From Reasonable Hank, who explains that Stephanie Messenger is an anti-vaccination activist in Queensland, and part of the Australian Vaccination Network.

Prosecutor to parents: Mailing chickenpox illegal

Parents fearful of vaccinations are being warned by a federal prosecutor that making a deal with a stranger who promises to mail them lollipops licked by children with chickenpox isn’t just a bad idea, it’s against the law.

Jerry Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said he was spurred by reports this week by KPHO-TV in Phoenix and WSMV-TV in Nashville about people turning to Facebook to find lollipops, spit or other items from children who have chickenpox.

Chicken pox isn’t the extreme case, although ordering kid spit is pretty daft. Isaac Thomsen, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, points out that none of this has any real chance of giving your child chicken pox. But the article goes on:

Thomsen, the Vanderbilt physician, said he was even more concerned by a person in the KPHO report seeking items tainted with measles to avoid a school-required vaccination. Measles has a significant mortality rate, causes more complications and is very infectious compared with chickenpox, he said.

Ordering measles by mail in the hopes of giving your child a resistance to measles is truly weapons grade stupidity.

This was not news to the most folks in the medical field:

Scientists say arsenic is a naturally occurring substance, and is so abundant in the Earth’s soil that it often ends up in many of the foods we eat. However, experts make a distinction between this abundant organic arsenic, which is harmless, and inorganic arsenic, which can be found in some pesticides and other chemicals.

“It is the inorganic form of arsenic in the environment that is toxic and measuring total arsenic is not informative,” said Aaron Barchowsky, a professor of environmental health at the University of Pittsburgh, who has studied the toxicity of arsenic in drinking water for 15 years.

A producer for the “Dr. Oz Show” said their apple juice tests measured total arsenic levels and did not distinguish between organic and inorganic arsenic.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

My opinion of Dr. Oz just continues to sink.

The older of the men would have been well known to the congregation, since he was one of the city’s doctors and one of its more notorious freethinkers. His name was Dr. Thomas Young, and he was a competent physician, a self-taught scholar and a well known deist.

His companion was slightly younger, in his mid-twenties compared to Young’s early thirties. He was a prosperous ironmaker in the town with a small but growing family, and so he may have been familiar to the crowd as well. He was Dr. Young’s protégé in all things scholarly, and had recently converted to deism. His name was Ethan Allen.

Allen might have been pale and shaky. This was not on the account of nerves, but because of the numerous medical preparations he had recently undergone. These preparations probably included purges of all sorts, accomplished by mercury pills and ipecac, and a diet of bland foods.

As the crowd watched, Dr. Young made a scratch on Allen’s arm, and then passed a thread through the small wound. The thread had been soaked in the fluid from a pus-filled blister on one of Young’s patients. Allen, still years away from fighting the British, was now fighting a more deadly foe: Variola major, or smallpox.

Inoculation

Pullquote: “Did you ever see two Persons in one Room Ipichacuana’d together? (I hope I have not Spelled that ineffable Word amiss!) I assure you they make merry Diversion. We took turns to be sick and to laugh. When my Companion was sick I laughed at him, and when I was sick he laughed at me.”
John Adams, on his preparation for inoculation

What Dr. Young had just done was technically an inoculation, also known as variolation after the name of the smallpox virus, or in the early days “the Turkish method.” The point was to infect the patient with smallpox in a controlled manner. Some doctors, like Dr. Young, also attempted to find a mild case of smallpox to act as the seed. Unfortunately, most doctors also required days of the “preparations” as Allen had undergone, a system of purging that did more harm than good.

Exactly how inoculation works isn’t clear. In wouldn’t be until 1796 that Edward Jenner would discover the use of cow pox as a means to produce immunity without using the smallpox virus itself. The word “vaccination” was coined to describe Jenner’s method – from the latin vacca for cow – so historians refer to the earlier methods as inoculation to keep them separate. Before this vaccination was devised, doctors were using the variola virus itself, without killing or weakening it.

What is clear is that inoculation did work. Dr. Zabdiel Boylstein of Boston began experimenting with inoculation in 1721. He found that roughly 15% of those who were infected with smallpox naturally died as a result. In contrast, only 2% of those inoculated died, and the symptoms were usually less debilitating as well.

Opposition

Pullquote: “… There is no Rule in the Word of God to found Inoculation upon. Therefore, Inoculation cannot be according to the Will of God, nor according to Knowledge.”
anti-inoculation pamphlet, John Williams

So Allen could expect to win his bout with smallpox, but he had other battles where the outcome was not as sure. Just for starters, smallpox inoculation was illegal in Salisbury without the consent of the town government. Allen and Young faced a stiff fine for their actions.

That was the least of their worries. Inoculation had been growing in acceptance among the average American citizen, but it was still not well regarded. For many people, the idea of infecting someone with smallpox in order to save them from smallpox was just stupid. Since the infected person could spread the disease, it was criminally stupid. Many inoculated patients were chased out of town by the locals.

There was also a great deal of opposition from the clergy, who were powerful in New England at the time. Many of New England’s ministers were vocal in their belief that smallpox was the will of God and that humans should not attempt to prevent it. This was the reason that Young and Allen had chosen to perform the inoculation in front of a church.

This is not to say that the clergy was united in opposition to inoculation. Cotton Mather, the Congregationalist preacher and member of the Royal Society, was a supporter of Dr. Boylstein first experiments. But for his efforts, Mather got a firebomb thrown through his window – it didn’t ignite – and the vocal opposition of many of his fellow preachers.

Fallout

Pullquote: “By Jesus Christ, I wish I may be bound down in Hell with old Beelzebub a thousand years in the lowest pit in Hell and that every insipid little devil should come along by …”
Part of Allen’s blasphemy

Regardless of the ongoing arguments, it seems clear that Reverend Jonathan Lee, Allen’s cousin and the minister of the congregation that he and Young now confronted, was one of the preachers who was opposed to inoculation. But Ethan Allen was opposed to Lee and his ilk, and he was determined to make a stand for reason against what he saw as superstition.

It didn’t help that Rev. Lee represented a hyper-calvinist faction that had spread through New England during the first Great Awakening. This group, sometimes called the “New Lights,” had harassed Allen’s family in the past. No love lost here.

When Lee and other local leaders pushed through the crowd to accost Allen and Young, Allen snapped. He demanded satisfaction from Lee and the others, and hurled an impressive amount of profanity and blasphemy at them.

If this weren’t so in character for Allen, it might have been a very clever premeditated move. As a result of his rant, Allen was arrested for blasphemy instead of receiving the inoculation. Allen could not hope to get out of the inoculation charge, but a blasphemy charge was more slippery. After his quarantine was over, Allen was able to finagle his was out of a blasphemy conviction with some courtroom theatrics.

It’s hard to say what the wider effects of this act of rebellion were. It could be argued that it soured the local reputation of both men, causing them to eventually leave Salisbury. That’s definitely the case with Young, who found his practice dried up. Allen was belligerent enough that his ouster was probably inevitable, but the inoculation didn’t help.

Young was forced to leave for greener pastures. He moved to Albany, NY, but he shortly found a new cause: revolution. He spent the rest of his life moving around and opposing taxation and British power. He’s probably most famous for taking part in the Boston Tea Party, during which he refused to wear a disguise.

Allen would go on to found the Green Mountain Boys, the largest paramilitary group in America at the time. They would start by opposing the rapacious landowners of New York, but go on to oppose British troops. Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys are the stuff of American legend for their taking of Fort Ticonderoga.

The inoculation itself is an almost forgotten moment in American history. But it represents, in a perfect little microcosm, the defiance of social, government and religious authority on which the American Revolution was founded.

Does god really heal? This is a simple question that I put to the test when I was a Christian- the results convinced me to abandon religion. One of god’s promises is that he will heal all believers that pray for it. This is one of the foundational beliefs in religious doctrine. Certainly god should honor his word in this area, but does he?

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.

If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:14-16)

Many Christians claim that atheists take verses out of context, but these verses leave little room for personal interpretation. Throughout history, religious people have claimed that god is capable of healing. If the bible is the inspired word of god then this verse provides the evidence needed to support this claim. If it is valid then Christians should be the healthiest people we know and this should be evident throughout history.

During the 14th century there was a massive plague that annihilated roughly 30% of the European population; Christians had the same probability of death as anyone else. Why is this? Surely, an omnipotent god that promised healing to all that asked would have been able to answer these people’s prayers. Some might say that the 70% that survived were the true believers so I will bring this into perspective. We will examine a recent case to see if prayer is a reliable source of healing.

Many people have used prayer in conjunction with medical assistance and had “miraculous” recoveries, but this doesn’t prove the efficacy of prayer. Jesus and his apostles never took a person to the hospital and according to this verse neither should modern Christians. If prayer is truly effective then there is no need for a doctor. If a doctor can heal a person through modern medicine then prayer is futile. Recently, a story has swept across the nation that shows what happens when prayer is relied upon without the intervention of medical personnel.

The Wyland family from Oregon had complete faith in healing and put it to the ultimate test. Their newborn baby had an abnormal growth of blood vessels above her left eye and for six months they relied solely on prayer. Obviously prayer didn’t work for them and unfortunately many more children have died because of this belief in faith healing. What harm is there in faith?

Newspapers considered the family’s church to be “cult-like” and “extreme,” but they were simply following god’s word. What conclusion can we draw from this story? Either prayer works or it doesn’t; YOU BE THE JUDGE! If prayer has no effectiveness in practice then why use it? People say that religious belief gives hope to followers, but this girl didn’t need hope. She needed healing and it is apparent that god couldn’t provide it. This ailment was completely preventable by medical treatment, but now she might have suffered irreparable damage. Many people might say they have seen people recover after prayer, but the failed attempts far outweigh the subjective experiences of a few. Why would god be so inconsistent when fulfilling his promise? It appears that modern medicine yields much more consistent results. If medicine is more effective than religious belief then what does this say for the validity of faith healing?

Click here to view the embedded video.

(via Agathos in the forum)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Truthfully, his talk is so vague that I have to assume that his point is the one conveyed in the youtube blurb: “This is a short clip of Paul Washer talking about overcoming depression. So often those who are “Depressed” are actually in sin and need to repent and need to be rebuked. Self-pity is a deceitful sin that trips up many. ”

(via American Jesus)

One of the participants snarked that when the immortality drug came, his insurance wouldn’t cover it. It got me thinking.

What do you think the social and economic consequences of extreme human longevity might be?

I’ll posit that this hypothetical immortality require a treatment at regular intervals, say once every few years. Let’s also assume that given the enormous demand the treatment is expensive.

This would probably mean that only the wealthy could afford to keep up with the treatments necessary to suspend aging. The apocryphal comment from F. Scott Fitzgerald about the rich being different is now absolutely true: the rich don’t age and won’t die.

The cultural divide between rich and poor would increase. Lower class resentment would grow. The rich might become more conservative – after all, the loss of their fortune could not only impoverish them but actually kill them, and social upheaval that damaged the network of clinics could do much the same.

But put on your science fiction hats for a moment. What do you think would happen?

I am doing research for a new book and would hope to elicit informed responses to the following question:

The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?

He’s gotten a number of interesting answers, and most are reasonable. Rupert Sheldrake, who is famous for his research into parapsychology, avoids self-serving shots at skepticism and talks about determinism. Lee Smolin resists the temptation to mention string theory.

For my money, it’s hard to beat the Four Humors theory of disease and human personality. According to this theory, which began in the ancient world, human disease and human temperaments were governed by the proportion of four substances in the human body: blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile.

Perhaps the only advantage of being poor in the middle ages was not having to deal with physicians who were trained in the four humors. Dealing with the chants and herbs of the village cunning woman would be bliss compared to being regularly bled by a trained doctor, and just as likely to be effective.

I can’t say why this was persuasive, except that it was probably the first systematic treatment of both disease and personality. It probably appealed to that type of person who wants big theories that explain everything at once. Since the humors could correspond to the four greek elements (fire, earth, air, water) it could be seen as a theory of nearly everything.

I also can’t explain why Tim LaHaye has apparently tried to bring back the four temperaments idea. Except that … it’s Tim LaHaye, and nonsense is what he does.