Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

Then, in the mid-1960s, Linus Pauling fell off an intellectual cliff.

now there's an image that'll stay with you

Based on his limited personal experience, Pauling recommended megavitamins and various dietary supplements for mental illness, hepatitis, polio, tuberculosis, meningitis, warts, strokes, ulcers, typhoid fever, dysentery, leprosy, fractures, altitude sickness, radiation poisoning, snakebites, stress, rabies, and virtually every other disease known to man.

sounds like galen with opium

Pauling had succeeded in unlocking some of nature’s best kept secrets because he was dogged in his devotion to formal proofs—the kind of proofs that result in publications in major scientific journals and the kind of proofs that win Nobel Prizes. Stone had never received a valid scientific credential, never published a paper in a medical or scientific journal, and had graduated from a program in Los Angeles that taught that all human diseases were the result of misaligned spines. Yet Pauling accepted Stone’s revelations uncritically.

well, there's your problem

Then Linus Pauling doubled down, claiming that vitamin C also cured cancer.

oh my dude...

Perhaps it was related to his greatest failing: his vanity. When anybody contradicted Einstein, he thought it over, and if he found he was wrong, he was delighted, because he felt he had escaped from an error. But Pauling would never admit that he might have been wrong.

wow

The results were the opposite of what had been expected. Those given megavitamins were actually more likely to die from lung cancer, not less.

oh snap

But Linus Pauling had ignored one important fact: Oxidation is also required to kill new cancer cells and clear clogged arteries. By asking people to ingest large quantities of vitamins and supplements, Pauling had shifted the oxidation-antioxidation balance too far in favor of antioxidation, therefore inadvertently increasing the risk of cancer and heart disease. As it turns out, Mae West aside, you actually can have too much of a good thing. (“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” said West, who was talking about sex, not vitamins.)

even as MY comments become more salty, so does the book

PAULING’S ADVOCACY GAVE BIRTH TO a vitamin and supplement industry built on sand. Evidence for this can be found by walking into a GNC center—a wonderland of false hope.

SO SALTY

In March 1987, Duesberg published an article in the journal Cancer Research, claiming that AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV—which he considered to be a harmless virus—but by long-term use of recreational drugs like heroin, cocaine, and amyl nitrate (poppers) by gay men.

and now THIS motherfucker

First, Montagnier said that DNA molecules could be teleported from one test tube to another (presumably, in a manner similar to the way people were teleported in the television series Star Trek). Then, Montagnier claimed that homeopathy made sense.

i mean...if you believe the first,i can see how you get to the second...

Montagnier said that when he took the blood of patients with autism—and diluted it to the point that not a single molecule of the original blood remained—he could detect electromagnetic waves indicating the presence of bacterial DNA. Autism, it appeared, was a bacterial infection. And it wasn’t just autism that was caused by bacteria. Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic fatigue syndrome were bacterial infections, too.

you can fuck right off into the sun, sir

Taking the podium next to people who claimed that autism could be cured with hyperbaric oxygen treatments, bleach enemas, and chemical castration, Montagnier said that the only thing these children really needed was a prolonged course of antibiotics.

RIGHT INTO THE SUN

The point is that all scientists—no matter how accomplished or well known—should have unassailable data to support their claims, not just a compelling personality, an impressive shelf of awards, or a poetic writing style.

say it again for the people in the back!!

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,” wrote Mark Twain, “it’s that they know so many things that ain’t so.”)

yas!

Due to selective breeding and cultivation, the crops we raise today “naturally” have little resemblance to their ancestors. From a practical standpoint, the farmer taking advantage of a chance mutation to cultivate a specific crop is indistinguishable from a choice to create the mutation ourselves. Both have the same mutation.

yes this!!!

Desperate to do something, anything, to cure the incurable, we continue to punish the afflicted.

<3<3

Within a few years of the removal of thimerosal from vaccines given to young children, seven studies showed that it hadn’t caused harm. The only harm had come from elevating a theoretical risk above a real risk.

fuck all antivaxxers right into the sun

Unfortunately, we seem incapable of learning the most important lesson in toxicology: The dose makes the poison.

YAAS!

Today, it’s not hard to find people who give medical or scientific advice based on the Wizard of Oz effect. Health gurus all hope that their winning personalities will hide their lack of evidence. And they don’t like to be challenged. When little men behind curtains are revealed to be just little men behind curtains, they often cry foul. It wasn’t that their claims were wrong, they argue, it was that evil forces were conspiring to defeat them.

throw them into the sun!!!

Wakefield wanted us believe that thousands of researchers, public health officials, academicians, and pediatricians on several continents were all deeply, hopelessly in the pockets of drug companies.

what a waste of air

(The legal aphorism is that when the law is on your side, argue the law; when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when neither is on your side, attack the witness.)

goddammit