What's the Harm? - Part 2

So, after a brief hiatus on my part, with too many projects to complete to count, I have time to brows the news from time to time again.

And, after my last post, I have another depressing news item to share from the "what's the harm?" department.

There are news links in Polish here and here (sorry, I could not find an English version).

To summarize:

A six moth old girl was found dead a few weeks ago in the town of Brzezna in the south of Poland, while in care of her parents. It was determined that she had died as a result of malnutrition. After some initial investigation, it was also determined that the parents started using a "natural" approach for the baby's care, including refusal of any vaccines, lack of medical care and a whole bunch of holistic feeding techniques. They attempted to follow advice from a faith healer, who allegedly told the parents to use skim milk and herbs as the baby's diet staple. The healer, called "God's Man" in the area, is well known for advocating abandoning regular medical care and using herbs, fasting and prayer as remedies for any ailments (including cancer!!!).

This case is not the first one for the supposedly "godly" man. A few years ago it was alleged that he had caused a death of a five year old boy, who had kidney problems. After initial, positive reactions to the standard, hospital medical care, the mother took the boy to the healer and believed in his "miraculous" approach, which ultimately resulted in boy's death.

Those two cases are clear answers to the argument for the alternative medicine that I hear very often: "what's the harm?". The answer is very simple, the harm is in believing that unproven, often completely nonsensical treatments can and do work. When someone abandons reason and critical thinking in small cases, it is easy to do the same in cases that can cause harm, death and destruction. Belief in miracles, prayer, alternative medicine (like homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc) when your life, or life of your loved ones, is at stake, can really be deadly.

What's the Harm?

What's the harm?
That's a question I hear a lot when discussing alternative medicine and all the included disciplines, like chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional "medicine" (including Chinese medicine), acupuncture, and many others.

I always point out that the harm comes from two sides. One side is the actual lack of medicinal and therapeutic value in all those alt-med offshoots. The other side is the fact that when we suspend our critical thinking in one area, we tend to stop using our brains across the board, and that can lead to more problems with rational decision making.

From time to time I catch a news on the interwebs, that illustrates the first issue so clearly, it is hard to read.

The original link is here (in Polish):
6-latka operowana po "leczeniu" u bioenergoterapeuty
which means: "A six year old undergoes a surgery after being treated by a naturopath" (I'm not sure if there is a better word in English than naturopath).

Let me explain...

In the town of Toruń, in central Poland, a local court ordered a naturopath to close down his "bioenergy" therapy business and pay a fine, after he treated a six-year old for a cold. After the initial session, in which he diagnosed the child with pneumonia, he continued to treat her for a month and a half, prescribing strong steroids (which he's not allowed to do) and treating her fever over the phone. When the parents noticed a large lump between the girl's ribs, they finally took her to a hospital, where she had to have a major surgery to treat her deteriorated lungs and where she spent more than five weeks, some of it in the intensive care unit.

The judge also said that she is planning to bring the case against the parents for failing to provide adequate care to their daughter, which seems to be reasonable, as they refused to take the child to a real doctor for weeks and almost killed their daughter in the process.

Unfortunately, one thing that bothers me is the fact that the naturopath is only required to close down his business for three years! Since the article mentions that he's been doing it for 20 years and that his mother was also a "famous" healer, I bet he'll be back treating people with magic and woo in no time.

Another point that stands out from this article is the fact that the guy has a "bioenergy healer" license. There is a lot of discussion in various states in the US about licensing alt-med "doctors". The opposition usually brings up one great point: any kind of license, legitimizes the profession, which, in case of alt-med is based on magic, wishful thinking and general woo-woo. For a lay person, a license makes the potential therapy look real and puts it on the same level as evidence-based medicine. Licensing alt-med scams might be a way to earn some extra tax dollars, but it creates a false sense of security for the general public.

How Stupidity Affects our Children

If you ever find yourself in a presence of parents in a developed country like the US, or somewhere in Europe, you will almost always get someone who is anti-vaccination. They come up with the typical set of excuses, from natural (nothing unnatural around my family), semi-scientific (maybe vaccines cause autism, and after all, they are not 100% effective), and religious (aborted tissue in vaccines?), to plain wacky (I'd rather have my child contract the disease, the natural way). Why is it more visible in developed countries? I guess, because most of the parents in those countries do not have to actually see their kids being severely sick, or even dying from an easily preventable disease.

However, it is very enlightening to see how those diseases have been spreading and popping up in rich and seemingly rational countries all over the world, in the last years. This is exactly what Council on Foreign Relations did in their visualization:

Notice, how much the points are concentrated where people are better off? And they are growing...

Stupid Is As Stupid Does (Or Says)...

One of our local Florida geniuses, Dennis Baxley, a State Representative from Ocala, said last Monday that we should give guns to our teachers to protect the kids in schools. Not a surprise, since he's a lifelong National Rifle Association member and a co-sponsor of the bill that became our "stand your ground" law.
My take on the NRA is pretty simple: they are here to protect moneymaking interests, at any cost, even when it means killing innocent children. They have no excuses anymore. They belong in the Dark Ages, not in the 21st Century civilization.

So, even after the unspeakable tragedy like the one in Connecticut last week, when it is pretty evident that making firearms widely available to anyone is a terrible idea, we still have people who want to turn our streets, stores, work and public places, and now even schools, into a wild West of the 1800s.
One can only hope that the cooler, more intelligent and rational heads in politics will finally wake up, get a spine and stand up to those special interests, that's been driving this pro-gun insanity recently.
You want to have a gun in your home, fine, even though it is a disaster waiting to happen (see here, here, and here) but no one in today's world needs a semi-automatic rifle, or a military grade weapons for private use. Period.

So, it's time to ban the assault weapons altogether, because, as data shows, it is very effective: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings. It's not only necessary to ban them, but it would be best to get the ones currently in private hands off the market by buying them back. In addition, stricter gun control laws should be imposed as soon as possible. Fighting guns in hands of crazy people with more and more guns, will only make the matters worse.

A great place to start is at demandaplan.org and mayorsagainstillegalguns.org

Finally, Rationally Speaking blog has a great (as always) entry on the topic, with some really, really good arguments. Massimo Pigliucci's final conclusion can't be expressed any better:

Another way to put this is in terms of virtue ethics. We need to think about what an openly armed society would do to our character as individual members of that society. I personally doubt even the quality of character of someone who thinks that hunting is a sport worth engaging in, but I am okay with that and other limited use of lethal weapons (“sport” is another questionable application, and even self-defense is reasonable only under fairly unusual circumstances and as a last resort). But I am pretty sure that there is something fundamentally flawed in the character of a person who thinks it’s a good idea to arm teachers and students in school, to allow concealed guns in churches and bars, or to provide citizens with the sort of weapons that other countries reserve only for their military. The most profound damage the NRA and its supporters are doing to this country is not just in allowing the sort of carnage of young children we have seen this past week, as horrible as it is. It lies in a deep corruption of our very character as human beings and in the threat to the very idea of a free and open society.

It is high time for some real action!

Politicians: Brains Not Required

We all know that being smart is not required for being a politician. Having a good education is also not in the requirements for this particular position, which could have been clearly seen in the recent batch of the Republican presidential candidates.
However, when it comes to politicians without brains, I firmly say "Not In My Backyard!!!" (NIMB).
This is exactly what's happening in one of the Florida State House districts, where all three Republican candidates, Kim Kendall, Mike Davis and Ronald “Doc” Renuart, support teaching creationism in our public schools.
It is amusing, and yet scary at the same time, to hear from Renuart, who is a physician (with higher education and extensive scientific training, I presume):

Evolution is still a theory. It should be taught as a theory, not as a fact. Creationism, divine intervention — a lot of people share this belief.

and then:

[Vouchers] give[s] students a way out (of a failing school). It’s not full tuition. When we don’t provide options for students, what’s really left for them? (These schools) must meet the standards of public education.

What standards? The same he just demolished bringing religion into science classes?

Florida Citizens for Science has a short post about this topic as well.

Pasco County School Board Elections: Vouchers

Our local Pasco County School Board elections are coming up, and as always the idea of school vouchers pops up with the candidates (Don Stephenson is one example). I always found this approach questionable, since it diverts public, tax driven funds from our public schools (where our tax dollars belong) into poorly controlled, private schools, religious in nature in many instances.

Thankfully, by a very wise decision of the good and smart people who wrote the US Constitution, public funds should never be used for religious purposes. However, religious people from all kinds of backgrounds argue differently, trying to prove that they, and their religion, deserves better. Except, when they find out that this slippery slope could also lead to other religions using the tax funds, and sometimes those religions are not as "popular" in this country.

People in Louisiana are finding out this exact thing right now, as reported by The Livingston Parrish News:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.
“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.
“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.
Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”

It is funny to see how their minds change and suddenly they are not so much for a "religious freedom", because it is not their own religion that's free.

I think we should keep it in mind when it's time to vote in the upcoming elections, and make sure that we select those candidates who are truly concerned about our public schools and do not support diverting our tax dollars to private schools and other organizations (that includes the very flawed Florida Religious Freedom, Amendment 8).

Science Education in America - How to Fix It

Slate has a series of excellent articles on the future of science education in America. They touch on a number of important issues that our current educational system faces, from funding and inspiration to testing and gender gap that exists today.

Three of the articles that I would like to point out are:
- Learning by Making - another voice in the discussion about standardized testing, and another good point against it.
- A Moment of Science - how to inspire your kids to pursue science, from one of the best science bloggers, Phil Plait.
- The Dark-Matter Ages - how the US is losing its leading role in basic science research and what it could mean to our future generations. You'd better listen, when such a warning comes from one of the best physicists today, Lawrence Krauss, the author of a recent book I recommended a few days ago.

Bad Journalism, Bad Science, Bad Medicine

I like local stories, and when I see one, I jump on it.
When browsing the interwebs today, I saw a blog post from Todd W at Harpocrates Speaks about a recent interview with a local pediatrician from Tampa, which was posted on the WTSP's Web site.
Todd does a great job dissecting the article for what it is: an uncritical, gullible piece of sensational journalism:

What could have been a good opportunity to ask critical questions. Instead, we get what basically amounts to advertising for a doctor making claims that are not supported by data. It's all well and good to make sure that families, and in particular women who are about to become or are pregnant, practice a healthy lifestyle. However, to claim that autism can be prevented by Dr. Berger's protocol, when we have no research actually validating it, is premature and irresponsible.

VanNest and Dr. Berger should both be ashamed: VanNest for irresponsible journalism and Dr. Berger for failing to do due diligence before making extraordinary claims. If his protocol actually works, that would be great, but the truth is that we do not know and will not know until the research is done. At best, Dr. Berger is Florida's version of Dr. Jay Gordon. At worst, he's a crank (which I'm leaning toward after viewing the Wholistic Pediatrics web site). Both do an incredible disservice to families who may expend added resources for no actual gain.

Not much needs to be added... perfect summary.
As I was browsing Dr. Berger's site, I also found a typical "holistic" approach to vaccines (we "recommend" them, but set your own schedule if you wish, or just skip the ones you don't like), and a few interesting recommendations that would make me run away from that practice as fast as I could. For example, Wholistic Pediatrics recommends OSCILLOCOCCINUM as a flu treatment. As I mentioned in my previous posts, OSCILLOCOCCINUM is a sugar pill (it says so on the vial!!!), so using it in anything but your coffee is a serious waste of your time, and dollars, as it is way more expensive than the same white powder found in your local supermarket. I also learned something new about this homeopathic remedy:

As with any homeopathic remedy, it is most effective when given away from food, herbs, or strong flavors like mint or cinnamon in toothpaste.

Huh? Cinnamon in toothpaste interacts with ? There must be some magic chemistry behind it, but I fail to understand it...
I'm sure glad my pediatrician uses reason and science in his daily practice.

Great To See Some Reason...

With all the recent economic trouble across the country (and the world), our local governments are looking to save money in all kinds of strange places. For example, our local school board is evaluating cutting the school week to four days, making them a bit longer instead.

When I first heard about this idea, I did some research and found out that there is relatively few school districts in the U.S., that decided to implement such a solution. As a result, there is rather slim amount of good data available to support its perceived value. It appears to me that there could be some benefits, but they are only apparent in very small and geographically spread out districts. For a district the size of Pasco County, the four day school week idea seems to have rather weak foundations, and might lead to more problems than it's trying to solve.

Unfortunately, when I attended a parents' forum with the chief proponent of this idea and the person who first proposed it, the School Board member Steve Luikart, my impression was that he was already convinced and all he wanted to do was to convince the rest of the board.

I'm glad to see that the issue is getting attention from some of the candidates to the school board during the upcoming elections. As The Tampa Bay Times reported today, Don Stephenson is firmly against the idea of the four day school week. Even though I do not agree with a lot of Mr. Stephenson's agenda, I am happy to be on the same side of the fence when it comes to the shorter school week. Hopefully, this will attract some much needed attention to this issue, and maybe, convince the current board to find better ways of saving money. Cutting our children's time in school is not the best way to ensure they get the best education possible.

Florida Science Standards - Fordham Institute Report

Well, while Florida fared pretty well when it comes to our teachers' quality, the science standards in our schools pretty much smell like a big pile of..., well, 'nuff said.

The Fordham Institute released its evaluation of science educational standards and Florida scored a big, bad D, mostly due to the lack of clarity, but also because both Physics and Chemistry ranked zero.
Surprisingly, even in the "southern" and unscientifically-leaning state like Florida, "controversial" topic such as evolution, gets some praise:

I guess, we have some work to do at home to ensure that out children are well prepared for the challenges of the 21st century

Evolution, on the other hand, is very well covered. Take, for example, the following:
Explain how the scientific theory of evolution is supported by the fossil record, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, biogeography, molecular biology, and observed evolutionary change. (high school life science) Describe the conditions required for natural selection, including: overproduction of offspring, inherited variation, and the struggle to survive, which result in differential reproductive success. (high school life science) Discuss mechanisms of evolutionary hange other than natural selection such as genetic drift and gene flow. (high school life science)
Even human evolution is treated—a rarity in state science standards:
Identify basic trends in hominid evolution from early ancestors six million years ago to modern humans, including brain size, jaw size, language, and anufacture of tools. Discuss specific fossil hominids and what they show about human evolution. (high school life science)
Barely a handful of states tackle human evolution in their standards, bolstering the life science score of the Sunshine State’s standards.

Pasco School Board Elections - My Gripes

A few weeks ago, I’d mentioned our local Pasco County School Board campaign in one of my posts, and I received a comment to which I feel I should respond.

I reserve judgment on Mr. Stephenson’s campaign and his views when more info is available from his web site. However there are a few things that I have an issue with at this time:

1.      Taxes, fees, and fiscal matters. In my mind, a school board member should be primarily concerned with schools and education. To say point blank that raising taxes and fees for education is unacceptable makes me worried about our children, and their future education.

2.      Curriculum. Not much there when it comes to solid ideas, but here we go again… no taxes, no money from federal government, even if it means taking it away from valuable education programs and our kids. Leaving to the states to decide what are the standards and what is taught in our schools is dangerous. All it takes is a single generation of bad, irrational politicians (and we have plenty of those) to set bad standards and it’ll be very hard for any state to dig itself out of that hole (as the next generation, being poorly educated, would continue to dig the hole even deeper). US can be competitive in a global economy only if our children are educated to the highest standards. This also applies to Mr. Stephenson’s comments on International Baccalaureate (which he would like to remove completely): “the curriculum for the IB program is written with an emphasis on ideals of global citizenry rather than emphasizing ideals of American citizenship.” I’m not even sure what that means, except that it sounds like a sound bite taken from Fox News? We live in a global marketplace and global, interconnected economy. Pretending that we can disconnect our children from other cultures and points of view, just because we don’t like them (or we think that our point of view is the only one worth teaching) will only make them less competitive in that global market. Even if we think that some of our ways are better than the ways of others, it’ll take broad knowledge of other cultures to have any impact. I’m also not impressed by a blank opposition to a so called “radical environmentalism”, supposedly contained in the IB program. I think we are on a very well-defined path to destroying our planet and to say that we should not be teaching our children how to better care for it is irresponsible. If our children don’t who will? Maybe Mr. Stephenson should define what ideas he considers “radical” to make the discussion more concrete. To sum up, I would like to see more of his ideas on curriculum: social studies, science and other topics, with some details and not just general, ideological talking points.

3.      Vouchers and charter schools. I’m a bit split on this one. While I like the idea of charter schools, I’m concerned that they can lead to a lack of control over their curriculum and standards. There needs to be a firm control over them to ensure they don’t become ideological (I agree with Mr. Stephenson that ideology of any kind has no place in our schools). However, I do not agree with Amendment 7 proposal, as I think that no tax funds should go to any religious organizations. Period.

As I live in Pasco County and have my son in a public school here, I want to ensure the best possible education for him and others, who will live in a much more demanding, global world from the one we grew up in. This can only be achieved with an education system that’s placed on the top of our priority list, that’s well funded and that teaches children critical thinking, math, science and openness to the world outside of our own. Let’s hope our next local School Board members understand and implement just that.

Morality From Religion - Part 2

Here is part two of this scary, scary documentary:

Morality From Religion?

It's heartbreaking, but unfortunately true way too often.
This is what happens when you stop thinking for yourself and let your imagination take over your brain:



You can't argue that religion and morality go together and you need one to have another. The video speaks for itself.

Andrew Wakefield: A Hero?

New York Times has a good article about Andrew Wakefiled, the man behind the MMR vaccine scare 13 years ago, and the main cause of the current anti-vaxx movement, failing vaccine rates and returning preventable diseases.

The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru

Most of the details are fairly well known, but what strikes me the most in the article is the real face of the anti-vaxxers. From my own experience, I saw people almost religiously following convictions that had no base in reality, but who refused to change their minds no matter what arguments were presented to them. If your arguments were too logical and irrefutable, they would turn to ad hominem attacks (either on myself, doctors, "big pharma", the government, take your pick).
Now, check the article:

She narrowed her eyes when she learned that a writer from The New York Times was there to write about Wakefield.

“Be nice to him,” she said, “or we will hurt you.”

or this:

“To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one,” says J. B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, a group that disputes vaccine safety. “He’s a symbol of how all of us feel.”

Such is the anti-vax movement: irrational, "religious", and unconvinced despite mountains of evidence.

More On Anti-Vaccine Outcomes

Following my recent post about Seth Mnookin's excellent book "The Panic Virus", and the news about pertussis outbreak in Virginia, here is Mnookin's comment about the outbreak:

Today’s lesson: “Alternative” Virginia school closes after half of its students infected with pertussis. All of them were unvaccinated.

The school's administrator said:

“Many of the families and staff at our school understand that some people choose not to vaccinate their children. We’re not requiring that they do.”

What a way to "protect" your students!

Pasco Schools: More Money Wasted

Why do those religious organizations insist on wasting those precious dollars that our local schools so lack?

A Christian group wants to attract more kids to the after-school Bible study programs it runs at several Pasco elementary schools.

But when the Child Evangelism Fellowship Suncoast Chapter asked to send fliers home with every student, school officials balked.
So the fellowship group has called in the Liberty Counsel, a nationally recognized legal organization specializing in religious rights, to push for access.

Story: Liberty Counsel demands Pasco schools distribute fliers for religious clubs

It is so simple: public schools should not be involved with ANY religion. Pick just one, start promoting it, and you are asking for trouble. It all looks rosy when your own religion being promoted, but what if we pick the wrong one: not yours? Isn't it better to just stay away from it all?
It seems like over and over, the religious ones push their agenda and then complain we all don't want to follow them, threatening our schools with lawsuits. Terrible!!!

Dr. Offit on Colbert

Dr. Paul Offit was on The Colbert Report last night:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/372812/january-31-2011/paul-offit

Interesting conversation (as always) from a great mind.

I already went through his book and I'll write about it shortly.

Do you hate McDonald?

Taste and quality aside... no argument there.
You must have seen the "undestroyable" McDonald's hamburger making its rounds on the Internet recently.
Did the story seem uhm... rotten a bit?
It probably is.
Here are a few good places to see if your average burger should really "decompose":

Some Skeptical Clarity to the Unrottable McDonald’s Burger Videos/Photos - via Science-Based Parenting

The Burger “Experiments” - via Neurologica Blog

CNN: The end of the autism/vaccine debate?

CNN has a great article summarizing the recent developments in the autism / vaccine debate:

"This retraction represents the death of a hypothesis," says Offit. "Parents should be reassured that a choice not to get a vaccine will in no sense lessen the risk of autism, and will only increase the risk of disease."

The end of the autism/vaccine debate?

There are a few excellent links with additional information at the bottom of the article.
Let's hope the word if finally out and all the money wasted on this misdirected research can go where it really belongs: finding causes and cures for autism.

After the Debate

So, while I was unable to actually attend the debate, it seems that there was something interesting that happened there: John Tracy took a very typical right wing road, offending everyone and painting himself as the only one with any values:

John Tracy's comments at Pasco School Board candidate debate offend his rivals

So Tracy told the audience at Thursday's candidate debate at Pasco-Hernando Community College that he was the candidate of family values and integrity. Not just one of them. The one.

How funny...

There is more in the TampaBay.com Gradebook Blog:

Pasco School Board candidate Rev. John Tracy defends his debate night comments

You have to love what Mr. Tracy concluded:

This particular article misrepresents my statements and fails to accurately set the context of the debate forum. Lesson learned. Voters beware! Do not trust the press.

That's right, blame the media for your own statements and try to twist the facts around, to make up your own reality. This attitude is so typical of the far right found everywhere, not only in this country.

We have to make sure we vote for someone much better to have any influence over our school system.