http://www.dbskeptic.com Skepticism. Critical thinking. Podcast. Community. Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:30:05 +0000 en-us hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Digital Bits Skeptic brings skepticism and critical thinking to a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture. Andy Kaiser clean Andy Kaiser skeptic@dbskeptic.com skeptic@dbskeptic.com (Andy Kaiser) 2009 Skepticism and critical thinking in a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture skeptic, skepticism, critical thinking, new age, religion, pop culture, skeptical articles, critical thinking articles, philosophy http://www.dbskeptic.com/images/dbskeptic-logo-144.jpg http://www.dbskeptic.com/category/healthcare/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:46:08 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1548 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/feed/ 17 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1339 - Let me tell you about an adventure my family had a few weeks ago. I should also say that I'm not a doctor, and nothing you read here is official medical advice. This is my understanding of what happened in this speci... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1339 Let me tell you about an adventure my family had a few weeks ago. I should also say that I'm not a doctor, and nothing you read here is official medical advice. This is my understanding of what happened in this specific case. I have to lead with this information because, while the story starts out fun, it ends in the hospital. My family went on vacation. Unfortunately, after just a few days, my daughter, Ally, got the flu. She's four years old, and this was a bad flu, the kind that really wipes you out. My wife and I had to take care of her full-time. We decided to ditch the vacation and come home, but not before stopping off at the local hospital to see if Ally was okay. And she was, the doctor told us. Just a standard flu. Keep her hydrated, wait it out, and she'll be fine soon. For controlling her fever, we also got a prescription for Motrin (that's a brand name ibuprofin used for fever and various aches and pains). On the ride home, I called Ally's pediatrician, and he agreed with the other doctor. But after five days, Ally was still wiped out. She hadn't eaten in that entire time. She couldn't eat anything without having to give it back within the hour. She could barely keep down water. The fever was gone. She just had continual nausea. While she was really weak, every once in a while she would move on her own. She'd burst into tears and say that her back hurt. She'd then flop around to change position, and that seemed to help. My wife and thought this was just because she'd been laying in that position for so long, her muscles were cramping up. I get backaches after sleeping the wrong way overnight - my daughter had been laying in the same position for almost a week. We brought Ally to her pediatrician's office, and were reassured that - again - it was just a regular flu. Then we found blood in Ally's urine. We drove to the emergency room. When we got to the E.R., the doctors, thankfully, were excellent. When we described all that had happened, one of the first things they said was, "We think she's having problems with her kidneys. Has she mentioned having any back pain?" That was one of those times where I felt like a complete failure as a parent. Yes, we said, she has complained of back pain. The doc was right: Ally was in the process of kidney failure. From there, they moved very quickly. I'll keep most of the details to myself because, well, I want them private. But here's one to give you an idea of what the parents and child had to go through: Ally went into surgery to have an IV inserted into her neck. Minutes after she woke up from the anesthesia, they started kidney dialysis. The neck IV was hooked up to a big machine that looked like a giant clothes washer. It took the blood out of her body, cleaned it, and put it back in. That was day nine. Nine days of no food, little water, bad sleep, the physical trauma of a bad flu and, as we found out, kidney failure. Luckily, that was the worst of it. Things turned around very shortly after the dialysis. It was just what her body needed, and having a machine clean her blood gave her kidneys a chance to recover. Things are fine now. The rest of the story is just recovery. After a week in the hospital's intensive care, we got to go home. Ally needed help walking again, but after a few wobbly trips to the hospital's children's activity room, she recovered with a speed I can only envy. We're now home and we're healthy. I told you the whole story so you can understand how we got to the point we did. I tell you this so you can prevent something similar from happening to someone you know. Remember earlier, when I mentioned that Ally was given Motrin for fever control? According to the kidney specialist, the Motrin was probably a contributing factor to Ally's kidney failure. Even if she had just one dose. Motrin, ibuprofin, asprin, and "NSAID" drugs Motrin, ibuprofin, asprin, Andy Kaiser clean 12:40 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/12/in-defense-of-oprah-winfrey/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/12/in-defense-of-oprah-winfrey/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:57:00 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1364 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/12/in-defense-of-oprah-winfrey/feed/ 5 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1330 - Oprah Winfrey was nothing more to me than an unseen TV show. I knew she was there, but never wanted to watch. Why would I? Her show was usually about clothes and cooking and redecorating and various "women's issues" ... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1330 Oprah Winfrey was nothing more to me than an unseen TV show. I knew she was there, but never wanted to watch. Why would I? Her show was usually about clothes and cooking and redecorating and various "women's issues" that I just didn't care about. I didn't have time for all that. I was a MAN. I had to get things DONE. No time for what I saw as fluff. I had important video games to play. Then years later, like some people do, I married a girl. My wife changed my viewpoint on many things, including how I felt about Oprah Winfrey. When I first realized my wife watched Oprah, I gave a long-suffering mental sigh. But, I figured I'd treat her Oprah-watching with the same respect she treated my video game playing: it would be tolerated, but never spoken about. But as I overheard a few things and learned some facts, my viewpoint changed. Oprah is a very good person. In 2007, Oprah spent $40 million to build the "Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls" in South Africa. She did this to provide educational opportunities to gifted girls who may not normally have a chance to succeed. In 2006, she raised money to help people recover from Hurricane Katrina. She got over $11 million in donations, and personally donated $10 million. In 1998, she started "Oprah's Angel Network", a charity designed to improve the lives of the underprivileged.  As of this writing, the charity has raised more than $51 million. And none of it is wasted - any overhead like administrative costs is personally covered by Oprah. 100% of donations actually get to those who need them. She's known to be an extremely philanthropic celebrity, if not the most philanthropic. I'm telling you these facts to show that Oprah herself personally cares about people, and she's willing to spend major chunks of her time and money to help others.  I'm telling you this to make clear what I believe about her personality - that whatever she might believe or promote, she's not malicious. Now we come to the situation today. It was my wife that alerted me as to the events. She said, "I just read this really cool Newsweek article about Oprah. I think you might be interested." The June 8, 2009 article was a long feature story on Oprah, detailing the medical quackery she's had on her show, from ineffective New Age scams  to dangerous anti-vaccination medical advice popularized in multiple interviews with Jenny McCarthy. It pulled no punches. The piece was titled, "Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You". Then, just a few hours later, the skeptical community virtually exploded in glee. The big skeptical names brought out their big cannons, and fired. People in and outside of the skeptical community wrote their own "open letter to Oprah", expressing well-reasoned arguments as to why Oprah shouldn't be doing what she's doing, essentially bolstering and supporting the Newsweek article. So Oprah got slammed by the mass media. Hard. And don't get me wrong - she should be held accountable for popularizing such claims. Particularly when those claims go against the consensus of the medical community. Particularly if those claims could cause harm to others, either by intention or negligence. Particularly when Oprah is so influential. But in the press that followed the Newsweek article, people seemed to really hate Oprah herself. In my Inbox right now, I have an email from someone with the self-righteous subject line, "Oprah gets what is coming to her".  Reader's Digest magazine followed up with an article, "The Trouble With Celebrity Science". You'll find plenty of not-so-polite opinion pieces. Some are intelligent. Some have titles like "Oprah is an idiot" and "Oprah fails at everything". Well, Oprah is not an idiot. She doesn't "fail at everything". This is clear. A smart person can be uncritical and taken in by ideas they hope are true. A good example is Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Andy Kaiser clean 9:54 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 02:07:30 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1002 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/feed/ 9 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1320 - The news lately has been buzzing about the swine flu. Excuse me, I mean the "H1N1 virus". Or the "2009 H1N1 influenza virus". Or the "H1N1 swine flu". - You know what? I'm going to forego the medical designation and... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1320 The news lately has been buzzing about the swine flu. Excuse me, I mean the "H1N1 virus". Or the "2009 H1N1 influenza virus". Or the "H1N1 swine flu". You know what? I'm going to forego the medical designation and... Andy Kaiser clean 15:22 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 02:09:56 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=988 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/feed/ 15 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 1319 - It's a growing trend to believe that a pill can cure anything. Any aches, any pains, any sores. It's a big reason why people are still looking for a pill to make you thin. While I think we have become far too reliant o... By M Parrott Article ID: 1319 It's a growing trend to believe that a pill can cure anything. Any aches, any pains, any sores. It's a big reason why people are still looking for a pill to make you thin. While I think we have become far too reliant on pills, I'm not saying to scrap all drugs. They save lives, they save the economy money and they stop your pain. However, there is a specific type of drug that I have a problem with - the anti-psychotic. Or, to be even more specific, the anti-depressant. There are at least seventy-three anti-depressants on the market. For something that is supposed to "cure" depression, that's a lot of drugs. Let me explain where this idea comes from, that a drug will cure a psychological disorder. It relies upon a theory called the "monoamine hypothesis". This theory suggests that depression is caused by low levels of three neuro-chemicals from a group called monoamine neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. In bi-polar patients, the subject's levels of monoamine neuro-chemicals will fluctuate depending on whether they are in a depressed or manic state (low levels for depression, high for mania). What evidence do we have for this effect? Urine. No, honestly, urine. When studying the urine of people with depression we find they have low levels of by-products of dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. Autopsies show that those who commit suicide have these same low levels. It therefore seems plausible that depression is caused by low levels of the three neuro-transmitters. However, correlation does not equal causation: there are no ill effects when artificially inducing low-levels of these three neuro-chemicals. The participants do not become depressed. This suggests that low-levels of serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine do not cause depression. If this is the case, then the whole idea of anti-depressant drugs is a fallacy. What about the drugs themselves? Proponents of the monoamine hypothesis argue that anti-depressants work, therefore proving that the theory is correct. However, this justification by circular reasoning doesn't fly. More on that later. Let me first outline what anti-depressants are. There are four main types; SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors), MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors), SNRIs (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) and TCAs (tricyclic antidepressants). Medical doctor Arif Khan (1979-1999) tested the effectiveness of three substances; Sertraline hydrochloride (an SSRI), St John's Wort (a plant from which most anti-depressants are made) and sugar pills (a placebo). The effectiveness test came back with a surprising result: sertraline hydrochloride was effective 25% of the time, St John's Wort was at 24% and sugar pills were at 35%. Actual anti-depressant drugs were less effective than a placebo. That's depressing. More research supporting these results is by Professor Irving Kirsch et al. (1998, 2002 and 2008), who showed that anti-depressants do not have enough statistical significance in comparison to placebos. Another point is that TCAs are also used to treat ADHD. You should treat ADHD with depressants, and yet TCAs - anti-depressants - are used to treat depression. I question any group of drugs used as depressants and anti-depressants at the same time. After studying these drugs and the monoamine hypothesis, it appears that the lack of serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine is a psychological disorder manifesting itself in a physiological symptom. For example, we don't say that Tourette syndrome is caused by sudden inappropriate language, but that Tourette syndrome causes the inappropriate statements. Some argue that if anti-depressant drugs are placebos, at least they seem to do something. This is not a good plan. We should instead pursue other treatments for depression, rather than assuming one little tablet can cure such a complex thing as a psychological disorder. Andy Kaiser clean 6:47 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/05/sugar-acid-and-teeth/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/05/sugar-acid-and-teeth/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:24:21 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=922 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/05/sugar-acid-and-teeth/feed/ 25 Andy Kaiser,Diane Johnson By Andy Kaiser Expert analysis by Diane Johnson Article ID: 1315 - I like to multitask. When I listen to other podcasts, I'm not simply staring at my computer speaker or glazing over as my headphones talk to me. I do other things. I browse the web. By Andy Kaiser Expert analysis by Diane Johnson Article ID: 1315 I like to multitask. When I listen to other podcasts, I'm not simply staring at my computer speaker or glazing over as my headphones talk to me. I do other things. I browse the web. I drive my car. I may eat, and, as what logically follows, drink. And it's that last one - drinking - that's today's topic. I'm a member of the Skeptoid mailing list. (Skeptoid is a podcast created by Brian Dunning. For those who aren't aware of it, I strongly recommend you check it out.) There was an interesting discussion on the mailing list. This assertion appeared: "Diet Pepsi is okay [in terms of overall health], but Diet Coke is bad." As we discussed the issue, others brought up a point: What about tooth decay and really sugary soda pop, like Coke and Pepsi? We know that pop is acidic. It's probably bad for your teeth. And it's loaded with sugar, which contributes to tooth decay. A dentist chimed in to the conversation, saying that in her experience, Mountain Dew is absolutely the worst drink in terms of tooth decay. In her practice, this seems to be the drink of choice for those with enamel wear and decay. But correlation, as they say, does not imply causation: just because two things appear related doesn't mean one thing caused the other thing. So the questions remained: What drinks are the worst for your teeth? Instead of using guesses and personal anecdotes, is there a way to objectively measure how bad a drink is for your teeth? Before we continue, I'll ask you this question, and we'll answer it later on in this article. Think about your answer, and see if it matches my test results. Here's the question: What type of drink do you think is the worst for your teeth? Your choices include pop, coffee, juice, milk, tea, sports drinks and yes, alcohol, including various beers, wines and liquors. After you pick the genre of liquid, can you pick the type or even brand? For example, we've already stated pop is bad for your teeth. Do you agree with the previous Mountain Dew assessment? What about Coke products? Or Pepsi versus Cherry Pepsi? And are all these really worse than milk, juice or alcohol? Think about your answer. I'll have the results for you soon. That's the intent of this article, to find a way to rate the "badness" of drinks in terms of tooth decay. So I ran to the store and purchased dozens of popular drinks. Juices, pop, coffee drinks, sports drinks, milk and a variety of alcohol. I then ran home, eager to test all these liquids. And... I realized I had no idea what to do next. This is where it helps to know people who are smarter then you. The doctor I mentioned earlier is Dr. Diane Johnson, DDS. Johnson is full-time practicing orthodontist and has been in private practice since 1986. Her undergraduate degree is a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University, her DDS is from Northwestern University Dental School, and her MS is in Orthodontics from the University of Illinois. She reviews for the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics. Dr. Johnson says: "We deal with the harmful effects of dietary choices every day, and since the largest part of our patient population is teenagers, we see a lot of pop consumption. ...my first bit of advice would be to never drink pop! You'll probably have headaches for 2-3 days while you are withdrawing from the caffeine. Yes, caffeine is extremely physically addictive; one of the ways - like nicotine in cigarettes - that companies make sure you come back for more of their product. To mitigate the effects of pop consumption, only consume it with meals.  Brush soon after eating or drinking anything besides water (including milk or juices). Chewing gum with xylitol will inhibit plaque bacteria (Trident makes one, but you have to look specifically for the one with xylitol).  This will help with the sugar part, but will make no difference with the acid part. Andy Kaiser clean 17:06 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:00:01 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=773 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/feed/ 13 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1311 - "Oh, excuse me." - ...and that's all that should have to happen. - Yet, in the United States, if I sneeze, someone around me will inevitably say, "God bless you." Sometimes they leave out the "god", By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1311 "Oh, excuse me." ...and that's all that should have to happen. Yet, in the United States, if I sneeze, someone around me will inevitably say, "God bless you." Sometimes they leave out the "god", and you get the more concise and cooler, "bless you". I'd like to know: what exactly have I done to warrant such compassion? ...Or is it contempt? Why do I need to be blessed? Why do people say "God bless you" after a sneeze? A sneeze is often caused because I've got something up my nose and my body wants it out. So I get a funny twitching in my sniffer, I take a quick breath, and an explosive blast of air shoots out my nostrils. Disgusting? Maybe. But it's a normal human bodily function. So therefore, why am I not blessed for passing gas? Seems to me that breaking wind or cutting the cheese - or whatever euphemism you want for the expulsion of flatulence - is just as required and is usually as involuntary as a sneeze. Now, there are problems with blessing someone who's passed gas, since if you bless me, you've just incriminated yourself. After all, as we all learned in preschool, "he who first detected it, ejected it". And "the next person who speaks" is indeed "the person who reeks". At least with sneezing, it's obvious who committed the act. So we have the aforementioned "God bless you". What does this mean? Why the blessing? Why is this so necessary? I know several people who aren't particularly religious, and they'll casually throw out a blessing after every sneeze. I know several people who are very religious, and after a sneeze they'll race to see who can first bless the sneezer, like some kind of covert religious competition. The history of blessing after the sneeze is a little murky, like looking at history through the veil of a few layers of tissue. There are many possible causes why we bless someone after a sneeze. Here are several possibilities: A common belief about sneezing is that during a sneeze, the heart skips a beat or even temporarily stops. The blessing was meant to insure that the heart continued beating normally. In reality, the heart isn't affected by a sneeze. Some used to believe that when a spiritual soul inhabited one's body, that person was healthy. Sickness was caused by problems with the soul, or from the soul leaving the body. It stands to reason that a powerful enough sneeze could rocket the soul outside of a person's body. When this happened, bad spirits or demons could enter, and cause disease. So saying "bless you" was a ward against evil disease-spirits, preventing them from entering your body while the soul was temporary out to lunch. Another common origin of sneeze-blessing started around 590 AD, at the time of the European Great Plague. People noticed that sneezing led to illness, and at the time, that often lead to a horrible death. If you sneezed, you needed a blessing, pronto. So what's the point of this article? Why do we care about the origin of saying "bless you" after a sneeze? The answer lies in an examination of tradition and the amazing longevity of some superstitions. Many people do bless others after a sneeze. The majority of blessers probably don't intend to officially bless someone after such an event. After I sneeze, I've never had anyone frantically whip holy water at me. When I go to my doctor, he takes my temperature and gives me some pills. If blessing a disease worked, he'd instead have me kneel while he anointed me with oils and Latin incantations. People say the words because, well, that's what you say when someone sneezes. And so the tradition continues, trudging along with its ever-growing burden of unneeded Things To Do In A Given Situation. Given the length of time sneeze-blessing has been in our culture, it makes me wonder: how many other aspects of our society are pointless, and persist only because of an unneeded, long-outdated belief? The next time I sneeze, Andy Kaiser clean 6:52 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/02/08/the-skinny-on-the-body-mass-index-bmi/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/02/08/the-skinny-on-the-body-mass-index-bmi/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:00:12 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=695 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/02/08/the-skinny-on-the-body-mass-index-bmi/feed/ 5 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 137 - Round up a group of ten-year-old children. Put each one on a scale. One third of those children are overweight. Expand your view, and you'll see that 23% of school children are overweight. So says the British government. By M Parrott Article ID: 137 Round up a group of ten-year-old children. Put each one on a scale. One third of those children are overweight. Expand your view, and you'll see that 23% of school children are overweight. So says the British government. They also state that within four years, one out of three adults will be overweight. I'm not sure if this scare trend is common across all cultures, but let me tell you now it is bull. The problem here is that to make these weighty judgements, the government uses the Body Mass Index (also known as the BMI) which is so innately flawed that you might as well flip a coin on whether someone is obese or not. What is the BMI (Body Mass Index)? Let's start with the BMI's origin. A Belgian mathematician and sociologist named Adolphe Quetelet created the Body Mass Index between 1830 and 1850. He did this as a way to compare a person's height with their weight. This technique was originally meant to aid in social science education, and wasn't intended to determine obesity levels. BMI was not meant for medical diagnosis. So how can we use it to see if people are obese? If we're analyzing a specific individual, we can't! At least, not reliably. Let's consider the problem with using weight as an obesity measurement. You might be thinking, "well, of course your weight determines if you're obese." Not really. Muscle and bone density play a big part. Compare equal amounts of muscle and fat, and you'll find the muscle weighs a lot more, at least four times more than fat. So a BMI label for someone with no fat but a lot of muscle will be obese. For example, Michael Jordan is obese according to the BMI and I guarantee he is a lot more fit than anyone reading this. I'm normal weight and Jordan is certainly in better shape than I. So here it is; if athletes are classed as obese then how can we possibly apply this formula to anyone? How can the BMI tell us if we are obese or not? (Yes, we can take additional factors into account like diet and exercise, but the BMI doesn't do that.) One of the key measurements of the Body Mass Index is weight. But weight isn't even an accurate measurement of how healthy you are. Some health fanatics and personal trainers will tell you that there are no genetic factors behind being fat, but this is far from true. Consider the variation in ethnicities. Look at Viking descendents and Greek descendents and you'll see a vast difference in structure. Those of Viking descendents are often higher than average weight; they have a larger bone structure. Greek descendents have a thinner bone structure and are in comparison generally lighter. So back to the BMI: why is one formula applied to everyone of every ethnicity if different ethnicities are genetically pre-disposed to be different weights? If you'd like to see how morbidly obese you are - or are not - see this BMI calculator from the Center for Disease Control. Diet and exercise are good for you. If you eat right you will be your natural, healthy weight. Yes, the BMI may label you as obese or over-weight. But so what? That's the weight at which your body is healthiest. Another detrimental part of the BMI is the social aspect. No matter what you look like, no matter how thin, fat, muscular, dimple-ridden, smooth skinned, pot holed or deformed: you're still a good-looking piece of humanity. It doesn't matter if you are the image of a greater being or the creation of self-directed chance. Humanity is a beautiful race. Live life however you want to live it. Don't be bullied by anyone, especially the government or media, on how you should look. It's your life; it's your choice. Andy Kaiser clean 6:35 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/10/getting-dirty-with-bacteria-panic-and-unjustified-sterilization/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/10/getting-dirty-with-bacteria-panic-and-unjustified-sterilization/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:16:27 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=608 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/10/getting-dirty-with-bacteria-panic-and-unjustified-sterilization/feed/ 4 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 132 - Recently I was watching The Today Show.  During one segment, they cultured swabs from what looked like clean kitchens and bathrooms.  I watched as they swabbed sinks, microwave ovens, and toilets. By David Annis Article ID: 132 Recently I was watching The Today Show.  During one segment, they cultured swabs from what looked like clean kitchens and bathrooms.  I watched as they swabbed sinks, microwave ovens, and toilets.  Imagine my shock when they found all sorts of bacteria.  I was even more horrified when I found out that the kitchen was the worst offender, both in their specific example and in the rest of the world. Horrified, I rushed home and began researching what I needed to do to protect myself.  A little research on the web revealed a study that found "nearly half of all kitchen sinks harbor high levels of potentially dangerous bacteria."  My house is dirtier than most as a result of three young boys that have priorities other than cleanliness.  Convinced that we were doomed, I ran to my car so that I could shop for Lysol, Clorox, and an autoclave. As I drove I began to have misgivings.  To protect myself from dangerous, potentially disease-causing bacteria I'd need to either stop kissing my wife or simply sterilize her mouth.  I knew this was true because we once plated our breath to settle a bet.  She's got bacteria in her mouth.  (As an aside, I can assure you with a high level of certainty that calling your future wife "dog breath" is far more dangerous than giving her a kiss, despite my study having an N of only 1.) The study of bacteria in homes was sponsored by Lysol ® brand products, makers of cleaners and disinfectants.  Now there is a funder with a financial interest in the study's outcome.  I also realized that if nearly 90% of sponges and 48% of sinks are swarming with bacteria, we should all be sick and dying or those bacteria rarely cause harm. Nevertheless, I was determined to try to make my house bacteria free.  I knew that NASA scrubbed spacecraft free of all life before sending them off to Mars, lest we find that life on Mars was only a bacterial contaminant brought by Earthly spacecraft.  Perhaps I could use their methods.  Unfortunately, a New York Times article that I read not long ago began "Researchers have found a surprising diversity of hardy bacteria in a seemingly unlikely place - the so-called sterile clean rooms where NASA assembles its spacecraft and prepares them for launching." So, it looks like I will not achieve a sterile environment in my kitchen, whether or not I use Lysol ® products.  In fact, I found that if the hygiene hypothesis is correct and increased exposure to "infectious agents, symbiotic microorganisms (e.g. gut flora), and parasites" helps a child's immune system, then providing a sterile environment for my kids would be detrimental to their health. There has also been concern about the use of anti-bacterial products in the home contributing to the development of drug resistant organisms though at least one study found no effect over a period of one year. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that food-related illness is a serious problem, causing about 76 million illnesses a year in the U.S.   Bacteria can and do cause disease, but consider the numbers we're dealing with: You yourself have more bacteria in your body than you do human cells.  I'll wash my hands and my sink. But I refuse to lie awake at night, frightened by the fact that neither my hands nor my sink will ever be sterile. Andy Kaiser clean 5:38 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/22/in-defense-of-murderous-humans-animals-at-steak/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/22/in-defense-of-murderous-humans-animals-at-steak/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:28:33 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=530 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/22/in-defense-of-murderous-humans-animals-at-steak/feed/ 6 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1265 - "Puppies." Even the word is cute. With just a few very oddball exceptions, you'd agree with me that puppies are adorable. But at what point do people stop using the term "man's best friend", By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1265 "Puppies." Even the word is cute. With just a few very oddball exceptions, you'd agree with me that puppies are adorable. But at what point do people stop using the term "man's best friend", and start saying "pass the salt"? I'm talking about the inherent differences between humans and every other animal on the planet. After all, as the smart, tool-using, big-brained creatures we are, do we not have an imperative to nurture and care for all the other animals on the planet? No. Not when animal rights are compared to humankind's safety, science or even hunger. In my own country - the United States - eating dog meat is considered taboo. We're just too emotionally close to our pets. Elsewhere, dogs are eaten and bred as a food supply: this occurs in China, Indonesia, Korea and Vietnam. Other countries eat dog meat more covertly, in more remote locations, or are used as a food supply in times of famine. These countries include France, Germany, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Switzerland, and near the Arctic and Antarctic. In times of desperation, the competition for life becomes a free-for-all. Stories like Jack London's "To Build a Fire" are understandable - if a man is freezing to death, of course he'll kill his trusty dog for its body heat. If a man is starving, he'll feed himself with whatever's available. This desire for life is so strong it's even visible between humans. For those who have sung and danced through the black comedy, "Cannibal: The Musical" or the 1993 movie "Alive", we know that people in extreme situations will ignore the most fundamental of taboos to stay living. Life or death situations are pretty easy to argue. But throw in some ambiguity and it gets tricky. When immediate death isn't part of the equation, at what point is it morally acceptable to kill an animal? I argue that it's allowed under these two situations: 1) It's morally acceptable for humans to eat most animals. We are omnivores. We are designed to eat meat, and we get certain nutrition from meat we can't easily get from other sources. 2) It's morally acceptable for humans to perform research and testing on animals if that effort has a chance of saving or improving human lives. Animal testing to further our scientific knowledge is an imperative. We would advance slower or not at all without animal testing, because the alternative with today's technology would be to test on humans. Even as I write these words, I don't like them. I believe they are true, but I don't enjoy having to pick what is clearly a lesser of two evils. However, I'm confident in the above because of this premise: All else being equal, any human life is worth more than any animal life. This idea may in fact be at the core of every animal rights issue. If someone has to suffer and die so that humans don't have to, then the animal must take this terrible burden. Why? Because someone has to - we don't yet have the technology to do otherwise. If we are altruistic to animals, humanity would suffer. In a rather brutal summary of the above themes, we end with this quote by comedian Nick Dipaolo: "If hooking a car battery up to a monkey's brain will help find the cure for AIDS and save somebody's life, I have two things to say... the red is positive and the black is negative." Andy Kaiser clean 5:58 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/10/where-meat-meets-metal-how-acupuncture-works-or-doesnt/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/10/where-meat-meets-metal-how-acupuncture-works-or-doesnt/#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:54:59 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=383 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/10/where-meat-meets-metal-how-acupuncture-works-or-doesnt/feed/ 10 Thomas Gentry By Thomas Gentry Article ID: 1254 - Right down the road from my house, there's a store selling and promoting homeopathy and acupuncture. I've spent a couple dozen hours collecting information about the place and what it sells so that I can give an ac... By Thomas Gentry Article ID: 1254 Right down the road from my house, there's a store selling and promoting homeopathy and acupuncture. I've spent a couple dozen hours collecting information about the place and what it sells so that I can give an accurate depiction of its beliefs and worth. In the next few paragraphs I'll expound on why this alternative modality of medicine is another case of people taking money for a service they can't render. I'll use text from their own website and combine this with the knowledge and critical thinking skills I have acquired from past studies. When addressed critically, this undermines the practitioners' intellectual credibility and their entire profession. I'm not a particularly well-read or knowledgeable person; I don't have specific knowledge of any field in appreciable depth. What I do have is years of training and practice in trying to spot lies and chicanery. In this case, I don't need in-depth knowledge of any specific medical modality. If I needed detailed knowledge of every topic to judge the validity of its claims, I would still be stuck on making and learning the proofs for addition, multiplication, and subtraction--don't even get me started on division. Using the filtering processes afforded to me by the rules of logic, I gauge a topic by the unlikelihood of its claims. The reference material for acupuncture sets off nearly every "red flag" I have acquired over the years, leading me to judge it as an extremely unlikely candidate for efficacy. Right from the "get go", if you do a search on the natural history of acupuncture you find claims like "It is based on the theory that a life force called Qi [pronounced 'chee'] flows through the body along certain channels, which if blocked can cause illness." That particular red flag is called the logical fallacy of "magical thinking." The magical thinking proponent says something meaningless, and allows the listener to fill in any logical gaps. Like how this "life force" works, what it is, or what is blocking it. How does the insertion of needles fix this blockage? This method of boondoggling doesn't work once you have the trained habit of forming questions when information is presented. It's as simple as asking, "how does this statement explain the claim?" If we can get past the first premise of this Chinese ideology (which already leap-frogs past rationality), the literature abounds with examples of lazy thinking. For instance, the claim that "acupuncture has been practiced for up to 5,000 years in the Orient" added to this claim of, "the evidences for acupuncture's effectiveness are adding up." In five thousand years, there's not enough data to link a cause and effect! What disheveled mind could make both of these claims without seeing the two statements are nearly incompatible, unless the writer means to say "the evidence has been building for 5,000 years, but we don't want to be too expedient in our proclamation of acupuncture's worth." That's only five hundred decades without a sensible explanation of acupuncture's cause and effect. Today's strongest claims have no link between cause and effect. The acupuncture peddlers themselves can't definitively explain their treatment. I found at least four separate and distinct ideas proposed as the underlying method of how acupuncture works. I'd like to specifically address two of these: Endorphins The body reacts to pain and intrusion by releasing feel-good drugs that lessen the pain. That one sounds fairly straight-forward, probably because it doesn't mention Qi. It refers to an actual, measurable, chemical process of the body. But why insert needles all over your body when you could just take these same chemicals in pill form? If this acupuncture claim really is correct, the entire process has been outmoded by modern pharmacology! Magic The next idea listed on my local acupuncturists' website was, "inserting a needle into the body's connective tissue... Andy Kaiser clean 8:23