A Hallowe’en tarantula

October 31, 2013 • 8:57 am

by Matthew Cobb

Whether you are dressing up as a ghoul tonight, you are a grump who ignores the kids knocking on the door, or you are doing some else  (like me), you should still appreciate this neat gif (yes, that’s pronounced… etc)

 

 

This was taken from the Smithsonian Tumblr, where they say:

This tarantula, Homoeomma stradlingi, graced the pages of the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1881 and clearly couldn’t stay put. We scanned it a while back to put in our Galaxy of Images.

h/t ‏@erik_kwakkel

Celebrities tout pseudoscience

October 31, 2013 • 5:18 am

Salon has a new piece by Daniel D’Addario decrying the female celebrities who have turned to touting woo; these include, of course, Jenny McCarthy, Suzanne Somers (who I wasn’t aware was promoting a ton of hormone and pill therapy to forestall aging), but also Mariel Hemingway and Mary Steenburgen, who seem to be pushing less harmful “lifestyle” stuff. (Steenburgen, for instance, had some minor surgery which, she claims, suddenly made her able to play the accordion. That reminds me of the old joke about the guy who was having a hand operation and asked his physician, “Doc, will I be able to play the piano after this operation?” The doc says, “Yes, of course—your hand will be just as flexible as before.” “Great!” replies the patient, “Because I can’t play it now.”)

Somers’s regimen, however, sounds dire:

And, most infamously, there’s Suzanne Somers, the author of some 24 books largely on the topic of wellness; her concept of wellness involves filling the body with hormones in order to fool the body into thinking it is not experiencing menopause. As shown on “Oprah,” Somers takes 60 pills a day, as well as injecting hormones into her vagina and rubbing them into her skin. The one-time “Three’s Company” actress has questioned the efficacy of chemotherapy as she promotes medical treatments not subject to the strict scientific method evaluation as, say, traditional medicine.

Somers, of course, sells the hormones on her site.  She was also invited to write a “Experts” column on Obamacare for the Wall Street Journal, for crying out loud, and did such a bad job that the paper has had to issue three separate corrections (you can read her piece here). What was the WSJ thinking? Well, they’re conservative, of course, and I suppose they thought they’d get attention by getting Chrissy to diss Obama.

We all know about Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccination campaign based on phony research and lies, but she now has a voice on the talk show “The View” (I’ve never watched it), which reaches millions of female viewers.  You’ve also probably seen the “Anti-Vaccine body count” site, which totes up the number of preventable illnesses and deaths that have occurred because of anti-vaxers like McCarthy. Of course the estimate is rough, but here are the figures from a few minutes ago:

Picture 6

Why are these woo-pushers often ageing female actors? D’Addario has an interesting answer, which may well be partly correct:

Would Somers be as passionate about hormone-replacement therapy if she weren’t booked on the sort of talk shows her acting career can no longer get her with every outré statement? If she weren’t enlisted by the Wall Street Journal to write an “Experts” column denouncing Obamacare — one that’s already received three corrections and that substantially misrepresents the government program? (If you’ve noticed that the figures this piece focuses on are exclusively female, that may be because Hollywood didn’t boot out George Clooney — or John Larroquette — once he hit a certain age. Women have fewer opportunities to get attention and income solely from their acting.)

That sort of sexism is almost certainly real, but I’d much prefer that the superannuated actresses tout less harmful stuff (Cindy Crawford is one example, doing skin care informercials that for some reason fascinate me, making me unable to leave the t.v. when they’re on. They’re funny, as they feature a sleazy French doctor who has discovered the “secret of youthful skin” in extracts from cantaloupes. The products are called “Meaningful Beauty” and have LOLzy, faux French names like Crème de Sérum.)

But what McCarthy and Somers do, whatever their reasons, is damaging to others. I can’t imagine that it’s useful to inject hormones into one’s vagina or take 60 pills per day, and Somers is no “expert” on Obamacare.  I’ll let Salon take down the odious McCarthy:

But Somers’ and McCarthy’s statements have real human cost: as Salon wrote in 2009, Somers takes her information from sources “many of whom are neither experts in women’s health or endocrinology, nor board-certified physicians, nor experienced researchers.” McCarthy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric, which has helped to erode the sort of herd immunity that prevents disease outbreak, is based on a discredited medical study retracted by medical journal the Lancet; the talk show host has alleged a coordinated media campaign by vaccine manufactures. Somers’ Wiley Protocol was designed by a self-styled “molecular biologist” who only holds a B.A. in anthropology and has been criticized by medical doctors for lack of proof of efficacy.

Finally, D’Addario speculates about why this Celebrity Woo attracts so much attention:

These actresses’ work lies at the intersection of two uniquely American desires: the love of celebrity and the distrust of academic authority. The reflexive distrust of orthodoxy — as demonstrated by Somers’ dismissal of Obamacare with half-remembered or made-up anecdotes that merit a Journal correction, or by her claims that she knows more than those fuddy-duddy doctors, or McCarthy’s imagining a global conspiracy against the truths she alone can figure out — has been a part of American life since snake-oil wagons rambled through towns. Americans know better than the medical establishment — no wonder TV’s Dr. Oz, with his throw-everything-at-the-wall approach to treatment, is so popular, or why visualizing wealth is a popular thought system despite no non-anecdotal proof it works, or why it’s so easy for some minds to leap to “death panels” when imagining a nationalized healthcare system.

This attitude, expressed by parents who treat their sick kids with prayer rather than conventional medicine, comes up repeatedly in the book I’m reading: When Prayer Fails, by Shawn Francis Peters. (I recommend it as both a good history of spiritual “therapy” and a horrifying account of its damage.) Over and over again you read about these parents and their pastors arguing not only that medicine can’t be trusted, but is in fact a tool of Satan. “God is the best healer,” they say. In the case of McCarthy, it’s close to the same thing: Western medicine is in a conspiracy to hide the autism-inducing effects of vaccines, and no evidence to the contrary will convince her.

The more I hear about this woo, and the anti-science attitudes behind it, the more I see a strong parallel with religiously based woo, including not only creationism but the “prayer therapy” I wrote about yesterday. Both religion and McCarthy-eque woo make empirical claims but distrust real science, tout other ways of healing based completely on “faith,” and depend heavily on celebrities (in the religion case, celebrity “healers” like Oral Roberts). In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see religion as a pseudoscience: for it makes claims about the world and shows many of the characteristics of classic pseudoscience like UFOlogy and Bigfoot-ism; these include truth claims that are often couched in ambiguous language, poor standards of evidence, the adherence to unfalsifiable claims, arguments that the scientific method can’t be used (“you can’t test the supernatural”), the acceptance of questionable data as “proof,” and the rejection of replication, outside verification, and disconfirming data by special pleading. Finally, both pseudoscientific and religious woo have clear emotional motivations.

Yep, religion is a pseudoscience.

h/t:Barry

How religions—and the U.S. government—let children die

October 30, 2013 • 10:34 am

I’ve been reading an enlightening but disturbing book:  When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, by Shawn Francis Peters, which details how children of some religious parents are left to suffer and die because the sects of their parents abjure medical care. The parents pray instead of taking their kids to the doctors or the hospital. The book is full of disturbing tales of not only horrible neglect, but of how the law tends to overlook such treatment, letting off religious parents who fail to treat their children with regular medical care, or giving them lenient treatment like short probation. This has led me to read more widely about this situation, and I’ll use it in my book.

Take the paper by Asser and Swan (references below), for example.  Here is the authors’ short precis:

Design. Cases of child fatality in faith-healing sects were reviewed. Probability of survival for each was then estimated based on expected survival rates for children with similar disorders who receive medical care.

Participants. One hundred seventy-two children who died between 1975 and 1995 and were identified by referral or record search. Criteria for inclusion were evidence that parents withheld medical care because of reliance on religious rituals and documentation sufficient to determine the cause of death.

Results. One hundred forty fatalities were from conditions for which survival rates with medical care would have exceeded 90%. Eighteen more had expected survival rates of >50%. All but 3 of the remainder would likely have had some benefit from clinical help.

Conclusions. When faith healing is used to the exclusion of medical treatment, the number of preventable child fatalities and the associated suffering are substantial and warrant public concern. Existing laws may be inadequate to protect children from this form of medical neglect.

Some of the kids who could have been saved had appendicitis, diabetes, diphtheria, meningitis, and measles.  There are also many babies and mothers who die in childbirth because they refuse to consult a doctor during a difficult birth.

A few case studies:

For example, a 2-year-old child aspirated a bite of banana. Her parents frantically called other members of her religious circle for prayer during nearly an hour in which some signsof life were still present. In another case, a 6-week old infant, weighing a pound less than at birth, died from pneumonia. The mother admitted giving the infant cardiopulmonary resuscitation several times during the 2 days before the infant’s death. In one family 5 children died of pneumonia before the age of 20 months, 3 before the study period. Although this raises the possibility of genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, immune deficiency, or asthma, many such conditions have a good prognosis with treatment. Their mother was a nurse before joining a church with doctrinal objections to medical care.

A 12-year-old girl [Ashley King] was kept out of school for 7 months while the primary osteogenic sarcoma on her leg grew to a circumference of 41 inches and her parents relied solely on prayer. A timely diagnosis would have allowed at least a modest chance for survival. [JAC: Peters’s book says that the smell of the rotting flesh from the girl’s tumor could be detected on the entire floor of the hospital when the law finally required, too late, that King be removed from her home and given medical care. You can read about her on this site.]

One teenager asked teachers for help getting medical care for fainting spells, which she had been refused at home. She ran away from home, but law enforcement returned her to the custody of her father. She died 3 days later from a ruptured appendix.

This was all abetted by the federal government. In 1974 the U.S. government’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare required that states adopt policies about religious exemption from child abuse before they could receive federal funding for programs protecting abused children. This requirement was rescinded in 1983, but most states still have religious exemptions for child abuse.

A document from the National District Attorney Association (reference below, free download) shows that over 70% of U.S. states still have exemptions from prosecution or accusations of abuse for parents who medically neglect their children on religious grounds.   Here is their summary:

37 states, the District of Columbia and Guam have laws providing that parents or caretakers who fail to provide medical assistance to a child because of their religious beliefs are not criminally liable for harm to the child. At the time Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act in 1974 to create a uniform approach to child abuse, it deferred to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) to determine the religious exemption policies of the act.1 HEW mandated that the states adopt religious exemptions to child neglect before they could receive federal funding for state child-protection programs.2 Although the department adopted new regulations in 1983 striking down this requirement,3 few states have repealed these religious exemption laws. Most of these statutes require that religion be a recognized church or a religious denomination. The Supreme Court had not addressed whether or not neglect exemptions for religious purposes violate the Establishment Clause.

As Peters’s book notes, one reason states have not gotten rid of the religious exemptions is that they’re lobbied heavily by religious organizations—particularly the Christian Scientists, who of course formally reject Western medicine since disease and injury can be cured by “right thoughts”.  (Of course many Christian Scientists aren’t dumb and do use medicine and go to doctors.)

You can see each state’s exemption in the document, and it’s a horrible thing to read.  I’ve pulled at random two examples: laws from Indiana and Michigan (emphasis is mine):

INDIANA

IND. CODE ANN. § 35-46-1-4 (2013). Neglect of a dependent; child selling

(a) A person having the care of a dependent, whether assumed voluntarily or because of a legal obligation, who knowingly or intentionally:

(1) places the dependent in a situation that endangers the dependent’s life or health;

(2) abandons or cruelly confines the dependent;

(3) deprives the dependent of necessary support; or

(4) deprives the dependent of education as required by law; commits neglect of a dependent, a Class D felony.

(c) It is a defense to a prosecution based on an alleged act under this section that:

(1) the accused person left a dependent child who was, at the time the alleged act occurred, not

more than thirty (30) days of age with an emergency medical provider who took custody of the child under IC 31-34-2.5 when:

(A) the prosecution is based solely on the alleged act of leaving the child with the emergency medical services provider; and

(B) the alleged act did not result in bodily injury or serious bodily injury to the child; or

(2) the accused person, in the legitimate practice of the accused person’s religious belief, provided treatment by spiritual means through prayer, in lieu of medical care, to the accused person’s dependent.

MICHIGAN

MICH. COMP. LAWS § 722.634 (2013). Religious beliefs; medical treatment

Sec. 14. A parent or guardian legitimately practicing his religious beliefs who thereby does not provide specified medical treatment for a child, for that reason alone shall not be considered a negligent parent or guardian. This section shall not preclude a court from ordering the provision of medical services or nonmedical remedial services recognized by state law to a child where the child’s health requires it nor does it abrogate the responsibility of a person required to report child abuse or neglect.

Most statues, like Michigan’s, allow the courts to intervene and have the children treated medically, but there is little or no penalty for parents letting their kids die by praying for them instead of getting them to a doctor. It’s a dreadful situation, and privileges religion—for if you neglect medical care on non-religious grounds, you’re liable.

This has to be fixed: there should be ABSOLUTELY NO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS for withholding medical care from children, and parents who do so should be punished in exactly the same way as a parent who is negligent for non-religious reasons.

This is one situation, by the way, where there’s a clear battle between science and faith, and one in which children, who in some of Peters’s cases suffer unspeakable torments, are the losers.

Remember, 37 out of 50 states, and the District of Columbia, have statues that exempt from criminal liability parents who let their children die by using prayer instead of medicine. Now that is a crime. It makes me ill to read statue after statute giving religion a pass when it allows parents to abuse their kids.

If you have the stomach for it, have a look at Peters’s book, and see what the laws are in your state.

_____________

Asser, S. M., and R. Swan. 1998. Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect. Pediatrics 101:625-9.

National Distric Attorney Association. 2013. Religious exemptions to child neglect.