Papaya And the Flushing of Wee Toxins, Forsooth!!

As many of you, gentle readers, no doubt know, many rank idiocies emanating from the world of pseudoscience irritate me to no end. But very few of them come close to the R-A-G-E (Hulk SMASH!) that ebulliates in me when I hear 'toxin', that standard catchphrase from all manners of peddlers of pseudoscience.

"Water memory" - a myth that wouldn't die

Holy pseudoscience, Batman!

Homeopathy websites (too many to list; I found the material for this post here) are all gleefully abuzz today** with the following factoid - New Research From Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart Scientifically Proves Water Memory and Homeopathy.

et tu...? Acupuncture and pain in Nature

Physician and blogger Harriet Hall, MD, once coined an exceptionally apt phrase to describe research in many alternative medicine modalities - "Tooth Fairy Science"; it refers to research undertakings into a phenomenon whose existence is yet to be established. In a post in her blog Science-based Medicine, she explained:

You could measure how much money the Tooth Fairy leaves under the pillow, whether she leaves more cash for the first or last tooth, whether the payoff is greater if you leave the tooth in a plastic baggie versus wrapped in Kleenex. You can get all kinds of good data that is reproducible and statistically significant. Yes, you have learned something. But you haven't learned what you think you've learned, because you haven't bothered to establish whether the Tooth Fairy really exists.

Priceless. And of all the modalities championed by modern peddlers of pseudoscience, acupuncture most certainly qualifies as a prime example of Tooth Fairy Science.

The Curious Case of Two Indias

For a while now, I have been reading an interesting and engagingly written book by young British science journalist and author, Angela Saini, titled: Geek Nation: How Indian Science Is Taking Over the World. I would perhaps write a review of the book once I am done. In this post, however, I am going to share a few observations from the book that struck an immediate chord with me. I call it 'The Curious Case of Two Indias', referring to a strangely split personality of the country I was born and grew up in. India is, at once, progressive and retrogressive, modern and medieval, scientific and superstitious - a contradiction of existence; the book Geek Nation has ample illustrations of this dichotomy. I refer to a part that relates to my own experience.

Homeopathic Belladonna in Japanese Encephalitis? Naah-uh!

Heh! Right now I have this stupid grin on my face, because I caught this glaring error in a published paper. Okay, it is a paper on homeopathy referenced in a godawful homeopathy website (that I mentioned in my yesterday's write-up), but nevertheless.

What's the harm?

In my last post on Homeopathy, a commentor, Mike Fowler, mentioned an interesting fact:

Here in Spain, "Homeopathy" basically means something different. Many "Homeopathico" preparations sold in pharmacies here contain trace and greater concentrations of the active ingredient, so they are probably more like "herbal" remedies.

Spain notwithstanding (I agreed with Mike when he further said that it might be a cultural or linguistic issue here), there is an important distinction to be made - not just by the proponents of science- and evidence-based medicine, but also, it would appear, by regulatory agencies. Because it transpires that ignoring this distinction can be... detrimental, quite detrimental. Read on for details.

Pensées - entry 00008

So... here. As promised in Pensées from Moi.

Original publishing date: April 27, 2010.

Original Title: Placebopathy

Pensées - entry 00006

So... here. As promised in Pensées from Moi.

Original publishing date: April 13, 2010.

Original Title: Homeopathy and mouse model

Pensées - entry 00005

So... here. As promised in Pensées from Moi.

Original publishing date: April 13, 2010.

Original Title: In which I take on Homeopathy

Gotra - the irrational, unscientific idiocy continues...

This great country of ours, India, with its underlying theme of unity in diversity, has a rich cultural heritage of education and knowledge, and civilization. It pains me immensely to find instances of idiotic and irrational customs, based solely in religious myths and superstitions, still existing in modern day India; the pernicious influences of such customs and traditions, fuelled by religious beliefs, are not only degrading the secular principles enshrined in the Constitution of India, but also actively harming the lives of many of its citizens.

Examples abound. Let me refer to a specific and recent one: the controversy about same-gotra (sub-caste) marriages among the Jats of Haryana. It all began with the 2007 murder of a young couple, Manoj and Babli, who were kidnapped and killed for the 'crime' of falling in love and marrying within the same gotra, against the wishes of the Taliban-style local village caste council, the Khap Panchayat. Though the perpetrators were arrested, tried in a court of law and given the death sentence, they were unrepentant - as were the other Khap leaders, who went on to ostracise Manoj's mother. The Jat cops who colluded with the murderers have not been punished yet.

The capital punishment handed out to the perpetrators was meant to act as a deterrent. Yet, undeterred, the Khap chieftains recently pledged to intensify their war against same gotra marriages, and started clamoring for amending to Hindu Marriage Act to ban same-gotra marriages. Recently, in a bizarre turn of events, a young Jat soldier, belonging to the traditionally caste-less Muslim religion, has caught the ire of the Khap for marrying a Muslim girl, whom the Khap considers to belong to the same gotra - never mind the completely different religion!

Prayer Therapy? Are you freakin' kidding me?

Snake oil comes in various forms and shapes, and its salesmen (perhaps I should use the PC term, 'salespersons') are of various hues and creeds. The commonalty between many of them lies in their relentless push to gain mainstream acceptance, which, of course, would mean more funds and more followers. They are not hampered or thwarted by the inconvenient fact that their brands of quackery, often founded on religious/mystical beliefs, are not supported by hard empirical evidence, or indeed, rationality. Undeterred, they plod on, championing superstitions, promoting lies, feasting on the fears, uncertainties and vulnerabilities of disadvantaged people.

Take, for example, the Church of Christ, Scientist, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 in Boston, which purports to tend to the sick using "Christian Science", a hodge-podge of elements of the Christian faith and severely evidence-challenged practices that combine airy hand-waving and crazy superstitions. According to an article published in the New York Times today, the faith's central scripture, written by Eddy who claimed an inspired understanding of the “science” behind Jesus’ healing method, expressly forbids medical care, and relies instead on Christian Science healing - a form of spiritual healing, based on Eddy's understanding of the Bible. Disappointed that existing Christian churches would not embrace her discovery of the "science" of healing, Mary Eddy created her own church, which trains its practitioners to "help" patients with "transcendental prayer intended to realign the patient's soul with God".

This is wrong on so many different levels.

Does acupuncture work in depression control? Nope.

This past weekend, the New York Times published an article on a study from Stanford University, where the authors apparently found benefit from acupuncture in pregnant women with Major depression. Given the track record of acupuncture (which features a resounding lack of evidence that it works), my skeptical antennae started twitching. I ferreted out the original study in the Obstetrics and Gynecology journal (link to full text here), and read it through thoroughly. This report - of a single randomized clinical trial (RCT) study with less than 150 subjects - claimed that an acupuncture regimen, specifically designed for a particular individual, could significantly reduce depression in that individual. As I suspected, the paper made a whole lot of science-y sounding, but nonetheless vacuous, arguments; their predominant talking point seemed to be that multiple exploratory analyses were done on the observed outcome. This assertion is always suspect; for an RCT, it shouldn't need so many exploratory analyses at the study stage, and the outcome measures should have been determined prior to the initiation of the study. As a friend of mine pointed out, "exploratory analyses" frequency means "fishing expedition", which is what this paper seems to have done in plenty. Unfortunately, the mainstream media coverage of this single study has been far from ideal; the news report has been worded to make it seem like a breakthrough or a major milestone in research, which is the impression the general public is left with - eventually to their detriment.

Sensationalist Hyperbole from the NY Times, Re vaccine adjuvants

Andrew Pollack is an MIT-trained engineer, who has covered the business and science of biotechnology for the New York Times since 2000. I don't know how qualified he is to comment on aspects of biology and medicine, or indeed how far he understands the topics that he speaks about. But it irritates me greatly when I see sensationalist tripe, such as, "Are Americans obligated to use an unproven vaccine to help protect people in other countries from the flu pandemic?" with which Pollack opens his commentary in yesterday's NY Times - curiously titled, 'Benefit and Doubt in Vaccine Additive' - on the use of adjuvants in vaccines in the United States.

The question is, or rather is meant to be, a loaded one; note the use of the key terms - 'obligated', 'unproven vaccine', and 'protect people in other countries' - that are guaranteed to rouse the rabbles and sit well with the proponents of anti-vaccination lunacy in the US. Let me first take the words that were surely utilized to engender a sense of outrage, and tickle the xenophobia inherent in many of that lunatic fringe: 'obligated', and 'protect people in other countries'.

As far as vaccines are concerned, there is no 'obligation' for the people of this country - but it does make eminently good sense. Consider the case of the influenza virus, which has been has been one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality, especially among young children, since 1918. The commonly circulating strain of the virus (the seasonal 'flu') is not virulent enough to cause mortality, but the virus is able to mutate at a very high rate leading to the emergence of highly virulent strains, which have a range of hosts, including humans, horses, pigs, sea mammals and birds, and more importantly, some of which are able to cross the species barrier (for example, bird to human, avian influenza A H5N1). When a new (mutated) influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, it has the potential of causing a pandemic. Pandemics caused by influenza A viruses in the past have been associated with high morbidity and mortality, as well as loss of livelihood.

It does not take great intelligence to understand that geographical barriers are largely meaningless nowadays, what with the tremendous increase in global travel, urbanization, as well as overpopulation; any epidemic, particularly the ones due to the hypervirulent new influenza strains (including those crossing over from animals) is likely to disseminate globally rather quickly, leading to disease and deaths in large numbers, as we have seen several times in the past few years, making the occurrence of the next pandemic just a matter of time. Therefore, the 'protect people of other countries' argument does not wash at all.