[p2p-research] shots in the dark/p2p article

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Ryan Lanham wrote:
> Hi Paul...
> 
> I am honestly not trying to pick fights, but again, homeopathy is probably
> the single issue after vaccines that keeps the physician bloggers busy.
> They are ruthless is debunking its claims.  In third place is
> chiropractory.  To me the physicians' are compelling, but there are a lot of
> homeopathy users out there.  On the other hand, something like 15% of the US
> electorate wonders inconclusively if Obama is the anti-Christ.  So I'm not
> sure numbers make much of an argument in this case.
> 
> Ryan
> 
>  "Successful Use of Homeopathy In Over 2.5 Million People Reported From
>> Cuba"
>>

Seem my other reply to Tomas.

By the way, someone just sent me this link:
   "Deadly immunity"
   http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index.html
"""
   But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the 
vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood 
spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging 
data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information 
Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations 
about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. ...
   In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the 
damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of 
Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, 
ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It 
withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for 
immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had 
been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of 
Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a 
private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time 
Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for 
GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal 
and autism. ...
   As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying 
vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, 
reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies 
himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in 
vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a 
"control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, 
Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of 
autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the 
Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury 
from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from 
outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines. ...
   But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers 
to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as 
steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues 
to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some 
of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, 
where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of 
thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that 
there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are 
hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, 
Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using 
thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist 
thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is 
linked to neurological disorders "under review."
   I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral 
crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our 
public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to 
poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably 
constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. ...
"""

On the other hand, this disagrees with that:
"Do The Amish Vaccinate? Indeed They Do, AND Their Autism Rates May be 
Lower" 
http://autism.about.com/b/2008/04/23/do-the-amish-vaccinate-indeed-they-do-and-their-autism-rates-may-be-lower.htm

Regardless of agreement on the science and statistics, what is interesting 
is the social processes documented in it (assuming it is accurate) where the 
immediate focus is on the bottom line profitability issues, not the 
children's health.

Again, a big irony here is that breastfeeding cuts down on the frequency and 
severity of many childhood illnesses, but it is not promoted by social 
policy to the same degree that vaccination is. It is not profitable.

In the USA, an average of about US$13K per year per child is spent to "dumb 
down" children though compulsory education.
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/086571231X

If injecting kids with mercury and aluminum and so on does indeed do the 
dumbing down job more effectively and cheaper than additional schooling, 
well, that's good for a structured hierarchical command-and-control economy 
is it not?
   http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I’ll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated 
industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions 
of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an 
egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like 
the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, 
any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a 
concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"

Or, as Aldous Huxley outlined in "Brave New World":
   http://www.huxley.net/bnw/one.html
"""
"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Foster explained. "The 
surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer 
intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like 
oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par." Again he rubbed his hands.
    "But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?" asked an ingenuous 
student.
   "Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn't it occurred to 
you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an 
Epsilon heredity?"
   It evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered with confusion.
"""

Now, I'm not saying this is intentional. But, if the main problem of society 
is already effectively dumbing people down to fit into an 19th century 
social order and 19th century factory jobs, then preventing dysfunction in 
relation to vaccines or dental fillings or whatever is not going to be much 
of a priority, either. It would really just be a plus, from a Prussian 
schooling point-of-view, because the few resistant to the toxins would then 
be labeled by the schooling system and could either be groomed into the 
elite or pushed back down in some other way. So, statistically, if the 
problem is too many smart people in the first place, wasting a lot of them 
does not matter, as long as you have some sort of "mining and sorting" 
operation going on.

The Vice Provost of Caltech again, with this quote being used to make a 
point he no doubt never intended it to be used for:
   http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"""
I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for 
American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, 
designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the 
same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of 
being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the 
existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more 
this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential 
growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It 
accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully 
underrepresented among the scientists, because it is hard for us, white, 
male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, 
they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is 
for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike 
at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher 
recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and 
successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and 
Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the 
most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system 
of education is designed to produce precisely that result.
"""

An example p2p discussion on that sort of thing is relation to vaccines 
(with comments on both sides):
"Just What Did That Thimerosal-Autism Study Say, Anyway?" 
http://specialchildren.about.com/b/2008/01/08/study-fails-to-prove-thimerosal-is-a-primary-cause-of-autism.htm

More on the mercury issue in general:
"Amalgam studies: disregarding basic principles of mercury toxicity."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15471104
"Dental amalgam, which has been used for over 150 years in dental practice, 
consists of about 50% metallic mercury. Studies on animal and humans show 
that mercury is continuously released from dental amalgam and absorbed by 
several body tissues. It is widely accepted that the main source of mercury 
vapor is dental amalgam and it contributes substantially to mercury load in 
human body tissues. There is still a controversy about the consequences of 
this additional mercury exposure from amalgam to human health. Many studies 
were performed to evaluate possible adverse effects. In this comment, these 
studies were analyzed with regard to their methodical quality by considering 
the newest findings on mercury toxicity and metabolism. In sum, a number of 
studies are methodically flawed drawing inaccurate conclusions as to the 
safety of dental amalgam."

Note that historically, mercury-containing amalgam was for poor people; rich 
people got gold fillings, which is fairly inert.

I'm not saying pulling out existing fillings is very safe though, either. 
Neither is mixing different types of metals in one mouth.  Also, unlike 
young children, adults have bigger livers, and most, but not all, can 
probably handle some level of continuous heavy metal exposure without too 
much effects. So, there are multiple variables.

Example p2p discussion on this on the nature.com site (with stuff on both 
sides):
   "Autism study panned by critics"
   http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080714/full/454259a.html

Alternative press:
   http://www.mercola.com/article/mercury/no_mercury.htm
"""
Mercury Does Leak Out of Your Fillings
   The ADA has said for the past 150 years that the mercury in amalgam is 
safe and does not leak.
   However, they no clinical studies were ever done and the FDA approved 
amalgam under the "grandfather clause" Subsequent studies have shown this 
not to be true.
   Over ten years ago the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine 
published an editorial (12 ) calling mercury fillings the chief source of 
mercury exposure to the US population.
"""

The other side:
   "The amalgam controversy: An evidence-based analysis "
   http://jada.ada.org/cgi/content/full/132/3/348
"There are numerous logical and methodological errors in the anti-amalgam 
literature. The author concludes that the evidence supporting the safety of 
amalgam restorations is compelling. ... Most lay people and many dentists 
are unfamiliar with the peer-reviewed dental literature and, therefore, are 
more easily convinced by media stories that amalgam is dangerous. The 
problem is so serious that the American Council on Science and Health, a 
consumer education and advocacy group, has determined that the allegations 
against amalgam restorations constitute one of the "greatest unfounded 
health scares of recent times." ... Investigators have demonstrated that 
people with amalgam restorations have higher oral levels of mercury vapor 
than do people who do not have amalgam restorations.34 Yet determining the 
amount of mercury released and absorbed from amalgam is difficult and 
complex. ... Using the lowest established value—the NOAEL for children, 
pregnant women and ill people of 1 µg Hg/m3—as a safe threshold for 
continuous mercury vapor exposure for the general public and assuming a 
respiration rate of 22 m3 per day, a safe threshold for mercury vapor 
absorption by the lungs is 20 µg/day.29 Eley29 also estimated the safe level 
for intestinal absorption of mercury from amalgam by multiplying the lowest 
NOAEL figure by a factor of 10 to reflect the low absorption by the 
gastrointestinal tract and then another factor of 2 to account for the 
reduced toxicity of mercuric compounds. This yielded a safe threshold for 
gastrointestinal absorption of salivary mercury of 400 µg/day. ... The 
cardinal rule of toxicology is that "only the dose makes a poison." Mercury 
can be toxic, for example, when high exposures occur in occupational 
settings. In these cases, the severity of response correlates well with the 
amount and duration of exposure. The relationship of dose (number and size 
of amalgam restorations), exposure time and symptoms has not been 
established. ... With amalgam, a wide range of diseases and conditions have 
been attributed to it based solely on self-reported improvements in symptoms 
when the amalgam restorations were removed. The already collected data on 
the morbidity and mortality of dentists who have a proven higher body burden 
of mercury than do the general public was ignored. Today, we also have 
compelling data from groups with and without restorations who lived under 
similar environmental conditions and these, too, refute the claims of 
amalgam toxicity. Data strongly suggest that mercury levels many times 
higher than those associated with a mouth full of amalgam pose no risk of 
adverse health effects. There is evidence that the body’s mercury burden is 
highest immediately after placement or removal of amalgam restorations.29 
This information casts a critical light on those dentists, physicians and 
patients who have claimed improvement of symptoms immediately after amalgam 
removal."

Funny comparison (don't know how true it is, but it is funny):
   http://www.dennisjcourtney.com/mama.php
"""
The ADA (The American Dental Association) has never wavered in its' Mantra 
that mercury amalgam silver fillings (which by definition are 51% mercury) 
are completely safe when placed in the mouth.  This is a very interesting 
position to cling to in these enlightened times.  Lets' take a look at why:
   When a dentist prepares amalgam for placement in the mouth he actually 
adds the mercury to the other ingredients himself just prior to placing the 
amalgam in the newly prepared tooth.  Now if it happens to be you sitting in 
the dental chair awaiting the arrival of this mixture to fill your newly 
"drilled out" tooth. Take note in this scenario:
     What if in the process of moving from the mixing counter to you he 
accidently drops the amalgam onto the floor beside you.  You may think well, 
how clumsy, the poor guy will have to mix another "batch" of amalgam for my 
tooth - which he will surely do.  The dentist on the other hand is faced 
with an additional dilemma.  He has just been a party to a "mercury spill" 
which is a known hazardous material and his actions for how he will have to 
clean-up that spill now fall under the guidelines of the EPA (The 
Environmental Protection Agency), who unlike the FDA (Food and Drug 
Administration) fully recognize the danger of mercury.  The dentist will 
have to document the incident and fill out the forms required by the EPA for 
the spill.  He can then elect to call in a "Haznet team" to physically clean 
up the spill or he can decide to deal with it himself but in documenting how 
he has disposed of the mercury he realizes that he will be contacted by the 
EPA or OSHA. (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) Their job will 
be to follow up on this matter to verify that no one was injured due to the 
spill and confirm that the material was disposed of properly.  Do you think 
that your dentist will do this?  Or, do you think he may illegally wipe-up 
the spill with a rag and toss it in with the other trash.  This option would 
of course be completely illegal, unethical, as well as a fineable and 
jailable as has been determined by federal statute.
"""

Anyway, once you start poking at medical policies, things get curiouser and 
curiouser. Again, the issue may not be so much that mercury fillings 
*intentionally* dumb down or harm poor people; it is just more like no one 
cares about that as being an important issue, or cares about it being a 
risk. Some may argue that is a legitimate trade-off as well -- possible 
future problems for getting rid of tooth pain in poor people. Anyone with a 
terrible toothache might think that was a good trade at that moment. And 
maybe, for most people, their system can keep up with any small amount of 
mercury leaked out when chewing.

But, as with vaccinations that don't need to contain mercury, one important 
point here is that there are alternatives like gold fillings or other 
materials that clearly pose less health *risk* to most people. But they 
sometimes cost more (especially gold, but also zirconium or related 
procedures) or require more visits. So, this problem is also an interaction 
with our global manufacturing technology and how we choose to ration various 
materials and procedures, as well as what we chose to focus our research 
energies on (guns or butter, or in this case, fillings). Or in other words, 
who gets what benefits, and who pays what costs or takes what risks?

But, these are not issues the mainstream (including professionals) wants to 
discuss much, because there is too much money and liability at stake, so 
only one side is usually presented in the mainstream. So covering both sides 
is left to p2p, however well or poorly one might think it is done.

But clearly, there are a lot of variables, and there are a lot of issues 
that are not well understood. Still, it seems to me at this point that, 
given alternatives are available, avoiding mercury in vaccines or fillings 
seems to me to be, overall, a good idea, as is avoiding any sort of 
non-inert metal (even aluminum) in products you put into your body. The fact 
that making a quicker change to less risky interventions has not been a 
priority in the USA is the scandal IMHO, more than anything.

I liked this comment at the above autism link near the beginning of this email:
"""
  ehswan says:
    Can youall say “systemic corruption for the love of money”? That’s what 
I see. It’s all about money. Simplistic? Yes it is! Years, no decades ago 
(1920’s) we were told leaded gasoline was not a problem, turns out there 
were other additives that would have been just as good, but there was no 
money to be made from them, so leaded gasoline it was, until it became clear 
that spewing lead throughout the envirornment was poisoning all of life, 
then in this, my country, it stopped. Now mercury in vaccines, in my country 
has stopped, but not before a huge number of innocents have been irreparably 
damaged. Why? Well it turns out that the addition of compounds containing 
mercury allowed the vaccine makers to market vials for multiple use saving 
them 50 cents per vial. Why? Because mercury is extremely toxic to all life 
forms, like moulds and other contaminats that would be introduced into the 
vials by multiple needle pricks. The love of money is the root of all evil.
"""

So, that's the price of mercury exposure *risk* for decades in vaccines, 
saving US$0.50 a shot or so. Had not any of those scientists read "Alice in 
Wonderland"?
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Hatter

Related, inspired by that comment:
   "The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment"
  By Peter Dauvergne
   http://books.google.com/books?id=5PEFBfoK9JIC&pg=PA67
"Why did U.S. regulators declare leaded gasoline "safe" in the 1920s? Why 
were critics, once so loudly calling for precaution and further research, so 
quiet in the following decades? And, finally, why were so many scientists, 
activists, and government agencies in the United States suddenly -- a half 
century later -- beginning to challenge the "facts" and "safety" of leaded 
gasoline? The answers reveal important lessons about how and why ecological 
shadows form, intensify, and shift. They reveal how the pursuit of profits 
and markets can trump calls for precaution even in the face of high 
uncertainty and significant risks, how corporations and state allies can 
silence critics and control "research" for generations, and, finally, how 
knowledge and technology can both cause and begin to mitigate ecological 
shadows."

So, let's use the logic we are demanded to use. How do people defending the 
scientific method as the appropriate way to make these decisions explain the 
history of leaded gas?
   "The Leaded Gas Scare of the 1920s"
   http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/hleadgas.asp
"""
With the nation's newspapers full of accounts of leaded gas claiming the 
lives of workers, Hamilton and Henderson's warnings stirred the press and 
the public into a frenzy. Standard Oil, it was learned, had already put 
Ethyl on the market based only on the results of its own tests with the 
substance. Responding to the uproar, local boards of health stepped in, 
blocking any further sale of Ethyl until unbiased tests could be conducted.
...
   The corporate interests dominated the hearings, for they had controlled 
all the research and testing of the new gasoline. The men who had died from 
handling Ethyl, it was shown, had been exposed to concentrations far greater 
than the motoring public ever would in using leaded gasoline. Reformers 
Hamilton and Henderson pointed out the known dangers associated with lead 
poisoning and cited the tremendous health risks of even tiny amounts of lead 
being discharged in automobile exhaust fumes, but they were overwhelmed by 
the corporate enthusiasm for Ethyl. One Standard Oil spokesman likened it to 
a "gift of God," so great was its potential to improve the automobile. After 
deliberating, the panel agreed to lift the ban on the sale of leaded gasoline.
...
   For 50 years after its appearance on the market, leaded gas continued to 
power America's love-affair with the big luxury cars Detroit was producing. 
But in the 1960's scientific evidence made it clear that airborne lead was a 
serious health hazard. Efforts were renewed to outlaw lead in gasoline, with 
federal restrictions governing the lead content of motor fuels coming into 
effect in the 1970s. Lead exposure, we now know, can cause a wide range of 
illnesses in adults and poses especially high risks for children, affecting 
their neurological development, growth and intelligence.
   Of course, the voices of caution ignored in 1925 were absolutely correct. 
Leaded gasoline was good for car engines, but bad for people. Although today 
leaded gasoline is banned in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, it 
is still in use in many developing countries, where in large cities it is 
considered a grave health risk to children.
"""

Can't happen again? How about Vioxx? Again, read the first quoted section 
about the social dynamics of that meeting about mercury in vaccines. And, in 
the same way, consider the arguments made above for how mercury in fillings 
is not toxic to the average person either. Still, it is true, "the dose 
makes the poison".

The deeper issue is, who gets to decide what are acceptable risks? Who 
controls setting the priorities on the funding of research to look for 
alternatives? How is an economic system set up that either gives people 
access to the alternatives or denies alternatives to people as either too 
expensive or as involving paying the wrong provider? These are not questions 
the status quo is that interested in asking.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/