Government Spin

I find the Government's lies rather distasteful, especially when senior ministers peddle unjustifiable speculation as fact. If they practise transparent self-deception, claiming, for example, to have ended the "boom-bust economy", and fail both to keep their promises and to prepare for the inevitable down-turn, they must expect to be punished by history and the polls.

Here is part of Gordon Brown's 2004 conference speech:

"And I come to this conference after seven years of this New Labour government more idealistic than ever, more determined and more certain than ever about what it is our duty to achieve for Britain.

No longer the most inflation prone economy, with New Labour, Britain today has the lowest inflation for thirty years.

No longer the boom-bust economy, Britain has had the lowest interest rates for forty years.

And no longer the stop-go economy, Britain is now enjoying the longest period of sustained economic growth for 200 years.

And no longer the country of mass unemployment, Britain is now advancing further and faster towards full employment than at any time in our lives."

When he made this speech Britain had low interest rates, low inflation and low unemployment; everything looked rosy. We knew, though, that it could not last. There is always a bust after a boom and, even if we did not know exactly when it would happen, or how bad it would be, or what form it would take, we knew the bust must come. Gordon Brown, his head buried in the sand of "No longer the boom-bust economy", believed his own spin and failed to prepare for the downturn.

Would things have been any better if Gordon had been more prudent during the boom years? Possibly not, but all three parties could learn from his mistakes; the next Chancellor or Prime Minister to act imprudently or to spout fanciful speculation as fact might not be so lucky - maybe next time we will penetrate armour of attractive lies and expose the ugly truth. 

Saint Monica

Vaccinations are one of the greatest public health successes of the last two hundred years. They have eradicated smallpox and massively subdued measles saving millions of lives in the process. Between 1999 and 2005 the annual death rate from measles fell from 873,000 to 345,000 as a result of widespread vaccination. How many people have these diseases killed?

• Smallpox - 300-500 million in the 20th Century alone (source),
• Measles - 150-200 million in the last 150 years (source).

How is it, when considering these figures, that vaccination is still seen in some parts of the world as an evil Western Imperialist intervention? Vaccination against Polio has reduced worldwide instances of the disease from several hundred thousand a year to around a thousand a year but objections by small-minded, ill-educated Nigerian politicians prevented the complete annihilation of this virus (in Nigeria, opponents to the vaccine spread rumours that it was part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise young women - vaccination rates plummeted, infections rose). Most outbreaks today can be traced to Nigeria, where fear of the vaccine is rampant.

The really depressing element is that the people best served by a cheap, eaily administered and virtually risk-free vaccine are those least-likely to get good medical support if they succumb to the virus. Vaccination is really their only option.

Can this sort of thing happen in the UK? It should not, of course, but this story shows just how easy it is for people to abuse their power at the expense of those whose welfare they should be protecting. In this instance, Governors at a Catholic school have prevented the administration of the HPV vaccine on their premises, significantly increasing the chances that some of their students will completely avoid the vaccine and increasing their risk of cervical cancer.

The Head Teacher, Frank McCarron, who has at least some responsibility for the health of his pupils, refused to comment; he should stand up for his pupils in the face of his Governor's ridiculous decision or hand his post to someone who will.

Bury Council also opted to ignore the situation, claiming that "each school has the right to make individual decisions regarding issues such as these". This is wrong; vaccines work best when everybody is treated so the refusal of one group of people to take action weakens the overall effect of the vaccine and directly affects the entire community. 

What next?

• The Governors should reverse their decision and do what they can to help administer the vaccine in as efficient a manner as possible.
• Bury Council should revise their policies to remove from schools the right to veto centrally-approved public health interventions.
• The Government should promote more widely the benefits of vaccination and should close the loop-holes that allow schools to dodge their responsibilities.

For more information, take a look at the Saint Monicas website: link. The front-page links to an article on the Daily Mail's site, suggesting that the Governors are not taking advice from the Government or from health professionals but from tabloid newspapers; very strange, and rather disturbing.

Ruth Kelly Out, Brown Still In

Ruth Kelly is to leave the cabinet but will anyone notice? Her most memorable moment was her opposition to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (which she appears to have opposed simply because it conflicted with her Bronze-Age sky-fairy religion) and it can be no great loss to the country that she is to leave her position. 

On the subject of Gordon Brown, the BBC quote her as saying:

"I cannot think of anyone better than Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party. He is a towering figure in the Labour Party."

This is either a stunning lack of imagination (surely she could think of someone, Jack Straw perhaps, or a Miliband?), a mis-placed sense of loyalty to a broken and useless leader or a damning indictment of the state of the Labour Party. Can they really find nobody better than Brown? 

If it really is the case that Labour ministers would rather resign than work in the Cabinet (spending more time with the family being code for "I want out before I am pushed or everything goes completely tits-up") then Brown really should either start making some tough decisions (which he does not appear able to do) or call a general election. 

It looks, however, as if he will hang on till May 2010 hoping for something to improve, although this didn't work for John Major and it is unlikely to work for Brown. Brown should go quickly to the polls and let the Conservatives burn their popularity cleaning up the mess. The Labour Party (with a new leader) might then have a chance at the 2013 elections but if they allow Brown to govern till 2010 they will be out of Government for a decade or more.

Undermining Science - Fundamentalists Attack

There are people and organisations whose only purpose is to undermine the teaching of science and to return the world to an earlier, darker, unenlightened time when God and his followers held sway over our lives. Fanciful, you may say. Overstated, possibly. Perhaps, even, parnoid and delusional. 

Would that it were so but I am afraid that it is not the case, and I will now prove it to you.

You may have heard stories about Creationism (the belief that a supernatural intelligence created the Earth and everything on it in, essentially, the forms we see today) in the United States and the attempts of its believers to displace Evolution as the accepted explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, but have you tried reading their literature? Here are a couple of "mainstream" Creationist websites for you to try:

• Answers in Genesis (link) - these people believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs walked the planet with humans and that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. 
  
• Discovery Institute (link) - differing slightly from the Answers in Genesis bunch, these guys prefer to call their beliefs "Intelligent Design", although it should be clear to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of biology, botany or anatomy that "intelligent" is entirely the wrong word. 
  
• Creation Museum (link) - linked to Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum in Kentucky will give you all sorts of mis-information with which you can retard your children's education, giving them the worst possible start in life. 
  

These three organisations are representative of the large and well-funded right-wing fundamentalists of the Christian faith in the United States. They work hard to create an image of scientific respectability whilst at the same time producting huge quantities of noxious rubbish for consumption by a gullible audience primed from birth to accept without question the ridiculous statements of inexpert authority figures. Between them they are striving to undermine the teaching of science in the US and, if they succeed, we will all be the poorer for it. 

Why is this important? Imagine a doctor trying to treat HIV (a very rapidly evolving virus - see link for more details) with drugs or methods that become steadily less effective as time goes on, unable to understand what is happening because he has no real knowledge of Evolution. How many people would die because of this?

So that's Biology - three stupid organisations, run by people unable to face the real world without a bronze-age guidebook. 

What about Physics? "No", you might say, "surely nobody could argue with the discoveries of modern Physics?". How wrong you would be.

The main example in this category is Common Sense Science, a website that rejects the accepted theories of the structure of the atom, preferring instead to expound a "ring" theory. Exactly what this theory consists of is only made clear if you are prepared to buy their pamphlets (I'm not - I try to avoid reading this sort of rubbish) but let me quote one small section from their site:

Common Sense Science is a body of theory regarding matter and forces that describes the physical world using geometric models, absolute time and Galilean space in a way that strives to be consistent with experimental observations and free of internal contradictions. 

Absolute time? Geometric models? These guys are idiots, shoe-horning God into every aspect of science as if the supernatural was a good explanation of the state of the world. They present no evidence, no mathematics, no convincing arguments for their beliefs. They are, in short, religious fundamentalists, not scientists, and their "theories" can be dismissed without further consideration (if they were really confident in their "theories", they would just publish them on their website). 

Daily Mail

I have been reading Ben Goldacre's Bad Science (try it - you won't regret it) and I thought I'd test myself with the website of the Daily Mail. Here's what I found:

Headline: Satan worshippers kill and eat four Russian teenagers after stabbing each of them 666 times (source)

Satan worshippers? Really? And they stabbed their victims 666 times then killed them? I guess they cooperated with investigators because I don't believe even the best forensic scientists could discern 666 wounds on a part-eaten corpse.

How about this one:

Headline: Simple powder to beat 2,400 genetic diseases goes on sale in two years  (source)

This article is about a drug called PTC124 which has just completed a very small phase 2 trial (23 patients, no control group) and which will go to phase 2b later this year. I am not an expert, and I may have missed something in the technical literature (Google PTC124 for more information), but here are a few of the apparent inaccuracies I found in the Mail's article:

1. The study addressed the use of the drug against a specific form of Cystic Fibrosis, not the 2,400 diseases suggested in the article,
2. "...on sale in two years" is a ridiculously premature statement to make of a drug that hasn't yet completed a large-scale trial,
   
3. The drug might work against other genetic diseases but the team has only tested it againstCystic Fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy - other trials are pending.

PTC124 is clearly a potentially important drug but the Mail's coverage seems to be rather inaccurate and misleading.

The conclusion? Reading the Daily Mail website is a trial and not to be recommended unless you need a hit of worthless or intrusive celebrity "news", over-blown or inaccurate medical stories or implausible foreign stories. 

Drinking for God

The first post in a new blog is a bit special; it sets the tone for future efforts, defines the blog and establises the principles that will, if the author is lucky, attract readers to his humble scribblings.

As this is a blog for ranting against the cynical opportunism and blatant exploitation practised by some elements of our society, it seems only fitting to kick-off with a topic that blends environmental concern, religion and big business in one convenient package: Spiritual Water.

What, you might ask, could I possibly have against a company selling bottled water, especially one that gives a chunk of it's profits ($0.10 per bottle) to charity? Well, leaving aside the environmental impact of the creation, packaging and distribution of this entirely unnecessary (in the Western world, at any rate) product, I think I would have to focus on two aspects; branding and product.

Let's look first at the product itself. From their website (link):

The delicious Spiritual Water can meet the demands of discerning and health-conscious consumers by offering purified water that also delivers purified thoughts and actions for a totally positive and wholesome lifestyle.

They don't explain how it delivers "purified thoughts" - maybe they have a special process that makes their product more spiritually advantageous than the stuff that falls out of the tap - so I think we can assume this is just marketing guff; they are selling standard purified water and there is nothing special about it at all.

So much for product, what about branding?

The bottles are decorated with Christian symbols and figures and each bottle has prayers in English and Spanish on the label. The company claims (link) that:

Each time you drink you benefit from the soothing, appropriate prayers, for added uplifting inspiration.

Really? What benefits? Do they have any evidence or is this merely an unsubstantiated claim designed to persuade gullible customers that they can accrue spiritual advantage simply by choosing the right brand of water? 

This is the most cynical type of exploitation. The conflation of God, health, positive thinking and purified water in Spiritual Water's branding and literature, along with the use of simplistic religious imagery and dubious health claims ("...drink purified water more often to stay healthier...", link), can only be seen as an attempt to sell an unnecessary product (bottled water) to the least sophisticated sections of the religious community.