Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives

by Michael Specter

  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.

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  INDEX

  abortion

  abstinence

  ACT UP

  acupuncture

  Adamchak, Raoul

  Aetiology

  Africa:

  arable land in

  declining food production in

  desertification in

  drug resistance in

  fears and denialism in

  and HIV/AIDS

  hunger in

  malaria in

  population growth in

  poverty in

  African Americans:

  and disease.

  See also race

  Age
of Autism

  ageism

  Aggrastat

  agriculture. See organic foods

  AIDS activism

  AIDS deniers

  AIDS epidemic

  AIDS virus

  albuterol

  Aleve (naproxen)

  alternative medicines