Our Newest Book Project!

Some of the most fun and illustrative content that Ziztur and I have dived into on this blog were our grossly in-depth book reviews; You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think, by Ray Comfort, and the classic Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis.  Well, we decided that it's high time we started in on a new book.

Thus, Evidence of the Afterlife, The Science of Near-Death Experiences, by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry.  This book has only been out since January 19, and became a best-seller almost immediately.  An in-depth review of this book appealed to us for several reasons.  For one, its cultural appeal is incredibly broad.  The arguments and evidence in this book, as well as a thorough, critical examination of it, are relevant to Christians, atheist, spiritualists, and everyone in between.  The arguments here are unique.  Ziztur and I have beaten all the old arguments for the existence of God to death, but an argument for the afterlife, based on near-death experiences, is something we haven't carefully looked at on the blog yet.

A few interesting notes:  Jeffrey Long seems to have assembled the data for this book by simply accepting people's near-death experience testimony via a form on his website (at least, that's what it says on the Near Death Experience Research Foundations's website).

Evidence of the Afterlife is by far the largest scientific study of NDE ever presented, and is based on researching over 1300 NDEs shared with NDERF.

Of course, Ziztur and I, being curmudgeonly skeptics who care about science, would point out that claiming a "scientific"conclusion based on anecdotes submitted to a website is as unscientific as it gets.  It would be very difficult for the authors to screw up the scientific method any worse if they actually tried.  We could reasonably dismiss the entire book's conclusions based on a sampling method as grossly biased as this, but of course we're going to take a closer look.

Look for us to dive into Jeffrey Long's specific claims and arguments soon.  If reading this kind of "evidence" and "science" makes you a feel slightly ill, laughter is the best medicine.  Thus, I leave you with the words of Tim Challies, a Christian reviewer of best-selling books, and his thoughts on this evidence of the afterlife.

The accounts are too common and too consistent to ignore entirely. So we see that such experiences do appear to exist and that they seem to lead directly away from what the Bible teaches us. What recourse do we have, then, but to state with some confidence that these experiences are somehow a trick of Satan?

Homeopathy: For insomnia

Okay! I've had like 2 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours as I finish this post. So, if there are any glaring grammatical errors, I can't see them because my eyes are kinda crossed. I'll trust my fellow bloggers to fix any obvious ones. :)


Continuing on my series of articles outlining a recently published two-part special issue of the journal Homeopathy on the efficacy of homeopathy, this post is on an article [1] testing the effectiveness of application of homeopathy to chronic primary insomnia. 


This research was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the primary purpose of which was to "evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic similimum in the treatment of chronic primary insomnia in terms of the patient's perception of the treatment, using a Sleep Diary (SD) and the Sleep Impairment Index (SII).

The Sleep Diary is defined in the study as a daily written record of the subject's sleep patterns, including sleep-wake times, time in bed, estimated period of sleep, quality of sleep, number of sleep interruptions, and daytime naps. The SII is a "7-item measurement tool that yields a quantitative index of sleep impairment." It relies on self-report of the subject's perception of "insomnia, its severity, level of distress and impairment of daytime functioning"

For the study, subjects were recruited and then asked to fill out a SII to provide a baseline measurement of the severity of insomnia symptoms. They were also instructed to record sleep data in the sleep diary for one week to provide a baseline measurement of other sleep variables. Their full homeopathic case history and physical examination were performed. For each subject, the homeopath was allowed to prescribe any homeopathic remedy that he or she felt would be beneficial to the subject. Potencies were not limited, rather the homeopath determined the most suitable remedy. The dosage took the form of

"three single-dose lactose powder satchet per consultation, one of which was dissolved sublinguially each night consecutively before going to sleep… each active powder sachet comprised 10 medicated lactose granules which were placed into the sachets containing lactose powder. The medicated granules were produced in accordance with Method 10 of the German Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. Lactose granules were triple-impregnated with centesimal potencies of the relevant remedy contained within 96% ethanol… Each placebo powder sachet comprised lactose powder and 10 lactose granules impregnated with 96% ethanol alone and were indistinguishable from the active sachets in appearance and taste"

Impressively, the researchers in this group put a great amount of forethought into the blinding and randomization process. The researcher and research supervisor would discuss each case and determine which homeopathic preparation was most appropriate, based on "repertorisation (RADAR version 9) of the totality of symptoms presented". Then, the prescription was dispensed by an independent dispenser according to the randomization list. So, the researchers and subjects did not know if the subjects were receiving homeopathic preparations or placebos. Participants were instructed to begin taking the medications a week after the initial consultation (presumably so that they could fill out their week-long sleep diary). After two weeks, they returned to the clinic, where they were reassessed. At this point, the homeopath could modify the treatment as needed, so long as treatment still fell within the principals of homeopathy. Again, subjects went to a dispenser for either the homeopathic preparation or a placebo.

The subject group consisted of an initial recruitment of 45 subjects. 12 did not meet the inclusion criteria. Thus, 16 were allocated to the treatment group while 17 were allocated to the placebo group. Of these subjects, 2 were lost to follow up from the treatment group (due to scheduling difficulties and compliance) and one was lost from the placebo group due to scheduling difficulties. This left a total of 14 subjects in the treatment group and 16 in the placebo group.

At the end of the study, researchers analyzed the SD in terms of total hours slept per week. For the SII, subjects graded their sleep symptoms in terms of a 4-point severity scale (none, mild, moderate, severe or very much). The authors stated that they analyzed this data "in the form of summary scores as well as per individual question".

So, let's talk about statistics a little. The researchers set the P-value at .05, meaning that the researchers would be 95% certain that the data they obtained from groups were significantly different from one another. This is important to note because, as Petter so eloquently pointed out, most published research results are wrong, and so a p-value of .05 might be acceptable for preliminary work but is absolutely unacceptable for conclusive work, especially clinical medical studies. The researchers state that the groups did not differ significantly in terms of their baseline measurements of hours per week slept or SII reports.

For the treatment group, the weekly hours slept was as such: Baseline: 35, week2: 45, week3: 43, and week4: 41.

For the placebo group, weekly mean scores for hours slept were: baseline: 34, week2: 32, week3: 35 an week4: 35.

For the SII measures, the treatment group was: baseline: 3.34 week2: 3.14, week3: 1.47.

For the placebo group the SII measure was: baseline: 3.53, week1: 3.41, week2: 3.35

A major problem with these numbers is that while it looks like the treatment group got more mean hours of sleep than the placebo group, the reader is offered no numbers for standard deviation. That means that I can't calculate effect size to see if these numbers have any clinical relevance. For those of you who aren't researchers or statisticians – this is a big deal. One might be able to show that there is a statistical difference between groups, but whether or not this difference is clinically relevant can spell the difference between useless statistical noise and an actual worthwhile treatment. On the surface, those numbers look impressive, but without a standard deviation, we have no way of knowing how distributed the data were – we have no way of knowing, for example, if one or two subjects seriously skewed the data.

Was there a significant difference in any of the other factors of the sleep diary? You'll recall that the SD measured at least six different factors of sleep, yet the authors only chose to report on the mean hours of sleep per week. Not per day, but per week. Why did they not report on the other items in the sleep diary? My guess is that they did not find that any of those factors were significantly different, or perhaps even found that some of those factors were significantly different, but showed that the placebo group had a more positive outcome. We do not know, because they do not say. Regardless, if researchers mention that they measured something, it is prudent that they report on the results. In my experience, journal reviewers frown on the practice of mentioning variables early in a paper and then not reporting on the outcomes of those variables.

Things are a little more complicated for the SII measure. The researchers report contradictory and vague results, stating:

1. The SII is a 7-item measurement tool.
   
2. There were "significant improvements in 6/11 questions after 1 week" for both groups
   
3. There were "significant improvements in 10/11 questions" in the treatment group and significant improvements in 4/11 questions in the placebo group for week 2.
   
4. "When comparisons were made between Baseline SII scores and those at Week 4 (trial entry and trial completion), significant improvements in all (11/11) questions within the verum group were observed. Within the placebo group no significant improvements were noted for any of the questions (0/11) over the same period.
   

It's interesting that a 7-item measurement tool has "11 questions" – what's the deal with that? How is it that there were improvements in the placebo group, but then there weren't? The researchers claim that there was a significant difference between treatment groups between baseline and each follow up consultation. This seems to jive with their numbers (3.34, 3.14, 1.47) but they say that while initial improvement occurred in the placebo group (moving from 3.53 to 3.41) there was "no difference between baseline and final SII scores".

Say what? The scores were 3.53, 3.41 and 3.35. There is clearly a greater difference between baseline (3.52) and week 2 (3.41) and week 4 (3.35), but they say this is non-significant. Why? Also, why is it that they took baseline SD measures and then 3 follow-up SD measures, but only took 2 follow-up SII measures? From my perspective, the data in this study is starting to unravel. Once again, they only give the mean and not the standard deviation, so I am unable to calculate effect size.

The researchers also have a table of the specific homeopathic preparations they used, and to what frequency they were prescribed. They do not say to what potency the preparations are given, just that 23 were given at 30CH, 63 given at 200CH, 38 given at 1M, and 5 given at 10M. They are: Lachesis muta (8), Nux vomica (7), Medorrhinum (5), Sepia officinalis (5), Lycoposium clavatum (4), Carcinosin (4), Sulphur (3), Natrum muriaticum (3), Calcarea carnonica (2), Coffea cruda (2), Ignatia amara (2), Silica terra (2), Mercurius solubilis (1), Arsenicum album (1), Cannabis indica (1), Calcarea arsinicosum (1), Kalium carbonicum (1), Tuberculinum (1), Thuja occidentalis (1) and placebo (5).

Yes, they prescribe placebos intentionally. Apparently this was given as the "second prescription only; only if the first prescriptions was considered to be still acting." I'll let you guys make of this what you will.

One of the more fascinating results of this study is that the placebo group does not mirror the placebo effects of typical drug trials for insomnia. Why is it that the results of the placebo group are so negligible? In this study, the placebo treatment resulted in no significant increase in the duration of sleep and only tiny improvements in the SII scores. Quite, frankly, this is surprising and does not agree with other research on the placebo effect of treatments for insomnia. A strong positive placebo (and nocebo, for that matter) effect has been established in the treatment of primary insomnia [2] As such, I am skeptical that the verum treatment has been adequately compared to a placebo treatment.

I also take issue with the author's statement that homeopathy is a viable treatment for insomnia, given the small size of treatment groups and respective probable lack of power. Of course, since the researchers did not specify the standard deviation, I can't calculate power either. I think the correct conclusion of this study is that given the small sample size, this study is a pilot study that can be said to have determined that further study on the effects effect of homeopathy on the treatment of chronic primary insomnia may be warranted. I think that it would also be valuable to explore the surprising lack of placebo effect in the placebo group, as this is contrary to established literature.

1. Naude DF, Couchman IMS, Maharaj A. Chronic primary insomnia: Efficacy of homeopathic simillimum. Homeopathy 2009:99, 63-68
   
2. Perlis ML, McCall WV, Jungquist CR, Pigeon WR, Matteson SE. Placebo effects in primary insomnia. Sleep Medicine Reviews 2005:9;381-389

Journal of Homeopathy: wheat

According to ScienceDaily, the journal Homeopathy has published a 2-part special issue on the biological models of homeopathy. Being the obsessive quirk that I am, I decided to get ahold of this 2-part special issue of Homeopathy to see what all the fuss is about.

ScienceDaily says that:

The special issue makes an important contribution to this debate, by reviewing laboratory experiments with high dilutions. It includes reviews and new findings in biosystems, ranging from whole animal behavioral, intoxication and inflammation models through diseased and healthy plant models, to test tube experiments using isolated cells, cell cultures or enzymes.

The editor in chief concludes that -

"Throughout its 200 year history claims that homeopathy has 'real' (as opposed to placebo) effects have been hotly contested. Our special issue brings together a wide range of scientific work in biological systems, where there can be no placebo effect, showing that there are now several biological experiments which yield consistently positive results with homeopathic dilutions."

One of the first articles I looked at was an article on the effect of arsenic on wheat seedlings [1]. This article was a review of an experiment on wheat seedlings that had been replicated 17 times among 2 research groups. The experiment was like this: To test potentiated arsenic as a cure for arsenic poisoning, researchers first exposed wheat seedlings to a 1%, 1.2%, or 1.6% solution of arsenic. Then, they had three outcome groups: 1 treated with water, 1 treated with 45X potentized water, and one treated with a 45X potentation of 1% Arsenic. Then, they measured wheat shoot length as an outcome after 7 days.

So, here's what happened with the two research groups. The first lab group conducted the experiment, and said experiment resulted in a 24% increase in shoot growth as compared to the placebo. This was the expected outcome, as homeopathic arsenic is taken to be a remedy for arsenic poisoning. A different research team later replicated the experiment, only to find the opposite – they found that the arsenic group had a reduction in hoot length by -3%. Curious about this discrepancy, they performed the experiments again. They found no statistically significant effect. So, they performed a meta analysis of all of the seed data and found a 3.2% reduction in seed growth and an (apparently nonsignificant) trend in reduction of germination rates.

The authors report that these findings are puzzling, but the fact that there was any effect at all shows that homeopathy does something. Their conclusion is that treatment of arsenic poisoned wheat seeds with homeopathic arsenic leads to statistically significant, yet contrary, effects. Without going into huge amounts of detail, I can say that the authors did a fairly good job of eliminating other factors that might have contributed to their results. Regardless, the meta-analysis certainly did not show that homeopathic arsenic is an effective treatment for arsenic poisoning in wheat.

I think that the experiment producing both positive, negative, and no effects does not point to homeopathy having some kind of effect, but rather it illustrates that science is messy and inexact. A 3.2% difference in wheat shoot growth is barely noticeable. Their mean growth rate was between 29 and 65mm. When a meta analysis reveals a 3.2% difference between treatment groups, we're talking about a difference in wheat shoot measurements of 1-2mm.

Surprisingly, the researchers in this paper talked about effect size. Effect size, simply is a measure of the strength of the relationship between two variables. In scientific experiments, it is often useful to know not only whether an experiment has a statistically significant effect, but also the size of any observed effects. In other words, if we look at a group of 20 people in a treatment group and 20 people in a placebo group, there might be significant differences, even when those differences are essentially meaningless. What is really important is how much these groups are different or how big the differences are. It is always possible to show that there is significant difference between two groups, unless they are 100% Identical. The important part is to what degree groups are different. For this, you need to know the effect size. In this case, the effect size of a 3% difference between their wheat groups amounts to 0.04. Effect size for Cohen's d an effect size of 0.2 to 0.3 might be a "small" effect, around 0.5 a "medium" effect and 0.8 to infinity, a "large" effect. If a small effect is from 0.2-0.3, and the effect size of the experimenter's wheat growth is 0.04, then I would chalk up the differences to experimental noise. This difference in groups is immensely tiny.

I have to wonder why the experimenters chose only 7 days of germination instead of taking measurements at 14 days, and then at 28 days. I don't know if a 1-2mm difference in shoot length among groups will actually translate into any measureable effects of plant size as the plants grow, but since the authors of this paper did not comment on further growth after the 7 day period, one cannot make any claims either way. There are also about a million factors that can influence early seed growth. I admit only rudimentary knowledge of horticulture, but even if seeds are placed side by side in rows in a pan, there could be enough of a difference in lighting, soil temperature, air temperature, and carbon dioxide distribution to account for the small differences seen among groups, even if the groups are dispersed. One thing the experimenters did do was to look for statistically significant differences among shoot growth of 2 pans of seeds where the seeds were placed side-by side and subjected to otherwise identical growing situations. They didn't find any differences. Here is how they arranged the seeds:

The 90 envelopes of each cardboard box were grouped in 9 groups of ten seeds each. The 9 groups of each box were randomly allocated to 3 3 treatment groups with the aid of a computer generated randomization list. The list was prepared newly for each box and each experiment. Thus, in one box, ten seeds of the first group were followed by ten seeds of the second group, and so on (corresponding to the order in which they were planted).

There are other research papers on homeopathy for treatment of arsenic poisoning. One was a study conducted on mice [2] which produced positive results, but it was unblinded. There have been other studies conducted on humans, but I'll just say that the guys over at NESS tore those studies apart. I am unconvinced that this minute difference among plant seedlings will translate into a clinically meaningful effect with regard to using homeopathy as a treatment for disease (also noting that the tiny effect the researchers found in their meta-analysis was contrary to homeopathy, stunting shoot growth rather than increasing it) and the standards for validity of non-homeopathic remedies are much higher. Given all of the other research published on homeopathy which has shown that its effects are equivalent to placebo in humans, I have to wonder why researchers are backtracking into preliminary studies and then saying, "See? High dilutions do something… even if what it does is barely measurable and contrary to the law of similar" when we already have ample evidence that homeopathy is of little clinical use.

1. Lahnstein L, Binder M, Thurneysen T, Frei-Erb M, Betti L, Peruzzi M, Heusser P, Baumgartner S. Isopathic treatment effects of Arsenicum album 45x on wheat seedling growth – further reproduction trials. Homeopathy (2009) 98:198-207
   
2. Mallick P, Chakrabarti (Mallick) J, Bibhas G, Khuda-Bukhsh AR. Ameliorating Effect of Microdoses of a Potentized Homeopathic Drug, Arsencium Album, on Arsenic-Induced Toxicity in Mice. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, (2003)3:7

DOWSING FOR BOMBS.

I just stumbled across this appalling news about a British company selling millions of dollars of bomb-detection devices to Iraqi security forces.  What's so wrong with this, you ask?  That device is the ADE 651, basically, a fancy injection-molded dowsing rod:

These things were sold for, I shit you not, $16,500 to $60,000 each.  Disgusted yet?

Highlights include:

-American military advisors have desperately tried to convince Iraqi security forces not to rely on them.

-James Randi has offered the company that produces and sells them, ATSC (UK) Ltd., his standard million-dollar challenge.  The company has refused to attempt the request.

-The devices have no battery, solar cells, or any other power storage.  The user is supposed to walk in place for a few moments to "charge" the device.

-Surprise, surprise, no research has ever shown such devices to be more reliable than chance.

-The manufacturer itself states that it's only customers are developing countries; neither military or police force in any industrialized nation purchases it's products.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.  This is literally a case where we can be remarkably certain that people have died because of a combination of pseudoscience and corporations so unregulated that they can get away with such blatant fraud.

“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.

Organic continues to be bullshit

We've got evidence that organic food is not more nutritious and doesn't taste any different than nonorganic food. But nutrition and taste are not the only reasons people support buying organic goods. Organic is said to be a sustainable form of agriculture. It puts less potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment. It reduces fuel costs through less importation of food. It supports independent farmers rather than huge corporations. Taste and nutrition be damned, organic is like recycling: people feel good doing their part to help the environment.

There are emerging issues in the Organic industry which may spell death for another of these particular pro-organic arguments; that organic foods reduces fuel costs though less importation of food and supports independent farmers rather than huge corporations.

Increasingly, large corporations are getting wind of the fact that consumers are willing to pay a price premium for organic foods. Organic foods were once confined to a scant few independently-owned shops or farmer's markets in urban areas and college towns. Less than a decade ago, organic foods were in such low demand that dedicated organic farmers often sold their organic produce into conventional markets. Now, organic foods are in such high demand that there are shortages of supplies for farming.

Now, large corporations such as General Mills, Kelloggs and Dean Foods are gaining access to the organic markets by purchasing and taking over successful organic companies. Organic foods can be found in any supermarket and on the shelves of consumer giants such as Wal-mart.

To meet supply needs and increase profit margins, the large food corporations are turning to overseas markets for organic foods. Nearly half of the organic farmers and handlers with USDA organic certification are from countries other than the US (16,000 in the US and 11,000 elsewhere spread among 100 different countries) and this is especially true for vegetables and soybeans.

It seems as though corporatization of organic foods may spell death for organic foods offering a sure-fire way to support the local economy and reduce food transportation costs.

Because and Since strike again!

Believe it or not, I actually have a life of some kind outside of this blog. Woa!

For those of you who don’t know, I am most of the way through earning a doctoral degree in occupational therapy with an emphasis on research methodology and biomechanics. My undergraduate degree is in philosophy, and I’m sure you’re surprised about that.

Since May I have been working in a biomechanics lab, largely doing nothing. I did, however, send my research paper off to the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for peer review and possible publication.

About a month after I sent the article off, I got it back with an attached 10 pages of comments. The peer reviewers were fairly pleasant in their comments and seemed genuinely interested in the research and in having it published, so if all goes well, I will let everyone know. Part of the rules of the journal is that I do not release my findings to the public until they approve of the publication.

In case you’ve never written a research article before, note that it is an arduous process. I probably have a total of 50+ drafts. My co-author is my mentor and run the lab, so I would write a draft, send it to him, and then he would make comments and send it back. Then I would edit the draft per his comments, send it to him, and he would make more comments and send it back, ad infinitum.

One of the most amusing aspects of this process concerns the words, “since” and “because”.

Initially, I had several sentences beginning with the word “because” and a few sentences began with, “Given that…”. After sending a draft off, I noticed that the draft was returned to me with all of the occurrences of “because” and “Given that…” changed to, “since”. I shrugged, approved of the changes and moved on – there is no sense in quibbling over details. I finished editing the draft and sent it back.

My mentor returned the draft to me, whereupon I had noted that all of the occurrences of “since” had been changed back to “because”. My mentor had also changed a sentence that did not begin with “because” around so that it did. Once again, I shrugged and made more important changes. I sent the draft off.

You probably know where this is going…

My mentor returned the draft to me again, and all the instances of “because” had been changed to “since”… AGAIN.

At this point, I sent off the draft to my friend Saint Gasoline. After that, I told my mentor that Saint Gasoline probably got the usage right, given that he works as a copy editor.

More on being happy atheists

I’ve argued in this, this and this post that studies reporting greater health (especially mental health) among strongly religious people using a control group of nonbelievers were weakened by the fact that nonbelievers may be too heterogeneous a group to make an adequate comparison to strongly religious populations. I pointed out the need to study nonbelievers as a group on a larger scale in order to determine if there were any meaningful differences between different subtypes of nonbelievers.

As such, I was pleasantly surprised when the newest issue (August/September 2009) of Free Inquiry magazine arrived in my mailbox. Hiding in the pages of the magazine is an article reporting on the results of a study which did exactly that.

First, researchers conducted a pilot study with 333 members of the Center For Inquiry/Michigan branch e-mail and group newsletter and 325 individuals who were members of two local churches in the same community. The survey was designed to test for characteristics distinguishing religious and nonreligious individuals. Some of their initial findings were:

-CFI/Michigan members were predominantly male, more highly educated, more likely to be never married or cohabitating, and had fewer children living at home.
-95% of the church group reported being absolutely certain that god existed, and members were divided between these three categories: “religious”, “spiritual” and “theistic”.
-In the CFI group, 48% described themselves as atheist, and the remainder was distributed among agnostics, humanists, spirituals, and others.
-Within both groups, reported life-satisfaction was within the average range for both groups, but church members reported themselves as having a greater degree of social support relative to CFI members.

The survey included a measure of personality, and on this the believer and nonbeliever group differed the greatest on one of the five major personality traits – that of “openness to experience”.  The church sample reported a greater degree of “agreeableness” (a quality of being amiable or nonconfrontational)

After this pilot study, researchers recruited an additional 5,831 nonreligious individuals to survey. Obviously, there are some weaknesses to this survey method. It is difficult to do random population samples of individuals who are a minority in the population, so researchers used “snowball sampling” by emailing active members of CFI and asking them to recruit other nonreligious individuals for survey. As such, the members of the survey were likely to be active members of secular communities. They were also more likely to report higher positive traits due to social desirability bias, though the same weaknesses can be found for surveys of religious individuals.

Some of their findings were:

-Forty one percent of respondents had a master’s degree or higher and 31% earned $100,000+ per year. The sample was 74% male, 53% married, and the mean age was 48.
-Respondents were raised in a variety of childhood backgrounds. Fifteen percent of respondents reported being raised in a household in which religion was mildly or not at all emphasized, and 35% reported being raised in a household with strong or very strong religious emphasis.
-Individuals with higher household religious emphasis were more likely to have poorer relationships with families.
-self-labeled atheists and humanists reported that they were more emotionally invested in their philosophical views than agnostics or spirituals.

Regarding mental health, nonbelievers most confident in their nonbelief tended to be the most emotionally healthy, especially relative to people with uncertainty or doubt. Life satisfaction was lower among people who labeled themselves “spiritual” as opposed to agnostic, atheist or humanist. Thus, the common assumption that greater religious belief leads to greater mental health may be overly simplistic as it appears that confidence in either belief or nonbelief is associated with greater emotional adjustment and mental health.

I think the most important part is not that these studies are giving those of us involved or associated with the “nonbeliever” community any new or surprising information about ourselves, but that they provide quantitative evidence against commonly-held stereotype that nonbelievers are less psychologically healthy than believers. We can, in fact, be happy without faith, religion, or purpose and meaning handed down to us.

Acupuncture affecting regulation of pain

A new acupuncture vs. placebo acupuncture study has been making headlines such as "Chinese acupuncture affects brain's ability to regulate pain, study shows" due to results of a study suggesting that there may be a difference in opioid receptor response in acupuncture vs. placebo acupuncture.

Several large-scale studies [1-3] have been released showing that acupuncture and various forms of placebo acupuncture have clinically insignificant differences in the reduction of pain, proponents of acupuncture are now looking at brain-imaging to explore the mechanisms of acupuncture and placebo acupuncture to determine if acupuncture and placebo acupuncture operate via different mechanisms.

In this study [4], researchers hypothesized that long term acupuncture therapy may result in increased opioid receptor availability and that these effects would not be observed in a placebo acupuncture group. Their subjects consisted of 20 women randomly divided into 2 groups of 10 subjects. One group received traditional acupuncture treatment while another group received non-invasive, placebo acupuncture. Results from PET scans using contrast material were taken during a 90-minute period, during which acupuncture treatment or sham acupuncture treatment was administered during the 45-90 minute timeframe. A period followed in which subjects received 7 acupuncture or sham acupuncture treatments, and then the PET scan procedure was repeated, for a total of 9 treatments. Results indicate acupuncture therapy evoked short-term increases in MOR binding potential, in multiple pain and sensory processing regions including the cingulate (dorsal and subgenual), insula, caudate, thalamus, and amygdala. Acupuncture therapy also evoked long-term increases in MOR binding potential in some of the same structures including the cingulate (dorsal and perigenual), caudate, and amygdala. These short- and long-term effects were absent in the sham group where small reductions were observed, an effect more consistent with previous placebo PET studies.

There are several pieces of information regarding this study that were left out of news headlines an abstracts, so I will attempt to summarize them here and then offer my own analysis of the results. However, it should be clear that I am not a neurologist, and thus my knowledge of neurology is somewhat limited.

Subjects were blinded to which treatment group they were in, and they were also asked to guess which treatment group they thought they were assigned to after the first PET scan. There was no significant difference between groups, and thus it can be assumed that the subjects remained adequately blinded, though the study does not mention any blinding of the researchers, making it quite likely that the researchers were unblinded, which could have an effect on the study results.

During the acupuncture treatment, needles were left in during PET scan acupuncture treatment measurement during the 45-90 minute timeframe, while no needles were retained during the sham acupuncture group given that no needle penetration occurred during sham acupuncture. Clearly then, PET scans during that 45-90 minute period involve one group receiving an active treatment (given that needles were in their skin) while the sham group received inactive treatment (given that no needles were present). It seems obvious to me that there will be neurobiological differences between a group of people being measured while needles are inserted into them and a group of people who do not have needles in them, so their results are not surprising. Additionally, even though subjects may have not know which group they were in (they had to have had no prior acupuncture experience to participate), they quite likely were aware of whether or not needles remained in place during the PET scans, especially given the fact that both treatment groups involved placement on the head and ear. This knowledge could provide an explanation for the differences in treatment groups and is not addressed in the study. As such, even though the subjects were ignorant of whether or not they were receiving placebo treatment or not, the same cannot be said of their ignorance of the presence of needles placed in their body during PET scans.

What I find especially interesting about this study is the discussion of opponents of acupuncture in the introduction. The researchers wrote:

“Recent controversy in the field of acupuncture research was generated when several large scale randomized controlled trials in chronic pain patients failed to show superiority of acupuncture over sham acupuncture methods. This has led opponents of acupuncture therapy to suggest that it is no more effective than a placebo intervention.”

I fail to see why one needs to be an opponent of acupuncture therapy to suggest exactly what the large scale randomized controlled trials are suggesting – that acupuncture therapy is not superior to placebo intervention. This sentence seems to indicate potential bias on the part of the researchers in this study. The data from these studies are very clear.

If the clinical results between acupuncture and placebo acupuncture are the same, it seems to me that potential side-effects are far more important than the fact that acupuncture and placebo acupuncture potentially operate via different mechanisms. This difference in mechanisms is irrelevant, or at least far less relevant than clinical results or side effects. It could be argued that different types of placebo acupuncture have different neurochemical mechanisms of action as well, but thus far no study has documented these potential differences. This study is weak in that it only compares two different treatments. If the study had used acupuncture and two different types of placebo acupuncture that had already been established through trials to have similar clinical results, and then shown that the mechanism of action for the placebo acupuncture was the same while the acupuncture group had a different mechanism, then the results would be more convincing.

The researchers indicated that previous studies indicated that the neurobiological response to acupuncture was distinct from pain and sham acupuncture, but one of the articles [5] I read in support of this claim (there were three total, and all appeared to be from the same group of people as evidenced by common authors. I read the newest one.) failed to blind subjects to which treatment they were receiving and thus is poor evidence to support their claim. Instead, this seems to support evidence that there is a different neurobiological response in individuals who know they are receiving acupuncture or a placebo, which is to be expected.

Regardless, it seems fairly obvious to me that measuring neurobiological responses in a PET scan while some subjects have needles inserted during the scan and others do not is measuring a neurobiological response to needles being in the skin versus not in the skin.  Sticking needles in subjects would likely provoke a different neurochemical response in subjects when compared to placebo acupuncture, which involved no needle insertion. So, if you do two different physical things to people, this provokes different neurochemical responses. Didn’t we already know this? At least this study does not argue that acupuncture and placebo acupuncture have different effects. Instead, it argues that acupuncture and placebo acupuncture have different mechanisms. My less than dignified response is, “So what?”


1. Brinkhaus B., Witt CM, Jena S, Linde K, Streng A, Wagenpfeil S, Irnich D, Walther HU, Melchart D, Willich SN. Acupuncture in patients with chronic low back pain: a randomized controlled trial. Arch. Intern. Med. 2006;166:450–457.


2. Linde K, Streng A, Jurgens S, Hoppe A, Brinkhaus B, Witt C, Wagenpfeil S, Pfaffenrath V, Hammes MG, Weidenhammer W, Willich SN, Melchart D. Acupuncture for patients with migraine: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 2005;293:2118–2125.

3. Melchart D, Streng A, Hoppe A, Brinkhaus B, Witt C,Wagenpfeil S, Pfaffenrath V, Hammes M, Hummelsberger J, Irnich D, Weidenhammer W, Willich SN, Linde K. Acupuncture in patients with tension-type headache: randomized controlled trial. BMJ 2005;331:376–382.

4. Harris RE, Zubieta JK, Scott DJ, Napadow V, Gracely RH, Clauw DJ. Traditional Chinese acupuncture and placebo (sham) acupuncture are differentiated by their effects on μ-opioid receptors (MORs) NeuroImage 2009;47:1077-1085

5. Napadow V, Kettner N, Liu J, Li M, Kwong KK, Vangel M, Makris N, Audette J, Hui KK.  Hypothalamus and amygdala response to acupuncture stimuli in carpal tunnel syndrome. Pain 2007;130: 254–266.

How much money do we spend on CAM?

Finally! A real survey outlining the cost of Supplements, Complimentary and Alternative Medicing (SCAM's) has been published by a government survey.

Now, when people use "Big Pharma" as a scapegoat for illogical arguments about why SCAM's work, we can point out that "Big SCAM's" have their fingers in the healthcare pie too. Read on:

Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey [1]. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine. CAM accounts for approximately 1.5 percent of total health care expenditures ($2.2 trillion [2]) and 11.2 percent of total out-of-pocket expenditures (conventional out-of-pocket: $286.6 billion [2] and CAM out-of-pocket: $33.9 billion[1]) on health care in the United States.

Approximately 38 percent of adults use some form of CAM for health and wellness or to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, according to data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) [3]. 

Of the $33.9 billion spent on CAM out-of-pocket, an estimated $22.0 billion was spent on self-care costs—CAM products, classes, and materials—with the majority going to the purchase of nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products ($14.8 billion) such as fish oil, glucosamine and Echinacea. U.S. adults also spent approximately $11.9 billion on an estimated 354.2 million visits to CAM practitioners such as acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, etc.

To put these figures in context, the $14.8 billion spent on nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products is equivalent to approximately one-third of total out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs, and the $11.9 billion spent on CAM practitioner visits is equivalent to approximately one-quarter of total out-of-pocket spending on physician visits.

"These data indicate that the U.S. public makes millions of visits to CAM providers each year and spends billions of dollars for these services, as well as for self-care forms of CAM," said Richard L. Nahin, Ph.D., MPH, acting director of NCCAM's Division of Extramural Research and lead author of the cost of complementary and alternative medicine analysis. "While these expenditures represent just a small fraction of total health care spending in the United States, they constitute a substantial part of out-of-pocket health care costs."

 Here are some important references. I suggest you memorize them:


1. Nahin, RL, Barnes PM, Stussman BJ, and Bloom B. Costs of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Frequency of Visits to CAM Practitioners: United States, 2007. National health statistics reports; no 18. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2009.

2. Office of the Actuary, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Health Expenditure Data for 2007. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Available at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/02_NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.asp#TopOfPage.

3.  Barnes PM, Bloom B, Nahin RL. Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults and Children: United States, 2007. National health statistics reports; no 12. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2008.

College attendance and religiosity

Recently I read here that a study [1] had been conducted which looks at the trends between the study of certain subjects in college and religious observance. The study concluded that very religious high school students are more likely than less religious high school students to attend college.

This may surprise the skeptical world. I’ve heard many times that people with high levels of religiosity tend to be less educated and less intelligent whereas people with low religiosity tend to be more educated and more intelligent. Typically people cite an article published in nature as evidence for this phenomenon [2], if they cite an article at all. So why is this study saying that people who are more religious are more likely to attend college?

The authors first rightfully point out that there is a pressure in the United States toward being religious, yet despite this pressure (especially from families), religiosity is remaining more or less steady and even swinging downward as the years go by. One common culprit blamed on this is college, given that college tends to be the first time people are separated from their families for an extended period of time.

The goal of the study was to look at how contents of college curriculum affect student values and to distinguish these effects from patterns of selection based on already-held values. The study hypothesizes that college students are confronted (in varying degrees) to three streams of thought in college that have certain negative attitudes toward religion, and that these streams of thought may have an effect on religiosity. Those streams of thought are:

Science – consisting of a commitment to truth, the scientific method and open-mindedness toward evidence. Natural science fields have a strong scientist content.

Developmentalism – consisting of a commitment to freedom and progress. Economics and business have a strong developmentalist content.

Postmodernism – consisting of a commitment to relativism of truth and morality and the idea that truth and morality are determined by those who are most powerful. The humanities and social sciences have a strong postmodernist content.

The article delves much deeper into exactly what these three streams of thought are and how they come into conflict with religiosity (in a refreshingly impartial manner), but for the purposes of this article I will leave them simply defined.  If on accepts that different majors are tied to different streams of thought, it is possible to test whether any of these three streams of thought contribute to reduced religiosity by looking at initial choices of major and changes of major over time in concordance with any changes in religiosity. They specifically examined the changes in religiosity from high school and into college, using a sample size of literally thousands of students in Michigan from high school and through college.

Here are some of their findings:

-compared to business majors, social sciences and humanities have a statistically significant negative effect on both attendance of religious services and the rating of the importance of religion.
-education majors were more religious than other majors and their religiosity increased over time.
-religiosity increases over time for business majors
-religious attendance decreased for students who are undecided about college major.
-religious attendance decreased for respondents who did not go to college.
-students in science and engineering have less trust in god than people who have not gone to college or business majors (as measured by asking the respondents, “if we just leave things to god, they will turn out for the best [disagree, mostly disagree, neither agree nor disagree, mostly agree, agree]”).

-students who were social science, humanities or engineering tended to think religious organizations should have less of an effect on society, whereas subjects who had not gone to college thought religious organizations should have more influence on society.

The study was fairly well-designed, so I was quite surprised to find that students who were more religious were more likely to attend college, given that it seems to contradict other studies (such as the one reported on in Michael Shermer’s How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God [3]) which indicate that atheism increases with education level.  Religiosity was rated on a 1-4 scale (“how often to you attend religious services? [1=never, 2=rarely 3=once or twice a month 4=about once a week or more]”), and each point on the scale corresponded with a 14% increases in the likelihood of going to college. A change in the rated importance of religion by one point amounted to an 8% increase in the likelihood of going to college.

I think that a weakness in the study lies in the fact that they did not take into account the different denominations of college attendees, and rather used “religious attendance” and “importance of religion” as their measures of religiosity. As such, the study ignored the positive or negative impacts of particular denominations or religious schools of thought, especially Sectarianism (the belief that religious rewards will be given exclusively to the adherents of a particular faith) and fundamentalism (finding value in sacred texts, especially the belief in the inerrancy of biblical texts).  Studies have shown that sectarianism and fundamentalism in particular has a negative impact on educational attainment [4], and especially the educational attainment of women [5]. Sectarian and fundamentalist individuals are also more likely to choose a religious college.

One other interesting thing to note is that the reported amount of time people spend at religious services does not seem to correlate with actual religious service attendance – studies show the actual number is about half of what people report – suggesting that many people overestimate (or lie about?) how often they attend [6]. The best this study can say with regard to religious service attendance is that the people who likely overestimate how often they attend are more likely to go to college.

1. Kimball MS, Mitchell CM, Thornton AD, Young-Demarco LC. Empirics on the Origins of Preferences: The Case of College Major and religiosity. NBER (2009) Working Paper No. 15182

2. Larson EJ, Witham L. Leading scientists still reject god. Nature 1998:394;313

3. Shermer, M. How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. New York: William H Freeman. 1999:76–79. ISBN 071673561X.

4. Sherkat DE. Religion and higher education: the good, the bad, and the ugly. 2007: Online at http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Sherkat.pdf

5. Sherkat, DE, Darnell A. The Effect of Parents' Fundamentalism on Children's
Educational Attainment: Examining Differences by Gender and Children's Fundamentalism Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1999:38;23-35.

6. Hadaway CK, Marler L, Chaves M. what the polls don’t show: a closer look at U.S. church attendance. American Sociological Review 1993:58;741-752

Organic food = bullshit

That's right. I said it.

There are no health benefits of choosing organic food over typical food.

I've had an inkling that there is no evidence to support the idea that organic foods are healthier than their inorganic counterparts. Now I have the evidence to back it up, along with an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit to offer a colorful media rebuttal.
From BBC news:

There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.

The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an "informed choice".

But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years.
   
Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.

Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron.

The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs.

Differences that were detected, for example in levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and are unlikely to provide any health benefit, the report concluded.

Gill Fine, FSA director of consumer choice and dietary health, said: "Ensuring people have accurate information is absolutely essential in allowing us all to make informed choices about the food we eat.

"This study does not mean that people should not eat organic food.

"What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."

She added that the FSA was neither pro nor anti organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.

Dr Dangour, said: "Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."

He added that better quality studies were needed.

Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said they were disappointed with the conclusions.

"The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences.

"Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods.

"Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.
"Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health," he added.

 I'll be locating this article and offering my own opinions as to whether the criticisms offered in this news report are justified. You'll see my thoughts soon!

Michael Shermer's Five Moral Dimensions

So, Ziztur and I had an awesome time at TAM7.  Discussing the lectures afterwards, we had to admit that there wasn't a great deal of new information there - most topics that were discussed were old news to us.  I suppose that's to be expected, considering the two of us have drowned ourselves in everything skeptical, rational, and godless for years now.

Surprisingly, the most interesting lecture, to me, was Michael Shermer talking about Libertarianism, and that was precisely because I disagreed with him more than any other speaker!

*Disclaimer:  It's now been a couple weeks since I heard the lecture, and I didn't anticipate wishing, in retrospect, that I had taken notes.  I'll leave obvious disclaimers here and there when I don't remember something, some things I've looked up online to ensure their accuracy, but some things might be mistaken.  If that's the case, don't hesitate to let me know!

The opening of Shermer's talk sounded straight-forward enough; he said that "skepticism" in general is or should be an apolitical movement.  He said that sometimes "skeptics" or "rationalists" can have a tendency to identity atheism/skepticism/rationalism/etc. with modern liberal political ideology.  He cautions us that devoted skeptics and critical thinkers have a wide variety of political bents.

All this is true, so far as it goes.  It seems to me that "skeptics" do not necessarily entail a specific political ideology for the same reason that being "skeptical" doesn't necessarily entail any other specific demographic.  Skeptics tend to be politically liberal rather than libertarian, and far, far more likely to be either of these than politically conservative.  In the same way, skeptics and rationalists tend to be atheist or agnostic rather than a member of an organized religion.  However, this does not mean that there are no conservative skeptics, and it's entirely possible for a skeptic to be a theist as well.  This is because every human being is skeptical of some things - skepticism is not a rigid, defined category, it is a spectrum, with some people being more skeptical than others.

Of course, this is all well and good, but as I mentioned, there is a very obvious correlation between self-proclaimed skeptics and liberalism, just as there is a nigh-overwhelming correlation between skeptics and atheism/agnosticism.  So Shermer rapidly moved on from the above heart-warming message about us all just getting along, into a defense of libertarian ideology.

There were a number of papers he referenced, which I have hunted for but have been unable to find.  One such point was a study of different papers claiming that there have been zero wars between liberal democracies for some considerable period of time.  Without access to the original research or the criteria used to categorize the nations in question (and Shermer even mentioned that some of these criteria were a bit questionable) I can't really comment on this seemingly significant claim.  All I will say is that there were just over 200 wars during this period between non-democratic countries, and almost 170 wars between one or more non-democratic countries and democratic countries, which makes me question the criteria used.  Also, I would find this point much more persuasive if those wars between democratic and non-democratic countries were overwhelmingly instigated by the non-democratic countries, which is not the case.  Of course, this also assumes as an unstated premise that a liberal democracy must by definition be a strictly capitalist culture, with no socialist policy at all, which is completely untrue.

The focal point of Shermer's talk, to my mind, is his discussion of the Five Moral Dimensions, a very interesting bit of research into the ethics of human cultures and individuals, which is being headed by Jonathan Haidt.  You can read about these moral dimensions that he proposes here, and can even contribute to his research and get a table of your own ethical layout (among other question-and-answer studies) according to this research here.  The table you receive shows how you prioritize your own ethical principles, alongside the results of those who identify as liberal, and those who identify as conservative.  Here are those results, along with my own (mine are in green, liberal results in blue, conservative results in red):

Here's a brief description of the Five Moral Dimensions:

1.  Harm/Care - Ethical foundations concerning compassion and security.
2.  Fairness/Reciprocity - concerning justice and human rights.
3.  Ingroup/Loyalty - concerning patriotism and loyalty to a group.
4.  Authority/Respect - concerning social and cultural hierarchies, and tradition.
5.  Purity/Sanctity - concerning resistance to cultural immorality and/or physical contamination.

In a nutshell, those who self-identify as liberal place far more emphasis on the first two moral dimensions, significantly downplaying the latter three, while conservatives largely weight each of the five dimensions relatively equally.

Here's where I think Shermer went wrong.  If one wishes to defend libertarianism, I think the best way to go about it is to make a case that the first two moral dimensions provide all the foundation you need to build libertarianism from, using reason and critical thinking.  The implications of this research is that a libertarian ideology does take some fuel from the latter three dimensions.  If that's the case, then Shermer has considerably weakened his argument for libertarianism - frankly, the latter three dimensions are completely irrational as foundations for morality.

Shermer attempts to drive home his point in, in my opinion, a pretty pathetic way.  He shows a slide - a picture of the Twin
Towers, in flames, about to collapse.  Below the towers is a question:  "Can we really afford to abandon tradition and patriotism?"

Um, yes.  We can.  Let's think about this.  The clear implication of this emotionally-charged question is that we need, we require the third, fourth, or fifth moral dimensions to condemn the actions of fundamentalist terrorists.  Really?  Take a good look at the first and second moral dimensions - does Shermer really think that we cannot possibly condemn violent religious extremism based on these first two (most espescially the second)?

As for why the first two moral dimensions are rational foundations for ethics and the latter three are not, well, isn't that obvious?  Imagine a society that governed itself entirely through the first two.  There will obviously still be disagreements, but it is quite possible for a just society to draw it's cultural ethic from these first two entirely.  Simply put, the first and second moral dimensions do not require the third, fourth, and fifth.  Now, imagine the reverse.  Pretty obvious, isn't it?  I hate to pull such a predictible example, but yeah, screw it, I'm throwing down the Nazi card.  A society that bases it's cultural morality on only the third, fourth, and fifth dimensions would be horrifying.  It seems obvious to me - whereas the first and second dimensions don't require the latter three in any way, the latter three absolutely require the first and second to be present as well.

Think of all the greatest ethical cock-ups in human history; the ancient Hebrew war crimes, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, all the various genocides of native peoples in the Americas and Africa.  Can anyone credibly argue that these atrocities resulted from applications of the first or second moral dimensions?  Or were they all painfully obviously the result of the latter three being more powerful than the first two, in the cultures in question?

As I said, if you've concluded that libertarianism does have a rational foundation in the first two ethical principles alone, then I might disagree, but that would at least be a rational foundation for the ideology.  Michael Shermer certainly seemed to be claiming that libertarianism is based, at least in part, on all five moral dimensions to some extent or another, and that this basis is rational.  It seems clear to me that a political ideology that is derived from authority, ingroup loyalty, and/or a concern for what is "sacred" and "pure," then such an ideology is completely irrational.

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.