News Intelligence Analysis
From Alternet
Weird
Science on the Religious Right
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
Posted on August 11, 2005,
Printed on August 22, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24000/
"God said it. I believe it. That settles it." This
familiar bumper sticker slogan appears to sum up the Religious
Right's decision-making process on matters of heated public debate.
But when policies involving human biology and behavior are
being hammered out, faith alone isn't always sufficient to win
over voters and decision-makers. At such times, a bit of scientific
evidence comes in handy, and some of the Religious Right's operatives
aren't too choosy about where they get it.
Consider the following seven claims, the quality of the scientific
evidence that supports them and the potential consequences, were
they to be widely accepted:
"Condoms are full of holes"
That's according to Concerned
Women For America and many other right-wing groups. How big
are those holes? Big enough that an HIV particle or even a sperm
can easily wander through, if you believe this scary diagram
from abortionfacts.com:
Organizations that advertise gaping holes
of 5 microns (.0002 inch) or more in condoms often turn out to
be misapplying data from a 1993 paper by scientist C.M. Roland.
Possibly confused by the title of the journal in which Roland
published his work -- Rubber World -- they fail to note
that his experiments were done with latex gloves, not condoms.
On the other hand, a 1998 Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
report
noted that when 1-micron holes were intentionally drilled in
condom latex, a sensitive test could detect them, but the same
test could find no holes in undrilled condoms. That indicated
that condoms have no holes bigger than 1 micron, unless researchers
poke the holes themselves. And in a 50-micron-thick condom, even
a 1-micron-wide hole is really a narrow tunnel that would have
little chance of reaching through the entire thickness, let alone
allowing HIV particles through.
The overall conclusion of the FDA study: "All the latex
films representing a wide range of formulations and ages were
effective barriers to transmission of the small virus. Thus,
permeation through quite thin, stretched samples with this very
sensitive test was not found."
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
fact
sheet on condoms states that "Laboratory studies have
demonstrated that latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable
barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens." And, of
course, a far larger sperm cell has no chance of escape.
That information is buried in the midst of a previously informative
CDC document that was largely gutted under the Bush Administration.
While noting, correctly, that condoms are not 100 percent effective,
the current fact sheet no longer contains information on proper
use of condoms.
Condom failure is actually overwhelmingly due to mistakes
or accidents during their use, not manufacture or testing, so
the fact sheet now put out by the CDC, and influenced by the
Religious Right, may be making unwanted pregnancy and HIV infection
more likely, not less so.
A footnote: Concerned Women for America's "full of holes"
claim was based on a press release by the National Physicians
Center for Family Resources. That obscure group came under
fire this summer in Congress for the Bush administration's
4Parents.gov website,
which it produced. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. and 145 nongovernmental
organizations condemned the site for misleading teenagers about
condoms and other sexual issues.
"Phonics is the only effective way to teach reading"
Have you ever wondered why right-wing Christian parents and
educators are so intent on promoting phonics (a method of teaching
reading that stresses basic symbol-sound relationships) and so
abhor "whole language" learning (in which children
learn words by reading them in context)?
The answer you'll get from phonics advocates is simply that
it works, as indicated by better test scores (at least when the
tests include questions
on phonics!). But there appears to be consensus among researchers
outside the Religious Right that the most effective approach
is a broad, integrated one that incorporates some phonics training
and a lot of reading.
The most pertinent research I've seen on the Christian phonics
fixation (by the way, why do those last two words begin with
different letters?) was done by Mark Thogmartin. Here are excerpts
of some of the reasons he heard from phonics enthusiasts, as
he listed them in a 1997 issue of Home
Education magazine:
Probably the chief reason for the Christian Rights's crusade
against whole-language learning is a concern about its association
throughout the 20th century with the left side of the U.S. political
spectrum. Indeed, conservative Christian writer Samuel Blumenfeld
has suggested, according to Thogmartin, that whole-language-style
methodology "was initiated as a deliberate attempt by socialists
to lower the literacy rates in America. An illiterate society
would be more dependent on the 'Big Brother' socialist government,
making a socialist takeover much easier."
"Abortion causes breast cancer"
The heavily publicized "ABC Hypothesis" -- that
having an abortion increases a woman's risk of developing breast
cancer -- is not supported by valid research. According to the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is "well
established" that "induced abortion is not associated
with an increase in breast cancer risk."
But ABC proponents such as Karen Malec, president of the Coalition
on Abortion/Breast Cancer, claim that the NIH is party to a coverup,
and that in fact "abortion
causes breast cancer." To support that assertion, they
often cite research in which women suffering from breast cancer,
as well as women who are cancer-free, are asked whether they
have ever had an abortion.
But in such situations, say ABC's critics, healthy women are
less likely to be forthcoming about past abortions than are those
who are currently undergoing treatment for a grave illness. Studies
that avoid that bias by relying wholly on medical records have
found no link.
Many environmental and genetic factors interact throughout
a woman's life to push or pull her down a road either toward
or away from breast cancer. No one factor can be said to "cause"
the disease -- certainly not one like abortion, for which even
a valid statistical association cannot be detected.
In an attempt to seal her argument, Malec often claims that
abortion "causes" breast cancer through the simple
mechanism of preventing childbirth. Perhaps inadvertently shedding
some light on her underlying motivations, she has
written that "experts universally agree that having
a child provides a woman with a natural protection against breast
cancer and that it is healthier for a married woman not to postpone
her first full-term pregnancy."
"Remote prayer cures disease"
There could well be all sorts of "mind-body" mechanisms
through which prayer in the presence of a patient, or by the
patient herself, might provide medical benefits. But what if
so-called "remote intercessory prayer" -- that is,
praying for a far-away patient without that patient's knowledge
-- could be proven to produce medically detectable results? That
would really be something, wouldn't it?
Amazingly, in 2001, a paper demonstrating the effectiveness
of remote prayer turned up in the Journal of Reproductive
Medicine. In that study, scientists at Columbia University
showed that by saying appropriate prayers, groups of people in
the US, Australia, and Canada apparently increased the pregnancy
rate in women who had undergone in vitro fertilization in Korea.
But before long, critics led by Bruce
Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology
at the University of California, Irvine, showed that the study
was suspiciously designed and statistically flawed. Then it came
to light that one of the paper's three authors, Daniel Wirth,
lacked a medical degree but did sport an impressive criminal
record.
A year after the paper was published, Wirth, a faith-healing
con man, was indicted for stealing $3.4 million in income and
property through the use of false identities. He pled guilty
to conspiracy charges in May 2004. (The charges were unconnected
to the prayer study).
In October 2004, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine
published a correction stating that another of the paper's authors,
Rogerio A. Lobo, had requested that his name be removed from
the paper. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services had found that Lobo first learned of the study
six
to 12 months after its completion.
To date, no statistically significant evidence of successful
remote intercessory prayer has been published.
Private prayer has no obvious implications for government
policy, unless research on the subject is paid for by taxpayers.
And -- you guessed it -- that has indeed happened. The National
Institutes for Health, through its National Center for Complementary
and Alternative Medicine, has funded research on remote intercessory
prayer at least twice since 1992.
"Emergency contraception is a health hazard"
The so-called "morning-after pill" -- a single tablet
containing hormones similar to those in birth control pills but
in a larger dose -- prevents pregnancy by blocking fertilization
or implantation of the egg. Side
effects may include some flu-like symptoms, which appear
to be less severe than common side effects of early pregnancy,
and of shorter duration.
David Reardon, Director of the anti-abortion Elliot Institute,
offers this
retort to FDA researchers who have declared the pill safe:
"Actually, what they really mean by 'safe' is simply that
women aren't dropping down dead." Like other critics of
emergency contraception on the Religious Right, unencumbered
by any scientific evidence, he conjures up dark images of devastating
long-term health risks from taking the pill.
What has Christian extremists up in arms about emergency contraception
is that it may prevent implantation and development of an already
fertilized egg, which they regard as the death of a human being.
That belief, of course, has long been the subject of philosophical
debate. Exaggerating health hazards is simply a way of doing
an end run on the philosophical question and getting the pill's
use restricted or banned outright.
In 2004, the FDA refused to permit over-the-counter sales
of Barr Laboratories' "Plan B" emergency contraception
product. In so doing, the agency overruled its own scientific
advisory panel, which had recommended that such sales be allowed.
In May 2005, The Nation and the Washington Post
quoted
one conservative evangelical member of the advisory panel, W.
David Hager, as he boasted to an Asbury College congregation
-- in a videotaped sermon -- of his role in getting Plan B restricted:
"After two days of hearings, the committees voted to
approve this over-the-counter sale by 23 to 4. I was asked to
write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of
the FDA. For only the second time in five decades, the FDA did
not abide by its advisory committee opinion, and the measure
was rejected. Now the opinion I wrote was not from an evangelical
Christian perspective. ... But I argued it from a scientific
perspective, and God took that information, and He used it through
this minority report to influence the decision."
He added, "Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God
turned into good."
The FDA is revisiting the question of over-the-counter sales
of Plan B and will issue a ruling by the end of this month.
"Terri Schiavo could have gotten better"
When Schiavo's autopsy was released publicly on June 15, 2005,
it showed, in the words of the district medical examiner, that
her brain damage "was irreversible, and no amount of therapy
or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
The report did not state that Schiavo was in a "permanent
vegetative state" (PVS), because PVS is defined in clinical
terms and not demonstrated through autopsy. The Religious Right
has latched onto the report's silence on PVS, continuing to insist
that, based on the autopsy, "we really
can't know how she died."
Pointing to the absence of a PVS diagnosis in the autopsy
report, a spokesperson for the organization Focus on the Family
said
that "People are grasping at straws to justify the dehydration
death of Terri Schiavo."
Of course, before Schiavo's death, clinical observation by
medical experts did confirm that she was in a permanent vegetative
state from which she could never recover. Evidence to the contrary,
of course, could have provided a compelling reason to continue
life support indefinitely. And for a while, hopes for restoration
of Schiavo's consciousness appeared to rest on one man: William
Hammesfahr, M.D.
The Schiavo family selected the Clearwater, Fla. neurologist
to testify before Florida's Sixth Circuit Court in 2002 that
his "vasodilation therapy" could revive Schiavo. But
the court
order that followed was scathing in its assessment of Hammesfahr's
arguments:
It is clear that this therapy is not recognized in the medical
community ... and what undermines his credibility is that he
did not present to this court any evidence other than his generalized
statements as to the efficacy of his therapy on brain damaged
individuals like Terry Schiavo. He testified that he has treated
about 50 patients in the same or worse condition than Terry Schiavo
since 1994 but he offered no names, no case studies, no videos
and no tests results to support his claim that he had success
in all but one of them.
The Court was also skeptical about Hammesfahr's claim to be
a "Nobel Prize nominee," and with good reason. He based
the claim on nothing more than a letter written on his behalf
by Rep. Mike Bilirakis, R-Fla., who is not eligible to make Nobel
nominations.
"Humans are not descended from pre-human ancestors."
For a good story, give me that old-time creationism, with
its 6,000-year-old Earth and big flood. But that's not an easy
sell when you're dealing with school boards and other government
institutions. So these days, the anti-evolution Right talks mostly
about intelligent design (ID).
Many proponents of ID -- which is creationism dressed up in
a white lab coat -- have accomodated scientific reality to some
extent by admitting, for example, that the Earth really is 4.5
billion years old or that natural selection can occur within
certain strict limits. However, they are unwavering in their
insistence that individual species are the products of custom
design, not natural selection. And that applies doubly to our
own species.
As they labor to explain how humans were created -- while
trying to avoid being buried under a growing mountain of physical
and genetic data that demonstrates our primate ancestry -- ID
thinkers have exhibited some impressive creativity of their own.
Among their efforts to reconcile the intelligent design of humans
with real science, the award for Most Imaginative goes to Jonathan
Wells.
A Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and
author of the creationist classic Icons of Evolution (2000),
Wells wrote the
following as part of a paper he presented to the International
Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, a forum established
by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church:
Some people believe that the first human beings were created
fully grown. But ... a creature that begins life without passing
through birth and childhood would be so unlike us that we could
not regard it as truly human, regardless of how great the superficial
resemblance. And because human babies are totally dependent on
other creatures for their survival during early development,
animals capable of raising the first human babies must have been
a necessary part of the original plan.
Human babies need milk to survive and grow, so mammals had
to exist before humans appeared. And not just any mammal. The
first human baby presumably had to be nurtured by a creature
very much like itself -- a humanlike primate. This creature,
in turn, could only have been nurtured by a creature intermediate
in some respects between it and a more primitive mammal. In other
words, a plan for the emergence of human beings must have included
something like the succession of prehistoric forms we find in
the fossil record.
Intelligent Design is an attempt to squeeze a creation story
-- any creation story, whether it features Adam and Eve or motherly
monkeys -- through cracks in the First Amendment and into public
classrooms. This process is at various stages of completion in
Kansas, Ohio,
Pennsylvania,
and other states. And President Bush himself recently endorsed
the teaching of ID.
Well, you have to admit that when the Religious Right and
its innovative researchers get involved, science is anything
but dry and dull.
But when society is trying to come to a collective decision
on science-related issues that can have profound consequences
for millions of people, we need something more substantial than
gripping fiction and colorful characters.
Stan Cox is
a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas.
© 2005 Independent Media
Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24000/