Two sided stories blog

I have just returned from a conference where among the many things that were discussed was the subject of bad science...

I will wait for more detail but wanted to ponder a few aspects of perhaps why I am one of many who distrusts the pharma-medical complex.

Some people thought that this film was entirely fictional...

If you have not seen it, (spoiler alert) underneath the spy thriller genre normality, it is about how a drug company covers up the fact that its latest wonder drug causes many deaths in trials in Africa, a cover up in order to ensure that the product can still be used to make them money.

The reality of why we should not trust the medical/major drug company industry may appear more mundane but they, and their apologists, are in many ways more worrying.
Some of my concerns are:

1. Despite their vehement attacks on other forms of health treatment as unscientific they manage to avoid touching on the issue of just how unscientific they are under their own terms.

2. Their misunderstanding of the nature of what constitutes evidence - the call for a more evidence based medicine was not a call to rely totally on the often flawed and uni-focal data from randomised controlled trials - it was for a mixture of trials, other types of research and clinical experience.

3. The Corporate imperative that declares medicines that they can patent and profit from are the only ones that should be allowed in the government funded NHS - hence their increasing attacks on alternative and complementary treatment as a threat to their profits.

4. The number of times they cover up, or downright lie about, inconvenient truths that show how ineffective their products are, (even their own research states that less than half of all drug treatment courses are positively effective).

5. Doctors' slavish following of the pharma leads...Why have they not stopped prescribing Prozac when research shows it to be no more effective than a placebo..?
Why can you track the progress of a drug company representative around the country's GP practices simply by tracking the increase in prescriptions of their new drugs that follows their visits?

6. How do the large drug companies still get away with bribery and corruption - inviting Doctors to conference trips to Bermuda, for three hours of hard sell plus five days of all expenses paid holiday?

7. They actively and passively discourage the 'yellow card' system from being fully utilised to report all bad reactions to drugs, to the point where you need to have obviously died as a direct result of the drug before a report is likely to be acted upon.

8. Given the insistence that many other therapies must demonstrate how they work, how can they still prescribe paracetamol and ECT (just as two examples at the opposite end of the weirdness scale) when they don't know how these work either?

I further hold that the worshiping of randomised controlled trials is due for a savage wake up call.

Sure, I understand its principles, and can see the notion - which would be fine and would be more than fine by me, I like the idea of good controlled trials, ones where patients are properly informed but not led into severe doubt and panic by the process.

It could work...
IF... it was practiced on mechanistic models of identikit human beings that show no wide variation in their response to a whole range of treatments...
IF...the drug companies stuck to their own rules sufficiently well as to make the trial the pure thing they purport it to be...
IF...its champions were not quite so blindly against all other forms of strong evidence that upset their concrete thinking about how science works.

Professional over-stepper, Edzard Ernst, has said that every scientist "should have a closed mind when it comes to the subject of homeopathy"...

and this is from an interview in 2003.
'He is from four generations of conventional doctors but, he says, "Even as a young boy I was treated with complementary therapies - mostly homeopathy."

His first post was in a homeopathic hospital in Munich, where he was greatly impressed. "If you study medicine and pharmacology, you know [homeopathy] can't work," he says. The active substances in homeopathic medicines are so diluted that pharmacology says they cannot have an effect. "Then you start working in a homeopathic hospital and people get better. Is that a miracle? It certainly is very impressive for a young doctor.'

But not enough to allow him to keep an open mind apparently - and indeed the results of his "comprehensive reviews" of a very small number of inconclusive trials that are specifically limited to the one chemical aspect of treatment, is to advocate that everyone should follow his example and close their minds...

(Flat Earth dogmatists, come back, all is forgiven...)

I have a theory as to where his own closed mind emerges from and why he has a particular aversion to this branch of the healing therapies...

That interview hints at his early involvement in homeopathy whilst in his country of birth. In another interview he states that his mother was a huge believer in the treatment - hence the dominance of homeopathy in the treatments he received as a child...

He did however move to the UK due to a rejection of Germany and Austria, and admitted he found it hard to deal with his homeland's record of medical research during the Nazi period. He was someone who also rejected Vienna, '...because medicine there was about power and money and status. "The Viennese got on my nerves ... The time they spent intriguing against each other in the faculty could have been spent more fruitfully."

The insights of a certain famous Viennese doctor might also have left him cold - perhaps his mother and her utter belief in homeopathy represents a part of himself that he desperately wanted - still wants - to reject?
I am sure that Freud would have found Ernst's career path, beliefs and utterances most interesting - ("How do you feel about your mother Edzard?")
- as a precursor to reaching his most unscientific statement,
"All should have a closed mind"...

Oedipus Ernst is how I shall always think of him...

I had to smile,
...hearing the wriggling Catholic apologists on the news - and then, those who would explain that the problem has all been down to the use of "canon law" - internal Church governance rules whereby they hold to themselves the right to investigate and "punish" their own for minor crimes (such as mass murder) - without involving the secular legal authorities.

It is more to the point that they used NO LAW - instead moving the priests to new parishes (Cardinal Ratzinger's policy) or sending their priests to therapy centres, hoping to cover up the scandal, protect "Church reputation" and retain priests - an increasingly hard to find resource, despite all the "perks".

Sinners - who make the rest of us look like saints.
spot the odd one out...

The most recent of the very many scandals comes from the USA.
The Vatican has had the nerve to attack those 200 disabled children, now adults, for daring to suggest that Cardinal Ratzinger, before becoming pope, might have been involved in covering up and enabling child abuse...

"The Vatican attacks, as despicable..."
a bit like Peter Sutcliffe complaining of unfair treatment when people accuse him of being the Yorkshire ripper...

In fact, when I think of him, and those psychotic killers of prostitutes, I can't help thinking that they have a slightly higher moral ground to stand on, and more right to pontificate about how unfairly the world is treating them.
After all, they were probably screwed up as youngsters by being abused - maybe by their priest, and if not - at least by the whole sick culture of sin engendered by the sagging weight of history of the Catholic Church.

The idea that the Pope is to blame is of course ridiculous - getting rid of him would do no good. No, it is the entire system and all its occupants who must collectively stand accused of guilt of conspiracy and accessory before and after the fact. The fact of the worst abuse of power to rape and physically abuse children...
and its the system I would now refer to, with other evidence, from a different angle.

There is a personal story I would like to push forward, one that has nothing to do with child abuse, but is related because it displays the way the whole culture is abusive - and why it is wrong for the Catholic church itself to be allowed to remain unpunished for its multitudinous sins.

It concerns a former friend of mine, Father Sean Seddon, a Catholic priest I used to work with in South Wales.

"When Sean told his so-called priest friends about his desire to marry me, on more than one occasion he was told “see her, sleep with her, but for God’s sake you don’t have to marry her”

This is a quote from a Brynmawr school teacher who fell in love with a Catholic priest - and he with her. He was a good man, a compassionate man, I worked with him helping those in his parish with mental health problems. Those people loved him for his obvious dedication to them as "individuals of worth" in a society that generally walked away and feared them.

After ten years of love, and several of "Church help", unable to reconcile the hypocrisy of his Church, he did what hundreds of abused children throughout history have done - he turned his resultant depression and shame in on himself, and took his own life,
...by lying down on a railway line, not 2 miles form this house, not far from the infamous "Our Lady of the Victory, religious treatment centre in Stroud" run by the "Servants of the Paraclete".
Jan Curry, the woman he was in love with, writes:

In his broken state, he was sent to a religious treatment centre in Stroud. This was a totally inappropriate place for him. In his confusion and despair, he was made to join in group therapy sessions with paedophiles and alcoholics. As I discovered, little distinction was made between these problems and those of a priest in a loving long-term relationship with a pregnant partner.

( Note: This centre is now closed, couldn't get the staff apparently).

for her fuller story click here

Suicide by a Catholic priest is a major, major challenge to any Catholic parishioner... it must have been especially difficult for those few of his parishioners who had written him hate mail saying he would go to hell for betraying his vow of celibacy.

Where are those parishioners now?
still going to church?
- the same Brynmawr church?
do they believe that Sean Seddon is in eternal torment in hell for the double sin of suicide and falling in love?

Does any Catholic ever look hard at all these recent cover ups - the massive abuse in Ireland, Germany, America, Finland, Argentina, Brazil and wherever else it has yet to be revealed, and manage to say to themselves, "This is basically a good church"? "I thoroughly believe in the infallibility of the Pope"...?

The odd one out...
The popes and archbishop in the picture above are all guilty of covering up crime - with the possible exception of Pope Alexander VI, who was at least open, and comparatively honest, about power hungry invasion, theft, extortion, sex, and murder of his enemies.
All of those of modern days may have had less direct involvement in the commissioning of crime, but they have all failed, their entire careers, to end the corruption of the system or die trying.

That is the only vow I ever want to hear from someone within the catholic church, still allowing anyone else to give them money.
"I will end this organisation or die trying".

Excuse me, I do not normally like to delve into anything as deeply trivial as TV in my blog (with the possible exception of even deeper trivia in the form of Peter Greenaway's ego) but I am here in the study because it is on TV and my wife quite likes this show, Lark Rise to Candleford.

Does anybody else find it making them want to drink vinegar and clean their teeth?

I thought, there must be a hundred blogs out there saying that it should be called Barf Rise to Hyperglycaemiaford - but a quick search using the title and the words "puke" or "sick" returned only BBC promotional guff...

I did watch Cranford
- which many say was "similar", in that it was set in a village with cozy characters in roughly the same period - and even featured some of the same actors - but to me there was a big difference.
In Cranford people died.
They got ill and died, they got blown up and died, they got killed in the worst train accident of the century caused by a cow.

In Candleford, all relationships have tiny weeny little story arcs that make you all cozy and happy - and there are pretty ribbons on top of everything.

Lord spare us - this is almost as unbearable as Simon Cowell.

...who, in an aside, still wins my award for biggest asshole on Desert Island Discs ever.
When asked, by the delightful Kirsty Young, what luxury item he would take to his desert island (bearing in mind you cannot have anything that might be a tool to assist escape),
he said... he would have, (just for looking in), a mirror...
I searched desperately as Kirsty apparently did too, for the wink or nudge from him to suggest he was sending up his persona - but no - he was serious.

so I hope that instead of a mirror, they give him an Iplayer that can only play the entire series on loop of Barf rise to Blandleford.

Its in today's Film and Music supplement of the Guardian (title linked) - quite shocking really..
Peter Greenaway, Avant-talente film maker extraordinaire, has died, he has killed his self...

...in 14 years time.

OK...He says he will kill himself at 80 - and chooses the freedom of now residing in Holland to do it...(because no real artist would do it in the UK?)

I remember seeing his films, two of the three in my entire life I have ever walked out on before the end, are his...and yes, I used to get in free but that isn't what helped the decision. I have sat all the way through some utter rubbish.

He now says he is "no longer interested in cinema per se ...its a half-dead medium wasted by taking its cues from books, telling bedtime stories for adults. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are illustrated books, not cinema. I want to be a prime creator. As every self regarding egotistical asshole artist should do."

It turns out the subject of his latest (non cinema) film is "The Night Watch".

If the title is familiar that would be because it is also the title of a famous painting by Rembrandt - and funnily enough, the painting is the subject of the film this "prime creator" has just made...
The Night Watch, he reckons, (the painting not his version of it), is the first work of real cinema, on account of Rembrandt's manipulation of artificial light. Though were Rembrandt around today, "he would have been shooting on holograms. He would be post-post-James Cameron."(sic) He shakes his head. "All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil."

He is apparently very happy to be an out homosexual in Holland too, despite his quoted, "I'm a Darwinian. All I can think is that we're here to fuck, to procreate, and we're incredibly focused towards it."

I am not sure why two of Britain's worst but inexplicably funded film makers happen to be the only two out gay men who got their films shown here - despite massive public failure to understand their genius...

I for one would not take bets on Greenaway offing himself when 80 - to do something that cowardly as a premeditated act would be not his lack of style.
At least Derek Jarman made something real and honest before he popped his clogs - his Dungeness garden was several hundred degrees superior to any of his movies...

perhaps Greenaway will outdo him in the degree of his changing into something a bit more modest, but to me the death of his ego cannot come soon enough...

"Emperor's new clothes" was always how I felt about the film work of these two over praised artists, but the Dungeness garden was a redemption from the dross...

From: MERCILESS, His Holiness, Pope Benedict the
To: ALL IRELAND, The primate-like being of
date: 18:03:2010
Subject: That thing again.

Dear Sean,

I do not like this, I do not like this at all. It looks like yet another pants down in public situation with me in the hot seat, AGAIN!. Don't you think I'm sick of apologising for this shit?
You are "considering your position" you say. Would that be the position one adopts in a public school when about to be chastised?

heheh
just kidding Sean - me and you is old buddies, I would never dream of hanging you out to dry, we're family, and our blood is thicker than theirs... - I just have to get some help writing the bit of this letter that has to be made public, so I am asking you, and all my other red robed buddies, what you all think?

Cardinal Bestiality recommends the standard humble apology but no demands for resignation from you - he says the story arc will just fade and die if we keep the apologies simple and brave out the rest. I like him and respect his knowledge of the media, but it has no "fade and die" feel to me right now...

Cardinal Hypocrite on the other hand says we should say absolutely nothing by way of further apology, we should go on the attack - pointing out how child abuse is rampant in the secular world and we just have slightly more than what you might expect from a vetted, trained and privileged elite...

Its a tempting line but we tried it before and it only brought down more outrage from the very people who fund us, our membership.

Cardinal Vaseline feels we should try diversionary tactics whilst slipping out a quiet letter announcing our sincere regret yadda yadda - he has in mind some glorious trip and making some new saint in Ireland...

I dunno..Perhaps you can do some digging and see if we can come up with a really good looking monk who cured a couple of woman of cancer or something - that should do it - use our usual friends to create the evidence -

I think somewhere else, not Ireland, would be better - but maybe none of the places where we know the same problem might emerge...we'll work on that anyway yes?

Most of the other Cardinals are too busy weighing up their chances of ever getting either a pension or another job if they tell me the wrong thing - useless bunch of sycophants! they would never have progressed in the Hitler youth - and none of them have a chance of getting my hat when I go upstairs.

(sorry Sean but I guess I don't need to tell you that this is not an option for you now either...)

anyway - excuse the ramblings - I need to get this letter drawn up by tomorrow and we still have to ensure that our income and expenditure targets don't start to slip even further and damage our relationship with the share holders.

The futures market is saying dire things about our prospects in the western world - we may have to consider moving our entire operation to the underdeveloped world - just like BAT and Philip Morris have done. I will not let them have the Vatican - we've done too much, buried too many, to let this goldmine go...

So the point is I have to contain this as an Irish issue - keep it close to that area and not allow the news to get hold of anything that might make ripples across our developing markets in the southern hemisphere.

I know we can count on the support of most of the major media players - their CEO's confessions make our Jesuit brothers look positively mild by comparison! (you should see that little shit Paul Dacre's - no really, see the encrypted attachment)

but we cannot contain all those pesky new media types and little rogues of undemocratic outlets - like the BBC and the Guardian.

So it may be we find a form or words whereby I don't demand your resignation but you decide to jump and I say what a terrible sacrifice you have made for the glory of God yadda yadda - you know the format...

get back to me by email pronto

blessings etc.

Benny

I just had one of these through the door, and I am cross.

If I could have seen the collector or their vehicle I would have gladly punched them out/taken the registration and reported it to a man I know...

The man I know is the County Trading Standards officer who first alerted me to this team of scammers operating in Gloucestershire and across the UK. All the clothing they collect goes to their private business who make a profit for their own pockets - they have no connection to any breast cancer or any other registered charities.

So if you feel tempted to put any old rags in these bags for collection - make sure they are stuffed with easily bursting bags of permanent liquid dye such as Gentian violet...hopefully the collectors will get a strong message and with luck, be traced. it's time we stamped on these cancerous con-men and...
make sure you know who you are giving to.

the scam envelope is easily recognisable as it has the words "DO NOT DELAY!" on it and a web site address "donotdelay.org" which, if you type it into your browser, is a blank pink screen.

There are many hospice and breast cancer research charities that could use your charitable donations, these guys need a prison sentence.

This relates to the previous post - same story different angle...

Why did Mr Straw choose to go on the famous ten past eight slot of the Flagship News programme "Today"?

He repeated the same stance as he had always taken - that it was essential that no information about the reasons behind Jon Venables' recall to prison was released to the public...

So we were treated to John Humphrys finding fifteen different ways to skirt around the same question - exactly as Jack the Lad must have known he would, (given that all journalists seem to be of the opinion that the baying lynch mob must have their views expressed on every platform available.)

There is a clear explanation...
Straw loves the sound of his own voice and the notion of his own importance, (those are established facts not opinions) - so clearly this represented a great chance for him to look statesmanlike in his amazing ability and skill in saying nothing in fifteen different ways.

Well, he is a politician.

Worse though, even than Jack Straw's pathetic ego tripping, is that the Today producers thought it worthwhile and responsible to put him in this slot. Tabloid thinking on the Today show?

We should have had a straight statement - "There is no news on the Venables issue for solid legal reasons" - end of story. That's five seconds not fifteen prime-time minutes.

The title linked Daily Wail piece is not atypical of the tabloid response to news of Jon Venables getting into trouble and being recalled from his new identity release.

The following are quotes from those who enjoy such coverage

"As part of my tax is being used to feed and care for the murdering little shIt then yes, I say we have the right to know the details. I also say his identity should be disclosed and all police protection removed."

"It's only a matter of time before the evil little shit gets his comeuppance."

The print media are in decline, After a show of moral low ground scraping on the issue of a child killer (as in He was a child when he killed another child) they are not so much dying as committing Hara kiri.

The contempt of court they seek to commit and skirt round, playing to the baying mob makes me long for the day when all the tabloid press cease to exist - and stop polluting our society with their hate filled contemptuous trash.

Around the time of the Bulger killing there was a not dissimilar case in Norway. Two small children killed another - beating the toddler up and burying them in a snow drift.

Did we see crowds of baying stone throwing adults storming the courts and swearing death to the two child killers on TV news? no...

The community concerned wrapped itself with love around the parents of both victim and perpetrators' parents, trying desperately to come to terms with the horror for all concerned and heal the wounds that the incident caused.

Shame on Britain and its gutter press for doing the precise opposite -
Not one is genuinely concerned for the Bulger family, not one has looked at how these children, who became so psychopathic at the age of ten, were allowed to be so lost in our world. All they want is the sight of blood and a lynch mob appeased.

Sickening...and roll on Norwegian emigration...

Jogging for the cameras David?
Oh how it makes you look fit to lead...not.
David Cameron took a while to talk about the multi-millionaire Lord Ashcroft's "non-dom" status, what made me laugh was how he tried to shake it off with comments on Labour's donors and the "happy he is now clear about his status" line.
This deflective line on his status is the one that would have denied him his peerage in the first place according to William Hague, the then leader of the Tory party - (Yes, three leaders ago!) who was assured that he would be paying millions of pounds of UK taxes in order to comply with the permanent residence request...he lied to you William
- and you know it.

Today on Question time Ken Clarke tried the same line of "I don't know what the fuss is all about, probably most of us are envious of non doms' status..."

BZZZZZZZZZ! quack quack oops, that was a red white and blue rag to the others who could now proudly state how they were pleased to be UK residents. Also how pleased they are to be paying all their taxes here and are now expecting those charged with making laws that govern Brits to obey the rules that allowed them to reach that lofty position.

I have no doubt that this story arc, if properly maintained, can significantly expose the weaselly transparency -( as in "I have no substance" )- of David Cameron. And hopefully it will remind people that an outright Tory majority is a bad idea for the majority of UK taxpayers.

Which brings me to my desire for a hung parliament, and my message to the floating voters:-
You've voted for Tories, you've voted for Labour - which one has proved they do best with a landslide victory? - why are either of them to be more trusted than any other formula for government?
a cliche answer:
"Yeah, but a vote for the Lib Dems or Greens is a wasted vote innit?"
- you mean you only want to vote for a party that wins?(like London born fans of Manchester United)
"A fat lot of good that has done", is exactly what I am saying.
By voting for the Greens and acknowledging that the two main parties are so similarly bad as to not deserve an overall majority - you could actually force them to change...to agree to policies of foresight and consensus...

and by giving a voice to those who can see over a duck house and a tax break to the long term needs of the planet that we utterly depend upon for all life...
you might just help effect some real changes for the better...

Just in case anyone is new here - and if not, to remind you exactly why I would like to bring down the Catholic church and what it stands for...
try this - you'll have to go there yourself because my puritanical blog host prevents all links with the word "sex" (or "Zionist") in them
its one of the most viewed in the Guardian and look for the story that says "gay sex scandal hits the Vatican"

I have nothing against leading politicians being gay - of course not - as long as they don't hypocritically hide it and then try to repeal laws guaranteeing equal rights.

I have nothing against gay priests (except that they are priests)
until they go around preaching one thing but practicing the opposite.

(Hang on a minute - that is almost all of them)

We have, this year, the obscenity of the current Pope coming to the UK, and planning to beatify Cardinal Newman.
For those who don't know; as well as being the patron "Saint to be" of politicians, he is the man who burned people to death for daring to read the Bible in their own language, citing that the Church decreed it must be left in Latin only.

So the Church is giving out its usual lovely messages about the Holy Book....Murder to keep it private and under Priestly control and you can thus become a saint...WTF!?

The obscenity of that is a reflection of the obscenity of the entire Catholic structure - it is institutionally worse than anyone within it, and all other major church structures dare admit.

Because the purpose of nearly all institutions is self preservation BEFORE the good of mankind, and the bigger and older the institution the worse this self preservation behaviour becomes...

and more good news...The Pope cannot heal anyone - placebo effects do not last.

please let this be the first year in many, when Catholic numbers worldwide start to reduce as intelligence and education rises...

this is a sorry table of "paid" members..
Seminarians (men studying for the priesthood) 110,583
Religious sisters 769,142
Religious brothers 55,057
Diocesan and religious priests 405,178
Lay Ecclesial Ministers 30,632
Permanent deacons 27,824
Bishops 3,475
Archbishops 914
Cardinals 183
Pope 1

Total 1,402,989

to serve a world membership of 1,300,000,000 - and rising. (who presumably provide the millions of pounds that pays for all these people...and their nefarious activities).

we need to turn this around people - the Idiocracy is still alive and well...