Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives - Michael Specter (2009)

NOTES

Most of the information contained in this book comes either from interviews or from the large and constantly growing body of scientific research that addresses the subjects of each chapter. I will put footnotes on my Web site, www.michaelspecter.com.

I thought it might be useful here to point out at least some of the sources I found particularly compelling. Traditional journalists (a category that includes me) tend to deride blogs as so much unedited and contradictory noise. That’s often true; but some of the most insightful science writing in America can be found on blogs these days—and I was lucky to have them at my disposal. Five in particular stand out as well-written, factually precise, and remarkably comprehensive: Aetiology, which focuses on evolution, epidemiology, and the implications of disease (http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/); Respectful Insolence, a medical blog that explains itself at the outset with the thoroughly accurate comment “A statement of fact cannot be insolent” (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/); Science-Based Medicine (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org); Neurodiversity, which is almost certainly the most complete archive of documents related to autism on the Internet (http://www.neurodiversity.com/main.html); and Denialism (http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/). For some reason, I didn’t stumble upon the last of them until late in the process of writing this book—but it’s excellent.

1. Vioxx and the Fear of Science

For a book that addresses the causes of our growing sense of disillusionment with the American medical establishment, I would suggest John Abramson’s Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine(HarperPerennial, rev. ed., 2008). There were two congressional hearings on Vioxx. Documents pertaining to the first, held on November 19, 2004, by the Senate Finance Committee, are available at http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/hearing111804.htm. Representative Henry A. Waxman convened hearings in the House on May 5, 2005, which focused on how drugs are marketed in the United States. All testimony and supporting material is available at http://waxman.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=122906. In retrospect, the initial 2001 study by Eric Topol and his colleagues, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, stands out as restrained, well-reasoned, and prescient. Unless you are an AMA member, though, you will have to buy it (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/286/22/2808). “What Have We Learnt from Vioxx?” by Harlan M. Krumholz and several colleagues examines the episode and its impact. The article, published by the British Medical Journal, appeared in January 2007 (www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7585/120).

For two particularly useful discussions of eugenics, I would recommend Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Harvard University Press, 1995). To get a sense of how a thoughtful scientist can follow reason and logic out the window (and take large segments of the world with him), there is no better place to go than to Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius (Prometheus Books, 1869).

2. Vaccines and the Great Denial

For a deeply insightful primer on vaccines, the place to turn is Arthur Allen’s Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver (Norton, 2007). Paul Offit not only invents vaccines, he writes about them with great authority. I am deeply indebted to his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure (Columbia University Press). The National Academy of Sciences, through the Institute of Medicine, has released two exhaustive reports on the safety of vaccines: Immunization Safety Review: Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine and Autism (2001), and Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism (2004). Both are available through the NAS Web site ( .http://www nationalacademies.org).

It would be hypocritical of me, in this book above all, to ignore those who reject the scientific consensus. Two places to begin: the National Vaccine Information Center (http://www.nvic.org), and David Kirby’s book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). Kirby also maintains a robust collection of articles, testimony, and transcripts at http://www.evidenceofharm.com/index.htm.

3. The Organic Fetish

The best book I have ever read about the ways in which genetically engineered and organic food relate to each other and to society is by the husband-and-wife team Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food (Oxford University Press, 2008). Adamchak is an organic farmer and Ronald a plant geneticist. Their knowledge, sophistication, and priorities ought to provide at least some evidence that seemingly irreconcilable differences are not impossible to resolve. (Ronald also maintains a fascinating blog by the same name, http://pamelaronald.blogspot.com.)

Everything Marion Nestle writes is worth reading (usually more than once). I particularly recommend Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (University of California Press, 2002) and What to Eat(North Point Press, 2006). Denise Caruso runs the Hybrid Vigor Institute. Her call to excess caution seems unwarranted to me, but nobody makes the argument better or more thoroughly: Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet (Hybrid Vigor Press, 2006).

For data on agricultural production, hunger, or development in Africa, I suggest that any interested reader look at the World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report: Agriculture for Development. (The URL for this report is almost comically long. It would be far easier to go to the bank’s general site, www.worldbank.org, and type “2008 world development report” into the search box.) Among the other studies I have found useful: the Pew Charitable Trust 2008 report Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America (http://www.ncifap.org/) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2006 study Africa’s Turn: A New Green Revolution for the 21st Century(www.rockfound.org/library/africas_turn.pdf). The annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations always addresses these issues, but never more directly than the 2004 study Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the Needs of the Poor? (www .fao.org/es/esa/pdf/sofa_flyer_04_en.pdf). Finally, Louise O. Fresco has written often and revealingly about issues of food security in the developing world. See particularly her report, last updated in 2007, Biomass, Food & Sustainability: Is There a Dilemma? (www.rabobank.com/content/images/Biomass_food_and_sustainability_tcm43-38549.pdf).

There are many discussions of the “precautionary principle,” fear, and the idea of risk. Four stand out to me: Cass Sunstein’s Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lars Svendsen’s A Philosophy of Fear (Reaktion Books, 2008); Peter L. Bernstein’s Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Wiley, 1996); and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Pantheon, 2008).

4. The Era of Echinacea

The Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane.org), through its Database of Systematic Reviews, comes as close as possible to providing authoritative information in a field that needs it badly. In addition, the National Center for Complementary Medicine, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center each offer information on vitamins and supplements at http://nccam.nih.gov, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu, and http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/1979.cfm respectively, as of course do many other in stitutions.

The two best recent treatments of alternative health have both been written or edited by Ernst Edzard, who is professor of complementary medicine at the universities of Exeter and Plymouth. The first, written with Simon Singh, is Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Norton, 2008). Edzard also edited Healing, Hype or Harm? A Critical Analysis of Complementary or Alternative Medicine (Societas, 2008). For the other side of the story, Andrew Weil is the man to see. He is prolific, but one might begin with Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being (Knopf, 2005).

For a disciplined and opinion-free history of vitamin regulation in America, see the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health. The managing editor was Marion Nestle, and the 750-page report is available at her Web site, among other places (www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/surgeon-general.pdf).

I try to remain open-minded on all scientific issues, but there are limits. Those eager to explore the phenomenon of AIDS denialism are on their own. Anyone seeking to understand the actual roots of the disease, or its natural progression, however, can start at www.aidstruth.org—which lives up to its name.

5. Race and the Language of Life

For a general argument on the issue of race and ethnic background in medical treatment, there is the 2003 piece by Burchard and Risch et al., “The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice.” For an abstract and an extensive list of subsequent papers on the topic go to http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/348/12/1170; Sandra Soo-Jin Lee’s essay “Racializing Drug Design: Implications of Pharmacogenomics for Health Disparities,” in the December 2005 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is a smart discussion of race and genomics (www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/AJPH.2005.068676v2.pdf). The New York University sociologist Troy Duster has written widely on the topic as well; see Backdoor to Eugenics (Routledge, 2003), among many other publications. Robert S. Schwartz argues that genomics has turned the concept of race into a dangerous anachronism in his “Racial Profiling in Medical Research,” New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 18 (2001). It can be purchased at the journal’s Web site (http://content.nejm.org).

The best short explanatory book I have ever read on the subject of genetics is Adrian Woolfson’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics (Overlook Press, 2004). Two other books have proven valuable to me: James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA (Harvard University Press, 2008), and Barry Barnes and John Dupré, Genomes and What to Make of Them (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

6. Surfing the Exponential

As I note in the book, the phrase “surfing the exponential” comes from Drew Endy of Stanford University. The best study on the topic is New Life, Old Bottles: Regulating First-Generation Products of Synthetic Biology by Michael Rodemeyer, a former director of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. This report, issued in March 2009 under the auspices of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, can be obtained from the Synthetic Biology Project (http://www.synbioproject.org/library/publications/archive/synbio2/).

The ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) has taken the lead in calling for stricter oversight of this new discipline. The group poses thoughtful questions that demand thoughtful answers. On December 8, 2008, Steward Brand’s Long Now Foundation sponsored an unusually amicable debate between ETC’s Jim Thomas and Endy. The conversation provides a thorough airing of the issues and can be purchased on DVD at Amazon.com (the podcast is also available at no charge: http://fora.tv/media/rss/Long_Now_Podcasts/podcast-2008-11-17-synth-bio-debate.mp3).

ETC has released many studies, all of which can be found on the group’s homepage (http://www.etcgroup.org/en/issues/synthetic_biology.html). The most important and comprehensive of them, Extreme Genetic Engineering, is here (http://www.etcgroup.org/en/issues/synthetic_biology.html).

Scientists are often accused of ignoring the ethical implications of their work. It is worth nothing, then, that Craig Venter—the genomic world’s brashest brand name—embarked on a yearlong study of the ethical and scientific issues in synthetic biology before stepping into the lab. Synthetic Genomics: Options of Governance, by Michele S. Garfinkel, Drew Endy, Gerald L. Epstein, and Robert M. Friedman, is available at www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/syngen-options/overview/, and the technical reports that were commissioned for the study can be found at http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39658.

The scientific roots of synthetic biology are explored in Philip J. Pauly’s book Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology (Oxford University Press, 1987). It’s expensive and hard to find; but it is out there. I would also recommend Michael Rogers’s book about the early days of recombinant DNA technology, Biohazard (Knopf, 1979). That, too, is difficult to find. For anyone inclined to wonder why Eckard Wimmer created a synthetic polio virus, I suggest reading his 2006 article on the implications of the research, published in the Journal of the European Molecular Biology Organization, “The Test-Tube Synthesis of a Chemical Called Poliovirus.” A free, full-text version of the article can be found at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16819446.