David Tredinnick: Scientific Illiteracy Within The Government

David Tredinnick: A Dangerous Man With A Dangerous Amount Of Power

"Proximity to power deludes some into believing they wield it. I put an end to that sort of thinking before it begins"

- Frank Underwood

For those of you who don’t concern yourself with politics (or U.K. politics at least), David Tredinnick is an Eton educated MP (Member of Parliament) for the conservative party. His degree and knowledge forms that of a Masters of Business Administration.

Why are his personal Beliefs a problem?

You may be thinking, ‘why are his views a problem, what power does he have’? Well, I missed off the fact he is a member of the Health Select Committee, and was elected in 2010. Even further, he was opted onto the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (SciTech). Now, this a huge position of power, having a say on what goes on in the medical and scientific community. Their jobs are to review the operations of the Department of Health as well as their associated bodies. This includes reviewing expenditure and policy administration. 

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Pseudoscience in the government

Homeopathy/CHM

He gained (certainly my) attention in 2009 when he spoke of his love for alternative medicine, specifically homeopathy. It was at this time he told parliament that blood will not clot when a full moon is present, then called scientist ‘racially prejudice’. He believes Chinese herbal medicine has full scientific merit, and has even contested health officials on the case, proposing to bring back traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for use by the National Health Service (NHS). 

"With homeopathy, for instance, a remedy might be so diluted — perhaps one part in 200 — that it almost cannot be analysed. In theory, it should be weak, but in fact it gains power from being diluted. I have used homeopathy many times over the years, but I have never been trained in it. Even so, I once looked at the relevant research and prescribed — if I may use the term without insulting the hon. Member for Wyre Forest — a certain remedy for a child who had grommets inserted to deal with glue ear. The treatment was successful after one application, and the problem never recurred."

-Tredinnick

SciTech have reviewed the evidence for homeopathy and stated that is has no medical benefit, it was filtered out of the health services and anything homeopathic, should be labelled as such. This is the committee he is on board with. Why go against the evidence? He found four cherry-picked, badly
studied papers (1, 2, 3, 4) and put them to SciTech to criticise the study they conducted. Now, as these are actual scientist, and he is not (MBA, remember, no actual scientific education himself) they were reviewed systematically and, rightly so, dismissed.

Astrology

It doesn’t stop there; he is a great believer and promoter of astrology in medicine. Astrology is the pseudoscientific art of creating a divine link between astrological phenomena and the events that happen within the world, or more specifically, your personal world. Put bluntly (and perfectly) by Dr Cooper in The Big Bang Theory:

"....participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality."

 You will have probably seen/read this in the back of a newspaper. For example, my Aquarius sign today says:

"Getting near the finish line just doesn't count -- you need to put all your effort into full completion. Finish everything you do today, from workplace conversations to shopping trips. Don't leave things undone or unsaid, and check everything off your list. This is a great lesson in not biting off more than you can chew, though. You'll get a great sense of your capacity and be surprised at how efficient you can be. This effectiveness will figure prominently into your career future."

- astrology.com

 So: finish what I start. Yes, I imagine that will figure in my career future. This alone, for the average human, takes an inordinate lack of logic. Now, combine that with medicine, what do you get? Well
, probably dead people. Medical astrology uses various body parts and diseases and treats them according to the astrological signs, along with the position of sun and the phase of the moon. Ridiculous, right? (If your answer is anything other than ‘yes’, stop reading). Tredinnick spoke at the Astrological Association of Great Britain (AAGB) in 2009. Here, he stated his own personal experience of medical astrology, further stating that this, again, should be used in the NHS. So, it’s perfectly feasible to bring back a treatment programme proven to be ineffective based on the anecdotal evidence of an MP? No, and luckily for the rest of the UK, there wasn’t a huge following for allowing this back into our medical systems. 

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It gets worse

Not only has been a member of the Health Committee and SciTech, but he has now been nominated as a chairman for the Health Committee. He challenged the existing chairman Dr Sarah Wollaston. An actual doctor, with a medical degree and the skill to differentiate between what does work (actual medicine) and what doesn’t work (astrological medicine and homeopathy) - then again, you don't need a degree for that, just common sense. Obviously, Tredinnick doesn’t like this, and has challenged her for the chairman seat. The nominations for the chair ran from the 4^th until the 10^th of June, with the results announced today on Wednesday the 17^th June.

Edit: - sign this petition at change.org

Conclusion

This man has purported to return two medical systems that have been reviewed time and time again,
 to show that they have absolutely no scientific merit. This hurts people; cancer should not be treated with astrology, or with Chinese herbs. The NHS is, and at the time was, in a state of financial crisis. Admittedly, treating people with homeopathy theoretically shouldn’t cost much as it is mainly just water, but never the less, training people on bullshit does cost money. Not to mention the fallout that would become nowadays, it has been proven that this pseudoscientific crap doesn’t work, why would you risk the lawsuits? 

If elected the chairman gets a lot of power within the medical community. So, who would you rather have with that power? An actual doctor, who knows the ins and outs of the medical procedures and has the scientific skills to back up claims, research and follow up, or do we want a raging, homeopathic, pseudoscientific lunatic in control? Simply put, we cannot have a pseudoscientist in charge of the health committee, it is ridiculous. I don’t think people understand the harm an extremely well placed pseudoscientist can cause, and hopefully, we won’t find out in this case. Somebody as scientific illiterate as this in government shouldn’t be at this position, let alone be running for a higher position, with a weigh in of pseudoscience over medical science.

And in case you didn’t hate him already; Tredinnick voted against same sex marriage at all its bills, in February 2013 and its review in May 2013. Furthermore, he believes that cancer should be cured through the use of radionics – the act of healing a person through the power of thought. 

Well, in the spirit of that, hopefully we are thinking of Tredinnick, and not in a positive way.

Sugar - is it all bad?

Sugar – The Not So Secret Killer

   

This week I saw an article on SKY NEWS on how a study finds that more sugar is contained in ‘healthy fruit snacks’ than in Haribo sweets. In the article, they say that Fruitz 100% fruit drops had higher levels of sugar in them:

Frootz:

Haribo:

As you can see, not one ingredient in the Frootz is added sugar.  Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Honey, Molassess, Glucose, Maltose and Lactose can be listed as ingredients as added sugar sources, which are clearly not present. Meaning, the sugar in there is naturally occurring from the fruit. Per 18g serving we have 11.3g of sugar, compared to Haribos 10.7g per 18g. So, not that much more really is it? None the less, they are correct. The fruit does contain more sugar. Primarily, the sugar found in fruit is fructose. Fruits contain many salient nutrients required by the body; water, fibre and essential vitamins. Sweets, such as Haribo actually contain purified sugar forms; High Fructose Corn Syrup, Glucose table sugar – meaning they should be consumed in moderation, as too much of this sugar can cause fatigue, tooth decay concentration loss and so forth. 

The differences in these two is that the naturally occurring fruits in sugar contain phenols, a form of an antioxidant, offering many health benefits, whereas refined added sugars don’t give this benefit. Fructose breaks down in the liver, meaning there insulin isn’t provoked to respond. Glucose however, breaks down in the stomach, requiring the release of insulin to remove the sugars from the bloodstream. Dried fruit; known for it being a high sugary treat, has a high fibre content and high amount of nutrients. However, these are the ones that they tend to add sugar too, if you are monitoring your sugar intake, look for ‘no added sugar’ on the labels. So yeah, fruits contain sugar, in high amounts. But it is very different from added sugar.

 

Action On Sugar

You may be thinking that ‘if this organisation is so against sugar, surely they would know the difference between the two’, well, you’d be wrong. And why has SKY News picked this up? They keep referring to a study, what study is this? Who is it funded by? And honestly, what scientific journal has published a study saying that the sugar content in fruit is higher in sweets? – This has been studied over and over again, it is a fundamental truth. However, basic biology has the answers to the differences in the metabolism of the sugar in the different sources. There is also no indication that such a new study has been published on their website, in fact, most of the work appears to be on salt, which definitely should be reduced in food.

This organisation is calling for a tax on high sugar content food. So does this include fruit? I mean a kids 200ml fruit smoothie from Innocent contains 9.6g of sugar and is already expensive as it goes (although epically delicious).  Why not educate people instead of inducting more tax into a ever indebted society? Taxing things does not deter them, it means they just spend more, and the government gets more. Surely campaigning for the education of sugars in foods and the detrimental effects they cause (when continuously consumed in large quantities) is much more effective than taking more money out of peoples pockets? Not to mention, it is a news reporter/journalists job to inform the public on the facts, a sentence stating that there are fundamental differences between the sugar in fruit and the sugar found in sweets would have sufficed.

This causes major worries amongst parents, people consuming sugar and fruits. There is even a comment section on the base of the SKY NEWS article where someone states they don’t give their children ‘carcinogenic aspartame’ and a ‘stack of unnatural preservatives’ – food babe army at it again. There’s zero evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic. At all.

Source

Conclusion

Again, it took me around 20 minutes to research the differences in sugar (to check the knowledge). What this article is saying (from my perception) is not to eat fruit as it has high sugar contents when from manufacturing plants. Parents have hard times getting fruit in their children as it is, many of which don’t have the time to research the differences between sugars and what they mean. The easiest ways tend to be via the use of having marketing packets, making fruit fun, having different characters and bright packaging in order to entice the children to eat it. A marketing scheme which has worked for many years. You are encouraged, especially by myself, to check the backs of packets, as yes, many packed fruit will contain added sugars by companies in order to make it taste nicer, just the examples given here and the wording of the entire article is misleading and atrocious. 

It is irresponsible of an organisation, such as 'Action On Sugar' and even SKY NEWS to pick up on the fact that fruit has more sugar and propagate it as though this is detrimental to children, going to further the obesity crisis and make people feel like bad parents. I’m not saying this sugar is bad for you, of course it’s not in small amounts. Everything is good in moderation, but campaigning against food manufacturers because of the sugar content of natural fruit is just ludicrous. Eat fruit.