Category Archives: Pseudoscience

Ebola Is Nothing Like HIV/AIDS

Healthcare, Pseudoscience, Science

Jane M. Orient, M.D., is the freedom-loving doctor behind the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (here’s an op-ed I wrote for the AAPS in … 2000). In a column for WND, today, she seconds the gist of “Obama Obfuscates On Ebola,” yesterday’s post: Ebola is nothing like HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Orient lists the things that make the prevention and containment of AIDS/HIV a walk in the park compared to Ebola. She concludes:

… Reassurances from the CDC, and the public policy based on them, rely on assumptions that are probably not true. The CDC still insists that the virus is not “airborne” – at least not for more than three feet. Barack Obama has said that “you cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.” But the CDC has told travelers who exhibit Ebola-like symptoms to avoid public transportation.
Our robust and sophisticated medical and public health infrastructure is supposed to be able to handle the situation. Like it did in Dallas? Time will tell whether any of Mr. Duncan’s contacts become infected (in addition to the Texas nurse who has tested positive). The Dallas public health department is supposed to be carefully following only about 18. How many more does it have the resources to track?

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Related: “Obama Obfuscates On Ebola”

Obama Obfuscates On Ebola

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Science

As a former HIV/AIDS volunteer counselor in South Africa, it is my never-humble opinion that comparing Ebola to HIV/AIDS amounts to politically correct theatre. For one thing, it is not easy to contract the human immunodeficiency virus. For another, the virus is relatively fragile outside the host. Viral load or titer factors into the chances of transmission. And it is both easy and cheap to prevent transmission. AIDS infection rates in Africa have nothing to do with lack of resources but, rather, with unprotected sex irrespective of ample education.

Ebola is the exact opposite. It is not difficult to get. The virus doesn’t easily destruct outside the body. In West Africa, in particular, it is difficult to stop an Ebola epidemic because of magical thinking and a lack of infrastructure.

Front men for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have obfuscated plenty about Ebola. However, Dr. Barack Obola, who should get that growing proboscis checked out, takes the cake. The president has managed to dispense Ebola advice in direct contradiction to even the CDC’s breezy platitudes.

“You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus. … Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu. … You cannot get it from another person until they start showing symptoms of the disease, like fever. … cannot get it from someone who’s asymptomatic.” (CNSNews & Hot Air)

The CDC’s website, as opposed to its media representatives, provides the correct information, distilled by Hot Air:

Casual transmission in close quarters in public spaces is possible.
Spending “a long amount of time” within three feet of an infected person is risky, a scenario that logically includes a long bus ride.
A spokesman for the CDC told the LA Times recently that “I’m not going to sit here and say that if a person who is highly viremic … were to sneeze or cough right in the face of somebody who wasn’t protected, that we wouldn’t have a transmission.” Well, there you go. If there’s a risk of transmission on a plane, why wouldn’t there be a risk of transmission on a bus?

UPDATED: Conspiracy Or Just Government SOP? (Obola Calling Israel)

Conspiracy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Pseudoscience, The State

Don’t trust the state’s health emissaries. That’s not an unreasonable message to take away from the Ebola dust-up in Dallas. While I am no conspiracy theorist—never have been—I do think the theory proffered below by Prof. Jason Kissner (hat doff to LewRockwell.com) is plausible. Why? Because state operatives, reflexively if not intentionally, conspire to retain their policy mission (open borders always) and increase their sphere of influence.

Excerpted from “The Dallas Ebola Case: An Immigration-Related Process Conspiracy?”

To begin, consider that people like Dr. Sanjay Gupta keep saying that the Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan had “told the nurse” who attended to him upon his first arrival at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital Emergency Room that he had “traveled “to” Africa.”

That’s certainly a very odd thing for a Liberian national, having just arrived from Monrovia, Liberia to the United States for the very first time in his life, to have supposedly said, is it not? Of course, it fits the CDC Checklist used prior to, and including, Duncan’s case, so that must have been exactly what Duncan said, right Sanjay?

Duncan’s status as a Monrovian Liberian national has not exactly been blasted across the MSM news; in fact, the MSM news for the most part has been adhering studiously to the asinine “traveled to Africa” view even though it is grossly misleading.

So why adhere to the view? The chief contention of this article is that we might be observing the unfolding of a “process conspiracy” pertaining to Ebola and the highly contentious immigration issue. The phrase “process conspiracy” is operationalized here as a conspiracy rooted in a policy or policies consciously designed to shape practice in ways such that the output exacerbates the very problems the policy/policies was (were), on the surface, designed to contend with.

The specific object of the Globalist Ebola process conspiracy is here theorized to involve diminishing the linkage, in public consciousness, of Ebola with nationality status. Globalists have huge immigration plans for the U.S., and they do not want Ebola (or any other infectious disease, for that matter) getting in the way of those plans. That is why their Ebola policy protocols—as absurd as they are (discussed shortly)— read the way they do, that is why we have been exposed to a cloud of lies emanating from Dallas and dispersed through the MSM, and that is why Duncan was discharged with antibiotics soon after his first visit to the Emergency Room of Texas Presbyterian.

Because the theory is a process conspiracy theory and therefore rooted in subverted policy, it has application not just to Duncan, but to future Duncans as well. The argument proceeds as follows. First, a brief observation concerning risk is offered which, even though obvious, is necessary because without it the argument will make little sense. Second, the CDC’s Ebola Screening and Isolation polices are examined, and, on the basis of the risk observation, shown to be not only wholly inadequate to the task they were allegedly crafted to meet, but quite likely to make the Ebola contagion problem even worse. Third, evidence is provided in support of the idea that the Ebola process conspiracy theory offers a simple, and very plausible explanation, of certain important assertions of fact, and inconsistencies, emanating from Dallas that are otherwise rather difficult to explain. Throughout, the connection to the issue of nationality status will be obvious.

On the risk issue, people who are Liberian nationals and residents of the hot zone Monrovia clearly present much greater risk than randomly drawn “travelers to” Liberia, simply because the exposure time is likely to be much greater for the former set of people.

Now we turn to consideration of the CDC’s policy guidance on screening and isolation of Ebola patients—and keep in mind that, astonishingly, these (click here and here) are purportedly new policy statements issued in the wake of the Duncan Dallas case, and yet they still do not meet the very problem Duncan-type cases present.

The screening/isolation problem presented by Duncan type cases is this: under CDC policy guidelines, what are hospitals supposed to do when they encounter potential Ebola cases that are asymptomatic, but which involve persons who have not merely “traveled to” certain countries in Africa, but in fact are also nationals of one of those countries who have lived, perhaps even in outbreak areas, at a minimum since the outbreak began? …

READ ON.

UPDATED: OBOLA CALLING ISRAEL. Obama wants Israel to assist in the Ebola effort. Israel says no:

“Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says assisting in medical relief in Liberia and Sierra Leone would risk infecting Israeli personnel.” … after examining the request and mission details, the Defense Ministry decided against Israel’s participation, saying there was no feasible way to provide for the safety of the Israeli doctors and medical crews, which then could return to Israel and further spread the virus.” (WND)

MORE @Twitchy.

Latest Medical Mea Culpa: Carbs Kill

Pseudoscience, Science

Scientists are reluctantly, if slowly, arriving at the following conclusion: Carbs kill. The evidence is hard to refute. (Karen De Coster was right, warning way back about “Frankenfoods and The Government’s Fraudulent Food Pyramid.” ) The latest medical mea culpa—from Cambridge University, no less—is summarized by Dr. Barbara H. Roberts at The Daily Beast:

… There are many other recognized risk factors the the American Heart Association ignored, including blood sugar level, low “good” (HDL) cholesterol, insulin levels, and body weight—all of these are influenced by diet.

In fact, most people who have heart attacks don’t have elevations in bad cholesterol. They are much more likely to have metabolic syndrome—a condition that puts you at high risk for diabetes and heart disease. Metabolic syndrome is defined when you have three of the following: high triglycerides (blood fats), high blood sugar, high blood pressure, low “good” cholesterol (HDL-C), and a large abdomen measurement (abdominal obesity).

Interestingly enough, blood triglycerides do not go up with eating fat—they go up if you eat a diet high in processed grains, starches, and sugar. Unfortunately for the proponents of high-carbohydrate diets, high blood triglycerides are a major risk factor for heart disease. In addition, low fat/high carb diets lower protective “good” cholesterol and raise insulin. These diets are implicated in the development of diabetes, which is a potent risk factor for developing heart disease.

The writers of the 2013 statin guidelines based their recommendations on studies that looked at the reduction in the risk of events like heart attacks in people treated with statins, compared to people on a placebo. The AHA dietary guidelines do not cite any diet studies that looked at whether following a specific diet lowered the risk of developing cardiac events—yet they are giving dietary advice. Why?

There might be two plausible reasons. One is the AHA’s moneymaking “Heart Check Program.” The second is the conflict of interest (and curious beliefs) of Robert Eckel—the co-chair of the panel that wrote the guidelines.

The AHA introduced the Heart Check Program in 1995 and it has been quite the moneymaker, as the AHA sells the Heart Check stamp-of-approval to food manufacturers. Food companies shell out between $1,000 and $7,500 to be certified by the Heart Check Program—and then there are yearly renewal fees. The program currently endorses 889 foods as “heart-healthy.”

And the Heart Check Program is not the only way the AHA benefits from Big Food companies. In their annual report for 2012-2013, the AHA lists among its lifetime donors of $1 million or more Conagra, Quaker Oats, and Campbell Soups, among others.

Forty-five percent of these “heart healthy” foods—over 400 of them—are meat; 92 are processed meats—which have been shown to have either neutral or negative effects on heart health.

Even more problematic are the foods containing added sugar. The AHA recommends that women consume less than 6 teaspoons (100 calories) of sugar a day and less than 9 teaspoons (150 calories) for men. Yet there are items that get the nod of approval from the Heart Check program despite being near or at the sugar limit, like Bruce’s Yams Candied Sweet Potatoes and Healthy Choice Salisbury Steak. Indeed, until 2010, the Heart Check imprimatur was stamped on a drink called Chocolate Moose Attack, which contained more sugar per ounce than regular Pepsi.

And until this year, Heart Check approved many foods with trans-fats, which raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol, among other deleterious effects on health, like increasing inflammation and the laying down of calcium in arteries.

Like the dietary guidelines, the AHA Heart Check Program appears to address only the effect of foods on cholesterol level and blood pressure. Meanwhile, since the 1970s, our yearly sugar consumption has skyrocketed along with the incidence of diabetes and obesity. …”

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