Medicine is all about science - most of the time.

Medicines, treatments, even devices get put through a rigorous placebo-controlled, double-blind study process before they are declared fit for use in medicine. Anecdotal tales of how something worked for someone, no matter how much that someone is convinced a particular treatment, drug, or device worked for him, are considered unscientific, and therefore not sufficient evidence to support whatever it might be.

This is true, with the exception of one particular treatment, where anecdotal tales are the only evidence supporting that treatment, because there has never been a single placebo-controlled, double-blind study of that treatment, during the entire time it has been used in medicine.

Does that treatment work? It might. The problem is, as far as scientific evidence goes, that particular treatment has just as much support as prayers to Khonsu, holding a rabbit's foot, or sacrifices to Talona.

The treatment I'm talking about is vaccination. Regardless of what you may believe about its efficacy, the fact remains that it has never been subjected to what is considered the gold standard of proof in medicine, and any attempts to suggest that maybe it should be subjected to that standard result in the person making the suggestion being branded a kook, a radical, "antivax" (whatever that is), and various other terms that are synonyms for "crazy", and the person making the suggestion is informed that a placebo-controlled, double-blind study of vaccination is "unethical" - which makes it the only form of medical treatment to hold that status. In every other form of medical treatment, it is considered unethical to not perform such a study.

Why is it crazy to want a medicine that is being injected into your body - or your child's body - to have been put through the same degree of testing that your migraine medicine had to survive before being approved? For that matter, why is it crazy to want to know that your doctor is relying on something more than anecdotal tales when recommending that you receive a particular medication?

Is it really so bad to question the efficacy of a treatment that has never been subjected to a single placebo-controlled, double-blind study, especially when its supporters respond to questions about such a study with the same hostility that an Inquisitioner responds to questions about the legitimacy of the Church?

Think about it. If there is scientific evidence supporting the treatment, all those questions could be satisfied by simply producing the study. Responding to those questions as if one's religion had been blasphemed against does nothing to advance a claim of credibility.

For that matter, why is it that every other form of medical treatment demands placebo-controlled, double-blind studies to be considered ethical, yet suggesting the same standard for vaccination is considered unethical?

Dear FTC: Go Fuck Yourself

This is not your blog. This is my blog. Until the day you put me in jail for my writing, I will write whatever I damned well please, whenever I damned well please, for whatever reasons I damned well please.

Regardless of any authority you may claim (which, as we both know, is unlawful under the United States Constitution), I do not recognize your authority over my writing, nor do I recognize your authority over my thoughts, associations, or any other form of expression.

I will continue to write whatever I damned well please, whenever I damned well please, for whatever reasons I damned well please, and I'll disclose, if I choose to disclose, whatever I damned well please.

If you want to try to get your $11,000 out of me for my writing, you're going to have to do it the same way every other mugger does: at the point of a gun. Don't be surprised if I respond to you the same way I would to any other mugger.

If you want to shut me up, you're going to have to either kidnap me or kill me. Either way, you will be behaving as pirates, bandits, highwaymen and muggers have done through the centuries. I know I'm just a small fish in the blogging universe, but even a small fish knows one or two other fish, and those one or two other fish each know one or two more, and so on, ad infinitum.

Kidnap or kill one blogger, the news gets out, no matter how small a fish that blogger is. All you'll be doing is pissing off the rest of the blogging universe, and making it more likely that more bloggers will respond to you as the scum-sucking low-life maggots you are. Who knows? Maybe the gene pool will be improved by the response. One can only hope.

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America's National Health Care System

Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything--except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve." . . . I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind--yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?
— Dr. Thomas Hendricks, Neurosurgeon, explaining why he chose to cease practicing medicine

I suspect that we'll soon be seeing a lot of doctors following in Dr. Hendricks' foosteps, until all that are left are one of two groups:

1. Those who are so devoted to their patients that they would continue practicing, even in a concentration camp, or
2. Those who are so incompetent that the only way they could get patients is at the point of a gun.

And we're supposed to be grateful for the government's "management" of health care?

Computer Death

Well, my computer has reached the point of giving me a

KERNEL_APC_PENDING_DURING_EXIT 

message whenever I exit a large program (OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, World of Warcraft, whatever), and the BIOS has ceased to recognize the existence of my DVD drives, which means I won't even be able to restore my system when Windows craps out.

Looks like I'm going to be learning how to do my writing with a pen and paper again, real soon now, unless a miracle happens and I manage to find money to buy a refurb or used computer somewhere.

Yay. Hurray. Whatever.