Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Balog on June 23, 2009, 06:04:46 PM
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090623/ap_on_re_us/us_forced_chemo
Apparently the teen and his mom fled to Kali to avoid continuing chemo; he prefers "alternative treatment." Sounds like a mistake to me, but is the .gov allowed to force parents to make medical decisions? Sounds like a pretty slippery slope to me.
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I've been following this incident for ages now.
If he were an adult, I'd say "Go a head, Mr. Hauser. Kill yourself, I won't care."
(it says something about me I knew the kid's name before clicking on the link).
And yet Hauser there is not an adult.
On the other hand, the Israeli government had once caused the deaths of circa 6,000 children due to forced medical procedures.
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Obviously kids shouldn't be able to have total control of medical stuff. But it sounds as though his Mom is backing the decision, so the state is over ruling his parent.
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Should parents have total control over medical decisions regarding their children?
I do not know.
On one hand, I trust the government very little.
However, I also believe a situation in which a parent has total, unlimited control over medical decisions regarding his child is also inherently dangerous. I would not trust a parent with this authority any more than I would trust the government.
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how old is the kid?
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how old is the kid?
Thirteen.
I'm with Micro on this. I honestly don't know what the right response to all this sort of thing is.
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However, I also believe a situation in which a parent has total, unlimited control over medical decisions regarding his child is also inherently dangerous. I would not trust a parent with this authority any more than I would trust the government.
OK... who WOULD you trust? Not the patient, not the gooberment, not the parent(s). Perhaps the doctor and/or insurance company?
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...is it bad to say I don't know the proper answer to this?
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thats a real tough one. i know 13 year olds that i think could make a decent informed decision. not many but a few. and it is his life
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OK... who WOULD you trust? Not the patient, not the gooberment, not the parent(s). Perhaps the doctor and/or insurance company?
Refusing medical care can be abuse. I wish I could muster your easy outrage, but this is just a crappy area with no easy answers.
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...is it bad to say I don't know the proper answer to this?
Allow me to enlighten you: =D
In the case of a person in the majority of their years, I think it's safe to say that he or she is the final arbiter of any decision to be made regarding their health care, as long as he or she can pay for it somehow.
In the case of a minor, however, the parents are liable for the bills. The minor is liable for the actual results of the procedure or treatment (or lack thereof). You have a classic potential conflict of interest not unlike the welfare state we currently have in the US, where 51% can vote themselves benefits from the treasury. Not that kids are welfare leeches... =D But the moral principle from a financial standpoint is the same. However, you have to weigh that against the moral principle from the familial obligation standpoint. It's a parent's duty to care for their children, including health care costs.
So, you can have a couple of conflicting situations:
1. Minor cancer or other terminal patient that is so sick of treatment that he wants to just have some peace, but mom/dad/doc/ins all agree to give him more treatment. Minor patient is being coerced into treatment against his will.
2. Minor patient in need of treatment but parents cannot afford it or oppose it, yet doctor suggests it. CPS and gooberment gets involved as a result.
I'd propose as a standard of practice WRT minors in expensive or controversial treatment:
As long as the following conditions exist:
1. The patient is severely ill or terminal;
2. A means of at least partial insured payment is available;
3. The doctor believes that treatment is the best option;
4. and the patient and parents disagree on the course of treatment;
That the result should be to follow doctor's orders.
But... if the patient and parents agree to terminate care... the doctor is obligated to honor that and the state has no right to interfere.
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However, I also believe a situation in which a parent has total, unlimited control over medical decisions regarding his child is also inherently dangerous.
Why, exactly? I have held unlimited control over medical decisions when family members have gone under for surgery. It's a form the hospital makes you fill out. But really, the "unlimited control" angle is a strawman in this case. If the parent and child disagreed about the treatment, I could see the state intervening to weigh the parental rights, the child's rights, and the medical necessity of the treatment in question. The parent and child appear to be in complete agreement this time.
I don't think this is a slippery slope. We're already at the bottom of the hill with this one. The parent is not neglecting the child's condition. She is obviously aware of it, and is seeking treatment for it. The Christian Scientists deal with similar situations and are usually exonerated.
She is obviously an idiot, and her child will likely die horribly if she pursues alternative "medicine." That is their problem. They should be prepared to answer to their creator for it, but not the state.
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Azrael: if a kid breaks a leg, and the parents refuse to have it treated, how is that not abuse?
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Balog, that's a strawman.
You're confusing an immediately painful and life threatening ER situation with an excellent prognosis for recovery (along with a disagreement between parents that "think its against god's will" or "costs too much", and a kid just screaming "make the pain stop!"), with a long term debilitating terminal case where the minor patient has been made rationally cognizant of the treatment options and their likelihood for success and their drawbacks... and the minor and parents both agree that "enough is enough."
Obviously the former case is child abuse.
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Azrael doesn't seem to be making a distinction between types of care the parent is refusing. And again, who decides when and what kind of treatment parents get to refuse?
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the parents refuse to have it treated
Strawman, but I think AZRedhawk and I have different reasoning.
Who said the parent was refusing to have anything treated? She went so far as to travel to another state for the sole purpose of treating the child!
The mother of this kid is not abusing the child by neglecting his condition. She is very, very wrong in her belief that alternative hocus-pocus is going to fix the kid, but there is no neglect happening here. She is refusing the state's treatment in favor of a method that both she and the child prefer.
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Strawman, but I think AZRedhawk and I have different reasoning.
Who said the parent was refusing to have anything treated? She went so far as to travel to another state for the sole purpose of treating the child!
The mother of this kid is not abusing the child by neglecting his condition. She is very, very wrong in her belief that alternative hocus-pocus is going to fix the kid, but there is no neglect happening here. She is refusing the state's treatment in favor of a method that both she and the child prefer.
We're discussing the hypothetical reasoning behind state interference not this specific case. So again, if a kid breaks a leg and the parents refuse to have it set (whether out of fear of doctors, wanting to pray or burn incense or whatever over it instead) is that ok?
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We're discussing the hypothetical reasoning behind state interference not this specific case. So again, if a kid breaks a leg and the parents refuse to have it set (whether out of fear of doctors, wanting to pray or burn incense or whatever over it instead) is that ok?
No, you're changing the question every time. Last time you said they refused treatment. This time, they're refusing to have it set. They are not equivalents. Neither are "fear of doctors" and "wanting to pray" equivalents.
Let me put this in one clear statement: When the child is injured or sick and the parents refuse to treat the child, they abuse the child through neglect. When the child is injured or sick and the parents treat the child with generally accepted medical practices, they do not abuse the child. When the child is injured or sick and the parents treat the child using "alternative medicine," prayer, incense, witch doctors, or any other kind of hocus-pocus nonsense that they believe by religion, social custom, or the advice of a very foolish but trusted advisor, they are not neglecting the child's condition and are therefore not abusing the child.
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Balog, that's a strawman.
You're confusing an immediately painful and life threatening ER situation with an excellent prognosis for recovery (along with a disagreement between parents that "think its against god's will" or "costs too much", and a kid just screaming "make the pain stop!"), with a long term debilitating terminal case where the minor patient has been made rationally cognizant of the treatment options and their likelihood for success and their drawbacks... and the minor and parents both agree that "enough is enough."
Obviously the former case is child abuse.
If I recall correctly and maybe I don't; it's not a strawman, this case is more like the scenario above than not. If I recall correctly what this kid has is usually successfully treated with the treatment recommended vs. almost guaranteed fatal without the treatment, and no less fatal with the particular "alternative" treatment they were pursuing.
Of course I may not recall correctly in which case if it is in fact a pretty much guarantee the normal treatment most likely won't be successful, the parent/child should have more say than the government.
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Azrael: "refusing treatment" and "refusing real treatment" are functionally equivalent, to me anyway.
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Maybe they are to you, and frankly, they are to me, too. I think that woman is an idiot, her son is too, and without government intervention she would bear enormous moral responsibility for his early and terrible death.
The law, however, views it differently, and I think rightfully so.
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Should parents have total control over medical decisions regarding their children?
Yes, absolutely. Until the child is mature enough to take responsibility for himself, the responsibility falls on the parents. The government has no "right" to interfere with a parent/child decision any more than it has the "right" to interfere with an independent adult's decision.
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So, HTG, do you believe parents can make any medical decision whatever regarding their children? What about cosmetic medical procedures?
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So, HTG, do you believe parents can make any medical decision whatever regarding their children? What about cosmetic medical procedures?
Lacking any evidence to call the parents behavior or intentions into question, I don't see how you can take away the parents right to manage the welfare of their own children. The principle of of "innocent until proven guilty" applies IMO.
My problem is that you are all bringing up exceptions that don't apply to 99.999999% of all cases or families. You can't start unilaterally taking away parental rights because of some anecdotal exception you found. Those rare exceptions are what child protective services and courts and judges are for.
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So, HTG, do you believe parents can make any medical decision whatever regarding their children? What about cosmetic medical procedures?
I believe the parents should get to make the judgments about which medical treatments are the best for their child. They are the ones with the best interest in achieving the "right" outcome.
I don't think all decisions a parent might make would be good ones. I don't think that a parent can do anything he/she wants to a child willy-nilly under the guise that it's a medical treatment (for instance, pedophiles don't get to claim that abuse against their own children is somehow medicinal and therefore OK). I simply think that in matters of honest disagreement about what treatment is best, or what outcome is most desirable, the parent's wishes should prevail, because they're the ones who bear ultimate responsibility.
The parents in this particular example are doing what they think is best. They think (with good reason) that chemo is dangerous and harmful to their child and they're looking for better alternatives. And although this particular article doesn't mention the spiritual angle, but I bet it's there as well. Chemo might be the most effective way to kill the boy's cancer, but I bet if you ask them they'd all say that killing the cancer isn't the only matter at stake. It's often hard for non-religious people to understand this, but to the devout there can be fates that are literally worse than death. A "healthy" soul might be worth far more than a healthy body, and curing the body at the expense of the soul might be the height of folly. Whether they're right about this or not I don't know, but it's their lives (and potentially their afterlives) at risk, so I'll let them make the call.
I wouldn't force my ideas and beliefs on them, any more than I'd let them force their beliefs on me.
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Where have I stated I want to create some law to infringe the rights of the parents or their children?
I merely stated that a moral problem exists here that cannot be satisfactorily solved by legislation one way or the other.
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Easy, trigger. I never said anyone wanted to create any laws or infringe any rights. You asked a simple question: who should be responsible for a child. I gave a simple answer: the child's parents.
Parents bear responsibility for their children. This is a basic truth, not a situation created by the law or by the state. Problems occur when the law tries to fight this reality. The problem in this particular case is that the judges won't let the parents take responsibility and exercise their own best judgment.
Hypothetical: what happens if the judges force chemo on the child, and the chemo harms or kills him? Will the judges take responsibility for their actions? Seems to me the judges may have control over the child, but they'll never bear any responsibility for his welfare either way.
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Easy, trigger. I never said anyone wanted to create any laws or infringe any rights. You asked a simple question: who should be responsible for a child. I gave a simple answer: the child's parents.
Parents bear responsibility for their children. This is a basic truth, not a situation created by the law or by the state. Problems occur when the law tries to fight this reality. The problem in this particular case is that the judges won't let the parents take responsibility and exercise their own best judgment.
Hypothetical: what happens if the judges force chemo on the child, and the chemo harms or kills him? Will the judges take responsibility for their actions? Seems to me the judges may have control over the child, but they'll never bear any responsibility for his welfare either way.
Your points are what make this issue a difficult legal judgement. Chemotherapy will harm this child. Chemotherapy is poison. Chemotherapy could kill the child. The whole point of chemotherapy is to poison the patient just enough to kill the cancer without killing the patient.
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HTG: so you concede that some things are not acceptable, even when done for medical or religious reasons? And the discussion is not whether the state should have any say in a child's medical decisions, but under what circumstances the state has the right to be involved?
I think of it a lot like physical discipline. The state should stay out of parents spanking etc their kids; however, this is not a license to beat your kid under the guise of "discipline." So again, the question is when does it cross the line into abuse? It's a slippery slope and I don't know the answer. But I do know "The state has no justification to intrude on the parent at all" is not the answer.
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Balog, I think you have really identified the issue. There's no question that some limits should be in place, but how to draw them is really tough.
HTG, Parents should not have total control of this - if you had a couple of parents who really wanted a girl but had a boy, so they raised him as a girl and then pushed for a sex change at 14, even if the kid were willing...would that be permissible? That's a pretty decent case for state intervention, as is this one.
I think that instead of rules there should be guidelines that whatever authority is involved has to consider, like:
-the likely impact of the illness (disfigurement, death, etc)
-the certainty that the bad effects will occur
-the certainty of improvement with medical treatment
-the certainty of improvement with the parents' method
It would also be necessary to inquire into the genuineness and nature of the parents' and child's motivations.
This is one where you need to rely on a good decision maker - tough to do, really.
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Note that the article talks of "religious reasons."
In this case, it is Amerind religious dogma that leads them to their course of action. But we can't have any outright criticism of that, or even mention of it in a light other than favorable.
Now, if they were icky Christian Scientists, you'd have had a quick ID of the religion and a heaping helping of derision to accompany the other bits of the story.
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13 years old is an awkward age - old enough to know what's being done, but perhaps not old enough to make the responsible decision.
From what I've read, if untreated, the disease WILL kill the kid.
Treatment for this particular cancer is supposed to be effective in the majority of the cases - it's a cancer with a high "cure" rate. (If there's an MD in the house who believes my understanding of this is incorrect, please set me straight.)
With all the nasty side effects of the medication, I can see refusing chemo if it were for a cancer that had a miniscule chance of being cured - prolonging or inflicting misery without the prospect of a good outcome is something I'd oppose.
But that's apparently not the situation here.
Denying treatment that has a reasonable, realistic chance of saving the boy's life in favor of folk remedies based on Indian religious traditions is coming awfully close to human sacrifice in my book . . .
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13 years old is an awkward age - old enough to know what's being done, but perhaps not old enough to make the responsible decision.
I think there is a complication in this particular case. Articles I've read skirt around whether or not this kid has a learning disability, but I'm pretty sure I've seen illiteracy mentioned. That may or may not mean learning disability, but it's at least been hinted at here and there.
We had a case not so long ago here where a girl under the age of majority was allowed to reject treatment for a cancer as she was terminal anyway and didn't want to endure more painful treatment to buy a little time. In these circumstances they get people into assess whether the child is 'adult' enough to grasp the consequences of the decision.
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We had a case not so long ago here where a girl under the age of majority was allowed to reject treatment for a cancer as she was terminal anyway and didn't want to endure more painful treatment to buy a little time.
Perfectly reasonable IMO. However, this other kid has, IIRC, Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which is about as curable as cancer gets. My understanding is he has a better than 95% (maybe 100%?) chance of survival if he gets treatment and a 100% chance of dying without. I view that kind of like how I view seatbelt and car seat laws for small children, yes, it takes some authority away from the parents, but some parents are dumb as posts. Why should the child be punished because they had the misfortune of being born to morons.
Chris
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I can't diasgree Chris, I was just passing comment on the legal aspects as I understand them.
Orac, an anonymous oncologist blogger, has covered the case a fair bit (he also does the Friday Dose of Woo that I've referred to before) - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/daniel_hauser_and_the_rejection_of_chemo.php
It's all very easy to rail against religious ignorance as the cause of this tragic story, as many skeptics are doing (sometimes very heartlessly indeed) and certainly that was my first inclination. Often it's justified, as in the case of Madeline Neuman, the 11-year-old girl whose parents allowed her to die from diabetic ketoacidosis rather than take her to a doctor because they believed that prayer would cure her. However, in this case, I've come to conclude that it's all very knee-jerk and simplistic. Rather than being the driving cause of an irrational decision to reject curative chemotherapy in favor of quackery, in the case of Danny Hauser, religion appears to be more of an excuse to justify and provide a legal defense for a fear-driven decision in parents predisposed to "alternative" medicine. I'm again left wondering whether, if there had been better support mechanisms for families such as the Hauser family, this whole kerfuffle might have been avoided and Danny would be on his third course of curative chemotherapy right now. I realize that not everyone is reachable, but, given that Daniel's refusal of chemotherapy appears to be far less driven by religion than I had first thought, perhaps he and his mother would have been more reachable than I had thought.
He seems to conclude that in this case, as in a few others before it, the parents initially accepted conventional medicine and the child went through chemo. It's during the chemo, when the child is made ill by the chemo, when the parents question their decision.
It's not as if I'm oblivious to the fear of chemotherapy. Let's face it. Chemotherapy is poison, and people are correctly afraid of poison. (Look for some woo-meister to quote-mine that sentence.) Chemotherapy poisons cancer cells, and the reason it can treat cancer is because it poisons the cancer cells more than it poisons normal cells.
After the chemo the child feels better, leading to either 'he's cured' or 'chemo is poison and made my child ill'.
'Chemo is poison', like 'alternative AIDS hypotheses' such as 'AZT causes AIDS symptoms' (and other notable areas of science), is another instance of science under attack from those who exploit misunderstandings and ignorance.
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Note that the article talks of "religious reasons."
In this case, it is Amerind religious dogma that leads them to their course of action. But we can't have any outright criticism of that, or even mention of it in a light other than favorable.
Now, if they were icky Christian Scientists, you'd have had a quick ID of the religion and a heaping helping of derision to accompany the other bits of the story.
In all fairness to the American Indians, it's important to note that American Indian religious leaders were asking the mother to not defy the court order. I think this may be more along the lines of "Hippy dippy interpetation of Amerind religious dogma" rather than actual American Indian religious dogma, and if it IS actual American Indian religious dogma, then it is about as representative of the whole of American Indian religious dogma, as Fred Phelps religious dogma is of the whole of American "Baptist" religious dogma.
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...'Chemo is poison', like 'alternative AIDS hypotheses' such as 'AZT causes AIDS symptoms' (and other notable areas of science), is another instance of science under attack from those who exploit misunderstandings and ignorance.
I don't think the statement that "Chemo is poison" is neccessarily an instance of science under attack. I consider it "poison", but don't discourage it as an effective cancer therapy. If I had cancer and my M.D. recommended chemo, I'd get chemo.
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I don't think the statement that "Chemo is poison" is neccessarily an instance of science under attack. I consider it "poison", but don't discourage it as an effective cancer therapy. If I had cancer and my M.D. recommended chemo, I'd get chemo.
Should have been clearer 'chemo is poison, don't have chemo', which exists out there, like anti-antiretroviral quacks.
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Should have been clearer 'chemo is poison, don't have chemo', which exists out there, like anti-antiretroviral quacks.
Fair 'nuff. Put me in the "Chemo is poison, only use it if you have cancer and your Dr. recommends it" category.
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In all fairness to the American Indians, it's important to note that American Indian religious leaders were asking the mother to not defy the court order. I think this may be more along the lines of "Hippy dippy interpetation of Amerind religious dogma" rather than actual American Indian religious dogma, and if it IS actual American Indian religious dogma, then it is about as representative of the whole of American Indian religious dogma, as Fred Phelps religious dogma is of the whole of American "Baptist" religious dogma.
Agreed.
My point is not necessarily to plumb the depths of Amerind religious dogma, but the media's oleaginous deference to it, where it would have shown none toward an analogous Christian dogma.
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Agreed.
My point is not necessarily to plumb the depths of Amerind religious dogma, but the media's oleaginous deference to it, where it would have shown none toward an analogous Christian dogma.
My vocabulary just expanded. Nice word, quite apt.
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HTG: so you concede that some things are not acceptable, even when done for medical or religious reasons? And the discussion is not whether the state should have any say in a child's medical decisions, but under what circumstances the state has the right to be involved?
I think of it a lot like physical discipline. The state should stay out of parents spanking etc their kids; however, this is not a license to beat your kid under the guise of "discipline." So again, the question is when does it cross the line into abuse? It's a slippery slope and I don't know the answer. But I do know "The state has no justification to intrude on the parent at all" is not the answer.
What I said was that parents are responsible for their children. The state can't be and won't be. As for medical decisions, which often boil down to judgment calls about juggling different risks and weighing different priorities on what outcome is best, the parents should have the say if the child can't decide for himself.
Nobody is disputing that these particular parents are trying to do what they think is best for their child. They just have a different idea of what the best way to achieve that is. This would be a different discussion entirely if the parents were trying to harm or neglect the child, or if the treatment in question wasn't so harmful and dangerous, or if the child and the parents disagreed on what should be done. But since none of this is the case, it really just boils down to a difference of opinion on which medical treatments are best, and what outcomes are most desirable. I'm not sure how anyone except the child involved and his caring parents can make a best decision. I certainly can't see why someone else's decision should be forced on them.
Frankly, I think the state and all the rest of us should mind our own business and leave 'em alone.
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Fair 'nuff. Put me in the "Chemo is poison, only use it if you have cancer and your Dr. recommends it" category.
What he said.
That stuff is nasty, relying on the hope that it kills the cancer before it kills the patient. Also, death caused by chemo is by no means uncommon.
But, I would likely undergo chemo, were it at all likely to be helpful. I would also toss in several bales of wacky tobaccy(1) and a round gallon of steeh-roads(1)(2) to help during & after.
(1) I am not really concerned with legality in the case of my own health or that of my loved ones. My respect for the rule of law can be stretched only so far before breaking.
(2) IIRC, anabolic steroids have been prescribed to cancer patients undergoing chemo.
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Note that the article talks of "religious reasons."
In this case, it is Amerind religious dogma that leads them to their course of action. But we can't have any outright criticism of that, or even mention of it in a light other than favorable.
I suggest that you read the expositions of the sect in question on "Respectful INsolence". They're about as Amerindian as I am.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/daniel_hauser_and_the_rejection_of_chemo.php
The reason given by his Daniel and his mother Colleen is that they belong to a highly dubious-sounding American Indian religion called Nemenhah, which is led by Philip "Cloudpiler" Landis, a white man who claims to be a naturopath and Native American "healer" peddling "cures" for AIDS and cancer
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MB:
Interesting article, but I am not sure it is relevant to my point.
Whatever the underlying reality, they claimed their religion forbade the treatment and most of the media deliberately were non-specific about the religion in question. If I were the least bit cynical, I would think that this was deliberate and that the media would hope that readers would assume they were Christian fringers.
This is a different standard of behavior than when it is a Christian fringe religion.
Tangentially, I am not the least bit surprised that the leader of the religion in question is, for all appearances, white. That matches with a goodly portion of my experience on indian reservations, where the requirements were historically very loose (but have been tightening up the last decade+, due to the advent of indian casinos, for reasons you can imagine).
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It amazes me that you managed to turn this into a debate on the media and their evil, evil anti-religious attitudes.
I do not hate Christians (though I am more sympathethic to Evangelical fundamentalism than, say, Catholicism, for political, philosophical, and aesthetical reasons), but I am not a great fan of them (on the argument that "we are in the semi-finals now"). The big problem is that the media hate freedom, not that they hate a given group. If they hated atheists, it'd be as ridiculous.
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Fair 'nuff. Put me in the "Chemo is poison, only use it if you have cancer and your Dr. recommends it" category.
I'm in there as well. For that matter, it's the same way with radiation therapy - dividing cells are the most vulnerable to radiation, and cancer tends to be the most rapid dividing. Radiation kills 'good' cells as well, you just try to restrict the treatment to cover the cancer the most while touching the non-cancer areas as little as possible. I seem to remember one system that uses 3-7 'beams' of radiation to cook the cancer spot while reducing average exposure levels for the rest of the body.
Same deal with chemo. With few exceptions, cancer cells carry your own DNA, just broken. It makes it difficult to target - whether by your body's immune system, chemo, or radiation.
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There are legions of peddlers of woo. They vary in their malignancy, from those who sell potions as supplements to healthy living to the truly delusional, to the outright evil. In the latter camp are those who push cancer patients to reject their oncologists advice, or AIDS patients to come off their meds. They truly exploit the vulnerable with promises of cures, and conspiracy theories of doctors wishing to keep them sick or kill them.
Matthias Rath falls into this catergory - http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/ - I've posted that before. Ben Goldacre's book is an exceptional read by the way, he really lays into media characters such as "Dr" Gillian McKeith.
Goldacre's main complaint is that there is actually a progression towards moving things such as complementary medicine into the mainstream. Orac has plenty to say about this too. In some ways it doesn't seem like the worst thing possible, we know about placebo and studies on homeopathy as Goldacre outllines demonstrate that perhaps an old fashioned 'being listened' to relationship with a therapist actually has benefits. The treatments themselves though should not placed on a par with modern medicine.
The other big issue:
Despite the extremes of this case, not one single alternative therapist or nutritionist, anywhere in the world, has stood up to criticise any single aspect of the activities of Matthias Rath and his colleagues. In fact, far from it: he continues to be fêted to this day. I have sat in true astonishment and watched leading figures of the UK’s alternative therapy movement applaud Matthias Rath at a public lecture (I have it on video, just in case there’s any doubt). Natural health organisations continue to defend Rath. Homeopaths’ mailouts continue to promote his work.
- from the link above.
Now how we protect people from this, I don't know. But during the days that Rath and Duesberg held sway over figures such as the South African Minister for Health and Thabo Mbeki people were harmed by their policies, and people continue to be harmed when they are taken in by malignant charlatans. When it comes to AIDS or cancer I'm not sure that I can fully accept that vulnerable people should just be left to them.
(On a sort of sidenote - kooks can be dangerous, or at least threaten to be dangerous - Anti-fluoride extremists 'threaten to kill MP' (http://www.theage.com.au/national/antifluoride-extremists-threaten-to-kill-mp-20090622-ct7z.html))
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I've read about Matthias.
I'm sure he is responsible for many deaths in Africa as a result of his snake-oil salesmanship. I think only the murderous thugs who rule there and Rachel Carson have more blood on their hands.
I'm also certain he's as smug as they are in their self-righteousness.
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I'm sure he is responsible for many deaths in Africa as a result of his snake-oil salesmanship. I think only the murderous thugs who rule there and Rachel Carson have more blood on their hands
Bait?
The only people who claim that Carson has blood on her hands know as much about as science as Rath does. DDT as panacea is woo too.
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I guess the WHO knows nothing about science, then:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083944
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Bait?
The only people who claim that Carson has blood on her hands know as much about as science as Rath does. DDT as panacea is woo too.
His snake oil is bogus.
My snake oil is the real deal.
Long live snake oil.
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Also, I wasn't aware I was baiting anyone- I took one snake-oil salesman and compared him to another. (And murderous thugs).
If you'd like, we can start another thread debating her role in the deaths of millions. (Of course, as I recall, thread drift is a feature of APS)
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I guess the WHO knows nothing about science, then:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083944
Bait was asked because I've taken people on about this before. And because of the weak comparision that people might then be tempted to draw, such as jfruser does.
DDT isn't banned for anti-malaria uses anywhere except the US. Never has been. It has been used, where mosquitoes are susceptible, continuously. Indoor residual spraying, as part of integrated pest management. Such as bednets and other, often more effective, pesticides. The only surprise in the WHO's statement is that it issued a press release acknowledging the long status quo.
In the early 1960s, several developing countries had nearly wiped out malaria. After they stopped using DDT, malaria came raging back and other control methods have had only modest success.
I suspect they are referring to Sri Lanka, which is the posterboy of the 'Spray Everything in Sight with DDT' lot. But not all is at it seems. Yes, after massively reducing its malaria problems with DDT Sri Lanka did stop spraying in 1964 (up from neglible figures to about 2.5m cases per annum - bad).
Malaria reared its head and by 1972 they were spraying again, with DDT. Which worked to a point.
Sri Lanka went back to the spray guns, reducing malaria once more to 150,000 cases in 1972; but there the attack stalled. Anopheles culicifacies, completely susceptible to DDT when the spray stopped in 1964, was now found resistant presumably because of the use of DDT for crop protection in the interim. Within a couple of years, so many culicifacies survived that despite the spraying malaria spread in 1975 to more than 400,000 people.
- Gordon Harrison - Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man
DDT resistance? Say it isn't so.
Bug Girl - an entomologist blogger on Carson and DDT
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/ddt-junk-science-malaria-and-the-attack-on-rachel-carson/
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/ddt-malaria-insecticide-resistance/
“The truth is that DDT is neither superhero nor supervillain — it’s just a tool. And if entomologists have learned anything in the last half-century of dealing with the million-plus species of insects in the world, it’s that there is no such thing as an all-purpose weapon when it comes to pest management. DDT may be useful in controlling malaria in some places in Africa, but it’s essential to determine whether target populations are resistant; if they are, then no amount of DDT will be effective….
Overselling a chemical’s capacity to solve a problem can do irretrievable harm not only by raising false hopes but by delaying the use of more effective long-term methods. So let’s drop the hyperbole and overblown rhetoric — it’s not what Africa needs. What’s needed is a recognition of the problem’s complexity and a willingness to use every available weapon to fight disease in an informed and rational way.”
a quote from May Berenbaum which bug girl uses to wrap it up.
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His snake oil is bogus.
My snake oil is the real deal.
Long live snake oil.
Yeah, that's exactly what is going on. There's a direct comparision between being pro-medicine and being anti-nonsense Steven Milloy lobbyist FUD. Actually, there isn't.
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Orac has plenty to say about this too.
Orac is an evil, evil bastard in his own right.
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Orac is an evil, evil bastard in his own right.
He is? I've perhaps wasted too much of my life reading him, and snickering at the snark.
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He seems to think the solution to the woo is to ban the hell out of it, and that all even slightly unconventional measures (like, say, resveratrol or HGH) are equally evil, disturbing, and should be banned/destroyed.
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He seems to think the solution to the woo is to ban the hell out of it, and that all even slightly unconventional measures (like, say, resveratrol or HGH) are equally evil, disturbing, and should be banned/destroyed.
Although I can't cite specific examples, from my general recollection that's fairly valid as a criticism of him. There's no doubt he knows his stuff, but there's nothing libertarian about him. With him and Goldacre it's fairly easy to extract the criticisms of woo from their solutions. Goldacre isn't so bad, his approach foiling to one of McKeith's claims to expertise, a membership of a society, was to get a membership of the same society in the name of his dead cat.
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It amazes me that you managed to turn this into a debate on the media and their evil, evil anti-religious attitudes.
It isn't amazing at all if you understand the way the American mainstream media operates.
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It isn't amazing at all if you understand the way the American mainstream media operates.
This is APS. It is already common knowledge for every single poster here that the media is corrupt and evil. Now, the nature of their evil can be a subject of discussion.
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Either parents are responsible for decisions regarding their kids ... or they're not. The problem is, the .gov wants to have it both ways. So do the figgin' doctors.
There is documented evidence of people defeating cancer without conventional medicine, through prayer, meditation, faith ... and sometimes diet. There are also (obviously) innumerable people who have undergone conventional cancer therapy and died despite the best efforts of big medicine. Thus, it cannot be argued that alternative methods don't work, and it cannot be argued that conventional methods will work. All you're left with is a gamble ... either way. So what's at stake is who gets to roll the dice.
My view is that it should be left to the parents. ESPECIALLY when it's a case like this one, where the kid doesn't WANT the chemo anyway. Somebody mentioned in the first page of this thread that there's a "conflict of interest" because parents have to pay for expensive treatments. I view it the other way. I assume that parents make their decisions out of conscience, and choose what they believe is in the best interest of the child. If their religion or their philosophy doesn't accept conventional medicine ... they should not be forced to be subjected to it.
And, more importantly, if the doctors and the judge(s) overrule the parents and require the treatment ... then the damned doctors and judge(s) should just step up to the plate and pay for it, too.
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Iain,
What you post may be true however:
With her book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson was one of the first people to suggest that DDT was creating widespread problems in the environment. Although there may have been problems with the widespread use of DDT in the environment and some expression of concern was warranted, many of Carson’s claims were highly suspect and her extreme rhetoric led to an overreaction in the other direction—policies to curb DDT use even where it was most needed for public health purposes.
At the time, a reviewer of Silent Spring in Science magazine (September 28, 1962, p. 1043) praised Carson for raising concerns about potential dangers associated with pesticide misuse, but the author expressed serious dismay with Carson’s extreme approach. The reviewer noted: “Just as it is important for us to be reminded of the dangers inherent in the use of new pesticides, so must our people be made aware the tremendous values to human welfare conferred by the new pesticides. No attempt is made by the author to portray the many positive benefits that society derives from the use of pesticides. No estimates are made of the countless lives that have been saved because of the destruction of insect vectors of disease.”
Because of the anti-DDT and anti-chemical hysteria engendered by the ideas in Silent Spring, DDT was eventually removed from the market under the Nixon Administration. Yet DDT was banned despite findings of an EPA panel that it was not a public health threat. Barron’s magazine (November 10, 1975, p. 3) reported on the topic in 1975: “In banning DDT, for farm uses, then-EPA director Ruckelshaus over-ruled the federal hearings examiner Edmund Sweeney. After seven months of hearings, during which 125 witnesses were called and 9,000 pages of testimony were submitted, Sweeney declared that the evidence indicated that DDT wasn’t a cancer hazard. He added that on balance, its usage did not create an unreasonable risk with its benefits…‘In my opinion,’ he said, ‘the evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.’” Similarly, Barron’s reported, the year before the ban, the National Communicable Disease Center of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare noted: “The safety record of for the use of DDT…is nothing short of phenomenal.”
The continued flow of misinformation about the public health impacts of DDT advanced by environmental activists along with the U.S. ban prompted public officials in other nations to stop using it and to even ban it in some places. In good measure, because of reduced use of DDT, malaria rates skyrocketed by the 1990s after having reached historic lows in the 1960s while DDT was in use. Roger Bate and Richard Tren note, for example, in Sri Lanka, which stopped using DDT in 1964, cases rose from a low of 17 to about half a million by 1969. Donald R. Roberts, MD, of the U.S. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and his colleagues note: “Although many factors contribute to increasing malaria, the strongest correlation is with decreasing number of houses sprayed with DDT.” A study of malaria in Latin America demonstrates a causal link between DDT spraying and malaria rates.
This study also shows that when global efforts to control malaria began to reduce emphasis on vector control (i.e., DDT), the malaria problem grew. The authors reported that “countries that discontinued their house-spray programs reported large increases in malaria rates. Countries that reported low or reduced HSRs also reported increased malaria. Only Ecuador reported increased use of DDT and greatly reduced malaria rates.”
Despite the devastating toll associated with reduced use of DDT, many government agencies and environmental activists have been reluctant to change their views. Even where DDT is allowed, government aid agencies—including some at the U.S. Agency for International Development—have denied funding to nations if they chose to use DDT. In 1990s, the United Nations Environment Program began work on the Convention of Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POPs Convention), which set in place bans on 12 chemicals, including DDT. However, during negotiations on this treaty, public health officials finally spoke out on the DDT issue, urging the governments to at least allow limited DDT use for malaria control. To that end, they signed an open letter urging POPs Treaty negotiators to include a public health exemption to the DDT ban. As a result, the final treaty allows for a temporary, limited exemption for DDT use for malaria control. But even with its limited, temporary exemption, the treaty regulations governing use make access more expensive.
From: http://rachelwaswrong.org/malaria-legacy/
Another factor to note:
One cannot blame Rachel Carson for things done in her name after her death. But she was undoubtedly wrong about DDT, and about a host of other issues. She was known to be wrong already in 1972, ten years after Silent Spring was first published, as the back cover of the 1972 Penguin Books version acknowledges. But in that year DDT was de-listed (and effectively banned) by the US Environmental Protection Agency, against the advice of the EPA’s own DDT hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney.
Manufacturing ceased in the US, and DDT became an icon of evil for the environmental movement. The eventual result was that good quality DDT became hard to acquire by malarial countries that had relied on it for disease control. In the ensuing years, aid agencies also discouraged it and all other insecticides for public health use. The consequence for hundreds of millions of poor people was painful, debilitating infection from malaria and other diseases. For tens of millions, it was permanent brain damage or death.
Carson is not to blame for environmental zealotry after she died in 1964. However, she epitomizes the movement itself – long on emotion, providing a few occasional kernels of truth, and rife with wild and usually unscientific manipulation of data.
From: Roger Bate, Africa Fighting Malaria (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=217)
Seems to me, her book was long on emotion and short on science and may have caused millions of unnecessary deaths because countries like the United States were no longer producing DDT. Seems the quintessential definition of a "snake oil salesman" to me.
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What I post may be true however you completely and utterly reject it based on something you read on an attack site and a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation enabling you to continue an outrageous slander.
Suggest you re-read what was posted.
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d a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation
That there is an ad hominem if I ever saw one.
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...is it bad to say I don't know the proper answer to this?
It's impossible to have an answer to this question that will fit every situation.
Case by case basis.
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What I post may be true however you completely and utterly reject it based on something you read on an attack site and a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation enabling you to continue an outrageous slander.
Suggest you re-read what was posted.
And I suggest you actually read what was posted.
Your claim is that the DDT bans had no effect on the usage of DDT across the world.
Your next claim is that DDT wouldn't have worked on resistant vectors.
My post claims a correlation between decreased DDT use and increased malaria. Nothing in your post refutes that, it simply claims that DDT is but one tool.
I chose not to argue that because I saw no reason to claim DDT was the one and only solution to malaria. I however, wondered how your data compared to the statistics in the two articles.
I granted your information as I have already read it. DDT isn't a magic bullet. It is another tool in the fight.
It seems strange, though, that a book with exaggerations and faulty science is defended so vehemently.
Also, since you have no desire to consider anything coming from an opposing point of view, I find it odd that you want me to consider your articles.
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Also, since you have no desire to consider anything coming from an opposing point of view, I find it odd that you want me to consider your articles.
That is understandable, given that I don't consider passages in the Koran that contradict the Bible to have validity.
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And to be fair Iain has had this conversation before.
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And to be fair Iain has had this conversation before.
As I stated, I was unaware of that and did not intend to bring it up a debate already hashed out.
My point that her book is not but snake oil is uncontested, I note.