Why skepticism about science and medicine?

(cross-posted from scimedskeptic.wordpress.com)

My skepticism is not about science and medicine as sources or repositories of objective knowledge and understanding. Skepticism is demanded by the fact that what society learns about science and medicine is mediated by human beings. That brings in a host of reasons for skepticism: human fallibility, individual and institutional self-interest, conflicts of interest, sources of bias and prejudice.

I have never come across a better discussion of the realities about science and its role in society than Richard Lewontin’s words in his book, Biology as Ideology (Anansi Press 1991, HarperPerennial 1992; based on 1990 Massey Lectures, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation):

“Science is a social institution about which there is a great deal of misunderstanding, even among those who are part of it. . . [It is] completely integrated into and influenced by the structure of all our other social institutions. The problems that science deals with, the ideas that it uses in investigating those problems, even the so-called scientific results that come out of scientific investigation, are all deeply influenced by predispositions that derive from the society in which we live. Scientists do not begin life as scientists, after all, but as social beings immersed in a family, a state, a productive structure, and they view nature through a lens that has been molded by their social experience.
. . . science is molded by society because it is a human productive activity that takes time and money, and so is guided by and directed by those forces in the world that have control over money and time. Science uses commodities and is part of the process of commodity production. Science uses money. People earn their living by science, and as a consequence the dominant social and economic forces in society determine to a large extent what science does and how it. does it. More than that, those forces have the power to appropriate from science ideas that are particularly suited to the maintenance and continued prosperity of the social structures of which they are a part. So other social institutions have an input into science both in what is done and how it is thought about, and they take from science concepts and ideas that then support their institutions and make them seem legitimate and natural. . . .
Science serves two functions. First, it provides us with new ways of manipulating the material world . . . . [Second] is the function of explanation” (pp. 3-4). And (p. 5) explaining how the world works also serves as legitimation.

Needed skepticism takes into account that every statement disseminated about science or medicine serves in some way the purpose(s), the agenda(s), of the source or sources of that statement.

So the first thing to ask about any assertion about science or medicine is, why is this statement being made by this particular source?

Statements by pharmaceutical companies, most particularly their advertisements, should never be believed, because, as innumerable observers and investigators have documented, the profit motive has outweighed any concern for the harm that unsafe medications cause even as there is no evidence for definite potential benefit. The best way to decide on whether or not to prescribe or use a drug is by comparing NNT and NNH, the odds on getting benefit compared to the odds of being harmed; but NNT and NNH are never reported by drug companies. For example, there is no evidence whatsoever that HPV vaccination decreases the risk of any cancer; all that has been observed is that the vaccines may decrease genital warts. On the other hand, many individuals have suffered grievous harm from “side” effects of these vaccines (see Holland 2018 in the bibliography cited just below, and the documentary, Sacrificial Virgins. TV ads by Merck, for example in August 2020 on MSNBC, cite the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as recommending the vaccine not only for girls but also for boys.

For fully documented discussions of the pervasive misdeeds of drug companies, consult the books listed in my periodically updated bibliography, What’s Wrong with Present-Day Medicine.
I recommend particularly Angell 2004, Goldacre 2013, Gøtzsche 2013, Healy 2012, Moynihan, & Cassels 2005. Greene 2007 is a very important but little-cited book describing how numbers and surrogate markers have come to dominate medical practice, to the great harm of patients.

Official reports may be less obviously deceitful than drug company advertisements, but they are no more trustworthy, as argued in detail and with examples in “Official reports are not scientific publications”, chapter 3 in my Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth (McFarland 2012):
“reports from official institutions and organizations . . . are productions by bureaucracies . . . . The actual authors of these reports are technical writers whose duties are just like those of press secretaries, advertising writers, and other public-relations personnel: to put on the actual evidence and conclusions the best possible spin to reinforce the bureaucracy’s viewpoint and emphasize the importance of the bureaucracy’s activities.
Most important: The Executive Summaries, Forewords, Prefaces, and the like may tell a very different story than does the actual evidence in the bulk of the reports. It seems that few if any pundits actually read the whole of such documents. The long public record offers sad evidence that most journalists certainly do not look beyond these summaries into the meat of the reports, given that the media disseminate uncritically so many of the self-serving alarums in those Executive Summaries” (p. 213).

So too with press releases from academic institutions.

As for statements direct from academic and professional experts, recall that, as Lewontin pointed out, “people earn their living by science”. Whenever someone regarded as an expert or authority makes public statements, an important purpose is to enhance the status, prestige, career, profitability, of who is making the statement. This is not to suggest that such statements are made with deliberate dishonesty; but the need to preserve status, as well as the usual illusion that what one believes is actually true, ensures that such statements will be dogmatically one-sided assertions, not judicious assessments of the objective state of knowledge.

Retired academic experts like myself no longer suffer conflicts of interest at a personal or institutional-loyalty level. When we venture critiques of drug companies, official institutions, colleges and universities, and even individual “experts” or former colleagues, we will be usually saying what we genuinely believe to be unvarnished truth. Nevertheless, despite the lack of major obvious conflicts of interest, one should have more grounds than that for believing what we have to say. We may still have an unacknowledged agenda, for instance a desire still to do something useful even as our careers are formally over. Beyond that, of course, like any other human beings, we may simply be wrong, no matter that we ourselves are quite sure that we are right. Freedom from frank, obvious conflicts of interest does not bring with it some superhuman capacity for objectivity let alone omniscience.

In short:
Believe any assertion about science or medicine, from any source, at your peril.
If the matter is of any importance to you, you had best do some investigating of evidence and facts, and comparison of diverse interpretations.

HPV does not cause cervical cancer; HPV vaccination can be deadly

(Cross-posted from http://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/)

Evidence continues to mount that the presumed connection between HPV and cervical cancer is no more than a statistical association, not a causative relationship:

The Gardasil controversy: as reports of adverse effects increase, cervical cancer rates rise in HPV-vaccinated age groups

Annette Gartland

“The Gardasil vaccines continue to be vaunted as life-saving, but there is no evidence that HPV vaccination is reducing the incidence of cervical cancer, and reports of adverse effects now total more than 85,000 worldwide. Nearly 500 deaths are suspected of being linked to quadrivalent Gardasil or Gardasil 9.
As Merck’s latest human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil 9, continues to be fast tracked around the world, the incidence of invasive cervical cancer is increasing in many of the countries in which HPV vaccination is being carried out.”

Once again independent scientists without conflicts of interest are maltreated by bureaucratic organizations with conflicts of interest to commercial interests, drug companies in particular:

“This article was updated with information from the AHVID  on 14/09/2018.

Update 15/9/2018:

Peter Gøtzsche has been expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration. Six of the 13 members of the collaboration’s governing board voted for his expulsion.
. . . . .
‘This is the first time in 25 years that a member has been excluded from membership of Cochrane. This unprecedented action taken by a minority of the governing board . . . . ‘
In just 24 hours, Gøtzsche said, the Cochrane governing board had lost five of its members, four of whom were centre directors and key members of the organisation in different countries.
Gøtzsche says that, in recent years, Cochrane has significantly shifted more to a profit-driven approach. ‘Even though it is a not-for-profit charity, our ‘brand’ and ‘product’ strategies are taking priority over getting out independent, ethical and socially responsible scientific results,’ he said’”.

HPV vaccination: a thalidomide-type scandal

I’ve posted a number of times about the lack of proof that HPV causes cervical cancer and that the anti-HPV vaccines are being touted widely by officialdom as well as manufacturers even though the vaccines have been associated with an unusually high number of adverse reactions, some of them very severe, literally disabling.

Long-time medical journalist and producer of award-winning documentaries, Joan Shenton, has just made available the first of a projected trilogy, Sacrificial Virgins, about the dangers of anti-HPV vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAzcMHaBvLs&feature=youtu.be

The website, WHAT DOCTORS WON’T TELL YOU, comments in this way: “HPV vaccine ‘a second thalidomide scandal’, says new YouTube documentary”

 

Vaccines: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Only in recent years have I begun to wonder whether there are reasons not to follow official recommendations about vaccination. In the 1930s, I had the then-usual vaccinations, including (in Austria, perhaps Europe) against smallpox. A few others in later years when I traveled quite a bit.

But the Andrew Wakefield affair *, and the introduction of Gardasil **, showed me that official sources had become as untrustworethy about vaccines as they have become about prescription drugs.

It seems that Big Pharma had just about run out of new diseases to invent against which to create drugs and had turned to snake-oil-marketing of vaccines. We are told, for example, that 1 in 3 people will experience shingles in their lifetime and should get vaccinated against it. Have one in three of your aged friends ever had shingles? Not among my family and friends. One of my buddies got himself vaccinated, and came down with shingles a couple of weeks later. His physician asserted that the attack would have been more severe if he hadn’t been vaccinated — no need for a control experiment, or any need to doubt official claims.

So it’s remarkable that the Swedish Government has resisted attempts to make vaccinations compulsory (“Sweden bans mandatory vaccinations over ‘serious health concerns’” by Baxter Dmitry, 12 May 2017).

That article includes extracts from an interview of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the Tucker Carlson Show, which included such tidbits as the continued presence of thimerosal (organic mercury compound) in many vaccines including the seasonal flu vaccines that everyone is urged to get; and the huge increase in number of things against which vaccination is being recommended:

“I got three vaccines and I was fully compliant. I’m 63 years old. My children got 69 doses of 16 vaccines to be compliant. And a lot of these vaccines aren’t even for communicable diseases. Like Hepatitis B, which comes from unprotected sex, or using or sharing needles – why do we give that to a child on the first day of their life? And it was loaded with mercury.”

 

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* “Autism and Vaccines: Can there be a final unequivocal answer?”
      “YES: Thimerosal CAN induce autism”

** See “Gardasil and Cervarix: Vaccination insanity” and many other posts recovered with SEARCH for “Gardasil” on my blogs: https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/?s=gardasil and https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/?s=gardasil

Quality of life when diagnosed HIV+ or AIDS

An obscure publication from Universidad Juan Agustín Maza (in Argentina) came to my attention via Research Gate:

“Iniciativas para mejorar la calidad de vida de personas con VIH positivo y SIDA: Revisión del Diagnóstico, el Pronóstico y la Terapéutica a la luz de la Ciencia y de la Ética” by M. E. Molina, J. Abou Medelej, S. Perez Daffunchio, D. E. Crisafulli & J. Álvarez.
[Initiatives to improve the quality of life of HIV-positive and AIDS-diagnosed patients: A review of diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy from viewpoints of science and ethics]

The full article is in Spanish with an Abstract in English:
“The first cases of AIDS occurred in 1981. There are not fully appropriate therapeutic interventions for treating this medical condition yet. People who are diagnosed with positive HIV or AIDS suffer a poor quality of life and receive medication that produces severe adverse reactions. The purposes of this investigation are: * To review the existent reports on the etiology, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of HIV. * To bring the affected people updated information for healthcare and improvement of their quality of life. We have analyzed a significant number of papers published in several countries on these topics, and we have found the following inconsistencies: * HIV risk behaviors: According to the CDC in the United States, the Estimated Per-Act Probability of Acquiring HIV from an Infected Source, by Exposure Act (heterosexual) is about one in one thousand for woman, and about one on two thousands for man. Nevertheless, an investigation conducted through the University of San Francisco, California, on 442 discordant heterosexual couples no seroconversion was observed throughout the ten years the research lasted. (1985-1995). * Diagnostics methods: In Argentina, we employ the ELISA screening method, posteriorly confirmed by a western blot test, but in the United Stated this last is discouraged since 2014. * Medication: The drugs that are used to treat HIV are DNA chain terminators which interfere with the normal functioning and replication of normal cells. As a result, damage in the immune system and the mitochondrial DNA are reported. We wonder what should we inform the patients and people in general about all these. We require the experts´ opinion on the ethical management aspects. Due that the diagnostic tests employed may result in false positives, and the fact that the medication is highly toxic, we recommend that patients with HIV positive diagnosis re-test their condition at least once a year”.

This all seems quite sound, but after citing false positives, no sexual transmission, and the toxicity of ARVs the last sentence is quite a let-down.

The mention of vaccines is also a mixture of sound and doubtful:[Google translation]:
Regarding the possible development of vaccines.
The difficulty in developing vaccines due to HIV mutation has been explained: the high coding error rate produced by the reverse transcriptase enzyme and the recombination of various phenotypes of HIV in the DNA of infected cells (Montagnier L., 2008). However, other retroviruses that respond to the same replication mechanisms do not produce mutations that impede the development of vaccines. Example: Murine Leukemia Virus. Likewise, a purification of up to 20% of HIV has not been reported to date, so doubts remain about the specificity of antibodies used in diagnosis (Leung, Hans Gelderblom Extended Interview min 37.48) , 2011”

Evidently the authors accept HIV/AIDS theory but are puzzled by its internal contradictions.