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| Kim Bannon in AIDS Denialist film 'House of Numbers' |
No comments will are being accepted on this post out of respect for Kim and her family. An earlier post on Kim can be found here.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
No comments will are being accepted on this post out of respect for Kim and her family. An earlier post on Kim can be found here.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Truth, Nothing But the Truth: Celia Farber's Defamation Claim Against AIDS Activist Is Dismissed
Brendan Pierson
November 8, 2011
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis B. York ruled last week in Farber v. Jefferys, 106399/09, that the journalist, Celia Farber, was a public figure for the purpose of the lawsuit and that her defamation claims against AIDS activist Richard Jefferys could not survive the heightened scrutiny required for public figures.
Ms. Farber began covering the AIDS epidemic for Spin magazine in the 1980s. While at Spin, she conducted a sympathetic interview with Peter Duesberg, a professor of biology at the University of California at Berkeley who rejects the scientific consensus that AIDS is caused by HIV. Mr. Duesberg claims the disease is caused by recreational drug use, and is sometimes aggravated by antiviral drugs used to treat it. He contends that HIV is a harmless "passenger virus" and has argued that the pharmaceutical industry has suppressed dissent in order to sell antiviral drugs.
Ms. Farber continued to give sympathetic coverage to Mr. Duesberg and write skeptically of the medical establishment on the issue of AIDS, culminating in a 2006 article in Harper's, "Out of Control," in which she castigated "so-called community AIDS activists" who "were sprung like cuckoo birds from grandfather clocks." Ms. Farber and Harper's drew harsh criticism for the article. A group of doctors and activists, including Mr. Jefferys, head of the anti-AIDS Treatment Action Group, published a widely circulated 56-point refutation of the article.
In 2008, the Semmelweis Society International, an organization formed to support whistleblowers in the medical field, announced that it was going to give an award to Ms. Farber and Mr. Duesberg for their dissent about AIDS. The group said the award was prompted by the Harper's article.
After learning of the award, Mr. Jefferys sent a Semmelweiss employee an e-mail saying that Ms. Farber and Mr. Duesberg were "not whistleblowers" but "simply liars." He said he could provide numerous examples of their dishonesty, including "altering of quotes from the scientific literature, false representations of published papers, etc." This e-mail is the core of Ms. Farber's defamation suit. She said the e-mail was circulated among members of Congress and the media, that it was false and that it was intended to destroy her reputation.
Mr. Jefferys filed a pre-answer motion to dismiss the lawsuit. He said the e-mail was true, and that Ms. Farber was a public figure, making her defamation claims subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny.
Justice York agreed. He noted that Ms. Farber has been writing about AIDS since the 1980s and has spoken at conferences on the subject. He also pointed to examples submitted to the court by Ms. Farber of hostile online statements made about her by AIDS activists. These examples, he said, actually hurt her case.
"Although her purpose is to show the animus of the traditional HIV/AIDS community and impugn defendants' motives in making their statements against her, it also illustrates dramatically that, to AIDS activists angry at the dissenters, Farber has a celebrity status and notoriety," he said.
"Finally, Farber acknowledges that the article 'Out of Control' appeared in Harper's magazine, which has a widespread reputation; that the publication of 'Out of Control' generated enormous attention and publicity not only for the article but for her as its author, resulting in a series of articles about both; that internationally known members of the traditional HIV/AIDS community felt compelled to publish a lengthy document refuting the contentions in 'Out of Control,'" the judge wrote.
"Thus, Farber's own complaint and the papers she submits in opposition to this motion establish that, in the limited context of issues surrounding AIDS and HIV dissenters and the question of whether HIV causes AIDS, she is a public figure," he said.
Furthermore, Justice York said, even if Ms. Farber were not a public figure, Mr. Jefferys' e-mail would be subject to a heightened standard because it involved a matter of public concern. Allowing the defamation claims to go forward would have a chilling effect on the public discourse on an important subject, he wrote.
The judge also rejected Ms. Farber's argument that the suit should go forward even under a heightened standard because Mr. Jefferys' e-mail showed gross negligence.
"Here, Jefferys relied on numerous reliable sources," the judge wrote. "Thus, Jefferys did not exhibit constitutional malice or gross irresponsibility when he relied on them and on his own prior professional research to reach his conclusions about Farber's work as a journalist in 'Out of Control' and her other writings."
Ms. Farber had focused on the word "liar" as an example of gross negligence. But Justice York said that "liar" was just an example of the heated rhetoric around the dispute, noting that Ms. Farber had used similar rhetoric herself.
"Through the various references to him and other 'so-called activists' in the Harper's piece, she strongly suggests that Jefferys and others lie, twist facts or hide data in order to remain in the good graces of the pharmaceutical companies which support them financially," he wrote. "She also accuses him of lying about whether there is a debate as to the cause of AIDS. …Indeed, in her affidavit in support of her opposition, Farber hurls accusations at Jefferys which are strikingly similar to those he has hurled at her."
Andrew T. Miltenberg of Nesenhoff & Miltenberg, counsel to Ms. Farber, said in an e-mailed statement that "We are undeterred and looking forward to appealing this important case. Ideology and belief trumped documented facts in this decision, which is precisely the matter at the heart of this lawsuit. To date, neither Harper's itself nor a single source in Farber's article have disputed her facts.
"We will continue to fight to preserve freedom of the press so that those who report true stories that are unpopular, or threaten industries, are not in a position to be professionally assassinated by the very people whose wrong-doings are exposed. This case is not about a single journalist but about the fate of journalism itself, which has been over-run by vested interests who deploy intimidation tactics to control the press."
Mr. Jefferys was represented by Joseph Evall of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. He declined to comment.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
October 31, 2011
by Peter Aldhous
Opponents of science are experts at winning the battle for hearts and minds. It’s time to learn their game and beat them at it, says Peter Aldhous
Fat chance.
In March, an impressive array of climate scientists did exactly what Holdren wanted, but their efforts seemed only to inflame the scepticism of Republicans opposed to regulation of emissions. For researchers who study how people form their opinions, and how we are influenced by the messages we receive, it was all too predictable. Holdren’s prescription was a classic example of the “deficit model” of science communication, which assumes that mistrust of unwelcome scientific findings stems from a lack of knowledge. Ergo, if you provide more facts, scepticism should melt away. This approach appeals to people trained to treat evidence as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
The problem is that in many cases, it just doesn’t work.
Perversely, just giving people more information can sometimes polarise views and cause sceptics to harden their line. “We can preach the scientific facts as long as we want,” says Dietram Scheufele, a specialist in science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This is replicating the same failed experiment over and over again.”
Soft science
The good news is that the latest research on communication and public opinion reveals strategies that anyone who wants political debate to be informed by accurate scientific information should be able to use to get their message across.
Indeed, given recent comments from some Republican presidential hopefuls, it may be high time US scientists put aside their own scepticism about the “soft” social sciences, and embrace what these studies have to say.
First, though, a bit of perspective. While some of the comments made recently by Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and others may seem alarming, it’s important to bear in mind the relatively narrow audience they were intended to reach.
This is presidential primary season, when candidates must appeal to the most ideologically committed voters to win their party’s nomination. When Perry invoked Galileo in contending that “the science is not settled” on climate change, it was a message crafted to appeal to hard-core Republican voters and big-money donors within the oil and coal industries – not to the majority of Americans who accept that our planet is getting warmer and that human activities are largely to blame.
In fact, few objective measures support the idea that fundamentally anti-science ideology has taken hold in the US. Scientists are generally held in high public esteem, scientific knowledge shapes up fairly well compared to other nations, public interest is high and investment in research remains healthy. “You can’t find a society that’s more pro-science,” argues Dan Kahan of Yale University. Even so, there are a few key areas of US public opinion where this picture begins to break down. People aren’t empty vessels waiting to receive information. Instead, we all filter and interpret knowledge through our cultural perspectives, and these perspectives are often more powerful than the facts. That poses a problem for some areas of science, which have come to clash with the values of a sizeable proportion of the US population.
Evolution provides the clearest example. Religion is a bigger factor in the lives of Americans than it is for citizens of most other developed countries. Evangelical Christian churches that preach literal interpretations of Genesis are especially influential. No wonder the US comes near the bottom of the pile in international surveys measuring the percentage of people who accept evolution (see “Darwin’s doubters”, p 41).
Cultural filters also explain why some social conservatives – including Bachmann – are willing to believe anecdotal reports that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can cause mental retardation. Here, evidence that the vaccine is effective and poses little risk is being filtered through the fear that a product designed to protect against a sexually transmitted virus will encourage promiscuity among teenage girls.
Such biases are not the preserve of the right – many of those who falsely believe that childhood vaccines cause autism are left-leaning supporters of “natural” medicine who distrust the pharmaceutical industry. But on climate change, again, it is those on the right who are butting heads with scientists.
Climate is especially interesting because polling indicates a relatively recent and strengthening ideological split on the issue (see “Divisive climate”, p 41). The most ardent sceptics are those who identify with the Tea Party movement, according to a poll run earlier this year for the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. For these voters, the cultural filter seems to be the idea that taking action to limit climate change means “big government” intervention in the US economy, anathema to staunch conservatives.
Hammering another nail into the coffin of the deficit model, Kahan’s latest survey of more than 1500 US adults indicates that far from overcoming our cultural biases, education actually strengthens them. among those with greater numeracy and scientific literacy, opinions on climate change polarised even more strongly.
Kahan’s explanation is that we have a strong interest in mirroring the views of our own cultural group. The more educated we become, he argues, the better we get at making the necessary triangulation to adopt the “correct” opinions. On issues like climate change, for most people these cultural calculations trump any attempt to make an objective assessment of the evidence. As well as explaining how intelligent and educated people come to misunderstand where the scientific consensus lies, Kahan’s work suggests a way to drag debate back towards what the science actually says: change the messenger.
Trusted voices
Kahan scores people on two cultural scales: heirarchists versus egalitarians and individualists versus communitarians. Liberals tend to be egalitarian-communitarian, while conservatives are more often hierarchical-individualist.
In one experiment Kahan examined attitudes to the HPV vaccine. When presented with balanced arguments for and against giving the vaccine to schoolgirls, 70 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians, and 56 per cent of hierarchical-individualists, thought it was safe to do so.
Kahan then attributed the arguments to fictional experts described so as to make them appear either egalitarian- communication (liberal) or hierarchical- individualist (conservative). The “natural” pairing, with an egalitarian- communitarian arguing in favour of the vaccine, and a hierarchical-individualist arguing against, drove the two camps a little further apart. But, crucially, swapping the messengers around had a dramatic effect: 58 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians and 61 per cent of hierarchical-individualists rated the vaccine as safe (Law and Human Behavior, vol 34, p 501).
These findings suggest that one way to change people’s minds is to find someone they identify with to argue the case. Climate scientists have almost certainly been badly served by allowing former Democratic vice- president Al Gore to become the dominant voice on the issue. His advocacy will Have convinced liberals, but is bound to have contributed to the rejection of mainstream climate science by many conservatives. So who might do a better job of carrying the climate message to conservative ears? Perhaps the US military, which is worried about the security implications of climate change, or senior figures within the insurance industry, who are factoring the risk of more frequent severe weather events into their calculations.
Of course, scientists themselves could step up to the plate. But their powers of persuasion may be limited. While it wasn’t always so, US scientists tend to lean heavily towards the Democrats’ camp – which helps explain why the idea of climatologists forming part of a liberal conspiracy to whip up alarm and keep federal research dollars flowing has become part of the climate deniers’ narrative.
The appeal of this story to those on the political right illustrates another key finding: how a message is framed in relation to the cultural biases of the intended recipients is crucial to its persuasiveness. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank that seeks to undermine the teaching of evolution in US schools, has learned this lesson well. After failing to get biblical creationism taught in science classes, the institute came back with the “scientific” concept of intelligent design, and two carefully researched talking points: “evolution is just a theory” and “teach the controversy”.
Not only were these frames attractive to the religious right, they were also difficult for scientists to counter without seeming to endorse censorship. Especially clever was the use of the term “theory”. To many people the word is roughly synonymous with “hunch”, so the frame did its intended job of questioning Darwinism’s credibility.
Matthew Nisbet, a communication specialist at American University in Washington DC, has long argued that scientists need to do a better job of framing (Science, vol 316, p 56). Working with Edward Maibach of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Nisbet recently found that framing action on climate change in terms of public health benefits prompts a positive response from a broad range of Americans, including those who are ambivalent when it is framed as an environmental issue (BMC Public Health, vol 10, p 299).
Another promising frame is the idea that climate change presents an economic opportunity for the US through the creation of “green jobs”, although in recent weeks this rallying cry has been muffled by the controversy surrounding the Californian solar power firm Solyndra, which went bankrupt despite being loaned more than $500 million by the Obama administration.
Still, Scheufele is convinced that the most effective frames for communicating about climate change will ultimately revolve around economic opportunities, as concerns about the economy are usually where political debates are won and lost.
For many scientists, talk of “framing” and “selling” ideas to the public sounds uncomfortably like misinformation through the dark art of spin. This misses the point, argue advocates of framing. It’s possible to communicate accurately about science in the context of an engaging frame, they say.
New research demonstrates the value of another mode of communication that should come more naturally to scientists. Jason Reifler of Georgia State University in Atlanta and Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, tested two different ways of presenting the same information about temperature records to people who identified themselves as “strong Republicans” sceptical about human-caused climate change. One was in the form of a line graph, the other plain text.
The text had little effect, but the graph made the strong Republicans more likely to acknowledge that global warming is both real and a consequence of human activities. “Given sufficiently unambiguous graphical information, people are much more likely to acknowledge the facts,” Nyhan and Reifler concluded, in a paper presented in September at the American Political Science Association’s meeting in Seattle.
Taken together, studies of communication provide a recipe to allow science to better inform US political debate: find frames that work with broad sections of the population and stick closely to those narratives; seek allies from across the political spectrum who can reach out to diverse audiences; and remember that a graph can be worth a thousand words. While there’s little evidence the US is in the thrall of a coherent anti-science movement, the penalty for failing to follow this recipe could be the election of a president who is blind to the true scientific consensus on some of the key issues of our time.
Experience elsewhere provides a cautionary tale, argues Seth Kalichman of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, who studies the movement that denies that HIV causes AIDS. Thabo Mbeki’s flirtation with this movement and his refusal to endorse the use of antiretroviral drugs during his tenure as South Africa’s president has been estimated to have caused more than 300,000 premature deaths (Journal of AIDS, vol 49, p 410).
“You could very easily end up with a US president who holds unscientific views, and that could be as damaging as Mbeki was inSouth Africa,” Kalichman warns.
READ THE ENTIRE STORY @ New Scientist Magazine
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Posted: October 02, 2011
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WND
Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, two presidential candidates who sparred over the issue of Texas vaccinations, may be floundering in the polls, but the topic of Merck's controversial Gardasilis heating up – with an Austrian physician who studied the drug saying it is not only dangerous, but useless in reducing cervical cancer, the stated reason it would have been administered to young girls under an executive order from Gov. Perry.
Dr. Christian Fiala, who successfully fought the use of the drug in Austria, told WND this week "there is no proof of a causal relationship of HPV and cervical cancer (correlation is not necessarily causation) and there is no evidence that HPV vaccine reduces the overall number of cervical cancer (cases)."
'SCARY MEDICINE: Exposing the dark side of vaccines'
In an email, Fiala called the HPV vaccination plan "a money-making machine without any benefit for patients. But some inherent risks."
Officials report that there have been 17,500 or more "adverse" incident reports that have been made over the last few years because of the use of the vaccination.
Fiala, who fought the idea of vaccination with Gardasil as part of a national health standard in Austria, says he was targeted by the vaccine developers for his findings.
"The doctors involved in vaccine development submitted an official complaint ... accusing me of doing harm to the image of doctors," Fiala said. "The investigation did not go far, because I could show that I fully respect evidence based on medicine. Therefore, the investigation was closed. But it could have cost me the right to [practice] medicine. It was meant as a threat."
He said that while he was arguing over the application of the medicine, an 18-year-girl was found dead in her bed.
"She had been absolutely healthy before her death, except some central nervous symptoms in the few days prior to her death. … This happened three weeks post-HPV vaccination," he said.
Then, another girl, 16, was hospitalized with similar symptoms and was in intensive care for a week before she started recovering.
"For obvious reasons this slowed down the enthusiasm for the vaccine in Austria," he said.
As a result, the product is not greatly promoted in his country, "and it is used infrequently."
Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons also told WND that she battled Perry's plan in 2007 and 2008 to inoculated school girls.
"Our position was that this was a violation of parental rights and patients' rights, to mandate a vaccine without a really good public health reason," she said.
She pointed out that the HPV virus is spread only by sexual contact and not in routine school situations. And she said there were a lot of questions about the brand new drug, among them the direct link between the HPV vaccine and any side effects.
"It tends to worry me quite a lot if I give a shot and [a patient] drops dead," she said.
"It should be that the patient is the one to make the determination [to get vaccinated]; the state should not be demanding that little girls be subjected to this."
She told WND that it was good for the issue to be raised at the level of a presidential race, because the public needs to debate and decide such issues.
When Bachmann raised the issue,the traditional media attacked her for asserting that the vaccine could be dangerous and should not be imposed by government.
The Bachmann attack "may be hurting her considerably more than him," stated theInternational Business Times, citing her narrative about a mother who complained the treatment had injured her daughter. "Bachmann did not offer any scientific evidence to suggest there is actually a viable link between Gardasil and mental retardation."
The report said: "Of the 35 million doses of Gardasil distributed in the U.S., only about 0.05 percent of individuals who have been vaccinated have reported some kind of side effect, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mental retardation was not one of them."
The Washington Post joined the criticism, saying, "Her offense quickly turned to defense when her comments were criticized by an extremely long list of groups and people, including Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Post editorial board, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control.
"In the wake of Bachmann's comments," the report continued, "there doesn't seem to be a rush of stories questioning the safety of Gardasil. There appears to be only one such story: a WISH-TV Indianapolis report about Zeda Pingel, whose mother claims she's suffered health problems after being vaccinated."
The Student Life publication at Washington University accused Bachmann of making verbal gaffes.
"The virus itself is the most common sexually transmitted infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, some 50 percent of sexually active American adults will contract HPV during their lifetimes. HPV is a very real problem, and this vaccine can help prevent its spread.
"With women comprising half our population, that this claim, which can do nothing but hurt women's health, was made is concerning," the publication said.
Some 17,500 individuals have suffered side effects such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Bell's Palsy and even death.
In the debate, Bachmann said Perry's act was "a violation of liberty interests."
"We cannot forget in the midst of this executive order, there was a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate," she continued. "Is it about life or about millions of dollars for a drug company?"
Perry said the donation from the vaccine maker, Merck, was only $5,000, and he was insulted if Bachmann was suggesting he could be "bought for $5,000."
"I'm offended for all the little girls who didn't have a choice. That's what I'm offended for," she responded.
Neither the Bachmann nor the Perry campaigns returned WND requests for comment.
But critics of Perry point out that the vaccine is supposed to address a disease only transmitted by sexual activity, and the issue isn't the mundane, clinical argument that Gardasil supporters portray.
At the What Doctors Don't Tell You blog, a campaign called Truth About Gardasil was highlighted.
"What they are not telling you is that thousands of girls are having adverse reactions to the HPV vaccines, some have even died – at last count, at least 103 lives have been lost. We have got to do something about this. These girls need our help! These girls are having reactions such as; seizures, strokes, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, headaches, stomach pains, vomiting, muscle pain and weakness, joint pain, auto-immune problems, chest pains, hair loss, appetite loss, personality changes, insomnia, hand/leg tremors, arm/leg weakness, shortness of breath, heart problems, paralysis, itching, rashes, swelling, aching muscles, pelvic pain, nerve pain, menstrual cycle changes, fainting, swollen lymph nodes, night sweats, nausea, temporary vision/hearing loss just to name some of them!"
Actually, the government itself has documented deaths from reactions to the vaccine, although the total doesn't match the blog's claim of fatalities.
Anecdotally, the government's documents confirm:
The case of a 19-year-old woman who was given Gardasil and reported, "Headache, nausea, dizziness, chilling, tiredness, shortness of breath, complained of chest pain, severe cramps." She died of "acute cardiac arrhythmia."
A 13-year-old girl was vaccinated and, 10 days later, developed fever. According to federal reports she "did not recover and was admitted to the hospital. … She developed dyspnoea and went into a coma … she expired [that day]."
And a 10-year-old developed "progressive loss of strength in lower and upper extremities almost totally ... nerve conduction studies [showed Guillain-Barre syndrome]." The case was considered "immediately life-threatening."
Those reports have been monitored over the years byJudicial Watch,a Washington watchdog corruption fighter, since the drug's approval by the Food and Drug Administration
"To say Gardasil has a suspect safety record is a big understatement. These reports are troubling and show that the FDA and other public-health authorities may be asleep at the switch," Tom Fitton, president of the organization, told WND when the death and injury reports were arriving.
Judicial Watch launched a comprehensive investigation of Gardasil's safety record in 2008 after the drug's manufacturer,Merck & Co., began a major effort to lobby in state legislatures to impose requirements that girls be given their product.
It was in 2008 when Judicial Watch obtained documents from the FDA documenting "anaphylactic shock," "foaming at mouth," "grand mal convulsion," "coma" and "now paralyzed" descriptions of the complications from Gardasil. The company wanted it to be mandatory for all schoolgirls.
The federal reports document some three dozen deaths in the United States, although an activist organization claims there have been almost 70 deaths, nearly 800 "serious" reactions and thousands of minor reactions.
Merck spokeswoman Jennifer Allen Woodruff told WND that the drug addresses a medical need, that of reducing the rates of HPV.
She said it has been approved widely around the world, with 120 countries having examined and approved its use.
"Nothing is more important to Merck than the safety of our vaccines and those who use them," she said. "The facts about Gardasil are clear and its efficacy and safety … were established."
She declined to say that Merck had not lobbied state lawmakers for laws that would force the vaccine on children and families, instead offering that the company focused on lobbying efforts regarding the "potential school requirements" in some states.
She said the company's goal was simply to provide information to those who made such decisions.
However, the vaccine has had a few bumps. Agence France-Presse reported in 2009 that Spanish authorities withdrew tens of thousands of doses of the vaccine when two teen girls were hospitalized.
In the United Kingdom, an investigation was launched after two young girls died following their injections of the drug.
And the Daily News and Analysis from India said the Indian Council of Medical Research suspended a cervical cancer control vaccination program for girls after four deaths and complications for 120 more.
The Truth about Gardasilhas launched a videocalled One More Girl that publicizes "questions" about Gardasil's safety.
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