The SkeptVet

Since my review of the presidential candidates’ positions on science issues earlier in the week, I have seen a number of efforts by other scientists to warn the scientific community and the public that Donald Trump stands out as the most egregiously and consistently anti-science candidate in this year’s election.

One effort is an open letter authored by a number of prominent scientists, including Harriett Hall and Steven Novella, two prominent skeptics and authors of the Science-Based Medicine Blog:

Scientists say: “Donald Trump is Not Who We Are”

As members of the scientific community, we invite our colleagues to stand together in making it clear that Donald Trump’s views on many pressing topics are at odds with scientific reality and represent a dangerous rejection of scientific thinking.

There should be no place for this kind of rhetoric – or this kind of attitude toward expertise itself – in the halls of government.

As a community, we affirm the values that make us who we are: curiosity, skepticism, integrity, and simple adherence to the facts.

Vaccines save lives every day, but Mr. Trump has stoked discredited fears about vaccines and autism and accused doctors of lying to people about them.

Every major country on Earth is adapting to a changing climate and reducing emissions from fossil fuels, but Mr. Trump has claimed it is a hoax, a statement that prompted a response from hundreds of members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the country’s leading scientific advisory body.

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, has a similarly disconcerting record:

He also dismisses the evidence that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels.

He delivered a speech to the House of Representatives challenging the teaching of evolutionary science in classrooms based on a misreading of how evolution works.

Nearly 40 years after the Surgeon General first warned us about the dangers of smoking, Pence claimed that “smoking doesn’t kill” and said there was no direct link between smoking and lung disease.

These are not the words and thoughts of responsible leaders.

The letter currently has 712 signatures, including mine.

Another open letter signed by 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences warns of the dangers of  denial of human-caused climate change and of a refusal to participate in international efforts to combat it, both positions embraced by Donald Trump and rejected by all of the other candidates:

An Open Letter Regarding Climate Change From Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences

Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality.

During the Presidential primary campaign, claims were made that the Earth is not warming, or that warming is due to purely natural causes outside of human control. Such claims are inconsistent with reality.

The political system also has tipping points. Thus it is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord. A “Parexit” would send a clear signal to the rest of the world: “The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change. You are on your own.” Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

I generally try to stay away from politics per se on this blog, though I often cover political issues when they touch on the areas of science and alternative medicine. Usually, this falls in the general category of government failure to regulate unproven or pseudoscientific therapies properly or protect the public from quackery. However, this post is more directly about the current election. Regardless of your political perspective or which candidate you support on the basis of other issues, there is a bit of information out there concerning the presidential candidates’ positions on science issues, and that is what I’m going to address today.

Since 2008, the non-profit, non-partisan group ScienceDebate has been trying to get all major and third-party candidates for president to participate in a debate specifically focused on science and technology issues. Such a debate, sadly, has never happened, which says a lot about the degree to which science is valued by politicians and voters. However, candidates often provide written answers to questions about science policy, which allows some comparison of their knowledge and views on these topics.

Both Trump and Clinton, as well as Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson, provided answers to these questions this year. There isn’t much surprising about these answers.

Clinton

Clinton’s answers reflect a mainstream moderate-left view, and in general she makes moderately specific policy proposals involving increasing government investment and/or regulation. Her responses are the longest and most specific and substantive of the candidates. In particular, she acknowledges anthropogenic climate change and supports international efforts to combat it, and she is a strong proponent of vaccination and public health programs.

Apart from her answers on this questionnaire, Clinton has been frustratingly sympathetic to naturopathy and some varieties of alternative medicine, so she is by no means a crusader for a strongly science-based approach to medicine. And her positions on GMOs have been inconsistent.

Stein

The positions of the minor party candidates also fit pretty closely the expectations one would have based on their political affiliations. Jill Stein’s answers mostly emphasize environmental protection positions, such as aggressive action on climate change. Unfortunately, she also strongly supports a number of positions suggesting she is either misinformed about the scientific evidence or prefers ideology to scientific facts. She aggressively promotes organic agricultures, despite the lack of evidence to support any health benefits. This may be because of perceived environmental benefits, and there is somewhat better evidence for these, though is also controversy on this subject. Stein is also strongly opposed to GMO research and supports misleading labeling laws intended to discourage progress in this area, which reflects a fear of GMO not supported by the evidence.

While Stein has been accused of being anti-vaccine, the evidence does not support that view. She does tend to respond to any question about vaccines by talking mostly about conflict-of-interest issues within regulatory agencies and suggesting that distrust of vaccination is driven more by this than anti-vaccine propaganda. I tend to agree with concerns about conflict-of-interest, but I disagree that this is the major driver of anti-vaccine fears. I think complaints about industry and government relations, even when often valid, are used as a justification for anti-vaccine ideologies based more in pseudoscience and fear than in genuine concern about impartial science. However, her statements suggest that despite this rhetorical focus, she appears to accept the scientific consensus on the safety and benefits of vaccination, she’s just less concerned about those issues than about big bad corporations.

It’s also true that the Green Party platform has been supportive of homeopathy and other alternative therapies. That has been dropped from the current platform, though it was present when Stein was the nominee in 2012. Finally, Stein is also adamantly opposed to any use of nuclear power under any circumstances,  without any apparent interest in the scientific evidence concerning the pros and cons of it.

Johnson

Libertarian Gary Johnson, not surprisingly, answers pretty much all of the questions in a way that allows him to emphasize his view that government is almost always the problem and not the solution. He rarely has much to say about the scientific issues per se, since he’s much more concerned about free markets and eliminating most government functions. Though he doesn’t say much about science, his answers generally don’t reveal any significant departures from mainstream science. He even appears, grudgingly and weakly, to accept a role of human activity in climate change and the need for compulsory vaccination, at least sometimes.

Johnson is, however, adamantly opposed to any meaningful regulatory role for the FDA in drug safety, which is clearly counter to the best interests of patients. And I suspect he would support the continued lack of meaningful regulation of dietary supplements, herbal remedies, and so on, in favor of the “buyer beware” approach, which proved utterly ineffective in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Donald Trump

And then there’s Donald Trump. Without question, his ScienceDebate answers and other comments make him soundly the most anti-science candidate running, in terms of positive policy positions and a general ignorance of the issues and the facts. His answers to the questions are typically short, vague, and often completely off point, indicating a total lack of interest in the subject. Overall, he too disdains much role for government in science and technology, preferring the free market to be allowed to do as it pleases. His response to the issue of public health strongly suggests he sees little to no value in the national public health system or institutions.

Where Trump sets himself apart from the other candidates in terms of science issues is in his rejection of climate change science and his deeply anti-vaccination views. He has indicated a belief that climate change is not real and is merely a ploy to give China an economic advantage over the U.S. And he is the candidate of choice for the anti-vaccine movement due to his open acceptance of the tired and long-disproven myth that vaccines cause autism. Here are some examples of how popular Trump is with the anti-vaccine crowd.

The keynote conclusion of this article on the notorious quackery site is this:

This November, VOTE TRUMP or prepare for the DEATH of everything you love

Subtle, eh? Here’s another example:

Yup, that’s right. The uber anti-vaxer Andrew Wakefield has been personally assured by Trump that he understands vaccines cause autism. This endorsement has brought along other anti-vaccine loons, including veterinarians like the notorious Patricia Jordan, author of the bizarre extremist screed Vaccinosis-The Mark of the Beast, about whom I’ve written frequently. And another inhabitant of an alternate reality I’ve written about, Dr. Al Plechner (Here and Here), also appears to be a Trump supporter, though for somewhat different reasons. Here are a few snippets from his Facebook page:

Trump has also been quite friendly towards alternative medicine. He has had business interests involving quack urine testing and vitamin and diet schemes. However, this may be more  a reflection of his greed and lack of business ethics than a sign of a true ideological commitment to alternative medicine.

Bottom Line
None of the candidates have a spotless record in terms of science policy positions. Politics, values, personal experience,  and emotions often trump scientific evidence in the development and defense of beliefs. However, Donald Trump has consistently inhabited an alternate reality and shown flagrant disregard for facts and experts in many areas, and science is no exception. His embrace of anti-vaccine myths, and the support this has generated from the anti-vaxer fringe,  as well as his denial of climate change science make him easily the most egregiously and consistently anti-science candidate in the field.

Way back in 2012, I wrote about a lawsuit filed by Hemopet, an organization known primarily for being a non-profit blood bank but also involved in some unconventional laboratory testing (as Hemolife) and alternative medicine ( as the Hemopet Holistic Care Center). This founder and director of this organization is Dr. Jean Dodds, about whom I’ve written several times as she is a prominent advocate for a number of alternative medicine practices. Dr. Dodds, via the Hemopet organization, has filed a number of patents for her unconventional diagnostic tests (involving thyroid disease testing and food allergy detection) and for her proposed method to use genetic data to predict the appropriate diet for pets. She originally sued a couple of pet food companies (Purina and Hills) claiming that the very idea of “nutrigenomics,” or using genetic information to formulate diets, was owned by her through these patents.

Though I have since reviewed in detail Dr. Dodds dubious claims about nutrigenomics, her bogus food allergy testing process Nutriscan, and her misleading “studies” on vaccine dosing for small dogs (here and again here), I had lost track of this lawsuit. However, a recent VIN News article about Hemopet drew my attention back to the organization. This article was actually not about the lawsuit but an unrelated issue. Apparently, Hemopet had been pushing the State of California for a tax exemption and implying that its blood-banking service might have to close if the exemption wasn’t granted. The legislation granting the exemption was passed by the legislature but vetoed by the governor. However, Hemopet now says it will remain in operation and will continue to press the state not to require it to pay some $81,000 in back taxes.

This is an interesting subject in its own right. The relationship between the blood bank, diagnostic laboratory, and clinical practice isn’t entirely clear from the Hemopet tax and non-profit filings available on the California DOJ web site. Perhaps something I’ll investigate another time, but as a vet rather than a tax attorney, I’m not sure I can make heads or tails of such issues. In any case, the subject did draw my attention back to the lawsuit I originally wrote about, and this led me to find the subsequent developments I’m reporting here.

In the original post, I concluded that the subject of Hemopet’s nutrigenomics patents seemed to me entirely too vague to qualify for patent protection, though I acknowledged I’m no expert in the subject:

So what appears to have been patented here is the idea of collecting a wide range of pieces of information about an animal in a computer, passing it around to people, and using it to “reduce morbidity and mortality, and improve the quality of life and lifespan” in companion animals. It’s hard to see how this could be a patentable idea, or even truly original apart from the unsubstantiated general claims about the links between gene sequences and health, but again I’m not expert in patent law.

I was more concerned by the lack of a clearly valid and established scientific principle behind the attempt to own the concept of nutrigenomics:

despite a list of scientific papers included with the patent application (but not used as specific citations to support particular claims), it’s not clear that there is an actual preventative or therapeutic healthcare intervention here…it’s a bit baffling how these two organization can compete for ownership of an idea which doesn’t really exist in a tangible form yet…It does seem, however, like putting the cart before the horse, since who gets to profit from a new approach to health and nutrition should at least have something to do with whether the approach actually works and who has done the work to demonstrate this.

Based on my exhaustive review of Dr. Dodds’ subsequent book on nutrigenomics from last year, it’s clear that she still has not validated her concepts or methods, despite now selling them as a product. That, at least, is sufficiently within my area of expertise for me to be able to state with some confidence. However, I was pleased to see that the courts have so far agreed with my far less informed view of the intellectual property questions as well. In November, 2014, the U.S. District Court in California granted a motion by one defendant, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc., for summary dismissal of the lawsuit. The decision explains why, according to legal precedent, the claims made by Hemopet are insufficient to qualify for patent protection, so the patents are not valid nor defensible:

…the formulation and preparation of pet food is nothing more than an extension of the abstract idea of “determine” a dog or cat’s diet. The creating or formulating processes directed in the claims are couched in the most general terms, lacking any specifics that would allow a practitioner to learn how to actually develop or produce such a diet…Therefore, all of the claims are squarely within the realm of “abstract ideas” as defined by the Supreme Court.

Only the final step, “determine a nutritional diet for the canine or feline companion animal; and formulate and prepare a nutritional diet product based on the relationship,” relates to the creation of a “different state or thing.” However, whether considered individually or in combination with the other steps, the claims do nothing more than instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract ideas of the first few unpatentable steps in the final step…This is nothing more than telling the practitioner to “apply it” in general terms. Hemopet’s claims do not describe in detail a step-by-step method for developing a nutritional diet product.

…the functions performed by the computer, database, or software routine at each step of Hemopet’s process are “well-understood, routine, conventional activity, previously engaged in by those in the field.”

[Hemopet’s] claims simply recite the abstract concept of determining a nutritional diet for a dog or cat based on naturally occurring relationships and fail to include any express language to define how the nutritional diet is actually formulated, developed, or produced.

For these reasons, the Court finds that the claims at issue are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea.

The bottom line is that in addition to being scientifically dubious and unproven, Hemopet’s claims about Nutriscan are vague and amount to no more than a rearranging of established and theoretical ideas about genetics and nutrition, not a specific and original process for selecting and formulating a diet. As such, they don’t qualify for patent protection.

This judgement was upheld by the appellate Circuit Court in September, 2015. I have not been able to ascertain what happened with the separate lawsuit on the same grounds filed against Nestle Purina Pet Care, Inc. If anyone with greater legal research skills would like to look into this, I’d be interested in the outcome. However, it appears likely that the outcome of that case was substantially the same as the case against Hill’s, because now Hemopet has filed an appeal in the Hill’s case with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given that Hemopet’s claims appear vague and unpatentable even to me, and more importantly to the far more qualified judgement of the state district court judge and the federal appeals court judges, it is hard to imagine the Supreme Court granting this appeal. Of course, even if it does that won’t speak at all to the scientific legitimacy of the ideas Hemopet claims to own. But even from a scientific perspective, the ownership of general ideas seems counter to the spirit of scientific discovery and likely to impede research and discovery. I think it far more likely that beneficial therapies and inventions will come from allowing widespread dissemination of ideas and information and from research by many different and competing parties.

Dr. Harriett Hall has posted an article on the Science-Based Medicine blog informed by a colleague of mine who is trying to fight the infiltration of pseudoscience into veterinary medicine in Washington State.

In the United States, each state regulates veterinary medicine independently through a Veterinary Medical Board (VMB). The VMB sets rules for the practice of veterinary medicine and issues licenses allowing vets to have, essentially, a monopoly on healthcare for animals. The reasoning behind this is that the public will be protected from dangerous and incompetent veterinarians due to the requirements for a license, which include a veterinary degree from a recognized educational institution, a test of one’s medical knowledge, and a requirement for regular continuing education to make sure vets have a current, scientifically valid knowledge base for their practices.

Unfortunately, proponents of unscientific alternative medical approaches are gaining greater influence over the regulation of veterinary medicine, which is fundamentally a political process that is influence by public opinion and the beliefs of individuals in government more than by the scientific evidence concerning such practices. In Washington, the VMB is considering allowing a large proportion of the continuing education vets use to maintain their licenses to be about alternative therapies.

This is not due to any new evidence supporting these therapies. It is due to the vocal involvement of a mall number of holistic vets who are able to disproportionately influence the political process. The chair of the VMB, for example, is a vet who practices “Quantum Healing,” a bit of New Age mystical nonsense that is essentially religion masquerading as medicine. Her influence has clearly trumped objections to this policy based on science.

I’ve written before about the ineffectuality of government regulation of veterinary medicine and the stunning degree to which even the most extreme rejection of science and scientific medicine is tolerated by regulators. The only way that we can protect the public from quackery is if we tell our representatives and regulators that we expect the standards of veterinary medicine to be based on real science, not mystical nonsense.

Such efforts can be successful. Attempts to expand legal authority for naturopaths in California, for example, were recently rejected by legislators thanks to active, informed input from the public. Getting involved is the only way to help protect the public and our pets from the influence of “quantum vets” on state regulators. Please take a look at Dr.  Hall’s article and consider voicing your opinion, especially if you live in Washington state.

A public hearing will be held on September 19^th. Comments on the proposed rules can be submitted on the department’s Rules Comment webpage, or directly to the program manager, Loralei Walker, at Loralei.Walker@doh.wa.gov by September 12, 2016.