There are a lot of forms of junk science that are harmless. For instance, there are the alien landings in Roswell, which have been a popular theory for years.
There are plenty of variations on the theory. For instance, there are theories that there are aliens flying around and that the military is covering it up. There are theories that people have been kidnapped by aliens and subsequently returned to earth.
But what many people don't understand are the destructive consequences of junk science. Take creationism, for instance:
Creationism, as taught by Christian fundamentalists for 2000 years, has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. The crusades. The mass slaughters of pagans after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Holocaust. The burning of witches. The systematic rooting out of dissident sects. Take a look at any other form of religious fundamentalism, or the belief that one's religion is the only true religion, and you will see the same thing.
And the fundamentalism that is at work in this country is just as insidious. The Bush administration engaged in the systematic dumbing down of our students, with the notion of teaching to the test replacing discovery and creativity and the setting up of all our schools for failure in a backdoor effort to establish right-wing fundamentalism as the law of the land.
And when a population dumbs down, thanks to Bush, Limbaugh, and the rest of hate radio, then superstition replaces sound science and belief. While science has made lives better for all, the forces of right-wing fundamentalism continue their efforts to dumb down our population. If we look back at the times of the Roman Empire, we see the consequences of having a population which believes in nothing but superstition -- massive wealth inequality, poverty, and starvation. The exhaustion of resources and the consequent rampant inflation drove millions out of the cities into the countries into substance farming, forcing the Empire to hire mercenaries to fight their wars. Eventually, they could no longer hold their empire together against the forces of decay and the Dark Ages were ushered in.
And then, there are the forces of global warming denial. There is a website, ironically titled "Junk Science," which engages in a systematic attack against man-made global warming even though it is settled fact. And not content with their attacks on man-made global warming, Steve Milloy and Company go on to attack the reaction to Swine Flu even though influenza once killed millions of people after World War I.
And that brings me to my final point -- we are living a sheltered life, with no conception or appreciation of what life was like before we developed vaccines. Back before we developed vaccines, people died all the time of Polio, TB, measles, mumps, smallpox, and other such contagious diseases. It has been decades since any of these diseases were considered a serious threat in the Western world.
Now, we have scaremongers like Jenny McCarthy who are manufacturing hysteria against vaccines by claiming to link them to autism. She is doing so even though Andrew Wakefield, the person who was the biggest promoter of this notion, has been exposed as a fraud who perpetrated a hoax. And there are plenty of other hysterical claims about vaccines which have all been debunked:
* Does hepatitis B vaccine cause SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)? Looking at the numbers of doses of the former administered and cases of the latter, one would conclude the opposite, that hepatitis B vaccine prevents SIDS, since 90 percent of U.S. children have received hepatitis B vaccine, and SIDS cases have dropped dramatically in the past decade (probably due to the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP] recommendation that infants sleep on their backs).
* Does MMR vaccine cause autism? This question received extraordinary attention after it was raised in an article in The Lancet in 1998, by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues. The co-authors and The Lancet both have since retracted the article and its conclusions, and Wakefield is currently on trial in the U.K. for conflict of interest at the time of its publication. (He was on retainer from lawyers suing for vaccine damages.) More important, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) expert panel evaluated the issue and concluded that the evidence favored rejection of a connection between autism and MMR vaccine. Fourteen epidemiologic studies have been performed, all demonstrating the absence of a relationship between increased rates of autism and frequency of use of MMR vaccine. It is unfortunate that the speculation of a relationship between MMR vaccine and autism has resulted in the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases (especially measles) in children whose parents refused to allow them to receive the vaccine and has diverted attention from research into the real causes of autism, which has been shown to have prenatal origins.
* Is thimerosal a cause of neurologic abnormalities, including autism? The preservative thimerosal, consisting of ethyl mercury, was used in multi-dose vaccine vials. At present, most infancy and childhood vaccines are supplied in single-dose vials, and all such routine vaccines are thimerosal-free. Studies to answer this question, including five epidemiologic surveys, came to the same conclusion as the MMR vaccine–autism analyses, that there is not a relationship. A pivotal study at the University of Rochester quantifying thimerosal in childhood vaccines stated that administration of vaccines containing thimerosal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe levels in infants.
This notion that autism somehow is caused by vaccines is straight out of the pages of religious superstition. People fall into the trap of thinking that because A happened and because B subsequently happened that A somehow caused B. But by that "logic," we could claim that because Venus appeared in the night sky and because someone had a heart attack later that night, that Venus was responsible for that person's death. This is the sort of religious superstition that happened all the time in the ancient world, and this is the sort of religious superstition that McCarthy and her defenders have fallen victim to.
McCarthy has a website called "Generation Rescue," a name which, quite frankly, is similar to "Operation Rescue." Both of them ooze "concern" over babies. Both of them engage on a self-appointed rescue mission to save them from a crisis that doesn't exist. Both of them are blind to the destructive consequences of their actions if they were to be carried out. In the case of Operation Rescue, thousands of women would die each year to illegal abortion if forced pregnancy were to be made the law of the land. Generation Rescue is blind to the consequences of putting millions of children at risk to diseases which were largely eradicated thanks to vaccines.
McCarthy and her followers can talk about freedom of speech all they want -- but that is not the issue. This is not a matter of her freedom of speech, but a matter of her character. She has a free speech right to peddle whatever junk science she wants, including the notion that aliens landed on the moon or the notion that the Sputnik launch never happened, if she so desires. But we have just as much of a free speech right to ridicule such notions when they are not in accord with reality and the teachings of science. On her website, the front page shows numerous alleged links between vaccines and autism even though these theories have been discredited with Wakefield. She links to numerous studies that purport to establish such links; however, many of these studies are old and many of them establish no such link, but talk about the symptoms of autism. I challenge McCarthy and her defenders to come up with one credible study in the last two years that establishes such a link and that is not linked to Wakefield. By her own admission, she is not a scientist. So, why should I believe her word over people who have dedicated their lives to finding medications that make life better for all? I submit that the people who spread hysteria against vaccines have Pasteur and the people who brought us penicillin to thank for their ability to sit in the cozy confines behind their computer and peddle their tripe.
And what's more, such people who peddle this notion, or any other junk science notion, have no appreciation for what life was like before the development of vaccines. Perhaps these pictures will refresh our collective memories. I'm sorry if this seems cruel to some people, but people who peddle the notion of linking autism and vaccines lack basic scientific and historical understanding of why we need vaccines and forget that the human lifespan was much shorter than it is today as late as 100 years ago.
We all agree that we need to ask questions about research. We all agree that we need to work to minimize the profit motive in Big Pharm and to eliminate shortcuts that lead to destructive medicines getting on the market. The disastrous past eight years of the Bush administration has undermined our trust in the drug companies and the government to keep our medications safe. That is not the issue.
But the problem with McCarthy and her defenders is that they would throw the baby out with the bathwater and take us right back to the days in which omens, religious belief, and superstition were used to treat illness and in which mental illness was regarded as a form of demonic possession. Nobody is saying that we have to blindly accept what Big Pharm says. But if you want to challenge them, use sound science. If you want to question whether a drug for diabetes is safe and effective, use sound science, not anecdote. If you want to establish a link between autism and vaccines, do the work yourself, or at least link to some credible studies in the last two years and explain why the research makes your case. But questioning works both ways -- and we have every right to question McCarthy, the creationists, Milloy, or anyone else out there who is peddling junk science and make them and their defenders back up their claims. The lives of thousands of children at stake demand that we do no less.