I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine crankosphere.
Actually, maybe "disturbance" is the wrong word. Unabashed whooping it up is closer to correct. High-fiving is perhaps a better term. Or maybe partying like it's 2005. The question, of course, is what is the inciting event was that sparked such widespread rejoicing in the antivaccine world. I'll give you a hint. It has to do with the hero of the antivaccine movement, the man who arguably more than anyone else is responsible for the MMR scare that drove down MMR vaccine uptake in the UK to the point where measles, once vanquished, came roaring back. Yes, we're talking about Andrew Wakefield, whose incompetent and now retracted research launched a thousand biomedical quacks. (Actually, that's probably an underestimate.) However, we're not talking about Andrew Wakefield directly. Rather, we're talking about Professor John Walker-Smith, one of the co-authors of Andrew Wakefield's now rightly discredited 1998 Lancet paper. The anti-vaccine crank blog is going wild with the news that Professor Walker-Smith has succeeded in his appeal of the General Medical Council's decision that he should be struck off the medical record along with Andy Wakefield:
A High Court judge quashed the finding of professional misconduct against Professor Walker-Smith, who had carried out some of the tests for the controversial paper that suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.Mr Justice Mitting also called for the reform of the General Medical Council's disciplinary hearings after the lengthy battle by Professor Walker-Smith to clear his name.
The Wakefield paper prompted a nationwide scare over the safety of the jab after the study of 12 children was published in the medical journal The Lancet.
On AoA, we've been treated to some articles with titles like this:
- Quashing of GMC Findings Against Prof Walker-Smith
- Read the Full UK Court Decision in John Walker Smith MMR Autism Appeal
- Professor John Walker Smith Exonerated in Autism MMR Case
The full ruling can be found here. Let's dig in, shall we? As usual, what the antivaccine movement is promoting and what is in the ruling are not necessarily the same thing. If there's one thing that's obvious from the outpouring of verbiage from various antivaccine blogs, Twitter feeds, and press releases, it's that the antivaccine movement somehow thinks that this decision exonerates Andrew Wakefield, too. Let's disabuse them of that delusion right now, shall we? According to Mr. Justice Mitting:
At a press conference, which Professor Walker-Smith did not attend, convened to accompany publication, Dr. Wakefield stated publicly the view which he had previously expressed privately to Professor Walker-Smith that he could no longer support the giving of MMR vaccine. The joint view of Professor Walker-Smith and Dr. Murch, stated in a letter to Dr. Wakefield on 21st January 1998, was that it was inappropriate to emphasize the role of MMR vaccine in publicity about the paper and that they supported government policy concerning MMR until more firm evidence was available for them to see for themselves. They published a press release to coincide with publication stating their support for "present public health policy concerning MMR". Dr. Wakefield's statement and subsequent publicity had a predictable adverse effect upon the take up of MMR vaccine of great concern to those responsible for public health. There is now no respectable body of opinion which supports his hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked.
Correct. There is no respectable body of opinion supporting Wakefield's hypothesis that the MMR is somehow linked to autism or the entity Wakefield made up called "autistic enterocolitis." It's rather annoying that Mitting would refer to it as a "body of opinion." One can only speculate that it's his legal background that leads him to use this particular phraseology. No scientist would. Scientists would (and do) point out that not only is there no good scientific evidence supporting Wakefield's hypothesis, but there is a lot of evidence that falsifies his hypothesis. There's a reason why Wakefield is viewed with such contempt in the scientific world. Actually, there are multiple reasons, not the least of which is that Wakefield is an incompetent scientist willing to commit research fraud to provide evidence for trial lawyers to use in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, a plot that Brian Deer uncovered and described in excruciating detail and with excruciatingly detailed documentation. This ruling says nothing about that; it's primarily about methodology and Mitting's legal ruling that the GMC didn't adequately explain the rationale behind its findings that Walker-Smith committed professional misconduct. Mitting's decision also relies a lot on his clearly poor understanding of medical research issues. (More on that below.)
It's a simple fact, though, that Mitting's decision regarding has nothing to do with whether Wakefield is a fraud or a pseudoscientist or not. Nor does it have anything to do with the question of whether vaccines, specifically the MMR vaccine, cause autism, as much as Wakefield's many apologists would like to convince people otherwise. In fact, as I've pointed out before, Wakefield's being struck off the British medical registry has nothing to do with the validity of the science. Even if Wakefield had prevailed and been allowed to keep his medical license, his claimed findings that vaccines cause autistic enterocolitis and/or autism would have been just as bogus. Legal rulings are not science. They can be based on science, but often they are not. It's nice when they don't go against science and nicer still when they resoundingly agree with science, but such is not always the case. To try to argue that a legal ruling such as the one regarding Professor Walker-Smith exonerates Wakefield is an even worse folly than arguing that his being struck off necessarily proves he is a quack. He's an antivaccine quack based on science; it matters not what the courts say.
Admittedly, I haven't paid much attention to Professor Walker-Smith. Back when I wrote about Andy Wakefield being struck off, I said very little, if anything about Walker-Smith. The reason, of course, is that I viewed the Walker-Smith decision as being at best peripheral. I didn't know enough about him to decide for myself whether the GMC decision was justified or not. Still, it's useful to look at the court's decision to see why it concluded that Walker-Smith didn't deserve to be struck off.
The first thing that needs to be considered is a dichotomy. John Walker-Smith appealed the GMC decision. Andrew Wakefield did not. Why not? It's hard to say. Was it because he was too busy being the medical director of the quack clinic Thoughtful House in Texas? After all, at the time he was already making plenty of cash without a medical license. There was no need for him to appeal, which would cost a lot of money and effort. He had already left England anyway, his reputation trashed long ago. In contrast, Professor Walker-Smith appears to have had more reason to fight. He had stayed behind and, unlike Wakefield, who had never been particularly respected, Walker-Smith had been highly respected in his field. There was a lot more motivation for him to try to salvage his reputation.
In any case, here is the conclusion of the appeal decision:
For the reasons given above, both on general issues and the Lancet paper and in relation to individual children, the panel's overall conclusion that Professor Walker-Smith was guilty of serious professional misconduct was flawed, in two respects: inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion. Miss Glynn submits that the materials which I have been invited to consider would support many of the panel's critical findings; and that I can safely infer that, without saying so, it preferred the evidence of the GMC's experts, principally Professor Booth, to that given by Professor Walker-Smith and Dr. Murch and by Dr. Miller and Dr. Thomas. Even if it were permissible to perform such an exercise, which I doubt, it would not permit me to rescue the panel's findings. As I have explained, the medical records provide an equivocal answer to most of the questions which the panel had to decide. The panel had no alternative but to decide whether Professor Walker-Smith had told the truth to it and to his colleagues, contemporaneously. The GMC's approach to the fundamental issues in the case led it to believe that that was not necessary - an error from which many of the subsequent weaknesses in the panel's determination flowed. It had to decide what Professor Walker-Smith thought he was doing: if he believed he was undertaking research in the guise of clinical investigation and treatment, he deserved the finding that he had been guilty of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure; if not, he did not, unless, perhaps, his actions fell outside the spectrum of that which would have been considered reasonable medical practice by an academic clinician. Its failure to address and decide that question is an error which goes to the root of its determination.
As you can see, the decision all boils down to the question of research and whether Walker-Smith thought he was doing research or actually treating autistic children using interventions that were clinically indicated. If the interventions were clinically indicated, then it could be argued that he did not commit professional misconduct. If the interventions were done with the knowledge that they were being done for research purposes rather than to treat the children, then Walker-Smith is guilty of misconduct. The reasons, of course, are the lack of ethical committee approval yet, as is discussed in the decision:
At the heart of the GMC's case against Professor Walker-Smith were two simple propositions: the investigations undertaken under his authority on eleven of the twelve Lancet children were done as part of a research project - Project 172-96 - which required, but did not have, Ethics Committee approval; and they were clinically inappropriate. Professor Walker-Smith's case was that the investigations were clinically appropriate attempts at diagnosis of bowel and behavioural disorders in children with broadly similar symptoms and, where possible, treatment of the bowel disorders or alleviation of their symptoms. The GMC's case was that he was conducting research which required Ethics Committee approval. His case was that he was conducting medical practice which did not. Accordingly, an unavoidable and fundamental question which the panel had to answer was: what is the distinction between medical practice and research?
In light of this introduction, what follows is profoundly contradictory in that the judge acknowledges that what Walker-Smith did could be reasonably viewed as research, but exonerates him because it could also be viewed as therapeutic:
The panel made no express finding on this issue and cannot have appreciated the need to do so. It was not helped by the premise upon which the GMC's case was founded. There was a good deal of evidence, to which I refer in greater detail below, that Professor Walker-Smith and his team were undertaking what any reasonable body of medical practitioners would categorize as research - but also that he intended and genuinely believed that what he was doing was solely or primarily for the clinical benefit of the children. When such an issue arises, a panel will almost always have to determine the honesty or otherwise of the practitioner.
Justice Mitting then lists facts supporting and negating the proposition that what Walker-Smith was doing was research. I must admit, I find some of the "facts negating' to be questionable. Particularly bizarre was Mitting's listing of a fact that no parent other than one was required to sign the consent form in the proposals submitted to the Ethics Committee or in the revised form approved by it. Well, duh! That was part of the problem, now, wasn't it? You know? Doing research without having obtained adequate informed consent from the parents?
Also rather odd was Mitting's other reasoning that "none of the five clinicians involved in the investigation of the Lancet children who gave evidence to the panel considered that they were following Project 172-96." So what? The children's information and clinical histories ended up being used in Wakefield's Lancet paper. I suppose one could argue that Walker-Smith was an unwitting dupe of Andy Wakefield an therefore was not guilty of research professional misconduct, but, if that's the case, it's hardly flattering to Walker-Smith. it's also hard to imagine what clinical indications existed to subject these children to lumbar punctures. As a clinician, I always had a hard time figuring out how Wakefield, Walker-Smith, and the rest justified doing lumbar punctures on these children.
The implications of Mitting's ruling are frightening in their potential. Think about it. Basically, if his ruling stands, it's hard not to wonder whether it's open season on human research subjects in the UK. As long as the physician can construct a quasi-legitimate-sounding rationale that he can point to aside from a research protocol for doing research-related tests on human subjects, he apparently doesn't need to get ethical approval anymore. He can cite Mitting's ruling that, as long as he doesn't think he's doing research--even if that is incorrect--then he's not, and the GMC can't do anything about it. So much for the Helsinki declaration! Similarly, his "any reasonable physician" test fails spectacularly as well, at least in the way he applied it. "Any reasonable physician" would not subject autistic children to a battery of invasive tests including lumbar punctures for dubious clinical reasons. Those tests were quite correctly judged by the GMC to have been ordered for research purposes rather than for routine clinical care. Autism quacks in the UK have good reason to rejoice. As it stands, one has to wonder whether they can now get away with essentially anything.
Of course, none of this stops the antivaccine movement from lapsing into full mental jacket conspiracy mode. For instance, our old friend Ginger Taylor, speaking for the Canary Party, issued a press release:
"It is quite obvious to me that James Murdoch, Brian Deer and GlaxoSmithKline orchestrated the smear attack on Dr. Andrew Wakefield," said Ginger Taylor, executive director of the Canary Party. "A judge has now ruled that the GMC hearings were a farce. Parents are waiting for journalists to find their spine and start some honest reporting on the character assassination of doctors that is blocking medical treatments for vaccine injured children, and the role that GSK and Merck may be playing to protect their profits on the MMR vaccine. The Canary Party honors and stands by doctors of integrity like Prof. Walker-Smith, who continue to fight and defend their hard-won reputations for going the extra mile to investigate and improve the chronic, difficult-to-treat cases that now permeate our society."
Uh, no.
I do love the conspiracy mongering, though. From my perspective, Judge Mitting's decision strongly implies that, rather than being involved in Wakefield's professional research misconduct, Walker-Smith was an unwitting dupe. Neither conclusion speaks particularly well of Walker-Smith, but I suppose it's better to be an honest dupe than a dishonest research cheat. Personally, I'd rather be neither. No matter how hard the antivaccine movement tries to spin this as some sort of exoneration of its hero Andy Wakefield, it's not.
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@ flip:
I've always pricked up my ears whenever someone tells me that they're on "high moral ground"...
On victim blaming:
Whether the person has cancer, mental illness or an infectious disease, the blamer is motivated first by fear because if a person gets an illness and you also are a person, you *just* might be susceptible to it as well: therefore they must have gotten sick because they either *did* something wrong or there's something *intrinsically* wrong with them.This fantasy-based judgment allows the blamer to distance him or herself from reality enough to remain inviolate and immune to the said illness or, as we see amongst the woo-slingers," If I follow my *protocol* I will never become ill" or, "If I do, I can *cure* myself easily". I hear these lines frequently- it's all within their power.
Denialism of serious illness being based partially on uncontrollable factors ( including genetics, un-avoidable environmental risks and true 'unknowns') reveals inner psychological workings of the believer, a partial divorce, or a least a trial separation from reality. SBM seeks out all the causes of illness: whether they're internal, external, controllable or not, physical, social, environmental as well as their interactions.
Mental illness is exceedingly complex because people are affected physiologically and socially and may self-reflect upon their lives: how you behave and plan your life has some effect on what you feel but you cannot control everything because there are physiological underpinnings and you interact with others- who have ideas of their own- in the real world. Life involves a measure of un-controllability.
Pegamily -
Here is another example of your deviousness and dishonesty.
Starting on January 14, you repeatedly claimed that Dr. Donald Berwick's stated that 30% of medicine was "useless" and "dangerous".
You were corrected, and you responded [emph. added],
Here's your problem: Before you even made your first post with your fabricated characterization of Dr. Berwick's statement, you had already been corrected about it elsewhere.
So in this case, your dishonesty went far beyond distorting a statement to suit your purposes. You have actually been forum-shopping this lie; when you are called on it in one venue, you simply took it somewhere else and ran it up the flagpole with full knowledge that you were misprepresenting the statement.
This proves that you can make no claim that you simply misunderstood Dr. Berwick's statement, or that you were repeating what someone else said about it and you didn't realize it was incorrect.
This awful behavior stands as yet another example of how repugnant you find the concept of being truthful.
Are the people who pay you to attend your seminars aware of your eagerness to lie to promote your offerings?
I did not fabricate a claim by Dr Offitt. It was my understanding he claimed 10,000 vaccinations would be harmless in one day, I stated that as such
A study in intellectual integrity and courage.
"10,000 ? Tell that to Hannah Poling's parents.
Well, well, I suppose I was too generous in my assessment of the textual similarities. I'm sure that anyone thinking of being "supervised" in a month-long water fast would be interested to know that her general judgment is so grossly impaired as to think nothing of such antics as making up a new identity and then "reappearing" to give it advice.
"I did not fabricate a claim by Dr Offitt. It was my understanding he claimed 10,000 vaccinations would be harmless in one day, I stated that as such, then someone stated his claim was a 10,000 antigen load. No lie, no big deal."
You didn't make up the lie; you just accepted it without question and repeated it to others. Commendable; you're not a liar, just a patsy for other people's lies. Should we conclude that everything else you write is also something you're repeating without bothering to investigate?
lurker,
You keep bringing up Hannah Poling, but I don't really understand why. She has a mitochondrial disorder, an enzyme deficiency of the kind that causes encephalopathy at the age of one or two years old, with or without vaccines. It is by no means certain that vaccines caused or even exacerbated her illness, and the court that compensated her parents did not rule on causation.
Emily had the same deplorable tendency.
In one memorable comment on that thread, she managed to pack four separate lies in her description of a single paper that she was claiming for support.
@495 Denice
I see it more as a control issue, much in the same way. Victim blamers can't control the world around them, but can't bring themselves to deal with it, and so try even harder to take control... hence the "I do this and never get sick". Power of positive thinking will apparently overcome even the most chaotic of worlds. Regarding mental illness specifically, I also think it has a lot to do with not being able to understand symptoms that aren't visible. Everyone can see a cancer patient, whereas you can't see someone who is depressed. Therefore "it doesn't exist". I'd also bet all the money in my pockets that it has to do with them having reasonably happy, healthy lives in general, and not being capable of empathising with someone who is depressed. I've met many a person who would just assume "oh you're just having a bad day" or "you'll get over it". They don't see anything long-term in it because they haven't experienced it or had contact with mental illness themselves.
In Pegamily's case, I think s/he's just being an average troll, getting her kicks wherever she can by stirring the pot.
@496 Occamslaser
Thanks for posting that AVN link. Now I see "Pegamily" really is Australian. Sigh...
No wonder s/he can't stand people going after university courses in woo. That would severely impact on the wallet, and make the titles of 'osteopath' and 'chiropracter' absolutely useless (even though they're not listed as AMC specialties already).
@500 Honest?
No, s/he's quite clearly a liar. She's been caught out a few times. See the threads I linked to in my comment at #487.
Pegamily, are we speaking to a him or a her? Proven a liar once more, just by reading that AVN post.
Sadly many people such as Emily and her ilk are simply happy to repeat lies they have heard without ever checking them out. Just look at the many posts that have been made here that contain long lists of papers justifying their positions, lists that are often simply cribbed from a website and repeatedly posted all over the net (a quick Google search is often very depressing showing just how far and wide those lists have gotten). There is almost never any attempt to read those papers themselves.
I know I have mentioned this before, but what I really do not get is why people like this never step back and reevaluate their positions and their sources then it becomes clear they have been repeating completely misrepresented facts and lies. I would have thought that if you repeatedly are shown to have been wrong, or that your sources are wrong, you might start to question how much you know and whether you are right about the matter.
Here is an example: when I was a teenager I was very much interested in UFOs and the paranormal. I was also interested in science but did not know any scientists and had not read much about critical thinking. When I was reading about UFO and paranormal "research" I just thought they were performing good studies, that this was proper research. However, I kept seeing people disagreeing and eventually started reading books by people like Carl Sagan and I started to understand that what these "researchers" were doing was not science, that is was often very dishonest and poorly conducted. What they were doing was just cargo cult science, crap dressed up in the trappings of science without the honesty and without the cruel peer review that is normally carried out.
Now I see "Pegamily" really is Australian.
That explains the ignorance (in earlier threads) that Canberra University is different from the Australian National University.
@505 Herr Doktor Bimler
Surprising given that s/he is in NSW.
@504 Travis
I was the same way. I fell for the Eastern/Western fallacy, and didn't think much about tai chi or any of that related stuff. Once I started reading science sites I realised just why they were so wrong. I don't continue lying or believing them, I admit "well, I was just ignorant" and move on.
Admitting one is fallible is apparently too scary for these folk. Especially one who runs their own clinic, seminars and promotes themselves as a doctor... despite their own titles not being legitimately recognised as specialties. It's hard to break away from something you've spent decades holding onto and making money from.
Here's your problem: Before you even made your first post with your fabricated characterization of Dr. Berwick's statement, you had already been corrected about it elsewhere.
Goodness me. That list of copy-pasted bullshit certainly has the ring of the authentic ur-Emisus.
There are some funny comments on that thread.
Occy:
785
"lilady -
She does not run the clinic and she does not own it. Her bosses will be quite surprised at the "publicity" she is generating for them.
Based on this statement, I believe you have incorrectly identified the place of "Emily's" employ. Perhaps you can post some scrap of information that is not in itself identifiable so that I can verify this mismatch with my own findings, such as the last two digits of the phone number, or the last couple of digits of the IP address of the web site?"
Posted by: OccamsLaser | February 10, 2012 10:32 AM
My own findings? Such as the last 2 digits of the phone number?
C'mon Occy are you serious or delirious?. You yourself are a pedantic nit-picker. I could go through your ramblings & deconstruct them as above but I have better things to do.
Krebiozen:
You should read your references completely before quoting them -Harriet Hall said that. And btw, I have never advocated veganism. I wonder if Occy will call you a liar for saying I promote vegan diets.
Also, regarding osteopenia & the widespread diagnosis of this "non-disease" in healthy women based on a spurious measurement of a bone mineral density T score :
" the findings suggest that a simplke T-score threshold could be an inadequate approach to risk assessment"
Medicine Today, Aug 2004, Vol 5 No 8
Flip:
I gave up answering your questions ages ago because you expect me to write a book in reply. And besides, you, like the others, credit me with stating ridiculous things ( nature cures everything, diet is a cure-all SBM is evil, uselsess etc & other such rubbish) & then attack my supposed stance. How easy is that? The threads you linked to do not make me out a liar, as you say. Your statement makes you out to be a very poor judge of a liar.
Denice:
I never promoted anything to do with my website. I have all the while promoted principles I know to be true, & criticised practices that I & many many others know to be untrue & potentially lethal.
It was interesting to hear the deathly silence (apart from one respondent) when asked the percentage of modern medicine which is not science-based. And that response was not too flattering for sbm, either.
The truth is your beloved sbm is mostly not science-based. Some is, as I have said, & as Fuhrman, McDougall, Ornish et al have all stated. And this is appreciated.
The day to day practice of modern medicine, with its reliance on drugs & almost complete disregard of the innate healing powers within the organism when causes of illness are removed, is 90% nonsense.You all agree that some pracices are not science based (off label marketing etc), the difference between you & me is that our percentages vary.
Hey look, there's a lie right there!
Still waiting for any sort of explanation or apology for your behavior in comment 445.
@508 Pegamily/Dr Greg?
No, no I didn't. What I wanted was maybe a paragraph. I specifically and repeatedly asked for a succinct (look it up if you don't know what it means) explanation of NH and how it works. Even if you did, it doesn't change the fact that you not once posted EVIDENCE that it works. No peer-reviewed papers, just references to books. You simply don't like or don't understand that people can't decipher your meaning from your vague postings and refuse to take your word for it. Maybe the problem is with you...
It's nice to see though that you once again Gish gallop your way past every single question, criticism and point put to you. Scream the martyr and hopefully no one will notice all the flaws in every you've posted about.
I'll also point out for people who don't want to read 1000 previous comments: I'd never heard of NH before and was open-minded to consider it. I'm also not trained in science or medicine. You had the absolute amazing chance to convince me of your viewpoint. And failed. Utterly. And why? Because in that 1000 comments I still don't know how NH works or what specifically you subscribe to or how you 'treat' people. You couldn't summarise it in a novella let alone a book. You couldn't even give a sentence to define your terms, which average dictionaries can do. You're either incredibly vague on the notions yourself or didn't want to get trapped into specifics that you know don't make sense.
Once again, the problem is with you. Many times may people asked you for YOUR SPECIFIC VIEWPOINT. When it wasn't given or was shown to contradict another of your points, we had to guess at what you meant. (And you do outright contradict yourself on many of those issues you think we made up) When we asked for clarification you Gish galloped again and then cried foul every time someone tried to understand your viewpoint and got it wrong.
PS. When you outright state you have no profit motive, and then admit that you teach at universities and run a clinic, that's the point at which you become a liar. When you use a sock puppet account in order to continue discussion, then post that you don't know the original account (and state you think 'they' have some good points), then admit under your new account that yes, the old account is also yours: that's when you become a liar.
I think the average lurker can figure out whether or not I'm judging you correctly. Especially if they have better reading comprehension or memory than you.
Then you are either woefully ignorant of how search engines work, or you can't remember what you post. And you once again ignore the point that asserting something without evidence is useless. Or you're a liar and know you're scamming people.
Yes, because that question wasn't a strawman at all. And strawmen *always* have to be treated as serious questions deserving time and responses.
But hey, you can't practice what you preach:
From the Andrew Wakefield thread:
Please do us all a favour and move past the bit where you repeat claims with no evidence to back you up. You go on and on (and on) about SBM having no evidence behind it and yet never post your own. You're either disengenuous or a liar. Which is it?
FIFY.
... I'm done. You can whinge and whine all you like. The only reason you're here is to post silly statements in order to attack SBM. You have no real desire for discussion, and you've shown yourself (ample times) to be incapable of taking on board what anyone says or replying without turning into either a horse or a record. Both broken. Call me when you figure out how to act like an honest adult.
@508 Pegamily/Dr Greg?
No, no I didn't. What I wanted was maybe a paragraph. I specifically and repeatedly asked for a succinct (look it up if you don't know what it means) explanation of NH and how it works. Even if you did, it doesn't change the fact that you not once posted EVIDENCE that it works. No peer-reviewed papers, just references to books. You simply don't like or don't understand that people can't decipher your meaning from your vague postings and refuse to take your word for it. Maybe the problem is with you...
It's nice to see though that you once again Gish gallop your way past every single question, criticism and point put to you. Scream the martyr and hopefully no one will notice all the flaws in every you've posted about.
I'll also point out for people who don't want to read 1000 previous comments: I'd never heard of NH before and was open-minded to consider it. I'm also not trained in science or medicine. You had the absolute amazing chance to convince me of your viewpoint. And failed. Utterly. And why? Because in that 1000 comments I still don't know how NH works or what specifically you subscribe to or how you 'treat' people. You couldn't summarise it in a novella let alone a book. You couldn't even give a sentence to define your terms, which average dictionaries can do. You're either incredibly vague on the notions yourself or didn't want to get trapped into specifics that you know don't make sense.
Once again, the problem is with you. Many times may people asked you for YOUR SPECIFIC VIEWPOINT. When it wasn't given or was shown to contradict another of your points, we had to guess at what you meant. (And you do outright contradict yourself on many of those issues you think we made up) When we asked for clarification you Gish galloped again and then cried foul every time someone tried to understand your viewpoint and got it wrong.
PS. When you outright state you have no profit motive, and then admit that you teach at universities and run a clinic, that's the point at which you become a liar. When you use a sock puppet account in order to continue discussion, then post that you don't know the original account (and state you think 'they' have some good points), then admit under your new account that yes, the old account is also yours: that's when you become a liar.
I think the average lurker can figure out whether or not I'm judging you correctly. Especially if they have better reading comprehension or memory than you.
Then you are either woefully ignorant of how search engines work, or you can't remember what you post. And you once again ignore the point that asserting something without evidence is useless. Or you're a liar and know you're scamming people.
Yes, because that question wasn't a strawman at all. And strawmen *always* have to be treated as serious questions deserving time and responses.
But hey, you can't practice what you preach:
From the Andrew Wakefield thread:
Please do us all a favour and move past the bit where you repeat claims with no evidence to back you up. You go on and on (and on) about SBM having no evidence behind it and yet never post your own. You're either disengenuous or a liar. Which is it?
FIFY.
... I'm done. You can whinge and whine all you like. The only reason you're here is to post silly statements in order to attack SBM. You have no real desire for discussion, and you've shown yourself (ample times) to be incapable of taking on board what anyone says or replying without turning into either a horse or a record. Both broken. Call me when you figure out how to act like an honest adult.
Damn, sorry for the double post.
Pegamily,
Good grief, you're still here flailing around desperately.
Really? This is the blog post I referred to above, there is no mention of Weston Price and Dr. Hall is less than flattering about Campbell, as I quoted. Perhaps you are referring to something else?
Most of the people you claim have had fantastic results promote an extreme vegan diet. Esselstyn, McDougall and Klaper certainly do. You have condemned dairy products, and talked of the "need for a plant-based diet". What else am I to conclude?
You mean this Medicine Today? There's nothing about osteoporosis in there that I can see. The quote you give seems to come from this article that suggests that osteopenia is undertreated, exactly the opposite of what you are claiming. Perhaps it's you who should read your references before quoting them.
Pegamily/Dr. Greg -
I have no idea what point you are trying to make by quoting this post of mine. Due to the, shall we say, distinctiveness of your beliefs, coupled with the fact that you are a public figure who is a prolific speaker on the health circuit and who posts the same material under his own name in other public forums, you made your identity immediately evident. Nonetheless, lilady seemed to have erred in her identification, and I offered to confirm her findings using a couple of digits from your clinic's phone number.
I'm very serious. The fact that you consider your own lying to be mere "nits", yet you viciously attack SBMers who you claim have lied, indicates that you harbor an asymmetric moral worldview, which is very worrisome for those you interact with. That is, you believe that when you commit some sort of moral transgression, such as lying, it is insignificant because it is you doing it. When others lie, you consider it a serious offense, and you rail against it. In short, to rationalize your behavior, you have adopted the belief that the rules don't apply to you -- the rules being that, for example, lying is wrong.
If Dr. Offitt concealed his financial connections to therapies he supports, and was caught reproducing articles where he had removed sections damaging to his positions, and claimed journal articles and public health officials said things they actually didn't say, and when asked about Natural Hygiene, he fabricated shocking statements and attributed them to one of its leading practitioners in order to then attack that person, what would you post here about your opinion of Dr. Offitt? Can you somehow summon the courage to honestly answer that question, or will your fear of facing yourself defeat you?
No, you could not, and your characterizing of what I have written as "ramblings" is a demonstration of yet another in your large set of mechanisms for coping with -- or hiding from -- the truth. What I have posted can not rationally be termed "ramblings" (other opinions welcomed), but more importantly, what you are so obviously attempting to do is to change the subject from the content of my posts to their form -- a very childish and unsuccessful maneuver, which will fail.
You have been caught in numerous lies, some of which you have eventually confessed to. We must add to the list your four lies in this post as exposed by herr doktor bimler here and here.
Do you lie to yourself about the contents of the papers you read in order to avoid questioning your beliefs, or do you just lie to other people about them? Do you lie to your patients about what journal articles say, as you have done in these threads? Do you lie to your patients about what Dr. Offitt has said? Do you lie to your patients about what Dr. Berwick has said?
Do you think that little of yourself that you are afraid that if you face the truth, you would not be able to cope with it? That if you were honest with yourself and with your patients, partners, and family, you wouldn't be able to sustain your income? That you wouldn't be able to attract people to your seminars? That your CD and DVD sales would fall off? That you would no longer be a prolific speaker on the health circuit? What, exactly, is the reason behind your extreme fear of truth?
Have you taught your children that they should lie when attempting to convince someone of something, because if they hold a belief deeply, the means justify the ends? What is your reaction when you discover that they have lied to you?
Are you afraid of your patients' reactions when they discover how dishonest you have been here? How do you balance that fear against your fear of the truth?
Pegamily/Dr Greg, what is your super duper procedure to protect babies from pertussis? Be sure to provide actual scientific evidence to support your solution that is so much better than boosting pertussis immunity of the community with DTaP and Tdap vaccines.
And you really should answer my question on how the rate of measles incidence in the USA dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970. No more hand waving, you really have no excuse to avoid that question.
Interesting that my quick browse on Dr Greg's site showed some info for plenty of chronic illnesses, but not a lot on critical ones. I didn't spend a lot of time there though, but did notice that the treatment for asthma is apparently a change of diet and/or fasting. I wonder how that would work if asthma is related to a pollen allergy reaction?
You've said cheerio to me more than once Flip, but you keep coming back with very long goodbyes, so I assume you are enjoying some mild dopamine release. Be my guest.
And Chrissy, I have answered both your questions in the only way they can be honestly answered. I repeat: you cannot confer health on a person, or "protection" by a needle. Headaches can be relieved by pain killers but down the track the person pays a price, or many a price. Just because the headaches are gone, doesn't mean you are any healthier. The cause of your feared diseases is not uni-factorial, it's multi-factorial.
The fact that the rate dropped as stated does not impress me without much more information- parallel health problems etc.
Actually, you never answered my questions at all... you just say "Oh, well, that is very interesting. Next!" Measles and pertussis are not just headaches.
So exactly what is the magic formula to protect babies from pertussis? Do tell us so that we may exalt in your brilliance. Otherwise, go away.
The threads you linked to do not make me out a liar, as you say.
This is not my field of psychology but it would be interesting to know which rationalisations Emisus is using.
-- Perhaps the idea is that when one out-sources the fabrications to other people by copy-pasting the errancy from other websites, then it does not count.
-- Perhaps there is a distinction here between actual 'lies' and mere 'bullshit', i.e. stuff made up without knowing or caring whether it is true or false.
In honour of Australia, this is a good time to link to the Bullshit Song from "The Return of Captain Invincible".
Newsflash, Pegamily #@515
Neither can you, no matter how much you try to paint it as "natural" "hygiene" (yes, separate scare quotes intended), and therefore so much more better than anything else anyone else has to offer.
Lying sack of crap Scumily, you never answered exactly how it could be that proper nutrition could "help enormously" with fighting off disease and yet a sufficient percentage of the population employing that method would not have any form of herd immunity. As explained before, that's a contradiction in basic logic, like claiming that putting the best running shoes on every member of a relay team will make each individual runner finish their portion of the race faster, but that the team's finishing time will remain unchanged.
It just doesn't work that way! Either the team is going faster, or the individuals remain just as slow; it can't be both! In the same way, either chains of infection are terminating earlier because enough individuals along those chains are "helped enormously" in fighting off the disease, or those individuals are not being helped enormously. Why do you persist in this ridiculous idea (besides you being a dumb dishonest liar, of course) that you have the secrets of "enormously" helping people to fight off disease but herd immunity still doesn't exist?
And if you're tempted to use the word "multi-factorial" in your response, kindly stick your head in a garbage pile and deliver your nonsensical diatribe there. Either the factor you're claiming to contribute to the equation actually makes a difference or it does not, no in-between.
Come on, Pegamily, show us exactly what magic diet protects a baby from pertussis! Oh, and do tell us how measles rates dropped by 90% in the USA during one particular decade if "protection" by a needle" does not work. Really, do tell us. And use real evidence.
Your hand waving and excuses are pathetic.
I said it before so being the mother of 3 (see I can remember how many kids I have) I am allowed to repeat myself, Emasus has no understanding of modern medicine at all. She has not availed herself of my advice to get into a hospital (always looking for volunteers) to look at the people there. Not one of them is getting better by fasting (any number of adults that I have been in contact with are not eating to the DETRIMENT of their health, interesting how not one of them gets better by NOT eating and I can say with confidence some of them are doing it deliberately and not starving in the way Emily claims is bad). Please I beg anyone out there reading this who may think or even remotely think Emasus has a point, go to a hospital, volunteer, look at the patients there. I think you will quickly find that all the breast beating criticisms of SBM will fly out the window.
I think rather than look at "rationalisations" as revealing an individual's inner workings, it would be more instructive to consider them as advertising techniques. I followed OccamsLaser's links** to the website of the business in question.
Peg's work @ RI resembles those I survey: aspersion is routinely cast on SBM- often by quoting SB sources inaccurately. An entire philosophy of health and medicine is outlined as prelude to any mention of products or services. It boils down to inculcating mistrust of SBM ( and pharma) then presenting natural remedies such as supplements, herbs, massage, fasting et al. Usually there is accentuation of the risks inherent in pharmaceeutical products ( including vaccines)- leaving out their benefits- while simultaneously trumpetting the merits of nature-based solutions. Often, a proud history of the alternative method is hailed as evidence of its efficacy and safety.
Another arrow in the quiver: SBM isn't really scientific itself, we're told. Standard research is labelled 'tainted', 'compromised', 'funded by pharma'-thus not at all trustworthy. Frequently nefarious actions by drug manufacturers and governments are tossed about to increase suspicion. Personal attributes ( of the providers/ the originators of the method) exemplifying 'kindness', 'altruism','spirituality' and other sterling qualities are then added to the mix. Extremely high rates of successful treatment for serious conditions are reported sans RCTs; testimonials are used as well. The message is tailored to prospective customers who are dis-satisfied or suspicious of SBM already including those with chronic problems that are difficult to treat with any form of standard treatment- a reality, not everything can be fixed.
** believe it or not, my late relative married a fellow with the same last name and I have many cousins named as such. Fortunately, it's a very common name.
Pegamily/Dr. Greg -
Thank you for admitting that measles vaccinations are directly responsible for the dramatic drop in the infection rate, and therefore that you do not disagree with the general principle that vaccinations confer immunity.
The next matter is for you to provide evidence for your claim that there is another, negative consequence of dramatically reducing measles infections via vaccinations -- the "price" to which you refer, but which even you have admitted you are unaware of.
That is, you have never disputed the figures provided for the dramatic reduction in measles from 1960-1970, nor have you disputed that vaccinations are primarily responsible for that reduction. Therefore, you cannot claim that vaccination does not confer some immunity.
What you have claimed is that as a result of this positive effect on measles infections, there may be a negative effect that is equal to, or greater than, the positive effect. However, you have admitted that you have absolutely no data whatsoever to support this suspicion.
Therefore, as it stands, you do not dispute that vaccinations can prevent disease, and you feel that there might be some other negative effects, but you have no idea what those are. It follows, of course, that there might not be any.
Let's address this bit of non-logic:
Vaccinations against measles do not "relieve" measles. And headaches are not an infectious disease. Therefore, your parallel fails completely.
Bulletproof vests help prevent injury from bullets. By your logic, just because you weren't hurt by a bullet when you were shot while wearing a bulletproof vest "doesn't mean you are any healthier" than if you hadn't been wearing one when you were shot.
By what mechanism did vaccinations cause measles infection rates to drop?
Can you get a disease -- any disease -- without any exposure to the pathogen associated by SBM with that disease?
Dr. Fuhrman says that the flu is a simple viral illness. Is he wrong?
Would you agree to be exposed to any pathogen to test your claim that germs do not cause disease and that germs follow after a person already has contracted a disease?
What is your view of members of the SBM community who behave as you have behaved in these threads? Are you proud of your statements in these forums? Or are you afraid of what your patients, partners, and others will think when they read them?
Would you rather your patients and potential patients -- and seminar attendees, and CD/DVD purchasers -- know your views as expressed in this blog, or are you afraid of them discovering what you have said here?
Denice Walter:
Peg's work @ RI resembles those I survey: aspersion is routinely cast on SBM- often by quoting SB sources inaccurately.
I do get the sense from Emasis' oeuvre that the SBM empire is so evil and so unscrupulous that one is justified in using any tactics in pre-emptive defense against it -- so fabrications don't really count.
you cannot confer health on a person
"Health has to be earned".
Susan Sontag made good points in "Illness as Metaphor" about the tendency -- common in quacks and magical thinkers -- to interpret disease as an expression of moral failing.
One of those I survey informs his audience in scolding diatribes about how their decadence- eating hamburgers, pizza, cakes, candy and drinking coffee, cola and (( shudder)) alcohol- has set them up for CV disease and cancer because of their own indulgent sinfulness. If only they had lived "right", he intones self-righteoulsy and nasally, implying that they " brought it on themselves."
Reminds me a bit the development of kids' attributions about why 'people are poor' which start from internally based ( they're either intrinsically bad or mis-behaving) to older kids' more socially conscious, situational concepts ( lack of education or opportunity).
On that Evil SBM meme: check out cartoons @ NaturalNews: evil mad scientists, smirking doctors and pharma scions predominate. I imagine they might illustrate RI minions as scientists contentedly stroking their gorgeous pedigreed cats or decidedly un-motherly creatures resplendent before their adoring mirrors... oops, I guess they have us covered.
I am gorgeous! I have a pedigree! Strokes now!
Pegamily/Dr. Greg -
Another lie. You were pretending to be someone else before I had even posted on this site.
You posted first as "Emily", then you pretended to be a second person when you posted as "Gardener" and supported what you posted as "Emily".
Will you have the integrity to admit your fraud?
What would your opinion be of an SBM supporter who posted in advocacy of SBM, then pretended to be a second person supporting the first?
In case it wasn't already clear that you were lying about this, here is another of your statements on this topic:
Are you ashamed to reveal your deceitful behavior to your patients, partners, seminar attendees, lecture audiences and bookers, and family?
You wrote,
Dr. Greg, do you believe that case studies should be viewed as evidence?
You've stated that you do not accept the theory of evolution, but you have declared that our bodies were intelligently designed.
Who intelligently designed our bodies?
Pegasus aka Emily aka Gardener aka Dr. Greg aka Dr. Greg Fitzgerald -
From your Health for Life web site:
Are you able to reverse your hardening of your attitudes as displayed in your repeated references to your closed-mindedness on medical matters? Do you think it would be beneficial to your health to change this established pattern of thought?
Posted by you under the name "Emily":
Here's another reason you've hidden your financial interest in the therapies you promote: you don't want readers to know that Alec Burton is actually your business partner.
What is your opinion of SBM advocates who conceal their financial relationships with others whose programs they laud?
Pegasus aka Emily aka Gardener aka Dr. Greg aka Dr. Greg Fitzgerald -
You had been asked earlier on multiple occasions what exactly you meant when you said
and
You never answered.
It seems you were being quite literal:
http://www.healthforlife.com.au/health-services/live-blood-analysis/
Pegasus aka Emily aka Gardener aka Dr. Greg aka Dr. Greg Fitzgerald -
I asked you (as "Emily") your opinion of chiropracters and osteopaths. Despite my repeated, direct questions, you concealed the fact that according to your Health for Life clinic's web site, you are both a chiropracter and an osteopath.
Why did you decide not to disclose this information?