The problems with transhumanism

I have pondered writing about the transhumanism movement for a while, and the opportunity has finally landed on my desktop when I read a brief article by Kyle Munkittrick of the Institute for Emerging Ethics & Technologies. The article is in the form of a FAQ expressly addressing the question of whether aging is a moral good, and in it Munkittrick briefly explains and (thinks that he) refutes some of the standard arguments against transhumanism. Let’s take a look.

To begin with, what is transhumanism? It is a type of futurist philosophy aimed at transforming the human species by means of biotechnologies. Transhumanists think of disease, aging and even death as both undesirable and unnecessary, and think that technology will eventually overcome them all. I must confess that — despite being a scientist always fascinated by new technologies (hey, I am writing this on a MacBook Pro, I carry an iPhone with me at all times, and I read books on the Kindle!) — I have always been skeptical of utopias of any kind, not excluding the technological variety. Which is why I am using Munkittrick’s short essay as a way to clarify my own thoughts about transhumanism.

Munkittrick begins his own response to critics of transhumanism by stating that if anyone has a problem with technology addressing the issues of disease, aging and death then “by this logic no medical intervention or care should be allowed after the age of 30.” This, of course, is a classic logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy. Munkittrick would like his readers to take one of two stands: either no technological improvement of our lives at all, or accept whatever technology can do for you. But this is rather silly, as there are plenty of other, more reasonable, intermediate positions. It is perfectly legitimate to pick and choose which technologies we want (I vote against the atomic bomb, for instance, but in favor of nuclear energy, if it can be pursued in an environmentally sound way). Moreover, it is perfectly acceptable — indeed necessary — for individuals and society to have a thorough discussion about what limits are or are not acceptable when it comes to the ethical issues raised by the use of technologies (for instance, I do not wish to be kept artificially alive at all costs in case of irreparable damage to my brain, even if it is technologically feasible; moreover, I think it immoral that people are too often forced to spend huge amounts of money for “health care” during the last few weeks or months of their lives).

Munkittrick continues: “Transhumanists are trying to escape aging — and its inevitable symptom, death — because we actually acknowledge it for what it is: a horror.” Well, I personally agree with the general sentiment. As Woody Allen famously put it, I don’t want to be immortal through my work, I want to be immortal through not dying. But to construe death as a “symptom” to the disease of aging is far fetched, and biologically absurd. Aging and death are natural end results of the lives of multicellular organisms, and in a deep sense they are the inevitable outcome of the principles of thermodynamics (which means that we can tinker and delay them, but not avoid them).

There are several problems with the pursuit of immortality, one of which is particularly obvious. If we all live (much, much) longer, we all consume more resources and have more children, leading to even more overpopulation and environmental degradation. Of course, techno-optimists the world over have a ready answer for this: more technology. To quote Munkittrick again: “Malthus didn’t understand that technology improves at an exponential rate, so even though unaided food production is arithmetic, the second Agricultural Revolution allowed us to feed more people by an order of magnitude.” Yes, and how do we explain that more people than ever are starving across the world? Technology does not indefinitely improve exponentially, and it must at some point or another crash against the limits imposed by a finite world. We simply don’t have space, water and other prime materials to feed a forever exponentially increasing population. Arguably, it is precisely technology that created the problem of overpopulation, as the original agricultural revolution (the one that happened a few thousand years ago) lead to cycles of boom and bust and to the rapid spread of disease in crowded cities. This may be an acceptable tradeoff (I certainly don’t wish to go back to a hunter-gatherer society), but it does show that technology is not an unqualified good.

Yet, the transhumanist optimist can’t be stopped. Here is more from Munkittrick: “One of the key goals of transhumanism is to get the most advanced and useful technology to developing countries, allowing them to skip industrialization (and the pollution/waste associated) and go straight into late capitalist, post-industrial society, where population growth is negative and mortality rates extremely low.” Besides the fact that with the current global economic meltdown a late capitalist society doesn’t really sound that appealing, do we have any evidence that this is happening, or even possible? The current examples of such transition come from countries like India, China, and Brazil, and those don’t look at all encouraging, as the result seems to be increasing economic disparity and massive amounts of additional pollution. How exactly are transhumanists planning on skipping industrialization?

As for post-industrial societies having negative population growth, this is true of only a very few countries, and certainly not of one of the most massively polluting of them all, the United States. It is true that birth rates are dramatically lower in post-industrial countries in general, but this is the result of education not technology per se. It happens when women realize that they can spend their lives doing something other than being perennial baby factories. Despite this, the world population is still going up, and environmental quality is still dropping dramatically. Technology can surely help us, but it is also (perhaps mostly) a matter of ethical choices: the problem will be seriously addressed only when people abandon the naive and rather dangerous idea that technology can solve all our problems, so that we can continue to indulge in whatever excesses we like.

One last point: Munkittrick depicts what he thinks is an idyllic scenario of people living to 150 (this may not be possible without significant alterations of the human genome, which of course raises additional questions of both feasibility and ethics). He says that “any technology that would extend life beyond the current average of 70-100 would do so by retarding aging as a whole, that is, the degradation that begins to occur after about age 27. Maturation would occur at the same rate, peaking between 22 and 26 depending on the person, but after that preventative medicine and repair techniques would slow aging, resulting in a much longer “prime” age, say extending youthful adulthood (what we think of now as 20’s and 30’s) well into the 50’s and perhaps 60’s. Because these techniques will be far from perfect, aging will still occur to some degree. Like youthful adulthood, middle-age would presumably begin much later and last much longer. So lets say a person reaches genuine old age at 100, with all the problems that reduce one from ‘thriving’ to surviving, leaving them 50 years of old age instead of 20 or 10.” Hmm, I like the first part (extending my prime through my ‘60s), but the latter one seems ghastly. Both from a personal and a societal perspective, fifty years of old age are a hefty price to pay, and one that would be psychologically devastating and further bankrupt our resources. Now if we could consider euthanasia for the really old, non-functional and suffering people... but that’s another discussion.

I do not wish to leave the reader with the impression that I am a Luddite, far from it. But I do think that techno-optimists the world over really ought to fantasize less and pay much more attention to the complexities not just of the logistics, but particularly of the ethics implied by their dreams. Better and longer lives are certainly a worthy goal (though I personally would put the emphasis on quality rather than quantity), but this doesn’t license a mad pursuit for immortality. Besides, true immortality (the ultimate goal if you think of death as a “symptom”) must be unbearable for any sentient being: imagine having so much time on your hands that eventually there will be nothing new for you to do. You would be forced to play the same games, or watch the same movies, or take the same vacation, over and over and over and over. Or you might kill time by reading articles like the one by Munkittrick literally an infinite number of times. Hell may be other people, as Sartre said, but at least at the moment we don’t have to live in Hell forever.

Massimo's picks

* A nice history of the "vaccines cause autism" nonsense by "SkepDoc" Harriet Hall. A must read.

* Get ready for the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, coming up in New York City on September 12!

* Study shows largest generation gap in the US concerning values since the Vietnam War.

* Chaos is good for your brain...

* Robert Wright has written a book on the evolution of god that is likely to upset a lot of people. So you really need to read it.

Vaccines do not cause autism

“The evidence is in. The scientific community has reached a clear consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism. There is no controversy.” So begins an in-depth discussion of the vaccines-cause-autism nonsense penned by “SkepDoc” Harriet Hall in a recent issue of eSkeptic. It is a must read for any thinking person who has been baffled by the likes of Jenny McCarthy and her unconscionable sponsors, boyfriend Jim Carrey (who bankrolls McCarthy’s dangerous ignorance) and Oprah Winfrey (who provides McCarthy with television time so that she can endanger the lives of even more children).

The SkepDoc helpfully traces the history of this pseudoscientific tale, dividing it into three acts. The original claim came from a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield, who in 1998 published an article in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, proposing that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine may cause autism because 8 of 10 autistic children he had examined seemed to have developed their autistic symptoms immediately after having been vaccinated, according to their parents. If this sounds like pretty flimsy evidence, it is: the paper was eventually retracted by the journal and by most of Wakefield’s co-authors. It turned out that the doctor did not use any controls at all, ignored negative virological studies that had disproved his thesis even before the publication of the paper, had undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in the matter (he was paid by the lawyers of some of the families whose children he used in his research), and had violated ethical rules of conduct (he bought blood by bribing the children at a birthday party). Moreover, Wakefield’s findings could not be replicated by other studies, so you’d think that would be the end of the story. Nope: the bastard — once charged by the British General Medical Council with professional misconduct — simply moved to the United States, where he is happily making money by working in an autism clinic. As a result of Wakefield’s unconscionable “study”, vaccination rates in the UK dropped, cases of measles went up, and children died. Pseudoscience can kill.

Phase two of the craze, according to Dr. Hall, can be traced back to legislation passed (also in 1998) with the aim of reducing the total amount of mercury that children get through the thimerosal that was used in vaccinations. The intention was good, though it turns out that the dangerous form of mercury is methylmercury, not the ethylmercury found in vaccines. Accordingly, the law was not prompted by any published research or serious assessment conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, two mothers (!!) conducted their own “research” and claimed that the symptoms of autism are identical to those induced by mercury poisoning. As Hall points out, this is simply false, period. At any rate, thimerosal was eliminated from vaccines in 1999. You would therefore expect the rate of autism to have gone significantly down as a result, if the hypothesis of a causal link were somehow correct. It didn’t, in fact, it went up. Moreover, a dangerous cottage industry of people selling crackpot remedies against mercury poisoning has emerged, with quacks like Mark and David Geier selling a method that amounts to a very painful process of chemical castration for the hefty sum of $5000-6000 a month. Pseudoscience can hurt, badly.

The third phase of this saga identified by Hall is the one that has seen the above-mentioned McCarthy and Winfrey involved, among others, and it is the even broader (and even less substantiated) claim that all vaccines produced by “Big Pharma” are harmful and are causing an epidemic of autism. McCarthy has an autistic child, and of course she is absolutely convinced that her motherly instincts trump science. She apparently realizes the dire consequences of what she is doing, if somewhat dimly. Here is a quote by McCarthy from the eSkeptic article: “I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their fucking fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s shit.” The problem is, of course, that current vaccines are in fact as safe as vaccines are going to be, and the dangers are only in Miss McCarthy’s deranged mind. (Incidentally, there seems to be a reliable claim that McCarthy’s son developed autistic symptoms before he was vaccinated, thereby putting in question either the mother’s “instincts” or her good faith.) Pseudoscience can make you a celebrity, the health of the children be damned.

Dr. Hall very appropriately quotes Jonathan Swift in the context of this discussion: “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after.” That, of course, is true for the lies of pseudoscience as much as for those of politics (which was Swift’s main concern). What is astounding and deeply disturbing to me is that America seems to be enthralled with this manufactured controversy about science: a substantial portion of the public is convinced that vaccines are bad, while scientists agree that they are as safe as they can be; half of the public thinks that global warming is a myth, while the overwhelming majority of competent scientists keep telling us that we are in dire straits that are getting more and more dire; and of course more than half of Americans reject evolution, despite the fact that the theory has been accepted in science since the end of the 19th century.

There is no simple solution to this problem, though these “controversies” are making the American population more ignorant (evolution), sick (vaccines) and environmentally unconscionable (global warming) than ever. Scientists and science educators need to do their part to counter this nonsense, of course. But celebrities like Carey and Winfrey ought to stop promoting bullshit because they are sleeping with a nutcase or out of a misplaced sense of wanting to help others from the dangerous depths of sheer ignorance. And of course the public at large has a duty to society to be informed and attempt to make the best decisions based on the most reliable sources of evidence. The information is out there, people, just use your brains.

Massimo's picks

* Bill Maher on how the Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital...

* Newskeek's article on evolutionary psychology, featuring an interview with yours truly.

* Paul Krugman on why the so-called "centrist" Democratic senators who are trying to kill health care reform are anything but centrists...

* Tony Judt on why we should not allow Israel to get away with making a (fictional) distinction between legal and illegal settlements in Palestine.

* Thoughtful editorial by cosmologist Lawrence Krauss on why atheism is still (likely) the best bet for scientists.

* What happens when real paleontologists do a field trip at the creation museum in Kentucky...

* Our early ancestors relied more on smell than sight, and the implications for human evolution.

* Did Neanderthals go extinct because we ate them? A food tale from our distant past.

Three fixations of fundamentalist Christians

I’ve been reading Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University, which makes for both irritating and fascinating reading. It’s the story of a semester the author spent at ultra-conservative Liberty University as a (temporary) transfer student from ultra-liberal Brown, with the aim of getting the insider’s view of what fundamentalist Christianity is all about. You can check out my Amazon review of the book if you are interested in my broad assessment of it (the short version: enjoyable read, good attempt by the author at bridging the cultural divide, unfortunate tendency by Roose to overplay the likable side of his Liberty University buddies and even of Jerry Falwell and to downplay their homophobia and bigotry).

What I’d like to focus on here is Roose’s observation, while taking various courses at Liberty, that three themes repeatedly emerged from his interactions with his professors (and I use the word in a very charitable fashion here, for the sake of argument): evolution didn’t happen, abortion is murder, and absolute truth exists. Given my interest in understanding the fundamentalist mind and fighting its pernicious effects on society, it seems to me obligatory to ponder on these three points, which I have also observed form a recurring pattern in my own more than decade-long interactions with Christian fundamentalists (though it should be added that the same themes are strong also in other fundamentalist versions of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious mythology).

Roose maintains that there are three ways in which Liberty professors attack evolution: by equating acceptance of evolution to faith in God, by questioning one or another of its scientific tenets (an all-time favorite is, of course, criticism of radio dating of rocks), or by sheer sarcasm (as in “can you believe scientists actually think the human eye is the result of chance? — They don’t, by the way). These are all very telling. The sarcasm is a form of anti-intellectualism that strongly suggests to the faithful that we simple minded folks are in fact much smarter than them PhD-sporting scientists, an anti-expert attitude that of course few fundies actually carry through in any other area of their lives (most of them go to car mechanics, doctors, lawyers, financial consultants and other such experts). The other two tacks are even more fascinating because they are mutually contradictory, and in fact represent two distinct tactics adopted by the creationist movement in the United States during the 20th century. It is simply not coherent to criticize a position on (alleged) scientific grounds (even attempting to present a scientifically acceptable alternative in the form of the oxymoronic “creation science”) while at the same time charging the other side with simply engaging in a religious belief. The content of religious beliefs is not subject to scientific inquiry by its very nature, so one cannot reasonably use science and rationality to criticize an idea, only to switch when convenient to the position that that same idea is held by faith, meaning in spite of the evidence. Then again, there never was much reasonableness in the fundamentalist mind.

Abortion, of course, would take several posts in and of itself, as it is a complex matter even for progressives. I certainly do not subscribe to the idea that abortion should be as easily available as aspirin, or that women have an absolute and unquestionable right to do what they will with the fetuses they carry. To contemplate having an abortion is to engage in an incredibly complex and painful exercise in ethical judgment, and there simply is no easy way out. That said, the fundamentalist insistence on the “sanctity of life” strikes me as hypocritical and ill-founded. First off, most of the same people who scream “baby murder” are also in favor of the death penalty, for instance, or have no trouble sending thousands or even millions of innocents to their death by declaring holy wars of one kind or another. But more to the point, these people seem to be completely incapable of understanding that “personhood” is a continuous process that is only potential at the moment of conception. Is the zygote a human life form? Yes, though it won’t become a human being for months. Is it a human person? At that moment most certainly not. This is important because we recognize rights to persons not to cells (well, we unfortunately recognize rights to corporations too, but that’s a whole different story). If it were biological material that had rights, then sperms and eggs shouldn’t be wasted either (if your mind wandered to Monty Python’s Every Sperm is Sacred you are in good company). Moreover, and rather counterintuitively, fundamentalists should be in favor of human cloning, and should defend the right to existence of every single human cell, since they are all potential human beings that could become actual if they were to go through a cloning process. This position is absurd, of course, but it highlights the idea that there is no simple solution to the issue, no clear black and white, us vs. them approach that is tenable.

And that brings me to the last tenet on Roose’s list: absolute truth (to be found, of course, in the Bible). This is really what fundamentalists of all stripes have a problem with. They simply cannot accept that Truth with a capital T is essentially inaccessible to humans (except when we are talking about logic and mathematics), and that moreover in many real cases of interest to human affairs there is no absolute truth. This doesn’t mean that anything goes (the dreaded extreme postmodernist position), but rather that truth comes in degrees, or that there may be more than one reasonable assessment of a given situation, leading to pluralism on whatever issue one may be considering.

Indeed, it is this obsession with absolute truth, this epistemological hubris if you will, that also explains the other two recurrent themes: fundamentalists wouldn’t have a problem with evolution if they didn’t insist on taking the Bible as the definitive word in matters of history and science (as many moderate Christians in fact don’t). And they would be able to tolerate a range of positions on abortion if they didn’t think that there is an absolute distinction between human and non-human, and an absolute way to determine right and wrong.

There is, of course, no simple solution to the problem of fundamentalism. However, I must admit that — as irritating as Roose’s book becomes at times — he has hit on a good point in his Epilogue: “Humans have always quarreled [I’d say murdered each other, but whatever] over their beliefs, and I suppose they always will. But judging from my post-Liberty experience, this particular religious conflict isn’t built around a hundred-foot brick wall. If anything, it’s built around a flimsy piece of cardboard, held in place on both sides by paranoia and lack of exposure. It’s there, no doubt, but it’s hardly forbidding. And more important, it’s hardly soundproof. Religious conflict might be a basic human instinct, but I have faith [a rather unfortunate choice of word], now more than ever before, that we can subvert that instinct for long enough to listen to each other.”

In other words, start wearing a suitable “Your Friendly Atheist Neighbor” t-shirt. If you really are friendly, the other side might see you as someone to respectfully disagree with, not as a demon to send to hell as expeditiously as possible. That would be progress indeed.

Massimo's picks

* Bill Maher talks to Keith Obermann about health care and why the Dems should ignore Republican opposition.

* Interview with Bertrand Russell, always a pleasure.

* Massimo's interview on Minnesota Atheists Radio, on atheism and politics (not quite the level of Russell, alas).

* What neuroscience can tell us about teaching.

* The philosophy of quantum physics.

* Could demographic trends put the GOP in the minority for a long time? Let's hope so.

* From brain scanning to mind reading?

* How is it that psychics can't tell when their are being swindled?

* Yet another important step toward understanding the origin of life. I wonder what creationists will say...

* Gay behavior is common among animal species. Will conservatives keep extolling the family values of penguins?

* Why zoning out may be good for your examined life.

* A delightful essay by philosopher Simon Blackburn on why David Hume is so much better than Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

* And speaking of Hitchens, as much as I don't particularly care for either some of his political views or his writing style, I must admit he's right on the mark at Slate on the so-called "elections" in Iran.

Bertrand Russell

Now that I am officially a philosopher (i.e., my salary is going to be paid by a philosophy, instead of a biology, department), I can indulge full time in reading philosophy without feeling guilty. I haven’t mastered the skill (of not feeling guilty) yet, but I’m working on it. This is also why I’m starting an occasional series of blog posts devoted to individual philosophers, picked among those that strike my fancy for one reason or another. Obviously, a blog post is not the appropriate venue for even a superficial look at the entire body of work of a major philosopher, so what I’ll do instead is to briefly comment on a number of major themes relevant to each particular case, and hope to stimulate people to read more about that philosopher. We begin with the 20th century British logician and moral theorist Bertrand Russell.

Russell was the first philosopher I ever read, beginning when I was in high school, and arguably the guy that got first got me into philosophy. It was one of those long and boring Sunday afternoons in my father’s house in Rome, which we spent listening to a radio broadcast of the soccer games of the day. I was scanning one of my father’s collections of books with the same cover, one of those things that people who don’t read, for some reason (guilt? shame?), like to have on their shelves so that they can pretend to have some interest in Culture, even though said books lie virgin on the bookcase and their owner couldn’t tell you the difference between Homer and Shakespeare if he heard a few lines of The Odyssey contrasted with excerpts from Hamlet.

At any rate, I picked up Russell’s autobiography, having vaguely heard the name before. I couldn’t put the damn thing down, and kept reading it as if it were a ravishing novel (which in a non-fictional sense, it is). After that I moved to Why I am Not a Christian, another hugely influential book in my youth, and so on with several others by Russell. I was hooked, and thirty years later I am about to become a real philosopher in the same department where the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly is produced. But enough about me, let’s talk about Bertie.

Russell’s life was packed with the kind of events that fill several other people’s lifetimes, partly because he lived a very long existence (he died at age 98), but mostly because the man had an incredible amount of physical and mental energy. He married four times, wrote an astounding number of influential books and articles about philosophy, got in trouble with the law several times for his anti-war sentiments, and was denied an appointment at the City University of New York (where I am going in the Fall) because a judge thought that Russell’s opinions as expressed in his Marriage and Morals made him “morally unfit” to teach in American universities.

Russell’s chief interest in philosophy was in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, and his primary achievement in that field is the monumental Principia Mathematica, co-written with Alfred North Withehead. His project was to establish mathematics on entirely self-sufficient logical foundations, a project that eventually failed and was later demonstrated by people like Kurt Godel (he of “incompleteness theorem” fame) to be impossible in principle. Russell’s work was foundational and highly influential nonetheless. Russell is also commonly acknowledged as the father of what today is known as “analytic” philosophy (as opposed to the other major contemporary branch, so-called “continental” philosophy). The idea is that philosophy should be concerned with clarifying the use of language, eliminate confusion and get rid of incoherent or meaningless propositions (particularly abundant in certain writings on metaphysics).

Frankly, however, the aspects of Russell’s thought that I consider most relevant still to people today concern his politics and his writings on morality. Unlike many progressives during his lifetime, Russell recognized early on that the communist regime of the Soviet Union was a disaster for its citizens and for humanity at large, and was accordingly publicly very critical of it. In a typical fashion, here is how he managed to attack the Soviet revolution and the Catholic Church in one paragraph:

“One who believes as I do, that free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism as much as to the Church of Rome. The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.”

Russell also clearly saw the threat of Nazism ahead of many others, and accordingly thought that World War II (unlike WWI) was necessary and justified. For a time he had high hopes about the role of the United States as a positive force in international governance, but those hopes were dashed by Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis first and by the Vietnam war later. He co-signed a document with Einstein in 1955 that led to the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs a couple of years later. Shortly thereafter he also became the first president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (from which he eventually resigned because the organization did not support the sort of civil disobedience for which Russell was arrested in 1961).

The man had guts, and had no qualms in fighting for, not just writing about, his ideas on a just and peaceful society. Accordingly, Russell wrote forcefully on a variety of other ethical issues, favoring women’s right to vote, access to birth control, and rights for homosexuals, to mention a few. In other words, he was (and still is) the conservative bigot’s ultimate nightmare. You’ve got to love the man.

Let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Bertie, concerning the issue of death and the zest for life:

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”

Massimo's Picks

* An interesting article by Harriet Hall in eSkeptic about the placebo effect and how it works.

* Some good food for thought on Iraq and the Middle East from New York Times' Thomas Friedman.

* Defending a science writer who is being sued for libels by pseudoscientific chiropractors.

* I bet you didn't foresee the new trend on TV: psychic shows!

* Keith Olbermann catches Newt Gingrich directly (and presumably unwittingly) contradicting "he who must not be contradicted," Ronald Reagan.

* Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything... except your intelligence (and their blog is pretty good too!).

* Paul Krugman on how right-wind media and politicians are fanning conspiracy theorists and other lunatics.

* The Federal government has spent $2.5 billion of your money to test "alternative" medicine for the past ten years. The results are rather disappointing...

* Journalist Carl Zimmer on how wiki tools help research on swine flu, and a new model for how science might work in the future.

Deepak Chopra defends Oprah while committing endless logical fallacies

I regularly read the Huffington Post, for the good reason that it often sports intelligent articles written from a progressive standpoint, and because I believe in open access and open contribution to the socio-political discourse (otherwise, I wouldn’t bother writing this blog). Then again, one of the drawbacks of openness is that you get crap together with the good stuff. This isn’t altogether bad, since reading crap is a necessary component of developing one’s own sense of critical thinking, sharpening the baloney detector, so to speak. But crap needs to be responded to, especially when it comes from influential sources. Hence this column on good old Deepak Chopra (he of quantum mysticism fame) defending Oprah Winfrey from the attacks of a “struggling news magazine” (Newsweek) which recently dared criticizing Oprah for endorsing and promoting pseudomedicine — most famously by lending ample tv time to Jenny McCarthy, the former Playboy model who maintains against all evidence that vaccines cause autism.

Ok, Deepak, here we go. Chopra complains that Newsweek adopts “the same tiresome blend of gotcha journalism and selective fact-reporting that fills tabloid coffers,” which is a stunning case of the pot calling the kettle black if you go on and read the remainder of Chopra’s own piece in the Post. Be that as it may, we then find out that “[Oprah’s] intention to improve women's lives on all fronts is so obvious as to be almost above criticism.” Really? I have no reason to doubt Ms. Winfrey’s intentions, but surely Deepak has heard that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions, no? But you see, “the fact that she has celebrity guests who have causes and crusades in the area of health, such as Jenny McCarthy or Suzanne Somers, is not the same as Oprah herself endorsing what they say.” Well, if you actually watch Oprah (which I sometimes do while working out at the gym) she is strongly endorsing McCarthy and Somers, as it is made clear by the continuous nodding and words of encouragement that Winfrey utters every time these quacks are on her show, or by her sometimes vehement dismissal of their critics.

A major argument deployed by Chopra is that “[Oprah] brings up creative solutions to problems that medical science is baffled by, such as the healing response itself and the role of subjectivity in patient response. ... Do subjective changes affect healing? Obviously they do, or we wouldn't have the placebo effect, which comes into play at least 30% of the time in illness.” He then goes on to show proof of what he is saying by citing a study (conducted by mainstream medical researchers, incidentally), showing that “on average, acupuncture patients received twice as much benefit as those on standard treatment [anti-inflammatory drugs or a massage]. The kicker is that some of the patients received fake acupuncture — they were pricked superficially with toothpicks — and received the same relief.”

Now let us stop for a moment and analyze the above. First off, Chopra does not seem to understand the placebo effect. As Harriet Hall explained in a recent issue of eSkeptic, the 30% figure (which is actually 35%) derives from a 1955 study published in the (decidedly non “alternative”) Journal of the American Medical Association, and authored by Henry Beecher (a non-alternative MD). But the figure of 35% refers to the cumulative effect of everything that is not treatment, which includes not just the actual placebo effect, but more importantly a large component deriving from the body’s natural (evolved, not mystical) ability to heal itself. Indeed, a more recent study by Asbjorn Hrobjartsson and Peter Gotzsche published in 2001 in the New England Journal of Medicine properly compared the improvement achieved with no treatment to the improvement due to the placebo effect, and found little measurable effect of the placebo. This doesn’t mean that the placebo effect doesn’t occur, just that it is much more limited than the “30%” figure mentioned by Chopra, who apparently doesn’t bother reading the medical literature before making his spectacularly misinformed pronouncements.

Moreover, a rational person would conclude from the study of “real” and “fake” acupuncture that there is no such thing as real acupuncture! If pricking patients with toothpicks has the same effect as inserting needles, wouldn’t you surmise that the whole thing is in fact the result of placebo and natural healing, no acupuncture required thank you very much?

Chopra criticizes the “medical establishment” for being slow to explore new treatments, and cites the case of American doctors who have finally begun considering lumpectomies in place of the much more drastic mastectomies in cases of breast cancer. I am no fan of the health industry, and particularly of the pharmaceutical industry, especially as they are run in this country. But, please notice that the increase in interest in lumpectomies was the result of rigorous studies published by European researchers in peer reviewed journals. Nothing whatsoever to do with “alternative” medicine, whatever that means.

One more example, which perfectly embodies Chopra’s “logic,” such as it is. The mysticism that he promotes (and handsomely profits from) needs “mystery,” as in things that official science doesn’t understand. Otherwise he couldn’t sell his quackery as an “alternative.” So he cites, predictably, the mind-body connection, as in the following stunning passage: “So let me offer a typical finding that comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other official sources. It concerns the effect of child abuse and other adverse circumstances on later health. Is it ‘soul talk’ to believe that a child raised around parents who abuse substances, who suffer from mental illness, or who outright abuse the child will suffer health risks later in life? According to the CDC study, covering 15,000 HMO members in San Diego between 1995-97, the risk of contracting an autoimmune disease as an adult is increased from 70% to 100% if you happened to be abused as a child or grow up with adverse home conditions. ... This study suggests a human connection rather than a biological one.”

A human rather than biological connection? What does Chopra think human beings are, if not biological organisms? And notice, again, that the source of the study is a perfectly mainstream organization, the federally funded CDC. And no, no scientist in his right mind would dismiss this as crazy ‘soul talk,’ because the idea of a connection between stress and health has been accepted and explored experimentally by biologists in both humans and other animals for decades. Indeed, if you are a dualist (as in “mind-body”) like Chopra you actually have a hard time explaining exactly how is it possible that the mind and the body are thus connected (a much bigger mind, Rene Descartes, tried and miserably failed). But if you are an old-fashioned materialist scientist you actually expect a connection between “mind” and “body” because they are both the results of biological functions.

I’m sorry, Mr. Chopra, but that little “struggling news magazine” actually did something that takes gall these days: they questioned the nonsense sputtered by a celebrity with no medical training whatsoever in the name of protecting the public’s health and welfare. It may be tiresome journalism, but it is the only kind of journalism worth reading.

Blasphemy laws in the 21st century

Blasphemy is a strange concept, according to my dictionary it refers to “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously of God or sacred things.” By that definition, every religious believer constantly engages in blasphemy — of all the other gods she doesn’t believe in. You would think that this simple observation would put an end to any silly talk of legislating blasphemy, but you would be spectacularly wrong. A recent checklist of blasphemy laws worldwide makes it clear that they are found not only in the obvious places — Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other similarly unenlightened nations — but in most European countries, Canada and several states in the US.

To add irony to tragedy, of course, Saudi Arabia — that beacon of tolerance — has recently mounted a campaign at the United Nations to pass an anti-blasphemy resolution, sponsored (surprise surprise!) by the 56 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Because nothing speaks more loudly in favor of religious tolerance than the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, to pick on most obviously the motor behind this effort, an inter-faith conference on religious blasphemy simply could not be held, because Jews, Christians, and even representatives of non-Saudi versions of Islam would not be allowed into the country if they openly professed their respective creeds.

Proponents of anti-blasphemy laws within international bodies like the UN or the European community seem oblivious to the obvious legal (not to mention moral) contradictions that such laws immediately raise. As far as the United Nations is concerned, for instance, blasphemy laws are in stark opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which constitutes an essential part of the UN’s raison d'être. In Europe, as recently as May 2009 the Venice Commission, which is the EU’s advisory body on constitutional issues, clearly stated that blasphemy comes under freedom of expression, which is protected in the EU charter.

Fortunately, most western countries simply do not use their blasphemy laws, though attempts to eliminate them altogether have failed in recent years in Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands, for instance. The UK is a glaring and positive exception: in March of last year the House of Lords finally abolished anti-blasphemy statutes with a 148-87 vote. It is instructive, however, to read how conservative member of the house Detta O’Cathain attempted to defend the indefensible:

“The essential question is: Should we abolish Christian beliefs and replace them with secular beliefs? As long as there has been a country called England, it has been a Christian country, publicly acknowledging the one true God.” Ah yes, the one true god. Except of course for all those other religious people who are legal British citizens and happen to believe in other gods. And of course that is precisely not the essential question: O’Cathain is making the same (possibly willful) mistake that is common among Christian fundamentalists in the United States, the confusion between freedom of speech (including of course for non-theists) and the persecution of one’s own faith. Could it be that this persecution paranoia comes from the actual legacy of intolerance and violence that has characterized Christian churches throughout their history?

But the UK's positive step is about to be countered by an unusual move in a nearby part of Europe: Ireland is considering putting a new blasphemy law on its books! The proposed statute says in part “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000” and defines blasphemy as speech that is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.” I’m not sure what the difference is between “grossly abusive” and simply abusive, or where ithe threshold is that defines a “substantial” number of offended, but the concept of “insult” is so tenuous that I seriously wonder how such a law — God forbid it should be passed — would allow the preservation of any free speech at all in Ireland. Suppose I start a religion that has only one commandment: there are no gods other than the Big Green Blob in the sky.” (You will appreciate that this isn’t that far fetched, considering that a similar clause represents the first commandment of all three Abrahamic religions.) Even at the onset, with a membership of one, my new religion will both have to be protected against blasphemy and simultaneously manage to be blasphemous to all other religions in one fell swoop. Talk about logical contradictions! The example might seem outrageous, but it is simply a very obvious version of what is already out there: as my atheists friends often tell their religious counterparts, I disbelieve just one more god than you do, so everyone is by definition blasphemous.

But of course the real argument against blasphemy laws is not a matter of logical contradictions or legal consistency, it’s a matter of simple decency. This was stated most clearly by the US Supreme Court in Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952): “It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures.” That’s because an open society can only thrive by being, well, open. I understand that this doesn’t go down well in theocratic countries like Saudi Arabia, but it really ought to be a no-brainer in western democracies. And this principle ought to apply to non-religious speech as well: Canada and several European countries, for instance, have “hate speech” laws that make it illegal (e.g. in Germany) to deny historical facts like the Holocaust. Denying the Holocaust is stupid, bigoted and ignorant, but we should not be getting into the business of legislating against people’s stupidity, bigotry or ignorance (it would be a truly Sysyphean task anyway). Instead, we should combat them with education and critical thinking.

What needs protection is not hate speech, of course, but hate action: burning down churches, killing abortion doctors, or attacking the embassies of countries whose citizens publish satirical cartoons ought to be strongly condemned by all and swiftly prosecuted on legal grounds. There is only one reasonable exception to an uncompromising protection of speech: when someone directly incites hate crimes. But on that count, it is religions across the world that have a really bad record. Should we not cleanse our own house from actual violence and hatred, before rallying against the imaginary ones that our paranoia attributes to other people?