Terahertz

Peak excerpts: Grad referendum and anti-vax is dangerous

I guess my blog went down over the weekend. I figured out that it had something to do with my database breaking, but a quick repair seemed to have fixed it. Not exactly good timing as I was enjoying my holiday in Edmonton.

So things are back online now and there’s a bunch of new stories from the Peak.

First, we have two articles standing up for The Peak in the upcoming Graduate Student Society referendum that is asking students to discontinue funding to The Peak. “Grads must vote to keep their voice” is by Brian Labore, and “The question is biased” is by one of my friends from SFU orientation Kristen Soo. Meanwhile, Gary Lim submitted the humour/feature article “Support your student paper” which lists three creative uses for The Peak besides actually reading the paper.

The Peak also featured two news articles about the GSS elections, including on the cover page: “GSS 2010: Meet your candidates” and “GSS candidates square off in debate.”

Also on the topic of the referendum, the Teaching and Support Staff Union, which represents all TAs sent out a letter endorsing the No side of the referendum – telling students to vote to continue funding The Peak:

Dear Members,

We are writing in regards to the upcoming GSS election, and specifically the referendum question in regards to The Peak. We are asking that you vote “no” to the question and support the GSS’s continued funding.

At our last general membership meeting, a number of members expressed concerns with the potential of pulling The Peak’s funding. While we all share the GSS’s concerns with the The Peak’s content and decision-making structures, we wanted to see if the staff of The Peak would be willing to work with graduate students to make improvements so that we could continue our relationship.

As such we formed a committee and in the last two weeks, we have engaged in a fairly broad dialogue with The Peak. The main concerns we outlined to them were

1. Issues of accessibility, which included concerns we had around both the transparency and access to information in terms of how the newspaper was run, how articles were vetted, and the process for article submission. We requested that they post far more information on the website about their structures, submission guidelines, etc. and that they begin to open up the process by which students can write and get involved.

2. Graduate Student Involvement, which included our concern that graduate student voices were not being given adequate space in the newspaper or on the board and that graduate student issues were not being discussed. We requested that they create a graduate issues section, a graduate issues position, and that they begin to actively work with graduate organizations (the TSSU and the GSS) to solicit submissions and tackle graduate student issues.

3. Issues of discrimination and/or oppression, which included concerns around questionable content including potentially racist, sexist, or homophobic articles. We requested that they make anti-oppression/facilitation training mandatory for their editorial staff and, ideally through this training, start to effectively and responsibly think about how to better deal with questionable material and how to better run their meetings to ensure there is space for people who are uncomfortable with offensive material (even if it’s humorous) to express concerns and to motivate discussion on how to deal with it with sensitivity and respect.

The Peak has agreed to work with us on creating a more accessible structure, on targeting more graduate students (whether that’s just through increased content or in a dedicated position), and has indicated an openness towards anti-oppression training.

Given that we had less than two weeks to reach an agreement with The Peak, we can obviously not promise any structural change immediately, but we feel that they have taken our concerns seriously and are willing to work with us to move forwards.

In light of their commitment, and in light of our belief in the necessity of graduate students having a connection to the only student newspaper on campus, we ask that you vote “No.” Especially with bargaining coming up, which increases the importance of our continued communication and connection with undergraduate students, we feel that it is necessary to continue working with The Peak and ask that you help us make it a platform that graduate students can use as a tool of information, advocacy, and change.

The Social Justice Committee

Finally, The Peak also published another opinion piece by myself, probably my last until the summer term starts (since I’m not sure how many serious issues are left this term), this one on the anti-vaccination quackery that’s been spreading. I don’t know if any TXT MSGS were left since I haven’t been to campus yet to pick up a print edition; we’ll find out tomorrow I guess.

Anti-vax is dangerous, dishonest

By Ian Bushfield

Nineteen children in the B.C. interior contracted whooping cough in February, and just recently another 14 people in Vancouver were diagnosed with measles. Both of these diseases had been nearly wiped from the developed world by modern medicine and vaccinations; however, almost none of these people had been properly vaccinated.

This negligence can be explained by a growing anti-science sentiment among practitioners of so-called complementary and alternative medicines. This movement is fed by superstition and conspiratorial beliefs. I have little respect for supposedly harmless beliefs in naturopathy since children are getting unnecessarily sick and in some cases dying.

Despite some legitimate complaints about the unscrupulous behaviour of many pharmaceutical companies, the basic scientific fact remains that modern medicine and vaccinations work. You can thank modern medicine for life spans past 40, child mortality rates below 20 per cent, and many more advances. Our government is not out to poison us; vaccines are tested and drugs are regulated for a reason.

This backlash tends to be due to ignorance. For example, one pseudoscience specialist in the whooping cough outbreak claimed that vaccines contain “muck.”

Her argument is basically that it is okay not to vaccinate children from deadly diseases that we know exist because modern medicine involves spooky chemicals. I am not sure where on the periodic table muck is or from what molecule it is derived, but I will take my chances with it over whooping cough, cholera, tuberculosis, and any number of other diseases that we have essentially defeated through the use of vaccines.

Many of these naturopathic “doctors” further subscribe to homeopathy — the idea that diluting a toxic substance until you just have water will make it more effective in curing the disease that it would normally cause in full dosage. For example, if you got bit by a rattle snake; the homeopath would bring out a vial of water that represents the dilution of snake venom.

The water you drink is supposed to have a memory that recalls having snake venom in it and will therefore purify your body.

Never mind that homeopathy has never been shown to be more than a placebo effect or that most mixtures are so diluted as to not contain a single molecule of the active ingredient; the question is, why would you waste your money on something that shows no efficacy?

Now consider the hypocrisy of the natural medicine movement. They claim that their potions of herbs and supplements are on par or better than evidenced-based medicines. Further, natural medicine is supposedly more pure than what the supposedly evil pharmaceutical companies are selling.

Yet when the government introduces modest legislation to regulate alternative medicines, to ensure that they live up to the claims they make, Big-Natura gets up in arms and claims that government agents are going to break into your house if you give your children ginseng. If their drugs do what they say they do, they ought to have nothing to fear from rules that protect consumers from crooked practices.

It is worth remembering though, that nothing spells profit like sugar pills and snake oil. It is no surprise then that major pharmaceutical companies have already moved into the under-regulated naturopathy market, looking to score a quick dollar off the hippies who try to boycott them.

Modern, science-based medicine brought us out of the dark ages. To make ignorant assertions that witchcraft and sorcery can take us forward borders on the absurd. If there were actual evidence supporting many of the claims being made, doctors would have no quarrel with prescribing homeopathy, acupuncture, and Reiki; however, real doctors are not in the business of giving false hope.

When evidence supports an alternative medicine, it’s just called medicine.

Update: I also just noticed that The Peak picked up an Opinion piece from The Manitoban on Simon Singh winning some ground in the libel suit filed against him by the British Chiropractors Association.