Lee's Blog

I sometimes get frustrated at both sides of the debate over CAM* cancer cures. Yes, I even get frustrated at Orac! The reason is that the defenders of science tend to allow defenders of CAM get away with not proving their case.

The defenders of CAM like to whine that of course they can’t afford to do proper randomized placebo-controlled double-blinded trials, and the scientific community won’t fund those trials, and it’s just all very unfair because people are dying for lack of that proof.

This is bogus**, and defenders of science should hit them with that every time they whine about it.

CAM defenders claim to have cancer cure rates for all cancers upwards of 90%. If this is the case, they can prove it to the complete satisfaction of anybody (including the Nobel Prize committee) very easily and cheaply, just doing what they do now. All they need to do is pick one of the truly horrible cancers — pancreatic, for instance — and report two-year survival for a reasonably large group, say one hundred patients.

Two-year survival percentages for pancreatic cancer are in the single digits for all patients, regardless of age, medical condition, and treatment (though survival is lower without treatment, of course). Therefore it doesn’t matter whether people are randomly assigned to the CAM treatment or not, or whether there’s a control group, since there are no known variables that would make much difference in survival. The natural history of the disease serves as the control group.

Similarly, there’s no need for any patients to receive a placebo. Placebos may make a difference in how the patient feels about the situation, maybe in the pain or discomfort he suffers, but they make very little difference in survival. If placebos kept cancer patients alive, oncologists would have lots more surviving patients.

Likewise, there’s no need for blinding either side, if the measure is “Patient is alive” vs. “Patient is dead”. Barring fraud, there are very few doubtful cases where one might be inclined to score a patient as alive or dead based on one’s presuppositions about the effectiveness of treatment.

In short, to prove that a CAM cancer treatment works, the practitioner should proceed as follows:

• Line up a hundred or so pancreatic cancer patients.
• Make sure they are properly evaluated by a conventional oncologist, so there can be no question of their diagnosis.
• Document irrevocably their identifying information, so there can be no doubt as to who was in the original group***.
• Treat them according to the CAM protocol.

If, after two years, ninety of the group are still alive (as we would expect given the claims of CAM practitioners), then the treatment undeniably must have worked. There simply are no known confounding factors, biasing influences, or other treatments that could have produced that result.

And if CAM defenders don’t push for this simple demonstration … well, we know what that means.

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* I.e., pseudo-scientific.
** Simon Singh got in trouble for using that word …
*** I would put all the info in one big document then encrypt it using public/private keys, burn the encrypted document on CDs, and then ship it off to national health services, insurance companies, individual oncologists, mass media, bloggers, and anyone else I could think of. But then, I think in computer terms. The point of encrypting is that the patients’ private information isn’t revealed to the world. Part of setting up the test is that the patients agree that after two years their info can be revealed. Since they don’t expect to be around in two years, it seems to me that they’d be willing. After two years, you reveal the private key so anyone who wants to can verify that the surviving patients really do represent 90% of the original group.

I went to a goodbye party for three people who won’t be working for Those People. My best friend in New York — who won’t be working for Those People — told me twice, “it’s gonna be alright.”. FSM, I hope so.

The company where I worked for 11.5 (not 12.5 — arithmetic fail) years was sold at the end of May. People have been laid off, and some have quit rather than work for Those People. Major changes to come in nine days.

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned here, but Winston Churchill is one of my heroes. I was reading his finest hour speech again. The last paragraph sends chills down my spine every time I read it. And then I think of what has been thrown away…

Congressmen are above the law.

This has had 2,478,074 viewings as of noon on Saturday, June 19. I wonder how many million it will get to before the election.

This being the AutoExec – WM-01 – Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray – Gray -. The customer images and the reviews are not to be missed. I am always astounded at how creative people are.

Yay! I was not convinced by the mDNA evidence. Indeed, I think I even commented on that here, although I can’t easily look back on this iPhone. But now the evidence is in: non-African populations (by which they mean populations that moved out of Africa in the past 50,000 years or so) are 1%-4% Neandertal. They are not extinct! We have met the Neandertals, and they is us!

Update: I should clarify that I was not convinced by the mitochondrial DNA absence of evidence.

No living human being has been found with mDNA sufficiently different from the rest of us to suggest that he or she has Neandertal mDNA. But all that proves is that no Neandertal female left descendants that have continued down to the present in the purely female line. When you consider how few varieties of mDNA there are among the billions of people now living, that must be true of the vast majority of women who were living at that time, Neandertal or sapiens. It does not prove that no Neandertal woman has descendants of any kind living today.

Just as mDNA is passed in the maternal line, the Y-chromosome is passed in the paternal line, and there are no known cases of men today who carry a Y-chromosome that is suspected of being a Neandertal chromosome. But that just proves that no Neandertal man has descendants in the purely male line, which is equally true of the vast majority of men living in that time.

But again, I’m thrilled to learn that I’m part Neandertal.

I’ve been thinking about the comment by “Mike in Ontario, NY”, that the TEA Party is merely a cover for white supremacists and racists. What is exceptionally foolish about this comment is that any reasonable white supremacist would oppose the TEA Party and its goals.

One of the points that Walter Williams makes repeatedly is that individuals cannot afford to engage in systematic (society-wide) discrimination. He argues that systematic discrimination has to be enforced by the government, or it will fail.

Dr. Williams points out that, in apartheid South Africa, there were laws restricting the kinds of jobs blacks could hold — and white employers were charged with and convicted of violating those laws. Why did white employers take that risk? Because it was in their individual interest to employ the best available workers in the jobs for which they were best suited. It is only government — which has no concern for the bottom line — which can demand and enforce the inefficiency of refusing to place the best workers in the right jobs.

Likewise, Dr. Williams points to the segregated buses in the South, and observes that the bus companies resisted segregation — they fought the laws requiring segregation, and when they lost, they disobeyed the laws until they were threatened with legal action. Why would they refuse to humiliate black people when the law not only allowed but required it? Because those black people were their customers, and they didn’t want to drive off their customers. Only a government can ignore the bottom line and deliberately humiliate a class of people regardless of the economic effect.

Getting back to the TEA Party, the tea-partiers wish to reduce the scope of government and increase the scope of individual decision-making. This makes systematic discrimination more difficult rather than less, which would not be a desirable outcome for white supremacists.

You may reply that systematic discrimination is illegal in the United States, and indeed that the Federal Government is hostile to the goals of white supremacists. Well sure it is … now. But what basis is there for the Federal Government to be hostile to the goals of white supremacists? What reason is there for systematic discrimination to be illegal?

It has long been thought that the Constitution demands equal rights under the law, but we have seen that the Constitution is, well, less honored than previously. It is not self-executing. If all three branches get together and decide that, say, freedom of speech means freedom to say what the law allows when the law allows it, to those whom the law allows to hear it (McCain-Feingold) … well, there’s not much left of the Constitution, is there?

So what is there to stop the Federal Government from deciding that “equal rights under the law” means dramatically different rights for different groups? Can that happen?

The insane spending currently engaged in by Congress can end only in disaster. I do not know what the disaster will be, though I think Zimbabwean-style inflation is the probable end-game. Whatever the ultimate disaster, with a black President, don’t you think the white supremacists would seize the opportunity — the same opportunity a certain dictator of the 20th century seized — to blame all of the nation’s troubles on a specific racial group? Don’t you think they would be in an exceedingly strong position to take power? And once they were in power, with the nation in turmoil and the precedent established that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not in fact guaranteed … how long would equality under the law last?

The tea-partiers want to avert the looming disaster by reining in spending. They want to re-establish the principle that the United States is a Constitutional republic. Why on Earth would white supremacists support the tea-partiers? On the contrary, I would expect white supremacists to be the most enthusiastic supporters of the Federal Government’s race to ruin.

I don’t drop by the Panda’s Thumb very often, but I did yesterday, and I found this gem of an interaction.

First raven quotes a report that many young adults are leaving Christian churches when they grow up, and adds,

What implies this is that xianity is on the skids in the USA. Making creationism a litmus test works both ways. If people have to believe that mythology is real and hating science is a requirement, some will just drop the religion. Mostly the best and brightest.

By my reckoning, based on the ARIS surveys, between 1 and 2 million people leave the religion every year. These days between the xian terrorist MD assassins, the Catholic child rape problem, and the Hutaree xian militia wannabe cop killers, xianity is providing quite the wind at the back for this exodus.

I don’t know about you, but “xian” for Christian strikes me as a deliberate insult. Mind you, I’m not even a believer, but this offends me. Yes, people sometimes used to write Xmas for Christmas, but that initial letter is not an X in our alphabet, it is a Chi in the Greek alphabet and so is correctly used as an abbreviation for Christ. Using a lowercase x is plain and simply wrong since there is no connection between lowercase x and “Christ”. And I think people like raven know that and do it intentionally.

Continuing, raven goes on to quote one (count ‘em, one) Catholic Cardinal saying atheists are “sub-human”. (Well, he’s scum. That doesn’t mean the whole Catholic Church is scum.) raven then adds,

This isn’t going to go over well. The No Religions are now 24% of the US population, 72 million people, the largest sect if they were a sect. Humans have a very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized. Right back at them.

Yep, that’s quite true. And the people who are regularly called death cultists and accused of wanting to overthrow the United States, by people like raven, also have that very same very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized. But strangely, raven doesn’t grasp that.

Amusingly, a few hours before raven started the comments above, John Kwok observed

The Tea Party Movement started in February 2009. Only within the last few months has it opted to align itself to the Republican Party. So, just on the face of it, I am quite confident that it will resist any “fundamentalist take over”. Most Tea Party Movement activists tend to be fellow Libertarian in their outlook and couldn’t care less about Xian concerns with regards to abortion, stem cell research, etc. etc.:

And, just minutes after raven correctly observed that “Humans have a very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized”, Mike in Ontario, NY, responds to John Kwok,

Spontaneous? Grass-roots? Pffft. John, you’re talking out your arse on this one. The teabaggers are being promoted from “below” by white supremacist organizations who are mainstreaming their Xian terrorism via friendly mouthpieces like Faux Noise, Whirled Nut Doily, Dredge, etc. Stop trying to portray the new white power movement as being something actually sensible, credible, or even popular. The fringers are getting a lot of play right now, but they’re just being manipulated with divisive ploys and white suburban race paranoia. Restoring civil liberties? WTF are you smoking, Kwok? You sound like a YEC’er when you speak of the ‘baggers.

Yep, nothing improves dialog like impugning people’s motives without basis, calling them racists without evidence, and consistently using a crude sexual slur to refer to them. And of course they won’t respond in the predictable fashion … right?

In the comments to the previous post, macaroni observes

Maybe Jack is a little afraid of his ability to defeat the “Black Wind” and believes he could win many smaller battles against evil in the future and that it would better serve “mankind” in that way. He just needed something to prod him off his logical thinking. Smile. He who runs away lives to fight another day….. No “Charge of The Light Brigade” for Jack.

That makes sense, but there are three points that argue against it.

First, Glaeken has survived for 15,000 years battling against the Adversary. He isn’t into the “Charge of The Light Brigade”. Granted, he’s telling Jack to act instead of doing it himself, but Jack is his Heir — the one who will take over the defense of the world when he is gone. Glaeken would never tell Jack to charge to his death. He told Jack to perform a physically demanding task that he himself is no longer up to, that’s all. And in fact, as it turns out, there really isn’t any physical danger; the important thing is to keep moving as fast as possible so as to kill the focus of the Black Wind before the mental effect (feelings of depression and futility) is able to stop you.

Second, even if this were a situation where Jack had to leave tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — to die because he had to live to fight another day (which is a situation that Glaeken might really have found himself in), he should have felt regret. Indeed, if he were not a narcissistic sociopath, he would reasonably have been calling Glaeken names because Glaeken ordered him to leave those people to die. This actually happens sometimes with firefighters and the like, I am told — they know that they cannot save people, but it tears them up not to try.

There is no possibility that Jack would react like the firefighters, however. He made that absolutely clear in a previous book, Harbingers, where he stated that, if Vicky and Gia died, he would leave everyone else in the world, including his supposed friends Abe and Julio, and his beloved sister’s children, to die horribly, and that he would not lift a finger to save any of them. Instead, in that book, he sadistically trapped and killed four of the firefighters who were carrying on the fight that he explicitly refused to join.

Third, there is still the fact that Jack called Glaeken a name because Glaeken pointed out that the people that Jack “loves” — in his stunted, narcissistic fashion — will also die if he does nothing.

Think of this in purely realistic terms. Imagine that Glaeken and Jack are in an apartment building late at night, and they observe a man pouring liquid all around the building. Glaeken says that the man is a known arsonist and that the liquid smells like gasoline, so he must be planning to burn the building with everyone sleeping inside. Glaeken tells Jack to stop the man from lighting the gas, because Glaeken is not able to limp down there and stop him in time. Jack says no, trying to save all those people would endanger his own valuable hide. Glaeken says, “Vicky is at a sleepover in this building.”

Is the natural reaction to call Glaeken a bastard for pointing out to him that Vicky is in danger too? Or to thank him for preventing Jack from making a horrible mistake — leaving Vicky to die with all those others?

I would understand Jack’s reaction (not sympathize or agree, but understand) if Glaeken had said, “Some of those who will die are nine-year-old girls just like your Vicky, just as cute, just as well-loved, with just as much potential that will be wiped away through your refusal to save them.” That really would be emotional manipulation, trying to reach whatever fragment of conscience Jack may possess, trying to show him that there is something going on that he “cannot abide in his sight”.

But Glaeken’s statement simply brought to his attention that Vicky and Gia really were in danger. How could that warrant calling him names? Unless, of course, in Jack’s mind, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because it forces him to actually live up to his claim that he loves Vicky and Gia more than life itself. To him, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because he would rather walk away and let all those people die including Vicky and Gia, and after they were dead he would just shrug and say, “Well, that’s not my fault because Glaeken didn’t explicitly warn me that they were in danger, but now that they’re dead, I don’t ever have to lift a finger against the Adversary.”

So, with all due respect to macaroni, no, I don’t think Jack’s actions are explicable by his thinking this is a “Charge of The Light Brigade” situation.