Some days I just gotta thump my pulpit. But this is why I blog I suppose…<\/p>\n
I’m slogging through a New Yorker profile of Dan Bongino, the new extra strength Rush Limbaugh, whose YouTube channel was recently taken down (more of that please!) because Bongino tried to do an end run around a previous YouTube timeout. The New Yorker often goes into deep detail about its subjects and that makes the articles quite long at times, but they’re almost always worth the read. New Yorker and Consumer Reports are the only two magazine subscriptions I’m going to keep when I transition into living on retirement money.<\/p>\n
I want to talk…okay, vent…about this exchange with Bongino and the New Yorker reporter that caught my eye the other day:<\/p>\n
\nFor Bongino, the policies of the pandemic – mandates for masks and vaccines, admonitions against experimental treatments – have always rested on a dubious expectation of trust. When I asked him why he challenged the science, he cut in: “Time out.” He fed my words back to me: “\u2019You challenge the science\u2019 No! That\u2019s not the way science works! Science is a process of challenges.\u201d He went on, \u201cWhat are you, a lemming? Just because people tell you to do things doesn\u2019t mean you should automatically do it. Pregnant women took thalidomide for morning sickness. That was the consensus of the time. Look how that worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is such a perfect example of how these wingnut talk radio babblers manipulate not just the facts but also, and slyly, the language, that it takes your breath away. It is pure gold. And the reporter, unless he covers it later in the article that I haven\u2019t read yet, does not push back on any of it. But I can cut this reporter some slack for that because without a doubt your typical New Yorker reader can see through this multilayered bullshit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s us take it apart\u2026<\/p>\n
Science is a process of challenges<\/em>. Well\u2026yeah. Jacob Bronowski talked in The Ascent of Man, about the newly arrived students at G\u00f6ttingen University bringing to their studies \u201c…a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.\u201d And in that same episode, titled \u201cKnowledge or Certainty\u201d, he argued passionately against arrogance and dogma, what he called \u201cthe despot\u2019s belief that they have absolute certainty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All knowledge he insisted, is confined within an area of uncertainty, or as he preferred to call it, an area of tolerance. Science is what we do to sift out the facts from the fictions, however passionately hoped for. The physicist Richard Feynman once said that science is just a way we have of not fooling ourselves. But there is more to it than that. In Science and Human Values Bronowski wrote that \u201cWhen you discard the test of fact in what a star is, you discard with it what a man is.\u201d It is the search for knowledge, the habit of truth Bronowski spoke of, that makes us human.<\/p>\n
But that is precisely what Bongino discards here. You challenge science, with more and better science. Not with theology, not with strongman politics, not with a lot of half assed goofball conspiracy theories, not by calling anyone who follows the science lemmings.\u00a0For one thing, lemmings don\u2019t hurl themselves off cliffs in mass suicides. That\u2019s a myth, popularized here in the United States by a Disney nature documentary that was\u2026well\u2026lacking in science.<\/p>\n
Just because people tell you to do things doesn\u2019t mean you should automatically do it.<\/em>\u00a0See how deftly he shifts the focus from science tells us, to what \u201cpeople tell you to do\u201d? Now he\u2019s not challenging the science, he\u2019s quite reasonably not blindly letting \u201cpeople\u201d tell him \u201cto do things\u201d. What people? What things? No need to be specific, the point is to derail the question. If crazy uncle Batsinthebelfry tells you to go jump off a bridge you wouldn\u2019t do that would you? So don\u2019t listen to Dr. Fauci unless you\u2019re a lemming. And as it turns out\u2026unsurprisingly\u2026Bongino doesn\u2019t know any more about Thalidomide than he does about lemmings.<\/p>\n
Pregnant women took thalidomide for morning sickness. That was the consensus of the time. Look how that worked out.<\/em>\u00a0Notice he doesn\u2019t say it was the consensus of the science of the time. Because the science wasn\u2019t quite all there. And to get the full story on that, you need to look up Frances Oldham Kelsey, who in 1960 was a reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration. It was Kelsey who kept the thalidomide tragedy in Europe from becoming one here in the US. Because\u2026<\/p>\n
\nKelsey had the power to prevent a drug from going to market if she found the application to be lacking sufficient evidence for safety. After a thorough review, Kelsey rejected the application for thalidomide on the grounds that it lacked sufficient evidence of safety through rigorous clinical trials. -Smithsonian Magazine, May 8, 2017, \u201cThe Woman Who Stood Between America And A Generation Of Thalidomide Babies\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That \u201cconsensus of the time\u201d Bongilo casually throws out there, was in fact careless marketing of a drug initially as sedative, that was never tested on pregnant women, but was marketed to them for morning sickness after the drug maker discovered it could also be used for that. There was no \u201cconsensus of the time\u201d, there was only marketing and tragically superficial approval based on nothing more than the drug maker\u2019s own testing. And Kelsey didn\u2019t think that was entirely honest either.<\/p>\n
\nReports of the side effect peripheral neuritis\u2014painful inflammation of the peripheral nerves\u2014were published in the December 1960 issue of the British Medical Journal. This raised an even bigger red flag for Kelsey: \u201cthe peripheral neuritis did not seem the sort of side effect that should come from a simple sleeping pill.<\/p>\n
She asked for more information from Merrell, who responded with another application merely stating that thalidomide was at least safer than barbiturates. Kelsey then sent a letter directly to Merrell saying that she suspected they knew of the neurological toxicity that led to nerve inflammation but chose not to disclose it in their application. Merrell grew increasingly upset that Kelsey would not pass their drug, which had been used in over 40 other countries at this point.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The science was not there. It was only Kelsey demanding to see the science before she\u2019d sign off on it that prevented a bigger tragedy in the US than happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eventually, after reports of birth deformities began appearing overseas, Merrell withdrew the application. But samples of the drug had been distributed to more than 1200 physicians and from these to tens of thousands of their patients. That resulted in 17 reported cases of congenital deformities here in the US. It could have been thousands \u201c…had the FDA not insisted on the evidence of safety required under the law (despite ongoing pressure from the drug\u2019s sponsor).\u201d<\/p>\n
For Bongilo to use this as an example of why not to trust the scientific evidence of the effectiveness of vaccinations is stunning in its brazenness. But these people are nothing if not brazen about it these days. What Trump taught them is not to hold back. Don\u2019t just fudge the facts. Go ahead and brazen it out. Everyone knew thalidomide was safe until it wasn’t. Now they’re telling you the COVID vaccinations are safe. We all know how that’s going to turn out…<\/em> Bongilo isn\u2019t merely challenging the science, he\u2019s challenging the very thing that makes us human\u2026our rational facility\u2026short circuiting it with tactical rhetoric and disinformation.<\/p>\n
So his side can win the culture war. But what, exactly is the prize? Ends and means are not separate and unrelated items.\u00a0To paraphrase Bronowski, when you discard the test of fact in how effective a vaccine is, you discard with it what it is to be human. Also, you get people killed. People. Not lemmings. People with lives. People with families and friends who loved them.<\/p>\n
Is Donald Trump really worth dragging yourself down into that abyss? Is he really worth discarding everything inside of you that could have been noble and decent? If the devil is still out there trying to buy souls, he must be really pissed at the downturn in quality lately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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