March-April Edition

The March-April edition is finally here. Some extra details on it can be read here.

Thanks to Matt and Katy for contributing.

Help Take Down Naturopathy

By Michael Hawkins

There usually is no central theme to Without Apology. This is premised on the notion that a broad band of ideas is the most fruitful method of reaching people. However, sometimes there are more pressing issues.

It may have been noticed that a number of articles are devoted toward discussing naturopathy – the belief in a magical “vital force” which is central to the body being able to heal itself. At first glance this belief may seem harmless, but reality shows otherwise.

Naturopaths are licensed as a certain type of doctor in the state of Maine. This is a mistake. It would be inappropriate to go to one of these individuals for medical care. (Indeed, one of the health methods of some naturopaths is iridology; this is where one looks at the color patterns and other characteristics of the iris to make determinations about certain aspects of a patient’s health.) The low qualifications needed to become a naturopath, the sub-standard medical training, and the plainly silly diagnostic methods give the very real possibility of a naturopath prescribing contra-indicated drugs. At the very least, a waste of time and money is highly likely.

It is important to the health and safety of all Maine citizens that naturopaths lose their right to practice medicine in Maine. We ought to hold our medical professionals to higher standards.

Please email your state senator about this. Actually do it. It only takes a minute – http://www.maine.gov/legis/senate/senators/email/maillst.htm

If you do not know your state senator, email Libby Mitchell – http://www.mainesenate.org/mitchell/email.htm

The health of the gullible, the ignorant, and the simply deluded is at serious risk right now in Maine because of the status of naturopaths. It is paramount that everyone do what he or she can to prevent dangers in the healthcare industry. Write your representative and ask that Maine become the third state to have an outright ban on the practice of naturopathy.

How Naturopathy Could Kill Suzie Q

By Michael Hawkins

The following is a letter the Kennebec Journal will apparently not print. Trying to discover the reason and rationality behind the decision is futile. It’s just a bad paper.

Let’s pretend Suzie Q has a pain in her stomach. At first she chalks it up to something she ate. But the pain keeps returning. Maybe it’s a bug, she thinks.

After the pain persists for some time, Suzie Q wonders if maybe it’s stress. She slows things down for a little while.

But it doesn’t help.

Soon she decides she needs to see someone about this. She goes to a naturopath.

The naturopath assesses Suzie Q’s state. Maybe he utilizes Chinese medical astrology. ASTROLOGY. After all, accredited naturopathic schools really do teach it.

He decides Suzie Q needs garlic or some similar herbal remedy. Then he asks for his $80-200 fee.

Suzie Q goes home happy, but the pain soon deflates her again. She continues to see her naturopath, trying multiple herbs.

Six months pass when she finds herself in a hospital bed. She’s surrounded by medical doctors. Her oncologist tells her she has an aggressive stomach cancer that has progressed too far for treatment. If only she had seen him six months earlier, she might have had a chance.

What if Suzie Q was your friend? Your mother, your sister, your brother, your father, your spouse, your child? You?

Contact your representative and demand that naturopaths lose all licensing and practicing rights NOW.

The Streisand Effect

By Michael Hawkins

“The Streisand Effect” is a phenomenon named after the actions of Barbara Streisand. In 2003, she sued a website for hosting an aerial picture of her mansion, citing privacy concerns. She lost not only the suit, but even more of her privacy. The website found itself with 400,000+ hits over the next month. In short, attempts at censorship on the Internet are often met with higher publicity for the censored person, video, or picture. It is important to keep that in mind while reading the rest of this article.

Andreas Moritz is a quack from South Carolina who despises all good medical advice, acts against the well being of the sick, and preys on the vulnerable.

On his website, http://www.ener-chi.com, Moritz claims “Cancer does not kill a person afflicted with it! What kills a cancer patient is not the tumor, but the numerous reasons behind cell mutation and tumor growth. These root causes should be the focus of every cancer treatment, yet most oncologists typically ignore them. Constant conflicts, guilt and shame, for example, can easily paralyze the body’s most basic functions, and lead to the growth of a cancerous tumor.”

This is pure crackpot talk. The man has no education in oncology or basic biology and is outright dangerous. That’s why he tried to get my website, http://www.forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com, shut down.

It began May 24, 2009. I made a post titled “Andreas Moritz is a stupid, dangerous man”. In it I quote from an article written by Moritz in which he repeats much of the above anti-scientific, stupid, dangerous garbage above. He blames the victim, advocates against standard treatments, and is, well, stupid and dangerous.

Moritz soon responded, repeating his crackpot claims and demanding respect. As someone who actually likes science, I demanded evidence first. He had none.

Eventually, Moritz posted a nearly 10,000 word spam article of his (which, for some strange reason, ended with an anti-vaccine rant) and scuttled off. I presumed this was the last of my direct contact with this crackpot.

Soon my post started to show up as the number 2 result in Google for “Andreas Moritz”. The pleasure I took in this, however, was cut short February 17.

On that day, my hosting site, WordPress, suspended and blocked my website. The reason has to do with local naturopathic quack, Christopher Maloney.

Two weeks earlier I got a notice which suspended my posting rights for several days. After WordPress made me contact them (because telling me directly obviously doesn’t make sense, right?), I was informed they had received a notice which said Christopher Maloney was an actual doctor. This ran counter to a post I had where I stated precisely the opposite. They told me to edit or delete the post.

Since Maloney is a naturopathic doctor under Maine law, I corrected my post to state that he is only a doctor by a low set of standards and that the medical community rejects his status as legitimate. This apparently wasn’t good enough, hence the eventual block.

I quickly contacted PZ Myers of the blog Pharyngula, one of the largest science blogs on the Internet. He publicized my case, titling a post “Christopher Maloney is a quack”.

But it was soon discovered that Maloney was claiming to not be the one who contacted WordPress, counter to my assumption. As it turned out, Moritz would later send me an email where he bragged of his accomplishment – while also threatening “an expensive lawsuit”.

That was a mistake.

Myers soon had a post titled “Andreas Moritz is a cancer quack”. The story spread across the Internet, finding its way on to Richard Dawkins’ site, http://www.richarddawkins.net, and making the rounds through the rest of the blogosphere and Twitter. I was famous on the Internet.

It soon became apparent that Maloney and Moritz had been in contact prior to all this. That means Maloney’s claim of not being responsible for getting my site shut down is disingenuous at the very least. He shoulders the anti-science burden as much as the cancer quack.

After 6 days of the Internet tearing the two quacks apart, WordPress found its spine and returned my site. My post is again number two – but now there are far more sites which tell their readers of the quackery of Andreas Moritz. Oh, and do search “Christopher Maloney Maine”, sans the quotation marks, on both Google and YouTube.

Whatever pettiness may seemingly be apparent in all this is really a genuine, deep disdain for anti-scientific quacks. Maloney offers treatments which are ineffective, poorly evidenced, and not supported by the scientific community. His danger is passive in that what he offers does no direct harm, but it does do harm when it delays real treatments for real health issues. A person with stage 1 stomach cancer may see Maloney for an undiagnosed pain, only to be ‘treated’ with some useless herbal remedy. The cancer will continue on its path, ignoring the ineffective naturopathic ‘treatments’. By the time a real medical doctor makes a correct diagnosis, it may be too late. Why so many states, including Maine, allow people to this to other people is a mystery.

Moritz, on the other hand, is the lowest of the low. He preys upon the sick for monetary gain, offering actively dangerous advice. He blames the victim, incoherently babbles malarkey about real medical science, and tells people to forego real treatments. The disdain for this man should be high among all people, whether he got their blogs shutdown or not.

Naturopaths Are Not Doctors

By Michael Hawkins

Okay, maybe that headline isn’t entirely accurate.

Naturopaths are people who practice an alternative form of medicine which has little to no basis in reality. Under Maine law, they are actually considered doctors. They aren’t medical doctors, mind you. No, no. Maine law holds them to a lower standard, meaning they are Naturopathic Doctors (ND), not MD’s. This also gives them fewer rights than real doctors. Be thankful.

Naturopathy is a belief that the body can heal itself via its “vital force”. This is entirely magical thinking which has no basis in science, is contradicted by everything in chemistry and biochemistry, and has never had any significant research done in its favor.

One local naturopathic ‘doctor’, Christopher Maloney, wrote a letter to the editor of the Kennebec Journal several months ago. In it he espoused several untruths, verging into flat out lies. This is common practice for these sort of people, so it isn’t surprising. What was especially unfortunate, though, was that the KJ ran an extra blurb explaining that naturopaths are considered to be a certain type of doctor under Maine state law. This was entirely unnecessary and, if one is to use the standards of the medical community at large, dangerous because it gives undue gravitas to a field where relatively little medical training is actually required.

One of the dangerous things Maloney told readers was that the flu vaccine only provides 6 to 15 percent protection. He misconstrued some basic statistics. In reality (and according to the CDC), the flu vaccine offers upwards of a 90% reduction in becoming infected with the flu for healthy adults. And even in the instances where someone still gets the flu after being vaccinated, the virus is much less intense.

The reason Maloney and other naturopaths want the public to believe these things is that they are generally hyper-skeptical of vaccinations (just like Jenny McCarthy). While a faux-sympathetic tone towards vaccines is sometimes taken by these people, they actually seek to raise significant doubt; it’s one of their most obvious goals. Of course, ask them to supply any evidence to the general danger of vaccines and, well, “evidence” may well need to be defined for these people.

For instance, a review of Maloney’s site, http://www.maloneymedical.com, shows a section on autism and vaccines where Maloney offers several links to a single anecdotal story (which isn’t convincing on its own merits anyway). He ends with several other links, the most prominent of which may be his own personal anecdote.

This is not evidence.

Deepening the hole into which he placed his anti-scientific letter, Maloney goes on to state that the flu vaccine has no effect on deadly complications for any population group. What he doesn’t say is that the non-mountebank truth is that they reduce hospitalization in the elderly by 50-60% (CDC). Death rate falls by 80% (CDC).

Next – and this one really irked me – Maloney tells readers that black elderberry has been shown to “block” H1N1. The worst thing about this blatant falsehood was just how easy it was to find out the truth. PubMed features two peer-reviewed studies on this. Both (by largely the same group) show that black elderberry had some positive effects for the regular flu, but the study size was small and thus more research needs to be done. (In other words, no respected member of the medical field would ever start making recommendations on such a miniscule sample of evidence.) At no point in the paper was it indicated that black elderberry has any sort of vaccination properties (either for H1N1 or what it was actually studying – the regular flu), which is what Maloney seems to imply.

It’s because of this sort of malarkey that naturopaths are not generally considered doctors within the medical community at large. Maine law must change to reflect this fact.

Claiming Objective Morality Sans An Objective Source

By Michael Hawkins

Is it possible for a believer in objective evil to determine what actually is evil without either invoking his god (or claimed objective standard) or undermining his entire position? Here is an examination of that question.

For the sake of expediency, “God”, here, can refer to any deity of a belief structure which is viewed as creating some ultimate standard for evil. This includes polytheistic belief structures in many cases. “Evil” can usually be read to include both good and evil.

Here’s the common stance: In order to determine what is ultimately right or wrong, one must make an appeal to a source which has final standing. Without such an appeal, right or wrong has no universal meaning, only local meaning, and that is ultimately meaningless. (On an aside, that only addresses the value of local meaning on a universal scale – something obviously addressed simply in terminology. It says nothing of the local value of local meaning.)

With this stance comes some questions. If that ultimate source is necessary for ultimate right or wrong (and exists), how can one know what he/she/it has to say on any given human moral affair? Is it possible for one to have access to all this source has to say? Are humans limited in access?

The common answer to the first question comes in the form of holy texts. The Torah, Bible, and Koran are “the big three”. They give specific decrees on things that are right and wrong while claiming to be from God. In them murder is universally wrong. Theft, sex before marriage, dishonoring one’s parents. All, and many more, are described throughout these books. They and other holy texts act as the most direct source to knowing what is right or wrong as declared by an ultimate source.

The second question is where moral claims by believers run into trouble. Is it possible to have access to all an ultimate source has to say by virtue of holy texts? Obviously not. It isn’t possible for all moral situations and conundrums to be addressed via individual books. More directly, not all such instances are actually addressed.

So does this limit human access to this ultimate information? If holy texts account for the only manner by which one can attain such knowledge, then yes. If there are alternative routes, then those must by explored. Meditation, inference, and prayer offer the most promising paths. But first it is necessary to tie everything together.

The accuracy of any declaration on right or wrong is called into question in any holy text since they are all written by fallible human beings. This must be acknowledged for the sake of truth-seeking. However, for the sake of argumentation, it will be necessary to side-step the issue. Instead, the focus must go on to the second question. The possibility of having access to everything God has to say is nil if holy texts are the only source. What this importantly means is that if a moral issue arises which is not addressed within any holy text, then it is not possible for a believer to make an objective stance. One topical issue can be grabbed from the headlines to make the point.

Abortion is not addressed in any of the big three holy texts. Vague passages can be interpreted as such (much like Dr. Seuss’ “Horton Hears a Who” has been abused), but nothing is ever really said. This means that if a believer is to make a claim that abortion is objectively evil (remember, or good) here, he has no ground on which to stand. At least he has no ground by his own position that objective evil must come from an objective source. By chance he may be right that his objective source believes abortion is evil (he has a 50/50 shot, afterall), but his determination is based upon some other source. What that source may be or is bears no importance here. It is enough to say that it is emphatically not God.

For the further sake of expediency, it should be readily pointed out that even should abortion prove to be the wrong example for this exercise (though it isn’t), then others abound. Is capitalism evil? Communism? Social security? Even wearing mismatched socks? No holy text says anything of these issues or a number of others.

Back to the third question, human access may not be limited to just holy texts if meditation, inference, and prayer are options. These all fail, however. Should meditation and prayer reveal any information on a moral question, they are not valid beyond the targeted person. While it is possible that God revealed that something is objectively evil to a particular person, that largely argues for a local meaning. That is, Susie may know that it is objectively evil to spin in circles after sunset because God told her, but that information is entirely reliant upon Susie – the standard can only be determined to be subjective (even if it really is objective). As for inference, that can only be done using holy texts or prayer in the first place. So let us not forget the very first question: is it possible to determine what is objectively evil without invoking God. Susie may have an alternative source, but it is still God. She may be able to infer from what God has revealed, but she still must invoke his existence.

So what if a believer says “X is objectively evil” but has no holy text or revelation to back up such a claim? That is, there is no source which says “This is what God says about this issue” and there is no source which could directly indicate what God says. How can the believer then say something is objectively evil? This necessarily undermines his entire premise. If something can be determined to be objectively evil without first invoking God, then there is some other method by which the believer is making his statement. He obviously cannot logically maintain saying he knows objective standards exist because God exists and God exists because objective standards exist.

In short, no, a believer cannot “determine what actually is evil without either invoking his god (or claimed objective standard) or undermining his entire position”. He must invoke his god or undermine his whole argument. As has been demonstrated, he must cite his god (or objective standard). He often cannot do that. In those situations if he then says he has determined that something is objectively evil anyway, he is either wrong or he has admitted that his objective standard is not actually necessary for purposes here.

On a final note (one for clarification), this argument can be applied to any declaration on evil by a believer in objective standards. If it is necessary for objectiveness to exist in order for evil to exist, then the position is still undermined whenever a believer declares something evil without any sort of source beyond himself. The argument is precisely the same, but the terms are clarified: “evil” always means “objective evil” in the given context.

Not Being a Selfish Prick

By Kaytlyn Gillis

America is a land of excess. Americans are known for wanting things to be bigger, faster, and stronger than the latest version. For a country that was built on hard labor as a land of the free, we have quickly become the land of “not good enough”. It’s not even worth purchasing a cell phone or computer anymore, as a new one will hit the shelves the following week. American’s aren’t satisfied. We want it cheaper, we want it faster, and we want it all to ourselves.

Recently, there has been a great deal of controversy about the relief efforts being sent to Haiti after the destruction the country has suffered from the recent earthquake. The Red Cross, as well as many other independent organizations, have combined efforts to help with the devastation that shook the country. Many people have voiced opinions that Americans shouldn’t help others, that we should “take care of our own first”. In fact, a popular mass message on Facebook recently stated just that. This particular message went as far as to say “shame on you America” for helping Haitians, when there are so many underprivileged Americans.

This is a matter of wealth distribution, not ability to provide foreign aid. The United States is one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, even when taking into account the absorbent National Debt. Yes, it is essential that we take care of our own, especially those that are struggling to provide food and medical care to their families. Yes, many families are hurting right now, but it is not because of the money being spent by the US on foreign aid. The US spends a small percentage of its Gross National Income on foreign aid. Some years it has been as low as 2%, according to http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/us-and-foreign-aid-assistance. Therefore, if you deem it necessary to complain about the US spending its “pocket change” to help countries that sometimes struggle simply to find clean water, keep in mind that much larger sums of money are needed to get our country back on track. Go ahead and let your blood boil as you finance another big screen TV. The rest of us will focus on the rich bankers who were “bailed out”, and then took a vacation with the bonus checks they received, for it is these people that are taking away the essential funds that are so desperately needed for our poor and underinsured citizens.

The priorities of our government are the problem, not foreign assistance. It we take away foreign assistance, we are still left with underpaid workers, high priced health care, and a growing unemployment rate. It is the redistribution of wealth with which Americans should be concerned. The gap between the rich and poor is widening by the minute, even though foreign assistance program efforts remain relatively the same. (And thank goodness Reagan and his make-the-rich-richer and the-poor-poorer policies aren’t in the same force as they once were.)

Every day, millions of Americans go more into debt. Plasma TVs, vacations, and other elaborate (and in many cases unnecessary) purchases make up the monthly credit card bills of many of us. At a time when every other commercial is an ad to finance a new car or other big purchase, and our nightly sitcoms are interrupted with ads claiming to teach you how to get out of or consolidate debt, it seems that we should start examining the true financial issues. As a significant amount of the aid being sent to Haiti is from donations given by average Americans, I find no reason to find fault with those who choose to help others.

The US can afford to help other countries in a desperate time of need. Our frustrations should be aimed at those who waste our nation’s money. The Bank Bailout is a perfect example. But we can even go as far as to reexamine why our baseball players are offered millions of dollars a year, along with food and travel allowances, yet our teachers and social workers are underpaid and overworked. Explain to me how it is that foreign aid, of all things, is what is “hurting our own”.

Poker Legends and the Game of Life

This article appeared in the previous edition, but was unfortunately butchered in an editing error. It has reappeared in the latest edition and so reappears here as well.

By Matthew Doyon

Emerging from a field of thousands of contestants, there were only two players left. And only one of those two could make history. It was November 2008, and the main event of the World Series in Las Vegas was coming to a culmination. The World Series of Poker, that is.

Neither one of the final two players left in the poker main event contest was American. On one side of the table sat Russian Ivan Demidov, and on the other side sat Austrian Peter Eastgate. Both men had outlasted over six thousand other players to earn a place at the final table of poker’s grandest stage.

The World Series of Poker is a group of poker games that is held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the not so distant past, this event was attended mainly by professional players, celebrities and maybe other well-to-do persons who simply enjoyed bumping elbows with the poker pros. An amateur player aptly named Chris Moneymaker quickly changed all of that.

In 2003, Moneymaker came out of obscurity to beat hundreds of professionals, win the main event, and become the poker champion of the world. There were around eight hundred entrants that year. The year after this “no-name” became world champion over twenty-five hundred people paid the ten thousand dollar entry fee and joined the game. Since then, the number of entrants has always been comfortably over five thousand. Poker is no longer a professional gambler’s game. It is now the game of the “no-name”. And the no-names have won every year since 2003.

And so, in 2008, Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov sat at a table, each poised and hoping to claim the coveted title of poker’s best player. Demidov and Eastgate had about an even number of tournament chips. But in the next to last hand, Demidov bluffed off most of his chips to Eastgate who had made a lucky five-card flush.

In the final hand, Demidov, made two pair. He had few chips left and needed to act. From across the table, Eastgate coldly stared him down. Instead of looking up into Eastgate’s scorching eyes, Demidov simply focused. This intelligent young Russian had made it this far by remaining thoughtful and making wise decisions. A little luck hadn’t hurt either. And so thinking that he probably had the best hand with his two-pair, he said the two most famous words in Texas Hold’em poker, “All in.” With those words, Demidov effectively shoved his remaining chips into the middle of the pot and sealed his fate.

Texas Hold’em is a game that is played with each contestant using two hidden hole cards and five community cards to make the best possible five-card poker hand. In this situation, and unfortunately for Demidov, Eastgate had made a five-card straight with the same community card that had given Demidov two pair. Eastgate quickly called Demidov’s all-in bet with his made straight and after one more benign community card was harmlessly turned, the game was over. Eastgate won over nine million dollars. In addition to that, he had become the first Austrian and also the youngest poker champion of the world at age twenty-two. He would earn the name “Icegate” for his trademark stare. This “no-name” is now and forever a poker legend.

Poker was once a game played purely by gamblers and professionals. It was illegal in many places and the players were regarded as little better then criminals. In these days, poker has become a game that anyone can play. In any given hand, anybody can win. It is an underdog’s dream. And poker, just like life, involves both fate and good decision making. With good decisions, you can possibly cut down on the role that fate plays. John Wayne, one of the game’s biggest fans, once said, “Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.” But then again, in life, your wise decisions may or may not always help you in the end.

And so it goes with poker. It’s a game in which you can make the best decisions and still lose. It’s a contest in which you can be stupid and still somehow win. It is a competition that takes into consideration the controlled human element, and yet somehow always involves dumb luck.

And life, like poker, demonstrates the odd relationship between our freedom of choice and the irony of fate. That is why it is such a great game. The game of life, I mean. The game of poker is great too; and if you don’t believe me then just ask Chris Moneymaker, or if you prefer perhaps, Peter “Icegate”. Life is an underdog’s dream.