The Hannah Poling case and the rebranding of autism by antivaccinationists as a mitochondrial disorder
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I seem to have taken on the role of the primary vaccine blogger of this little group of bloggers trying desperately to hold the forces of pseudoscience and magical thinking at bay in the face of powerful forces trying to “integrate” prescientific belief systems with science- and evidence-based medicine, a process that would be unthinkable in just about any other field of applied science, such as aeronautics or the physics used in engineering, just as creationists try to “integrate” religion with biology. Although I do have a strong interest in the antivaccination movement in general and the claim that vaccines, or the mercury in the thimerosal preservatives that was in many childhood vaccines in the U.S. until late 2001 or early 2002 (when they were taken out) are a major cause or contributor to autism, such had not been my intention. When I started here on SBM, I had intended to be a lot more diverse. Indeed, I had even had another topic entirely in mind for this week’s post, but, as happens far too often, news events have overtaken me in the form of a story that was widely reported at the end of last week. It was all over the media on Thursday evening and Friday, showing up on CNN, Larry King Live, the New York Times, and NPR.Science-Based Nutrition
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One of the most successful propaganda campaigns within health care in the last few decades has been the re-branding of nutrition as “alternative” or out of the mainstream of scientific medicine. I have marveled at how successful this campaign has been, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. I suppose this is partly a manifestation of the public’s short-term memory, but it also seems to reflect basic psychology.Prior Probability: the Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”—Continued Again
Some History
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After the previous posting on the Bayesian approach to clinical trial data, several new comments made it clear to me that more needed to be said. This posting addresses those comments and adds a few more observations regarding the unfortunate consequences of EBM’s neglect of prior probability as it applies to “complementary and alternative medicine” (”CAM”).Antiscience-Based Medicine in South Africa
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South Africa’s Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is fighting to protect the traditional healers of her country from having their methods tested scientifically. She warns that, “We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development,” and that she does not want the incorporation of traditional healing to get “bogged down in clinical trials.” Her arguments are anti-scientific and represent a health tragedy for South Africa. However, such attitudes are not uncommon within the community of sectarian medicine and represent some of the common rhetoric used to disguise anti-scientific positions.Science and Chiropractic
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In the comments to a previous blog entry, a chiropractor made the following statements:
1. Chiropractic is a science.
2. Chiropractic is based on neurology, anatomy and physiology.
3. Chiropractors are doctors of the nervous system.
4. Chiropractic improves health and quality of life.
I offered to write a blog entry on the “science” of chiropractic, and I asked him, both in the comments section and by personal e-mail, to educate me first by providing me whatever evidence he could find to support those claims. I never heard back from him, so I was left to do my own research as best I could. Here’s what I found.
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