Category: medicine

Dawkins and Sokal on the dumb ideological ploy maintaining that human sex is “assigned at birth”

April 9, 2024 • 12:30 pm

What a pair! The renowned biologist and the hoax-exposer/mathematician, teamed up to attack the medical profession’s new and woke tendency to deny the existence of biological sex as a reality. (Yes, all animals have exactly two sexes, which are not made up by society.) This eloquent op-ed is in the Boston Globe, and you can click below to read it for free, or find it archived here (h/t Mark, Barry).

It’s the “sex assigned at birth” meme, which any fool knows was made up to pretend that biological sex doesn’t really exist in nature, but is merely a “social construct”. This is the same risible meme taken apart by Alex Byrne and Carole Hooven in a recent NYT op-ed. As Alan and Richard note below, the distortion of reality was made for ideological reasons—by gender activists who want to see biological sex as a spectrum, and that is based on the the insupportable view that if you distort biology, transgender or transsexual people will not be “erased”. But, as I’ve said ad infinitum, you don’t need to distort biology to justify treating such people with civility and respect, and to confer on them the same moral value as everyone else has.

The excerpt from the above speaks for itself, but has a lot of useful links to show how well the termites have dined.

The American Medical Association says that the word “sex” — as in male or female — is problematic and outdated; we should all now use the “more precise” phrase “sex assigned at birth.” The American Psychological Association concurs: Terms like “birth sex” and “natal sex” are “disparaging” and misleadingly “imply that sex is an immutable characteristic.” The American Academy of Pediatrics is on board too: “sex,” it declares, is “an assignment that is made at birth.” And now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urge us to say “assigned male/female at birth” or “designated male/female at birth” instead of “biologically male/female” or “genetically male/female.”

After discussing the biological definition of sex, which, as you know well by now involves differences in developmental systems that produce gametes of different size and mobility, Sokal and Dawkins give a sharp rap on the knuckles of the medical establishment. I’ve put the last two paragraphs in bold; the penultimate one shows the trend and motivation, while the last one shows the damage.

Much is speciously made of the fact that a very few humans are born with chromosomal patterns other than XX and XY. The most common, Klinefelter syndrome with XXY chromosomes, occurs in about 0.1 percent of live births; these individuals are anatomically male, though often infertile. Some extremely rare conditions, such as de la Chapelle syndrome (0.003 percent) and Swyer syndrome (0.0005 percent), arguably fall outside the standard male/female classification. Even so, the sexual divide is an exceedingly clear binary, as binary as any distinction you can find in biology.

So where does this leave the medical associations’ claims about “sex assigned at birth”?

A baby’s name is assigned at birth; no one doubts that. But a baby’s sex is not “assigned”; it is determined at conception and is then observed at birth, first by examination of the external genital organs and then, in cases of doubt, by chromosomal analysis. Of course, any observation can be erroneous, and in rare cases the sex reported on the birth certificate is inaccurate and needs to be subsequently corrected. But the fallibility of observation does not change the fact that what is being observed — a person’s sex — is an objective biological reality, just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is “assigned.” The medical associations’ pronouncements are social constructionism gone amok.

. . .For decades, feminists have protested against the neglect of sex as a variable in medical diagnosis and treatment, and the tacit assumption that women’s bodies react similarly to men’s bodies. Two years ago, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet finally acknowledged this criticism, but the editors apparently could not bring themselves to use the word “women.” Instead the journal’s cover proclaimed: “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected.” But now even this double-edged concession may be lost, as the denial of biological sex threatens to undermine the training of future doctors.

The medical establishment’s newfound reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality most likely stems from a laudable desire to defend the human rights of transgender people. But while the goal is praiseworthy, the chosen method is misguided. Protecting transgender people from discrimination and harassment does not require pretending that sex is merely “assigned.”

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It is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just. If the cause is truly just, then it can be defended in full acceptance of the facts about the real world.

And when an organization that proclaims itself scientific distorts the scientific facts in the service of a social cause, it undermines not only its own credibility but that of science generally. How can the public be expected to trust the medical establishment’s declarations on other controversial issues, such as vaccines — issues on which the medical consensus is indeed correct — when it has so visibly and blatantly misstated the facts about something so simple as sex?

 

Read also Byrne and Hooven; click below (or read it archived here):

Finally, the infamous Lancet cover:

The New England Journal of Medicine apologizes for not recognizing the attack on Jews in Nazi Germany

April 5, 2024 • 9:55 am

Well, here we are ninety years after the Nazis began persecuting Jews in Germany, and I guess the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is feeling guilty for having completely ignored that persecution until the war was nearly over (1944). No matter that none of the editors of the journal back then are still active, much less alive: they still feel that a long apology is in order.

I guess I don’t mind their late mea culpa (it’s five pages long), and I’m not even sure a medical journal should take political stands, but in this case the Nazis affected the practice of medicine in Germany. For one thing, they fired more than 3,000 Jewish doctors, and, of course, later sent them to the camps. And the Nazi doctors were, of course, often complicit in medical outrages, like the euthanasia of the mentally ill and the gruesome and torturous experiments on inmates in concentration camps.  One could, I suppose, make a Kalven-like case that the Nazis were indeed hurting the practice of medicine (though in a different country), and so their crimes fall under the ambit of NEJM.

And so the NEJM editors, recognizing that other journals, like the Journal of the American Medical Association and Science, did call out Nazi atrocities, are trying to catch up. Unfortunately, they coopt the language of DEI to explain the journal’s ignoring of Nazi atrocities.

Here’s how the journal begins its admission of ignorance, willful or otherwise. I’ve put links to key articles they reference that are on the Internet rather than their footnotes:

Hitler was first specifically mentioned in the Journal in 1935, in an article by Michael M. Davis, a noted American health expert and reformer, and his collaborator Gertrud Kroeger, a leading German nurse. Yet between this article and 1944, when Nazi war crimes were first explicitly acknowledged in an editorial, the Journal remained all but silent regarding the deeply antisemitic and racist motives of Nazi science and medicine and the threat to the “ideals” of civilization. . . .

Articles on Germany or Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s are overwhelmingly about the compulsory and oversubscribed sickness insurance system, “socialized medicine,” and “quackery,” not the persecution and mass extermination of Jews. In fact, when it did address Nazi “medical” practices, the Journal enthusiastically praised German forced sterilization and the restrictive alcohol policies of the Hitler Youth.

Finally, the Nazi Reckoning after 14 years:

But when the Allied powers liberated the concentration camps, it became clear, as the so-called Doctors’ Trial (1946–1947) categorically demonstrated, that the medical profession in Germany embraced Nazism’s antisemitic and eugenic ideology8 and was deeply complicit in the implementation of mass extermination. The crimes of the Nazi state could no longer be ignored. The first Journal article explicitly damning Nazi medical atrocities is a 1949 article by Leo Alexander, a Viennese-born American neuropsychiatrist, who gathered evidence for the trial of the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg.More articles would be published from the 1960s onward, as scholars started documenting the atrocities committed by medical doctors, and especially after the Declaration of Helsinki of 1964, which established a number of ethical principles regarding human experimentation.12

The journal admits that it was an “outlier” in this respect, but then goes into excruciating and tedious detail into the one article it wrote in 1935 by Davis and Kroeger—an analysis of German “socialized medicine”. Click on screenshot below to get the pdf. Be warned, it’s a snoozer, even though it approves of socialized medicine.  I’m not sure why NEJM even mention this article save that it was attacked two weeks after publication in a letter to the editor, whose author, Joseph Muller, claimed that the Davis and Kroeger piece was propagandistic and “unworthy to appear in our periodical”.

The criticism:

Davis and Kroeger’s article did not go unchallenged. In a letter to the editor published 2 weeks later, Joseph Muller, a dermatologist and an active member of the Massachusetts Medical Society (which owned and still owns the Journal), complained about the Journal using Davis and Kroeger’s article “as a propaganda organ for half cooked world improvers.”21 The article, he claimed, was “neither medical nor scientific, but contains plenty of propaganda and is therefore unworthy to appear in our periodical. It is remarkable by omission of facts rather than by its statements.” Moreover, he wrote, the omission “that more than three thousand medical men were deprived of their means of supporting themselves should open the eyes of the American medical profession to one great danger of State Medicine.” Though Muller showed sympathy for the Jewish doctors, however, the real crux of his critique was not Nazi genocidal atrocities but — remarkably — the danger that socialized medicine could hold sway over the profession, a long-held concern among American physicians about “state medicine.”

As we see below, first author Davis answered Mueller’s criticism in a very brief response that basically swept away Nazi atrocities (Kroeger didn’t answer; the journal said she was a Nazi sympathizer). Its heart is this:

The deplorable repressive policy of the Hitler government in respect to Jewish physicians had no bearing on the main point which the article was intended to bring out, namely, that the organized medical profession of Germany has, by the actions described in the article, been placed in a more responsible position than ever before with respect to the medical services under German health insurance.

In other words, “who cares about the Jews, we were talking about medical insurance”.

Well, what we have is medical history, and of course it wasn’t just doctors who ignored what the Nazi regime is doing. Many people had no idea about the camps, though ignorance of the persecution of the Jews should have been evident to any thinking person.  But the apologia could have occupied but a single page, saying just what I said above.  Sadly, the piece goes on and on, and finally drags in DEI-like elements in trying to explain the exchange of letters above as well as the journal’s failure to cover the medical atrocities of the Nazi regime (bolding is mine):

Davis’s brief response to Muller’s attack is important in that it reveals what have come to be understood as critical elements of structural racism: unconscious bias, denial, and compartmentalization. In his rejoinder, Davis tried to bring some clarification to his omission by denying the relevance to his argument of discrimination against and persecution of Jews.  , , For Davis, the expansion of medical power was thus more important than the fact that this gain in power came at the expense of thousands of Jewish physicians. Moreover, it did not matter to Davis that the doctor whom he described as the “guardian of the health interest” of the German people had to be “Aryan” to be able to practice.1 As we now know, however, this reliance on the benevolent and altruistic physician to act in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath was insufficient to prevent the atrocities committed by physicians in the Nazi death camps.

And later, there’s this, called “moral blindness”:

And beyond Davis, how do we account for the virtual silence of the Journal about these issues over the ensuing decade? Part of the answer lies in denial, compartmentalization, and rationalization, all of which depend on structural and institutional racism — deep historical, often unrecognized, bias and discrimination that serve the status quo.

Well, we don’t know whether Davis’s (or the NEJM’s biases) were unconscious, and is it really news that many Americans didn’t like Jews in the 1930s and 1940s? Those were the years of the popular antisemitic radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, and of the equally popular antisemitism of Charles Lindbergh, American Hero. And yes, there was structural and institutional racism, most familiar to academics as the “Jewish quotas” in many universities instituted in the 1920s, and lasting for at least three decades.

This history is well known and well documented, save for the possibility of “unconscious” bias, a dubious concept that remains controversial. Regardless, I find it somewhat bizarre that the NEJM feels the need to apologize so many years afterwards, when during WWII it was simply following the American Zeitgeist that preferred to ignore the plight of European Jews. And equally bizarre is that it coopts the language of DEI to implicate structural and institutional racism, which of course was simply the racism put in place by Hitler and many Germans after they whipped up sentiments against the Jews. Is anything accomplished by using modern concepts that are arguable (“structural racism” and “unconscious bias” as a cause of inequities) rather than what’s really at issue here: the fact that not many people cared about the Jews during WWII?  I’m just glad they didn’t mention “the inequities affecting Jewish doctors due to structural racism and unconscious bias.”

Bill Maher’s latest monologue

March 30, 2024 • 1:15 pm

Bill Maher’s latest monologue, “Stuck on stupid,” takes out after what he sees as overreactions to the covid pandemic (including closing schools and denying flatly that the virus came from a Wuhan lab),  I remember disinfecting groceries with alcohol and staying a long distance away from people, and, seriously I don’t think that Maher is correct to say that those behaviors were simply stupid. After all, remember that people were dying of a virus that we didn’t understand, and a lot of people hadn’t yet been vaccinated.

So I think here Maher is being snarky with the wisdom of hindsight. He even seems to diss vaccinations!

And yes, we have learned some stuff: how to make RNA vaccines, that those vaccines work, and that, right now, we don’t really need to have our sixth booster unless we’re immunocompromised.

This ain’t one of Maher’s better efforts. I didn’t follow his opinions at the beginning of the pandemic, but I know some reader did, so please weigh in below.

Bret Weinstein denies that AIDS is caused by HIV

March 11, 2024 • 9:30 am

A high-up worker in the pharma industry sent me a video from last month  showing biologist Bret Weinstein apparently denying to Joe Rogan that AIDS is cause by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). (That claim starts about three minutes in, but watch the whole video below.)

Apparently Weinstein subscribes to Rogan’s “competing hypothesis” that AIDS is simply group of symptoms caused not by a virus, but by taking “party drugs” (3:53). Weinstein finds that explanation “surprisingly compelling.”  He also suggests darkly that Nobel laureate Kary Mullis—also an HIV denialist—died “strangely” (there were conspiracy theories about Mullis’s death).  Then the video stops, but you can hear the whole 3½-hour episode here.

The first several minutes of the video below, which you’ll have to scroll back to see, show Weinstein expressing doubt that a virus also causes Covid-19.

You may remember that Weinstein and his partner, biologist Heather Heying, touted the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment and preventive for the “syndrome” known as Covid-19, even though there was no evidence that the drug was effective (see also here).  In other words, Weinstein seems fond of heterodox and discredited causes of and treatments for diseases: he’s a medical conspiracy theorist.

The pharma guy who wrote me said this:

I don’t mean to obsess about BW, but after the Evergreen debacle and getting a modicum of credibility, he went crazy about COVID and the efficacy of ivermectin so much so that Sam Harris ripped him for conspiratorial thinking and now they’re enemies.  I was livid because people like him were giving horrible medical advice to the public as a biologist-who-claims-to-be-an-authority and may have really harmed people who were listening to his claptrap.  3 weeks ago, he was on Joe Rogan’s show (which I don’t watch but saw a link) wherein he’s now giving airtime to the ‘AIDS is not caused by HIV’ conspiracy theory.

As a member of Pharma industry who watched colleagues like myself craft thousands of molecules to become specific drugs tailored to fit and inhibit the active sites of HIV protease, reverse transcriptase, integrase, and to antagonize HIV binding to the chemokine receptor CCR5 that the virus uses to enter T-cells, I know for a fact that these drugs prevent AIDS by stopping HIV viral replication and entry.  All were approved in Phase 3 with data and are used in various combinations to make drugs like the Quad pill that have suppressed HIV to undetectable levels, allowing HIV-infected individuals to lead pretty normal lives.  Ergo, AIDS IS caused by HIV!  QED.

There were then some words not suitable for a family-friendly site, but among them were the claims that Weinstein is “a conspicuous troll who is hurting people.”

VICE News has a summary of Weinstein’s appearance on Rogan and on their shared and bogus theory of AIDS. An excerpt:

Weinstein’s “evidence,” he made clear, is partially drawn from reading about this theory as outlined by Robert F. Kennedy in his book The Real Anthony Fauci, published in 2021. (One review of the book noted that Kennedy managed to misrepresent numerous scientific studies he cites, which does not make a strong case for its scientific rigor; nor does the fact that it was written by Robert F. Kennedy.)

“I came to understand later, after I looked at what Luke Montagnier had said and I read Bobby Kennedy’s book on Fauci, was that actually the argument against HIV being causal was a lot higher quality than I had understood, right?” Weinstein told Rogan. “That it being a real virus, a fellow traveler of a disease that was chemically triggered, that is at least a highly plausible hypothesis. And with Anthony Fauci playing his role, that was inconvenient for what he was trying to accomplish.”

. . .The conversation generated substantial outcry from scientists and public health researchers on Twitter; David Gorski, an oncologist who frequently writes about the anti-vaccine world and pseudoscience, identified the conversation as an example of “crank magnetism,” writing, “Once you go down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy theories in one area (e.g., #COVID19), it is nearly inevitable that you will embrace fractal wrongness in the form of multiple kinds of pseudoscience (e.g., antivax, AIDS denial, etc.).”

And this is, of course, indisputably part of a larger pattern. Rogan and Weinstein regularly repeat discredited scientific ideas, mainly around their promotion of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID and Rogan’s constant promotion of anti-vaccine ideas. The AIDS conversation makes clear that COVID denialists are branching out, using their forms of pseudo-inquiry to draw other bad ideas back into the public discussion.

And from Wikipedia:

Appearing on a Joe Rogan podcast in February 2024, Weinstein erroneously stated that some people with AIDS were not infected with HIV and that he found the idea that AIDS was caused by a gay lifestyle, rather than the HIV virus, “surprisingly compelling”. The American Foundation for AIDS Research reacted to the podcast, saying “It is disappointing to see platforms being used to spout old, baseless theories about HIV. … The fact is that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), untreated, causes AIDS. … Mr. Rogan and Mr. Weinstein do their listeners a disservice in disseminating false information …”.

As for Weinstein’s implication that Karry Mullis’s death may have involved his “maverick” view that HIV didn’t cause AIDs (shades of Karen Silkwood!), Michael Shermer responded on February 16 with a tweet:

I’m especially distressed by this kind of quackery, which in the end can cost lives, by a man who started out in my own field, evolutionary biology.  Now, having left Evergreen State far behind him, Weinstein appears to be trying to make a name for himself by being medically heterodox. It’s fine to question untested theories, but the evidence is now very, very strong that HIV causes AIDs and that Covid-19 is caused by a coronavirus.

People often say that “pseudoscience” isn’t that harmful. After all, what’s the danger in reading the astrology column or tarot cards? But that’s just the thin edge of the wedge that opens up medical pseudoscience like that given above. And that can kill people.

Pro-Palestinian protesters heckle president of the AMA speaking at our medical school

March 3, 2024 • 9:30 am

The University of Chicago doesn’t like to publicize protests about the Middle East war, as they make the school look bad. And the University is even more secretive about punishing protestors—like these—who violate the University “Protest and Demonstration Policy” by shouting down speakers (also see the President’s statement here). I have been unable to find out, in several cases, whether local punishments have been applied to disruptive students.  This is kept a secret for reasons best known to the University.

These violations of University policy, involving disruptions of other people’s speech, are not protected by the University’s free expression policy, which hews very close to the First Amendment of the Constitution. But despite their illegality, they continue. And they invariably involve pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom have vowed not to respect the protest and demonstration policy.

So far the University has either failed to punish violators, or has given them only a slap on the wrist, like writing an essay on “my demonstration experience.” It’s not rocket science to figure out that if demonstrators violate University regulations but aren’t punished seriously, and there’s no record of a violation on their transcript, then the illegal protests will continue.  A regulation that’s not enforced is a regulation without teeth.

Below is are two short videos from Instagram showing a protest at the Medical School that occurred last month.  The speaker (or “attempted speaker”) is Jesse Menachem Ehrenfeld, the new President of the prestigious American Medical Association (AMA).  He is accomplished, Jewish, and gay.

The last two traits caused the protest that occurred when he was invited to speak to his alma mater, for he got his MD here. Despite his being a liberal and an honored physician, and despite his attempt to present a “Grand Rounds” talk on LGBTQ+ equity in medicine to the the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, the students still harassed him.

You can see the “issues” by listening to the angry and loud protests below (note that the cowardly speakers donned masks to hide their identities).  Ehrenfeld is accused of Israeli “pinkwashing” (the crazy claim that Israel only pretends to support LGBTQ+ rights to distract people from the country’s supposed crimes); accused of the AMA not having formally called for a ceasefire in Israel; and accused of being complicit in the deaths of Palestinian civilians because of Israel’s supposed war crimes.

As the Instagram post says below, “Security escorted protestors out of the lecture hall.” That’s a step in the right direction, since the University has failed to do even that during other protests.  But are these protestors medical or other students at the University? If so, then they must be punished. If they’re not from the University community, then they’re likely guilty of trespassing and can be banned from campus. Whatever the University does about this, it must involve more than simply removing disruptive protestors from the venue, as that’s not really a deterrent, much less a punishment.

These protests invariably involve only pro-Palestinian students, simply because the pro-Israeli ones aren’t into this kind of disruption. And this has led pro-Palestinian demonstrators to ask why  they’re being singled out by the University.  But that’s a dumb question with an easy answer: “Because they’re the only group that holds these types of angry and disruptive protests with respect to the war.”

I wonder whether after Israel is victorious, as I think it will be, these protests will continue.  I think they will, because the anger will only be intensified.

Here’s another post sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine, a registered student organization. Some of the video overlaps with that above, but they also have the temerity to tell Ehrenfeld what his ethical responsibility is:

On 2/20, Healthcare workers and medical students led disruptions and a banner drop during American Medical Association President Jesse Ehrenfeld’s talk at UChicago Medicine. AMA stop the hypocrisy, you have an ethical obligation to stand against genocide. You have an ethical obligation to stand with life, in solidarity with Palestine. Ehrenfeld, history is watching! Med Students say: Ceasefire Now!
Repost from @hcw4palichi

The students apparently disagree with the restriction that there is a time and place for free expression—times and places where it doesn’t disrupt University activity.  This video also shows security asking students to leave, but they persist in a “silent protest,” holding up a banner in the classroom. I am not sure if that’s a violation of University regulations, but it should be, because it is disruptive, particularly when there are many signs held by many students. I would say, “no signs in the lecture hall.”

Doctors Without Borders accused of complicity with Hamas

December 20, 2023 • 10:15 am

When Kelly Houle and I sold a copy of Why Evolution is True that had been autographed by many in the science/atheist/skeptic community (including several Nobel Laureates), and which had been illuminated with Kelly’s artistic flair, we decided to donate the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders (DWB, founded as Médecins Sans Frontières), an NGO that goes around the world with its doctors and nurses helping people in distress, particularly during tragic events like hurricanes and civil wars. It even won a Nobel Peace Prize.

All this sounded great to us, and we donated the $10,500 the book brought on eBay to DWB. (Have a look at the book here.) We thought it would do a lot of good, which was the sole object of our auction.

Later, however, I heard a rumor that DWB was somewhat anti-Israel and didn’t use Israeli doctors, although it does use doctors and nurses from many other countries. I emailed the organization asking about this, and never got a reply. I found accusations of DWB being antisemitic and anti-Israel (and pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda) on the internet (see here, here, here, and here, for example), and was distressed, as such an organization should not be taking political stands or engaging in political advocacy, which it was reported as doing. If they really don’t use Israeli doctors, and those doctors are willing to be used, then it’s guilty of antisemitism, for help is help, regardless of where it comes from or the religion of the medic.

You can find other and similar accusations on the web, but here’s a new one, written by Alain Destexhe, who used to be a big shot in the organization. He’s identified this way:

Alain Destexhe, Medical Doctor (MD), a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, is an Honorary Senator in Belgium, former secretary general of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and former president of the International Crisis Group. Author of Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century.

I think that gives his words sufficient credibility! And the Gatestone Institute has published an article by Destexhe article that accuses DWB of complicity with Hamas. Click the headline to read, and judge for yourself:

The piece is based on a new investigation of the organization, a group is loosely organized so that members can say what they want on social media. Check out the link to the report as well as the accusations given in the excerpt below:

The public statements since October 7 of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) and its employees, on the ground in Gaza, show a systematic bias in favor of Hamas and hostility to Israel. MSF has failed in its humanitarian purpose and violated its own charter, which proclaims “assistance… irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions.”

MSF has been present in the Gaza Strip since 1989. It now plays a leading role there, with at least 300 staff members, and works closely with local hospitals on a number of projects, either directly or indirectly with the Hamas “Ministry of Health”.

MSF is often quoted by the international media and is seen by public opinion as an objective, neutral and independent observer of the conflict in the region. Because of the history of the organization, which in 1999 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the French and international media have blind faith in MSF when it comes to reporting what it states.

However, a new investigative report on the social media posts of MSF and its employees has seriously called this reputation into question. The tweets and the Facebook posts of MSF and around 100 of its employees in Gaza were scrutinized.

Despite being subject to the MSF Charter, a significant proportion of its staff seem to share the Hamas point of view and support the terrorist attacks of October 7. For example, from October 7:

  • “Always remember that Gaza has done what all Arab armies have not done… !! It dug tunnels with its own hands. It built its weapons with its own hands…!! She sacrificed her sons, her women, her youth, her elderly, her homes and her mosques for the dignity of this land…!!” — MSF nurse (see Appendix 1).
  • “oh my God, we love you” — MSF doctor (see Appendix 1).\

. . . MSF’s biased analysis of events can also be found among MSF’s official spokespeople, who — usually quick to communicate — are completely silent on the atrocities of October 7.

. . .MSF repeated the false claim that Israel bombed Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. In a tweet dated October 17, MSF France wrote in French:

“We are horrified by the Israeli bombing of the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, which treated patients and housed displaced people. Hundreds of people were killed according to local authorities. This is an unacceptable massacre.”

MSF did not specify that these “local authorities” are part of Hamas.

Here’s the DWB Twitter (“X”) site logo, followed by a couple of tweets:

This is their pinned tweet, and there are repeated calls for a ceasefire.  Their concern for healthcare “on both sides of the conflict” rings hollow in the face of their complete lack of concern for what happened in Israel.

A DWB Facebook post decrying the US’s veto of a ceasefire in the Security Council, which accuses the US of giving “diplomatic cover for the ongoing atrocities in Gaza”.  Surely not an institutionally neutral pronouncement, and misguided as well. One could just as easily say that “the U.S. is trying to allow Israel to defend itself so that the tiny country can continue to exist.”

DWB picketing for a ceasefire at the UN:

Much of the article above was taken from the 47-page report, which gives examples of DWB and MSF’s tweets and other comments on social media supporting  also this from the investigation report, written by Destexhe; it’s 47 pages long and gives lots of examples.  Some quotes are blow, bolding is theirs:

MSF has had a large presence in Gaza for a long time. Moreover, in a series of tweets, MSF provides precise information on the situation at the Al Shifa hospital, showing its perfect knowledge of the premises and the staff. Is it possible and credible that MSF and its employees knew nothing and saw nothing of Hamas’s violations of humanitarian law?3

To date, MSF has not once denounced the violation of these “sanctuaries” by the Hamas belligerents, even though on 7 October it asked: Health facilities must not be targets. MSF calls on all parties to respect health facilities, which must remain sanctuaries for people in need of care.\

. . .MSF has had a large presence in Gaza for a long time. Moreover, in a series of tweets, MSF provides precise information on the situation at the Al Shifa hospital, showing its perfect knowledge of the premises and the staff. Is it possible and credible that MSF and its employees knew nothing and saw nothing of Hamas’s violations of humanitarian law?3

To date, MSF has not once denounced the violation of these “sanctuaries” by the Hamas belligerents, even though on 7 October it asked: Health facilities must not be targets. MSF calls on all parties to respect health facilities, which must remain sanctuaries for people in need of care.\

And the report’s conclusion:

Since 7 October, MSF, which is very active on X, has not tweeted a single word denouncing the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by Hamas on 7 October, the hostage-taking of dozens of civilians and the use of hospitals as barracks or human shields. MSF has denounced Israel on numerous occasions, but never these violations of humanitarian law committed by Hamas.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) regularly refers to international humanitarian law, but its interpretation of this law varies widely. MSF has seriously failed in its humanitarian purpose.MSF’s Charter asserts the organisation’s neutrality, impartiality and independence from any political, economic or religious power. MSF must be irreproachable and neutral in its work. This is clearly not the case in Gaza.

The proximity of some MSF staff to Hamas raises questions about possible links between MSF and extremist groups.

Now one could argue that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worse than Israel, and DWB is simply reflecting different levels of crisis. But in the face of their long history of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli propaganda, and apparent failure to use Israeli doctors (I still haven’t found out whether they do, but suspect not), I think DWB is guilty of injecting political and anti-Israel bias into their actions. Plus there’s their complete silence on the activities of October 7, and of course don’t mention that Hamas and IJ are still firing rockets at civilians in Israel. Apparently Israeli lives simply aren’t worth mentioning. No call to stop firing rockets?

One thing is for sure: I deeply regret having given this organization $10,500 a while back, and they’re not going to get dime one from me any more. I put them in my will as getting a substantial amount of money, but I struck them out. There are organizations that aren’t reported to be allied with terrorism that deserve my money more.  Read not just the report above, but the linked article, and perhaps google “Doctors Without Borders” Israel to see more.  Then judge for yourself.

Intercessionary prayer fails again, this time with covid recovery

December 5, 2023 • 11:30 am

This is the third study I know of in which intercessory prayer (prayer by strangers for the afflicted) has failed to show results.  The first two papers, whose titles are below (click to read) showed that such prayer failed to help patients with heart disease.  I’ve discussed these before, and you can see for yourself that if God exists, listens to prayer, and sometimes responds, He clearly was not listening in these two experiments.

I give the conclusions of each of the first two studies below. Notice that the second study was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, which clearly hoped for a positive result!

First, a study from 22 years ago:

Conclusion: The study found no evidence of an effect of intercessory prayer on the primary outcome of mortality or on the secondary outcomes of hospitalization time, ICU time, and mechanical ventilation time.

Second, a study from 17 years ago:

Sadly, no gods with any power to respond to prayer did anything. Note as well that, in fact, intercessory prayer increased (nonsignificantly) the percentage of  bad outcomes (bolding is mine). Perhaps god doesn’t like intercessory prayer!

Results: In the 2 groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayer, complications occurred in 52% (315/604) of patients who received intercessory prayer versus 51% (304/597) of those who did not (relative risk 1.02, 95% CI 0.92-1.15). Complications occurred in 59% (352/601) of patients certain of receiving intercessory prayer compared with the 52% (315/604) of those uncertain of receiving intercessory prayer (relative risk 1.14, 95% CI 1.02-1.28). Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups.

Conclusions: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

And look at the acknowledgements:

This study was supported by the John Templeton Foundation. The Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation supported the Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation site only.

And here’s the latest study, published in a weird journal, but one that is peer-reviewed: Heliyon. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

Heliyon is a monthly peer-reviewed mega journal covering research in all areas of science, the social sciences and humanities, and the arts. It was established in 2015 and is published by Cell Press. The journal is divided into numerous sections, each with its own editorial team.

Click the title to read, or you might find it more convenient to download the entire pdf here. The reference is at the bottom of the page.

The experiment was done in Brazil, and I don’t think I need to reprise the methods and results since the summary below gives all the essential information. I’ve highlighted the lack of positive results by bolding part of this summary:

Between September 2020 and December 2020, a total of 199 participants (out of 244 that were screened) were randomly assigned to either the Intervention group (n = 100) or the control group (n = 99, Fig. 1). Baseline characteristics, presented in Table 1, were well balanced between the two groups. The study population consisted of 34 % women, with a mean age of 61 years. Additionally, 44 % of participants had hypertension, and 6 % had obesity. At the end of the study, no significant difference in the primary outcome of mortality was observed between the intervention and control groups. Among the 99 subjects in the control group, there were 8 deaths, and the same number of deaths [8] occurred in the intervention group (HR 0.86, 95 % CI 0.32 to 2.31; p = 0.76). Similarly, there were no statistically significant differences in the secondary outcomes between the two groups. The need for ICU admission (p = 0.471), length of stay in the ICU (mean difference 􀀀 0.77, 95 % CI -4.13 to 3.20; p = 0.70), need for mechanical ventilation (p = 0.457), duration of mechanical ventilation (mean difference 3.89 days, 95 % CI -7.09 to 14.71; p = 0.54), and length of hospital stay (mean difference 1.96, 95 % CI -2.78 to 7.85; p = 0.45) were all similar between the two groups, as shown in Table 2. Due to the necessary change in participant identification during the study, we also evaluated the outcomes among participants who were identified by initials and received direct prayers (Table 3) and among participants who were identified by the number of the hospital beds (Table 4). Similarly, we did not observe any changes in the primary or secondary outcome. 

Other aspects of the study worth knowing about include the fact that subjects were admitted to intensive care or clinical inpatient facilities with a PCR-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. All patients were older than 18, and were used regardless of their religion or lack thereof. The study was double blind with a control group of patients; patients didn’t know whether they were being prayed for (half were; half were not) and the pray-ers didn’t know the names of the patients, who were identified and prayed for only by their initials and, later, by the number of their hospital bed (God presumably knows all this stuff).

The pray-ers were “Protestant religious leaders” who were able to pray daily for one of the patients. And the prayer devoted to each patient was INTENSIVE, as detailed below:

Each intercessor prayed from their own homes or workplaces, dedicating a total of 240 min per day, divided into three shifts of 80 min each (morning, afternoon, and night). The content of each prayer was not specifically assigned, but it was required to include the following topics: 1) preservation of the patient’s life, 2) avoidance of orotracheal intubation or mechanical ventilation for those not yet intubated, 3) shorter duration of intubation and mechanical ventilation for those already in that state, 4) reduced length of stay in the ICU, and 5) reduced total length of hospital stay.

Now that is what I call prayer. Nevertheless, there was no difference in the outcomes of the experimental (prayed-for) and the control (not-prayed-for) group). The authors do give some caveats, including the small sample size and the fact that the method of identifying patients changed mid-study from initials to hospital bed number (Brazilian law was invoked), but if there is an omniscient God, He should know these things.

This is three out of three studies that haven’t worked.  The possible explanations include these:

1.) There is no God to hear the prayers.

2.) There.is a God, but he can’t hear the prayers.

3.) There is a God who hears the prayers, but he pays no attention to them.

4.) God doesn’t want to be tested, and so ignored the whole experiment. But note that God was effectively tested in a Bible passage (1 Kings 18) in which sacrifices were offered to a false god versus the real God simultaneously, and only the sacrifices to Yahweh worked. This was a controlled experiment!

5.) Protestant prayers are less effective than prayers of other denominations.

Inventive readers can think of other explanations.

Of course as an atheist I think that #1 is the right answer. As the late Victor Stenger said, “The absence of evidence [for God] is indeed evidence of absence if the evidence should be there.”

Naturally this study won’t make a dent in the belief of the godly, for they will simply discount it on one ground or another—probably #4 above.  All we can say is that three sincere attempts to see if prayers work showed that they don’t.

And did I mention that although Lourdes is full of discarded crutches and wheelchairs, there are no false eyeballs or prosthetic limbs on display? Apparently God can cure lots of stuff, but is impotent before blindness and amputation.

________________

Soubihe Junior NV, Bersch-Ferreira ÂC, Tokunaga SM, Lopes LA, Cavalcanti AB, Bernadez-Pereira S. 2023. The remote intercessory prayer, during the clinical evolution of patients with COVID -19, randomized double-blind clinical trial. Heliyon. 2023 Nov 17;9(11):e22411.

doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22411. PMID: 38045114; PMCID: PMC10689938.