Category: Health

Discoverer of Catalyst Role of mRNA Had Trouble “Getting His Work Published”

(p. B12) Sidney Altman, a molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for sharing in the discovery that ribonucleic acid, or RNA, was not just a carrier of genetic information but could also be a catalyst for chemical reactions in cells — a breakthrough that paved the way for new gene therapies and treatments for viral infections — died on April 5 [2022] in Rockleigh, N.J.

. . .

HAs seems to happen so often in science, Dr. Altman stumbled upon his discovery. “I wasn’t looking for what I found,” he said in a 2010 interview with Harry Kreisler at the Institute for International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

He had studied how a small RNA molecule, called transfer RNA, carries genetic code to make new proteins. Some of the code is not necessary, so an enzyme cuts it out before it is used.

Then, in 1978, Dr. Altman began studying an RNA-cutting enzyme from E. coli bacteria that was composed of an RNA molecule and a protein. He managed to separate the two pieces and test them to see how they reacted in the enzyme process. Much to his surprise, he discovered that the protein did not perform as an enzyme without the RNA molecule. He later discovered that the RNA molecule could be the catalyst, even without the protein.

The finding ran completely contrary to what at the time was established theory, which held that it was the proteins that were the catalysts in enzymes.

The discovery of what are now known as ribozymes was so radical that Dr. Altman had trouble getting it accepted.

Joel Rosenbaum, a professor of cell biology at Yale and a colleague of Dr. Altman’s, told Chemistry World magazine that when Dr. Altman first tried to get other scientists to accept his research, “the community of molecular biologists, including several at Yale working on RNA, did not want to believe the work.”

“He had a hard time obtaining invitations to speak at scientific meetings and, indeed, getting his work published,” Dr. Rosenbaum said.

For the full obituary, see:

Dylan Loeb McClain. “Sidney Altman, Who Stumbled on a Breakthrough in Genetics, Dies at 82.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 16, 2022): B12.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated April 18, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Gary Becker Foresaw a Cure for Obesity that Daniel Kahneman Wrote Was “Implausible”

I have found much of value in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. But the following passage is not included in what I value.

A famous example of the Chicago approach is titled A Theory of Rational Addiction; it explains how a rational agent with a strong preference for intense and immediate gratification may make the rational decision to accept future addiction as a consequence. I once heard Gary Becker, one of the authors of that article, who is also a Nobel laureate of the Chicago school, argue in a lighter vein, but not entirely as a joke, that we should consider the possibility of explaining the so-called obesity epidemic by people’s belief that a cure for diabetes will soon become available. He was making a valuable point: when we observe people acting in ways that seem odd, we should first examine the possibility that they have a good reason to do what they do. Psychological interpretations should only be invoked when the reasons become implausible—which Becker’s explanation of obesity probably is.

Source: Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, p. 412.

Gary Becker is vindicated again:

(p. A16) An experimental drug has enabled people with obesity or who are overweight to lose about 22.5 percent of their body weight, about 52 pounds on average, in a large trial, the drug’s maker announced on Thursday.

The company, Eli Lilly, has not yet submitted the data for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal or presented them in a public setting. But the claims nonetheless amazed medical experts.

“Wow (and a double Wow!)” Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, chief executive of Verve Therapeutics, a company focusing on heart disease drugs, wrote in a tweet. Drugs like Eli Lilly’s, he added, are “truly going to revolutionize the treatment of obesity!!!”

Dr. Kathiresan has no ties to Eli Lilly or to the drug.

. . .

The Eli Lilly study lasted 72 weeks and involved 2,539 participants. Many qualified as obese, while others were overweight but also had such risk factors as high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, cardiovascular disease or obstructive sleep apnea.

They were divided into four groups. All received diet counseling to reduce their calorie intake by about 500 a day.

One group was randomly assigned to take a placebo, while the other three received doses of tirzepatide ranging from 5 milligrams to 15 milligrams. Patients injected themselves with the drug once a week.

. . .

The medications are among a new class of drugs called incretins, which are naturally occurring hormones that slow stomach emptying, regulate insulin and decrease appetite. The side effects include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. But most patients tolerate or are not bothered by these effects.

For the full story, see:

Gina Kolata. “Experimental Obesity Drug Produces 20% Weight Loss.” The New York Times (Friday, April 29, 2022): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 1, 2022, and has the title “Patients Taking Experimental Obesity Drug Lost More Than 50 Pounds, Maker Claims.” Where there is a slight difference in wording between the online and the print versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Kahneman’s book is:

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

CAR T Therapy Is a Durable “Cure” for Some Leukemia Cancers

(p. A17) Doug Olson was feeling kind of tired in 1996. When a doctor examined him she frowned. “I don’t like the feel of those lymph nodes,” she said, poking his neck. She ordered a biopsy. The result was terrifying. He had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood cancer that mostly strikes older people and accounts for about a quarter of new cases of leukemia.

“Oh Lordy,” Mr. Olson said. “I thought I was done for.” He was only 49 and, he said, had always been healthy.

Six years went by without the cancer progressing. Then it started to grow. He had four rounds of chemotherapy but the cancer kept coming back. He had reached pretty much the end of the line when his oncologist, Dr. David Porter at the University of Pennsylvania, offered him a chance to be among the very first patients to try something unprecedented, known as CAR T cell therapy.

In 2010, he became the second of three patients to get the new treatment.

At the time, the idea for this sort of therapy “was way out there,” said Dr. Carl June, the principal investigator for the trial at Penn, and he had tempered his own expectations that the cells he was providing to Mr. Olson as therapy would survive.

“We thought they would be gone in a month or two,” Dr. June said.

Now, a decade later, he reports that his expectations were completely confounded. In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, Dr. June and his colleagues, Dr. J. Joseph Melenhorst and Dr. Porter, report that the CAR T treatment made the cancer vanish in two out of the three patients in that early trial. All had chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The big surprise, though, was that even though the cancer seemed to be long gone, the CAR T cells remained in the patients’ bloodstreams, circulating as sentinels.

“Now we can finally say the word ‘cure’ with CAR T cells,” Dr. June said.

Although most patients will not do as well, the results hold out hope that, for some, their cancer will be vanquished.

For the full story, see:

Gina Kolata. “Potential Leukemia Cure Leads to New Mysteries.” The New York Times (Thursday, February 3, 2022): A17.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 2, 2022, and has the title “A Cancer Treatment Makes Leukemia Vanish, but Creates More Mysteries.”)

Stereotyping Older Adults May Shorten Their Lives

(p. D3) Dr. Robert N. Butler, a psychiatrist, gerontologist and founding director of the National Institute on Aging, coined the term “ageism” a half-century ago. It echoes “sexism” and “racism,” describing the stereotyping of and discrimination against older adults.

Among the mementos in Dr. Levy’s small office at Yale is a treasured photo of her and Dr. Butler, who died in 2010. One could argue that she is his heir.

A psychologist and epidemiologist, Dr. Levy has demonstrated — in more than 140 published articles over 30 years and in a new book, “Breaking the Age Code” — that ageism results in more than hurt feelings or even discriminatory behavior. It affects physical and cognitive health and well-being in measurable ways and can take years off one’s life.

. . .

Another memento in Dr. Levy’s office is a card on her bulletin board that reads, “Ask Me About 7.5.” The souvenir came from a Wisconsin anti-ageism campaign and refers to her 2002 longevity study, which for two decades followed hundreds of residents older than 50 in a small Ohio town. The study found that median survival was seven and a half years longer for those with the most positive beliefs about aging, compared with those having the most negative attitudes.

. . .

We absorb these stereotypes from an early age, through disparaging media portrayals and fairy tales about wicked old witches. But institutions — employers, health care organizations, housing policies — express a similar prejudice, enforcing what is called “structural ageism,” Dr. Levy said. Reversing that will require sweeping changes — an “age liberation movement,” she added.

But she has found reason for optimism: Damaging ideas about age can change. Using the same subliminal techniques that measure stereotypical attitudes, her team has been able to enhance a sense of competence and value among older people. Researchers in many other countries have replicated their results.

For the full commentary, see:

Paula Span. “How Ageism Can Take Years Off Seniors’ Lives.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 26, 2022): D3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated April 28, 2022, and has the title “Exploring the Health Effects of Ageism.” Where there is a slight difference in wording between versions, the passages quoted above are from the online version.)

Levy’s book mentioned in the commentary above is:

Levy, Becca. Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live. New York: William Morrow, 2022.

BioNTech Is Running Clinical Trials for mRNA Cancer Vaccines

(p. C2) Scientists are . . . advancing mRNA vaccines and therapies to treat cancer, which poses a particular challenge because tumor cells arise from the body’s own cells and can easily deceive the immune system into thinking they are normal. Cancer patients today receive varying types of treatments, but they involve therapies manufactured outside the body. The mRNA researchers believe that the body’s own immune system can be used against cancer if it’s given the right tools.

BioNTech, now a household name for its Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer, was founded in 2008 to pursue mRNA cancer treatments. The German company says that even at a low dose, a strong enough mRNA treatment can be developed to prompt immune cells to make certain proteins and to train the rest of the immune system to recognize and target tumor cells that express these same proteins. “It needs to be louder and more aggressive for cancer because the immune system needs stronger persuasion to attack something that appears to resemble a normal cell which it should respect and not attack,” said Özlem Türeci, BioNTech’s chief medical officer.

The company’s pipeline includes at least 10 cancer vaccines in human clinical trials using mRNA for skin, pancreatic, ovarian and other tumors. Two of its most advanced programs in mid-stage clinical studies, one for melanoma and the other for head and neck cancer, harness mRNA to make specific proteins seen with these cancers that will prompt a vigorous response from the patient’s immune system. Research from BioNTech published in 2020 in the journal Nature showed that the treatment caused the lesions of melanoma patients to shrink.

Some of BioNTech’s other cancer treatments are tailored to individual patients. A tumor is removed surgically and then shipped to the company’s laboratories, where researchers sequence the DNA and search for proteins, using machine learning to decide which ones are needed for that individual’s therapy. To address how quickly cancer can spread in the body, BioNTech designs and develops these clinical-trial treatments in just four to six weeks—a potentially lifesaving turnaround time for more pressing cases.

For the full essay, see:

Jared S. Hopkins and Felicia Schwartz. “Can the Technology Behind Covid Vaccines Cure Other Diseases?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, February 5, 2022): C1-C2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date February 4, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Modern Medical Consensus Supports Thousands of Years of Indian Ayurvedic Tradition of Nasal Rinsing

(p. D6) To the uninitiated, the neti pot may seem like yet another wellness trend. After all, the teapot-like vessel was popularized in the United States by the celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, who called it a “nose bidet” on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and has been criticized for promoting unproven supplements and health products.

Rinsing warm saltwater through your nose — in one nostril and out the other — as an antidote for a variety of woes like sinus inflammation, congestion and allergies may seem strange and possibly scary;  . . .

But according to ear, nose and throat doctors, nasal rinsing, which traces back thousands of years to the Ayurvedic medical traditions of India, is an unusual example of a practice that is at once ancient, trendy and evidence-based. And, it’s safe and inexpensive to boot.

It has a “very, very high level of evidence, randomized controlled trial evidence, that shows that it does work and it does help,” said Dr. Zara Patel, an associate professor of otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Here’s what we know.

. . .

In 2021, an international team of experts published a consensus on how best to manage common sinus issues, like chronic inflammation of the nasal and sinus passages that can cause runny nose, congestion, impaired sense of smell and facial pressure or pain. They concluded, based on the best yet limited evidence, that regular rinsing with saltwater was one of the treatments most proven to be effective.

Other small studies have suggested that saltwater rinses can help with seasonal or environmental allergy symptoms like congestion, runny nose, itching and sneezing.

And there is some evidence that rinsing can help soothe symptoms of acute upper respiratory infections, like those caused by common cold or flu viruses, though there is less research on this use. One of the largest studies to date, published in 2008, was conducted on about 400 children aged 6 to 10 with colds or flus in the Czech Republic. Among the children who used saltwater rinses several times per day, their symptoms resolved more quickly and they were less likely to use fever medications, decongestants or antibiotics, or to have to miss school, than the children who didn’t rinse.

Dr. Patel, who practices in California, said that rinsing can also help clear fine particles from wildfire smoke, which can be irritating.

Though the evidence that rinsing helps with these various nasal issues is of mixed quality, experts say there are few downsides to trying it. “The risk is so low and the potential benefit so high for rinsers” that it’s worth giving it a go, said Dr. Nyssa Farrell, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

For the full story, see:

Alice Callahan. “What to Know About Nasal Irrigation.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 1, 2022): D6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated January 31, 2022, and has the title “Do Neti Pots Really Work?”)

The international consensus mentioned above was published as:

Orlandi RR, Kingdom TT, Smith TL, Bleier B, DeConde A, Luong AU, Poetker DM, Soler Z, Welch KC, Wise SK, Adappa N, Alt JA, Anselmo-Lima WT, Bachert C, Baroody FM, Batra PS, Bernal-Sprekelsen M, Beswick D, Bhattacharyya N, Chandra RK, Chang EH, Chiu A, Chowdhury N, Citardi MJ, Cohen NA, Conley DB, DelGaudio J, Desrosiers M, Douglas R, Eloy JA, Fokkens WJ, Gray ST, Gudis DA, Hamilos DL, Han JK, Harvey R, Hellings P, Holbrook EH, Hopkins C, Hwang P, Javer AR, Jiang RS, Kennedy D, Kern R, Laidlaw T, Lal D, Lane A, Lee HM, Lee JT, Levy JM, Lin SY, Lund V, McMains KC, Metson R, Mullol J, Naclerio R, Oakley G, Otori N, Palmer JN, Parikh SR, Passali D, Patel Z, Peters A, Philpott C, Psaltis AJ, Ramakrishnan VR, Ramanathan M Jr, Roh HJ, Rudmik L, Sacks R, Schlosser RJ, Sedaghat AR, Senior BA, Sindwani R, Smith K, Snidvongs K, Stewart M, Suh JD, Tan BK, Turner JH, van Drunen CM, Voegels R, Wang Y, Woodworth BA, Wormald PJ, Wright ED, Yan C, Zhang L, Zhou B. “International Consensus Statement on Allergy and Rhinology: Rhinosinusitis 2021.” International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology. 11, no. 3 (March 2021): 213-739. doi: 10.1002/alr.22741. PMID: 33236525.

During Pandemic, Delayed Medical Procedures Rose from 4.6 to 6 Million in England’s Socialized Healthcare System

(p. A8) LONDON — Lara Wahab had been waiting for more than two years for a kidney and pancreas transplant, but months had passed without any word. So last month she called the hospital, and got crushing news.

There had been a good match for her in October [2021], the transplant coordinator told her, which the hospital normally would have accepted. But with Covid-19 patients filling beds, the transplant team could not find her a place in the intensive care unit for postoperative care. They had to decline the organs.

“I was just in shock. I knew that the N.H.S. was under a lot of strain, but you don’t really know until you’re waiting for something like that,” she said, referring to the National Health Service. “It was there, but it sort of slipped through my fingers,” she added of the transplant opportunity.

Ms. Wahab, 34, from North London, is part of an enormous and growing backlog of patients in Britain’s free health service who have seen planned care delayed or diverted, in part because of the pandemic — a largely unseen crisis within a crisis. The problems are likely to have profound consequences that will be felt for years.

The numbers are stark: In England, nearly 6 million procedures are currently delayed, a rise from the backlog of 4.6 million before the pandemic, according to the N.H.S. The current delays most likely impact more than five million people — a single patient can have multiple cases pending for different ailments — which represents almost one-tenth of the population. Hundreds of thousands more haven’t been referred yet for treatment, and many ailments have simply gone undiagnosed.

For the full story, see:

Megan Specia. “In Britain, an Ever-Growing Backlog of Non-Covid Care.” The New York Times (Thursday, January 27, 2022): A8.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated January 27, 2022, and has the title “‘I Feel Really Hopeless’: In U.K., Millions See Non-Covid Health Care Delayed.”)

Excessive Hygiene from Masking, Distancing, and Deep-Cleaning, Can Increase Allergies and Auto-Immune Diseases

(p. A17) The idea that exposure to some infectious agents is protective against immune-related disorders isn’t new and comes with significant scientific heft. The so-called hygiene hypothesis is constructed from epidemiologic evidence, laboratory studies and clinical trials that, put together, support the notion that an excessive emphasis on antisepsis is implicated in misalignments of the immune system that risk disease.

Allergic and autoimmune diseases are far less common in communities with less hygiene, and autoimmune disorders increase in children who migrate from areas with less emphasis on hygiene to areas with more emphasis. They are less common in agricultural communities, where exposure to dirt and animals is common, compared with neighboring communities with shared genetics but little farming. Children who attend daycare early in life—runny noses, colds and all—have less asthma and fewer allergies. Animal studies, laboratory experiments and small trials in humans all point in a similar direction: Avoiding exposure to some microbes prevents the immune system from training well and predisposes to autoimmune diseases.

. . .

This isn’t a paean to infections and poor hygiene but a reminder of the importance of balance. When I prescribe antibiotics, they have to be strong enough to treat my patient’s infection. But if I overtreat, I run the risk of giving the patient colitis (inflammation of the colon) without additional benefits. Current hygiene policies and practices need rebalancing.

. . .

The extreme concern for hygiene at the onset of Covid-19 was intuitive and understandable. The virus was spreading fast, information on routes of transmission was limited, and we as a society tried to protect one another from infection. But policies that were easy to support two years ago need re-evaluation. Distancing, deep-cleaning and masking aren’t “more is better” kinds of goods.

On the other side of the balance, health risks from extended intensive hygiene are credible. As Omicron recedes and we internalize the paucity of Covid-19 benefits from some hygiene practices, we should balance those against the benefits we lose by shielding our immune systems from normal exposures—and the ones we withhold from children by preventing the exchange of microbes through play and smiles.

For the full commentary, see:

Eran Bendavid. “Covid and the ‘Hygiene Hypothesis’.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, February 2, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 1, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Natural Immunity Is Stronger and Lasts Longer Than Immunity from Covid Vaccines

(p. A17) Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.

For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.

None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity.

For the full commentary, see:

Marty Makary. “The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, January 27, 2022): A17.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 26, 2022, and has the title “The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid.”)

The Israeli preprint study mentioned above is:

Gazit, Sivan, Roei Shlezinger, Galit Perez, Roni Lotan, Asaf Peretz, Amir Ben-Tov, Dani Cohen, Khitam Muhsen, Gabriel Chodick, and Tal Patalon. “Comparing Sars-Cov-2 Natural Immunity to Vaccine-Induced Immunity: Reinfections Versus Breakthrough Infections.” medRxiv (2021): doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415.

Democrat-Praised “Whistleblower” Rick Bright, Not Trump Admin, Delayed Molnupiravir by Months at Peak of Pandemic

(p. A17) When Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced on Oct. 1 [2021]that their new antiviral pill reduced Covid hospitalizations by roughly half, some in the media blamed Donald Trump. An Axios headline: “Before Merck backed COVID antiviral, Trump admin turned it down.” In fact, Trump officials pushed for government funding to accelerate the development of the drug, molnupiravir. They were opposed by a career official, Rick Bright, whom Democrats praised as a “whistleblower.”

Mr. Bright joined the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in 2010 and became Barda’s director in 2016.

. . .

Emory had licensed molnupiravir to Ridgeback, which in April 2020 requested $100 million from the government to fast-track studies in humans. Mr. Bright says Trump officials ordered Barda officials “to fund the Ridgeback proposal as quickly as possible, and preferably within 24 hours.” But he said “Ridgeback had not followed the proper procedure for receiving BARDA funding.” Barda declined the request, and Ridgeback collaborated with Merck, which put its own capital at risk.

After Mr. Bright’s reassignment, Barda funding for trials, manufacturing and advance purchases of monoclonal antibodies proved critical in accelerating their development. Molnupiravir would likely have been available much sooner had Barda provided funding as Trump officials urged last spring.

For the full commentary, see:

Allysia Finley. “Who Slowed Merck’s Covid Remedy?” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 11, 2021): A17.

(Note: ellipsis, an bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date October 10, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

The Elite Experts Who Have Failed, Tend to Censor the Heterodox Outsiders Who They Fear

(p. 8) When you have a chronic illness and struggle to get better, you try to maintain a certain equilibrium by distinguishing yourself from all those other sick people, the ones who are trying truly crazy things while you are proceeding sensibly and moderately along the path to health.

. . .

These exotic treatments, from acupuncture to IV vitamin C to magnet therapy and more, weren’t the core of what helped me eventually gain ground and improve — strong and various doses of antibiotics played the central role. But they were the most educational part of my slow, still-continuing recovery, in the sense of what they revealed about the complexity and strangeness of the world.

The strangest of them all was the Rife machine.

. . .

Naturally, it worked.

What does “worked” mean, you may reasonably ask? Just this: By this point in my treatment, there was a familiar feeling whenever I was symptomatic and took a strong dose of antibiotics — a temporary flare of pain and discomfort, a desire to move or rub the symptomatic areas of my body, a sweating or itching feeling, followed by a wave of exhaustion and then a mild relief. I didn’t get this kind of reaction with every alternative treatment I tried. But with the Rife machine I got it instantly: It was like having a high dose of antibiotics hit the body all at once.

Of course, this was obviously insane, so to the extent that I was able I conducted experiments, trying frequencies for random illnesses to see if they elicited the same effect (they did not), setting up blind experiments where I ran frequencies without knowing if they were for Lyme disease or not (I could always tell).

. . .

When I set out to write about the entire chronic-illness experience, I hesitated over whether to tell this kind of story. After all, if you’re trying to convince skeptical readers to take chronic sickness seriously, and to make the case for the medical-outsider view of how to treat Lyme disease, reporting that you’ve been dabbling in pseudoscience and that it works is a good way to confirm every stereotype about chronic ailments and their treatment: It’s psychosomatic … it’s all the power of suggestion … it’s a classic placebo effect … poor Ross, taken in by the quacks … he’ll be ‘doing his own research’ on vaccination next

    .

    But there are two good reasons to share this sort of story. The first is that it’s true, it really happened, and any testimony about what it’s like to fight for your health for years would be dishonest if it left the weird stuff out.

    The second is that this kind of experience — not the Rife machine specifically, but the experience of falling through the solid floor of establishment consensus and discovering something bizarre and surprising underneath — is extremely commonplace. And the interaction between the beliefs instilled by these experiences and the skepticism they generate (understandably) from people who haven’t had them, for whom the floor has been solid all their lives, is crucial to understanding cultural polarization in our time.

    On both sides of our national divides, insider and outsider, establishment and populist, something in human psychology makes us seek coherence and simplicity in our understanding of the world. So people who have a terrible experience with official consensus, and discover that some weird idea that the establishment derides actually seems to work, tend to embrace a new rule to replace the old one: that official knowledge is always wrong, that outsiders are always more trustworthy than insiders, that if Dr. Anthony Fauci or the Food and Drug Administration get some critical things wrong, you can’t trust them to get anything right.

    This impulse explains why fringe theories tend to cluster together, the world of outsider knowledge creating its own form of consensus and self-reinforcement. But it also explains the groupthink that the establishment often embraces in response, its fear that pure craziness automatically abounds wherever official knowledge fails, and its commitment to its own authority as the only thing standing between society and the abyss.

    This is a key dynamic in political as well as biomedical debates. The conspicuous elite failures in the last 20 years have driven many voters to outsider narratives, which blend plausible critiques of the system with outlandish paranoia. But the insiders only see the paranoia, the QAnon shaman and his allies at the gates. So instead of reckoning with their own failures, they pull up the epistemic drawbridge and assign fact checkers to patrol the walls. Which in turn confirms for outsiders their belief that the establishment has essentially blinded itself and only they have eyes to see.

    What we need, I’m convinced, are more people and institutions that sustain a position somewhere in between.

For the full commentary, see:

Ross Douthat. “How I Became Extremely Open-Minded.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, November 7, 2021): 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 6, 2021, and has the same title as the print version. The passages that are underlined above, were in italics in the original. In the underlined passages I use a hyphen were the original had ellipses.)

The passages quoted above are from a commentary adapted from Douthat’s book:

Douthat, Ross. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. New York: Convergent Books, 2021.