You might have noticed—again!—that posting has been a bit…slow. That’s because I had a double deadline last Friday. A grant application I was working on was due then, as were the reviews I’m doing of grant submissions for an NIH study section. You might also remember that I had promised I’d get back to a more regular posting schedule as well, but that that promise fell through last week as well. As a result, I thought I’d explain.
Last week, we had a family health crisis, and my father was hospitalized. He’s fine now (at least as good as he gets), but between finishing getting my grant submitted, finishing up my grant reviews, and that, there was no time for anything else, like my hobby here. Now that that’s all done, I’m hoping that this week or, at the latest, next wee will be the time that I get back to my normal schedule. Let’s just say that, because of the declining health of both my parents and two hospitalizations (my mother last month and my father this month), August and September have been…challenging.
Now, you might be wondering why I included a bit about “shameless self-promotion” in the title, and there’s a simple reason for that—actually two reasons. The first is that I was invited to give a talk on cancer misinformation on October 18 at the Carbone Cancer Center at the University of Wisconsin. Incredibly (and I still can’t believe this) I’m one of the keynote speakers at their 22nd Annual Fall Conference entitled this year Misinformation, Myths & Misbeliefs. (Other keynote speakers include Elaine Schattner MD, Joseph Uscinski PhD, and Ethan Zahn.) So if you’re in the Madison area, available to attend that day, and/or affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, come on down!
As I’m currently deeply embedded in putting together my slides for the talk, which—again, I can’t believe this—is only two and a half weeks away, I thought I’d poll the hive mind for topics that you consider very important that could help me put the finishing touches on my slides this week.
The title of my talk is It’s About (Way) More Than Science: Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Combatting Health Misinformation, but as I’ve put the talk together I’ve kind of wished that I had called it something like Cancer Misinformation: The names change, but the song remains the same. I’ll find a way to combine all that into the same theme, but if you have any ideas for strands of ideas of how cancer misinformation doesn’t really change at its heart and how understanding that is how you combat it, feel free to comment below. Some of the key themes/ideas that I’ll touch upon will include:
- Alternative cancer cure testimonials (of course).
- The myth that cancer is not really the problem; the body’s reaction to it is the problem (e.g., Robert O. Young, German New Medicine).
- The “one true cure” whose existence “They” are hiding and information about which “They” are suppressing.
- Stanisław Burzynski vs. the FDA and state medical boards.
- How cancer quackery in the age of the pandemic—turbo cancer!—is mostly just repackaged old cancer quackery (e.g., Paul Marik and the FLCCC).
Anyway, wish me luck! This is the first invited talk to such a large audience that I’ve been invited to give since before the pandemic, and I’m a little nervous about it.
9 replies on “Some blog housekeeping and a bit of shameless self-promotion”
Congrats and good luck!
Congrats and good luck. Won’t attend your talk. A bit to far to travel.
Hope for the best with your mom and dad.
What I would like to see in such a presentation would be something about “toxins”. That while the boogeyman of the day changes (it’s sugar, no, it’s GMO, no, it’s these COVID vaccines), there is always this idea that there is some everyday thing that people consume which causes cancer and if you just “lived clean”, you could avoid it. And if you could not avoid it, you should detox (which ties nicely both into “turbo cancer” scare and fake cures).
The question I’ll ask you: is cancer misinformation really as much the topic as cancer treatment misinformation? Your first item notes alt med promises cancer cures, while sbm only promises treatment. Doesn’t the woo that cancer is actually something else spring from some attempt to claim why the woo cure regime will work, be that one true answer to the misery dealt out by the “cancer industrial medicine industry”?
Would a better rubric for the whole apparatus be something like ‘mythologies of cancer denialism’? (That’s just a sincere ‘blue sky’ question. I’m not sure it’s an improvement.)
As you might guess, I have to question the premise that understanding how the woo song remains the same is the key to combatting it. This strikes me as projecting the perspective of science onto people who minds are functioning on other wavelengths. Why would any of the people who are ripe for cancer bs expect the heart of the message to change? Isn’t the opposite actually the case, that some core of historical continuity adds to the appeal of an alternative narrative, as conspiracy theories are modern myths of Manichean struggles between a powerful Them and a ‘red-pilled’ Us?
But if was attending a presentation on this topic, the question I’d want it to address is exactly ‘how does this understanding of misinformation help us combat it’? One answer I could imagine is that it presents a roadmap for “prebutting”, calling out typical bs before an audience might hear it from an endorsing source. But I don’t think that gets to the root, because it’s still a discourse of facts versus ‘facts’, and the terrain is actually operating on different terms — the dominance if lizard brain functions in the face of a horrible, uncurable disease that can typically only be effectively mitigated by treatments with severe secondary consequences.
Perhaps, however, there is in all the repetition of the woo song some clues to the psychology of cancer denialism. Like the unchanging heart of the misinfo has evolved in some analog of natural selection. It’s survives and reproduces because it ‘works’ within the givens of the situations at hand.
To offer just one quickie hypothesis on that, I’d note homo sapiens seem to need to maintain a feeling of agency to thrive, which both cancer, and cancer treatments (in many cases bolstered by the Clarke’s Third Law aspect of how modern medical science appears in practice to lay people) dramatically undercuts. The woo narrative then promises first and foremost to restore agency. Aren’t the fundamental theses always, “Yes, you can fight the Big C! Yes you CAN beat it, if you fight it right! Yes, you don’t have to lose parts or properties of your self, your identity, in the process!”?
Just typing this out it occured to me there’s a ‘logic’ to conspiracy theory here, a sort of reverse reification where the effects of nature are recast as the effects of human skullduggery, making the prospect of countering them seem both more likely and more laudatory.
Anyway, if I’m on the right track here, maybe the question for those who want to counter the effects of misinformation becomes: how can the rhetoric AND the practice of conventional care counter the loss of agency cancer patients face…
Coincidentally (really!) I have to sign off now to head off for a prostate biopsy. When I get results, I’ll no doubt mention them here at some point in the future.
@ Orac, lest you think the interrogatory grammar above is JAQ, it’s just the accepted norm for Socratic engagement in the humanities, which is typically the polite and proper way to question a conference presentation in any following discussion. I. e. we actually want the question recipient to engage it, and all thoughtful responses
are appreciated.
The Carbone Cancer Center states, “There’s more to cancer care than medications and surgery. We also offer integrative health services like acupuncture, mindfulness for stress reduction and massage therapy. These services are available to inpatients as well as on an outpatient basis.”
https://www.uwhealth.org/services/cancer#22yDf9eNvFmSbszqIwzfyI
@ Orac,
Be respectfully insolent and question the use of acupuncture? I hope your talk is recorded and available thereafter.
Mindfulness and massage are nice, but they’re not going to treat cancers. Acupuncture? I’ll stick to needles inserted only by people with medical training.
Excision was the appropriate therapy for mine (basal cell). Not fun, but it worked.
Alt med proselytisers eternally describe cancer aetiology/ treatment based on the natural/ artificial ( manmade/ “chemical”) dimension:
cancer is caused by artificial substances/phenomena and treated ( by SBM) by similar means ( chemo, meds, radiation) which fail.
Of course, to them, natural life styles prevent and treat cancer effectively – diet, exercise, juices, veganism, pure water, sunlight, supplements, meditation, prayer and good thoughts work well.
which all are do it yourself, possibly guided by a gifted nutritionist or yoga instructor, thus eliminating the need for professionals, universities and research.
Which make people feel good about themselves.
Cancer existed long before chemicals:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oa.1390010315
Meningioma in Paleolithic and Neolithic period.
Wishing both of your parents to recover soon, it is perfectly okay to post less. I also post less for several reasons. One of them is the realization that my Covid vaccine posts may have deleterious effects on certain individuals whom I care about greatly. I appreciate your cancer related posts as they bring up a lot of past cancer related memories.