Why did NPR fire Juan Williams?

Fox News and other right-leaning media seem to be jumping out of their chairs over NPR's firing of Juan Williams, claiming it was unjustifiable and politically motivated.  But was he really fired over his recent comments on Fox (see the video below), or did he violate his contract with NPR?

"Gary Null is the Kent Hovind of Alternative Medicine "

If the embedded video above doesn't appear, try here, here or here.

A "Dietary Antioxidant" for kids, or an environmental chelator?

I had made a few posts related to autism a while back, and today came across this article (via Orac's post over at Respectful Insolence).  It's a nice example of bullshit truth in advertising by Kentucky company CTI Science, Inc. ran by Boyd Haley.

I first wondered if the product would be equally marketable were it more appropriately named "Chelator, with Titanium and Iron Rust" or maybe "N¹, N³-bis(2-mercaptoethyl)isophthalamide", instead of "OSR#1", and in the end I decided the answer was probably no.  Why?  So far it looks like a large portion of the intended consumers are parents and caretakers of autistic children...

Haley Autism One 2007 Powerpoint, p. 63 [Source]

More important than the name, I wondered about the truthfulness of the claims on the product website, particularly the scant evidence that the stuff is really safe for children, and of course the story behind this blurb on their FAQ page (as of 19 January 2010):

There is an internet rumor that OSR#1® is an Industrial Chelator. Is this true?

No. OSR#1® as produced by CTI Science is not now and has never been marketed or tested as an environmental or industrial chelator. Nor has OSR#1® been tested in humans as a chelator by CTI Science, and no claims of chelation treatment use are made by CTI Science.

Now, here it's worth noting that CTI Science website also states that OSR#1 was developed in conjunction with...

the University of Kentucky in Lexington which licenses the underlying patent rights to the Company.

(By the way, is it just me, or wouldn't you really like to know what that patent number is?)

According to the articles above, it seems that statement is indeed highly questionable, and the source of that mean ol' "internet rumor" appears to be (gasp!) a University of Kentucky patent -- presumably the very same one mentioned by the CTI Science website?

Reading into this great report and in particular this post (both from 2008), we find...

Prof. Boyd Haley’s new chelator N,N’-bis (2-mercaptoethyl)isophthalamide, or “CT-01” — represented to the FDA as a “new dietary ingredient,” and now marketed as an antioxidant for consumption by autistic children under the trade name “Oxidative Stress Relief” (OSR) — is substantially similar if not identical in its chemical structure to one member of a family of industrial chelators developed by his colleagues at the University of Kentucky, and for which U.S. and international patents were awarded in 2003.

U.S. Patent No. 6,586,600, Multidentate Sulfur-Containing Ligands (issued July 2, 2003) (.pdf) names as its inventors chemists David A. Atwood, Brock S. Howerton and Matthew Matlock of Lexington, Kentucky. David Atwood is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, and Mr. Howerton and Mr. Matlock are graduate students. The rights to the patent are assigned to the University of Kentucky Research Foundation.

More details on the patent issue were posted later here, but it's pretty clear from patent #6586600 mentioned above (presumable the patent licensed to CTI Science, Inc.) that these compounds were intended to be used as environmental chelators.

Looking back at the claim from the website, we see the beauty of good advertising: so far, it looks like CTI Science hasn't technically lied to their consumers here.  You see, while these chemicals were initially patented as environmental chelators, it's technically true that (bold added for emphasis)...

OSR#1® as produced by CTI Science is not now and has never been marketed or tested as an environmental or industrial chelator.

So what do you think? Are they being maybe just a little bit misleading as they try and dodge the association of their product with it's intended role as an environmental chelation agent?

"Amsterdam is a mess... a cesspool of corruption, crime..."

I visited Amsterdam once while waiting to catch a plane following a trip to the Den Haag (and no, I didn't do anything there considered illegal here - although I did walk past plenty of cannabis cafes and brothels), and overall it seemed like a nice place. That said, it's great to see someone throwing some factual information at Fox News when they get it wrong:

Learing about nature from zoos...

... is kind of hard when the zoo uses a dyed donkey for it's Zebra display.





(Photographs by Sharon Weinberger, from the news link above).

Stem cells cure mankind's most devastating diseases!

A friend of mine recently brought my attention to the website for Medra Inc., ran by one William C. Rader, M.D. To sum it all up - the whole thing smells pretty darn fishy...

So what type of medical services does Medra provide?? How about human fetal stem cell treatment for, as stated on Medra's website: "many of mankind's most devastating diseases." What are those disease? The rest of the site suggests they include a menagerie of neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases, Down's Syndrome, arthritis, chronic pain, and others.

With a list like that, you might be wondering what exactly is this amazing new stem cell treatment? Well, nobody outside of Medra Inc. seems to know. According to this L.A. Times article, Dr. Rader "said he has not published anything about his therapy because that would open him to attack from a 'conspiracy' of scientists, government authorities, pharmaceutical companies and abortion opponents."

Er, wait a second. So, he's discovered a way to treat "many of mankind's most devastating diseases", but he can't tell even his own peers about how they might use the treatment to save countless other human lives? Hmmm... something seems just a little bit really strange here!

According to his website, this fetal stem cell treatment is

A medical procedure whereby Human Fetal Stem Cells are transplanted into a patient. These cellular building blocks are usually administered intravenously and subcutaneously (under the skin). It is a painless procedure, which takes place in approximately one hour, and has no negative side effects.

Wow! No negative side effects!? Now pretty much all of my BS detectors are going off! Is this guy for real!?! Don't get me wrong - I think stem cell research holds great potential for advancing both medicine and many areas of biology, but the treatment offered here seems too good to be true.

Unfortunately, Medra Inc. is for real - in fact, $25,000+ for real. Oh, and you also have to travel to one of Dr. Rader's out-of-country clinics in the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, or the Ukraine to get this mysterious treatment. Seems completely legit, right? Riiiiight.

So, with my suspicions flying off the charts and no available scientific evidence to turn to in order to evaluate these claims, what's left to do?? How else might we evaluate his claims of curing all these ailments? Even if we could hear each and every patient's story, we'd still be hard pressed to see through any placebo effects. But what we can do is take a closer look and see if there's at least some anecdotal evidence consistent with his claims. This by no means proves anything, but if Medra Inc. can't even provide some compelling anecdotal evidence, we can feel comfortable looking elsewhere for medical treatment.

So, lets start with the obvious - his front page "success stories." Lets begin with a video about Hannah from Medra's own website:

http://www.medra.com/video/medra4.html

Adorable kid, horrible disease, and a heart wrenching video with a wonderful outcome - the stem cell treatment has cured her! Right? I mean, that's what the video suggests, and we should trust Medra, Inc. to be honest with us, right? Surely t would get taken down if she were still sick, right? Wrong.

Fortunately, her mother keeps a web journal with tons of details. You can read about her last treatment in March, 2009, back to what appears to be the first treatment in June, 2007, and other details back through October, 2006. I don't have the time to do it myself, but it would worth trying to piece together a time-line of her treatments and symptoms over this period - various drugs at various dosages, IVIG treatments, the stem cell procedures in question - all seem to have been at play at some point during the past couple of years. Indeed, such a history could be just the sort of thing that doctor could infer quite a bit from, were we actually shopping around for this sort of medical treatment.

In any case, as you can see from the 2009 entries, Hannah's struggles are not over. Returning to our original intent for dredging through all this information - can we infer anything about Medra's front-page success story? Well, for starters, it isn't at all the wonderful success that the video lead us to believe. Could the treatment have helped her? Perhaps, although she was also receiving multiple other forms of treatment over the past couple of years that might also be responsible for any improvements. Heck, for all we know trips to the Dominican Republic alone may have brought about changes in her symptoms! Who knows!?

While we can't say much conclusively about Dr. Rader's claims, we can say that Medra, Inc. looks to have pulled in at least $20,000 x 1,500 = $30,000,000 from the his patients' families for what appears to be, at best, only moderately effective treatment. So is this the quintessential case of the brilliant doctor who holds the key to curing mankind's most devastating diseases, or is Medra Inc. just a modern-day snake-oil salesmen? Unfortunately, we don't have the evidence to really answer that question.

Until I see some real evidence supporting Medra's claims - I for one won't be flying any of my family members down to the Dominican Republic any time soon.

Links to more information:

1. Barrett, S. The Shady Side of Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy. Quackwatch, February 17, 2009.
2. Wikipedia entry for William C. Rader.
3. Ripoff Report #466029 and the associated web journal mentioned above.

These look interesting, but I haven't read them yet:

1. Baker, Monya. 2005. Stem cell therapy or snake oil? Nature Biotechnology 23. doi:10.1038/nbt1205-1467
2. Enserink, Martin . 2006. Selling the Stem Cell Dream. Science, 313(5784). doi:10.1126/science.313.5784.160
3. Other articles through google scholar.