Ruffling Feathers: An Editorial Comment

On Quacks and Their Defenders

Rarely has a subject elicited such a vehement reaction from our readership as our articles “Medical Science vs. Homeopathy” (WV No. 947, 20 November 2009), “Capitalist Reaction and Anti-Vaccine Hysteria” (WV No. 948, 4 December 2009) and “Defend Simon Singh! Defend Scientific Medicine!” (WV No. 949, 1 January). WV was deluged by so many letters that we could not possibly publish all of them. With the exception of one letter (printed at right), all took issue with our blanket denunciation of medical quackery—homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, “New Age” spiritualism, herbal remedies, naturopathy—and our intransigent defense of science-based medicine and its accomplishments, such as vaccinations.

As we noted in WV No. 947 in regard to snake-oil “medicine”: “While some of these treatments may be relatively harmless and may sometimes have a placebo effect, more often they are dangerous both in themselves and because they divert patients from needed medical treatment.” Of the letters that defended quackery outright, one grotesquely claimed that AIDS is spreading because of a lack of selenium in the soils of southern Africa and defended homeopathy as “hard science” and chiropractic as “a great American invention.”

A few writers tried to put defense of their chosen snake oil in a more rationalist light. A letter by B.B. in Atlanta correctly noted that “all attempts should be made to protect the scientific community from anti-science hysteria” but also condemned attempts to vaccinate the population against the H1N1 virus, which he called a “hoax.” T.S. wrote that we should support the “methods of science” while also favorably quoting New Age health guru Gary Null, an HIV-denialist who promotes chiropractic and homeopathy and pushes “nutritional” methods to treat AIDS in place of antiretroviral drugs. When South Africa’s former president Thabo Mbeki carried out a similar policy, it resulted in the needless deaths of an estimated 300,000 people.

As a Marxist organization, we do not purport to have particular expertise in medical science. But the issue at hand goes to the defense of science itself, and of Marxism’s dialectical materialist worldview, against religious obscurantism, mysticism and all anti-scientific outlooks.

While scientists must test their theories to ensure that they are rooted in material reality, quacks by definition resist rigorous testing because their practices are based at bottom on religious or other mystical dogmas (subluxation for chiropractors, qi for acupuncturists, etc.). This is not to say that medical science still does not have a great deal to learn and a long way to go in the treatment of diseases. The marriage of the art of medicine and science is historically recent and incomplete. We fight to expand scientific understanding against the quacks who exploit gaps in that understanding to peddle their wares. Science-based medicine cannot perform miracles. But it must be defended against the alternatives.

The letters we received that argued for “alternative medicine” had a common theme: that “mainstream” medicine cannot be trusted because it is profit-driven and therefore hopelessly corrupt. Under capitalism, medicine is driven by both profit and social utility. We certainly do not claim that the American Medical Association primarily cares about patients or that the pharmaceutical giants are benignly concerned about people’s health needs. Indeed, many of the problems in the U.S. health care system do stem from the drive for profit. But this is not a question of the scientific method but of the social system in which science operates. As we wrote in WV No. 947:

“Medicine for profit rations health care by class, race, sex and ethnicity, reserving the best care for the wealthy. The capitalist class can largely be blamed for the gullibility of the public: high costs place health care beyond the reach of many, and out of despair, many turn to something that promises miracles. Contributing to this problem is ignorance of the principles of science on the part of a population stripped of access to decent public education.”

Under the Obama administration’s health care “reform,” the very insurance giants that have made U.S. health costs the highest on the planet will be raking in even more money by ripping off working people. Meanwhile, an estimated 23 million people will not be able to afford any health insurance by 2019, in addition to millions of “illegal” immigrants who are barred from receiving any benefits. The labor movement should be in the forefront of the struggle for free, quality health care for all. We fight for socialized medicine—the expropriation of the parasitic health care and drug companies—as part of the struggle for a workers government.

It is quite trendy to rage against “Big Pharma” and to turn to “natural,” “organic” and “holistic” foods, cures and lifestyles as some kind of alternative. Note, however, that the alternative medicine industry is no less driven by profit. It is, in fact, a very lucrative market: Americans spent more than $23 billion on vitamin, herbal and other supplements in 2007. More than a third of Americans use “therapies” like acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and “traditional” healing methods. None of these treatments require FDA approval or any kind of certification of safety or effectiveness to be commercialized. Big Pharma is, in fact, a big player in “alternative medicine.” Some of the same companies that mass-produce drugs in huge chemical labs also churn out vitamin and herbal pills sold in bottles with rainbows, sunrises and flowers on their labels. Pharmaceutical giants Wyeth, Bayer HealthCare, Unilever, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline all make or sell supplements.

Indeed, this business is so big and profitable that a number of legitimately degreed doctors and scientists prostitute their credentials to promote anti-science nonsense. The notion that vaccines cause autism was given a veneer of scientific credibility by Andrew Wakefield, a prestigious doctor from a prestigious British hospital, in a 1988 study published in the reputable medical review The Lancet. His study was funded by a lawyer’s office conducting a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer. As the baseless rumor linking autism to measles-mumps-rubella vaccines spread throughout Britain, child vaccination rates plummeted to below 70 percent in some areas, and the country suffered waves of measles outbreaks. Twelve years after the article appeared, The Lancet issued a full retraction of the study. In May, Wakefield was stripped of the right to practice medicine by Britain’s General Medical Council.

Religious obscurantism and anti-scientific superstition were given an enormous boost by the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union. With bourgeois ideologues claiming that socialism is a failed experiment, and even that class struggle itself is a thing of the past, disaffection with capitalist society can take on strange colorations. Many who fear imminent ecological disaster, for instance, turn to reactionary “zero growth” and “back to nature” schemes, all the while chatting on their computers about the evils of technology.

Our defense of science—and of the gains of the bourgeois Enlightenment in general—is intimately linked to our fight for new October Revolutions. Under an internationally planned collectivized economy, massive resources would be invested in scientific research and the means would be developed to ensure that everyone receives quality medical treatment in a timely manner.

Health also means a decent place to live, good nutrition, education in human biology, clean air, safe and decent working conditions. The capitalist profit system cannot provide this—whether in the advanced industrial countries or in the neocolonial countries of the Third World, where masses languish in hunger and dire poverty and are cut off from anything resembling modern health care. The means of production have to be ripped out of the hands of the greedy capitalist class through world socialist revolution—the only road to building a society where scientific research, technological development and all the productive forces would be put to the service of all of humanity.