Sceptics on Saturday with me & Dr Krissy Wilson.
Richard and I have been doing a semi-regular spot on Sydney radio 2GB on Saturday nights as a guest of Glen Wheeler.
Last Saturday, Dr Krissy Wilson joined me, to discuss Power Balance bracelets, UFO sightings over Sydney and fish raining from the sky in the isolated aboriginal community of Lajamanu, NT.
You can listen to the audio here.
Hospital employs naturopath despite admitting ‘no evidence’ for effectiveness
A Victorian hospital has employed a naturopath to the staff of an endometriosis clinic.
This is despite an admission by the Technology/Clinical Practice Committee that ‘There is no good evidence of effectiveness for naturopathic advice in patients with endometriosis.’
Endometriosis is a painful condition characterised by bloating, period pain, heavy or irregular bleeding and occurs when the tissue that normally lines the uterus (the endometrium) is found outside the uterus. Endometriosis can be a chronic, recurring condition and occurs in approximately 10% of women. The causes are not fully understood, but treatments include surgery, hormone therapy as well as medication for pain relief.
In a bizarre decision summary (full pdf here), released by the Committee, of the Southern Health Moorrabbin Hospital, they state;
The applicants have stipulated that the naturopath will not initiate discussions about naturopathic medication, however it is anticipated that patients may bring this up. In this situation the naturopath will advise that there is no evidence for safety or effectiveness (my emphasis).
This seems in stark contrast to the role of the committee which is described as ‘to ensure that new technologies and clinical practices at Southern Health are introduced within a rigorous and evidence-based framework’.
The decision summary also states that;
‘The naturopath will not be prescribing..’ but will ‘be providing dietary and exercise advice and general health measures.’
It’s curious therefore that the hospital did not employ a dietitian, who could easily fulfill such a role without the humiliation of having to tell patients that there is ‘no evidence for the safety and efficacy’ of their own profession.
The proposal was also put forward in 2008, but rejected. It is not clear why it was approved on this occasion.
In the decision summary, the committee states (perhaps in acknowledgement of the lack of evidence) that the ‘This clinic will provide opportunities for research into the role of naturopathy in endometriosis.’
The position will be trialled for two years, then reviewed with the option of making it permanent.
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Thanks to Jo and Kathy for the tip off.
Vaccine court finds no link to autism
A US Federal court designed to provide compensation to children injured from vaccines, has declared that evidence supporting an alleged causal link between autism and a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines is ‘scientifically unsupportable’.
Congress set up the special judicial forum, sometimes called the “vaccine court,” in 1986 to address claims over vaccine safety, following pressure from parents and anti-vaccine lobbies who insisted there was a link.
Three test cases brought before the court were to pave the way for a class action by thousands of parents of children affected by autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but after reviewing the cases it was deemed there was no convincing evidence.
The vaccines and autism theory was popularised by Dr Andrew Wakefield following the publishing of his 1998 Lancet paper, which has subsequently been retracted. Wakefield was the subject of the longest investigation in the history of the UK General Medical Council for misconduct surrounding research for this paper. The GMC found he had been “callous” irresponsible” and “dishonest”, was paid by lawyers to prove a link between vaccines and autism, had a patent submitted for his own single measles vaccine and conducted unnecessary and painful invasive procedures on children without the correct ethics approvals.
Another blow to his reputation came when his ‘monkey study’ paper, due to be published any day, was withdrawn from Neurotoxicology. This paper was lauded by the anti-vax movement, since it presented evidence for impaired neurological development in baby macaques given vaccines containing thimerosal – the mercury containing component.
It is expected that Wakefield’s work will never again be accepted for publication in any reputable scientific journal. A decision about his status as a doctor in the UK is expected to be made soon, but it is predicted he will be be struck off. He was recently pressured into resigning from his position as director of the alternative medicine clinic Thoughtful House in Texas.
The current status of Wakefield is unknown but his career is in tatters.
In the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Special masters released more than 600 pages of findings none of which could find a convincing link between vaccination and autism.
Special Master Patricia Campbell-Smith said in her conclusion of test case one, William P. Mead, that the “Petitioners’ theory of vaccine-related causation is scientifically unsupportable.”
“In the absence of a sound medical theory causally connecting William’s received vaccines to his autistic condition, the undersigned cannot find the proposed sequence of cause and effect to be logical or temporally appropriate. Having failed to satisfy their burden of proof under the articulated legal standard, petitioners cannot prevail on their claim of vaccine-related causation.”
In the second test case, Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. wrote,
“After studying the extensive evidence in this case for many months, I am convinced that the opinions provided by the petitioners’ experts in this case, advising the King family that there is a causal connection between thimerosal-containing vaccines and Jordan’s autism, have been quite wrong.”
In the final test case, Special Master Denise K. Vowell wrote of Colin R. Dwyer, a minor, that his parents, Timothy and Maria Dwyer,
“have not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that Colin’s condition was either caused or significantly aggravated by his vaccinations. Thus, they have failed to establish entitlement to compensation and the petition for compensation is therefore denied.”
As predicted, anti-vaccine lobbies are up in arms, claiming government conspiracy to protect the national vaccine programme.
Thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines, purely as a precautionary measure, in 1999.
AVN website suspended due to ‘legal complaint’
I discovered that the AVN website was down this morning. I thought nothing of it really, assuming it was just a technical glitch and would be fixed in due time. Well, it seems this is not the case.
The AVN president Meryl Dorey has just advised her subscribers that three domains have been suspended following a ‘legal complaint’ to their American host.
In an e-newsletter titled “AVN under attack” Dorey says the following;
“I came home this afternoon after doing our week’s grocery shopping, to find that all 3 of our domains have been suspended by our American server. When I contacted them, they told me that the reason for the suspension was a ‘legal’ complaint they had received. They would not give me any other information about the complaint so I have to wait to speak with their legal department next week.”
But then she says something very interesting;
“As soon as I hung up the phone with the web hosting company, I received a phone call from a friend who works in the Australian media. This person warned me that a media smear campaign against the AVN is about to start. They said that this campaign has been planned for some time and that it will involve trying to link the AVN with pornographic material.”
Okay, bizarre. And a little bit crazy. A smear campaign designed to link the AVN to porn? Sounds strange and a little bit pointless to tell you the truth. I’m not sure what this is designed to achieve. I hope Meryl knows and trusts her media source, cause this sounds a little too outlandish to be true.
Yet, the AVN has had a rough 12 months, so perhaps Meryl is inclined to believe anything at the moment. There are numerous complaints pending about the organisation, including an ongoing investigation by the Health Care Complaints Commission for spreading bad health advice and one with the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing for alledegly trading as a charity without a valid license for more than 2 years.
Meryl describes the last 12 months in a slightly more hysterical fashion;
1- The spurious complaint against the AVN and myself with the HCCC.
2- Harassment of our advertisers.
3- Harassment of our professional members.
4- Death threats by email and telephone.
5- Establishment of websites and blogs specifically intended to stop the AVN.
6- Ridiculous accusations which state that the AVN supports conspiracy theories including the Illuminati and alien body-snatchers.
7- Harassment of the families of AVN supporters which, among other things, includes the posting of personal and business details on the internet.
8- Complaints filed with the Department of Fair Trading.
9- Complaints filed with the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.
10- Complaints filed with ASIC.
11- Attempts to stop AVN-hosted seminars.
12- Hacking of the AVN website and email server.
13- Accusations that AVN supporters are child murders.
14- Threats to file defamation lawsuits.
15- Legal complaints which have shut down our website and email server.
16- Harassment of people who have donated to the AVN including tampering with their websites.
But the facts are pretty straight forward in this case. The AVN disseminates dangerous and inaccurate information about vaccines to vulnerable parents, who are then frightened into not vaccinating. Children are getting sick, some are dying.
It is therefore not such a bad thing that this information is removed from the public domain for a few days at least. It could save some kids’ lives.
Read the full text of the e-newsletter here.
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UPDATE: Ms Dorey’s suggestion that a smear campaign is about to commence linking her to porn may be a little late off the mark. There exists an adult website called AVN.com for Adult Video Network, which has been in existence for a very long time. Is this what her ‘anonymous media caller’ was referring to? Hat tip to TAG for making this connection.
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UPDATE#2: It seems most likely that the website being suspended is a mix up in a complaint against the adult site AVN. There has been mention of child pornography allegations, making it most likely that the American service provider banned the AVN.org not AVN.com
If it ducks like quack…
It’s a quack!
This is the new creation from The American Institute for the Destruction of Tooth Fairy Science, the creators of “If water has a memory then homeopathy is full of shit” poster.
Download the full size image here.
Thanks to Kernan for another awesome poster.
Shenanigans, subterfuge and the Shorty Awards
The Shorty Awards, in my own words.
On Wednesday March 3rd, 2010, the Shorty Awards were announced in New York City. I was unable to attend, even though I would have been delighted (I heart NYC) so instead I settled in front of my computer at work to watch the live stream from 11 am. The categories were announced in alphabetical order, so it wasn’t long before we reached the health category.
The Shortys are affectionately known as the ‘Twitter Oscars’ which is accurate in the sense that none of the nominees know if they have won before the ceremony. Further, The Shortys are not won purely on votes alone. A panel of judges makes the final decision following an initial round of nominations to select six finalists, then a secondary voting round.
As I watched the awards being handed down, it became apparent that those who had won the voting round were not automatically winning the final round. Some finalists had come from 3rd or 4th to take out the trophy. I was decidedly nervous. So it was with great relief that I heard my name announced as the winner of the health category.
Some very perceptive readers (I’m looking at you AndyD!) observed that I remained very quiet during the entire Shortys process. I did not blog it, I only occasionally asked for votes and I rarely tweeted about it except to say ‘thanks’ when I had won a round. There was a reason I made the decision to do this and some of you might have worked out why.
It was because specific alt. medders behaved so badly throughout this process that all I had to do was sit back and watch them self destruct. It was much better for me to say nothing, quietly screen capture their abuse and ad hominem attacks and wait for it all to crumble around them. Which it eventually did, not in the least on Wednesday, as you are about to see.
As Steve Novella advised me when the ‘she’s a fatty post’ appeared on Mercola’s site (see below), it was apparent that they had forgotten their roots in unicorns, sunbeams and fairy dust and reverted to their apparent true colours of personal insults and crazy antics. And Mercola and Adams did it in spectacular style. All I had to do was sit back and wait whilst other people documented the carnage.
Let’s recap a little shall we?
It all started when Mike Adams from Natural News was coming first and Dr Mercola second. At this stage I was somewhere down near 16th place, when I alerted my twitter followers to the competition. My mate and all round awesome smart guy Jason Brown decided he would have none of that and instigated a campaign to get me to the top position. Amongst other things he alerted PZ Myers of the hugely successful Pharyngula blog, who is known for his ability “to Pharyngulate”. PZ kindly blogged about the competition and this was when things began to get interesting.
Firstly, my position was elevated to the top five and increasing when Mike Adams got wind that a big pharma drug pusher was threatening his top spot. In fact, at this time I wasn’t even winning, but this didn’t matter to Mike, so he wrote a long post on his website asking his followers to vote for him (which is completely within the guidelines for The Shortys BTW).
Well it seems they did, but we started to notice some abnormalities with their votes. Many people including Tim Farley, Jason Brown and @Weezmgk did a quick audit and found that many of the votes for Adams were coming from newly created accounts, which were clearly set up explicitly to vote for Mike in health (and also for me in quackery). Weezmgk also did an audit on 160 votes when Adams had a total of 530 and found 104 were invalid. That’s 65%. That’s a lot.
Tweeting votes from new accounts was explicitly against the rules, which stated that only twitter accounts which were established and active prior to the competition start date on January 1, 2010 were eligible to place votes.
Next thing we knew, Mike Adams was completely disqualified.
And this was when it started to get interesting. Mike threw an epic tantrum, he threw his toys out of the pram, he hand flapped, he foot stamped, he wrote a frothing rant about how the competition was rigged, he threatened to sue the judging panel, and he wrote to the organisers;
“If you allow this to continue, the integrity of the entire Shorty Awards will be destroyed. I had hoped this would be a fair, honest competition that highlights the usefulness of short-form content, but thanks to the rogue voters who are supporting Dr. Rachael Dunlop, the Shorty Awards are quickly becoming a platform for defamation and false accusations where those who can spread the most aggressive insults are allowed to win.”
He then wrote a a truly epic post entitled “What sceptics really believe”. I won’t post the original blog here because it’s much more fun to read the various take-downs. Orac over at “Respectful Insolence” described it as A pyromaniac in a field of straw man or black hole of burning stupid incinerating every straw man in the universe? Mike Adams attacks skeptics. Phil Plait described it as “Alt. Med. guy whacked with the Shorty end of the stick”. Steve Novella over at Neurologica also covered it.
The following day Adams wrote another post referring to “hate speech from jackals who attack natural medicine” (all up, he wrote about four ranting posts about skeptics, filled with conspiracy theories and references to Big Pharma). My personal favourite was the claim that skeptics believe that the water in your toilet is the same as water from a mineral spring.
Adams got so asinine on his Facebook page that some of his followers suggested that his computer had been hacked. Not so I’m afraid. He really is that nasty. Many people covered Adam’s public tantrums, but I especially enjoyed the analysis by the Merseyside skeptics on their Skeptics with a K podcast. I recommend you have a listen.
But now it was Mercola’s turn to throw his toys out of the pram. He posted an acerbic rant on his Facebook page, pleading with his followers to vote for him by insulting me;
The ad hominem attacks became decidedly more charming, until some of his followers began to question his motives and behaviour;
The ‘little known’ bit might have been accurate before the Streisand effect multiplied my Twitter followers by a huge amount and traffic to my website doubled overnight – all thanks to Mercola putting my url on his website with the comment;
‘If you want a real laugh to see how ridiculous some of her positions are you can go to her site’. www.skepticsbooks.com
Thank you Joe Mercola.
Someone might want to direct Mercola to the definition of The Streisand Effect.
Interestingly, all the while Mercola was ranting and railing about me and pleading with his fans to vote and ask three friends to vote, he was simultaneously dismissing the Shortys as ‘just a stupid popularity contest’. One he cares about deeply it seems. He also made remarks about how him winning would have implications for the credibility of alternative medicine and natural health providers everywhere. Well I guess that never happened.
As the voting round continued, things began to get difficult for us. Remember mercola.com is one of the largest natural health websites in the world, he had at the time 64,000 fans on Facebook, he even claimed to have emailed 2.5 million people pleading with them to vote for him. At one stage, his votes went from 600 less than me to overtake me by more than 2000. I thought we might have lost it then, but as soon as they appeared, the Shortys removed them.
It doesn’t matter how many fans you have if they can’t read the rules, their votes won’t count.
Of course as you can predict as his votes started to disappear his fans accused me of having some kind of influence over the Shortys and called me a cheat, a fraud and a liar, amongst other things. I began to get votes in such categories, meanwhile my fans were much more creative, nominating Mercola for ‘mythical half fish, half drink’ – a category which he took out comfortably I am happy to say!
As the deadline for the voting round drew closer, I asked Tim Minchin to ask his 50,000+ followers to vote for me, which he very kindly did. (Interestingly, in contrast to when PZ Myers tweeted it, this kind gesture did not translate into many more votes. Clearly, PZ has his fans much better trained).
So it all ended on Wednesday and so far there has not been a squeak from the Adam’s or Mercola camps. What began as a fight for our principles, science and evidence, ended as an incredibly interesting insight into the minds of believers who when challenged in lieu of any evidence to support their claims, simply run behind the shelter shed and call me fat.
To my surprise and delight, there has been a huge amount of mainstream media coverage of the awards, probably because news agregator AFP picked up the story. In Australia, my name even appeared in the headline of many articles, whilst others described “Aussie biologist honoured for ‘tweeting’.”
My sister learned of the award from Brisbane commercial radio who ran it as a news item. The free afternoon newspaper, MX which is distributed to over 700,000 commuters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane ran the story on page two in Sydney (see left) and page four in Melbourne.
A Big Pharma thank you to all my supporters and all who voted for me throughout the process. I guess this little known non-physician is not so ‘little known’ anymore.
To reiterate my acceptance speech;
This award recognises the value of sharing evidence based health information on twitter. For science, reason and critical thinking, thank you.
Good manners doesn’t hurt either.
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Media coverage I have collected so far.
Nine msn; Aussie Biologist Honoured for Tweeting
The Australian; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award
Adelaide Now; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award
Sydney Morning Herald; Aussie biologist honoured for tweeting
BigPond News; Aussie honoured at Twitter awards
PerthNow; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award
The Mercury Tasmania; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award
News dot com dot au; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award
Audio Boo from Richard Saunders; Congratulations Dr Rachie (includes audio of announcement)
CNN dot com reports on the Shortys
Wakefield resigns in disgrace as the AVN entices with booze
Last night, Orac announced he had been advised that Wakefield had “voluntarily resigned” his post at Thoughtful House following the damning findings of the GMC.
The source for the news was an email circulated on the Thoughtful House Yahoo! list which was given legitimacy with comments left by Brian Deer confirming the story:
Yes, I heard this was coming some days ago. Apparently, Jane Johnson, Krigsman and Anissa Ryland are among those behind it.
Who is Jane Johnson?
This comment was left by @lizditz
The co-managing director of Thoughtful House’s board is Jane Johnson of New York, part of the family of the Johnson & Johnson health care products and services company. Johnson (who co-authored Jepson’s book, Changing the Course of Autism) and her husband, Chris, donated $1 million to lay the groundwork for Thoughtful House in 2004.
Ah, so Jane Johnson is apparently an heir to the fortune of Johnson and Johnson, a big pharmaceutical company.
That’s right folks, Thoughtful House was seemingly established with funds connected to a BIG PHARMA.
Oh the irony! Or hypocrisy.
Anyway, the news was also reported in the media today, with stories from the Times Online and The Guardian in the UK. Thoughtful House have yet to issue a statement, but it appears that Wakefield’s name has been removed from the staff list, however, his publications are still listed.
The reaction from the Australian anti-vaxers has been to cling even tighter to their poster boy, as one commentator said of the headline “Disgraced MMR doctor..”;
He is NOT disgraced – they should be ashamed….. ……… ……… . (1)
But as Brian Deer said on Orac’s post;
What he did to autistic children is just shocking. And what he’s been saying to people around him over the last few years is now seen for what it was: beyond belief.
One wonders what will become of Andrew Wakefield now. It’s looking very likely that he will get struck off the medical register in the UK and with no journal editors wanting to touch his tainted research, it looks like his career as a research scientist is over too.
Brian Deer said;
I always wondered what the reaction to the GMC verdict would be. As the Neurotoxicology withdrawal (taking with it a big chunk of Liz Birt’s hard-raised money, which Wakefield still controls) shows, no reputable journal editor will now accept his data.
Some people facetiously suggested he relocate to Ecuador and hook up with Mike Adams
(Oh, that was me).
Meanwhile on the home front, the deadline for the closure of the AVN is rapidly approaching (eight days to go). They seem to be getting more and more rattled at the moment, going into chaotic spins and devising conspiracy theories about the “septics” left right and centre.
Emails emerged today where they accused one male blogger of being a front woman for a drug company that runs a number of bullying blogs attacking anybody who want honest information on vaccination.
Even I was included at one stage, being accused of getting material that showed me in a bad light removed from a website, of which I have nothing to do with. Actually I left a comment on a post there last year, which now cannot be accessed due to a server problem. I know so much about I.T., I barely even know what this means, let alone how to remove material.
Also, in desperation and no doubt encouraged by the approaching deadline, the AVN sent another pledge email today offering a case of wine as an incentive to the next person who pledges $1000 (2). One wonders how far $1000 will get them, when they were asking for “..a benefactor or series of benefactors come forward to establish a fund that would guarantee the AVN’s existence for at least the next 2-3 years”, but who said there was method in their madness.
A colleague decided to utilise the powers of Sidewiki to inform people considering purchasing products from the winery who donated the loot, describing why “I cannot in good conscience buy Rosnay products”.
Take a look at the post if you have Sidewiki activated in your browser. Suffice it to say, Jason hit the nail on the head. Here’s an excerpt;
It has come to my attention that Sam Statham of Rosnay Wines is a financial supporter of a group called the Australian Vaccination Network. Sam’s most recent offering was a case of Rosnay Wines to the first donator of $1000 in the AVN’s most recent cash drive. The offer was made seemingly not as a personal donation, but as direct corporate endorsement.
.
The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is Australia’s largest anti-vaccination organisation. They have been running a campaign of misinformation and fear-mongering since 1994. Many people who now refuse to vaccinate cite the information that they received from the AVN as being partly, or wholly, responsible for their decision not to vaccinate.
I will leave the last word to Brian Deer, who reflected on the downfall of Wakefield on Orac’s post;
Part of me isn’t surprised by this apparent new development. The simple math of Thoughtful House’s board suggests that there will be at least one or two people of calibre and integrity, who know that all the cranksite stuff about a witchhunt, sinister forces and all that shit, are just that: shit. Wakefield has been nailed, absolutely fairly, properly, but belatedly, with no hidden agendas or vested interests.
Apart, that is, from the public interest.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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(1) AVN Yahoo!Group message #42270, sent 12.31 am, February 19, 2010.
(2) AVN Yahoo! Group message #42275, sent 5.47 am, February 19, 2010.
Media coverage of the impending collapse of the AVN
Last week, Meryl Dorey, President of the AVN announced the group would close its doors “on or near February 28th” citing monetary issues as the primary reason. This week, after several emails pleading with her members to step up and donate, or at least pledge to donate, she sent out an e-newsletter where she outlined what has been a tough year for her and the AVN.
In it she explains that;
“Approximately 12 months ago, an unremitting campaign of harassment began with a complaint filed by an anonymous complainant against the AVN with the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing (OLGR)….This whole situation came to a head about 7 months ago when a complaint was filed against both the AVN and myself with the HCCC. ….there have been an unending string of complaints filed against both myself and the AVN every time I’m on either the radio, TV or in newspapers. Without fail, the media will receive complaints stating that they should not be interviewing someone like myself who is not only anti-vaccine (in their words), but under investigation to boot!”
and;
“The people who are behind these attacks are, in my own personal opinion, totally without morals and ethics.”
For a complete and delicious take down of this special pleading email, please head over to @fuzztwin’s post, which precisely and thoroughly destroys her public baa-ing.
The post you see at the top of this blog was the hard-copy version of the article, which also appeared in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph under the headline; “Anti-vaccination group to collapse” (which I like much better as you might have guessed).
Naturally Meryl was very disappointed in this article, telling her email group that;
“I knew I could count on Kate Sikora and the Daily Telegraph to get it all wrong – even when the information was provided to them in writing. One has to wonder how much pharmaceutical advertising the Daily Telegraph takes in every day and whether that would have any influence on the anti-choice, anti-science stance taken by papers such as the Telegraph?”
(Zing! Big Pharma shill accusation)
and
“The people on Australia are done a great disservice by this article and by the Telegraph’s continual refusal to allow science-based data on the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines to be published.” (1)
Funny that, I thought it was quite accurate. What was interesting was that according to the article:
“Contacted twice for comment yesterday, Ms Dorey referred The Daily Telegraph to her email.”
So she opted to not even speak to the journalist.
The comments also make for some interesting reading. I’ll bet Meryl would have preferred the one below didn’t get approved, especially since she is desperately trying to shake off the conspiracy theory tag which has recently stuck to her.
Boldarn of N.QLD Posted at 10:36 AM February 16, 2010
As corporate and government lies are exposed increasingly , NWO advocates are panicking and attacking anyone who does not go along with their fascist rules . The mandatory fluoridation of all drinking waters is an important tool of globalists , as it effects the pineal glad ( gland for free thinking ). A fluoridated population is less likely to question anything and is easier to “manage” as NWO policies are rolled out over once free nations . Vaccines play a huge part in Agenda 21 – the NWO population control plan .Good on ya , Meryl Dorey , for your great effort an work ! Please contact me , I am also an activist & would like to send you my free poetry for your use . Peace –Boldarn
I also liked these two;
stewart cooper Posted at 7:49 AM February 16, 2010
Gee, I didn’t know Dick Smith had research level medical qualifications? Do people really listen to this self appointed know all? Witch hunting is alive and well in medieval NSW.
the response being;
Tom c of Sydney Posted at 9:53 AM February 16, 2010
Gee, I didn’t know Meryl dorey had research level medical qualifications? Do people really listen to this self appointed know all? (Hyperlink, mine)
Perhaps Meryl has lost her trust in the media. Maybe because they have ceased taking her information on face value and are beginning to realise she is not someone they should be consulting on issues of vaccine effectiveness and safety. Maybe Meryl’s time in the spotlight is drawing to a close.
Still, with the results of two complaints with the HCCC and the OLGR auditing the AVN this week, there are likely much more serious things for her to deal with.
If you missed the interview that I did with Ian Woolf from Diffusion Radio about the AVN and their impending downfall you can listen to it online here.
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(1) Message # 42231, sent Monday February 15th, 2010 11:53 pm
A giant leap in logic from a piece of bad science
When this appeared in my inbox yesterday, courtesy of Richard Saunders (who was kind enough to ask me if I was sitting down first) I initially *facepalmed*, then sought about getting the original paper where this apparent break through research had appeared (thanks to @xtaldave for the full text).
The paper that had apparently found homeopathy to be as effective as chemo for breast cancer (according to Homeopathy Plus!, yes those guys), was published in the International Journal of Oncology* and entitled “Cytotoxic Effects of Ultra Diluted Remedies on Breast Cancer Cells.” (Full text has been removed because quackers were linking to it for nefarious purposes>Click the link for the full pdf of the study).
The paper examines the effects of ultra-dilute remedies (read:homeopathy) on the induction of cell death in two cancer cell lines (commercially available MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) and one immortalised control cell line, (HMLE).
The authors use several remedies already in use for the treatment of human breast cancer developed at the P. Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation in India, Kolkata;
Carcinosin, 30C; Conium maculatum, 3C; Phytolacca decandra, 200C and Thuja occidentalis, 30C (for an explanation of how dilute these remedies are see here).
All remedies were diluted in 87% “extra neutral alcohol” and succussed, including the alcohol used as the control solvent.
The authors analysed each remedy with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to look for differences, then measured cell death in cell culture in response to increasing doses and increasing time of incubation with each remedy. These measures include the MTT assay for cell viability, Annexin V and PI for apoptosis, FISH for DNA breakage and Western blots to measure activation of cell cycle proteins.
Technically the paper is quite well written. The problems lie with the data. And these problems are so massive, I wonder how they got by the reviewers. I don’t know whether they were dozing when they reviewed this paper, but I could immediately see some big fat gaping holes in their results.
First up a few pointers;
“The experiments were conducted in triplicate and repeated at least twice in each case of remedy”
This would not get past me. It is accepted scientific convention that experiments are done at least three times (not two) and also in triplicate, giving you a final “n” number of 9. These studies were done in cell culture, meaning there is plenty of material for experiments to be repeated as many times as you wish. So why were they only done twice? Three is convention because it gives the study more statistical power.
Ah statistics, huh?
There is a distinct lack of statistics in this paper, by which I mean there are none at all. As my friend Jo said; “Nary a p-value nor a confidence interval to be seen”. Which begs the question, how can you get a paper accepted in a peer reviewed journal without doing an statistical analysis?
Really? No, I mean REALLY? This is why I suspect the reviewers were dozing or drunk.
And by not doing any statistical analysis, you can not make any statements about whether the treatments are different to each other. Statistics uses algorithms to calculate mathematical differences with a degree of confidence (usually 95%) so that we don’t rely on visual interpretation, which is notoriously unreliable. But this doesn’t seem to have bothered these authors, or the reviewers.
So let’s look more closely at the results.
Firstly the HPLC.
Oh wait a sec, there are no results shown for HPLC. And neither do the authors say “no results shown”. They just make some rather confused statements about what they think they saw and move on. What?! I need to see the chromatograms. What possible reason could they have for not including this data, especially when they go on to describe it so badly in the text.
“All four remedies had very similar HPLC chromatograms to each other, with only trace amounts of limited number of peaks. They were not significantly distinct from the solvent and they lacked the distinct peak seen in the solvent.
So, this means that all the remedies were the same, ie. no different to the solvent and no other peaks indicating any ingredients. But then they contradict themselves by saying that the remedies did not have the solvent peak? Fail.
And then;
“The chromatogram of the untreated and treated solvents appeared identical, indicating that succussion did not cause chemical changes in the solvent.”
Okay, but don’t some homeopaths claim that succussion does have an effect on the chemical structure of the water/solvent? Isn’t this how they explain that homeopathy works? I can only guess SINCE WE CANNOT SEE THE CHROMATOGRAMS, but what you are saying is the remedies and the solvent were exactly the same, meaning they are solvent.
No surprises there.
What about the cell death studies?
So let’s look at the cell death studies since these constitute the crux of the study’s aims. That is, to determine if these ultra dilute remedies can induce cell death in cancer cell lines.
So here we have results for all three cell lines, two cancerous and one control, and they are all treated with a control (the 87% alcohol solvent) or the remedies and death measured by MTT assay. Here’s how they describe it in the text;
“Interestingly, the inhibitory effects on cell viability of the remedies in both the MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells were distinctly greater for each of the doses tested than those seen in cells treated only with solvent.”
Which translates as the treatments killed the cells better than the solvent alone. Okay, so it looks like it did when you eye ball the histograms, but you have no evidence for this – you didn’t do stats, therefore you cannot say this! Sheesh, where did you learn to write science?
But why not keep the fail going;
“MCF-7 cells were found to be more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.
Again no statistics, so this statement cannot be confirmed. When you do science properly and you run statistical analysis, you are entitled to say, “MCF-7 cells were found to be significantly more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.
Unless you’re these authors, then you just get a great big FAIL stamp on your work.
Also note that they state that the control treatment (that is the solvent) also induced cell death in all cell types;
“As shown in Fig. 1A, the solvent reduced the viability of all three cell types; the overall reduction in cells at different doses of solvent was about 30% for MCF-7, 20-30% for MDA-MB-231 and 20% for HMLE cells.”
Ummm, hold on a sec.
This is your control treatment, which means it should not be causing cell death. It is designed to be inert, functioning as a carrier of your treatment, in order that you can measure the impact of the treatment alone. If your solvent or vehicle is killing your cells you have a fundamental problem. You need to go back to the drawing board and find a different solvent to deliver your treatment.
This is a very big problem right here.
If the cell death induced by the solvent is significant, then the rest of the paper is worthless. But because there are no stats here, there is no way to tell if death by the solvent is significant. According to the above statement, the alcohol killed ~30% of the cancer cells compared to no treatment at all. Although this effect was increased when the treatment was present, there remains a large problem with your model if your solvent is killing the cells.
Perhaps this explains why there are no stats in this paper? Because they may in fact show that the “inert” solvent also significantly kills the cancer cells? Once again, there is no way for me to know this without access to the raw data, or the statistical analysis.
Man, how the hell did this embarrassment get accepted?
Well now that I have revealed a fundamental flaw in this tripe I have lost the will to continue. There is much more fail herein however, I mean we are only at Figure 1 remember.
So I will cover just a few more things that are also glaringly obviously wrong with this paper, then I will send a large bottle of 87% alcohol to the editorial board and encourage them to keep up the good work of smiting the peer review process and science in general.
General lack of quantitation of results in this paper.
Figure 3, excerpt from Frenkel et al., showing damage to DNA.
Figure 3 (left) shows fluorescent microscopy data for DNA breakage as measured by FISH assay. But where is the quantitation of this data?
The authors show a representative image for each treatment, and this is usually acceptable if you then measure large numbers of cells and report on such changes with numbers (see below).
Dunlop et al., in press. Panels are representative DAPI/FITC overlay images of at least 10 images taken from triplicate wells. Histograms are mean + SD of 3 independent experients, incubations in triplicate, n = 9, p < 0.001 1-way ANOVA. Tukeys post-hoc analysis.
Further, even in the fluorescent images the authors only show a maximum of 14 cells. What the hell can you glean from 14 cells? They even say;
“At least 200 cells from treated and untreated samples were analyzed for mitotic index and telomeric DNA signals with a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with fluorescence attachment and a Photometrics CoolSNAP HQ2 monochrome digital camera.”
So where is this data? Not in this paper, I can tell you that.
Next up Western blots.
Then they move onto Western blots. Actually this looks like the most resolved part of the paper. They have normalised everything to beta-actin as convention goes, and they have indicated the time of exposure to treatments. But as I mentioned earlier, if their control treatment 87% alcohol, is killing cells, then what can we glean from this data? Well not much except the effect could be an additive effect of the alcohol and treatment. There is no way to differentiate the impact of the treatment versus the control.
Flow cytometry, not quantitated either.
Sigh. I spend most of my days doing flow cytometry, so I am pretty familiar with how it works and what are the accepted ways to present the data. This is not one of them.
Figure 5, excerpt from Frenkel et al.,
The assay they use (Annexin V and PI) is a common one and I use it often. Standard procedure is to count ~10,000 cells for each condition, then plot your results on a graph, like this (see left below).
Dunlop et al., in press. Flow cytometry analysis of lysosomal destabilisation in THP1 human monocytes with acridine orange as a probe. Mean & SD of three independent experiments, incubations conducted in triplicate (n = 9), ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, 1-way ANOVA, Tukeys post-hoc analysis.
You might also show your scatter plots as they have done above, as a nice visual demonstration of how the cells respond to the treatment, but this is not quantitation.
I’m going to stop there. I won’t even bother dealing with the discussion and conclusions, because by my analysis, they are based on flawed data.
One thing I will say about Homeopathy Plus! yelling “Homeopathy as good as chemotherapy for breast cancer” is not a conclusion you can draw from this study.
For all the reasons I have addressed above as well as the really obvious point that these studies were conducted in cell culture. This is a very different situation to a whole animal.
Cells bathing in a bath of homeopathy is very different to the processes which occur in vivo, for example the treatment must survive the low pH of the stomach, cross the gut, escape metabolism in the liver and get to the site of the cancer then do it’s job. This is a very complex process and very difficult to control. Studies in cell culture can provide data about the mechanism of action of a compound, but rarely do they relate to the processes in a human.
Never extrapolate results from a culture dish to a whole animal. You will undoubtedly be wrong and look like a fool.
Ooh, did someone say Homeopathy Plus!?
Listen to Fran Sheffield from Homeopathy Plus! talk about how homeopathy works here (mp3, 3:19).
*The International Journal of Oncology, impact factor 2.234, fail factor 10^23.
And so it begins to unravel for Wakefield
Overnight, Neurotoxicology withdrew Andrew Wakefield’s “other paper”, “Delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes in newborn primates receiving a thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine: Influence of gestational age and birth weight.”
This paper was originally published in October 2009 to the acclaim of the anti-vaxers who commented;
“Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.”
The study, in macaques reported impaired neurological development in young monkeys following vaccination with a thimerosal containing vaccine.
I commented about this paper on Skeptically Speaking recently, citing, amongst other things, the conflicts of interest statement by the authors as a source of concern. It says;
Prior to 2005, CS and AJW acted as paid experts in MMR-related litigation on behalf of the court retained by plaintiff lawyers. LH has a child who is a petitioner in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. For this reason, LH was not involved in any data collection or statistical analyses to preclude the possibility of a perceived conflict of interest.
As a working scientist, I participate in the peer review process. To me, these conflicts of interests are serious enough to enquire of the editor if the paper should be rejected on these grounds alone. I also can’t help but wonder if the reviewers did any background searches for Wakefield. If they had, my suspicions are this paper would never have been published in the first place.
I certainly hope this means that the studies he is about to publish, as referred to by Generation Rescue below, never see the light of day in a peer reviewed, respectable journal.
Whilst Neurotoxicology is indeed a respectable journal, it is albeit, small fry. With an impact factor of 2.409, it is certainly not a big hitter in the journal stakes. By comparison, The Lancet, which last week, retracted Wakefield’s notorious 1998 paper, has an impact factor of 28.
This Neurotoxicology paper is the one described by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey in a statement following the Lancet retraction. They said;
“There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism.”
According to the statement,
Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.
And
The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.
Although the editors of Neurotoxicology do not explain why they withdrew the paper, it seems likely that the GMC findings describing Wakefield as not only being wrong about the science in the Lancet paper, but also acting unethically with respect to using unnecessary and invasive procedures on children, are likely to have influenced their decision. He was also described as “unethical”, “callous” and “dishonest”.
With this third blow to Wakefield’s reputation in a week, the anti-vaxers have finally conceded that he was wrong about vaccine safety, accepted that he had multiple conflicts of interest which he did not declare and disassociated themselves from him.
Just kidding!
Instead they made a BIG FLOW CHART detailing the conspiracy designed to quash “one of the world’s most respected and well-published gastroenterologists.” Click for a high resolution image.
And they’ve also announced that they will republish the Lancet paper in the online quack-fest that is Medical Veritas. As yet, I have not seen any statements from Jen and Jim but, rest assured, it won’t be long before they start screaming conspiracy.
Sigh.
