“The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist', say researchers”

An article I recently read boldly claims that The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist', say researchers. I read this with a sigh, as I know from experience how greatly distorted any research findings can get when they are published in mainstream media. Clearly, this was an instance of such distortion. I was curious to see what the actual study said, and went off to find it. You may read it here, if you are curious.

Sadly, it wasn’t very distorted after all.

In fact, the press release from the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology was worse than the articles I had read. It presents the following conclusion from their study:

The complete absence of genetic contribution to the G-Spot, an allegedly highly sensitive area in the anterior wall of the vagina which when stimulated produces powerful orgasm, casts serious doubt on its existence, suggests a study by the Department of Twin Research to be published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The investigators carried out this study by recruiting 1804 female volunteers from the TwinsUK registry aged 23-83 years. All completed questionnaires detailing their general sexual behavior and functioning, and a specific question on self-perception of the G- Spot. The researchers found no evidence for a genetic basis. This led to the conclusion that – given that all anatomical and physiological traits studied so far have been shown to be at least partially influenced by genes – the G-Spot does not exist and is more a fiction created by other factors e.g. an individual’s own sexual and relationship satisfaction or self-report is an inadequate way to assess the G-Spot and researchers should in future focus more on ultrasound studies.

The impression I took from the mainstream press articles, and which was reinforced by the institute’s press release, was that the existence of the G-spot was inferred to correspond to study participants’ reports of whether they had one. If this were so—if we could determine anatomy by poll—I expect I could find some people with more spleens than kidneys and more livers than lymph nodes.

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I took the trouble to read the actual paper (it’s fairly short and quite accessible). The reality turns out not to be quite so bad. The main point—well, let me make an aside here and say that I find it extremely odd that what seemed to be the main point emphasised in the paper was considerably de-emphasised in the press release and consequent mainstream articles, seriously reducing their credibility. Anyway, back to the point:

The main point of the paper is that if the G-spot exists, it is an anatomical structure; if it is an anatomical structure, it is presumably genetically inherited. Even if some women have it while some don’t, we expect to find a strong correlation in twins. Since heterozygotic twins share 50% of their genome, and monozygotic (‘identical’) twins share 100% of their genome, if it’s genetically heritable at all, we should see a correlation in twins, especially monozygotic ones: If one twin has it, the other should (more often than is the case with unrelated people); if one twin does not, the other shouldn’t. Because twins are typically raised in extremely similar environments, even environmental factors should be similar. In particular, monozygotic twins should be more similar to each other than heterozygotic twins for heritable (but not environmental) factors.

Well, this turned out not to be the case: Heterozygous twins report that they have G-spots about as often as do monozygous twins, and this is the real point of the paper. It’s not as spectacular as the mainstream news articles, but I’m surprised that they so failed to emphasise this in their own press release. Ah well, such is the hunt for fame, I suppose.

In the conclusion of the real, scientific paper, the authors are of course forced to admit that

A possible explanation for the lack of heritability may be that women differ in their ability to detect their own (true) G-spots.

They, of course, do not believe this to be the case. We may reasonably ask, why not? And how good is your evidence? My thoughts will be very tentative, because I’m not an expert in any related field; but we may at least reason about it.

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First, I will note that the study’s exclusion criteria were, at times, a bit puzzling.

Women who reported that they were homo- or bisexual were excluded from the study because of the common use of digital stimulation among these women, which may bias the results.

I daresay it may bias them! For example, if the G-spot exists, it’s a specific anatomical location inside the vagina. Because it is postulated to be a very specific location, it may be difficult to stimulate with the penis, which is after all not prehensile and may not be angled so as to optimally stimulate a specific location. This postulated spot could perhaps be more easily located and stimulated with the fingers. Therefore, if it does exist, and if we are restricted to self-reporting as evidence, I would expect to find much stronger evidence for this in a population with common use of digital stimulation. The people I would ask first are the people whose answers they discarded. I would be very curious to see how their data are affected if they include this population. What was their rationale for the exclusion criterion? Was it determined beforehand, or after the data were in? Would it contradict their conclusion? What if this population were considered exclusively?

This looks like a very serious weakness to me, as the exclusion criterion seems to be specifically geared towards reaching a particular conclusion. (I can’t think of anything much more damning I could possibly say about a study.) It’s not the only thing that makes me raise an eyebrow, though (but it is the strongest).

Another thing is that, well, some traits just aren’t very heritable. (This is why we measure heritability; if there weren’t variation in how strongly phenotypic traits are associated with genes, there’d be no need.) I suppose the authors may reasonably expect their readership to be familiar with not just the concept of heritability (as I am), but also what kind of numbers we should expect (as I am not). Is a “close to 0” heritability common, or unusual, or rare, or impossible in variable phenotypic traits? Still, it is possible that heritability of the G-spot—not necessarily its existence, but perhaps its precise location and orientation, or its sensitivity—is relatively low. Is the study still powered to detect it? How does this render it more vulnerable to other confounders?

There are various criticisms leveraged against twin studies in general. Twin studies are potentially wonderful tools because monozygotic twins offer unique opportunities to investigate heritability. (Personally, I think the most interesting ones are of that rarity of rarities, pairs of monozygotic twins raised apart; the surprising similarities they show in a very wide range of behavioural traits is strong evidence of genetic conditioning.) But they are not perfect.

And finally, I make the observation that the institute—the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology—maintain a database of twins (an awful lot of them: Some 11,000 people). This is great; it enables them to efficiently perform twin studies. However, studying the same sample over and over again is problematic. If you look at the same N people, examining them for different properties over and over again, you’re bound to find an apparent correlation eventually. Think about it: If you pick 100 names at random from a phone book, you’ll expect about half of them to be male, half female; and about 8–15 of them to be left-handed…but if you examined them for blood pressure, and dietary habits, and sexual preferences, and number of children, and so on for any number of questions, it would be bizarre if they were an average sample in every respect. This is a problem with data mining. Clearly, the department’s database is pretty large, but then they’ve already published over 400 research papers. At what number of papers should we statistically expect to find spurious calculations?

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All in all, the study was a bit more sensible than mainstream media had me thinking at first, but as research papers go, I found it surprisingly unimpressive. In particular, the exclusion criterion that discarded answers from gay and bisexual women smells very fishy, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it “biased” the results so far as to invalidate their conclusion.

In a general sense, I trust science—I trust the scientific method, and (to a lesser but considerable degree) I trust that scientific consensus will move toward the right answers: Science is often characterised as an asymptotic approach to the truth (we may never know it exactly, but we will get ever closer). However, when considering a single study, one should be cautious. Never trust what the mainstream press says about it at all, whether you like what it says or not—ordinary reporters lack scientific savvy, good science reporters are rare, and after the editors have their say, it’s often dubious whether the scientists behind a finding would agree with anything the press has to say about them except, perhaps, the scientists’ names.

And while the scientific method is excellent, and the scientific consensus is the best approach we have to knowledge, some studies just aren’t worth the paper of the webpages they’re published on. If you want to adjust your opinions according to a single study, read it. Read it critically.

Chinese Herbal Medicine for Endometriosis

Media outlets are reporting that Chinese herbs may relieve symptoms of endometriosis, using a Cochrane review of 2 research articles. Headlines read “Chinese herbs show early promise for endometriosis”  and  “Chinese Herbs May Relieve Endometriosis Symptoms, Review Finds”  .

Endometriosis is a medical condition in which some of the endometrial cells (typically found in the uterus under the fluctuating influence of female hormones) are found outside of the uterine cavity. Symptoms include many nonspecific complaints such as pelvic pain, infertility, nausea, unusual menstruation, chronic fatigue, mood swings, back pain, ovarian cysts, constipation, urinary tract infections, diarrhea, anemia, etc. Appropriate diagnosis is by laparoscopic biopsy – a doctor will use a laparoscopic instrument to remove suspected extrauterine endometrial cells and examine them.  Treatments vary and can include hormonal treatments or surgery to remove the cells. In China, treatment of this disorder with Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) is routine.

Both of the media reports linked to above say that the Cochrane reviewers found some evidence that CHM has comparable benefits to conventional drug therapy after laparoscopic surgery for people with endometriosis but that the review has limitations. The primary author of the study is quoted as saying “"I think the positive message is that Chinese herbal medicine may offer equivalent benefits to conventional medicine but with fewer side effects.”

I found the Cochrane review [1] and noted that reviewers collected 110 studies for review and graded them based on methodological criteria. They dropped all but two of the 110 studies due to excluding trials with poor methodology, unconfirmed randomization procedures or ones diagnosing endometriosis without an appropriate laparoscopic biopsy.

Did the two retained articles feature research with superior methodology? First, let’s look at what those two articles were, and what the author concluded from this review:

The first article [2] had two treatment arms: women treated with CHM orally (2x/day) and via enema (1x/day) after laparoscopic surgery versus women treated with gestrinone (2x/wk) after laparoscopic surgery for 3 months. The results showed no difference between rates of symptom relief or pregnancy in either group.

The second article [3] had three treatment arms: women treated with CHM orally(2x/day), women who treated with CHM orally and via enema(1x/day), and women treated with danazol(1x/day) for 3 months. These women did not undergo laparoscopic surgery, but instead were only biopsied for diagnostic purposes.  Women obtained greater symptomatic relief with oral and oral plus enema CHM versus danazol, oral plus enema CHM shower a greater reduction in dysmenorrhoea pain scores than danazol and shrinkage of adenexal masses. There were no differences for other factors (lumbrosacral pain, rectal discomfort, vaginal nodules).

The author concluded that post-surgical administration of CHM may have comparable benefits to gestrinone but with fewer side effects, that oral CHM may be better for treatment than danazol and may be more effective at relieving dysmenorrheal and shrinking adnexal masses when used with a CHM enema.

So, what are our weaknesses?

1.    No placebo control: There was no arm of the first study which looked at women receiving laparoscopic surgery alone without CHM or danazol, and no arm of the second study which looked at women receiving no treatment or a placebo pill treatment.

2.    Poor blinding: I should not have to point out that if you enroll in a study that has a pill treatment arm and an enema treatment arm, it is impossible for the participants to be blinded to which treatment group they are in. And enema, as you probably know, is a procedure in which liquids are forced into the rectum through the anus. It might be possible to blind participants to whether or not they are getting CHM versus the other medications, but I bet most people can tell the difference between a Chinese medicine pill and the other pills in the study. The researchers were also not blinded as to which treatment group women were in, though the paper indicates the assessors were blinded to which treatment group the women were in.

3.    Inadequate comparison treatments: Danazol is no longer commonly used as a treatment for endometriosis, and gestrinone is not available in the USA. These studies would have been much more robust had they compared it to typical drug treatments for endometriosis. In the world of conventional treatments for endometriosis, these two drugs can hardly be called conventional.

4.    Poor outcome measures: In both of the studies, a clinical outcome of “no effect” was recorded if there were no change in symptoms or if the symptoms became worse. Recording worsening symptoms as “no effect” biases the data toward a positive outcome.


I think that the most appropriate take home message or finding of the study is this: the massive stockpile of clinical trials that explore CHM for treating endometriosis have serious methodological shortcomings. 

The author’s main conclusion (and the conclusion parroted by the press), that CHM may work to alleviate symptoms of endometriosis, seems spurious in light of this. Additionally, it appears that researchers used a specific mixture of herbs (Nei Yi) in the two studies, which raises the question: why the author did not title his paper “Nei Yi for endometriosis”?  Perhaps he wanted his readers to focus on the fact that this was a Chinese herbal medicine versus a “conventional” medicine.

Lastly, it is worth noting that although the authors of the review state that there is no conflict of interest in the publication of this review, the primary author is an acupuncture and Chinese medicine practitioner at a center for Chinese medicine in the UK.

References:

[1] Flower A, Liu JP, Chen S, Lewith G, Little P. Chinese herbal medicine for endometriosis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD006568. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD006568.pub2.

[2] Wu SZ,Chen XL,Chen WZ, Li SY.Clinical analysis of the treatment of endometriosis using Nei Yi pills and Nei Yi enema. Journal of Liaoning University of TCM 2006;8(7):5–6.

[3] Wu SZ, Chen XL, Chen WZ. Clinical observation of Nei Yi pills combined with Nei Yi enema in the treatment of endometriosis. Chinese Archives of TCM 2006;24(3):431–3.

bone marrow transplant = adult stem cells

Here is another article, courtesy of the Christian Research Institute's Twitter feed. (I am a glutton for punishment)

Scientists at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, are discovering a potential cure for leukemia and sickle-cell disease. How? By using blood stem cells from the placentas of women who have had Caesarian deliveries.

But researchers at the hospital are frustrated. State agencies have made multi-million-dollar grants available for embryo-destructive research, but money is scarce for its ethically sound counterpart, adult stem cell research.

Really? Not according to CNN. Please provide evidence that embryonic stem cells are ethically unsound.

In the Contra Costa Times, lead Children’s Hospital researcher Frans Kuypers says, “No one has been cured by an embryonic stem cell. We are able to cure folks with [adult] stem cells.”

Normally I don’t dive into ad hominem attacks, but this is pure insanity and betrays either a misunderstanding of the differences and similarities between adult and embryonic stem cells or a deliberate deception. Allow me, a complete layman when it comes to stem cells, to explain:

There are two classes of stem cells: multipotent and pluripotent. Pluripotent stem cells can give rise to any type of cell in the body except those needed to support and develop a fetus in the womb. Multipotent stem cells can give rise to a limited number of different types of cells.
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are multipotent. What this means is that while adult stem cell X may only be able to give rise to blood cells, an embryonic stem cell can give rise to blood and any other type of cell.

Adult stem cells have been being used for over four decades to cure disease in the form of bone marrow transplants. So of course people have been cured with adult stem cells. They’ve been researched for far longer than embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells have vastly more potential than adult-derived stem cells because they are pluripotent. What has been done for adult derived stem cells could potentially be done for embryonic stem cells, but on a much larger scale. Unfortunately, scientists have only been researching embryonic stem cells since 1998, all under heavy legal restrictions. Comparing the gains made by adult stem cells to the gains made by embryonic stem cells is akin to comparing the advanced problem-solving abilities of a two year old to that of a thirty year old.

 So why isn’t adult stem cell research receiving more funding? Josephine Quintavalle, director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, says “What you get from [the adult stem cell] approach is a patient-specific cure. There's no middleman . . . and there's no drug company that's going to get rich as a result of it.”

Why would a treatment with embryonic stem cells be less “patient-specific” than treatment with adult stem cells? Can the author provide evidence of the lack of funding of adult stem cell research as I have provided evidence showing that adult stem cell research received lots of funding?

If by “middleman” he means the companies who currently own the stem cell lines, then opening up embryonic stem cell research funding would eliminate or reduce this middleman, as those companies who have grandfathered in stem cell lines from before federal funding was banned would no longer be the sole holders of stem cell lines, as other companies could receive funding to develop new lines.

As far as the “get rich” comment… if no one has been cured using embryonic stem cells, how can a company “get rich” from them?

But, she explains, a lot of the pressure for stem-cell research is to find products that they can sell, as opposed to a treatment they can do to cure you.

Evidence please.  So what the author is saying is that embryonic stem cells don’t cure people and aren’t patient-specific, but drug companies think they can get rich off of them by marketing a product that sells rather than cures, due (in part) to this mysterious middleman. Got it. Provide evidence for this assertion.

Quintavalle is just one of many experts from both sides of the debate interviewed in the new documentary, Lines that Divide, produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture. http://www.cbc-network.org/

Ah ha! Here is one point of this article – buy or see this documentary. I’ve e-mailed them and asked for a review copy.

In the documentary you’ll hear first-hand testimonies from people whose lives have been saved through adult stem cell research. Like Barry Goudy, who suffered with multiple sclerosis. Since undergoing adult stem cell replacement therapy, he’s been free from MS for five years.

“adult stem cell replacement therapy” - AKA a bone marrow transplant – has been conducted in uncontrolled trials for people with MS. No controlled trials have been completed, though there are some underway. Here is how it works: MS is an autoimmune disease in which an individual’s immune system attacks the myelin sheath surrounding their nerves. This causes symptoms as nerves do not function properly when the myelin is destroyed or damaged. Bone marrow is extracted from a participant with MS. The participant’s immune system is destroyed with chemotherapy. Then, the participant’s own bone marrow cells are put back in, effectively letting the participant with MS grow a new immune system. There is no proof that it works.

They reboot your immune system,” he explains. “I live a normal life. I coach hockey, I play racquetball, I golf.” Without the adult stem cell transplant, Goudy would probably be in a wheelchair.

The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data (Thanks quackcast). Also, it really annoys me when writers say things like, “if X did not happen, he’d be in a wheelchair’. Being in a wheelchair is better than being stuck in bed without a wheelchair.

Twenty-two-year-old Corrina Archuleta also shares her dramatic recovery from a flesh-eating auto-immune disorder. Her family was making her funeral arrangements before adult stem cell therapy saved her life.

So… she had a bone marrow transplant? I wonder why the authors don’t mention that bone marrow transplants can cure leukemia and other autoimmune disorders. A blood marrow transplant is a transplant of stem cells. Why don’t the authors of this article or the writers of this documentary call it a “bone marrow transplant”? Most people understand what that is. My guess is that if they stop calling it “bone marrow transplant” and call it “adult stem cell transplants” then they can politicize it.

The film also covers why even traditionally pro-choice advocates are speaking out against embryo-destructive stem cell research. In order to extract enough eggs for embryonic stem cell research, a woman’s ovaries are hyper-stimulated so that she will produce a dozen or more eggs at a time.

But doctors know that ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome and the drugs themselves have caused blood clotting, stroke, and even death. The former chief medical officer of the FDA warms that potential egg donors “need to be aware that this is not a procedure that is without risk.” Even the risk of death.

Bone marrow transplants are not without risk, either.

The vast majority of embryonic stem cells are leftovers from thousands of unused embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics. A simple solution to this problem might be to limit the ability of women to donate eggs to a stem cell clinic unless they are part of a fertility procedure. This is not an argument against stem cell research but an argument against fertility procedures.

That’s not what you are seeing in the media. What you do see, however, are celebrities and politicians gushing over the potential for embryo-destructive stem cell research. Even while lives are being saved today by adult stem cell therapy.

Well yes, because embryonic stem cell research does have lots of potential, whereas the potential of adult stem cells has been realized (at least in part) for 40+ years.

We need to be informed in order to help shape the public debate-and encourage our leaders to fund proven, morally unproblematic adult stem cell research.

That’s why I urge you to get a hold of the film Lines that Divide.

Wait, what was that about profits? I don't want scientists to research procedures that have already been proven effective. I want research to fund potentially effective treatments using science-based methodology.

CRI on stem-cells

Here we go with another article from the Christian Research Institute, this time on Stem Cells:

Some of America's hottest celebrities have been delivering emotional performances, designed to strike a resonant chord with their audience. They're pleading with Congress to endorse government-sponsored research involving the use of human embryos.

Why would Hollywood celebrities enter the world of congressional hearings? Because fetal tissue research — especially research on embryonic stem cells — is being trumpeted as a great scientific breakthrough and a biomedical revolution. This revolution, they say, could lead to cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, AIDS, and more.

Consider for a moment why someone at CRI might write a piece on stem cells in which the article threads together the connection of “America’s hottest celebrities” to stem cell research. My guess is that typical readers of CRI are deeply Christian and thus may have a tendency to see celebrities as living in a world of failed values, sin and moral depravity. As such, mentioning celebrities in a piece (especially in this vague sense) is a tactic to get the reader to identify with anti-celebrity rhetoric. We “know” that the Average American® will listen to the advice of a celebrity regardless of said celebrity’s credentials. As such, this is likely to appeal to the intellect of the reader, I.E. “don’t be like the Average American® who gets advice from celebrities. Think for yourself!”

 They're campaigning because they want to see taxpayer dollars go for research programs that may alleviate suffering. That's all well and good, but the real problem is that fetal tissue research requires scientists to engage in unethical and immoral experimentation.

Please back up your assertion that embryonic stem cell fetal tissue research is unethical and immoral.

Some may ask how anyone with a heart could oppose such well-meaning research.

When they ask that, they are approaching the question from the wrong angle. Clearly, that kind of argument is meant to demonize opponents of stem-cell research. Of course we should not want human babies to die in order to help out other sick people. The question then becomes whether or not a collection of several hundred cells in a petri dish is a human baby.

The converse is true when stem cell opponents say that stem cell supporters are supporting mass genocide. By demonizing and misrepresenting your opponent’s argument, you lose credibility and your potential to make others understand your point of view diminishes.

The answer is that stem cell research requires the destruction of living human beings.

Please provide some evidence to back up that statement. Stem cell research does require the destruction of embryos, but I would argue that an embryo is distinct from a living human being. Also, once the embryos are destroyed, stem cells can be propagated almost infinitely.

Only human beings produce the precious stem cells that scientists desire; so, to get enough of them for research purposes, babies, even eight-weeks-old embryos in the womb, must be aborted and die.

Please back up your assertion that 8-week old embryos “must be aborted and die”.  Last I checked (which was right now) most stem cells are originally developed from embryos that are a few days old. Those embryos are grown in the lab rather than aborted from a womb.  Scientists have no problem “getting enough for research purposes”. The problem scientists have with embryonic stem cell research are people like the folks at CRI, who do not understand how stem cell research works and actively misconstrue information. The author of this piece makes it sound like scientists will need to go on fetus harvesting sprees to get the stem cells they need. No such thing needs to occur. The problem is not acquiring the stem cells – the problem is politics.

This is what NIH has to say:

“There are several sources of stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells can be isolated from human embryos that are a few days old. Cells from these embryos can be used to create pluripotent stem cell "lines" —cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in the laboratory. Pluripotent stem cell lines have also been developed from fetal tissue (older than 8 weeks of development).

“Non-embryonic, or "adult" stem cells have been identified in many organs and tissues. Typically there is a very small number of multipotent stem cells in each tissue, and these cells have a limited capacity for proliferation, thus making it difficult to generate large quantities of these cells in the laboratory. Stem cells are thought to reside in a specific area of each tissue (called a "stem cell niche") where they may remain quiescent (non-dividing) for many years until they are activated by a normal need for more cells, or by disease or tissue injury. These cells are also called somatic stem cells.

Once a stem cell line is established from a cell in the body, it is essentially immortal, no matter how it was derived. That is, the researcher using the line will not have to go through the rigorous procedure necessary to isolate stem cells again. Once established, a cell line can be grown in the laboratory indefinitely and cells may be frozen for storage or distribution to other researchers.

Back to CRI...

Such researchers are willing to overlook these troublesome facts for the so-called "greater good of society," an argument straight out of Dr. Mengele's Nazi laboratories.

Some CRI writers are very fond of the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, aren’t they?

Barring that, the author of this piece is once again misrepresenting the position of his opponent. We do not want mass genocide of babies in order to save people from disease. 

From the Hippocratic Oath of the fourth century before Christ to modern-day documents, medical ethics explicitly prohibit the harming of human life. "First, do no harm" has been the solemn oath of generations of physicians, but advocates of stem cell research would have us believe it's not a problem.

Belief has nothing to do with it. We swear not to harm human life, but it is more complicated than this simple proclamation. There are many gray areas in which one must use reason and critical thinking to determine if one’s actions are or are not harming human life. We are not trying to convince people that “harming human life” is okay. We’re convincing people that what we are doing isn’t “harming human life”.

 Some go further, saying that refusing to conduct such experiments is unethical! What's the basis for their assertion? It’s the possibility that the therapies derived from stem cell research could potentially alleviate the suffering of millions. The argument, however, is logically insupportable. Destroying life in order to save life is irrational and wrong, and it cannot be construed as an ethical act.

Maybe. Once again, the author simplifies a complicated issue into a soundbyte. We destroy life to save life every single day, simply by being alive ourselves. Humans sacrifice themselves in order to save others. We kill animals for food. We cut tumors out of people. We kill primates for research. Virtually all of medical science has destroyed life to alleviate suffering. Be more specific. If stem cells can be studied without killing people, then stem cells should be studied. Once again, stem cell supporters are not saying that they want to kill babies to save other people.  "destroying life to save life is irrational" just doesn't cut it as an argument. The author needs to specifically argue that destroying an embryo is unethical in order to have strong logical footing.

Furthermore, government-sanctioned destruction of human embryos isn't just unethical, it violates existing law. Federal funds may not be used for research in which embryos are destroyed. Some have tried to circumvent the law, but if Congress succumbs to the pressure to compromise, they'll be setting dangerous precedents for how human life is valued in the twenty-first century.

I am confused by this argument that stem cell research “isn’t just unethical, it violates existing law”. People would not be pleading with congress to lift the ban on government finding of stem cell research if government funding of stem cell research were allowed.This is like saying it is wrong for people to support the legalization of marijuana because marijuana is illegal.

The author seems to be claiming that human life will be devalued in the 21st century if the ban on federal funding for stem cell research is lifted. This is interesting. What kind of effects might we see from this devaluation? I guess we will see more destruction of blastocycsts and the potential to cure some of humanity’s most miserable ailments. This does not seem like a devaluation of human life to me.

Thankfully, several members of Congress are fighting for the unborn; and you can help them. Contact your representatives and let them know how you feel. Urge them to stay the course and make sure federally funded stem cell research remains illegal — regardless of what Hollywood superstars may say.

You should do what you believe think is right, regardless of what Hollywood superstars may say - that’s certainly true. You can also contact your representatives and urge them to lift the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.

Allergies, quackery, and remarkable cures

I recently received an email from an acquaintance, whom I shall not name here, on the subject of allergies (people who know me tend to bring that subject up now and then). Anything I represent as a quote below will actually be a paraphrase either to clarify or to disguise certain characteristic writing traits.
Here follows a snippet from the first email in our exchange:

Here is one of the articles (I find it very interesting):
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/enzymes.htm
This is from there:

It was found that after a person eats cooked food, his/her blood responds immediately by increasing the number of white blood cells. This is a well-known phenomena called 'digestive leukocytosis', in which there is a rise in the number of leukocytes - white blood cells - after eating.
Since digestive leukocytosis was always observed after a meal, it was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating. No one knew why the number of white cells rises after eating, since this appeared to be a stress response, as if the body was somehow reacting to something harmful such as infection, exposure to toxic chemicals or trauma.

Apart from the fact that the authors of the website do not know that phenomena is the plural form of the noun, we can’t learn a whole lot from this, but the briefest of perusals of the website demonstrates it to be a hotbed of quackery, some of it dangerous. As I said in my initial reply,

That website is, unfortunately, full of shit. Some of it is actually very dangerous. Chelation -- which they seem to think is just *great* -- is a favourite of alternative medicine people, but it's a terrible idea.

[I’m snipping a lot of stuff here—if you want to know what I think about chelation, ask.]

…chelation therapies are toxic. […] Another interesting fact is that […] chelation therapy will leech [sic] calcium from your body and may lead to hypocalcemia. This can cause you to stop breathing or cause cardiac arrhythmia, in really bad cases…
…I won't take my medical advice from people I *know* to be full of shit.

I consider this a useful caveat—the website contains stuff that makes sense to me, but that doesn’t prevent some of it from being shit, and as a single source it’s therefore useless.
Now, the problem is that although the website, in all fairness, does contain a reasonable description of what an allergy is, my acquaintance took away something rather different, judging from my acquaintance’s reply, email #3 in the sequence:

The whole point is that by eating properly, and giving your body the food it will be happy with, and not junk it with stuff such as doughnuts, dead burgers, and cooked tasty food (just because we like it), you will strengthen the natural fighting mechanism of your body, which is not now fuctioning properly in most humans, because it is always busy fighting dead food.

There is a terrible irony here, because an allergic reaction is an immune response—an immune response to what I call spurious pathogens, which is my trumped-up way of saying it’s triggered by the wrong things; when I go into anaphylactic shock from exposure to peanut butter, it’s because my immune system thinks I’ve taken poison and is doing all it can to rid me of it (unfortunately killing me in the process). The immune system is therefore not too weak in a person with allergies; it’s responding too strongly!

In fact, some very interesting research has generated the hypothesis that the reason why allergies are so prevalent in the hypersanitised Western nation is because we are, in a sense, too healthy. Carl Zimmer describes this beautifully in his book Parasite Rex. The brief gist of it (as I understand it) is that our immune system helps us fight off viruses, bacteria, and parasites in general. Therefore, parasites have evolved mechanisms to suppress our immune system. In response, evolution comes to supercharge our immune system to cope with the parasites’ chemical weaponry; they escalate in turn…and so on, for a few million years, until modern living virtually eliminates whole arrays of parasites and leaves us with supercharged immune systems without the dose of immunosuppressants they would normally be hampered by. Hence, it may be, they go haywire.

And this isn’t just crazy talk. It’s real science, and experiments have been performed, including one study (also here) where test subjects were deliberately infected with (controlled doses of) hookworms, and experienced relief of allergy symptoms.

There’s a kind of terrible backwardness throughout this entire discussion so far, such as when my sparring partner in discussion asks

Would you rather eat dead but safe food, or live and energetic (perhaps with traces of nature's dark side as parasites)?

Need I mention that the most energetic of foods are ones high in quick carbohydrates, simple sugars, and fats? Need I point out that vegetables are good for you not because they are energetic, but specifically because they are low in energy density? Apparently I do. As for the dark side…

The ironic thing is that this person and I could probably largely agree on what constitutes a healthy diet, but the mode of thinking is completely different. But then, I do not generally engage in debate to dispute (specifically) a conclusion, but rather flaws in reasoning. Any foolish way of thinking may lead you accidentally to the right answer, but relying on it is dangerous. This is the same thing that leads to other alternative medicine treatments—I will not use the word cures to describe them. Alternative medicine kills. (Chelation therapy can certainly kill.) Detoxification and colon cleansing kill, too. Even raw food diets have ended up killing people—children—when people failed to apply critical thought.

That is why I am proud to consider myself a skeptic, and that is why I will never abide terrible reasoning, even when no conclusions have ended up catastrophic—yet.

Homeopathy and the curse of the scientific method Pt1

I really wish I could find a free version of this journal article so that I could share it with you all - it is single the best piece of writing I have ever seen concerning homeopathy and the placebo effect.

Buried in the pages of The Veterinary Journal is an absolute treasure known as Overall (2009). In this article the authors first outline something very important: how to understand the role of bias in selecting populations for use in drug or medication trials. If a researcher approaches an individual to ask them to take part in a trial of a homeopathic medication, there are three main types of people a researcher can encounter, with respect to belief about the efficacy of homeopathy:

1. People who believe homeopathy is effective.
2. People who are unsure.
3. People who believe homeopathy is ineffective.

Of these three people, type 1 is the most likely type to agree to participate in a trial, especially one that is time consuming or involves a lot of work or effort on the part of the participant. When randomizing such a pool, it is highly unlikely that individuals in each respective pool will think (in this case) that homeopathy is ineffective. They are much more likely to believe homeopathy is effective. If they do not know much about homeopathy, they may assume that since this is not a trial to see if homeopathy works, but a trial to see if a particular homeopathic medication works, that homeopathy is therefore evidence based, and researchers are trying to prove that a particular remedy is effective. Either way, most people will be hoping and looking for positive results.

In animal trials in which owners are taking part in the evaluation of the behaviors of their own pets, they are likely to be quite biased or report different results based on their belief in the efficacy of the treatment. This is especially true if the changes in animal behavior are more subjective rather than objective. An owner who believes that a remedy is working may notice things like panting, drooling, or pacing less than an owner who has no such belief.

People often say that animals do not suffer from a placebo effect – that is, if you treat an animal with a medication it does not really know you are giving it something that should make it feel better. If the animal is in pain, it is not likely to feel less pain if you give it a sugar pill. This is basically true, but completely irrelevant, especially when observations of changes in animal behavior (indicative of an effect on the animal) are reported by people not trained in objectivity.

There is a problem in medical literature known as inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability is the measure of different observers’ ability to report similar findings using the same measurement tool. A measurement tool is said to have good inter-rater reliability when several different individuals report very similar results. Inter-rater reliability relies on training in how to use the measurement tool and how to report findings objectively.

For example, several individuals grading a true or false quiz would have very high inter-rater reliability; that is several individuals, if given a key with the answers, will very likely give the same person the same grade. Inter-rater reliability may be reduced if the graders aren’t given an answer key and have to decide if the answers are correct based on their own knowledge. Inter-rater reliability could be extremely low if the tests are given to graders who have no answer key and varying levels of knowledge of the test material.

Similarly, trained investigators using a measure to observe the behaviors of animals may have high inter-rater reliability, whereas a trained investigator observing little Rover’s behaviors versus Mrs. MyDogIsMyChild observing Rover’s behaviors may have very low inter-rater reliability.

So, this is why we must use double blind placebo controlled testing for animals. The owners of animals are very likely to report their findings based on how much they believe the remedy will work. Just think about all of the times a dog owner reported that their dog “looked depressed because daddy went on a business trip”, or “pooped on the floor out of spite”. We’re very good at projecting emotions onto our animals that are not there.

The pet may not know that they are participating in an experiment, but the pet owner knows, and the pet owner is the one reporting perceived effects of treatment. This is why placebo-controls in veterinary medicine are as essential as they are in human medicine.

A placebo is pretty well defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: “A drug, medicine, therapy, etc., prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient of being given treatment than for any direct physiological effect; esp. one with no specific therapeutic effect on a patient's condition, but believed by the patient to be therapeutic (and sometimes therefore effective). Also: a substance with no therapeutic effect used as a control in testing new drugs, etc.; a blank sample in a test”

Obviously, since the placebo effect can be so powerful, especially with respect to pain, anxiety, and other subjective issues, placebo trials must be conducted in order to separate remedies or medicines which affect physiology directly from remedies or medications which affect someone psychologically – it does mot matter if the pill is a sugar pill, a starch pill, a lactose pill or – dare I say – a homeopathic pill chemically identical to a sugar pill – the individual took a pill, and their belief that the pill will relieve their symptoms causes their symptoms to be relived. That’s a placebo.

Now, if a homeopathic, herbal, or X-type of medicine remedy has the same effects as a sugar pill, one can reasonably conclude that the remedy is inert physiologically. That is, it has no effect beyond the same effects seen in a sugar pill.

So, when companies market their remedies as being “80% effective”, but don’t tell you that the placebo arm of their study was also “80% effective”, people are being misled. Yet this is what homeopathic practitioners often do. In conventional medicine, if there is no difference between the effects of a placebo and the effects of a new type of medicine, then that medicine is discarded in favor of medicines in which there is an actual effect beyond the placebo effect. Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, on the other hand, seems to absolutely rely on the placebo effect to the point at which we may as well rename it to, “Complementary and Alternative Placebos” save for the fact that their effect will be diminished if people are aware they are being treated with placebo medicine.

Tomorrow, we discuss the importance of effect size!

Overall, K., Dunham, A., Homeopathy and the curse of the scientific method. The Veterinary Journal(2009)  180: 141-148
Online abstract

Journal: Third force therapy for atheists

Today I stumbled upon this journal article[1], in which the author treats three atheist clients who are experiencing mental illnesses (manic-depression and panic attacks), encourages them to “renew their connection to God” using “third force therapy”, and reports that his clients were “fully recovered within a period of 6 months”.

This article is actually one of a scant few research articles specifically looking at self-identified atheists as the intervention group, so naturally I was interested in reading it. I find it quite telling that the only peer-reviewed journal articles I can find that study atheists as a group from a psychological, sociological, or health perspective are ones like this one.

“Third force therapy” in psychology is typically referred to in the context of humanist psychology, in which the “forces” are behaviorism, psychoanalysis and humanism, with humanism being the third force.

Humanism in psychology focuses more on subjective experiences and interpretations of life events and in many ways is not considered science as its interpretations are nonfalsifiable. Categories of psychology that fall under the scope of humanism in psychology include sensitivity training, family therapies, self-help, co-counseling, etc.

This journal article seeks to define the “third force” not as humanism but as a god. In other words, there are three forces in the room: the client, the counselor, and a god.

The author introduces his work by stating that psychotherapy in the west is based on the objective and exclusive presence of a client and a therapist and in doing so loses the close bonding of clients to their god. He says that this bonding is reaches via various belief systems that are part of the natural connection between man and his god.

Obviously, the assumption made here is that there is a god, it is the god the author expects him to be, the connection with said god is good, and westerners, being the objective god-denying idiots they are, are doing their clients a disservice by ignoring the obvious (nonobjective...) reality of said god.

Moving on, the author states that many people are almost embarrassed to admit that they believe in a god, in this age of science and reason. Because we face “rampant materialism” a “disintegrating family system” and “international discord” and claims that developing a closer relationship with his god in order to rely on his god’s will “would seem more than necessary”.

It’s clear from the author’s choice of words that materialism is not good, disintegration of family systems and international discord are not good, and society would be better off turning to his god to cope with these things. I am not sure what the author means by “materialism” in this context – the tendency for people to love material goods? Or scientific materialism, which holds that the events in the universe have purely material causes?

He moves on to say that because humans are always searching for some god, we’re not wrong to assume that they are searching for something which exists and which they have a connection with. I would argue that the search for a god does not mean that there is a god; rather the search for a god is a way for humans to cope with the inability to control or explain certain aspects of the world around them. So yes, it is wrong to assume that because humans search for a god that they must have a connection with the thing they are searching for.

The author posits that intellectualization and the “scientific” desire for clear answers may block the natural connection we have with his god, and that this blocked connection may manifest itself in psychological symptoms, alienation, or an interference in the ability to experience joy. Moreover, the struggle between believing that one must turn to oneself for control and support may cause individuals to turn against oneself, if they find they are insufficient at controlling their lives in a productive manner. As such, submitting to the author’s god is a reflection of inner strength

I have to disagree. Science does not search for clear cut answers – clear cut answers are the answers religion claims to have.  Intellectualization cannot block connections with something that does not exist. I have no reason to assume that the author’s god exists, and the only evidence he gives for the existence of his god is that humans have a history of searching for it. I might also add that the author is making all of these substantial claims without any reference to other articles or evidence to back them up – his claims are purely speculative and clearly coming from an individual whose worldview is rooted in his religion.

The author mentions an experiment in which two monkeys were placed in a cage and given shocks to their feet every 20 seconds. One monkey was given a switch and taught to prevent shocks by flicking a switch. The second monkey was at the mercy of the first monkey’s switch tapping ability. The first monkey (the one in control) died after 28 days, while the 2nd monkey relying on the will and ability of the first) was fine. This is taken as evidence that trusting the will of a god will have beneficial health effects.

I think this experiment is less about the health benefits of someone who gives up control of someone else and more about the fact that the first monkey was under constant stress to flick a switch every 20 seconds, while the 2nd monkey could, for example, sleep or eat fairly peacefully. This also says nothing about any god.

I have read plenty of studies suggesting that religious belief can aid individuals in coping with mental illness and I would not deny that this is helpful for people, but I do deny that the help one gets from believing they are close to a god is due to the influence of an actual, existing god.

Regarding methods, therapy took place by unobtrusively encouraging the atheists to make or renew their connection with a god by removing blockages. He goes so far as to say that “Without belief in God there is no hope, without the rituals of religion there is no direction to hope; together they result in a strength that cannot be defeated by life.” The therapist (the author) is trained to restore these missing connections. The author reported that he applied this therapy to 3 atheists (both aged 25), two of which belonged to a “leftist/atheist group”. The last was an 18 year old addicted to marijuana and was abused and abusive. The author reports that he found religion to be a conflict in the lives of all 3 men, so he used third force therapy. He reports success after 6 months, with each individual’s symptoms degreasing in direct proportion to their new relationship with their god. All three clients became asymptomatic Muslims.

Of course, the author offers no objective measure of the severity of the symptoms to begin with, no pre- or post-tests, and nothing to measure. The reader is forced to rely entirely on his subjective opinion of the curative nature of his therapy. The reader is also encouraged by the author to conclude that third force therapy is designed to clear the path to a god so that said god in his mercy will cure psychological symptoms as well as have a protective effect against future symptoms.

I can only conclude from my examination thus far of the research literature on self-identified atheists that there is a lack of scholarship, rigor and objectivity that is present in robust research. There is no objective measure affirming the hypothesis that psychological symptoms are due to some kind of undefined “blockage” to a god.

[1]  Jahangir, S. Third Force Therapy and Its Impact on Treatment Outcome. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (1995) 5(2) 125-129.
Online abstract

Petter on Statistics and Medicine

Petter is such a good blogger, I am inclined to make him a contributor.

Once again, my most awesome commenter Petter Häggholm who wrote this guest post and this Ray a Day post and blogs over here (or by RSS; you can use tags to narrow it down to essay-style posts, or only posts related to skepticism or religion), has extended his EPIC WIN BRAINMEAT to my blog. Enjoy!

During my coffee break, I read an article in Scientific American Mind called Knowing Your Chances (available online). I think it is an outstanding article, and you should read it. The most evocative part may have been a simple example:

Consider a woman who has just received a positive result from a mammogram and asks her doctor: Do I have breast cancer for sure, or what are the chances that I have the disease? In a 2007 continuing education course for gynecologists, Gigerenzer asked 160 of these practitioners to answer that question given the following information about women in the region:

• The probability that a woman has breast cancer (prevalence) is 1 percent.
• If a woman has breast cancer, the probability that she tests positive (sensitivity) is 90 percent.
• If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability that she nonetheless tests positive (false-positive rate) is 9 percent.

What is the best answer to the patient’s query?

1. The probability that she has breast cancer is about 81 percent.
2. Out of 10 women with a positive mammogram, about nine have breast cancer.
3. Out of 10 women with a positive mammogram, about one has breast cancer.
4. The probability that she has breast cancer is about 1 percent.

Before you read on, take a brief moment to think about it, but also note your gut feeling. Done? Let’s continue:

Gynecologists could derive the answer from the statistics above, or they could simply recall what they should have known anyhow. In either case, the best answer is C; only about one out of every 10 women who test positive in screening actually has breast cancer. The other nine are falsely alarmed. Prior to training, most (60 percent) of the gynecologists answered 90 percent or 81 percent, thus grossly overestimating the probability of cancer. Only 21 percent of physicians picked the best answer—one out of 10.
Doctors would more easily be able to derive the correct probabilities if the statistics surrounding the test were presented as natural frequencies. For example:

• Ten out of every 1,000 women have breast ­cancer.
• Of these 10 women with breast cancer, nine test positive.
• Of the 990 women without cancer, about 89 nonetheless test positive.

Thus, 98 women test positive, but only nine of those actually have the disease. After learning to translate conditional probabilities into natural frequencies, 87 percent of the gynecologists understood that one in 10 is the best answer.

I’m happy to say that I did get it right on the first try, but I strongly agree witht the authors’ opinion that it is not intuitive when the statistics are cited as probabilities rather than natural frequencies. The reason I got it right is because I’ve done a bit of math and a wee bit of stats, I enjoy reading some blogs that talk about medical statistics, I know some of the not-quite-obvious ground rules of probabilities; I know what Type I and Type II errors are (even if I occasionally mix them up)…

…And, perhaps crucially, I’ve spent time thinking about false positives in medical testing before. When I get my periodic routine screenings for STIs (I’ve never had symptoms or tested positive for any, I’m glad to say, but I feel a responsible person should get tested anyway!), I’ve asked myself the hypothetical question What if it did show positive for, say, HIV? What are the odds that I would actually have it? (It turns out that if you’re a heterosexual male, and if you test positive for HIV, there’s about a 50% chance that you don’t have it! You should play it safe, but get re-tested and don’t panic. Some people commit suicide when they get positive test results, even though they’re as likely as not to be healthy.)

Still, while my gut told me the answer was not A (wherein I did better than most of the gynecologists), I had to think about it for a minute to figure out which was the proper answer. People need to be educated on this stuff. Meanwhile, if you haven’t had the benefit of statistical education, keep this one thing in mind: The obvious answer is not always correct, so if you’re unsure, ask someone who can do the maths. And, sadly, even your doctor may not know. I actually find it rather sad that as after learning to translate conditional probabilities into natural frequencies, 87 percent of the gynecologists understood that one in 10 is the best answer, this means that even after simplification, more than 1 in 10 gynecologists didn’t get it. Your doctor can spot the symptoms and order the right tests, but you may need a mathematically inclined friend to actually calculate the risks.

Massage after exercise myth busted?

You know the long-held belief that massage after exercise increases blood flow and reduces lactic acid, thus making your muscles hurt less afterward?

Apparently, it’s a myth. There are no scientific studies showing that massage improves blood flow and leads to a reduction in lactic acid (I looked, and so did the researchers of the study). It’s not that massage is bad for you, it’s that compressing a muscle apparently restricts blood flow rather than facilitate it.


According to researchers:

A Queen's University research team has blown open the myth that massage after exercise improves circulation to the muscle and assists in the removal of lactic acid and other waste products.

"This dispels a common belief in the general public about the way in which massage is beneficial," says Kinesiology and Health Studies professor Michael Tschakovsky. "It also dispels that belief among people in the physical therapy profession. All the physical therapy professionals that I have talked to, when asked what massage does, answer that it improves muscle blood flow and helps get rid of lactic acid. Ours is the first study to challenge this and rigorously test its validity."

The belief that massage aids in the removal of lactic acid from muscle tissue is so pervasive it is even listed on the Canadian Sports Massage Therapists website as one of the benefits of massage, despite there being absolutely no scientific research to back this up.

Kinesiology MSc candidate Vicky Wiltshire and Dr. Tschakovsky set out to discover if this untested hypothesis was true, and their results show that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid from muscle after exercise.

I want to be incredulous to this information because to me, it makes sense that massage would help increase blood flow – after all, by compressing the blood out of a muscle, you’re pushing it somewhere, and once you stop compressing the muscle, blood will fill the capillaries back up. Then again, if you’ve got a series of airtight hoses trickling water, will squeezing one of the hoses repeatedly cause more water to flow through that hose? Perhaps not. Aside from this, the circulatory system is a closed one, so increased blood flow in one area will lead to decreased blood flow in other areas, barring an increase in heart rate and thus an increase in flow rate of the whole system.

This is the first study to actually look at blood flow and lactic acid and the role massage plays in these two elements of muscle, so repeated studies are definitely in order.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.2

Onward!

During Dr. Harrub's B.s. (That's short for Bible study), after he talked about how the Bible had "scientific foreknowledge" and thus the only "logical" conclusion one could come to was that the Bible was inspired, he moved on to oceanography.

He cited ecclesiastes 1:7 (All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.)  and 11:3 (If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.) and Amos 9:6 (is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.) as examples of the amazing knowledge of the water cycle found in the Bible. Harrub went as far as to say that we did not have a complete understanding of the water cycle until the 17th century.

For one, this is not a complete understanding of the water cycle. The Bible pretty clearly reflects the understanding of the water cycle at the time it was written.

You'll note that the bible also has another most amazing insight - once trees fall, they stay there. Wow! There is no way people could have known that.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub talked about all of the amazing scientific foreknowledge of medicine in the Bible. As an example he cited Genesis 17:12 (And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations). Apparently, amazingly, the 8th day is the absolute best day to cut off bits of your baby son's penis. From Apologetics press:

In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? In 1935, professor H. Dam proposed the name “vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination” (1953, pp. 125-126). Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?

On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak. The chart below, patterned after one published by S.I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, portrays this in graphic form.

  It seems to me that the very simple act of observing that babies have the best recovery after they've had bits of their genitals cut off on the 8th day rather than some other day would only take the death or sickness of a few babies. In prescientific times, many behaviors or rituals such as this had a health benefit, regardless of whether or not that health benefit was understood. Why didn't God tell everyone that vitamin K was the reason we cut off baby cock bits directly?

How about some of the other great medical foreknowledge in the Bible?

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick. (James 5:14-15)

As they were going away, a man who could not talk and was demon-possessed was brought to him. After the demon was cast out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowds were amazed and said, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel!" (Matthew 9:32-33)

 If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee. (Exodus 15:26)

And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians. (2 Chronicles 16:12)

So according to the Bible, prayer and faith will heal the sick, mental illnesses are caused by demon-posession, and if you see a doctor, if you're sick, it's your own damn fault for not loving god enough, and if you see a doctor instead of god for your diseases, your diseases will never heal.

What amazing knowledge of medicine we find in the Bible! The only logical conclusion we can come to is that god handed this knowledge down on high - or, a bunch of desert-dwellers wrote this book with the limited knowledge of medicine they had at the time.

Anti-aging pill fail: RezV

Today I got some new spam in my inbox: this time, it's for RezV, a supplement pill containing resveratrol, a substance largely touted as being found in red wine.

The body of the e-mails says, in big letters: "discover how YOU can live to be 150"

When you go to their website, you're greeted with a video of an Oprah (Pseudoscience Queen) segment, where a very hyperactive dude with creepy eyebrows hawks a bunch of green horse pills that apparently contains a concentration of resveratrol. You'll also find the logos of USA Today, NBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Fox News, CBS, People, NBC (again?), Reader's Digest, Cosmopolitan, and PBS.

Their moneyback guarantee:

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
We are so confident that you will love RezV that we are not only going to give you a free trial period for the full month supply, but a RISK FREE 14 day money back guarantee. You will have 14 days from the date of your order to evaluate the product. If you decide you are unhappy with the product, cancel at any time during that 14 day period and pay nothing except shipping and handling. If you do not cancel, you will receive every 30 days a fresh one-month supply of RezV as part of our delivery program, for which you will be automatically billed $87.97 per month (a 21% savings off the regular price!) There are no obligations, and you can
cancel at anytime via our customer support line.

Since when does  "RISK FREE" mean that if you don't cancel within 14 days of placing your order (which means that if it takes a week to get from their warehouse to your doorstep, you have 7 days to try it) you'll be automatically billed $90+ per month. It seems to me that purchasing your "free trial" comes with the risk of your credit card being charged if you don't hop up and call the customer service line - and you know that they are going to try to convince you to keep using their product.

Oh come on Ziztur, you say, they can't really mean that the 14 day trial period begins from the moment you order it, can they? Yep, it says as much under "Terms & Conditions":

14 DAY TRIAL PERIOD INCLUDES SHIPPING AND TRANSIT TIME

Some of the "testimonials" on the website are just frightening. Take "Kelly Ann's" Testimonial:

My muscle tone is so much more firm, especially around my waist area, without actually having to work out.

 Oh shit! She's had a brain injury! Abnormal muscle tone is a sign of serious central nervous system dysfunction. I have to recommended that she stop taking her placebopills and see a real doctor.

Studies on humans have shown that even in doses much higher than the pull form offered (5 grams vs 20-200mg, depending on who is hawking it) did... nothing. The headline-grabbing Harvard study, published in 2006, showed that obese, middle aged mice who had resveratrol added to their high-calorie, high-fat diet became healthier and lived longer. A similar study, published later by the same researchers, showed that middle-aged healthy mice fed regular diets did not live longer or have increased health when given resveratrol vs. a placebo. [1] There are no studies showing that resveratrol has any positive affect on humans, though there are studies showing that it increased the lifespan of some fish, a fruit fly, and a type of worm. Yet before appropriate studies can be conducted on humans, countless pill-peddling companies are selling their supplements for unforgivably expensive prices.

It's funny that all of the websites and videos show people drinking red wine, or show pictures of red wine, and talk about how the compound is found in red wine, but most (all?) resveratrol supplements are not made from wine or grapes (or peanuts, which also contains resveratrol) but japanese knotweed. I guess it doesn't sound quite as enticing and sophisticated to say your supplement is derived from  Japanese knotweed as it does to say it's from red wine.

All of this red-wine-makes-you-healthier stuff comes from the idea of the French Paradox - wherein the French supposedly consume a diet higher in saturated fats, but have less heart disease than Americans - a 60 Minutes show in 1991 suggested that this was due to the French's consumption or red wine. Even the Wikipedia article on the subject suggests that the French Paradox is an overblown case of misplaced causation. The idea has been debunked with research by ... ironically ... some researchers in France. The French Paradox has also been debunked by statisticians - but this doesn't stop weight-loss companies from continuing to use it to their advantage.

1. Schard, D. Nutrition Action Health Letter; Mar2009, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p9-9, 3/5p, 1 color

Faith Infiltration: New Testament Fellowship

You've got to admit, any church that has fractals on it's homepage gets at least one point. Such is the case with New Testament Fellowship Church, our first "non-denominational" faith infiltration.

Enter the sanctuary, and you're greeted with... a rock concert for Jesus. They had it all - huge projection screen, a drummer behind a drum shield that still managed to be loud, electric guitars and bass, keyboards and the like, with a male singer belting out tunes in a gravely voice. The sanctuary had a black ceiling with lighting equipment exposed, and more contemporary graphics like the ones on the website. No crosses. No stained glass. No pews. People dancing in their seats. The guitarist even ran through the congregation and stood on a chair to rock out.

A song ended, and the projection screen above the pulpit went black. Sing along if you know the words, the leader said - and then they broke into an impressively good cover of Collective Soul's "Shine". The lead vocalist was nearly a clone of the lead singer of Collective Soul.

Music ended, and the sermon began - it was all about prayer. The pastor was a young guy wearing a hip shirt and jeans, and he spoke of how one can be best blessed by praying for others. It was generally a feel good message with a couple of interesting things thrown in:

1. The pastor told the congregation that there are "liberals out there in the left wing that really loathe Christianity." It's interesting how lots of Christians think that anytime someone disagrees with them it is hatred or loathing, and that this hatred or loathing is something that strengthens them, rather than making them question exactly why people speak out about Christianity. The Bible spoke of persecution, so any persecution proves the Bible was right. There are always going to be people that disagree with you, and generally they are not disagreeing with Christians because they are "bad" or "lost" and Christians are "good" or "saved".

2. The pastor told the congregation not to use prayer as a hammer - and he spoke of "abortionists" as the example. Rather than pray that they be "judged", pray that the lord bless them. This was, if not tolerant, at least more ethically acceptable to me than some of the other things I have heard churches say about abortion supporters.

3. The pastor actually used the A-word (!!), which is the first time we've heard it uttered by a pastor as part of a sermon. He said something like this, while on the topic of having faith, "Now, I know people will say they are atheists, and go ahead and let them say that because if they get into a jam, they'll pray too".  Okay, great. This is about the same as me saying, "Now, I know people will say they are theists, and go ahead and let them say it because when things get bad they'll admit they don't believe in God"

4. The pastor said that in this church, they aren't afraid to talk about whether or not prayer is really effective. Okay, cool. He actually cited a study (woa!) by Randolph Byrd, M.D. (and the dude actually said the name of the guy responsible for the study, he gets another point) that looked at intercessory prayer of cardiac patients in 1988. The study used about 400 patients, divided them into two groups, and had one group prayed for while the other group was not prayed for. The patients did not know they were being prayed for. The study was fairly sound in methodology but the significance of it was highly exaggerated. A good critique can be found here, but let's just say that the results were not impressive and not replicable. The study tracked 26 categories, and only six showed any significance, those six were related to one-another, and the significance was very small and easily traced to unperceived differences in the two groups or chance.

While the pastor was talking about tithing, he actually claimed that tithing for this church had a 90-day money-back guarantee. He said that if any new member of the church tithed for 3 months and then decided that God was a liar, he'd give them their money back. I'm not really sure what to think of this. I guess I can't be eligible because a non-existent thing can't lie.

He also decided to bring up the one story that gets Flimsy and my blood boiling - but I'll let Flimsy rant about tithing and Abraham in his section:

*Flimsyman:

Anyone who's followed this blog continuously might remember how much I hate Genesis 22.  This is the story of God commanding Abraham to kill his own son.  He gives no reason why, except, apparently, to test Abraham's loyalty to him.  This story is repulsive.  As I told Ziztur after the service earlier today, what amazes me about this story is how much Christians love it.  We've heard this story discussed in the sermon three times out of the few months we've been doing the faith infiltrations.  For the love of fuck, WHY?  This story is fucking disgusting!  Don't these people realize how absurd this story portrays their god as being?  Are they that blind?  FUCK.

Sigh.  Needless to say, I basically DON'T think highly of a church, ever, who mentions this story in a positive light.  They didn't help my opinion of them by using this story to illustrate that you should donate to the church.  The guy talked for ten minutes about how you should give because if you do God will give back to you and "You cannot out-give God."  Horseshit.  Your god is a monster, and your own sacred text demonstrates it.

Exams

So I am siting here proctoring an exam for the first year OT students - basically, I am sitting in a room full of students while they take a long open-book exam that requires such extensive space that they don't all fit in one room - and I just realized that I am proctoring for the final exam of the class that ultimately was the catalyst for me to become an atheist.

I seriously doubt any other students took away from the class what I did. Some of these students are the same ones that meet in a weekly Bible study group during lunch each Monday. I am on the Bible study group's mailing list, so each week I receive messages such as:

Monday we talked about Spiritual Warfare...    Jesus... focus on him.  But, we need to be alert to spiritual attacks so that we can pray them off of us and get back to loving on Jesus.  Don't be distracted by the schemes of the devil.   He is the father of lies... all he has to fight with is words.  SO REBUKE HIM.  When Jesus lives in you, you are filled with light.   Darkness can not stay there when you tell it to leave in the name of Jesus.  PERSEVERE... familiar spirits are a pain in the booty but even the crap we've been dealing with for a long time can not stay when we tell it to leave (it can come back through... just keep on rebuking!)  Finally, remember:  warfare starts at home, we need to get our hearts cleaned up... then start asking God to let you carry other people and start fighting some battles!  Maybe God wants your praying for people on the metro, or your classmates (but not like during class instead of paying attention ;) ), your city, state, countries on the other side of the world?  Get after a burden that you're passionate about!

FINALLY, if you feel like that whole being attacked thing was speaking right to your heart... PLEASE email me or grab me at school and lets pray together.

 

PRAY ON YOUR ARMOR AND THEN LETS GET IT DIRTY...

It scares me a little that believers can sound so militant. This is from a group of students in med school, most of whom are in their twenties. They invited me to their weekly group, but it was while I had class.

I wonder if they would perceive me as the enemy, or perceive my questions as spiritual attacks. Would my words be interpreted as scheme of the devil?

It seems to be that believing you are being spiritually attacked only serves to distance you from other people in the world. These are not only students that are not quite as far along in their schooling as I am, but potential co-workers. We're all part of the same schema, part of the large, incestuous body of occupational therapists. My ability to get along with my peers is huge in the professional world: fail at networking and your career suffers. So do I come to their Bible study and let them know I am a heathen? I would never dream of judging them professionally for being a theist, but I don't know if the street goes both ways. We're not playing on the same moral playground.

Abortion and informed consent

A friend of mine runs a blog called Pro-Life Voice, where Flimsy and I have been debating for weeks on issues of abortion. weeks. We've got practically a novel written in the comments section of his blog. Our debates have gotten me to research both positions and have shed some light on some common assertions.

It is often asserted by some people who want to abolish abortion that Pro-Choice activists don't actually care about the rights of women. One of the (many) reasons they justify this assertion is by pointing out the fact that said activists have opposed legislative acts such as the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act.

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act would have mandated by law that physician's performing abortion read a Congressionally scripted statement about fetal pain and give out a pamphlet giving out information regarding fetal pain. The act was opposed by the House in 2005.

The problem with mandating all physicians performing abortions to read a Congressionally scripted statement and give out a specific pamphlet of information regarding fetal pain under the duress of losing their licenses is that scientists, researchers and physicians does not agree on when, where and how fetal pain occurs. Scientists do not determine scientific facts by Congressional vote or any other type of vote. Scientists determine scientific facts by observation, experimentation, and rational thinking. Having congress vote on disputed scientific facts is not likely to lead to accurate scientific information.

It's not that abortion-rights advocates don't want women to have information regarding fetal pain, it's that advocates want women to have accurate information. So the opposition of this law is not due to people caring less for women, but due to people caring more for women. Abortion-rights activists opposed this act because they want women to have the ability to give informed consent. She can't give informed consent if she is given inaccurate information.

Physicians are already required by law and under the medical code of ethics to provide informed consent for all medical procedures, including abortion. Some Pro-Life activists assert that physicians are not required to give informed consent for abortions, and think this is terrible. It is terrible, but it's also false. I can understand why people might believe that the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act gives physicians an out to not give informed consent, but it doesn't. Unfortunately, it seems to take a deep understanding of law to really see this that goes beyond a typical individual's understanding.

State-developed materials that are mandated by some states for informed consent regarding abortion do not always measure up to the standards in informed consent. If you are giving a woman inaccurate information regarding her health and the health of her unborn, you are negating her ability to give informed consent.

We have another problem: how do we know that a physician is not negating a woman's ability to give informed consent if the physician is giving the woman inaccurate information on his or her own? At the moment we can't legally prevent physicians from giving out inaccurate medical device (though they could get sued by individuals for providing inaccurate information), but the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act would have decidedly forced physicians to give out unsubstantiated information.

Obviously we need a moment of science. Preferably a zillion moments of science.

Alzheimer's disease linked to cold sore virus

That's right - cold sores. Not letting your brain go to waste, not aluminum cookware, but Herpes Simplex has been very strongly linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD). The link? The neurofibrillary tangles (plaques) located in the brains of AD clients contain Herpes Simplex Type 1 - in fact, 90% of the plaques contain Herpes Simplex 1 DNA. Couple Herpes with a genetic predisposition (having the ApoE-4 gene, which is the leading genetic risk factor) and you might develop AD.

Researchers have suspected a connection between AD and herpes for decades and have noted previously that having Herpes Simplex 1 was a strong risk factor in developing AD. This new study strengthens this suspected connection into a causal one.

Ah...science. How I love thee.

The reference:
MA Wozniak, AP Mee and RF Itzhaki. Herpes simplex virus type I DNA is located within Alzheimer's disease amyloid plaques. The Journal of Pathology, Volume 217, Issue 1 , Pages131 - 138 DOI: 10.1002/path.2449

Homepet: NOT FDA Approved.

Some of you may remember my foray into the interesting homeopathic pet product company HOMEOPET. I posted a blog about it here.

In case you don't feel like reading it, I questioned a lot of the claims made by Homeopet, including their supposed approval by the FDA.

I e-mailed the FDA CVM (FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine) and asked them if Homopet is FDA approved like they claim repeatedly on their website. Here is the response I received from the FDA-CVM:

RE: Can you tell me if this company has FDA approval? CVM HomePage [CVMHomeP@CVM.FDA.GOV] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:43 PM To: --------------- Attachments:

Dear ------------------; Thank you for bringing this site to our attention. I have turned it over to our Division of Surveillance and Compliance. We are not happy with how this is being presented. This product is NOT an FDA approved drug. The fact that they have an NDC number does not indicate any approval on our part. I have referred this site to our Office of Surveillance and Compliance. Thank you again for bringing it to our attention. Sincerely, CVM Home Page

Homeopet clearly did not have FDA approval even though they claimed* they did repeatedly and constantly on their product pages. NO homeopathic products are approved by the FDA - I e-mailed the FDA directly and asked if homeopathic drugs were approved by the FDA and was told "They do not receive individual FDA approval".

Instead, homeopathic drugs must have approval through the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention of the United States (HPCUS). An organization that, among other things, does not require a homeopathic drug to undergo clinical trials. One can get homeopathic remedies approved based on anecdotal evidence alone. Homeopathy is the ultimate fake.

*Note: Homeopet has already removed any text claiming they have FDA approval from their website. You can still find websites selling this product that claim it has FDA approval, however. Furthur, if you Google "Homeopathy FDA" you'll find tons of homeopathic products claiming they have FDA approval. They do not. Obviously, it will do you good to avoid products which intentionally and demonstrably mislead you. FDA approval implies that a drug has undergone clinical testing and has been found to be safe and effective.

Atheism, spirituality, religion, disability and healthcare

Spirituality is arguably an essential component to the daily lives of human beings, and it is one of the things that separate the human animal from other kinds of animals. Spirituality can be very loosely defined as a personal search for transcendent understanding (Yuen, 2007), where transcendent means beyond the world, beyond human understanding, or beyond the self. It is the essential search and understanding of and for meaning and purpose in ones life through relationships with entities outside the self (McColl 2000), and the search for meaning and purpose of the individual. Spirituality was defined by Johnstone (2006) as an internal experience of cultivation motivated by interest in experience of meaning, purpose and significance.

Individuals with traumatic chronic disabling conditions (such as a stroke, spinal cord injury, etc) are thrust into unanticipated life-changing events. Traumatic disability is a unique experience which brings forth a unique dimension to spirituality. Five themes of spirituality and disability according to McColl (2000) are: Awareness and appreciation, closeness and intimacy, trust as related to the need to depend on others, purpose and life and purpose of the injury itself, and vulnerability and awareness of one’s own mortality. Many people with chronic disabling conditions report changes in their sense of spirituality after the onset of their disability.

While a sense of spirituality can and does exist without religion and the supernatural, religion is inseparable from spirituality. Polls and surveys consistently show that most people (89%) indicate that religion is fairly or very important in their lives (Johnstone, 2006). As such, an understanding of the ways religion can influence one’s sense of spirituality must be taken into account in general, but especially in the light of disability. There are many studies indicating that people who are religious have better mental health, greater social support, and less substance abuse (Johnstone, 2006). This is largely related to the social support network associated with religious practice. As such, if an individual is already religious, the social support network they have built up around their religious community may be able to help them cope with their disabling condition.

As individuals try to make sense of their own disabling conditions, they often question not only their own purpose after acquiring a disability, but the purpose of the disability itself. Virtually all people with chronic disabilities use some type of spiritual coping method. (Matheis, 2006). In this study, of 75 participants who were interviewed by telephone, quality of life was highest among participants who used a more secular spiritual coping rather than a religious spiritual coping.

Because spirituality is so essential in the coping and adjusting process for people with disabilities, it is important for those in the healthcare field to recognize the spiritual changes and spiritual issues that an individual may have. Disability raises many questions about order and purpose in the universe, reminding individuals that they are not in control, and challenging concepts about higher powers. Disability may cause spiritual issues to go unaddressed because disability often removes people from their social support systems and other resources for dealing with spiritual crises. (Ross, 1995). At the same time, disability can open up an individual’s life to meditation and new kinds of relationships with others. (Young, 1993)

It is important to note that while at times it is hard to separate spirituality from religion and belief in the supernatural, the two are not intrinsically connected. While a healthcare practitioner (such as an occupational therapist) might feel that a devoutly religious individuals needs might be best met by clergy or religious figures, he or she may be in the best position to meet the spiritual needs of the non-religious. People without religion such as atheists, agnostics and humanists have an equally deep need for meaning and purpose in their lives. (Kier, 2004). They may have similar sets of unanswered questions regarding spirituality. The fact that atheists and agnostics have been shown to have unaddressed spiritual needs in the healthcare field points to the fact that spiritual needs are universal in the human animal, and traumatic disabling conditions almost universally causes questions regarding spirituality to arise, and new ideas about spirituality to be formulated.

References:

Johnstone, B., Glass, B., Oliver, R. Religion and disability: Clinical, research and training considerations for rehabilitation professionals. Disability and Rehabilitation (2006) 29(15) 1153-1163

Kier, F. Unaddressed Problems in the Study of Spirituality and Health. American Psychologist (2004) 53-54

Matheis, R., Tulsky, D., Matheis, R. The Relation Between Spirituality and Quality of Life Among Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury. Rehabilitation Psychology (2006) 51:265-271

McColl, M., Bickenbach, J., Johnston, J., Nishihama, S., Schumaker, M., Smith, K., Smitsh, M., Yealland, B. Changes in Spiritual Beliefs After Traumatic Disability. Arch Phys Med Rehabil (2000) 81:817-23

Ross L. The spiritual dimension: its importance to patients’ health, well-being and quality of life and its implications for nursing practice. bit J N&s Stud 1995;32:457-68.

Young C. Spirituality and the chronically ill Christian elderly. Geriatr Nurs 1993; 14:298-303.

Yuen, E. Spirituality, Religion and Health. American Journal of Medical Quality (2007) 22:77