Archive for June 11, 2008

Res Ipsa Loquitor: Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal – one of the candidates on the short list of McCain vice presidential nominees – believes in exorcisms.  Enough said.

Liveblogging David Kirby’s Talk: Suggestions?

Dear faithful reader(s), and you itinerant anti-vaccination vagabonds;

First, thanks for all the traffic!  I hope you stick around to read some of the other posts, too.  I’m not a one-trick pony: although the study of politicized science is one of my most-discussed issues, it’s one of many, and the anti-vaccination debate is but one of many iterations of it.

Second, I’ve managed to clear my plate enough, I think, to be able to attend Kirby’s talk.  I plan to either live-blog it or post very thorough notes immediately thereafter.  But, I don’t intend to try to disrupt him or pose nasty questions during Q&A.  That’s not my style.  But I would be greatly indebted for any suggestions, advice, or talking points delivered by a faithful commenter, and I’d try to work that advice into a question or two if I can.  I speak for those who can’t speak for themselves… that is, those of you not in the New York area.

Mailbag: Robert Hinkley on David Kirby, Autism, and Vaccines

To those of you just joining us, I recently stirred up a hornet’s nest by writing on the alleged link between autism and vaccines. Since then, I’ve gotten a crash course in the subject, from a few friends, and now, a reader and a writer in his own right, Robert Hinkley. Mr. Hinkley writes to debunk some of Kirby’s claims that were made at a lecture in London earlier this month. I’ll reproduce his e-mail, edited for inline links and pictures, but nothing else, below. Be warned that some of his links are down: server problems.

I went to David Kirby’s lecture in London a week ago (I wrote about it here) and would like to tip you off to a couple of slides he used in his presentation then, in case he uses them when he speaks at NYU School of Law on the 26th. Kirby presents the slides as supporting his mercury/thimerosal/vaccines-cause-autism case, but in reality they do nothing of the sort. I thought I’d mention them to you in case you do manage to go along, as Kirby throws out a huge
volume of stuff and it might help to be prepared about a couple of specific things he says.

One slide he uses (see ‘chelate-result.jpg’, right) shows the results of an analysis of the urine of an autistic child, showing levels of mercury far higher than those found “within the reference range”, ie what would be expected in the urine of a healthy person who hadn’t suffered mercury poisoning. Kirby presents this as evidence that the child’s body had retained unusually high amounts of mercury, thus they’d been poisoned by mercury and their problems could be a result of their unusually high burden of mercury. This actually produced murmurings of amazement in the London audience and it does seem very compelling. The truth, however, is different. The urine was analysed after the child had been given a chelating agent: a drug specifically designed to cause their body to excrete the heavy metals it contains. But the reference concentrations for the amount of expected mercury in the urine are for urine from people who haven’t been given a chelating agent. Anyone givena chelating agent would be perfectly expected to produce urine with levels of mercury higher than those normally found in the urine of people who haven’t been given a chelating agent. The use of such “provoked” urine tests being compared to “unprovoked” reference results is explained better than I can do it by Steven Novella here. I also guess Kirby’s not aware of the 2007 paper published in ‘Clinical Toxicology’ which found that autistic children didn’t generally excrete higher levels of mercury (or arsenic, or cadmium, or lead) than non-autistic children (see here). That paper is of course a preliminary pilot and the number of subjects is low, but it certainly shows that not all autistic children exrete large amounts of mercury.

Another slide (see ‘denmark.jpg’, right) shows autism diagnosis rates in Denmark before and after the removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines. Kirby says that people use this (autism rates apparently increasing after removal of thimerosal) as evidence against a thimerosal-vaccine link but claims they are wrong to do so. Kirby says that before 1994 the Danish healthcare system was only diagnosing a small proportion of autism cases (13% was the figure he gave), so the autism rates recorded pre-1994 were artificially low. Leave aside for a moment the fact that Kirby is willing to embrace the notion of different diagnostic methods producing an apparent rise in autism in Denmark while denying it can have happened anywhere else. If you multiply the diagnosed pre-1994 autism rates by 8 to approximate Kirby’s claimed “true” rate you still get cases of autism – at least before 1990 – lower than they are in the late 1990s after the removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines.

As Hinkley indicates, you can probably expect more information on his own site soon. I’ll link to it when it comes up.

As the Future Catches You: Scientific Hegemony in the 21st Century

If Raymond Kurzweil is to be believed, the future may not be here yet, but humanity stands at the brink of discoveries that will revolutionize our lives in the next fifty years. Kurzweil, one of the more respected futurists, predicts that the “law of accelerating returns” – which explains how scientists can realize exponential progress in certain fields of research, like electronics in the 1990s – heralds an unprecedented era of discovery, thanks to nano- and bio-technology.

The problem is that, while humanity stands at the brink of this revolution, we also stand at a crossroads (huzzah for mixing metaphors!). Six years ago, at the beginning of the biotech revolution, Harvard’s Juan Enriquez made the case in his simple book As the Future Catches You that the revolution waits for no man. While science advances, propelling humanity forward, we as a society have the choice of partaking in this growth by funding and respecting the role of science in our democracy, or sidelining it and watching the revolution pass us by. American hegemony has always been built on scientific superiority, but we show signs of balking today, just when our commitment to scientific progress matters most.

Our commitment to science matters for more than just us, too. If we embrace our role as the most powerful nation in the world – by force of arms or force of credit – we realize that the task of blazing a trail into the next era of discovery falls to us. If we as the harbingers of scientific progress falter, we risk not only losing out on the revolution, to the benefit of another nation (say, China or England), but we also risk stalling inventions that could benefit all of humanity, not just those men and women within our borders. We cannot afford to stall the future; as Enriquez points out, it always catches you, one way or another.

This is not to say that one should unflinchingly engage in all sorts of dangerous research; no doubt the limits of responsible science are short of the limits of what science can actually accomplish.  I don’t think anyone would advocate construction of doomsday devices a la Futurama.  But I think we as a society risk stopping short of what responsible science can accomplish.  On that note, as Edward Murrow would say, allow me say what I mean, and mean what I say.

The past eight years have seen science stalled by a confused, manipulated, and angry American minority.  Speaking for small religious circles, our President has stymied stem cell research, and our politicians and interest groups have turned biology into a political football.  While the former is a threat to science, and the latter an indirect threat to science education, both are equally damaging, and ought to warn of a dangerous tendency to place science in political controversy just to score ideological points.  Despite John Adams’ old injunction, that facts are “deaf, deaf as adders to the clamor of the populace,” we face a populace that believes that scientific facts can be voted away.  No one man, or no small group, ought to have a heckler’s veto over scientific progress that stands to benefit all of humanity, and yet as technology leads humanity for the better towards a vastly different future, one that we today may not recognize, we can only expect these conservative forces to increase their clamor. 

We cannot afford to take that path.  Societies and civilizations never have an option to stand still.  The choice is either to grow, but grow responsibly, or fade and become increasingly irrelevant as the future – and other civilizations – catch us.  We cannot afford to stand against scientific progress without cause, and we cannot allow science, and its promise to help the many, to be held hostage to the spurious and subjective religious or moral objections of the few. 

Support Our Troops – And Mean It

If I could kill people with my mind, I would still probably stay my hand mind hand. But if I could wound with my mind, then we’d be in business. Assuming I had that power, one of my first targets would be the Republican pundits and supporters who assume that, to support the troops, one must support the war that they’re engaged in.

I fear that the heart of the problem is a small misunderstanding of what “support” means. When I say that I “support” our troops, I mean that I favor serious thinking, a resort to all other available alternatives, planning in excruciating detail, over-committal of resources to ensure a quick victory, and an exit plan in mind, before I would put any American soldier in harm’s way. So when I say I “support” our troops, what I mean is, I want them to not risk their lives if it could be avoided, and if they must, I want to ensure that they risk their lives safely and with the assurance of all possible support and forethought.

That, to me, seems like an expansive and fair definition of “support.” Sadly, the phrase “support our troops” has been co-opted to mean, “support our war,” and has been twisted into a rhetorical device used to cast doubt on the patriotism of anyone who doubts our mission in Iraq.  This twist of the phrase misses the point of the citizen’s role in a democracy.

To fail to question our military leaders in the run-up to, and during war, is to abdicate the citizen’s essential right and duty to ensure that the lives of our fellow-citizens are not risked in an unsafe or avoidable manner.  In Roman times, a citizen would receive the civic crown (corona civica) for saving the life of a citizen-soldier in battle.  What better way is there to discharge this solemn duty than to think before committing to warfare?  As Augustus earned his civic crown by ending war – thus saving all soldiers and indeed all citizens – we can earn our own by negotiating as speedy an end to Iraq as is possible.  After all, isn’t bringing the troops home the ultimate show of support?

I do not for a second imagine that I’m saying anything revolutionary here: anyone who has seriously thought about the matter can separate “support the war” from “support the troops.” And anyone with more than a third-grade education knows that even if one opposes the war, one must always want the best for our troops, and treat them with the respect they deserve.  But the worrying repetition of “support our troops” as an injunction against criticizing Bush and the war drives me to comment here again.  The troops need our respect, and keeping them in our thoughts and prayers (if you’re the type to pray) is one way to “support” them.  But support through political deeds and vigorous democratic debate, rather than words and thoughts , seems to me to be better.

Tangled Bank #107 is Here! With Us, too!

Good news, everyone!  Today stands to be a big day.  As war continues to rage in the trenches on the vaccine/autism posts, we’re also mentioned in Tangled Bank #107.

To those of you commenting on the autism posts: the spam filter, & moderation filter, seem to be catching some of your comments, but I always approve them, so if you don’t see your comment, just wait.  And I apologize on the behalf of the technology for interrupting the flow of debate.