A Dangerous Infection

Sadly disease has struck the shelves of some of the nation's leading magazine retailers, in the shape of the WDDTY bacterium; this is its footprint:

Watch out for it. It's spread by a Lynne Mctaggart, whose rather silly but dangerous views can be sampled here: When 'Science' is a Dirty Word. Note the scare quotes; it's indicative of a schizophrenic approach to the subject. I cannot find details of her scientific qualifications anywhere, but presumably she must have them. She says:

We have been accused of being unscientific, of pedaling [sic] unproven and harmful alternatives, as opposed to the real thing, true ‘scientific’ medicine.

This is true; they have been accused of being unscientific, and they have been peddling unproven and harmful alternatives. She then makes three points, which she says add up "to one indisputable truth: there is nothing remotely scientific about conventional medicine". The points are:

1. Most of the science behind standard treatments is fiction. This has no supporting reference.
2. Most treatments haven’t been proven to work. The BMJ are cited here, with no reference. Maybe it's the Clinical Evidence research?
3. Most treatments cause harm. Again no reference.

Well, these points are not completely off the mark, I don't think. Ben Goldacre says in Bad Pharma that 'Medicine is broken', and goes on to deliver this withering assessment:

Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don’t like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug’s true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug’s life, and even then they don’t give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion. In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug companies – often undisclosed – and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups. And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even owned outright by one drug company. Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it’s not in anyone’s financial interest to conduct any trials at all. These are ongoing problems, and although people have claimed to fix many of them, for the most part they have failed; so all these problems persist, but worse than ever, because now people can pretend that everything is fine after all. - Goldacre, Ben (2012-09-25). Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients (Kindle Locations 43-55). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

Goldacre goes on to document in rather harrowing detail how poor the process is for bringing drugs to market. Unfortunately for Mctaggart, none of that makes her magazine's claims any more believable. Just because medical science has problems does not automatically mean that the alternative does not. For centuries humorism held sway in the medical establishment, with people happily undergoing purges and bloodletting and getting better through regression to the mean. What put an end to it? Science. The only way to progress matters medicinal is to add more science, not to blithely disregard it. But her entire modus operandi is to discredit science in order to promote unscientific alternatives.

Her poor reasoning comes to the fore when she discusses comparative statistics on harm caused by real medicine and alternative 'remedies':

So that risk is: 0.01/1 million for natural substances vs 1000/1 million for drugs.  In other words, the risk of lethal harm from modern medicine is 100,000 higher than that of herbal or nutritional medicine.
This beggars the basic question: which form of medicine is the least scientific?

It should surely be obvious to anyone that a remedy that does nothing is far less likely to cause harm than one that does something. There are, of course, sins of omission, so people are harmed by taking a 'remedy' that does nothing. But her statistics simply highlight that she is peddling treatments that do nothing.

Drugs constitute a one-size-fits-all model, whereas every human being is unique. Drugs that work on me may not work on you and vice versa; most drugs can’t be made smart enough to, say, slot only tab A into slot B without affecting slot C, D and E, because humans are holistic.

Yet, somehow this 'one-size-fits-all model' is fine for the companies that sell Vitamin C, herbal 'remedies' and homeopathy? Of course! By this logic she should have to send a tailored copy of WDDTY to each of her subscribers, lest she is accused of neglecting their uniqueness. She signs off:

True science seeks to drive a stake into science, particularly scientism.
Nevertheless, mainstream science, particularly mainstream medicine, has grown ever more fundamentalist, dominated by a few highly vocal people who believe that our scientific story has largely been written and that the job of science is simply to confirm it.
Thankfully, an enormous body of resistance carries on in defiance of this restricted—highly unscientific—view. May they and all the true scientists like them continue to light our way.

In fact, those who value science and the nation's well-being are trying to organize resistance to this infection; anti-biotics are being developed around the blogosphere! Check out WWDDTYDTY for analyses of WDDTY articles, and Josephine Jones is maintaining a master list of issues relating to this unfortunate publication.

Sadly for Mctaggart, as GP Margaret McCartney said:

I'm astounded that Lynne thinks this is an evidence-based publication. It's anything but. The problem with evidence is that it can tell you things that you'd rather not know. A lot of the time medicine does do harm but that's why doctors and scientists are duty-bound to put their research findings out there and to stop doing things that cause harm. What we shouldn't do is abandon medicine and the scientific method and go straight for alternative medicine with no good evidence that that works either.

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Rhyme or Reason?

Richard Dawkins suggests that Rowan Williams and other sophisticated theologians are being poetic about their beliefs - perhaps that they are metaphorical. I'm pretty sure that Williams thinks, however poetic he gets, that there is an underlying real truth behind what he says. And this is surely true of most senior Anglicans, despite the suspicion some have (or had, like Julian Baggini?) that they don't really believe in the unlikely things they say they believe in. Consider this, from Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, in the Daily Telegraph:

The proper relation of religion to science is also vital. Young people must be taught to appreciate both the experimental methods of science and the ultimate values which religion offers. Such a conversation must take place in the classroom if we are not to continue being divided by “scientistic” and religious fundamentalists.

Mr Cameron reminded us that inalienable human dignity is founded on the biblical idea that we are made in the image of God. But to whom does this extend? And are there circumstances when a person might lose such dignity?

Nazir-Ali implies that we have sources of reliable knowledge other than science, with his false opposition between scientism and fundamentalism, then notes that human dignity is based on 'the biblical idea that we are made in the image of God'. This is very debatable, of course, but, further, is 'made in the image of God' a literal truth or a poetic metaphor? Science shows that we are inextricably a part of the animal kingdom with no need for such a notion, so should we not conclude a contradiction between science and religion here? I think we should, but liberal theists might say that I am being too scientistic and literal in my interpretation of the teaching; lacking poetry, perhaps? 

As an aside, read Russell Blackford's discussion of scientism, and other things, here, which explains well how the charge of scientism lacks teeth - anyone who appeals to a worldview based on reason and evidence  (practically everyone, I should think) is automatically not scientistic; but that does not allow anyone to claim truths in opposition to science.

Nevertheless, Nazir-Ali clearly wants public policy based on this 'idea', linking it to the 'special nature of the human embryo' which suggests he, at least, thinks it's a literal truth that we are created in the image of God, in opposition to the huge weight of scientific evidence:

It was for these reasons that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act recognised the special nature of the human embryo and established an authority to regulate scientific work involving embryos. I support the Coalition’s desire to trim the quangos, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is not perfect. But we need a body, perhaps modelled on the US President’s Council, that can consider the moral implications of developments in bioethics.

If he doesn't think it's a literal truth, should we base such decisions on ancient metaphors? I think metaphors could be useful if they highlighted an underlying truth revealed by our explorations of reality, but the image of God and the special nature of the human embryo would need to be connected by something more than a biblical idea, since biblical ideas have a wretched record in the marketplace of ideas and, in any case, they should not be grounds for public policy in a secular, multi-cultural world, unless they can be supported by secular, multi-cultural arguments and evidence. Even good poetic reasons would not suffice, in my opinion.

The moral implications of developments in bioethics should be considered, but, like all morality, they should be considered by us all, in a mature group negotiation that considers all the facts as we understand them, in concert with mutually acceptable values.

Bizarrely, Nazir-Ali also says:

As Mr Cameron reminded us, the value of equality comes from the biblical teaching, confirmed by science, of the common origin of all humans.

He appears to blind himself to the evolutionary view which shows our common origin with other animals, and to ignore biblical teachings such as descent from Adam and Eve and the massacre of the Canaanites, which suggest that some humans are more equal than others.

The Commission on Assisted Dying will be reporting this week, and it has taken on board evidence from Robin Gill, an advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the current status quo should be maintained, preferring to limit patient choice to a denial of treatment, with all the potential for pain and suffering that that entails. This stems from another supposed truth (poetic or otherwise) that human life is a gift from God and thus not our own:

10. The sanctity of human life: This principle is crucial to Christians. It encapsulates their belief that life is in and of itself sacred because it is given by God. Life has an inherent value, not just a conditional one. The principle is enshrined in law in the form of an absolute prohibition on the intentional killing of innocent human beings. It is not normally taken to mean that any life ought to be preserved at all costs. But it does ‘protect each one of us impartially, embodying the belief that all are equal’ (quoted by the Archbishop and the Cardinal from the 1994 Select Committee’s report, included in Appendix I).
11. For a Christian, this principle also encapsulates the simple belief that God owns my life, not I, and I have, therefore, no right to end it.

(from the Church of England briefing paper to the Lords Select Committee on Assisted Dying)

The consequence of such literal beliefs is Anglican opposition to humane measures which recognise each individual's autonomy. But, it's a logical corollary to the view that our lives are not our own. Let us hope that the Commission recognises the evil nature of such warping ideas, poetic metaphor or not, since these beliefs have neither rhyme nor reason to my ears.

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