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Junk Medicine

Science is not immune to conspiracy theories.

Jan 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18 • By JEFF STIER
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Denialism

Junk Medicine

Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carey crusade against vaccination, 2008

by Michael Specter
Penguin, 304 pp., $27.95

It’s popular among politicians on both sides of the aisle, as well as the public, to blame corporations, capitalism, and even science itself for our ills. Whether it is obesity (soda), cancer (chemicals), or autism (vaccines), an industrial villain is an easy and satisfying target. Rare is the defense of sound science that holds activists accountable for their scientific misstatements and the consequences of their scare campaigns. The public policy implications of this failure are enormous.

In Denialism Michael Specter, science and technology writer for the New Yorker, goes after low-hanging fruit in chapters as entertainingly titled as “Vaccines and the Great Denial,” “The Organic Fetish,” and “The Era of Echinacea.” That’s good, as far as it goes. He fails, however, to take on equally groundless but more sacrosanct examples of junk science. For instance, Specter writes that the alternative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil “offers sound advice in his many books—calling .  .  . corn sweeteners and trans fats dangerous.” These products, like their “natural” alternatives, sugar and saturated fat, are not particularly dangerous at moderate levels, and Specter’s readers deserve to know that, as surely as they deserve to know that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are false.

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