On December 10, 2007, 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was found strangled, and succumbed to the assault within hours. Her father, Muhammad Parvez, and her brother Waqas were charged with her murder.

Initial speculation was that the murder was a result of Aqsa’s defiance of her father’s request that she wear the traditional Muslim head covering called a hijab, and a desire to ‘westernize’ her clothing and activities.

Even if this were not the case, it is a fact that there have been similar incidents of violence towards women for perceived acts of disobedience of religious or social traditions—something not unique to Islam.

The resulting public reaction was predictable and mostly consisted of expressions of outrage and disgust. Among the reactions were some comments showing a lack of understanding, which can cloud our judgment when it comes to discussing preventive measures. This I find disturbing. It is my fervent hope that we can stop this particular brand of insanity, but in order to do so we must ensure that our efforts are properly directed.

The comments heard in the aftermath of this tragedy came from all walks of life and from many philosophical positions. As skeptics and purveyors of science and reason, we must be able to present a rational and balanced viewpoint that is considered, not a knee-jerk reaction.

(I should note that I am not trying to reach any specific conclusions nor propose remedies and solutions; that level of analysis is best left to those with more resources and qualifications than I have. I simply wish to express my thoughts and try to figure out how we should approach these situations as skeptics.)

A few days after Aqsa Parvez’s death, a well-known radio commentator asked, “Does this not invalidate Islam? ” While he was sure to say that there were many good and decent Muslims, his implication was clear—he questioned whether Islam is valid.

This statement above all others caused me to think about this subject.

In my opinion this act, horrific as it was, invalidates nothing. It does not invalidate a god concept, it does not invalidate religion in general or Islam in particular, and, as shocking as this may sound, it does not invalidate the father’s belief in the righteousness of his actions. For all we know there may be a god who wishes us to act as Islam dictates. I don’t believe that and I feel certain that none of the readers will give the idea even a microsecond of consideration, but there is still no invalidation of anything. This was the act of one man who did it for reasons of his own.

As an atheist I cannot blame a god I don’t believe in. As a skeptic I cannot blame a religion that, in its original texts, does not preach that women should be killed for such a thing. Intellectual honesty compels skeptics to learn the facts, and from all accounts the facts are clear—all the Qur’an says is that women should dress modestly, and prescribes no punishment for those who choose to dress as they wish.

As an evolutionist I am compelled not to blame religion. Instead I see this as an entirely naturalistic human failing. Here we have a man who should have possessed the paternal instincts rooted in brain chemistry that has evolved over eons that would cause him to protect, nurture, and love his daughter. Those instincts seem to have been so weak that they were overcome by his own personal interpretation of a vague religious edict. People who do this do not have parental instincts strong enough to prevent them from harming their own children or allowing them to be harmed; in a sense they are an evolutionary dead-end. There is no religious victory here, simply a human failing. If we blame religion, we are shirking our responsibilities as skeptics and as humans to look for proper causes based on human emotions and natural causes.

If we cavalierly dismiss this as an invalidation of a religion, we are cheating ourselves by taking the easy way out; we are cheating society out of a chance to investigate and perhaps explain a very real problem that deserves attention; and we are cheating Aqsa Parvez, a young woman who simply wanted to live her life as she saw fit.

We do not know about Aqsa’s religious convictions. For all we know she may have been conventionally religious, perhaps even devout, but merely unwilling to go along with certain cultural strictures. Let us not insult her memory with conjecture.

Where are these cultural strictures found? Not in the Qur’an, but in the Hadith—a set of religious texts written by other Islamic scholars after the prophet Mohammed’s death. Linguistically the word Hadith means “that which is new from amongst things,” or “a piece of information conveyed either in a small quantity or large.” That seems rather wishy-washy, as many religious texts tend do be. Generally people invent meanings from statements, condense texts, pick and choose, or expound on them voluminously to bamboozle the faithful.

The implication is that if you wish to know what Mohammed said, read the Qur’an, but if you wish to know what he meant, read the Hadith. It is the Hadith that expounds the Qur’an’s advice that women should dress modestly, turning a description of how to dress, with no prescribed punishment, into an intolerant dictate that women be completely covered and subjected to severe punishment for disobedience. Like any other writings, the Hadith has as much credibility as an individual wishes to give it. It could be seen as ‘gospel truth’ written by hands that were guided by a god, or it could be seen as a medieval version of a Jack Chick tract.

Many non-theists will immediately see religion as the problem in all this, and they would be partially correct. But it is not religion per sè, rather the way humans use, misuse, and abuse it. Atheists are not immune. We bristle, and rightly so, when theists admonish us by saying that atheism is just another form of religion. It is not, but neither is theism—both are simply position statements (one believes there is a god, the other does not).

Another thing that infuriates non-theists is the claim that the most barbarous and murderous states of recent times, and perhaps of all time, have been officially atheistic. Unfortunately they are probably correct. The caveat here for atheists is that if we are not careful to temper our philosophy with sound judgment and healthy scepticism, we can become that which we claim to oppose. Atheism may not be a religion, although some can preach and practise it with a religious fervour, but atheists can still be religious. It can be benign or even beneficial; I have often viewed my naturalism as a form of religion and see no problem with that description (it makes me happy), although carrying it to the extremes that organisations like PETA present is, in my opinion, fundamentalism.

Perhaps the most insidious form of atheistic ‘religion,’ at least in recent experience, is statism—the worship of the state and its ideals and progress. Ostensibly atheistic leaders such as Josef Stalin, Mao Xe Dong, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong Il have been almost deified as prophets at best and demi-gods at worst. Who of my generation can forget newsreel footage of thousands of uniformed Chinese civilians waving their little red book of quotations from Chairman Mao? There have even been incidents that imply a supernatural power. When Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, some of his entourage were taken to a hospital and witnessed an operation. The patient was awake and alert during the procedure, waving the little red book and extolling the virtues of Mao. If that ain’t that old time religion, I don’t know what is. (It turns out that the operation was rigged; it was a fervent volunteer who had been given massive doses of local anaesthesia.)

I would submit that China under Mao was just as theocratic as Afghanistan under the Taliban. In Russia the long lines waiting in Red Square to glimpse Lenin’s body lying in state lasted for decades, and continue in smaller form to the present day, therefore testifying to the enduring quasi-religious fervour attached to his name and legacy.

Religion is not entirely blameless, but it’s an enabler at most. It’s rather like the person who drives the getaway car—some drivers are unwitting or unwilling dupes. Theists ride away claiming that their religions have never/would never do such a thing, and atheists hop on board and proclaim that their freedom from religion means that they could never do it. (At such times I have heard individuals from both groups invoke Anthony Flew’s ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy*.) Some of those who are anti-religion or anti-Islam can just quickly dismiss it on that basis without any further thought. They are all wrong, as blood-soaked human history both current and ancient can all too easily illustrate.

If you wish to combat the excesses of religion, go ahead; I believe it’s a noble cause and I will stand beside you. If I can fit into my old uniform I might even lead a battalion. But I will only do so on two conditions: 1) That you realise that such excess is a strictly natural human failing that can exist independent of theism. 2) We admit that we are all therefore susceptible.

* Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about the ‘Brighton sex maniac’ striking again. Hamish is shocked and declares, “No Scotsman would do such a thing!” The next day he sits down to read the Herald and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion, but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.” – From Thinking About Thinking – Or Do I Sincerely Want to be Right? by Anthony Flew, 1975.

There are many symbols of the season, but the Christmas tree is the most iconic. Most skeptics know that the tradition of taking in a tree for the winter pre-dates Christianity’s arrival in Europe by many years, but that is not enough to dissuade those complainers who have been usurping pagan traditions since year one. For them we must take a more forward approach and confront them with their own words—the Bible itself.

When next you hear the inevitable grumbling about it being a Christmas tree, dammit, not a %$&#ing holiday tree, whip out this little biblical admonition:

Jeremiah 10:2-4 (King James Version):

2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

Hmm, seems as if there’s a wee bit of sinning going on in Christendom, because I’m sure that those hordes at the tree lots every year aren’t all worshipping Mother Earth.

My family? Yes, this happy band of atheists gets a tree. It’s traditional, a part of our culture. Like the Ikea commercial says, it’s a six-foot-tall, pine-scented air freshener!

Merry x-mas!

The fact is that all of the alleged controversy is rendered irrelevant when one admits that Christmas has become largely a secular holiday.

Out of the gate let me say that of course there remains a contingent of religious people for whom December 25th is the birthday of Jesus Christ, and who celebrate the date as such. But generally the majority in the world who celebrate Christmas—even in countries with very few Christians—celebrate it as a secular tradition rather than a religious one.

Christmas is mostly about giving and receiving presents, eating a lot of food, getting shmammered, attending parties, and spending time with family and friends. For some, it is about all of these things and attending church. But anecdotal evidence demonstrates that most of the church-goers attend more out of habit, tradition, or ‘keeping up appearances’ than to worship a god. In many cases, the folks who attend mass on Christmas only go to church once or twice a year (the other being Easter).

If the devoutly religious want Christmas to be purely about religion, then they must eschew all of the other Christmas traditions: gifts, food, lights, trees, etc. If they do not, then they are nothing more than hypocrites.

But what is Christmas, anyway? Is it historically a purely religious, Christian celebration?

If Jesus were a real historical figure, it is the consensus of most historians and theologians based on available evidence that December 25th was not the actual date of his birth. (Most accounts place it sometime towards the end of September.) December 25th was originally a Roman winter solstice festival known as Sol Invictus, which celebrated the ‘rebirth” of the Sun; several Sun gods were worshipped, including Sol and Mithras. Because it was already such a popular pagan holiday, it was co-opted as the birthday of Jesus. Celebrating the birth of Jesus was condemned and looked down upon by Christians for most of history; Christians didn’t start celebrating Christmas as we know it until the 1800s.

The gift-giving part of Christmas—some would argue the #1 Christmas tradition—was actually introduced long after the Church decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The tradition does not derive from the three wise men in the bible, as many believe. In fact, gift exchange derived from Saturnalia, a popular Roman holiday dating to 217 BCE that celebrated the god Saturn. Saturnalia involved sacrifices, a school holiday, and, yes, the exchange of gifts.

Even if we grant the ‘war-on-Christmas’ types the two lies they claim as truth (that Jesus was born on December 25th and that the gift-exchange tradition comes from the three wise men), I wonder how Jesus would feel about people celebrating his birth by literally trampling each other to death in a Walmart in order to buy the $450 video game on sale for $350.

As for that exalted symbol the Christmas tree—it is a tradition that dates to 16th century Germany. It was considered good luck to hang an evergreen at the apex of a house, and over time this morphed into having the tree inside and decorating it. The tradition immigrated to North America along with the Germans.

Traditions are what society is based on, no matter where you live in the world or what your society looks like. Traditions are mostly benign. They are also malleable and tend to change over time. And generally society changes with them. We celebrate Halloween: kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy door to door; adults dress up in costumes and parade and/or party. We do not celebrate the Celtic festival Samhain, from which Halloween is derived, warding off evil spirits by disguising ourselves as them, or slaughtering livestock and casting their bones into bonfires. (At least I hope we don’t!)

Christmas may have meant one thing once upon a time, but now it means something different. Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, but we can still celebrate Christmas. Even the non-religious can celebrate Christmas because it’s about tradition, merriment, nostalgia, and making new memories. It’s an excuse to get together with family and friends we don’t see very often. It’s fun to see the excitement and awe in children’s eyes. The food, candy, and chocolate are great, although the sweaters are mostly bad. Feelings about egg nog are split, and some people even like Christmas music.

As for me, I have grown increasingly weary of Christmas the older I’ve gotten. It seems the magic goes out of it when you’re no longer a child and don’t have children in your life. But it’s the crass commercialism and pure gaudiness that I abhor more than anything. (But if that doesn’t bother you and you still have some names to cross off your shopping list, may I suggest The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, edited by the brain behind the atheist bus campaign, Ariane Sherine.)

Christmas is no Halloween, but if I remove the religiosity and the crass commercialism, it’s a pretty nice time of the year. For whatever reason The Sound of Music is always on TV this time of the year, and that’s enough for me.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Human Rights Day, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Happy Omisoka, Happy St. Lucia Day, Happy Winter Solstice, Merry X-mas …and Happy any-other-December-holiday-you-may-celebrate-that-I-may-have-inadvertently-left-out!

A few quotations from well-known scientists, skeptics, and atheists on this subject:

“But of course it has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too. So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.”
– Richard Dawkins

“It seems to me to be obvious that everything we value in Christmas—giving gifts, celebrating the holiday with our families, enjoying all of the kitsch that comes along with it—all of that has been entirely appropriated by the secular world.”
– Sam Harris

“My personal war on Christmas is fought in a way the Bill O’Reillys of the world don’t even recognize: I blithely wish people a Merry Christmas without so much as a germ of religious reverence anywhere in my body. I take this holiday and turn it into a purely secular event, with family and friends and food and presents. I celebrate the season without thought of Jesus or any of the other myths so precious to the pious idiots who get upset when a Walmart gives them a cheery ‘Happy Holidays!’”
– PZ Meyers

Cheers to…

No cheers this month

Jeers to…

…Canadian Blood Services. On their web site and in a brochure being distributed to school children, Canadian Blood Services is promoting the completely absurd superstition that people can divine important personality and health traits from their blood type.

Here is an example of what they say:

“Having type A blood suggests that you are reliable, a team player and may benefit from a vegetarian diet…. Having type B blood suggests that you are independent, a self-starter and may benefit from a wholesome well-balanced diet… Having type O blood suggests that you might be competitive, goal oriented and a real meat eater.”

ASR holds that this astrology of the blood is ridiculous to say the least, and it is inconceivable that Canadian Blood Services is promoting it. Why not e-mail them and let them know your thoughts? I’m sure Chair Leah Hollins would love to hear from you: feedback@blood.ca.

This was brought to our attention by Francis Hanlon, who CC’d ASR on a letter he wrote to Canadian Blood Services. Here is a portion of his letter:

“[This is] a pseudoscientific notion that cannot be encouraged by an organization that is operating with taxpayer money purporting to provide healthcare services and therefore be part of a science-based healthcare delivery system…. Dr. Victor Herbert, a hematologist who studied blood and nutrition at New York ’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center before his death once said of the theory linking blood type and diet that it is ‘pure horse manure. It has no relation to reality. The genes for blood type have nothing to do with the genes that handle the food we eat.’ I urge you to remove this pseudoscience from your website and recall all the brochures that indicate that this information has any basis in reality. This is a total waste of taxpayer dollars and a travesty for a science-based organization to be promoting this misinformation.”

Thanks Francis!

The symposium was being presented by the University of Toronto Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and two of the sponsors of the event are purveyors of homeopathic products, and who knows what other pseudoscientific alternative ‘medicine.’

We wanted to admonish the school for having such sponsors take part in a symposium—this is supposed to be a medical science school, after all. And we wanted to educate attendees and the general public about what homeopathy really is.

I genuinely feel that most people do not know what homeopathy is. Many of the attendees didn’t know. I didn’t know until about two years ago! And once people learn what it is and how it purports to work, I hope they will be rendered unable to support it if they claim any amount of intellectual honesty. “It’s just water?!?” “They claim that water has a memory!?!?”

In a future Critical Eye we will provide you with the text of the brochure, but suffice it to say that our mini protest was a success: We managed to catch a majority of the attendees and give them brochures; we got compliments from one doctor in attendance who advises her patients against alternative medicine, and came to the symposium to “see what they’re up to;” and we got a double thumb’s up and a “keep up the good work” from one of the speakers.

We hope to hold more actions like this in the future, and we hope that you will join us.

As skeptics, we feel drawn to any cause, anywhere, where science and reason are under attack. Whether it’s government-abetted evolution denial in the southern United States, homeopathy mixing into mainstream culture in Britain, or fraudulent faith healers in Africa pushing fake AIDS cures, we use the Internet to inform and become informed about these issues.

Furthermore, we use the Internet to provide support to those who are personally affected by these issues and are in the trenches,” so to speak. It is that great ability to unite a relatively small, geographically diverse group into a loud, cohesive voice that is crucial to our success.

However, sometimes we may be guilty of farsightedness.

My introduction to the skeptical community only a few years ago was through the Internet, in particular the fabulous Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast and the Skepchick blog. Learning about the spread and influence of pseudoscience and the like captured my interest. While these blogs and podcasts are a great way to stay informed on topics of skeptical interest around the world, I realized that I was overlooking a lot of what was happening in my home town, Toronto, and Canada in general.

The last couple of years have seen gigantic growth in the size and influence of alternative medicine, with clinics and practitioners popping up everywhere and largely going unchallenged. As such, public perception has shifted and many people’s initial impression may be that there is validity to these practices, despite the fact that most of these modalities run the gamut from simply being unsupported by evidence to complete scientific implausibility.

Alternative medicine has also pervaded into the media, with daily and weekly papers running alt-health columns and, in my own community, a local television network even producing a show hosted by a homeopath who gives quack advice to people who may have legitimate medical concerns!

I have also documented a group calling itself Vote Fluoride Out that is gearing up to organize a campaign to stop the public health measure of controlled fluoridation of Toronto drinking water. Their information and arguments are steeped in pseudoscience, and they’re getting support from an unlikely local source (more on that soon).

As an example if acting local, take the New England Skeptical Society (NESS), which has done some great work investigating ghost hunters, particularly in New England. They took great advantage of their proximity and were able to actually meet Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are considered the progenitors of the ghost-hunting community. By taking part in some of their ‘ghost tours,’ NESS was able to do some great primary research and become local experts.

This is an example of how focusing on local issues will allow skeptics to become valuable information resources, not only for the skeptical community, but for our fellow citizens who may be oblivious to where the science stands on topics they encounter in their daily lives.

I hope that we, as Canadian skeptics, can turn more of our attention to what’s going on in our own backyard, as well as continue to stay informed about and support skeptical issues around the world.

In the next issue: The case for street-level skepticism.

http://www.news3news.com/wpo4.html

http://www.channel7daily.com/

You may notice that every link you click on takes you to the same product page, regardless of whether you want to check the latest hockey scores or the local weather. This is known as a microsite or landing page. It’s a pretty common practice to have ads pointing to such pages so that companies can market their products in a more enticing way than a puny banner ad allows. Most of the time landing pages present clearly branded messaging so you know you have clicked on the correct ad.

In the case of the examples above, the landing pages offer testimonials for products that shouldn’t exist yet and try to convince visitors to click on links to “free trials.” Clicking on these links will result in the actual product page. And then the fun begins.

The site that the faux news article takes you to (http://www.antioxwine.com), actually claims in the fine print on the Terms and Conditions page that the product it is selling may do nothing for you at all (although they have complete faith in it):

“D. We do not warrant or represent that Our Products will provide You with any particular benefits, or that Your results will match those of others who consume Our Products. Individual results will vary from person to person.”

The product page is designed very cleverly and is completely legal. It has an almost hypnotic way of advertising one product while selling visitors another by confusing them with two completely different but similar messages. It talks about Resveratrol and ResVmax, never once claiming that Resveratrol is present in ResVmax. Their actual claim is: “One pill = approx. 1000 glasses of wine,” without actually disclosing the exact ingredient they’re pumping you with at 1000 times a regular dose. There is actually no nutritional information on the site at all.

When buyers place their order they must provide their phone number, mailing address, and e-mail address. The purveyors now have enough information to pummel you with unwanted outreach. Again, in the Terms and Conditions they claim (in legalese) that they will send your information to third-party companies and offer you no opt-out preference. Most likely, they’re compiling a list of gullible people and selling it to the highest bidder to use in shady marketing schemes. If you want a lot more spam, junk mail, and intrusive phone calls, then simply buy this product!

The “free trial” will cost you a paltry $3.95 for shipping and handling, but they really start price-gouging with their opt-out ordering plan. The extremely confusing ordering policy automatically charges CAD$240 per month if you don’t contact them within 15 days of placing your free trial order.

This company is based in England, so if the order takes 16 days to arrive, you will automatically be charged $240. If you don’t contact them to cancel the order, they will continue to charge you every month.

This is a common scam, but it is worth reminding folks to always read the fine print!

The treatment most commonly associated with this issue is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR). The furor began in 1998 after an unfortunate set of circumstances which led the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, to publish an article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. I say ‘article’ rather than ‘research’ because the study may have had a (literally) fatal flaw – Dr. Wakefield was doing a study that was paid for by a group of parents of autistic children. These parents were looking for evidence that would aid them in a lawsuit against the makers of the MMR vaccine, which they were convinced had caused their children’s autism.

Immunization rates in Britain plummeted as a result of the article, with 25% of children not receiving the medication. A resurgence in the infection rates of these diseases followed, and in March 2006 a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die of measles in the UK in 14 years.

Since that time many of Wakefield’s collaborators have retracted their conclusions with a signed statement. The editor of The Lancet has said he never would have published the article if Wakefield’s conflict of interest had been known to him. As a result, vaccination rates in Britain have gone up to 85%. However, that is still lower than the 95% recommended by authorities as the minimum needed for herd immunity to keep those diseases at bay.

One would think that the purveyors and promoters of naturopathic medicine would be the last to accept any findings that the MMR vaccine is safe, but as skeptics we must keep an open mind to everything, and that includes giving credit where credit is due. The following can found on the web page of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM) after searching “vaccine”:

Association of autistic spectrum disorder and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: a systematic review.

Citation:

Wilson K, Mills E, Ross C, McGowan J, Jadad A. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, 2003;157(7):628-34.

OBJECTIVE: To systematically review the evidence for and against the existence of an association between autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

DESIGN: We conducted a systematic review of the medical literature to identify all controlled epidemiological articles examining for an association between ASD and the MMR vaccine. We extracted data from the articles on the characteristics and objectives of the study as well as evidence of an association.

RESULTS: Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria. One study found no difference in the rates of ASD and the MMR vaccine in children who were vaccinated and those who were not. Six studies examined for evidence of an increase in ASD associated with an increase in the MMR vaccine coverage, none of which showed evidence of an association. Four studies examined if a variant form of ASD was associated with the MMR vaccine, none of which showed evidence of an association. Eight studies attempted to determine if there was a temporal association between developing ASD and receiving the MMR vaccine. Of these, 1 study identified an increase in parental concern in the 6-month period following vaccination with MMR in one of its analyses. The results of all other studies showed no association between ASD and the MMR vaccine.

CONCLUSIONS: The current literature does not suggest an association between ASD and the MMR vaccine; however, limited epidemiological evidence exists to rule out a link between a rare variant form of ASD and the MMR vaccine. Given the real risks of not vaccinating and that the risks and existence of variant ASD remain theoretical, current policies should continue to advocate the use of the MMR vaccine.

This is a direct quotation from the article cited, so it doesn’t represent anything original on the part of the CCNM. It is, however, a rather powerful statement when you consider who is reprinting it. We all enjoy the odd gotcha” moment, so when someone tells you that their favourite alt-med de jour is against vaccinating children, you can refer them to the CCNM and demonstrate that even they don’t buy it.

Fear: Why is it working?

Some of the lies anti-reformers are spewing about health care reform: You won’t get to choose your doctor. There will be a government bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor. Grandma will be euthanized if she gets sick. Health care will be rationed. Everyone will be forced to pay for abortions, sex-change operations, and health care for illegal aliens. Death panels!!!

But people are believing it. Anti-reformers have launched a campaign of outright lies and absurdities and people believe it. Why?

Why are the fear tactics quashing rational debate about health care? Because appeals to emotion generally trump appeals to logic. (It’s the bane of a rationalist’s existence.) And the most powerfully motivating emotion is fear. Fear is our most primal emotion; survival is linked to it.

Many cultures, and certainly most western cultures, are uncomfortable with death. We don’t like to discuss it, and we don’t know how to handle it when we (or someone we care about) are confronted with it.

The American federal government has long encouraged Americans to make living wills and have end-of-life-care discussions with their doctors. It’s not new. The Bush administration advocated it. It’s a good idea. It’s a smart idea. It’s an important idea. People should have all of their wishes honoured when their inevitable end comes, and those wishes cannot be honoured if they’re not known (in the form of a living will). And people should make informed decisions about their end-of-life care by discussing options with their doctor.

‘Obamacare’ is not presenting anything new, just the concept the the government will pay for said end-of-life-care consultations.

The scare tactics of the anti-reformers turned this simple, innocuous concept into a monstrously scary prospect (death panels!!!) and the American public freaked out. Suddenly they were being forced to confront the idea of their own mortality. That’s scary. Even after millions of years of brain evolution, existential fear trumps logic and reason.

Fear is also contagious. This is a mechanism of evolutionary biology. Survival of a species requires signalling danger to others and being receptive to danger signals.

So fear of death is one culprit. Others include fear of change and losing the things they have, fear of diminished freedom of choice, and fear of government. Fear, fear, fear. Fear trumps reason.

The truth about U.S. health care

Again, as an outsider, I see the ‘debate’ about health care in the U.S. as patently ridiculous. I know enough about the current American system to know that most of what the anti-reformers are erroneously claiming about health care reform are things that exist in their current system.

“I don’t want some bureaucrat standing between me and my doctor!” or “I won’t be able to choose my doctor!” are two protests commonly heard in the past couple of months. But insurance company executives currently stand in the way of Americans and their doctors, and the public’s choices are already limited.

If an American is lucky enough to be able to afford a health care plan, or have a job that provides one, she will still have to pay out of pocket if she goes to a doctor or hospital not on her insurance company’s ‘in-network provider’ list. An in-network provider is one contracted by the insurer for agreed-upon rates. An out-of-network provider is one not contracted with the insurer. If Americans go to a doctor or hospital that is ‘in-network’ then they will pay less than if they go to an out-of-network doctor or hospital. In some cases they will have to foot the entire bill. So if you’re an American who is unconscious and being rushed to the hospital, you’d better regain consciousness long enough to tell people which insurance company-approved hospital to take you to so you don’t go bankrupt.

People in the current American health care system can be denied coverage by their insurers for pre-existing conditions, or denied reimbursement of drugs not approved by their insurer. Doctors and nurses spend a good part of their day on the phone with insurance companies to make sure that certain treatments and drugs are covered by their patient’s health care plan (often they are not). Sick people are often turned away by a hospital because that hospital isn’t on their insurer’s pre-approved list. And yet some Americans believe that they currently have free choice, that no one is standing between them and their doctor?

We keep hearing that America has the best health care system in the world. It’s true that the U.S. spends more (by all measures) than every other country. In fact, it is the most expensive in the world. But the World Health Organization ranks France, Switzerland, Britain, Canada, and Japan higher than the U.S. in health care. The U.S. ranks 37th. Forty-six million Americans can’t afford health care. Seventy-five percent of those who file for bankruptcy because of medical costs had insurance when they got sick and went bankrupt anyway. The system is run by huge health insurance corporations that make enormous profits off of denying care to patients.

And this is the system that anti-reformers are fighting, fighting, to keep.

The truth about Canadian health care

I live in Canada and I am appalled (and a little naïvely surprised) at the lies being bandied about regarding the Canadian health care system. In Canada we have universal, single-payer, non-profit health care called Medicare. It is a single-payer system: The government pays the medical bills, but doctors and hospitals are private and independent (as opposed to socialized medicine, like the NHS in Britain, where doctors are paid by, and hospitals are owned by, the government). In Canada, the provincial governments and the federal government are responsible for providing non-profit health insurance to all citizens—they pay for it, they don’t run it. And citizens pay no deductibles or co-payments in most cases (some medications and treatments are not covered or are only partially covered).

Canadians do not have to fight with insurance companies (or the government) for reimbursement. We are not denied care. We do not go bankrupt from medical bills. We do not have to suffer from illnesses or injuries because we cannot afford medical care. Canadian doctors and administrators do not have to waste precious time fighting with insurance companies, or turn patients away because they are not ‘in-network.’ Drug prices are negotiated by the government with the pharmaceutical companies, which keeps costs down. Doctors are reimbursed monthly by the government, which means no time-consuming paperwork for thousands of different insurance companies. (In the U.S. which has between 1,000 and 1,500 different insurance companies, about 30% of health care costs are purely administrative—overhead costs that single-payer, not-for-profit systems do not have.)

Why does Canada pays less for a better system? Here, health care is a basic human right; it is not for profit. Health care is not a market. Therefore, it is not motivated by companies trying to make as much money as possible. We don’t have bloated administrative costs, high-paid insurance company executives, ridiculous bonuses, and millions of dollars spent on marketing. It is a not-for-profit system.

Canada pays for more hospital days and doctor visits per capita than the U.S., but spends 40% less. We pay medical personnel less, our equipment and services cost less, the government negotiates drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, and the government is responsible for financing health care through its budget so therefore must keep its costs down.

In Canada, general health insurance is not tied to employment, so you’re free to quit your job and change jobs without having to fear, “What if I get sick or hurt?” And health care is not age- or prior condition-based.

Canada’s health care system is not perfect by any means. It is sadly true that there are wait times in the Canadian system. But it is a problem that has improved exponentially over the years due to better administration and management. If you require surgery and waiting a while is not life-threatening (for example, cataract surgery), then you may have to wait a couple of months. But if you require essential, life-saving surgery, you won’t have to wait at all.

Shona Holmes is a Canadian woman who has made the rounds on American talk shows condemning the Canadian system. She claims that she was diagnosed with brain cancer and needed emergency surgery, but was forced onto a waiting list so she went the States for her life-saving surgery. The truth is that Shona Holmes did not have cancer, she had a benign cyst, which is not life threatening. She probably would have had to wait two or three months in the Canadian system, but instead she went to the U.S., mortgaged her house, and paid $100,000 out of pocket. Had her non-life-threatening benign cyst been a life-threatening malignant cancerous tumour, the Canadian health care system would have provided Shona Holmes with surgery immediately, and she wouldn’t have had to pay one red cent. But because she went to the States, she mortgaged her future. (This woman has been thoroughly debunked: see here, and here, and here, among other places.)

Yes there are wait times in Canada, but nobody waits for emergency surgery.

Despite its imperfections, inadequacies, and increasingly classist structure (due to its deterioration over the years and movement towards a two-tiered system), Canadian Medicare is still a universal health care system that ensures no Canadian will ever go bankrupt, lose their house, go into debt, become homeless, or die because they have an accident or get sick.

Not too long ago Tommy Douglas was voted “The Greatest Canadian” by a national poll. Tommy Douglas is Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather. He is also the person who ushered in Canada’s universal health care system. The greatest Canadian.

Further reading:

“A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare.”

A no-holds-barred article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.

A more detailed primer on the Shona Holmes story.

One common myth is that suicide rates increase around Christmastime. Some versions of this myth may say the rate doubles, others will cite a percentage. The truth is that suicide rates actually go down over the holidays. In fact, more suicides take place in the early spring than at any other time of the year. No one really knows why, but it probably has to do with people being around others during the holidays. People often get depressed in the winter time before the holidays (the weather, lack of sunlight, social hibernation, stress of the holidays, money problems, etc).

But then the holidays arrive and suddenly they’re propelled into a world of food and music, gift-giving, parties, and gatherings. They’re surrounded by people and merriment. Maybe they feel better for a while and their suicidal thoughts go on hiatus. When the holidays pass, life returns to normal, and the depression returns. Maybe these people think if they can just fend off their harmful thoughts until the spring, they’ll be okay; they just need to make it through the winter. But when spring arrives they’re still depressed and suicidal and that’s when they decide to finally end it all. It’s one theory.

One of the myths that people often espouse, especially in the winter time, is that we lose 80% of our body heat through our heads. (Or 50%; the number changes.) The truth is, we do lose most of our body heat through our extremities—arms and hands, legs and feet, and heads. But we don’t lose any more body heat through our heads than we do our hands. It’s just that many people don’t wear hats in the winter, so when they do wear them they feel warmer. If you never wore gloves and suddenly put on gloves, you’d feel warmer too. Or shoes. Or pants.

People often see veracity in this myth because “heat rises.” While it’s true that hot air rises above cool air, heat does not rise inside our bodies and out through our heads.

Here’s a good one: If you shave, your hair will grow back faster, thicker, and darker. This was once debunked on a Canadian kids show called Street Cents years ago. Shaving just cuts hair—it has no effect on the part of the hair shaft below the skin surface, which is where growth and pigmentation occur. No one believes that when they get the hair on their head cut that it will grow back thicker and darker, so why do they believe it’s true with the hair on their legs? The truth is, hair does not grow back thicker or darker, it just may appear so because the new hair growth has blunt ends (from being cut) instead of tapered ends.

Speaking of hair, how about the common notion that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death? This one’s false too. Just like the above, hair and fingernails may appear longer after death simply because the skin around them has retracted. Dehydration causes the skin and soft tissue to shrink, but the hair and nails remain the same length. It’s an illusion.

A myth that knuckle-crackers will love to bust is that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. I read the truth about this myth when I was a kid, in a magazine at my doctor’s office and current research corroborates it: Your joints are surrounded by a thick lubricating fluid. When you crack your knuckles the bones of the joint pull apart, which causes a gas bubble to form in between. The sound you hear that so many people find irritating is the sound of the adhesive seal in the joint breaking (or you can think of it as the bubble popping). For the record, arthritis is caused by a person’s immune system attacking their joints.

Fun, right? Now go forth and start propagating the truth about these common myths.

This article originally appeared in a slightly altered form as a blog post.