One thing that anti-vaccine types keep asking over and over is the following:
“If your kid is vaccinated, and if vaccines work as well as you say they do… Why is my kid a threat to your kid?”
It’s an interesting mental game to play with them if you’re so inclined. It probably won’t get you anywhere with the hardcore anti-vaccine activists, the ones that blame everything and anything on vaccines. But the “softer” ones may still be reachable. Here’s how you play the game: Continue reading
Most religions, and certainly the major ones (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) require that you take certain things on faith. Many of them offer no hard evidence of their tennets. Yes, there is plenty of historical evidence for many of the events that happened in the narratives of these religions, but there is no hard evidence of the existence of a God beyond what is taken by faith alone.
But this blog is not about religion. It’s about science. In the world of science, we scientists require that claims be backed up by evidence. If someone comes to me and says that they can cure cancer, then I require certain proofs. I require that the treatment be shown to be biologically plausible. That is, I require that what the treatment claims to do is something that can happen in the real world, not the back of a napkin or a drawing on a blackboard. I also require the results of a well-conducted clinical trial where people with cancer are healed or live longer than people who do not receive the treatment. Finally, I require that the study that shows the treatment as effective be replicated by other studies by investigators who have no stake in the success of the treatment. That’s all I ask. It’s not a lot to ask for is it?
Apparently, it is a lot to ask for a clinic in Texas that claims to be able to cure cancer by using what it calls “antineoplastons”, a treatment of their own making. That treatment has not been shown to work. There have been no randomized, controlled clinical studies. There have been no follow-up randomized, controlled clinical studies. And even the biological mechanism by which the antineoplastons are supposed to work is, well, questionable. In short, there is no credible evidence that the treatment works.
That is unless you believe the testimonials. There are plenty of people who give testimonies about the treatment. Unfortunately, many of these testimonies are from the friends or relatives of the people who tried the antineoplastons as a last resort, albeit with a promise of a cure and at a great expense. I mean, it’s expensive:
“Antineoplastons are given orally or by injection into a vein. The duration of treatment usually ranges from eight to twelve months. A year of treatment can cost from $30,000 to $60,000, depending on the type of treatment, number of consultations, and the need for surgery to implant a catheter for drug delivery.”
But you wouldn’t know that this whole thing was expensive, unproven, and that the Food and Drug Administration is keeping an eye on it all from what you read in the testimonials. In those testimonials you have people who believe in the therapy with what can only be described as a religious devotion. One after another, the patients describe miraculous recovery from cancer. Others have family members describing an extra amount of time bought by the antineoplaston treatment. But, again, there are no studies published. There is no extraordinary evidence.
In fact, something that is missing from the testimonials website is the story of this young lady. She died. Also missing is this story. That little girl died, but not before her parents and friends had to raise a lot of money to try and get her to the clinic and into the clinical trials. They also don’t mention these stories. Or these.
The list goes on, and there will probably be names added to it because the clinic is still open, still charging patients thousands of dollars for unproven treatments that insurance won’t pay, and still being warned by the FDA for its activities.
A lot of people I know keep harking on the dangers of religion and how religion drives us to do some things that are insane. I tend to agree. However, part of me believes that it’s the human being inside of us that is to blame. We are the ones that forgo true, proven medicine for something that hasn’t been shown to work. For what? Hope that we may live a little longer? Hope that this maverick clinic in Texas has figured out the cure to the plague of the twentieth century?
Steve Jobs died today. He was an adopted child who grew up to build an enormous company full of innovation and materialized dreams. He revolutionized the personal computer to what we know it to be today. And he was known to follow his dreams relentlessly, inspiring many along the way. He was unique in his own way, and now we’ve lost him.
Or did we?
Mr. Jobs will live on in the hearts and minds of people who admire his work, or those of us who follow our dreams, and in the innovations that will surely be timeless. Just like so many thinkers and doers from history still live on today, Steve Jobs will go on in history.
Not only that, but if we push our children to be innovators in science, technology, the arts, we can very much have another Steve Jobs in our generation. I’d like to believe we will. I’d like to believe that our children will see a need and fill it, will take an idea and go with it.
The following is from Epi Ren, taking from Mr. Jobs’ commencement address to Stanford University in 2005:
Because of Steve Jobs, many of us believe that, yes, the dots will connect down the line, and so we follow our hearts.
Indeed.
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs, 1955-2011.
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