NZ Skeptics Articles

Hokum Locum

John Welch - 1 February 2005

Agent Orange: Déjà vu all over again?

If you don’t get the answers you want from a Government inquiry, press for another inquiry. Vietnam war veterans have continued such a campaign and have produced a map to confirm that they were present in areas that were sprayed with the defoliant under the US Army “Operation Ranch Hand”.

The Dominion Post (4 October) reports: “The year-long inquiry [the third] heard new medical evidence and harrowing testimonies from veterans, who related the effects of Agent Orange on their health and the health of their children.”

As we all know, harrowing stories get a much better press than the facts. A map confirming exposure is irrelevant. A study of veterans of Operation Ranch Hand found no association between exposure to Agent Orange and birth defects. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board concluded that dioxin (the alleged carcinogen found in Agent Orange) caused no health effects except for a skin disease seen at very high exposure levels. This is “chloracne”: a recent classic example is the ravaged face of the new President of the Ukraine who was poisoned with dioxin by political rivals.

Victims of the Seveso (dioxin) disaster have been followed up now for 15 years (Epidemiology 1997; 8: 646-652). When all types of cancer were grouped into one category, no statistically significant excess of cancer was observed. However, some cancers have a much longer leadin time, say 20-25 years. My crystal ball tells me that these current findings will stand the extra test of time.

All of this reminds me of a similar campaign to define or legitimise the problems that US Vietnam veterans had in reentering American society. As Edward Shorter puts it (A History of Psychiatry, p.304-5) “In language that anticipated the ‘struggle for recognition’ of numerous later illness attributions, such as repressed memory syndrome, the veterans and their psychiatrists argued that “delayed massive trauma” could produce subsequent “guilt, rage, the feeling of being scapegoated , psychic numbing and alienation.” In 1978 the world was presented with the new diagnosis of “post traumatic stress disorder”, commonly referred to as PTSD. Commenting on this politicisation of science Shorter comments: “Given such antics, it would be difficult to take seriously any official psychiatric pronouncements about problems surrounding … the psychiatry of stress.”

The Near Starvation Diet

Drastic calorie reduction (CR) is the latest diet fad for narcissistic yuppies and is based on experiments that showed animals lived longer and looked younger when fed less. Proponents of CR consume about half the calories normally advised for healthy eating. As if you hadn’t already guessed, the CR Society is California based. There must be more fruitcakes in California than anywhere else but it (fruitcake) would definitely be off limits for a CR adherent.

As one of them is quoted as saying: “ageing is a horror that has got to stop now.” The society’s website “includes a ‘better chocolate pudding’ made with, among other things, 13 squirts of sucralose concentrate, guar gum and micronised cellulose.” It sounds more like a chemistry experiment! CR is basically on the right track but like all such extreme movements has gone too far. Fat people are overweight because they eat too much of the wrong food and they lie to themselves about how much exercise they take. Eating the right quantity of food in the right mix will allow most people to maintain a healthy weight for their height.

ACC Fraud

An ACC beneficiary was jailed for almost three years for obtaining $80,000 by fraud. This was through the use of falsified documents and invoices for home help Dominion Post 6 July). A careful reading of the article reveals the source of the real fraud. The claimant in this case had received cover for the pseudo-scientific diagnoses of “fibromyalgia” and “occupational overuse syndrome”. Fibromyalgia is claimed to be a disorder where there are tender spots all over the body. The French called these “points hysteriques” and I have also seen it humorously described as the German “unt here” syndrome. The patient has pain “here, unt here, unt here”. The diagnosis of fibromyalgia is a logical fallacy as outlined by Quintner (Lancet 1999; 353: 1092-1094).” Fibromyalgia has been promoted as ‘a common and recognisable cause of chronic, diffuse musculoskeletal pain’. This statement violates the dictum in logic that an effect — in this case an illness — should not be confused with its own cause.”

Many such syndromes can be easily explained by existing psychological paradigms and it is clear that fibromyalgia is merely a rheumatological interpretation of chronic fatigue syndrome. As for OOS, those of you who were at the conference will remember the terrific presentation by Dr Lucire who argued persuasively that OOS is a psychological disorder caused by somatisation. This same model could easily fit for fibromyalgia. The real fraud as I say, is when quack doctors endorse complaints as being workrelated and therefore penalising innocent employers as well as being a fraud against ACC.

In Brief