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ng that soul to proper belief even if that amounts to torturing the immortal soul s body even to death if one believes that one s country was defeated and devastated by sabotage perpetrated by jews communists homosexuals gypsies and the like then obviously one should do whatever is necessary to rid the country of those perpe traitors and so on the human tragedy is that we acquire beliefs according to the environment into which we are born and in which we are raised and once belief has been acquired it tends to become increasingly entrenched and increasingly difficult to modify the problem for society is how best to ensure that collective public actions are based on correct rather than on wrong beliefs nowadays that is taken to mean that public actions should be based on science unfortunately the nature of scientific activity is widely and thoroughly misunderstood 1 in particular its fallibility which results inevitably from the fact that science is carried out by fallible human beings that fallibility is well illustrated by the history of medicine where many past practices are now recognized as having been harmful rather than helpful drawing out blood in sizable amounts for example nowadays the excellent intention to base medical practices on sound scientific knowledge has sadly gone wrong in several ways as a result of beliefs that turn out to be wrong one pervasive reason is that statistical associations are taken as indicating cause and effect an error that is warned against in even the most elementary introductions to statistical analysis several pertinent stories are analyzed in jeremy greene s magisterial prescribing by numbers 2 one story has to do with blood pressure life insurance companies required physical examinations their accumulated data revealed that on average mortality increased with increasing blood pressure now mortality increases with age and it happens also that every relevant study has shown that blood pressure too increases naturally with age in otherwise healthy people the association of blood pressure with mortality is an artefact illustrating the common principle in statistics that when two things a and b are each correlated with a third factor c then a and b will also show a correlation with one another even though neither causes the other 3 the misinterpretation of life insurance statistics has resulted in contemporary medical practice based on a wrong belief namely that it is beneficial is to bring everyone s blood pressure to a level that is normal only for people in their twenties this mistake becomes particularly harmful since the means used to lower blood pressure almost invariably involve administering drugs though lip service is always paid to advising appropriate diet and exercise as the first resort that drug companies are permitted to advertise direct to consumers among developed countries only in the usa and new zealand means that such practices become so taken for granted as to be virtually unquestionable another mistaken belief is that high levels of cholesterol in the blood constitute cardiovascular disease and increased risk of stroke and heart attack the corollary misguided belief is that bringing cholesterol levels down by administering statin drugs is beneficial even though statins hinder the body s production of coenzyme q10 which is a necessary component of the energy producing mechanisms of all cells inevitably therefore statins induce in muscular weakness which is officially but quite mistakenly described as a side effect it is a direct effect many well documented books and articles have debunked the cholesterol theory for example kendrick 2007 and ravnskov 2000 in 4 without effecting any change in standard practice although many individuals ignore or defy their doctor s prescribing of statins not only do modern american medical practices rely on misleading incompetent statistical analyses they are based fundamentally on the wrong belief that preventive medicine can be successfully practiced by administering of drugs this becomes increasingly harmful when those drugs continue to be prescribed as people get older and the steadily cumulating danger from drug side effects outweigh any possible benefit from reducing risk of one or another ailment 5 drug based treatments are particularly well entrenched because the pharmaceutical industry is hugely profitable in large part because of the profligate prescribing of drugs stimulated by pervasive advertising the greatest immediate improvement in prescribing practices would result if the food and drug administration and other regulatory authorities would demand statistically competent and honest protocols for clinical trials including that outcomes not be assessed as significant at p 0 05 but in terms of nnt and nnh numbers of patients needed to be treated for 1 successful outcome compared to numbers of patients needed to be treated to observe 1 undesired adverse event 6 that would prevent much harm for example that now perpetrated by hpv vaccines which are responsible for the greatest number of officially reported averse events as well as many horrifying anecdotes 7 while there is no actual proof that hpv causes any cancer at all hpv having been found guilty only because a few strains out of many dozens are often statistically associated with some cancers well intentioned physicians are doing harm because of wrong beliefs even as dozens of books 4 have exposed the misdeeds and their causes is it not an evil to persuade people to ingest things that do harm without any compensating good 1 science is not what you think how it has changed why we can t trust it how it can be fixed mcfarland 2017 2 jeremy greene prescribing by numbers johns hopkins university press 2007 3 seeking immortality challenging the drug based medical paradigm j ournal of scientific exploration 26 2012 867 80 4 what s wrong with present day medicine 5 when is enough enough stopping medicines in older people best practices journal 27 april 2010 6 9 rushabh j dagli akanksha sharma polypharmacy a global risk factor for elderly people journal of international oral health 6 6 2014 i ii 6 how not to measure the efficacy of drugs 7 mary holland kim mack rosenberg eileen iorio t he hpv vaccine on trial seeking justice for a generation betrayed skyhorse 2018 documentary sacrificial virgins share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin more share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on x opens in new window x share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in consensus fraud in medicine medical practices prescription drugs science is not truth scientific culture scientists are human unwarranted dogmatism in science tagged blood pressure and mortality cholesterol not harmful hpv vaccines harmful 1 comment the hiv aids blunder missed opportunities for mainstream research to self correct posted by henry bauer on 2021 01 20 quite a number of specific mis steps conspired to the acceptance and continuance of hiv aids theory they illustrate much of what has gone wrong with science it is subject to interference by commercial political and ideological influences it is comprised of a variety of institutions that do not interact usefully or reliably above all science has no overarching watchdog to ensure that theories change appropriately as evidence accumulates 1 the first and crucial mistake was when the secretary of health and human services margaret heckler held a press conference at which robert gallo claimed to have discovered the probable cause of aids illustrated by this sad episode is political interference and the pervasive ignorance of how science works gallo had not yet published anything insiders regarded him as incompetent and untrustworthy investigative journalism later 2002 fully documented that he is an unscrupulous charlatan 1 heckler s background was as a lawyer and a politically active republican activists had been campaigning vigorously for the republican administration to do something about aids this official endorsement of gallo s claim acted as a signal that anyone who wanted research support from the national institutes of health nih would likely be successful by proposing to work on hiv virologists in particular were hungry for funding after their failure to discover cancer causing viruses in the war on cancer 2 2 an important contributing factor was statistical incompetence at the centers for disease control cdc mistakenly taking gay rather than drug abuse as the most meaningful association with aids 3 the cdc should also have been aware that aids like symptoms had been quite common among addicts during the 1960 70s epidemic of so called recreational drug use 4 initiated the misleading young previously healthy gay men characterization based on 5 cases aged 29 36 average 32 6 5 its task force on kaposi s sarcoma had found the average age of aids victims to be 35 when cochrane 6 re examined the medical records 20 years later she found that the average age of the first 25 aids patients in san francisco had been 38 this mattered crucially the greatest risk for sexual infections is among people 30 lifestyle ailments are increasingly likely at older ages more compatible with a decade or two of what used to be called dissolute living cdc researchers as early as 1987 failed to recognize the significance of their finding that among job corps members at ages about 17 and younger females are more likely to test hiv positive than males 7 3 the army hiv research office also failed to recognize the significance of their finding that at ages about 17 and younger females are more likely to test hiv positive than males 8 4 duesberg had published comprehensive debunkings of hiv in 1987 9 and 1989 10 the latter has a footnote promising a rebuttal from gallo that never eventuated despite several reminders 11 233 5 as the years went by more and more conundrums emerged whose significance was missed the purple skin patches of kaposi s sarcoma had been the iconic signature of aids yet after half a dozen years they had become rare among aids patients the correlation between drug abuse and aids became stronger and stronger prostitutes who did not use drugs were not at risk of becoming hiv positive drug abusers who used clean needles would more likely to test hiv positive than those who exchanged needles marriage and pregnancy are risk factors for testing hiv positive many further instances with primary sources cited also for the points above see the case against hiv lessons the clearest general lesson is that policymakers and administrators should not take far reaching actions on matters of science or medicine without advice from individuals who have at least an elementary acquaintance with the history of science and the understanding of present day scientific activity incorporated in science and technology studies sts 12 anyone with that background would be familiar with the danger of accepting any scientific claim made by an individual researcher or administrator of research before the claim had even been published the training of most scientists and most doctors neglects that important background a fairly general lesson is that competence in statistics may be sorely lacking even in an agency like cdc where gathering and analyzing statistical data is a central task much has been written during the last several decades about the pervasive abuse and misuse of statistics in medicine and medical science 13 it is also not irrelevant that an overwhelming of proportion of those who were carrying out and reporting hiv tests were medical doctors mds or dvms rather than people trained in research this is not to discount and the insights of the many mds who have been able to learn from experience and to transcend some of the mistaken lore they were originally taught 14 but medical training focuses on applying what is known not on questioning it by contrast journalists who were covering the hiv aids story 1 15 had a more holistic mindset and noticed how inadequate the officially accepted view is a part of understanding what contemporary scientific or research activity involves is to recognize that the overwhelming proportion of individuals doing what is loosely called research or science are not engaged in seeking fundamental truths most of the published reports on hiv testing were based on taking for granted that hiv causes aids and gathering data for other purposes say recruitment into the armed forces or the presumed need of for antiviral drugs in different regions of africa so those researchers had been blind to the steady accumulation of data incompatible with the view of hiv as a contagious infection present day institutions of medical science are incapable of self correcting a mistaken consensus that is why society needs a science court 1 john crewdson science fictions a scientific mystery a massive cover up and the dark legacy of robert gallo little brown 2002 2 peter duesberg inventing the aids virus regnery 1996 chapter 4 3 john lauritsen cdc s tables obscure aids drug connection philadelphia gay news 14 february 1985 and five other papers reprinted as chapter i in the aids war propaganda profiteering and genocide from the medical industrial complex asklepios 1993 4 neville hodgkinson aids the failure of contemporary science fourth estate 1996 5 pneumocystis pneumonia los angeles morbidity and mortality weekly report 30 21 5 june 1981 250 52 6 michelle cochrane when aids began san francisco and the making of an epidemic routledge 2004 7 michael e st louis george a conway charles r hayman carol miller lyle r petersen timothy j dondero human immunodeficiency virus infection in disadvantaged adolescents findings from the us job corps jama 266 1991 2387 91 fig 4 authors training 5 md 1 rn 8 john f brundage donald s burke robert visintine michael peterson robert r redfield hiv infection among young adults in the new york city area new york state journal of medicine may 1988 232 33 fig 3 authors training 5 md 1 dvm donald s burke john f brundage mary goldenbaum lytt i gardner michael peterson robert visintine robert r redfield the walter reed retrovirus research group human immunodeficiency virus infections in teenagers seroprevalence among applicants for us military service jama 263 1990 2074 77 table 1 authors training 4 md 1 dvm 1 ms 1 phd burke d s j f brundage j r herbold w berner l i gardner j d gunzenhauser j voskovitch r r redfield human immunodeficiency virus infections among civilian applicants for united states military service october 1985 to march 1986 new england journal of medicine 317 1987 131 36 fig 1 authors training 5 md 1 phd 1 dvm 9 peter h duesberg retroviruses as carcinogens and pathogens expectations and reality cancer research 47 1987 1199 220 10 peter h duesberg human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome c...
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