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Science is a method, not a belief system. From Tamiflu to past medical failures, this piece asks what happens when consensus replaces scrutiny and evidence.

Most people who lead with a statement of faith in science have never read a scientific study.

They’ve never read the protocols that inform medical guidelines.

Never read internal company documents filed in court proceedings, or expert reports, or case studies.

They get their “science” from the news, or regulator statements, or government spokespeople.

Science is a method. They don’t believe in science.

They believe in the High Priests who pass down The Science™️, which they receive with the same reverence that a good Catholic receives the sacrament, and that is why no amount of evidence will convince them to abandon their belief in the safety and effectiveness of any number of commercial products unless the about-face is first sanctioned and circulated by said priests.

When ‘Science’ Becomes a Belief System

I was reminded of the religious nature of adherence to scientific consensus when I shared with friends recently that I was reading the book How Merck and Drug Regulators Hid Serious Harms of the HPV Vaccines by Peter Gøtzsche.

Not only is Gøtzsche a Danish physician, medical researcher, and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, he was an expert witness in the case Robi v. Merck & Co., brought by Californian woman Jennifer Robi, who alleged that the HPV vaccine Gardasil caused her heart conditions, nerve pain, and permanent disablement. (The case has been discontinued after Merck agreed to settle over 200 Gardasil-related suits for around USD $50 million.)

However, I never got to sharing this information because I was informed in a torrent of one-way arguments that vaccines have saved billions of lives, that this friend ‘believes in science,’ and that any evidence I did put forward would be untrue anyway.

“Ok.”

That’s all you can say to a religious zealot.

The Danger of Assumptions in Medicine

The recent discovery that the antiviral oseltamivir (brand name Tamiflu) may INCREASE mortality for critically ill patients compared to taking nothing at all will do nothing to dent this kind of belief.

Incredibly, in the 20+ years since Tamiflu was approved by regulators, no one ever ran a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to see how it fared for the sickest patients of all.

Everyone just extrapolated from research showing that it helped to alleviate a mild flu, assuming that it would therefore also provide benefit to patients in ICU. Based on this assumption, Tamiflu was added to hospital guidelines, prescribed by doctors and stockpiled by governments.

But that assumption was wrong — dead wrong — if the REMAP-CAP trial finding is correct.

The Monash University study found that in patients with severe influenza, around 20% of those who received Tamiflu died within 90 days, compared to around 14% of those who did not receive the drug.

The researchers said they went public with the “unexpected” result while still in pre-print phase (with the peer-review process not yet complete) because of the urgency of the public health implications. The Chief Health Officer has already instructed Australian ICUs not to prescribe Tamiflu to critically ill patients.

Science Can Correct Itself — Eventually

In one sense, this is science self-correcting. However, it’s 25 years too late because the gaps in the science were papered over with incorrect assumptions.

I guess that’s another big ‘oops’ to add to the list:

• DDT
• Thalidomide
• DES
• Asbestos
• Oxycontin
• PFAS
• Fen-phen
• Johnson & Johnson talc
• Pelvic mesh
• Vioxx
• Zantac
• Lead-based paint
• Metal-on-metal hip implants
• Mercury teething powder
• Cigarettes
• Covid shots

There are more, but that will do.

If there’s anything to learn from a list like this, it’s that science is corruptible and, even when not corrupted, science is not static.

Science is a tool to serve us – not a god that we serve.

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Republished with thanks to Dystopian Down Under. Image courtesy of Adobe.