Crazy Doctor Sangrado

One of the amusing episodes in Gil Blas concerns a charlatan doctor named Sangrado. When he sees a patient with gout and learns that the patient regularly eats large meals consisting mostly of meat and drinks large quantities of wine, he suggests that the patient’s diet may be aggravating his gout. He advises him to eat moderate meals consisting mostly of vegetables, legumes and baked apples, and says he should drink water instead of wine. In fact, the physician believes that everyone should follow this diet.  He doesn’t agree with the prevalent belief that wine is necessary to prevent indigestion, and he thinks people should stop eating before they are stuffed, even if they can afford to eat more.

This doctor is portrayed as a fool who kills his patients and makes Gil Blas sick through denying him wine. Isn’t it funny how medical advice which now is now so mainstream that it seems obvious was in the past seen as self-evident lunacy?

 Of course, Sangrado also says that no one really needs blood to live, and advises the patient to have himself bled as often as possible.

Graphic labels on cigarettes packages

Forcing cigarette companies to put graphic warning labels, including health warnings, pictures of diseased organs, and the 1-800-QUIT-NOW number, on cigarette packages, is a violation of the First Amendment, according to a recent and totally correct ruling by the DC Circuit (pdf).

You might wonder why this is so, since cigarette companies are already required to put warning labels on packs, while alcohol manufacturers have other warning labels, and all makers of packaged food are required to list ingredients, calories and so forth. The legal reasoning behind this regulation is that the government had a legitimate interest in making sure that consumers are accurately informed about the contents and risks of the food, beverages and cigarettes they consume.

Now, there is nothing in the Constitution restricting the ability of government agencies to campaign against smoking, taking the public stand that the risks of smoking outweigh its benefits. The libertarians among us might think that this is not a proper use of the power and money of the state, but the libertarians among us are often disappointed. However, the state still does not have the right to force any individual or company to express a certain opinion. The federal district court and DC Circuit agree that graphic labels and the QUIT NOW message go beyond informing consumers about health risks and amount to discouraging smoking. (In fact, the FDA made no secret of the fact that it hoped the labels would nudge people to quit.) This "ideological" message is one the government cannot force a company to send.

The Companies contend that, to the extent the graphic warnings go beyond the textual warnings to shame and repulse smokers and denigrate smoking as an antisocial act, the message is ideological and not informational. “[B]y effectively shouting well-understood information to consumers,” they explain, “FDA is communicating an ideological message, a point of view on how people should live their lives: that the risks from smoking outweigh the pleasure that smokers derive from it, and that smokers make bad personal decisions, and should stop smoking.”

No one doubts the government can promote smoking cessation programs; can use shock, shame, and moral opprobrium to discourage people from becoming smokers; and can use its taxing and regulatory authority to make smoking economically prohibitive and socially onerous. And the government can certainly require that consumers be fully informed about the dangers of hazardous products. But this case raises novel questions about the scope of the government’s authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest—in this case, by making “every single pack of cigarettes in the country [a] mini billboard” for the government’s anti-smoking message.

The so-called "warning labels" are not really warning at all, the Court held, but propaganda. Some convey no relevant facts, and others might be deceptive: an image of someone smoking through a tracheotomy hole might give the inaccurate impression that a tracheotomy is a common result of smoking.

Many of the images do not convey any warning information at all, much less make an “accurate statement” about cigarettes. For example, the images of a woman crying, a small child, and the man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “I QUIT” do not offer any information about the health effects of smoking. And the “1-800-QUIT-NOW” number, when presented without any explanation about the services provided on the hotline, hardly sounds like an unbiased source of information. These inflammatory images and the provocatively-named hotline cannot rationally be viewed as pure attempts to convey information to consumers. They are unabashed attempts to evoke emotion (and perhaps embarrassment) and browbeat consumers into quitting.

I find myself saying, as often before, thank God for the First Amendment. Cigarette companies in other countries are already forced to use graphic "warning" labels. Now, if only we still had the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments...

Non-conformity is suspicious and dangerous

This seems like a point Phoebe would make/has made: encouraging people to be suspicious of strange behavior stigmatizes strange people, who are generally not terrorists. This has the effect of making social life harder for the very people for whom it is already hard! Just as so-called "behavioral analysis" at airports has the effect of making security screening harder and more traumatizing for people who are already uncomfortable and anxious about it.

The video tells viewers not to ignore their “instincts.” But do we have an instinct for detecting “sketchy” people or behavior? Given what we know about stereotyping and selective perception, the reality is that people will view behavior through their pre-existing beliefs. Their interpretations of behavior as unusual or inappropriate will be influenced by how comfortable they otherwise are with the person engaging in it, which is impacted by race/ethnicity, class, and many other social categories. A guy leaving a backpack unattended is scary if that guy has a mohawk or, you know, looks scary and stuff, but when I do it, no one bats an eye. This video basically legitimizes turning anyone who makes you at all uncomfortable in public in to the police, on the argument that you are simply following your “instinct.” When you ask every citizen to become an intelligence agent, reporting every incident they perceive as odd, the result is the increasing stigmatization and semi-criminalization of those who can’t or won’t conform to pretty narrow standards of physical appearance, dress, and behavior.

No judge and jury this time

Nothing doing. No judge and jury this time. Sometimes those trials drag on three weeks. Sometimes they even let the guy go because he’s innocent. But that isn’t going to happen this time. I’m going to get the killer, innocent or guilty, and when I do, I’m going to saw off his head, crack his ribs, jump on his neck, smash his Adam’s apple, beat in his nose, tear off his ears, pull out his hair, bend back his fingers, twist off his toenails, and shatter his kneecap. But before I do this I’m going to work him over with a rusty knife. I’m like that, Matt. I want a clean and decent America, a place where our kids can grow and sniff the good fresh air.

--Ira Wallach

Fat and class

The fact that the people at the gym are thin and the people at Walmart are fat does not show that going to the gym makes people thin or that Walmart makes people fat.

Poor people in America are fat and rich people are thin. The disgust the thin upper classes feel for the fat lower classes has nothing to do with mortality statistics, and everything to do with feelings of moral superiority engendered in thin people by the sight of fat people. Precisely because Americans are so repressed about class issues, the disgust the (relatively) poor engender in the (relatively) rich must be projected onto some other distinguishing characteristic. In 1853, an upper-class Englishman could be quite unself-conscious about the fact that the mere sight of the urban proletariat disgusted him. In 2003, any upper-class white American liberal would be horrified to imagine that the sight of, say, a lower-class Mexican-American woman going into a Walmart might somehow elicit feelings of disgust in his otherwise property sensitized soul. But the sight of a fat woman—make that an “obese” woman, better yet a “morbidly obese” woman going into Walmart, ah, that is something else again…the fact that this woman happens to be poor and non-white can be dismissed by those observers as an irrelevant coincidence.

--Paul Campos

Cornelius Gilliam

Just feeling like random quotes today.

Cornelius Gilliam, sheriff of Clay County, who had campaigned for sheriff with the slogan that he had shot more wolves than any other man in Missouri...ran the Mormons out of town.

The mother's fault

When a child dies, for whatever reason, people want to punish the mother.

In 1996, Kristin Bunch was 21, pregnant and living in a mobile home with her three year old. A sudden fire engulfed the trailer, killing her three year old. The police said it was arson and claimed she went into her son's bedroom, doused it with a liquid accelerant like kerosene or diesel fuel and set it on fire. She was charged and convicted of felony murder and arson and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Arson investigators testified at her trial that burn patterns indicated the fire was arson...There was no direct evidence at Bunch’s trial that she set multiple fires in the mobile home through use of an accelerant. No one saw her set the fire or heard her refer to setting the fire, there was no evidence she had purchased a liquid accelerant, and there was no motive offered for her to intentionally set a fire.

A similar example is the case of Hannah Overton. Her four-year-old foster son, who had physical and emotional problems and suffered from pica (according to the defense) died of salt poisoning after having consumed large amounts of salty seasoning from the pantry. But the prosecution decided that his foster mother had fed him the seasoning in order to punish him, despite the fact that there was no evidence that she had ever used such a bizarre punishment with her many other children, and that she had no record of child abuse or indeed any other criminal conduct. In this case, the prosecution practically admitted they were prosecuting her because of public feeling that when a child dies, someone has to be punished.

And this is only one of dozens of cases I've read about where mothers have been sent to prison for accidental fires, accidental poisonings, or medical conditions which caused the death of a child. Even when it is clear that a third party harmed a child, the mother is blamed. And yes, always the mother.

For instance, the disappearance of Madeline McCann, a small girl, from her English parents' room in Portugal. Still unsolved, but never any plausible theory that it was anything other than a stranger abduction. But the mother, Kate McCann, was vilified in the tabloids for having left her daughter alone in the room for a few minutes. The father did so too, but no one mentioned him. After the disappearance, the mother was stalked by paparazzi and stories were run criticizing her for such crimes as wearing earrings, brushing her hair or smiling. The fact that the mother had a prestigious job was used against her.

Or the Cleveland, Texas rape case, in which dozens of men raped an 11-year-old girl, and some of her neighbors suggested it was the mother's fault for letting her daughter out of the house.

But I think my point is clear. If your child dies, get a lawyer.