Arthur Silber on aging and the HOPE that Rev. Wright brings

Choosing Sides (I): "Why America May Go to Hell," and Feeling Young Again

{Amen, as always Arthur. AMEN.}

I am profoundly in Jeremiah Wright's debt. He has reinvigorated my spirit, strengthened certain dwindling resources of mine, and made me feel young again.

It is often noted that many people become more conservative as they age. The opposite is true in my case. Over the last three or four years in particular, I have become more and more radical. I once described my political beliefs as libertarian in nature -- although, I hasten to add and I think the record will show, my libertarianism was of the genuine and serious variety, as opposed to the utterly phony libertarianism that will be found in today's culture, and especially among many bloggers. I opposed the very dangerous authoritarianism of the Bush administration from the time I began blogging in September 2002, and I opposed the invasion of Iraq before it began. I always recognized that the corporatist-authoritarian state at home and an aggressively and violently interventionist foreign policy are inextricably linked, that they are but the two faces of the same coin. But as my political-cultural critique has hopefully deepened, my political views altered. I now describe myself as a leftist-anarchist: the leftist part of the description designates the cultural-economic-historical-political perspective I try to employ, while the anarchist label indicates that I view the State as the primary problem. As I have said (and I will have more to say about this at some point), I view anarchism as useful in theory only at this point, although the theory is of immense importance. Until and unless a critical number of individuals alter the primary motives that move most people (the desire for power and control, and the demand for obedience, being chief among them), any state of affairs approximating anarchism will lead only to more chaos and death. If humanity manages to evolve through several more stages, which assumes we don't kill ourselves in huge numbers in the meantime (a fragile hope, indeed), then peaceful anarchism might have a chance.

I will be 60 tomorrow. Most of my readers are probably considerably younger than I am. I'm sorry to tell you that some of the standard cliches about aging are true. I have absolutely no idea how the hell I arrived at the age of 60. It seems only yesterday that I was a teenager who skipped school, and finally dropped out of high school altogether (twice!), so that I could go to the Metropolitan Opera five or six times a week. Subsequently, I acceded to the demands of convention, took the high school equivalency exam, got a B.A. from NYU and still later, in my thirties, got a law degree. In the course of my life, I studied intensively to become a concert pianist, and then an opera singer. I was an actor for the better part of a decade. I've worked in the film industry, and as a civil litigator. About ten years ago, through a complicated and terribly painful series of events, I said to hell with all of it. Today, my life is much as it was when I was a teenager who loved opera more than anything in the world: I've dropped out of "the system" almost completely. I have as little to do with the State as possible. I ask for nothing from the State, and I can only hope the State will demand nothing from me. Of course, the State can choose to demand everything from me whenever it wishes, and I will be close to helpless before its onslaught. Yes, freedom is a wonderful thing. I wish we had it. (If the State were to demand everything from me, there is almost nothing they would get since I have almost nothing, except for my life. Although I well understand that my life is of less than no interest to the State, it remains of some certain value to me, even now.)

Physically, I feel very, very old. Given current medical technology, it's very likely I would not have to feel so old at 60, except that my poverty means I can't avail myself of any of that technology. So my rotten health means that I feel more like 130. Yet it feels churlish to me to complain too much about the wreck that passes for my body. It also seems like only yesterday that I moved from New York to Los Angeles. But I moved here exactly 30 years ago, in 1978. I've lived half my life in Los Angeles. I didn't come out as a gay man until after I moved to L.A. (Some of that geographical and psychological journey is described here, in an essay from 2003, written when I was about to turn 55.) In the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, I made many friends and acquaintances in the gay community. Most of my friends from that time are dead now. They began dying around 1984, and they didn't stop dying regularly and in large numbers for a decade. I felt like a very old man while I was still in my thirties, as did all my friends. We expect to see our friends start to die when we arrive at, well, 60 or so. We don't expect it several decades earlier. This is my second time at this rodeo. Once would have been enough.

I do my best to ignore my health altogether. On some days, I can't, because I feel too lousy. But it's pointless to dwell on it, so I try to set it aside. And here's the interesting, and wonderful, thing: psychologically, I feel much younger than I did 30 years ago. I think I know more, and I think I understand much more. Even though I can control next to nothing in my physical existence, I feel very much in control psychologically and intellectually. That's a great gift, one for which I am deeply grateful.

But many of the subjects that I discuss here are exceedingly grim. Sometimes, it gets to be far more than I can bear, so I need to leave it alone for a while. But then, something completely unexpected turns up. A Jeremiah Wright appears on the scene. He causes me to feel more radicalized than ever, and I feel young again. Reverend Wright has performed an invaluable service, for those able to recognize and appreciate it. He has spoken a number of truths of critical importance -- see here and here for some background on that. And he has also caused a number of people to reveal themselves as significant frauds. I refer, of course, to many liberals and progressives, especially white liberals and progressives. When the moment of testing arrived, many liberals and progressives denounced Wright in terms that are indistinguishable from those employed by writers at National Review, or people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. You would think it might trouble these self-proclaimed liberals and progressives that they find themselves in such company, but it doesn't. This is useful information. Thanks, Reverend.

(I must note that this phenomenon is hardly restricted to white liberals and progressives, and I'm not referring only to awful conservative-"libertarian" blacks of the Larry Elder variety. Bob Herbert is often wonderful on subjects such as our inhumane prison system and torture, but take a look at Bob Herbert on Wright. "[T]he histrionics of a loony preacher from the South Side of Chicago." "The idea that [Wright's] nonsense may shape the outcome of this election is both tragic and absurd." Herbert has been an op-ed columnist at The New York Times since 1993. The Times is one of the leading voices of the existing power structure. That power structure is, from a cultural and historical perspective, an affluent, immensely privileged, white power structure. It not only propagandizes for the U.S. government and cheerleads the U.S.'s wars of aggression; it also seeks to enforce the permissible terms of debate, terms that are suffocatingly and immorally constricted. With regard to this controversy, Herbert has chosen sides -- and he has not chosen the side of truth and justice.)

I have briefly mentioned the ways in which the views and actions of Martin Luther King have been sanitized, defanged, neutralized and made "acceptable" to mainstream American opinion. In that connection, you should read this interview with Jonathan Walton. This excerpt will give you a start:

Let's talk about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Martin Luther King. Some of Wright's critics have contrasted his approach to that of King, who they portray as using reconciliation rather than confrontation. Is that an accurate portrayal of King? Is that an accurate portrayal of Wright?

No to both. It's a mythic portrayal of King, a nostalgic portrayal of King -- because King was accused and vilified for being controversial, actually more controversial than Jeremiah Wright.

Didn't King become more radical in the course of his career, in the period leading up to his assassination?

It was largely because of the fact that he moved from civil rights to human rights. One of King's famous quotes after desegregation laws had been passed was that he began to find out that it mattered little if African-Americans -- he said Negroes, of course -- have the right to eat at the counter if they don't have a dollar to spend at the lunch counter.

In response to my question before, you said that portraying King as having a message of reconciliation and Wright having a message of confrontation or subversion was not accurate. You've explained how King's approach wasn't purely about reconciliation.

It was about reconciliation. But just because it was about reconciliation doesn't mean that he wasn't confrontational. King believed in nonviolent, direct confrontation. And thus when we come marching through the town, we are trying to expose inequality and expose violence. And if you practice nonviolent confrontation, you morally shame your opponent toward moral suasion. And when you shame them toward moral suasion, it's not to defeat your opponent, but to reunite with your opponent. You're trying to make them ashamed of themselves, so they will turn from their wicked ways. These are all Gospel principles.

Essentially you're saying Wright uses that same approach.

Wright ain't necessarily King. Wright sees himself in that tradition. King was very much in the tradition of the African-American jeremiad. And that is where he would call out the sins of the nation so the nation would live up to its ideals and its promises. That's how King saw himself. But that's not how people looked at King. On April 4, 1967, King stood in front of the Riverside Church and said that if America does not change its ways, America, if you continue to be so prideful, God will tear down this nation, and rise up another nation that doesn't even know my name.

It was his "God damn America" moment, except there wasn't YouTube.

It was his God damn America moment. And the Sunday after King was assassinated, do you know what King was scheduled to preach that Sunday morning? His sermon title was "Why America May Go to Hell."

It is only one of the many calumnies heaped on Wright's head that the mythical, non-existent King is used to condemn him. There is no question that, if King were to reappear among us and speak as he did in the last few years of his life, he would be vilified and loathed in terms at least as harsh as those now directed at Wright. This is to not even mention what some of these same liberals and progressives might say about certain of the views of radicals such as Thomas Jefferson. As I often note these days, we are drowning in lies. Yet it is still no small wonder that this entire conversation about Wright, King, et al. proceeds in the almost complete absence of a discussion of what Wright has actually said, just as no one seems to remember what King actually said.

Among the more dishonest and ignorant reactions to Wright's comments are the reactions to his statements concerning AIDS. Consider this further excerpt from the Salon interview:

What about his statement about -- and he repeated it again on Monday -- about the U.S. government putting the AIDS virus in the African-American community?

Some may regard that as a trope for known, unjust practices, unjust medical practices against people of color.

Such as in Tuskegee?

Such as the Tuskegee experiments. Or America's complicity in Agent Orange. Or the American government's longtime denial of Gulf War syndrome. So that kind of becomes a rhetorical trope which is a heuristic shorthand for all of that -- for a failed healthcare system in America and failure to do anything about it. And while people may viscerally disagree with Rev. Wright's claim there, and while it may be clearly undocumented and unfounded, you're also talking about a man who had an HIV/AIDS outreach ministry to African-Americans, as well as gays and lesbians, in the 1980s, when the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, wouldn't even say the word in public.

Please note that Reverend Wright "had an HIV/AIDS outreach ministry to African-Americans, as well as gays and lesbians, in the 1980s." While my own experience means this carries special significance for me, this is a staggeringly great and unusual achievement, one deserving of the deepest admiration from every decent human being.

I've discussed some of the historical background that helps to explain Wright's AIDS commentary. Let's discuss it a bit more, and try to break through the wall of comfortable denial erected by almost all Americans, including many liberals and progressives. From Margaret Kimberley:

The name Josef Mengele is so infamous that it needs no introduction. Mengele was the German doctor who performed medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. An American doctor, James Marion Sims was equally monstrous, but his name is less well known.

Sims was a doctor who routinely performed unnecessary and sadistic surgeries on slaves in Alabama. He opened the skulls of babies and performed gynecological surgeries on women. They were forced to endure unimaginable treatments, all without the ether that had by then become available as an anesthetic. Of course, being enslaved people, they had no choice in any decisions that Sims made about their bodies or their lives.

Sims allegedly sought to treat vaginal fistulas caused by complications of child birth. One woman underwent this treatment, without anesthesia, 30 times. He obviously didn't cure her of anything.

Because Sims' victims were black Americans their stories remained largely untold. They were not the first or the last black Americans to be subjected to what can only be called torture in the name of scientific investigation. Sims is called "the father of gynecology" and eventually became president of the American Medical Association. He has been immortalized in a monument that still stands in New York's Central Park.

...

A newly published book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, is a comprehensive chronicle of surgeries performed without anesthesia, the notorious Tuskegee experiments that prevented 400 men from being treated for syphilis over a 40 year period, and forced sterilizations.

Harriet Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, has performed an invaluable service. White Americans love to point fingers at Germans who won't apologize for Hitler, or Japanese who claim that the rape of Nanking didn't take place. There is little interest in acknowledging, much less apologizing for atrocities that took place on American soil.

History tells us that torture and murder are considered acceptable if the perpetrators are white and the victims aren't. The population of American Indians was decimated from an estimated 15 million before European occupation to 200,000 in 1890. Simply put, they were murdered. They were shot and scalped and infected with disease. Millions of Africans taken into slavery in Africa perished before reaching the western hemisphere where they faced the prospect of being the property of Dr. Sims and his ilk.

The litany of atrocities documented in Medical Apartheid shocks the soul and the senses. Yet it must be pointed out that those atrocities are all logical results of the white supremacy that was manifested in chattel slavery, and the terror that followed it. There isn't a better candidate for torture than a person who isn't really considered a person.

It is indeed valuable that some of the most racist crimes committed in this country have finally been exposed. But it will be of little use if this history is dismissed as vestiges of another time instead of revealing an ideology that has never disappeared from the American consciousness. The use of black Americans as guinea pigs didn't end with the slavery era and wasn't confined to the South.

From a Washington Post review of Medical Apartheid featured at Amazon:

A fresh account of the Tuskegee study, including new information about the internal politics of the panel charged by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare with investigating it in 1972, lies at the center of Harriet A. Washington's courageous and poignant book. The balance of Medical Apartheid reveals, with arresting detail, that this scandal was neither the first chapter nor the last in the exploitation of black subjects in U.S. medical research. Tuskegee was, in the author's words, "the longest and most infamous -- but hardly the worst -- experimental abuse of African Americans. It has been eclipsed in both numbers and egregiousness by other abusive medical studies."

Although medical experimentation with human subjects has historically involved vulnerable groups, including children, the poor and the institutionalized, Washington enumerates how black Americans have disproportionately borne the burden of the most invasive, inhumane and perilous medical investigations, from the era of slavery to the present day. (This burden has become global in the last few decades.) In 1855, John "Fed" Brown, an escaped slave, recalled that the doctor to whom he was indentured produced painful blisters on his body in order to observe "how deep my black skin went." This study had no therapeutic value. Rather, fascination with the outward appearance of African Americans, whose differences from whites were thought to be more than skin deep, was a significant impulse driving such medical trials.

...

The infringement of black Americans' rights to their own bodies in the name of medical science continued throughout the 20th century. In 1945, Ebb Cade, an African American trucker being treated for injuries received in an accident in Tennessee, was surreptitiously placed without his consent into a radiation experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Black Floridians were deliberately exposed to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases in experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA in the early 1950s. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, black inmates at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison were used as research subjects by a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist testing pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene products; some of these subjects report pain and disfiguration even now. During the 1960s and '70s, black boys were subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by a University of Mississippi researcher who believed brain pathology to be the root of the children's supposed hyperactive behavior. In the 1990s, African American youths in New York were injected with Fenfluramine -- half of the deadly, discontinued weight loss drug Fen-Phen -- by Columbia researchers investigating a hypothesis about the genetic origins of violence.

...

Given the history presented in Medical Apartheid, it is no surprise that some African Americans continue to regard the medical system with apprehension, despite more stringent safeguards enacted by the federal government in the 1970s. Washington attributes this outlook, which she calls iatrophobia, to the seeds of distrust sown in black communities by the Tuskegee scandal and a history of lesser-known mistreatment.

Washington, a visiting fellow at Chicago's DePaul University, intends that Medical Apartheid serve a socially therapeutic -- if not cathartic -- function. Laying bare these atrocities, her logic goes, will foster healing and frank but necessary conversation. Clearing the air may encourage a better informed African American public to participate in clinical trials.

Despite the author's best intentions, the scale and persistence of the "dark history" she delineates may well preclude such a development. Precisely because Washington's account of racially stratified medical exploitation is so gripping, it may be difficult for the public to muster enthusiasm to enter clinical trials, no matter their cultural background. And with the experimental research burden shifting from Americans of African descent to Africa itself (which Washington calls a "continent of subjects"), Asia, and Latin America, where some cavalier researchers are seeking more plentiful and pliant subjects, readers may be more convinced than ever of the durability of the medical color line.

Get Harriet Washington's book, and read it. Try to understand this history and its significance, and then consider again this part of Chris Floyd's commentary:

First, what Obama called "such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS." After citing some books on the subject, Wright said:

I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't -- based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything. In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the -- one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non- question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

I personally don't believe that the U.S. government concocted the AIDs virus; but the notion that a government which conducted murderous medical experiments on black men for decades, and sold chemical weaponry to a brutal dictator (and, by providing military intelligence, helped him use them against the Iranians), and also launched a war of aggression in Iraq that has killed at least million innocent people might also be capable of creating and unleashing a deadly disease is certainly not implausible.

Yet all conservatives, and many more liberals and progressives than one might have thought or hoped, refuse to acknowledge this history. They do not want to understand the context in which Jeremiah Wright made his remarks. They are not interested in the full truth, or anything close to it. It's too upsetting. It might make people angry.

Well, fuck, yeah. If you're not profoundly upset and angry when you contemplate history and facts of this kind, you might as well be dead. You're certainly dead intellectually, and by your own choice.

But I'm not dead, not by a long shot. I may feel like hell physically, but I feel more alive psychologically and intellectually than I have in a long time. I am filled with delirious joy by certain aspects of our world, and I am deeply, terribly angry and enraged at others.

And I feel young again. Thank you, Reverend Wright. You're the best birthday present I could have asked for.

posted by Arthur Silber

The medical journals are now being scrutinized

Gaffes and Leaks Invade Journals' Ivory Tower

By John Gever, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: April 11, 2008 Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Audio (l to r): Jerome Kassirer, M.D., Tufts University; Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D., Georgetown University; Christopher Cannon, M.D., Harvard Medical School; George Lundberg, M.D., Medscape BOSTON, April 11 -- The integrity of the medical publication process has been called into question by a series of embarrassing incidents over the past two years. For example, just last month, it was revealed that authors of a high-profile 2006 New England Journal of Medicine paper on CT screening for early-stage lung cancer had failed to disclose patents they held on related technology as well as the fact that a tobacco company had provided much of their funding. The NEJM is not the only top journal to be embarrassed. In the space of two months in 2006, authors of three separate papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association -- on arthritis, cancer, and migraine treatment -- belatedly acknowledged funding and consulting relationships with firms selling arthritis, cancer, and migraine drugs, which they had not disclosed to the journal's editors. The journal system has traditionally been based on trust -- that authors will report their results fairly and honestly and that editors and reviewers will live up to their responsibilities. "Medical journals are an extraordinary public institution," said Harold Sox, M.D., of Dartmouth, editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. "People look to us to decide whether research is true or not." Pointed out Steven Nissen, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic, "Our colleagues and patients can only trust in evidence-based medicine if they trust in the evidence. To the extent that problems undermine trust, they undermine the entire scientific process." According to Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D., NEJM's editor-in-chief from 1991 to 1999, "The situation [with researchers' conflicts of interest] if anything has gotten worse since I was editor of the journal." In this special investigation, MedPage Today took a close look at some of these problems and potential solutions. Disclosure: Falling Short of the Goal Virtually all the major and many lesser journals have adopted some type of disclosure policy in the past 20 years. The NEJM's approach is typical. "For a journal to be of value, it must publish authoritative, up-to-date information that is free of commercial influence. ... [We] have set policies to ensure that the financial associations of authors are disclosed and that published articles are not influenced by those financial associations," according to the NEJM policy. "These important editorial policies have raised awareness about conflict of interest in medical research and have helped prevent bias -- and the appearance of bias -- stemming from authors' financial interests." Because financial relationships carry the most obvious potential for bias and are easy to characterize, the NEJM's disclosure form, like those of most journals, focuses on them. It asks all manuscript authors to declare such relationships in six specific categories, as well as any other type of arrangement that "could compromise the interpretation of the article" if not disclosed. "The required documentation from the journals is really excellent," said Dr. Nissen. The problem, he and others said, is that authors don't always follow the spirit and the letter of those standards. The case of Claudia I. Henschke, M.D., Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, is an example. She was at the center of furor last month when the New York Times revealed that her research on CT scanning to detect early-stage lung cancer was funded by tobacco-industry money (See: Early Lung Cancer Study Found Funded by Tobacco Money). It also turned out that she and a Cornell colleague, David F. Yankelevitz, M.D., held royalty-paying patents on CT-based tumor detection technology. The Cornell researchers did not disclose the tobacco funding to the NEJM or other journals where they published aspects of their research. Dr. Henschke said the patents had been disclosed to NEJM, but editors there decided not to include them in the published disclosures. Other journals only found out about the patents from news reports after the articles were published. Cornell's administration would not allow the researchers to speak with MedPage Today, and a NEJM spokeswoman declined to discuss the matter, citing its confidentiality policy. But according to Bruce A. Chabner, M.D., of Boston, the editor of The Oncologist, which published a paper from the Cornell group last January, the researchers initially did not believe they were required to disclose their patents. Dr. Chabner said he learned about the patents from press reports just as the January issue was going to press. He got in touch with the Cornell researchers, who told him, he said, that because the technologies covered by the patents were not explicitly mentioned in their article, they were not obliged to disclose them. The Oncologist's disclosure form specifies that researchers should report financial relationships involving products or patents "that are the subject of the matter under consideration." Likewise, the NEJM directs authors to report relationships to "products studied or discussed in the article and companies that make related products." According to press reports, the NEJM's editors initially agreed with their position, apparently switching signals only after they learned about the tobacco-company funding. Dr. Chabner's response was to publish a letter from the Cornell researchers acknowledging the patents, along with an editorial suggesting the investigators should have known better. "While there is no explicit reference to the software patents or biopsy needles, it is equally clear that the widespread adoption of CT screening as the standard of care for the early detection of lung cancer would increase the commercial value of these patents and products," Dr. Chabner wrote. "It seems to us that the readership of a scholarly journal deserves to know when an author could reasonably be expected to derive personal benefit from the results of his/her paper." Similar disagreements were at the root of the 2006 controversies over JAMA study disclosures. In each case, the authors indicated that they believed their relationships were under the journal's radar. Catherine DeAngelis, M.D., JAMA's editor, declined to be interviewed for this article. She told the Associated Press in 2006 that authors should "always err on the side of full disclosure," and she would decide what is relevant. JAMA's written policy calls for authors to report "all conflicts of interests, including specific financial interests and relationships relevant to the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript." Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D., a complementary medicine researcher at Georgetown University in Washington, who has also published on physician ethics and drug marketing, says such phrasing is a mistake. "There should never be wording about 'relevant' conflicts," she said, because a researcher's judgment on relevance may not jibe with editors or readers. Disclosure, however, "fixes the wrong problem," according to Dr. Kassirer, the former editor of the NEJM. The real issue, he said, is not the extent of disclosure of conflicts of interest -- it's the conflicts themselves. He pointed to research indicating that company-sponsored studies are more likely to find in favor of the company's products. Asked if what he reads in the major journals is less trustworthy than 10 or 15 years ago, he responded, "Yes. I trust them less." Disclosure isn't enough to deal with this problem, he said. Journal editors need to root out bias by alerting reviewers to authors' industry ties so they can be watchful for bias. Others maintain that disclosure is the critical element. Audio (l to r): Steven E. Nissen, M.D., Cleveland Clinic; Eric Campbell, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School Eric Campbell, Ph.D., a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, acknowledged that the disclosure system sometimes fails, but he pointed out that it is part of a larger system that checks the influence of pharmaceutical companies and others seeking to influence the journal process. "It's a whole bunch of regulatory mechanisms that make this work," he said. He also cautioned against excessively high expectations of medical journals. "What's written in journals are claims of truth," he said, and readers ultimately must judge for themselves whether they may be biased or incomplete. Another Harvard researcher, Christopher Cannon, M.D., said a possible solution to questions of conflicts of interest would be an online disclosure registry along the lines of www.clinicaltrials.gov. Researchers would file and update a single statement listing all their relationships. Journals could access the statement when a researcher submits an article, and publish those relationships it deems relevant. Such a system would be easier for everyone, he said. George Lundberg, M.D., editor-in-chief at Medscape Journal of Medicine and a former editor of JAMA, agreed that, all in all, disclosure policies are generally serving their main goals. "The whole journal enterprise consists of requiring trust between the authors and the editors and the peer reviewers," he said. "I think most of the time it actually works." Still, Dr. Lundberg added, "there are enough instances where it clearly doesn't, that you have to be pretty cautious about it." Sanctity of Peer Review One of the foundations of the peer review system is that reviewers should be anonymous and that they don't discuss the unpublished data to which they are privy. Twice in the past year, though, the sanctity of peer review has been violated. In March 2007, Martin B. Leon, M.D., of Columbia University, gave a series of public talks in which he criticized the COURAGE study, which found that coronary artery stents were essentially co-equal with medical therapy for stable angina. Trouble was, the study had not yet been published. He had reviewed the manuscript for the NEJM, and said so in one of his pre-publication talks. In May, another NEJM reviewer, Steven Haffner, M.D., of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, sent his review copy of a paper on rosiglitazone (Avandia) to the drug's manufacturer (See: COURAGE Embargo Break: Slip of the Tongue or Sabotage? and Leaked NEJM Manuscript on Rosiglitazone (Avandia) Puts GSK Under Scrutiny). Dr. Nissen said he worries about whether peer review can continue on its traditional trust basis. As well he might, because it was his paper on rosiglitazone that Dr. Haffner leaked. He said he was astonished when he heard about the incident, which was revealed publicly earlier this year. "I shred [review papers he receives] so that they're not laying around where someone might read them." Dr. Lundberg said he was not surprised that a peer reviewer would break confidentiality. "What's surprising is that so many don't break it," he said. "It's against human nature." He pointed out that peer reviewers are supposed to receive potentially world-changing information, which they are to keep absolutely secret, along with their role in the review process. If the paper is rejected, they have to pretend they never saw it. "This is an astonishing thing to ask," he said. "The fact that it works so well, most of the time, is to me a wonderful commentary on the professionalism of our academic community in the peer review process," he said. Others interviewed by MedPage Today declined to suggest that the two episodes amounted to a breakdown of the peer-review process generally. "That would be reading the tarot cards too closely," said Dr. Kassirer, the former NEJM editor. Crime and Punishment Opinions differ on what could be done to encourage uniform adherence to the rules protecting journals' integrity. Dr. Kassirer said journals can ask tough questions about the research design and statistical analysis. He said some of the major journals have started to do so, requesting details of protocols and commissioning independent statistical reviews. In 2006, the Associated Press quoted Dr. DeAngelis as saying, "I'm not God and I'm not the FBI," when asked whether JAMA should investigate author disclosures. Others interviewed by MedPage Today also found such policing out of bounds or too difficult. Dr. Nissen and Dr. Lundberg agreed it would be impractical for journals to spend resources on policing disclosures, except in cases where there is a specific reason for suspicion. Dr. Lundberg pointed out that many smaller journals don't have full-time staffs. "The answer is not to have a police force involved at the journals, Dr. Nissen said. "They just can't operate that way." Instead, Dr. Nissen said, violators should be punished, harshly and publicly. Although NEJM and other journals say they have a sanctions policies for dealing with authors who don't follow disclosure rules, the NEJM, for one, keeps such penalties confidential. Sanctions the journal may have imposed on Dr. Leon, Dr. Haffner, or the Cornell researchers were not disclosed. "The editorial process is strictly confidential," said a NEJM spokeswoman. "If a breach of ethics occurs, the editors handle it privately." That's part of the problem, according to Dr. Nissen. He believes public punishment is necessary to get researchers to take the policies seriously. "We have to make [violating policies] absolutely so unacceptable, and the price for doing that sufficiently high, that physicians just won't do it." He suggested that authors' own institutions should impose penalties and say so. "If the publicity around that is sufficiently painful, then I think people will not [violate policies]," Dr. Nissen said. "I do think we need a code of conduct here," he added. Dr. Campbell, the Harvard health policy researcher, was skeptical that much could be done to increase adherence to disclosure policies. "The ultimate burden lies with the scientists," he said. Officials at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center would not comment on whether Dr. Haffner had been formally reprimanded or otherwise sanctioned, citing confidentiality of personnel issues. Similarly, Cornell officials had no comment on whether Drs. Henschke and Yankelevitz might be penalized. In fact, the university issued a statement rebutting suggestions that the researchers had done anything wrong. MedPage Today was able to learn independently that NEJM's editors informed Dr. Leon that he would no longer be asked to serve as a peer reviewer or invited to submit commentaries, perspectives, or editorials. The editors also requested Columbia to consider academic sanctions (See: COURAGE Embargo Break: Slip of the Tongue or Sabotage?). Columbia declined to comment on whether it had imposed sanctions on Dr. Leon. Dr. Sox, the Annals of Internal Medicine editor, said that more than formal policies are needed to maintain the integrity of research reporting. "The biggest tool we have is the passion of the editor to get it straight, to find all the slanted writing and to make sure that all conflicts are reported," he said. He added that the group-based editorial policy at the Annals helps to keep standards high. "People have to convince other people that an article should be published," he said. "This group process, getting input from lots of people, one of whom may see something no one else sees that turns out to be really important, is a key element in maintaining the integrity of the process."

Related Article(s): Early Lung Cancer Study Found Funded by Tobacco Money COURAGE Embargo Break: Slip of the Tongue or Sabotage? Leaked NEJM Manuscript on Rosiglitazone (Avandia) Puts GSK Under Scrutiny

Waterboarding forcews the resignation of yet another JAG

Navy JAG Resigns Over Torture Issue

Knight Ridder | December 27, 2007

"It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy," wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. "There was a time when I served with pride ... Sadly, no more."

Williams' sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

The tapes may have contained evidence that the U.S. government used a type of torture known as waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

Torture, including water-boarding, is prohibited under the treaties of the Geneva Convention.

It was in the much-publicized interview two weeks ago between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who is the chief legal adviser at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, that led Williams to resign.

In the interview, Graham asked Hartmann how the uniformed legal community should respond if the Iranian government used waterboarding to torture a U.S. solider into disclosing when the next U.S. military operation would occur.

Hartmann responded: "I am not prepared to answer that question."

For Williams, a former naval Lieutenant Commander and member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), this answer went against "every training I had as an attorney" and as a member of the military.

Williams enlisted in the Navy in 1991 after completing law school at Santa Clara University. He was a legal officer and defense counsel in the U.S. Navy, meaning he both prosecuted and defended people in military courts.

He served on the USS Nimitz CVN-68, based in Bremerton, before becoming a member of the Naval reserves in 1995.

Williams, 43, felt that Hartmann was admitting torture is now an acceptable interrogation technique in the United States -- an admission that did not sit well with him.

"There was this saying in the Marines: 'We don't lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate people who do,' " Williams said. "And that sort of echoed through the Navy."

Williams felt that resigning from the reserves was not enough to demonstrate his dissatisfaction. He wrote to the Gateway hoping to set an example, echoing his same reason for joining the Navy two decades ago: "It was my way of serving the public," he said.

In his letter, Williams likened the use of torture by the United States to techniques used by the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge. He also wrote that he hopes "the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out."

Williams doubts that much will come of his letter of resignation and acknowledges that his life in Gig Harbor -- which consists of practicing personal injury law and spending time with wife and young son -- will not change much.

"I suspect (the Navy is) probably going to be fine with it," he said. "I doubt they would keep me in voluntarily."

He also states that, although reserve officers only perform military service once a year, he "probably would have stayed on if this hadn't happened, both for sentimental value and if something big happened where I was needed."

Outrage over CIA scandal

Below is an excerpt from the letter Andrew Williams submitted to The Peninsula Gateway. For the entire letter, see Letters to the Editor 16A.

"Thank you General Hartmann for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition. In the middle ages the Inquisition called waterboarding "toca" and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

"Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947 giving him 15 years hard labor. Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the United States Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict."

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2007 Knight Ridder . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Comments on BlogNetNews:

Comments

Good on him! Its a bloody shame it has to come down to resignation, but he's got a hell of a lot more of my respect than many of these other bastards.

Posted by: THX1138 | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:05 PM

So... anybody think somebody in the US will ever get convicted to 15 years of hard labor ? (to be fair, a lot of that might have been those "other torture practices")

Posted by: Caravelle | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:12 PM

On the Knight Ridder discussion forum, some have already dismissed the story on the grounds that Williams was just a lawyer, and that he already had a career outside of the military. So while the resignation undoubtedly took some courage, it is not as striking a symbol as one might hope for.

Any high-ranking career officers care to step up?

Posted by: Toby | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:15 PM

15 years nothing. I want to see the leadership of this government sent up before the Hague for war crimes.

Posted by: Froborr | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:15 PM

Ugh. The majority of the comments on that article are really depressing.

By the way, the U.S. Army Field Manual does SPECIFICALLY forbid water torture (sorry, I refuse to use the Owellian "waterboarding") as well as the cold cell and other techniques that are now part of US policy.

The United States is spreading a lot of something, but it sure isn't "democracy."

Posted by: THX1138 | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:16 PM

Froborr: "15 years nothing. I want to see the leadership of this government sent up before the Hague for war crimes."

I couldn't agree more!

Posted by: THX1138 | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:17 PM

In case anyone wants to read the entire thing: http://www.gateline.com/opinion/story/295.html

Posted by: Chris Adams | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:37 PM

On the Knight Ridder discussion forum, some have already dismissed the story

Because, y'know, anything they didn't have to do must have been an easy choice to make.

Posted by: MikhailBorg | Dec 27, 2007 at 03:40 PM

I take the post title as further proof that Fred reads the comments. Seeing as how we have a proclivity toward four- or five-hundred comment threads a few times a week, might I suggest you might want to get out more, Mr. Fred? Take a walk. Meet a girl. Take over the government and tell us all how to spend our money and be appropriately compassionate (TM). Y'know, live a little...

Posted by: Geds | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:14 PM

Those morons who say he didn't give anything up are clueless. Walking away from a career, and one which demands so much of one (body, and soul) because the institution is failing itself.... that's a hard row to hoe.

He has my every sympathy, respect and support. If he ever shows up someplace with so much as a lapel pin; I'll stand up and salute.

No reservations.

Posted by: | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:15 PM

I'm glad for the man. Would that ten thousand like him resign on their principles the same way.

Posted by: | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:19 PM

Oh, 04:19 was me - I think my cookie vanished when I hit "Preview".

Posted by: Robin Z | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:20 PM

Good for Cmdr. Williams!

Unfortunately, about all that someone in the military can do to protest is to resign.

I worry about those who don't.

Posted by: lightning | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:22 PM

I happen to know anecdotally (close correspondence with several JAG members who were high school friends that stayed in touch) that dozens of lesser JAG have already resigned in protest to either waterboarding or the revocation of habeas corpus. They won't get the recognition that Williams will (mostly because they weren't ranked as highly; Lt. Cmdr. is a big deal), but there is a definite undercurrent of unease among our nation's JAG corps.

Good on him, though, for making an issue of morality, as well as law, out of Hartmann's testimony. It's true that we've condemned people in the past for similar practices,

Posted by: Anna | Dec 27, 2007 at 04:36 PM

Geds: I take the post title as further proof that Fred reads the comments.

And I am plenty tickled that a throwaway Firefly reference became not only a shorthand in the thread itself but part of the title for another post. I feel like a real Slactiv(suffix) now.

Posted by: burgundy | Dec 27, 2007 at 05:44 PM

This type of news is what keeps me in this country. We've clearly gone down a very dark and dangerous path, but there are a lot of people who are quietly tugging us back in the other direction.

Posted by: Elpheba | Dec 27, 2007 at 05:51 PM

BDH indeed!

Posted by: Boze | Dec 27, 2007 at 06:30 PM

This type of news is what keeps me in this country.

AMEN!

I'm a little saddened that there isn't someone more high profile, but it's still terrific news. Every veteran I know will be extremely proud to read this.

Posted by: Robb | Dec 27, 2007 at 06:31 PM

I take the post title as further proof that Fred reads the comments. Seeing as how we have a proclivity toward four- or five-hundred comment threads a few times a week, might I suggest you might want to get out more, Mr. Fred?

Seriously, how does anyone do that? Personally, I like the bare aesthetics of this site, but when reading the comment threads, it's not only hard to keep track of where you are (lots of scrolling up & down), but I get headaches staring at the screen that long. Damn you fellow commenters for being so fascinating!

Posted by: Robb | Dec 27, 2007 at 06:36 PM

I have one window with tabs for each of the posts I'm following, then I click the bottommost timestamp, which sets the URL to the anchor for that comment, then hit reload - so the reloaded page goes straight to the last comment before I reloaded.

Posted by: jamoche | Dec 27, 2007 at 06:57 PM

I have one window with tabs for each of the posts I'm following, then I click the bottommost timestamp, which sets the URL to the anchor for that comment, then hit reload - so the reloaded page goes straight to the last comment before I reloaded.

Except for the tabs (I prefer opening new windows so that I can use the same button combination to jump from one Firefox window to another as I use to jump from a Firefox window to, say, iTunes), that is *brilliant* and I'm going to use that method from now on.

Posted by: Froborr | Dec 27, 2007 at 07:01 PM

On the Knight Ridder discussion forum, some have already dismissed the story on the grounds that Williams was just a lawyer, and that he already had a career outside of the military. So while the resignation undoubtedly took some courage, it is not as striking a symbol as one might hope for.

Y'know, lots of people assume that having a law degree (any law degree) guarantees you a gold-plated job that pays in the six figures at a top law firm. Ain't so. Most law firms are looking for 20-somethings fresh out of law school and willing to work 80 hours a week, rather than a 40- or 50-something lawyer with experience in military justice rather than, say, intellectual property law or something more relevant to life in the civilian world. Yes, there are jobs to be had, but switching careers in your 40s or 50s isn't quite as rosy a picture as non-lawyers tend to believe. (My dad's a retired Navy JAG.)

Posted by: Corbie | Dec 27, 2007 at 09:38 PM

Too bad Lawyer Williams isn't intellectually honest enough to admit that the US military has a long history of waterboarding, too - we had congressional hearings on our killing of Filipino POWs via "the water-cure" almost exactly 100 years ago.

Nothing was done about it then, either, except for a few slaps on wrists.

After all, we were bringing them liberty and civilization.

Posted by: bellatrys

the downside is that the remaining military is now a smidge closer to being Pure Distilled Evil.

Posted by: Jon H

Pardon my ignorance, but what does "BDH" stand for?

Thanks y'all, and may y'all have a happy new year. :)

Posted by: Bill K | Dec 27, 2007 at 11:41 PM

Bill K: Pardon my ignorance, but what does "BDH" stand for?

If you pop over to the TFWOT comments, you'll find that BDH stands for Big Damn Hero. The more specific context is that it describes someone who goes above and beyond, who displays extraordinary courage and goodness at a level it would be unrealistic to expect in everyone all the time.

Posted by: burgundy | Dec 28, 2007 at 12:02 AM

Bill K, it stands for "Big Damn Hero." See the comments in the previous thread (TFWOT).

Posted by: Victoria | Dec 28, 2007 at 12:06 AM

to add to the BDH reference, I think (as do others above) that it likely started out as a quote from Firefly (the tv show). The quote from ths show:

Mal: Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
Zoe: Big damn heroes, sir!
Mal: Ain't we just?

Posted by: kodiak | Dec 28, 2007 at 09:22 AM

Too bad Lawyer Williams isn't intellectually honest enough to admit that the US military has a long history of waterboarding, too - we had congressional hearings on our killing of Filipino POWs via "the water-cure" almost exactly 100 years ago.

Nothing was done about it then, either, except for a few slaps on wrists.

After all, we were bringing them liberty and civilization.

I read about that on Andrew Sullivan's blog (which is where I get most of my waterboarding news, come to think of it), and I think there was some pushback from those practices. Like judges or legislators making it illegal from then on. Did the people involved really only get a slap on the wrist ?

Even if they did though, the moral to that story to me isn't that Americans do Evil Things (though some people obviously need to be made aware of this), but : Americans decided a hundred years ago that what this administration is doing is unacceptable. So they should stop waffling already.

Posted by: Caravelle | Dec 28, 2007 at 09:41 AM

My paranoid side wonders if the waterboarding is part of a larger PMD push toward theocracy. There are so many things that seem to have sinister meaning when put together - torture used specifically against Muslims, the hiring of Blackwater whose chief holds fanatical Dominionist beliefs, Bush's "crusade" slip of the tongue after 9/11, the Air Force Academy becoming a Jesus Camp, the increasing evangelizing and harassment against non-Christian members of the American military, the Bush Administration's ties with educational institutions (Regent University and Patrick Henry College) that openly advocate theocracy, the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives favoring fundamentalist charities at the expense of even other Christian charities...did I miss anything?

Posted by: Tonio | Dec 28, 2007 at 09:44 AM

Too bad Lawyer Williams isn't intellectually honest enough to admit that the US military has a long history of waterboarding, too - we had congressional hearings on our killing of Filipino POWs via "the water-cure" almost exactly 100 years ago

The guy throws away a career in hopes of exposing current abuses, and you demand more of him?

Posted by: MikhailBorg

The guy throws away a career in hopes of exposing current abuses, and you demand more of him?

Most Americans know about the Spanish-American War, but few know about what happened in the Phillipines in the years that followed the war. I wouldn't be surprised if Williams didn't know.

Navy JAG quits over CIA torture tapes

by GottaLaff · Friday December 28, 01:57 PM

2 pssts pssst!

Andrew Williams, who was a legal officer and defense counsel in the U.S. Navy--he both prosecuted and defended people in military courts--has resigned.

"It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy," wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. "There was a time when I served with pride ... Sadly, no more."

Williams' sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

A lot of us join you in your sadness, Andrew.

It was in the much-publicized interview two weeks ago between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who is the chief legal adviser at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, that led Williams to resign.

In the interview, Graham asked Hartmann how the uniformed legal community should respond if the Iranian government used waterboarding to torture a U.S. soldier into disclosing when the next U.S. military operation would occur.

Hartmann responded: "I am not prepared to answer that question."

For Williams, a former naval Lieutenant Commander and member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), this answer went against "every training I had as an attorney" and as a member of the military.

BushCo doesn't think little things like that matter. Easy fix: Just rewrite the manuals in question.

Williams, 43, felt that Hartmann was admitting torture is now an acceptable interrogation technique in the United States -- an admission that did not sit well with him.

"There was this saying in the Marines: 'We don't lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate people who do,' " Williams said. "And that sort of echoed through the Navy." [...]

In his letter, Williams likened the use of torture by the United States to techniques used by the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge. He also wrote that he hopes "the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out."

The next step is to do something about it. And to thank people like Andrew Williams for speaking out.