoting her most recent paean to anti-vaccine pseudoscience and autism quackery written with “co-author” Dr. Jerry Kartzinel. The book is entitled Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide, and three weeks ago Jenny McCarthy and her boyfriend Jim Carrey showed up on Larry King Live to tout a truly incompetent and intellectually dishonest “study” that purported to find that U.S. children are the “most highly vaccinated children in the world” and that that’s correlated with our higher autism rates. I would have none of it. Next, Generation Rescue introduced its equally intellectually dishonest “Fourteen Studies” website, which launched dubious attacks from pseudoexperts on fourteen of the major studies that failed to find a correlation between vaccines and autism or thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. I wrote a lengthy post for SBM describing the utter intellectual and scientific bankruptcy of the entire enterprise.
Continue Reading »

One of the more frustrating things about practitioners who promote unsafe and scientifically discredited medical practices is their tendency to change their message for different audiences. One day they’ll tell you that they espouse only evidence-based practices and the next they’ll be promoting snake oil. This double talk is hard to combat, since to disprove them one would essentially have to provide a video of their contradictory remarks.

One day I participated in a series of business meetings with a CAM practitioner in attendance (he was an MD who graduated from UCSF). During one meeting he boldly proclaimed his support of scientifically rigorous research, and praised the Cochrane Collaborative’s efforts to provide systematic reviews of the evidence (or lack thereof) for various practices.

Several hours later we were sitting together in another meeting in which I objected to the publication of a consumer article that would assist parents of children with autism in finding a DAN! practitioner who could provide chelation therapy to their children. I explained that there was no evidence for the efficacy of such treatments, and plenty of evidence for their harm (including the death of at least one child that I’d read about in the news). I suggested that an article describing these dangers might be in order, but that an article encouraging chelation use for autism was simply unethical and I would not allow it to be published.

Instead of agreeing with me, the CAM MD suggested that I was being “narrow” and that I should allow consumers to “explore all their options.” I was stunned. This was the same person who had just said that he fully supported scientific inquiry. So I asked him how he could say that he supported evidence-based medicine, and then turn around and ignore evidence at will – even at the peril of human life.

His response dumbfounded me:

“I am just as comfortable practicing within an evidence-based framework as I am outside it.”
Continue Reading »