About this Author
NOTE: Due to a site closure (effective January 2007), I'm actively looking for a new position, and I have many capable colleagues in several areas who are as well.
I'm also available for consultations on all aspects of medicinal chemistry and pre-clinical drug discovery. This site is an accurate reflection of my experience and interests in the field - inquiries welcome! - DL
Derek Lowe, an Arkansan by birth, got his BA from Hendrix College and his PhD in organic chemistry from Duke before spending time in Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship on his post-doc. He's worked for several major pharmaceutical companies since 1989 on drug discovery projects against schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, diabetes, osteoporosis and other diseases.
To contact Derek email him directly: derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net
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Category Archives
December 11, 2006
Posted by Derek
Since I've been getting some more less-than-friendly email from Kevin Trudeau fans recently, I thought I'd take a minute to point out something that may not have been generally appreciated. What does the complete failure of a drug like Pfizer's torcetrapib say about the evil-pharma conspiracy theories that Trudeau and his type like to spin?
I mean, think it through: Pfizer spends hundreds of millions of dollars, only to find that their drug has unexpected toxicity. Not the horrible, chemical-weapon toxicity that the conspiracy mongers talk about, mind you: 11 deaths per thousand versus 6 deaths per thousand. But development stops immediately, as it should, the very day that Pfizer's executives get the news. Two days after trumpeting the compound as the biggest thing in their pipeline, they pull it and walk away from the billions of dollars that could have been.
How, exactly, does this fit the Evil Conspiracy worldview? Isn't this, according to Trudeau, exactly the same as all the other drugs already on the market? Why would a company walk away from all that cash just because of a measly little figure like 5 excess patient deaths per thousand? If you believe Kevin Trudeau, everyone who takes anything is being poisoned already.
I know I'm going to regret making this offer, but here goes: I'd be interested in hearing a Trudeau-ite explain this one to me. If you buy into his story, why any drug ever fails in the clinic must be a real head-scratcher, since you'd think that the Evil Pharma Overlords would be able to hocus the data enough to make any sort of toxic junk look good. And this one must seem especially weird.
So tell me, you folks who are convinced that I and all my colleagues in the drug industry are poisoning the world: why did torcetrapib fail? Ground rules: you have to know what torcetrapib is, and you have to have some basic understanding of what it was (in theory) supposed to do. ("Improve cholesterol to try to prevent heart attacks" is enough of an answer for that one - there's a free one for you). And you have to be able to spell Pfizer, and to have read at least one news story about the drug's demise. Have at it in the comments section.
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August 15, 2006
Posted by Derek
I've taken a few good swings at Kevin Trudeau around here, naturally enough, since he's going around telling everyone that my industry is poisoning them. I get some Google traffic from people searching for information about him, which makes me happy, since what they read here might possibly prevent them from giving this sleazy scam artist their money.
But I've noticed some odd search phrases turning up, things like "How old is Kevin Trudeau" and "Kevin Trudeau real age". Some looking around confirmed my fears. Yes, it seems that Trudeau is going around telling people that he only looks like he's in his forties - when, according to him, he's actually seventy years old. This statement seems to be confined to his personal appearances, because it's hard to track down in print. But it's out there. And it's a lie, as numerous legal records (such as his convictions for credit card fraud) will verify. This shows a combination of greed and contempt for his own audience that you don't come across very often. I'd want to get my clothes dry-cleaned if I brushed up against him by mistake, but you have to admit, he's quite a specimen.
So, for anyone who comes across this page by a Google search, here's the short answer: Kevin Trudeau is not seventy years old. This is an outrageous lie, being told to your face by an equally outrageous excuse for a human being. Trudeau is telling you this whopper for one reason: because he wants your money. Don't give it to him. Too many people have already.
Meanwhile, the marketing practices I spoke about last year continue - he's still slamming phone customers for his book with unwanted subscriptions to his $71 newsletter, for example. Here's one of the many folks who've found that getting Kevin Trudeau's hands off your credit card is next to impossible - and here's another. That applies to the poor suckers who pay $100 each to see him live, too - refunds are mighty slow in coming. And it appears that at least one of his front companies, Media Planet, has officially "gone out of business" in an effort to strand as many people as possible.
Naturally, he has another book out. And naturally, it's accompanied by a mudslide of lies and arrogant nonsense, such as the repeated claims that the FTC "censored" his first book, and that this one has all the good stuff in it that was cut out. (His real interactions with the FTC are considerably more complicated). This is merely a ploy to extract more money from his audience, even the ones who felt ripped off when they paid for his first book only to find it virtually content-free. This one is, naturally, full of the same vacuous gibberish as the first one. Naturally, it's $29.95.
Reputable publishers, though, are looking at the stacks of money that Trudeau is hauling away and wondering how to get some of that health-conspiracy mongering action. And what is this benefactor of humanity doing with some of the cash? Why, bankrolling a professional pool tournament. Where? Las Vegas. Naturally.
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March 30, 2006
Posted by Derek
I get emails every so often from people who are looking for more information about treatments for cancer or other diseases. More often than not, they've come across some Keven Trudeau-like "now the truth can be told" stuff and want to know what I think about it. I should note that almost all of these are non-hostile messages - they're just questions from people who haven't had a chance to learn much chemistry or biology, and want to hear some opinions from someone who has. I answer all of them as best I can.
A common theme in the miracle-cure claims is that such-and-such herb/supplement/device/mystic vibrational ripsnorter "boosts the immune system". If I had a dime for every time that claim is made, I'd be writing this from the conservatory of my mansion, right next to the orchid-hybridizing greenhouse and the frog pond. Who doesn't wish that their immune system worked better, tuned up to where it zapped every virus and cancer cell?
But, as Abel Pharmboy of Terra Sigillata pointed out, you should think twice about asking for that boost:
"Even if such a remedy existed, the immune system is far too complex to regulate with a single, myopic approach due to its multiple checks and balances, feedback loops, and other regulatory process that normally keep us from attacking our own tissue while recognizing and mounting responses against invading organisms. Even the most clever cancer immunologists have only made incremental headway in harnessing immune responses to treat cancer."
He goes on to mention that the notorious TGN1412 antibody was nothing if not an immune booster extraordinaire, and look what happened to the people that were exposed to it. My guess is that most people aren't aware that the immune system can attack a person's own tissues - they figure that there's an infallible friend-or-foe decoder built in or something. No such luck, though, when you consider the number of autoimmune diseases (and the number that might eventually be added to that list).
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March 1, 2006
Posted by Derek
I recently had an opportunity to look into some self-described autism treatments on behalf of a friend. There are huge numbers of desperate and hopeful parents out there, and there are some desperate and hopeful people selling things to them, too. The stuff I looked at was not, as far as I could tell, a cold-hearted scam, and considering the things you find in such disease areas, that's saying something. I think that the person involved believes, and wants to believe, that he's doing good in the world, and I'm sure his customers want to believe the same things.
At the same time, unfortunately, I don' t think much good is being done, but I can't get as enraged about it as I can some other situations. Take vitamin fraudster Matthia Rath, for example. He has recently withdrawn his lawsuits against a number of people and organizations in South Africa, in a sudden and unexpected move. Among them are the Health-e News Service, the group that broke the story of how some of Rath's alleged anti-HIV success stories involved patients who were taking antiretroviral drugs the whole time. Also off the hook is Dr. Eric Goemare of Medicines sans Frontieres, sued for defamation after characterizing Rath as a liar and a killer (which descriptions I find perfectly fitting, myself).
Says Goemare: "We are pleased that this phenomenal waste of time has ended." Dr. Rath is, of course, an expert at wasting things: people's time, their money, their hopes, their lives. I'd extend that list to include the oxygen he consumes by continuing to walk among us, but perhaps that's just me.
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November 21, 2005
Posted by Derek
This Volokh post (via Instapundit) about a former gang member who's been "nominated for a Nobel Prize" prompted me to leave a comment there, which I'll expand over here. It would seem that many people don't realize where Nobel Prizes come from.
The Peace and Literature prizes have a comparatively open nomination process, which makes for what I'm sure is a pretty poor signal/noise for whoever handles their mail. (Of course, the signal/noise of the list of eventual winners for those two isn't so great, either). But the science prizes are run in a tighter fashion. Here's the nominating committee for the Physiology/Medicine prize, for example, and it's very similar for the Physics and Chemistry Prizes.
The various Scandinavian professors involved are notoriously quiet about their choices, as are most prior laureates. The committees never say who these "other scientists from whom the Academy may see fit to invite proposals" might be, and I'm sure that identifying oneself would be a sure way to be dropped from the list. That's not to say that there are no controversies, just that we don't get to hear about them in detail for fifty years or so. That link will let you search older Medcine prizes. It's interesting that the corresponding database searches for Physics and Chemistry aren't even available.
What this means in practice is that no scientist, in theory, is able to be identified as a "Nobel Prize nominee." That doesn't keep it from happening, though. In fact, that link will take you to the story of someone who is claimed to have been nominated five times. A Google search for "five-time Nobel Prize nominee" turns the same person up all over the place. It's almost as if he hasn't done anything to discourage the practice.
One of most notorious recent examples was a neurologist, William Hammesfahr, who was all over the media during the Terri Schiavo case. He was invariably referred to by his supporters as a Nobel prize nominee, but this was another whopper. At least he only claimed to be nominated one time, but anyone who claims to be nominated at all should be under suspicion.
Searching for "N-time Nobel Prize nominee" for various values of N will net you all kinds of stuff. Excluding the Literature and Peace candidates, you find Nigerian crank physicists (more here, medical quacks, and Dr. Johanna Budwig herself, the current record holder in this doofus category. She's usually described by her acolytes as a "seven-time Nobel Prize nominee", which wouldn't be good news even if it were true, wouldn't you think? I note with amusement that in she was being called merely a six-time nominee back in 2002. Things have clearly advanced since those days, which is remarkable since I don't believe that Dr. Budwig is actually still with us.
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October 16, 2005
Posted by Derek
It's been a little while since we checked in on Dr. Matthias Rath, vitamin entrepreneur and scourge of my chosen field of work. But there have been some wonderful developments that I'd like to share with everyone. A note from a reader brought him to mind:
"Your education may not be serving you in a changing world. From some of what I have read you remind me of the physics professor who is still teaching the Bohr atom, sure that the quantum madness will go away. I highly recommend, before uttering another "sure" word on medical cures, you find and interview 10 patients whose HIV has been arrested by alternative treatment and 10 cancer patients who were diagnosed terminally ill and whose condition was reversed under Dr Rath's methodologies. I have followed them, in awe, watching as they were liberated from the naivete of the modern medicine you hold high. . ."
As I pointed out in a reply, it would do Doctor Rath a world of good for him to humiliate the medical establishment in a clinical trial showdown. You'd think that that we should be able to get the World Health Organization or some other worthy organization to referee, and if Rath's treatments are that good, he'd have nothing to fear. Think of it - the drug companies would have to eat dirt and Dr. Rath would be an instant hero for his amazing medical advances. No more nasty comments from snide onlookers like me, no more threats of arrest. . .why doesn't he come and settle our hash already?
I think we already know the answer to that question, don't we? But in case you've any doubt, take a look at the latest news from South Africa, where Dr. Rath has been parading patients who he claims have been fighting off HIV infection by taking his vitamins. As it turns out, they seem to have been supplementing the supplements:
Two HIV-positive women presented to the media in June by the Dr Rath Health Foundation as examples of how its vitamins can reverse Aids have admitted that they were on antiretroviral (ARVs) drugs all along. A third woman, a high profile Rath Foundation agent who has been promoting the vitamins in Gugulethu, died a few months after rejecting ARVs. . ."
Well, that's one way to do it. Dr. Rath, once again, is on the cutting edge of clinical practice. Think of the power of this technique! You could probably show that chocolate ice cream is an effective cholesterol-lowering agent, as long as you dosed people with a statin on the sly. Imagine how much proprietary-recipe chocolate ice cream you could move that way. . .and at twenty dollars a bowl, most likely. Oh, I'm in the wrong business, I tell you. If I could just cut every bit of human conscience out of my psyche, to the point that I could deceive terminally ill people into forsaking their only chance of survival and spending the last of their money on my worthless crap instead - I could be down there with Dr. Rath, wallowing around in the hundred-dollar bills like a pig in a trough. Doesn't he look happy, though. . .
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August 29, 2005
Posted by Derek
One of the things that came up in regard to that last post was the idea about blood being acidic or alkaline. I don't think that most people outside the medical sciences realize how much effort the human body expends on these matters. Those of us who keep up with these topics could do some good by letting people know how robust this stuff is.
To listen to most quack nutritionists, your body is in perpetual danger of flying apart. This thing is out of balance, that thing over there is running low, all these other things are set totally wrong. You need. . .herbal supplements! Of the kind that I happen to sell! Fix you right up! Of course, if you stop taking them, your physiology might well just start wobbling around again, so you'd better play it safe. . .and it so happens that we offer discounts on a yearly supply. . .
Now, it's not like things can never get out of whack, but a lot of metabolic energy goes into keeping that from happening. Biologists, MDs, and medicinal chemists are always getting surprised at just what sorts of abuse a living system is capable of absorbing without breaking down. Homeostasis is what I'm talking about. That concept applies to a huge number of living processes, but we'll stick with one dear to Kevin Trudeau's alleged heart: acidity and alkalinity.
The pH of the blood is held steady around pH 7.4 by several systems, not all of them well characterized, but all acting at the same time. The amount of carbon dioxide that the lungs exhale (or retain), the actions of the kidneys, and the circulating blood proteins are all involved. (Buy why it's pH 7.4 and not some other value is one of those very good questions that no one has a very good answer for.)
One of the main places that your body can go acidic is in muscle tissue during exercise. That's due largely to the buildup of lactic acid from anaerobic metabolism, and can send the interstitial fluid between muscle cells down to pH 7, much lower than blood gets under the same conditions. (There seems to be something about the capillary wall that excludes the excess acid, which is yet another control mechanism.)
Going alkaline is usually a sign that something's off with your breathing or with your kidneys. (You'd better hope that it's the former, because you can stop hyperventilating a lot easier than you can stop kidney trouble.) In either case, it takes a lot to overload the various pH controls, and if you do manage to - in either direction - you can be headed for serious trouble and even death.
This should illustrate why the "alkalinity causes cancer" theories from the likes of Kevin Trudeau are nonsense. The blood of people who get cancer is at pH 7.4, like everyone else, and that number (if it fluctuates at all) moves around according to whether or not that person just took the stairs, rather than whether they're drinking "coral calcium water" or whatever damn thing. pH changes in your stomach aren't reflected in the blood - if they were, we'd be dead as soon as we smelled lunch.
But all you have to do is Google any combination of "blood" "acid" and/or "alkaline", and you'll step off into a swamp of people who are trying to convince you otherwise. It's a simple, appealing theory, which if it were true it would explain a lot and immediately suggest ideas for treatment. But it's wrong, and it's been known to be wrong for a very long time. The only utility it has is as a prybar to separate people from their money.
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August 28, 2005
Posted by Derek
The time has come to take up the case of Kevin Trudeau. His pernicious book has hit the top of the New York Times best-seller list, a fact that the paper itself seems to find surprising. This 570-page doorstop is an ax job on my industry and my field of research, and accuses my peers and me of complicity in terrible amounts of human suffering. ("The drug industry does not want people to get healthy" is one of his favorite lines.)
How, you wonder, do people like me accomplish such awful things? Why, by denying consumers wonderful all-natural cures for just about everything that could possibly be wrong with them. And how do you find out about these wonders? By forking out for Trudeau's book, naturally. And when you find out that there's hardly a paragraph of specific information in the whole thing, then you can go pay him more money to get access to the untold amounts of crap on his web site. $499, according to the Times, will buy you a lifetime membership. This from a man who says "I changed my priority from making money to positively impacting people."
The medical rationales Trudeau offers are hardly worth even discussing, and make me feel like positively impacting the man with a spiked club. Readers who know some biochemistry might be forgiven if they haven't heard that "If your body is alkaline, you cannot get cancer. . .and if you have cancer, it goes away." I would be interested to hear what on earth he means by a person's body being alkaline - last I heard, my blood was at pH 7.4. But there's really no sense in arguing with the sort of person who can get things like this out with a straight face.
This is someone who spins tales of herbal clinics that cure cancer, every time. Of wonderful all-natural cures that will reverse type I diabetes. Of simple cures for multiple sclerosis, for heart disease. These are not harmless ideas - these are lies that can kill people, and given the number of books Trudeau has sold, they probably have. Perhaps his next book will detail the story of his consciencectomy. No doubt Kevin Trudeau moves around from mansion to mansion, but how he can sleep at night in any of them escapes me.
Update: Longtime reader Don Hertzog sends along this recent demolition of Trudeau in Salon (free registration required.) If you have some time on your hands, the Amazon review pages for the book are worth a look, too - there are over 800 reviews there, and most of them are from some pretty ticked-off customers.
Update 2: Ha!
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June 9, 2005
Posted by Derek
There's a doctor named Matthias Rath who for some years has been taking out big ads in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Rath is a big proponent of megavitamin therapy for just about everything, and by some cosmic coincidence he also has a line of vitamins for sale. No doubt he has a web site and a half, but damned if I'll link to it.
His ads are thunderous, paranoid denunciations of the pharmaceutical industry, the likes of which I haven't seen since the Church of Scientology took off after Eli Lilly and Prozac in the early 1990s. If you want some Instant Rath, take those and add some Lyndon Larouche-level conspiracy theories (for a while there, Rath was all but blaming drug companies for 9/11), and mix well. Season to taste, but if you've really got a taste for this stuff stuff, there's no hope for you.
His latest manifestos have been targeted to South Africa, and they're just what that country doesn't need. Rath rants about antiretroviral drugs being sinister poisons, while apparently everyone could be cured of HIV if they'd just guzzle his multivitamins without pause. The South African activist groups demanding free retroviral drugs are, according to him, tools of the "international drug cartel" that exists in the fevered reaches of his head.
It's hard to know how to answer such otherworldly accusations. Try, for example, the idea of drug companies funding groups who are screaming for their patents to be abrogated and their profits confiscated. I'm having a hard time making the connection. All in all, I'd rather be stuck in an elevator for three days with a dozen Intelligent Design advocates than spend five minutes with Matthias Rath.
South Africa's attitudes and policies toward HIV are enough of a mess already, as those who remember former president Mbeki's handling of the epidemic know. According to an article in Nature Medicine, the South African Traditional Healer's Association has sided with Rath, and a recent press conference from health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang featured one of her many endorsements of garlic, lemon peel, and beets instead of antiretrovirals. Meanwhile Rath is lobbying South Africa's parliament directly, amid accusations that he's planning to set up a factory to sell his own vitamin pills.
And meanwhile, at least 20% of South Africa's adult population is infected with HIV. What could be a great nation is threatened with an ugly slide back into the third world, while wastes of good carbon like Matthias Rath spend their time fighting the only known treatments. It makes you wish you could just avert your eyes.
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October 3, 2002
Posted by Derek
Most of you have probably seen this link by now, but for those who haven't, here's Montana's blue Senate candidate. The picture would seem to do a reasonable job of rendering his color, but I suspect that he's more gray than blue. Still, no doubt the effect is quite striking in person.
Colloidal silver (very fine particles of the metal suspended in water) is to blame. Actually, let me rephrase that: this guy is to blame, because he drank hefty amounts of the stuff for an extended period. The silver just did what silver does; you can't blame an element for acting the way it has to act.
And why, one asks, did this man do all these silver shots? Well, if you go to Google and run the phrase "colloidal silver" through it, you'll be assaulted with come-ons for so much of the stuff that you could start your own currency. It's been around for a long time (turn of the century, at least) and was a common ingredient in nose drops up until the 1950s or so. Here's a rundown on it from Quackwatch.
While it does have antibiotic properties, it's not effective enough (and its side effects are too great) to be of much use. The only modern application of it that I know of is in some kinds of burn salves, where it's at least applied topically.
Unfortunately, it's not a metal that the body handles very well. Silver doesn't have any known endogenous use, and there aren't any clearance mechanisms for it. So it just tends to pile up, which is the general problem with ingested metals. And, for reasons that aren't well understood, many people end up depositing fine particles of the metal in their skin, eyes, fingernails, and so on. It wouldn't surprise me if the metal were present in a number of internal organs, too (I'd start with the liver.) The condition's called argyria, from the Latin.
It's there to stay, too. There is absolutely no way to get it out. Here's an unfortunate woman who was given the nose drops for a period in the 1950s and ended up with argyria for the rest of her life. She's in a rather testy mood about all the latter-day silver promoters, and who can blame her? I'll link to a particularly clueless (and poorly written) example to give you the flavor of the field.
Our metallized Montanan made the stuff at home with a similar kit (probably generously laced with silver salts, depending on what kind of water he used,) because he feared antibiotic shortages after Y2K. And the hucksters told him, you know, that if he took this wonderful silver that he wouldn't have to worry about that sort of thing. How was he to know?
By using his brain, perhaps? By doing a half-hour's research on the web or in any good library? Apparently not. Actually, I shouldn't be making fun of his Senate candidacy. Come to think of it, he'd fit right in.
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June 23, 2002
Posted by Derek
After going off on the Weekly Standardon the 11th about the ridiculous miracle-cancer-cure ad they accepted, I see that there's one nearly as stupid in the latest National Review.Fortunately, it's not a particularly dangerous one.
It's for a book that touts a zillion uses for hydrogen peroxide, that wonder chemical that apparently will do everything except housebreak your dog. The good part is that it doesn't actually say that you should drink the stuff to cure cancer, and that's enough for me to hold my fire. If someone gets ripped off because of curiosity about new ways to simultaneously clean their refrigerator and soak their feet, I won't lose much sleep over it.
Of course, there have been various oxygen-therapy yahoots promoting peroxide and worse for years, and many of them claim to cure cancer (and whatever else you've got, though they don't seem to do much for the Heartbreak of Gullibility.) I once saw a come-on that impressed me greatly, promoting some sort of superoxygenated water as a way to get rid of free radicals in your body. That's kind of like selling gasoline-filled fire extinguishers, chemically speaking.
There's not too much good you can do with household hydrogen peroxide, but (fortunately,) not much harm, either. But I worked in a lab once where we had fairly good quantities of the 90% stuff, back in the days when it was more widely available. Now that material could be a real agent for change in your life. We had a spiffy chain-mail glove set that we used to pick it up, and donning those tended to concentrate your mind on the task at hand. . .
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June 13, 2002
Posted by Derek
Here's more info on the "Dr. Burton" mentioned in the egregious Weekly Standard advertisement (see the Tuesday, 6/11 post below.) This is courtesy of the invaluable Quackwatch. This is surely the same person. As far as Burton's methods go, what the book that the advertisement is selling is supposed to do for you, other than tell you more stories about his miracle cures, is hard to imagine. It's not something you're going to whip up at home (although stuff you could whip up at home would do just as much good, it seems, and cost less, too.)
As for Johanna Budwig, a Google search of that name will give you hours of reading, if not of reading pleasure. Flax seed oil and cottage cheese seem to the the two constituents of her miracle diet - there, I've saved you the $19.95 that those slimeballs were charging for their book.
I've had opportunity to study the effects of various lipid constituents on biological targets in the body, and I'd certainly not deny that you can effect a lot of interesting biology by varying the lipid profile of your diet. But keep cancer from even happening? I think not.
No response from the Weekly Standard folks yet (I sent them the first article below.) I'll be quite interested to hear what they have to say, if anything.
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June 11, 2002
Posted by Derek
Today I wanted to cover a particular intersection of medicine, commerce, and politics in the June 10th issue of The Weekly Standard.I've read the magazine on and off since its inception, and enjoyed it. I often agree with its editorial stance, and when I don't, I can usually see what the writers are up to, and how a reasonable person would come to their conclusions.
What caught my attention this time was something I disagreed with most strongly, but it wasn't an article. It was an advertisement on page 15, titled "Black Listed Cancer Treatment Could Save Your Life." Well, I earn my living by trying to find treatments that could potentially save people's lives, so headlines like that catch my eye.
But not in a positive fashion: for many years, I've kept an eye on all sorts of medical quackery, of which there is an inexhaustible supply. I'm pretty sure that I've seen this ad before, actually. For all I know, I've seen it before in The Weekly Standard.But I'd had a long day at the lab when I picked up this issue, and I was in a mood to read the whole thing.
It repays inspection. I found that in 1966, the "senior oncologist at a prominent New York hospital" developed some miracle serum that "shrank cancer tumors in 45 minutes!" And after another 45 minutes, "they were gone." (How this was determined using 1966 technology is left as an exercise for the reader, I suppose.) Who is this wonder-worker, and at which hospital did he work? The ad glancingly refers to him as "Dr. Burton," but goes on to relate that he was shut down by the FDA and forced - yes, forced - to leave the country, "where others benefited from his discovery." After their checks cleared, presumably.
We then switch to one Dr. Johanna Budwig, a "six-time Nobel Award nominee." Now an instant sign of fakery, as if another one were really needed after that first paragraph. No one knows who's really up for the science Nobels; the Academy isn't telling. When someone brags about being nominated for a Nobel in one of the hard sciences, it's time to head for the exits. I might as well say that I'm a six-time nominee for the NBA slam-dunk championship - hey, if I'd sent them postcards every year asking to be included, then why not?
"Dr. Budwig's" story is similar to Dr. Burton's, only she found a miracle diet that prevents cancer from even occuring. But (and you knew this was coming) she was "blocked by manufacturers with heavy financial stakes!" Hey, did they check Dr. Burton out? Seems like he'd have a reason to keep this competitor off the market. . .
Well, the ad goes on and on, and if you've seen one of these, in some ways you've seen them all. The whole thing is selling a book called "How to Fight Cancer and Win." Natural healing, miracle cures, secret breakthroughs they don't want you to know, all backed up by testimonials from people with initials for last names. One "Molly G" says that the book "has information I've never heard about before," and I find that statement the most believable thing on the whole page.
It's just another cheesy scam, another rip-off aimed at people who are scared of getting cancer, people scared that they might have it. . .or at people who really do have it and are scared that they're going to die. A fine group of customers to remove cash from. The publisher gets the money and a live mailing address (well, for a while), to sell to every other quack who needs a fresh group of the desperate and frightened.
So, what I'd like to know is, what is the Weekly Standard doing profiting from this slimy business? Now, I know that opinion journals need ads, and they never have enough. There are 44 numbered pages in this issue of the Standard, and there are only five pages of advertisements. That's probably about enough to pay for the coated paper. But I also know, as does everyone else, where the money is coming from: Rupert Murdoch, who felt it worth the inevitable steady losses to promote political views he agrees with.
More power to him, I say. But how are those views advanced by their proximity to sleazy ads for amazing cancer cures? I'm sure the advertising manager for the Standard would rather fill the issue up with ads for BMWs and single-malt whiskey. Does the magazine really hit the miracle-cure demographic? And does it really want to look like that's the one it reaches? Does News Corp. need the money this badly?
There's the practical argument. The impractical one is that taking money in exchange for giving these snake-oil merchants space is very close to immoral. I'm well aware of the precedent set (for example) by David Horowitz, trying to get his anti-slavery reparations ad placed in college newspapers. As was pointed out at the time, though, a newspaper or magazine is free to accept or reject any advertisements it feels like. (And a rejected advertiser is free to say what he thinks about the refusal!)
But this sort of ad isn't selling an argument - it purports to be selling scientific facts that will save your life. And these "facts" are, as far as I'm concerned, life-threatening bullshit. Would the Standard take an ad from the Scientologists? Would it take an ad from a throw-away-your-crutches faith healer? After this one, why not?
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April 9, 2002
Posted by Derek
That Fitzgerald reference is, of course, the quote about the sign of a first-rate mind being the ability to hold two contradictory statements at the same time. Like several of his other quotes, that one has the germ of spectacular error in it - similar to his line about there being no second acts in American lives. That one gets trotted out with great regularity, as we prove that some lives are made up of nothing but second acts.
Anyway, I'd say that that ability is as often the sign of a third-rate mind or lower. Another example of these contradictions came to mind after I read my mail about the last couple of postings. One correspondent pointed out that we have people watching for every food additive that might be shown to cause cancer, but thanks to Hatch-Waxman we're also letting people swallow almost anything as long as it's labeled as a "nutritional supplement." Some of these are the same people, actually.
Tropical leaves that starving tapirs wouldn't touch, roots whose previous function was to sterilize unwary nematodes, seeds and kernals that would give a buzzard the trots. . .grind it up; it's all fine. You don't really have to test anything for safety, and you don't have to prove it does anything (costs money to do that, anyway.) Just be sure to say that it's "not intended to treat, cure, or affect any disease" and you're rolling.
The latest issue of the fine review journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolismhas an article detailing cases where imported traditional "herbal preparations" have turned out to be laced with actual pharmaceuticals. While that reminds me of is the story of W.C. Fields spitting out the contents of his on-set swigging flask, which he always maintained was full of pineapple juice. Someone put him to the test, and his shout was "Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?"
Imagine a traditional preparation of herbal goodies that turns out to be cut with man-made antihistamines or sulfonylureas, rather than Nature's own bounty of alkaloids and cardiac glycosides. Here you are, expecting the usual gut-bomb of all-natural ephedrine, caffeine, or hepatotoxic enzyme inducers, and you get something scraped out of a vat instead. The nerve!
The problem is, it's not just that some fly-by-nighters are slipping pharmaceuticals in. The article also includes harrowing cases of preparations that contained whacking loads of mercury or arsenic, for reasons unknown. Why people swallow the ads for these things, much less swallow the pills, is a mystery to me.
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April 8, 2002
Posted by Derek
Not much time to post tonight, since our 22-month-old came down with a sudden fever. She's fine otherwise, though, in case anyone's wondering. I'm sure that, as a blog-baby, she'd play well with "Gnat" Lileks.
I've already had several e-mails about my snake-oil outburst in the previous post. No one's come out for the pro-snake-oil position yet; I guess that audience doesn't read me, which is something I can certainly live with.
It was probably the contrast between the ads I mentioned and what I know that medicine can accomplish (see 4/4 and 4/2 postings below.) I've noticed that Sydney Smith over at Medpundit takes issue with both the degree of my gloom and the degree of my optimism. He's got a point about some of the things we can do now (vaccinations are always a good example to adduce,) but I wonder about the popular perception of medical treatment. Large groups of people are worse than I am, in both directions.
There are two mutually exclusive wrong ideas that the general public has about medicine, I think. The first is that there's nothing useful out there, they're just going to mess around with you and waste your time and money, you're going to get what you're going to get, why fight it, etc.
Contrast that weltanschaungwith the second major group: the ones who feel entitled to have everything that goes wrong with them fixed. If one doctor doesn't give them the satisfaction they're after, they go to another. If one medication doesn't cut it, then there's another that will. Generally, there's a sense among this population that any condition can also be traced back to its cause, that person, action, or thing that made them sick. After all, the default setting is perfect health, so something must have happened!
There's a subset of people who manage to believe both of these things at once: these are the big-conspiracy types, who are sure that the doctors and the evil drug companies are ganged up against everyone. (It's an odd viewpoint, when you consider that those two groups - although they need each other - don't always get along very well.) I've had people seriously explain to me that "they" have cures for all these terrible diseases already lined up - "they're" just waiting until everyone's sick enough to make the market really huge.
I give those folks my standard answer to all conspiracy buffs: "Yeah. . .that's what they want you to think. . ."
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April 7, 2002
Posted by Derek
For Monday, I'm just going to send everyone to a wonderful article from the Washington Monthly. (I came across this one over at Arts and Letters Daily.)
It's a strongly worded look at the alternative/holistic medicine area, with particular emphasis on the recent attempts to subject these treatments to clinical proof. Many of the practicioners are simply ignoring the studies if they don't give them the answers they want to hear (which, as you can well imagine, they generally don't.)
I can tell you that my blood heats up when I hear the radio ads for potions - excuse me, dietary supplements - to "cleanse your liver" or "sharpen your memory." Not to mention all the miracle weight-loss or hair-growing pills. I feel like I've slipped through some wormhole and ended up in 1910.
Just look at the ancient shucks that are still in business: magnet therapy, iridology, reflexology...you can read all about this stuff in Martin Gardner's first "Fads and Fallacies" book, which is nearly 50 years old. The true and inescapable mark of a pseudoscience is that it doesn't learn a thing. It never changes; the theory is never overthrown; it just keeps on plugging away obliviously. Who cares about facts?
And while I'm on the subject of pedigreed nonsense: if I see another gaudy display of homeopathic dishwater near the checkout of a pharmacy again, I may do something quite reckless. I can only imagine what my medical colleague over at Medpundit thinks about that stuff; I know the herbal supplements really get on his nerves. As they should.
I'll come back later to the subject of the Hatch-Waxman Act, which is one of the things that got us into this fix. For now, check out that article link for a table-pounding good time.
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