Let’s bash Oz some more

It’s fun! He is such a bad doctor and a dishonest candidate. He also tortures and kills puppies. That’s almost comically villainous.

In 2004, complaints about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s dog experiments were cited in a report from an internal investigation into allegations of poor animal care made by Dr. Catherine Dell’Orto, a post-doctoral veterinarian. See also individual reports of Dr. Oz’s dog experiments. According to the report, “highly invasive and stressful experiments” on dogs were performed without a “humane end point.” AWA violations included a litter of whelped puppies killed by painful cardiac injection:

“The screams of these puppies could be heard through closed doors. All of these puppies, lying in a plastic garbage bag, were killed in the presence of their litter mates.”

Subsequent applications for grants to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by Dr. Oz have been denied. In 2004, Columbia paid $2,000 in fines to the USDA.

I have to make a significant caveat to that accusation, though. Almost all the sources are from PETA, and PETA is not trustworthy. I haven’t been able to find a source outside PETA for the claims (there is an NYT article from that time, buried deep behind a paywall), but that NIH cut his support is a more significant fact…but on the other hand, a $2000 fine is kind of insignificant. I also have no idea what the purpose of the experiments was — why was a TV doctor doing that?

True confession: I’ve euthanized puppies in the past (not in over 40 years, though!), and why would you do it with cardiac injection, and why would you do it en masse? Something is wrong there. Ask a vet who has to put animals to sleep — you do it quietly, respectfully, and with a sedative injection that lets them die peacefully. Screaming animals means you’re doing it wrong.

But then, Oz has always been an ethical nightmare. He has been featured in the AMA Journal of Ethics, and not positively.

Columbia’s affiliation with Oz had been under fire long before he launched a surprise Senate run in late November. In 2015, when Oz testified before the Senate about his endorsement of shady “miracle” cures, a group of some of the country’s top medical professionals sent Columbia a blistering letter demanding the renowned medical school fire the Oprah-blessed daytime star.

“Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” the physicians wrote. “Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”

Columbia University has also severed all ties with him (rather murkily, unfortunately).

After years of criticism, Columbia University Medical Center has finally—quietly—cut public ties with celebrity doctor turned Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz.

The acclaimed teaching hospital, where Oz held senior positions like vice chair of surgery and director of integrated medicine for years, stripped his personal pages from their website in mid-January.

I had no idea Columbia was in Pennsylvania, though.

Can we all forget Oz after the November elections? I look forward to that.

The daily Oz skewering

It’s not really going to be a daily event here.

But jeez, Oz provides a target-rich environment.

Can I just say that the claim that “life begins at conception” is sufficiently absurd in all of its particulars that anyone who says it needs to be laughed off the stage? Life doesn’t “begin” at conception, and the question is not whether the focus is on life (it’s not, or these same people would be against the death penalty and eating meat or any living thing at all), it’s about when human personhood begins, which is a much fuzzier and poorly delimited thing altogether. Except we know it doesn’t happen at conception.

Is demographics destiny?

This is fascinating, and I have no idea what the consequences will be. The populations of many countries are rapidly shrinking, and it defies simplistic explanations.

Is that good? Bad? I don’t know. Reducing the human population is good for the planet overall, but how these countries will respond is an open question. Also, modern capitalism seems to be a gigantic Ponzi scheme that relies on continuous growth — what happens when the base of the pyramid shrinks?

The decline in growth isn’t entirely universal. Some countries continue to expand that population base, largely through the mechanism of immigration. Look at the difference between China and the US!

My grandchildren are going to grow up in a different world than I did. We need to accept the fact of change and prepare to adapt with it.

Another demise!

Where’s his fedora?

I trust no one will be trying to defend this unfortunate victim: Kiwi Farms is dead. It would have been nice if it had been executed sooner.

If you never heard of Kiwi Farms, lucky you. RationalWiki explains:

Kiwi Farms is an immensely creepy stalking forum run by manchild Joshua Conner Moon out of his mom’s house. The people who are stalked are what are known as “lolcows” to the site’s userbase or “exceptional individuals”. Think some of the Internet’s worst assholes and coalition of criminals projecting their frustration onto minorities – and now that you’re picturing GamerGate, think creepier.

Due to difficulties enforcing harmful speech on the internet, there hasn’t been much legal action taken on Kiwi Farms, despite them being responsible for harming many people (directly and indirectly), costing them jobs and partners, exaggerating and spinning rumors, or even mentally abusing their victims to the point of suicide. In fact, the owners maintain that there is nothing illegal about the site, citing technicalities (we don’t harass people; our users do!) and phonebooks also distributing personal information (because sharing the address of this person we find weird is totally the same as a printed 411Wikipedia!); or just simply denying, downplaying, or justifying the activities being taken place. No services are buying their lies, however, as KiwiFarms is struggling to find any web service company willing to do business with them ranging from Paypal to CloudFlare to even Russia-based DDOS-Guard. Not even 8chan wants anything to do with the site owner.

Too loathsome for 8chan! That’s how bad it is…was. It was one of those sites one avoided tangling with because a) its users were violent and abusive, and b) there was no content there worth engagement, consisting entirely of angry losers vomiting up cliches. Even RationalWiki’s short confrontation got them mad.

Kiwi Farms has a thread “discussing” RationalWiki, which it describes as a “whiny hugbox for spergs and a clusterfuck of never ending drama on a rapidly declining website”. Cynical later helpfully labeled the statement as “sarcasm”, though it’s not clear what part of the statement is supposed to be “sarcastic”, especially since he continued to insult us.

“Sarcasm,” “jokes,” and mindless buzzwords are never adequate explanations for the kind of stupid behavior these kinds of people indulge in.

But you know what does?

Moon is a Florida man.

(Sorry, that was sarcasm and a joke.)

Not much to see in the news today

It’s all “the Queen is dead”, over and over again. I don’t care. Time to move on.

The news comes in two categories:

  1. Tradition is broken! One aspect of the world is changed. I will now wax sentimental over what the Queen represented (omitting the awkward bits, of course), and moan about how the world was better during her reign and we must return to the values of the 1940s and ’50s.
  2. A wealthy white woman represented the legacy of imperialism and colonialism, and now she’s dead, can we return the loot her system stole back to their home countries? What? She’s going to be replaced by a wealthy white man? Oh nawww no. Look at all those wealthy conservatives crying.

#2 is not getting printed in the pages of the big name newspapers, but oh boy are the powers that be having a wonderful time with #1, mourning a tiny and inevitable change that doesn’t really affect their status. They’ve got an excuse to wallow in sanctimony! Go ahead, guys, take your moment, but can we get it over with soon? We’ve got things that matter to get done. Swapping figureheads for an immoral system isn’t one of them.

I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this morning, and a couple of appointments with students, and a lecture to give, and some lab prep to do, so I’m a bit relieved that there’s so little of interest to distract me today.

The Queen is dead. My regrets to those who cared about her. Call me when the monarchy is dead, OK?

All the essential stuff was already written long before her death. Take it away, Patrick Freyne in the Irish Times:

Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.

Beyond this, it’s the stuff of children’s stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state. What’s the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.

That’s from March 2021. It’s all that needs to be said.

Have you considered forming a United Republic, maybe?

The Queen of England is not doing well right now. I don’t wish her ill, but I can’t get too worked up about her potential imminent demise. What does worry me is this:

Prince Charles, her heir, and his wife Camilla and Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge are traveling to Balmoral to be with the queen, according to their offices.

Hasn’t the United Kingdom suffered enough with boobs occupying high office? It seems so unfair.

The greatest thing Queen Elizabeth could do would be to disinherit all her heirs and dissolve the office, break up the kingdoms and let them all be independent. Or maybe do a Buffy and bestow her royal powers on every girl in the land.

The Queen is dead. May the monarchy follow suit.

Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

It’s unfortunate they’re so hard to hear, but did you know that spiders can make sounds?

Instead of catching flies in a web, the wolf spider hunts and runs down its prey, including small bugs and even other spiders. They have excellent night vision and because they make a hiss-like sound, they are among the so-called hissing spiders.

“Hissing is kind of a misnomer,” Dill said. “What they do is actually called strigulation, like crickets do when they rub their legs together.”

In the case of a wolf spider, it makes sound by rubbing its front legs together.

“Those front legs have hairs that are best compared with Velcro with little hooks on the end,” Dill said. “Some people say it sounds like a hiss when they hear it.”

The behavior is partly a defense strategy and, for the male spiders, mating behavior. In fact, they will turn up the volume during mating season by rubbing their legs while sitting in a pile of dry leaves, according to Dill.

“The rustling of the leaves helps them make more noise,” Dill said.

I don’t think my quiet little Theridiidae make any noise — they’re homebodies, they’re interested in vibrations but not at any detectable auditory level — but now I’m tempted to get some teeny tiny sensitive microphones to check them out.

Also…here is the required “creature of the night” video.

Dr Oz needs to erase his internet history, it’s just too embarrassing

This could easily evolve into a Daily Dr Oz Gaffe. So much material!

First problem: taking medical advice from a quack.

Second problem: thinking a 15-minute physical could do anything. Physicals are a diagnostic tool, they’re only cheap if they find nothing obviously wrong.

Third problem: who is going to do these physicals? They’re not going to be cheap if they require a highly trained doctor to carry them out. They’re not going to be good if they farm them out to volunteers.

Fourth problem: “festival-like atmosphere”? If I have a health problem, I don’t want to go to a festival. I want it fixed.

Fifth problem: People don’t have a right to health? That promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence was a lie, then. How nice that the Constitution promised us big guns instead.

This is a nothing solution that will only appeal to Republicans who will fixate on the word “cheap”.