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unusualmusic_lj_archiveFrom:http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/bad-science-kills-people-bush-administrationheroin-edition/
Bad Science Kills People: Bush administration/heroin edition.
I don’t know how much attention this post by Mark Kleiman is getting around the blogosphere, but it should be getting more. (h/t Kevin Drum in this post.)
Kleiman picked up on this story from NPR, which reported two facts:
Fact 1: public health officials around the country, including those in Cambridge, MA, the city where I now sit, are distributing rescue kits that save heroin users from overdoses. The kits cost $9.50, and they are credited with reversing 2,600 overdoses in 16 such local programs around the country. For context: NPR reports that “overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS, hepatitis or homicide.”
Most people would think that a cheap, simple tool that allows those on the sharp end of the drug wars to save lives would be an unalloyed good.
But then there’s fact 2: I’m just going to quote here the same comments Kleiman cites:
Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.
“First of all, I don’t agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That’s No. 1,” she says. “I just don’t think that’s good public health policy.”
Madras says drug users aren’t likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn’t as likely.
Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user’s motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.
“Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services,” Madras says.
Read that again.
People in dire straits should not be empowered to help themselves (in a way shown to work). Instead, a dying person should hope to have the luck to make it to the E.R.
It gets worse. The essential claim Madras makes is that improving a user’s chance of surviving an overdose will encourage further drug use, while avoiding death under the care of medical professional will induce the lucky survivors to seek drug treatment.
These are at least nominally empirical claims. They can and should be tested. But as far as we can tell, Madras pulls these statements out of her gut (I’m trying to be polite here). To the extent that there is any real data, NPR’s story also reports that “one small study suggests that overdose-rescue programs reduce heroin use and get some people into treatment.”
That is, the Bush Administration’s point person on drug policy simply ignores the inconvenient knowledge that exists about the effect of this cheap, life saving program.
R
Why?
Why doesn’t the fact that readily available cheap (and cheaper-for-the-state) alternatives to life-destroying events exist affect this view? Because of a commitment to an unexamined assumption: Exemplary suffering helps focus one’s mind, it is claimed (how else can you read Madras’s comments) and so anything that might defuse the power of the demonstration is to be avoided. Science be damned.
Read rest here:http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/bad-science-kills-people-bush-administrationheroin-edition/
That kind of thinking sound familiar? Remember the HPV vaccine? Read this:
Memoirs of a Skepchick had a really good satire explaining the dangers of such thinking:
Posted in Anti-Science at 11:24 am by Rebecca
I know my position on this may be a little controversial, but I think it’s important to have an open and honest debate about the subject. Here we go.
I am anti-fire extinguisher.
Wait, don’t leave yet. Hear me out.
Before the invention of the fire extinguisher in 1816, people used sensible fire safety precautions. They did not leave oily rags piled in buckets next to the ashtray. They did not set their farts on fire. And they always kept their curtains far away from heating devices.
After the invention of the fire extinguisher, all hell broke loose. It didn’t take long for games such as “Tie a Lit Sparkler to the Cat” and “Flaming Monopoly” to explode — literally and metaphorically — in popularity all over the country. People were just looking for a license to burn, and they found it in the fire extinguisher. I present the following chart as evidence:
Read rest here:http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=120
Compassionate conservatism, anyone?
Bad Science Kills People: Bush administration/heroin edition.
I don’t know how much attention this post by Mark Kleiman is getting around the blogosphere, but it should be getting more. (h/t Kevin Drum in this post.)
Kleiman picked up on this story from NPR, which reported two facts:
Fact 1: public health officials around the country, including those in Cambridge, MA, the city where I now sit, are distributing rescue kits that save heroin users from overdoses. The kits cost $9.50, and they are credited with reversing 2,600 overdoses in 16 such local programs around the country. For context: NPR reports that “overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS, hepatitis or homicide.”
Most people would think that a cheap, simple tool that allows those on the sharp end of the drug wars to save lives would be an unalloyed good.
But then there’s fact 2: I’m just going to quote here the same comments Kleiman cites:
Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.
“First of all, I don’t agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That’s No. 1,” she says. “I just don’t think that’s good public health policy.”
Madras says drug users aren’t likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn’t as likely.
Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user’s motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.
“Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services,” Madras says.
Read that again.
People in dire straits should not be empowered to help themselves (in a way shown to work). Instead, a dying person should hope to have the luck to make it to the E.R.
It gets worse. The essential claim Madras makes is that improving a user’s chance of surviving an overdose will encourage further drug use, while avoiding death under the care of medical professional will induce the lucky survivors to seek drug treatment.
These are at least nominally empirical claims. They can and should be tested. But as far as we can tell, Madras pulls these statements out of her gut (I’m trying to be polite here). To the extent that there is any real data, NPR’s story also reports that “one small study suggests that overdose-rescue programs reduce heroin use and get some people into treatment.”
That is, the Bush Administration’s point person on drug policy simply ignores the inconvenient knowledge that exists about the effect of this cheap, life saving program.
R
Why?
Why doesn’t the fact that readily available cheap (and cheaper-for-the-state) alternatives to life-destroying events exist affect this view? Because of a commitment to an unexamined assumption: Exemplary suffering helps focus one’s mind, it is claimed (how else can you read Madras’s comments) and so anything that might defuse the power of the demonstration is to be avoided. Science be damned.
Read rest here:http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/bad-science-kills-people-bush-administrationheroin-edition/
That kind of thinking sound familiar? Remember the HPV vaccine? Read this:
Memoirs of a Skepchick had a really good satire explaining the dangers of such thinking:
Posted in Anti-Science at 11:24 am by Rebecca
I know my position on this may be a little controversial, but I think it’s important to have an open and honest debate about the subject. Here we go.
I am anti-fire extinguisher.
Wait, don’t leave yet. Hear me out.
Before the invention of the fire extinguisher in 1816, people used sensible fire safety precautions. They did not leave oily rags piled in buckets next to the ashtray. They did not set their farts on fire. And they always kept their curtains far away from heating devices.
After the invention of the fire extinguisher, all hell broke loose. It didn’t take long for games such as “Tie a Lit Sparkler to the Cat” and “Flaming Monopoly” to explode — literally and metaphorically — in popularity all over the country. People were just looking for a license to burn, and they found it in the fire extinguisher. I present the following chart as evidence:
Read rest here:http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=120
Compassionate conservatism, anyone?
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 06:47 pm (UTC)Well they’ve been using that same rationale for years when it comes to sex ed, teaching kids how to prevent contagious deadly sexually transmitted diseases just encourages them to have sex! >_<
But of course there’s nothing compassionate about the Bush administration, they’re all positively blood thirsty.. The only people they give a damn about at all are ones that haven’t been born.. Once they’re born; let them die from lack of medical care, ship them off to Iraq to die, execute as many as you possibly can, etc.. Oh, but if your brain has been destroyed and you’re on full life support which is bankrupting your family (for lack of insurance) then they suddenly care about you again and will even call a special session of Congress to keep you plugged in.. Culture of life my ass…..
Hey, maybe we shouldn’t give body armor to soldiers, then they wouldn’t be jumping in front of bullets and bombs all the time! >_<
no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 10:37 pm (UTC)