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Many people decry science-based government regulation of medical products, cures, or devices as an intrusion on the freedom of the people to make up their own minds on the effectiveness of such things. In this age of heightened skepticism of government and scientists, this question is once again relevant. Why should government and scientists be the ultimate arbiters of what you can sell to people or what products they can buy and use? Why not leave it up to the consumers themselves? With this question in mind, I visited the Museum of Quackery and Medical Frauds. This museum is located within the Science Museum of Minesota as an exhibit called “Weighing the Evidence”. The exhibit contains many bogus therapies and medical devices. In this essay, I will mention some. An interesting pseudoscience featured in the museum is Phrenology. Phrenologists stated that distinct areas of the brain were responsible for an individual’s cognitive functions, and then they claimed that by measuring the shape of a person’s skull they could gain insight into the extent to which these brain areas underlying the skull determined a person’s behavior and cognitive abilities. The central assumption of phrenology was that any area having a dominant effect in the personality would result in the skull over that area exhibiting a bump, which they would measure. Phrenology has been debunked by scientists. The phrenology areas of the brain do not correlate to brain function, and the bumps in a person’s skull do not correlate to brain shape. Regardless, phrenology was very popular from the mid-1800s and into the first third of the 20th century, and was used for things such as defending and treating criminals, evaluating a parent’s love for a child, and matching people for marriage. Whereas most phenologist relied on palpation, measuring tapes, or calipers to assess the “bumpiness” of the skull, others used more sophisticated equipment such as the psychograph. The museum has one such device invented and patented by businessman Henry C. Lavery which could measure a person’s skull and rate 32 different mental faculties from deficient to very superior. Needless to say, this is all bunk.  Trying a Psychograph Cap One picturesque character featured in the museum is Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Kellogg was a bona fide surgeon and is most known as the inventor of the corn flake. Kellogg was also the staff physician of one of the most popular medical spas of the early 20th century, Battle creek Sanitarium. At this site he subjected his patients to all sorts of therapies that have not been validated by science such as electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, mechanotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy, and others. Kellogg was also a great believer in using vibrations because, according to him, they improved health and relieved constipation. To this end, he invented a vibratory chair that vibrated 60 times per second and of which a working model is featured in the museum. Again, there is no evidence that this therapy works. There are many other bogus products and therapies featured in the museum ranging from tonics, magnets, and vibratory belts, to radio waves and lights of different colors. You may chuckle at some of the crazy claims, therapies, and devices featured in the museum, but it can be argued that at most they made people waste their money, and if the people liked them, that’s their business. The problem is that some therapies actually killed patients, and at the beginning of the 20th century the US government had limited authority to protect consumers. For example, before the deleterious effects of the radioactive element radium became widely known, it began to be marketed as an all-natural enhancer of health that would restore vigor, improve sex life, and cure many diseases. Radium was included in a wide array of products ranging from chocolates and suppositories to toothpaste and dressings. This led to many people suffering from radiation poisoning and cancer. One famous case was the radium girls. These were women working at factories painting the dials of watches with radium-laced paint, which they were told was harmless. As part of their work, the women would often lick their paintbrushes to sharpen them, a practice that was encouraged by their supervisors. These women developed several illnesses including widespread damage to their mandibles; a condition that became known as radium jaw. The radium girls, as they were then called, sued their employers, and the resulting trial and associated publicity led to the passing of labor safety and work compensation laws as well as the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Another famous case involved radium-laced water of which one particular brand was Radithor. The American industrialist and amateur golf champion Eben Byers was prescribed Radithor for an arm injury in 1927. He became a big fan of the stuff and over three years consumed 1400 bottles. Byers began losing his teeth and developed cancer in his mouth. His upper jaw and most of his lower jaw had to be removed leaving him severely disfigured, but his bones continued deteriorating and holes formed in his skull. He died in 1932 and was buried in a lead-lined coffin. His remains were exhumed in 1965 and were found to be dangerously radioactive. It has been calculated that Byers consumed more than three times the lethal dose of radium. Due to his high social profile, Byers became the poster boy for the ill-effects of radium, and its use declined thereafter.  A Bottle of Radium-Laced Water The final case that led to strong regulation of health products and therapies were the 1937 deaths of more than 100 persons, many of them children, as a result of the ingestion of Elixir of Sulfanilamide which contained the poisonous solvent diethylene glycol. Next year congress passed the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and as a result of this a proof of safety would be required before the release of any new drug or cosmetics. Going back to the question posed at the beginning of this post, history indicates that the average person is no match against bogus drugs or therapies cloaked in pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo backed by clever marketing campaigns. We need scientists to evaluate these things, ask questions about their safety and effectiveness, and conduct tests. We also need government to enforce the conclusions of the evaluation by the scientists. Additionally, many compounds or therapies may be safe but not effective or untested, and people want them to be labelled as such to prevent them from wasting their money. This is the function of science-based government regulation. The photo of the bottle of Radithor by Sam LaRussa is used here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license. The other photographs belong to the author and cannot be used without permission.
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 Many years ago, I went to a staged production of Hairspray. This show was based on a 1988 movie by John Waters about a bunch of teenagers living in the city of Baltimore in the 1960s. In the staged production that we saw, the performance would stop at certain times and the author of the original film, John Waters, would speak from a lectern and tell amusing anecdotes about the movie and its actors. In the movie, the dream of the teen characters is to dance in one of the coolest shows on television, a teenage dance show called The Corny Collins Show. Due to the times, the Corny Collins Show is a segregated show where only white teens can dance except for one day a month (Negro Day) when black teens participate. The star of the movie is Tracy Turnblad, played by actress Ricky Lake. Tracy and her friends, both black and white, spearhead an effort to desegregate the Corny Collins Show. At one point, John Waters informed us that the show featured in the movie was based on a real teenage dance show called the “Buddy Deane Show”, which ran from 1957 to 1964. This show was also segregated and only allowed black dancers every other Friday. With the Civil Rights movement at its apex, the pressure to desegregate the Buddy Deane Show mounted, but the home station that ran the show was unwilling to integrate the black and white dancers, so it just cancelled it. At this point, John Waters interjected, “But who needs reality?” In his movie, Tracy and her friends succeed in integrating the Corny Collins show, and all the bigots get their comeuppance. Many years later, this is the moment of that function that I remember best. John Waters saying, “But who needs reality”. Being a scientist, I should, in principle, wince at that statement. After all, scientists are in the business of discovering reality. And we know how important reality is for human beings to live a life grounded in facts and evidence free of the shackles of ignorance and superstition. However, the truth is more complicated. The are millions of human beings in this world living in societies mired in disease, poverty, disenfranchisement, exploitation, discrimination, repression, and violence. For many of these people, the hope that their condition will improve anytime soon, when viewed from any objective point of view, is nothing but a fantasy. Yet, in these societies, individuals ranging from poets, writers, painters, and filmmakers, to political and social leaders or just regular folks, articulate and visualize fantasies that their trials will end one day, and that that their wrongs will be made right. Thus, fantasy can actually play a constructive role in our lives. Fantasy allows us to imagine a better future where good prevails over evil, and we overcome the intractable problems that burden us, to be free in that happily ever after ending, where the just are rewarded, and the wicked are punished. From fairy tales to movies such as Hairspray, fantasy can be a powerful motivator for change and a source of strength and inspiration that moves us to dream, hope, and act. But fantasy can also be a destructive force, and we all had the opportunity to witness this on January 6th of 2021 when a mob of people stormed the U.S. Capitol Building to stop the counting the electoral college votes of the American people, to harm our elected representatives, and to overturn a fair and free election. These people had been told the lie that the election was stolen, and they believed it to the extent that they were willing to risk their livelihood, their freedom, and their lives to contravene the will of the majority of their fellow Americans. I want to clarify here that I am not making a political point. All the evidence we have indicates that the 2020 election was not stolen. This is an objective description of reality. Arguing otherwise is unreasonable.  Now we come to the crux of my argument, which I am presenting here as my opinion. Most fantasies have at their core grievances that are real. But what is the grievance that spawned the fantasy that led to the denial of the election results and fueled January 6th? The people involved in these activities had been told for years that there is a cabal of nefarious entities such as the elites, the deep state, the fake news media, liberal Marxists, environmentalists, atheists, LGBT people, and others who hate them and their way of life. And these entities allegedly seek to control or destroy them by several means including manipulating the laws, the schools, the elections, the government, and other things. This is the bogus grievance which has spawned the fantasy among these people that they are under attack, and thus they need to strike back and defeat those who threaten them before it is too late. And after they do so, they will usher in a new era in our republic where their way of life will be safe once again and the bad people will be punished. When this fantasy is accepted, facts, evidence, and reason become irrelevant, and trust in our institutions and their safeguards against abuse of power become non-existent. This is how a fair and free election became a “fraud” where their votes were cancelled and their candidate was denied his rightful victory. This is how a call to a protest, where they were told that if they didn’t fight like hell and show strength they wouldn’t have a country anymore, was interpreted as a directive to attack the very heart of our democracy while they risked life and limb in doing so. This is the frightening power of fantasy. When it arises out of the noblest desires of humanity for a better future, it can be a formidable constructive force, but when it arises out of fear and ignorance fed by lies and misinformation, it can become a formidable force of destruction. The United States Capitol attack collage by Aca1291 is used here under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. The Hairspray movie poster is used here under the doctrine of Fair Use. |
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