Non-scientists weigh in on non-science.

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: Non-scientists weigh in on non-science.

Date: May 13, 2009 8:21 AM

Well, that's very nice, Meggie, but I
taught Weintraub, at times in person, all
she knows about the fraudulent diagnostic
criteria for Lyme, and I also had the balls
to complain to the USDOJ about it, whereas
Weintrub is an apologist for these crooks.

A one Pat Smith snuck Pam Weintraub onto
my e-list, ActionLyme, so Pam could re-write
my data and claim it as her own.

You can go to my website now, since I
re-explain on the homepage what I told
the FDA Vaccine Committee in Jan 2001.

Pam Weintrub drove me to the meeting.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/slides/3680s2_11.pdf

Pam trashes me now and calls me crazy,
because what else is she going to do?

This is intellectual property theft.

I doubt very much that someone who is not
an analytical chemist would be able to
understand how Dearborn was a scientific hoax.

Think about it.


Kathleen M. Dickson
Former Analytical Methods Development
Chemist for Pfizer
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org


http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_structure_of_comparative_e.php


The Structure of Comparative Effectiveness Revolutions

12 May 2009 05:54 pm
Liberal blogs have been bashing conservatives over the "comparative
effectiveness issue". And they're basically right. The idea that the
government shouldn't test the relative effectiveness of various
treatments because this might, someday, lead some moronic bureaucrat
to try to ban treatments, is not a good argument. Comparative
effectiveness research is one of those things that even a conservative
should be willing to at least think about having the government do,
because the government doesn't have a vested interest in the outcome.

I do want to raise some potential issues here, however, not because I
am against the idea--I am for it--but because there is a danger that
the government seal of approval may become far too powerful.
Governments do not have the obvious conflict of interest that plagues
some pharmaceutical industry research. But they have different
problems, some more prevalent in government because there is no
countervailing market discipline to weed them out.

* Perhaps the most obvious problem is that we won't entirely
eliminate the financial motive--government workers sometimes leave
their agencies, and the obvious place for them to go is to the
companies they regulate. If you wall off this lucrative avenue of
escape (say by dictating that they can't work in a regulated company
for 1-5 years after they leave their agency), you may have trouble
recruiting good people in the first place, because working for the
government will become something like a prison sentence.
* Science isn't always cut and dried, but government reports are
supposed to produce answers. There's a danger the bureaucrats will be
more definite than the science calls for. This is a risk in the
private sector, too, but private sector errors of this sort are rarely
as powerful as government errors of the same kind. Once the
government establishes a standard of care, private companies will
probably follow, even if they are wrong, because it's
o Easier than doing their own analysis
o A lot easier than getting sued
o Possibly cheaper than the more effective treatment
* Government agencies are much more vulnerable to interest group
pressure than private companies. Researchers will come under
tremendous pressure to say that things work when they don't--not just
from big, bad Pharma companies, but from patients who do not want
their insurance company to cut off access to the treatment. And see
above: a government report saying snake oil might work has more
impact than a dozen private company reports saying the same.
* Government power can perpetuate a bad paradigm. I'm currently
reading a book called Cure Unknown by a science journalist who
believes she and her family are suffering from chronic Lyme disease.
I don't know if Chronic Lyme Disease exists, or is a figment of the
imaginations of people with some unspecified systemic or psychological
problem. But some of the things she's angry about ring true to me
because they sound a lot like other episodes from the history of
science.


The spirochete that causes Lyme is hard to detect, so treatment
guidelines focus on the "bullseye rash", not because there's any
particular reason to think it must follow infection by the borrelia
bacterium, but because it's easy to diagnose, and . . . it's part of
the diagnostic criteria. Everyone who has "real" Lyme disease has the
rash, because the definition of "real" Lyme disease is having a rash.
This, of course, makes it hard to test the theory that the spirochete
might cause symptoms other than a rash.
Weintraub makes a compelling case that these sorts of hard-and-
fast diagnostic rules have, at the very least, left some indisputable
cases of Lyme undiagnosed, including that of Weintraub's son. The CDC
has turned this into a major problem, since of course most physicians
do not pour through the journals themselves; they glance at the CDC
criteria, which are quite restrictive. It's pretty clear that
scientists who have a lot vested in the current model of Lyme (their
careers, possible malpractice accusations), have at least for now won
the debate. It's not quite so clear that they should have. And the
government imprimatur has done a lot to seal the fate of the
dissidents. This is all standard stuff to anyone who's read The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But those revolutions happen
because there are multiple possible centers of power. The government
has the ability to potentially shut the revolutionary centers down.

As I say, I am in favor of doing the research. But the dangers of
this sort of government sanction are not quite so far off and
imaginary as Matthew Yglesias and Hilzoy seem to think. I don't think
conservatives have done a very good job of articulating those dangers
(and don't get me started on the pharmaceutical industry!) But I
still think they're worth keeping in mind.

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