Quackery
oracknows | May 25, 2009It's a lovely, sunny day here, so I'll be brief. I've written several posts about the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old who refused chemotherapy and is now on the run from the law with his mother to avoid having to comply with a judge's order that he receive effective, science-based treatment. One strange aspect of this story is that he may be receiving aid from Billy Best, a man who, as a teen, also had Hodgkin's disease and, at age 16, also ran away to avoid chemotherapy.
Here's the story headline:
Man Who Survived Without Chemo: 'I'd Still Fight': Man Who Ran to Avoid Chemo in 1994,…
oracknows | May 24, 2009On Thursday and Friday, the Chicago Tribune ran a two part series (part 1 and part 2) about what is arguably one of the worst atrocities (I agree with Steve Novella on this one) committed against autistic children in the name of antivaccine lunacy. Specifically, these articles discussed Mark and David Geier's Lupron protocol, which I blogged about three years ago, and Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, the founder of the woo-friendly Homefirst medical practice in suburban Chicago, whom I've also blogged about in the past.
Surprisingly, the reaction from the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism has…
oracknows | May 23, 2009About a year ago in Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl named Madeleine Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis thanks of the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who prayed for her but did not take her to a physician even as Madeleine became weaker and more ill, her deterioration leading to a most unpleasant death. Highly unusual in such cases, the DA actually prosecuted the parents for second-degree reckless homicide. Given the unjustifiably privileged position irrational religious justifications for doing horrible things have in our society, I was even more shocked that this case went to…
oracknows | May 22, 2009As promised, the Chicago Tribune served up the followup article to its expose of father-and-son autism quacks Mark and David Geier. This time around, the Trib takes on Dr. Mayer Eisenstein of the woo-friendly suburban Chicago medical practice known as Homefirst in two articles, Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism and Dr. Peter Rosi places blame on some parents for their babies' deaths (Dr. Rosi is one of Homefirst's longest-serving doctors). The reason Dr. Eisenstein came to the Trib's attention is because (1) he has started using the Geiers' Lupron protocol and (2)…
oracknows | May 22, 2009I originally joined this wild and woolly collective known as ScienceBlogs back in February 2006. I was not part of the very first wave of bloggers who made up ScienceBlogs when it launched, although I potentially could have, mainly because I had to work out policies about outside employment with my university before I could join up. In any case, one of the very first posts that I did back then that made a bit of a splash was a little ditty I called in my usual inimitable and restrained fashion, Why not just castrate them?
It was the dark saga of an even darker father-and-son tag team of…
oracknows | May 21, 2009I know I've been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let's take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of "toxins" in vaccines as the cause of autism, including aluminum (which is not toxic at the doses used in vaccines), mercury (which is no longer in most childhood vaccines other than in trace amounts), antifreeze (there is no antifreeze in vaccines), and ether (again, there is no ether in vaccines). Then look back a…
oracknows | May 20, 2009Over the last couple of weeks, I've been blogging regularly about the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with stage 2B Hodgkin's lymphoma who, after one course of chemotherapy in January, refused to undergo any more, citing a faux religion run by a woo-meister naturopath and Native American wannabe called "Chief" Cloudpiler. In reality, it probably wasn't so much belief in this fake religion, which is really no more than an excuse to use laws guaranteeing Native Americans freedom to practice their religions as justification for using peyote and various quackery for disease, but rather…
oracknows | May 20, 2009I know I've been writing a lot about the Daniel Hauser case, and forgive me if I may be beating a dead horse, but cases like these reprsent supreme "teachable" moments that don't come along that often. The antivaccine movement, for instance, will be with us always (or at least, I fear, as long as I still walk this earth and beyond), but cases like that of Daniel Hauser don't come along that often. As tragic as they are, they always bring up so many issues that I have a hard time leaving them alone.
This time around, I wanted to touch on an issue that has come up frequently in the discussions…
oracknows | May 19, 2009Maybe I was wrong.
I praised the decision of Judge Rodenberg last Friday, in which he placed chemotherapy refusenik Daniel Hauser in the custody of his parents and ordered them to take him to an oncologist and have him undergo repeat staging studies in order to determine the extent of his Hodgkin's lymphoma. I did mention my one reservation was that leaving Daniel in the custody of his mother did run the risk of their fleeing to avoid the court order. Unfortunately, shades of Katie Wernecke, that's exactly what they appear to have done:
Daniel Hauser and his parents, Colleen and Anthony…
oracknows | May 19, 2009A reader informs me of a plaintive, heartfelt request from Oprah for help in developing the television show of her new protege Jenny McCarthy:
You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.
Here is where YOU come in.
What would you like to see featured on Jenny's show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?
Any topics you'd like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have -- that you would love for her to answer?
If so -- we definitely want to…
oracknows | May 19, 2009As you may have noticed if you've been paying attention to the comments over the last few days, you may have noticed that we've had a bit of an infiltration of believers in "alternative cancer cures" (or, as I will abbreviate them, ACCs). The main focus of the infiltration appears to be in this post about Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy who refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's lymphoma and whose case was recently decided, with the judge ordering his parents to obtain repeat staging studies and then to get him to a science-based practitioner in order to get appropriate therapy. Oddly…
oracknows | May 18, 2009You knew it was just a matter of time. At least I did. Let me back up a minute and tell you what I mean.
Over the last week, I've done three posts about a chemotherapy refusenik (as some oncologists I've worked with tend to refer to them as) named Daniel Hauser. Hauser is a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who, after having undergone one course of chemotherapy for his disease, decided that he didn't want anymore. He and his mother justified his refusal using the teachings of a faux Native American cultish religious group but in reality are probably only using religion as a convenient…
oracknows | May 16, 2009Over the last week, I've written about the case of a 13-year-old chemotherapy refusenik named Daniel Hauser, who lives in Minnesota. After having been diagnosed with a highly curable form of cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, back in February and having undergone one cycle of chemotherapy that apparently made him very sick, he refused further chemotherapy and his mother actually went to court to justify this decision. As part of their justification, they tried to use freedom of religion based on Daniel's supposedly being a "medicine man" in a cult of faux Native American wannabes called Nemenhah,…
oracknows | May 15, 2009About a week ago, I lamented an astoundingly bad ruling in the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against skeptic Simon Singh. The ruling was so bad that many observers are wondering whether it's possible for Singh to go on or whether he can afford to appeal. Blogger Jack of Kent, who has been following the case with astute obsevations, tells us:
I understand that Simon Singh will announce whether he will appeal on Monday 18 May 2009 at a public support meeting to take place in London at 6.30pm.
The venue will be the Penderels Oak, the usual meeting place of London…
oracknows | May 15, 2009
While I'm on the topic, blog bud has proclaimed that he loves Jenny McCarthy's new blog at the Oprah website, in particular her Poop Stories. Personally, when I first saw Jenny's blog, my first thought was that a question I had always had ever since Jenny McCarthy became the chief propagandist for the antivaccine movement had finally been answered. I now know why that cesspit of anti-vaccine lunacy, The Huffington Post, had never invited Jenny McCarthy to blog. HuffPo may not have standards when it comes to science, but at least it has standards when it comes to writing, and Jenny's…
oracknows | May 14, 2009A loving ode to Jenny McCarthy from her good friends, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella:
Genius. That's all I can say.Thank you Brian Thompson, a.k.a. the Amateur Scientist. And to you, Jenny McCarthy, the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella offer their profound thanks for saving them from eradication in the U.S., just as they've offered their thanks to Andrew Wakefield for saving them from eradication in the U.K..Bloggers, you know what to do. Spread this video far and wide. E-mail it to your friends. Even better, e-mail it to antivaccinationists. Let's see if we can make this sucker go viral. (Hey,…
oracknows | May 14, 2009I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism.
The reason for the hate part should be obvious. AoA is, without a doubt, a cesspool of pseudoscience and anti-vaccine propaganda. All while oh-so-self-righteously denying that its agenda is "anti-vaccine," AoA on a daily basis lays down articles blaming vaccines for autism, while setting up websites attacking vaccine science, taking out full page ads attacking vaccines as causing autism, gloating when learning of declining vaccination rates in the Ukraine, and high-fiving (blogospherically speaking)…
oracknows | May 12, 2009Yesterday, I wrote about Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who, with the support of his parents, has refused conventional therapy for his cancer, which would normally consist of chemotherapy and radiation. Given his stage and type of tumor, he could normally expect at least an 85% chance of surviving and perhaps even greater than 90%, wherea without therapy he is certain to die of his disease, barring a rare spontaneous remission. The reason given by his Daniel and his mother Colleen is that they belong to a highly dubious-sounding American Indian religion called…
oracknows | May 10, 2009Regular readers here know that I really hate to see stories like the one I'm about to discuss, specifically that of 13-year-old Daniel Hauser, a boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who is refusing chemotherapy based on religion and his preference for "alternative" therapy, whose parents are also supporting his decision.
Since I'm a bit behind on this story, its having percolated through the blogosphere for the last three or four days, let me start with a bit of context. If there is one theme that I've emphasized time and time again here, it's science- and evidence-based medicine. That means…
oracknows | May 9, 2009...because they blog under the shadow of the United Kingdom's insane libel laws.
Witness this travesty of a ruling on the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association, as related by Jack of Kent.
I first learned about the UK's exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws when, shortly after I became interested in Holocaust denial, I followed the libel case against Holocaust historian Professor Deborah Lipstadt brought by Holocaust denier David Irving for, well, quite properly calling him a Holocaust denier in one of her books. What makes British libel laws so plaintiff-…