Weird Science (Two Items).
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(1) Self-Delusion on 'Climate Change'. The usually astute Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show was instead a stupe tonite. The first half of the program, and the "moment of zen" at the end were given over to bewailing 'anthropogenic global warming'. I switched momentarily to News 12 New Jersey to check the temperature: 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The national news today led off with tales of horrendously subnormal cold across most of the Nation, but the Daily Show ran footage of glaciers collapsing into the sea and water running off supposedly melting icesheets. Where might that be?
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The bulk of the United States is suffering thru an extended period of profoundly subnormal temperatures, the coldest in 10 years in places like Chicago, but the loons of 'science' and media keep ranting about global warming. Are these people stupid, dishonest, or insane? It is not possible for a sane person to believe in global warming when all around you people are literally dying from the cold, freezing to death. No sensible person can believe in manmade global warming when all around him the world is frozen.
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Where might ice be melting? New York City, where the Daily Show is taped? No. The temperature did not rise even close to freezing all day. Not today. Not yesterday. 35,000 homeless people in the city were crowding into shelters, to keep from literally dying from the cold. But the Daily Show is so intent on its delusions that an ice cap could topple the Empire State Building and Jon Stewart would still be shouting "Global warming! Global warming!"
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Where are those glaciers collapsing into the sea? Not in the Northern Hemisphere, not for months in the past, nor for several months to come. And what else can glaciers do when they reach the ocean but collapse? What does the Daily Show think icebergs are? Perhaps those entertainers don't understand that the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912 broke off from a glacier where it met the sea. That's what icebergs are, huge chunks of glacier that broke off when the glacier reached the sea. That's what has always happened. That's what will always happen. There is nothing new in this, and people play no role in it.
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Plainly nothing is melting in much of the United States and all but perhaps the tiniest fraction of Canada. So where is this melting that Comedy Central showed? Antarctica? Antarctica is in its summer now. Summer. Ice is melting in summer. Oh my god! Ice isn't supposed to melt in summer! Oh, wait. It is.
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The fact that the entire Midwest and the East as far south as North Carolina is seriously subfreezing means nothing to the true believer in "Global Warming". 'Don't bother me with facts!' To show what it might take to persuade nonbelievers that the planet is getting hotter, the Daily Show ran a film clip of a man surrounded by flames. The planet is burning up. Oh? Strip down to a bathing suit and step outdoors, Mr. Stewart. Perhaps that will snap you out of your delusions.
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(2) Compulsory Gardasil. Rick Perry, the Republican Governor of Texas, has issued an "executive order" that ostensibly compels every schoolgirl in Texas to be inoculated against the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), an asserted cause of cervical cancer. He has no authority to order any such thing, and forcing subsances into children's bloodstreams is something no government should be permitted to do unless it protects against a communicable disease those children might otherwise pass to each other in class. HPV is no such disease.
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A bill to require such inoculations has been introduced in Kentucky too. Why?

Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, says her proposal would help spare girls from the threat of cervical cancer, which claims the lives of nearly 4,000 women nationally every year.

4,000 a year? The Dallas Morning News says the figure is actually more like 3,700. But, for purposes of argument, let's bump it up to a whole 4,000.
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We are supposed to spend billions of dollars to vaccinate tens of millions of girls because 4,000 women a year die from cervical cancer? What is the population of the United States that we should panic over 4,000 deaths a year? 8,000? No, actually, it's over 300 million.
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Well, how many deaths from all causes are there each year in the United States? In the year 2000, there were 2,403,351 deaths. Each and every year about 2.4 million people die in this country. 2.4 million. (Of course, in the long term, every single person in the United States, and every other country, will die.) 4,000 deaths a year is 0.17% of total deaths. For that we are supposed to force every girl in school to take a vaccine that may or may not be effective and may or may not have side effects, the famous "unintended consequences" that every sensible person must bear in mind. Have we forgotten Vioxx? Fen-Phen? Thalidomide?
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And what is Gardasil to 'gard' against? HPV. Is this a virulent, all-powerful disease that no other measure can cope with?
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A webpage of the American Cancer Society called "What Every Woman Should Know About Cervical Cancer and the Human Papilloma Virus" provides this interesting information:

HPV is not a new virus, but we are learning more about this virus. Almost everyone who has ever had sex has had HPV at some time in his or her life.

How does HPV lead to cervix cancer?
HPV is spread through sex and it can cause an infection in the cervix. The infection usually doesn't last very long because your body is able to fight the infection. If the HPV doesn’t go away, the virus may cause cervix cells to change and become precancer cells.

Precancer cells are not cancer. Most cells with early precancer changes return to normal on their own. Sometimes, the precancer cells may turn into cancer if they are not found and treated. Very few HPV infections lead to cervix cancer.

Let me repeat the key points here: "Almost everyone who has ever had sex has had HPV at some time in his or her life." "The infection usually doesn't last very long because your body is able to fight the infection." "Very few HPV infections lead to cervix cancer." That's what the American Cancer Society says. So why on Earth would anyone think for even an instant of forcing millions of girls to take a vaccine against HPV? And why not boys? If HPV doesn't cause cancer in boys and men, why would we think it does so in women?
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The case against HPV is mostly a statistical correlation between the presence of HPV in women with cervical cancer. But if "almost everyone who has ever had sex has had HPV at some time in his or her life", why would a correlation between HPV and cervical cancer be meaningful?
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This seems "science" gone mad. Or is it just a con game played by a pharmaceutical company to reap a windfall by forcing people to take a worthless vaccine?
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Merck, the maker of Gardasil, is based in my state, New Jersey (about 35 miles from my house). If it can con bunches of states into forcing people to take Gardasil, Merck will make a fortune, and New Jersey will take in some extra tax revenue from Merck. That's not good enuf reason to force people to take something that has not been proved, against a virus that has not been proved to cause any cancer whatsoever.
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But even if vaccinating girls — and boys? — with such a vaccine were wise (which I do not for an instant concede), that decision should be made democratically, by legislators openly debating, and listening to their constituents' objections. This is a very personal matter. Government is to tell people what they must take into their veins? Where does Government get any such right?
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Most pointedly, where does a governor get the right to issue an edict over the general population? Governor Rick Perry was not elected Generalisimo or President for Life. He is just some fool off the street. Nowhere does the Constitution give any governor or other executive the right to force citizens to do anything not expressly mandated by legislation duly passed by a legislature they have elected.
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An "executive order" is an order from a government executive to government departments. It controls only the executive branch of government, not society. To interpret an "executive order" otherwise is like accepting the idea that the CEO of General Motors has the power to require all Americans to buy a Chevy. After all, he's an executive. Why can't he issue an "executive order" over the entire population? Well, he just plain does not have that authority. He can't even order GM's own employees to buy a Chevy. Nor has the Governor of Texas the authority to tell private citizens what to do. A governor's executive order has absolutely no force of law over anyone outside government. None. Absolutely none.
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Governor Perry's power grab over the bodies of Texas girls is medical rape. He is attempting to compel children to take something into their veins that could cause a different kind of cancer, or birth defects, or some other unintended effect years down the line. After all, vaccination's effects are expected to last for years, or you wouldn't inoculate 11- and 12-year-olds against a sexually transmitted virus. If good effects could last for years, surely bad effects could equally last for years.
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Gardasil has not been around for decades. It has no proven history of safety. Even with well-understood vaccines that have been around for generations, there are small numbers of serious adverse reactions. Gardasil would not be the only inoculation girls will have taken. What if there is interaction or immunological overload? As CBS News has reported in the matter of multiple inoculations given to military personnel in Iraq, some recipients have died!
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The scientific evidence of the 'cocktail' of vaccinations that veterans of (the first) Gulf War were required to take is unclear even now. Some people suspect that at least some of the sufferers of "Gulf War Syndrome" got sick from vaccinations. Do we really want to risk the health of millions of girls for the sake of a disorder that kills an insignificant number of women?
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If there is something seriously wrong with Gardasil, we might not know about it for decades. And if millions of girls are inoculated with this new vaccine, even a small proportion of serious adverse effects could wipe out any advantage to administering it. In 20 years, for instance, there will pass thru our schools some 75 million children, half of whom are girls. 38 million forced vaccinations? If adverse effects occurred with only ½ of 1% of those girls, or their children, that would be about 190,000 young women who would suffer adverse effects that could include death to the woman or death or deformity to her child. For what? To stave off 80,000 deaths from cervical cancer in the following 20 years — assuming that no treatment for cervical cancer is developed in those 20 years? Is that sensible?
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Gardasil could indeed be another Vioxx, Fen-Phen, or Thalidomide. If people voluntarily take it, that's one thing. But to force people to take it is quite another.
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Rick Perry should be impeached. Or hanged. Or shot. Sic semper tyrannis.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,100 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM