BY HARRIET HALL, M.D.
STARTING WITH THE TERRIBLE TWOS, when toddlers hear the word “No” on a regular basis, people don’t like to be told they can’t do something. They often believe government regulations interfere with their rights. The government requires vaccinations for school attendance; parents complain that they should be able to make their own decisions about whether to vaccinate their children. The government requires that drugs be approved by the FDA before marketing; desperate patients dying of cancer complain that regulations are preventing them from getting the one new treatment that just might save their life.
Health Freedom
The “health freedom” argument is that everyone has the right to use whatever treatments they want, to control what goes into their bodies, and that it’s none of the government’s business. But as Stephen Barrett and William Jarvis explained on Quackwatch:1
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About Skeptic
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?
COLUMNS
The SkepDoc: Health Freedom, Right to Try, and Informed Consent, by Harriet Hall, M.D. • The Gadfly: Do You Have Traits or Are You a Type? by Carol Tavris •
SPECIAL SECTION ON TACTICS FOR DISCUSSING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES
Personhood and Abortion Rights: How Science Might Inform this Contentious Issue, by Gary Whittenberger • How to Teach Evolution to Religious Students, by Surat Parvatam • The Arguments for Creationism and the Arguments for Evolution: A Study in Contrasts, by Ralph M. Barnes • Meeting Our “Enemies” Where They Are: The Advantage of Understanding Your Adversary’s Arguments, by Andrew Cooper-Sansone
ARTICLES
The Grandest of Questions Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing? by Michael Shermer • Reports of Mysterious Attacks on U.S. Diplomats Continue: Separating Fact from Fiction by Robert E. Bartholomew • The God Damners: The Now Not-so-New Atheism by Michael Cohen • Quackery in America: An Inglorious and Ongoing History, by Morton Tavel, M.D. • What Is It like to Be a Human? by Colin McGinn
REVIEWS
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress • The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution • The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will • SCAM: So-Called Alternative Medicine • Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life • The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are
JUNIOR SKEPTIC
Secrets of the Ouija Board, by Daniel Loxton