Pointing Fingers

General James Conway Wants You To Delude Yourself

The Marine Corps' top officer said March 25 that even if the ban on openly-serving gays in the services is lifted, he would draw the line at forcing heterosexual Marines to bunk with gays on base.

"We want to continue [two-person rooms], but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it," Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told Military.com during an exclusive interview at the Pentagon. "And to me that means we have to build BEQs [bachelor enlisted quarters] and have single rooms."

Conway's comments came the same day that Defense Secretary Robert Gates reprimanded the Army's Pacific commander for publicly exhorting servicemembers and civilians to write to Congress to oppose repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Army Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon made his views known in a letter published in Stars and Stripes on March 8.

Maybe I am missing something here, but Conway is speaking as if there aren't actually any gays in the Marines.

What he is actually saying is that he would prefer E1-E3 to pretend that there aren't any gays in the Marines because self delusion is good for unit cohesion.

He might just as well ask servicemembers in Iraq to pretend there aren't any IEDs to worry about, making everyone less stressed overall.

He could also ask all white supremacists to pretend that everyone in the military is white by simply digging their eyes out so they can't actually see. So what if blind servicemembers are less effective, it's all about making everyone feel comfortable.

Fucking idiot.

Maybe Conway should resign and apply for a position in the hospitality industry, making room for an actual leader, not a pretend one who has his head shoved so far up his ass, he doesn't know what decade we're in.

Hello Healthcare Reform, Goodnight Genocide

They fought until the bitter end.

Opponents of health reform spent the first year of the Obama administration fighting tooth and nail to derail him and kill it, demonizing everyone and everything in their path.

It inspired the birth of the Tea Party activists, a group of angry and confused citizens who had bought hook, line and sinker into the fear tactics purchased for millions by insurance companies, and sold by faux grass roots organizations they funded.

Throughout the summer of 2009, raucous town hall meetings dominated the political landscape.

Images of bureaucrats on "death panels" banging gavels and dispensing death sentences on grandma were perpetuated by everyone from Sarah Palin, dragging around her child with Down’s Syndrome like a cheap prop, to turncoats in the senate, like Chuck Grassley, who lied to Obama that he would work to secure bipartisan legislation, while telling his constituents he wouldn’t, YouTube be damned.

Hungry for blood, the racism was just as unconcealed as the weapons activists waved around dangerously at town halls where the President spoke, chillingly calling for the blood of patriots to water the tree of liberty. Protests decrying the rise of a fascist/socialist/communist caricature of the Obama administration and Obama Care threatened to annihilate the First and Second Amendment with the fervor of the New York Police Department at a Republican convention in 2004.

Caricatures of the President as Hitler and the Joker depicted him as a fascist, socialist and witch doctor who murdered unborn children and grandmothers with equal disdain. Intelligence was equated with elitism while ignorance and stupidity were hailed as patriotic.

Orly Taitz – an unhinged lawyer/dentist and leading figure for the quickly discredited "birther" movement challenged the President’s citizenship, claiming Obama is an Islamo-fascist sympathizer and that that Fox News is partly owned by Saudi Arabia. (And is, no doubt, a proponent of tort reform, having only been personally involved in 22 lawsuits in Orange County civil court, and been charged frequently with judicial and ethical misconduct in her capacity as an attorney in federal court and with the California Bar Association).

Aligning themselves with Ms. Taitz included Senator Jim Inhofe, Rep. Bill Posey, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, Rep. John Campbell, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. John Culberson.

Republicans lost in a sea of moral hypocrisy, led by the cartoonish RNC Chair, Michael Steele, a fey and ineffective Mitch McConnell in the Senate, and the giggly trio of John Boehner, Eric Canter and John Cornyn in the House of Representatives, turned to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to define not just healthcare, but themselves and their party.

During the President’s State of the Union address in January, an unknown congressman named Joe Wilson screamed "You lie" after the president stated that illegal immigrants would not be provided for in the health insurance legislation. While it played well to the racist fringes and gave Wilson fifteen minutes of fame at tea party rallies, turns out Wilson lied.

As the hateful venom flooded the airwaves, and saturated America’s living rooms, the Bill O’Riellys, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks demonized a doctor named George Tiller, referring to him as a "baby killer" until a lunatic named Scott Rhoeder walked into Dr. Tiller’s church and blew his brains out. The pro-life message was being delivered all right.

The election in Massachusetts of Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s senate seat was heralded as the nail in the coffin of healthcare reform, and ended the Democrats’ filibuster proof supermajority in the senate. Petrified and defeatist Democrats lamented the loss of power they never bothered using anyway, and joined media pundits and Republicans in their own death march.

Yet a polarizing, divisive figure, whose very name and presence screams partisanship, soldiered on. The first woman Speaker of the House and arguably the most powerful woman in the world along with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, revived the bill. President Obama finally rolled up his sleeves and realized that his attempts at bipartisanship were a hopeless pipe dream that would leave him and America with nothing.

A brave cadre of 59 000 nuns represented by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, who broke rank with the Church had stated: "We believe that genuine health care reform is a moral imperative; therefore we call for a health care policy that respects and protects human life and dignity and advances universal coverage."

The Pope was far too busy offering disillusioned Irish Catholics a belated, half-hearted apology for yet another sexual abuse scandal referring to their continued and deliberate practice of covering up and sheltering child rapists in the Church (rather than bring the irreparably tarnished and corrupt institution into disrepute), to stand up for the life affirming goal of universal health coverage.

Challenging Orly Taitz for the clown crown, the demented Representative Michele Bachmann turned classic symptoms of paranoid delusion and bipolar disorder into political strategy kooky enough for Glenn Beck to endorse, dethroning Ann Coulter, and turning her into an irrelevant, incoherent cross between Stephen Baldwin and Phyllis Schlafly.

A half-witted, half-term governor former governor from Alaska characterized the debate as between supporters of socialism and "those who love America." These are the same anti-socialists who have no qualms with the United States giving aid to Israel to support the egalitarian and socialist roots of Zionism by enticing Jews in the Diaspora to come to Israel through generous housing and other subsidies in addition to government-created jobs that both fund and perpetuate settlements.

Major compromises were made, and what ultimately passed on Sunday evening was a watered down version of health reform that did not include the robust public option that many Americans were seeking to encourage competition.

Despite abortion language that reiterated the existing Hyde Amendment that was inserted, ensuring that a woman’s right to a legal, constitutional abortion is never funded by the government, the issue still nearly managed to derail reform.

By the time the vote came over the weekend the Tea Party had turned sour, even uglier than the racist McCain Palin campaign rallies of 2008.

Revealing their true colors and true intentions, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spat on by a protestor, Rep. John Lewis was called a "nigger" and Rep. Barney Frank was called a "faggot" and "Homo Communist." That a group appropriating a sex act known to most gay men to define their movement and which sounds gayer than a Richard Simmons aerobics class would scream homophobic slurs is delicious irony – but irony is as elusive to Tea Party activists as coherence is.

No sooner had one of the biggest obstacles to passage of the bill, the congressman Bart Stupak, announced his support, he secured an assurance that President Obama would sign an executive order ensuring that no federal funding be spent on abortion, Republican attack dogs on the floor of the House of Representatives turned on him. A coward from Texas named Randy Neugebauer took a whole day to admit it was he who called Stupak a "baby killer" in a stunning lack of institutional decorum that echoed the rancor outside.

Just before the voting began, Rep. John Boehner, bristling with unbridled anger in a speech -- or rather a screech -- that turned his fake orange tan crimson then white, screamed "hell no you can’t" as Democrats could and did moments later.

And so, after an historic moment in the House occurred, healthcare reform became real. Far, far from perfect, and sorely lacking in many areas, but real. For the first time in a long time, CSPAN must have trumped ESPN.

When America woke up on Monday morning, the sky had not fallen. No one who had health insurance woke to find it gone, or their premiums raised.

The best post-mortem of how this was played by the Republicans was written by a Republican strategist David Frum underscoring how momentous the occasion was, warning Republicans that the chances of repealing the bill were all but impossible and that they best figure out a different strategy for November elections, in which a sweep was by no means inevitable, but rather unlikely.

Predictable blowhards from the angry right responded with the same political tone deafness they demonstrated throughout the process.

Rush Limbaugh, who vowed to leave the country if health insurance reform passed ranted incoherently, safely ensconced in his Vicodin-induced, white supremacist haze somewhere in Florida, with no immediate plans on his imminent departure.

Violating his First Amendment protections by inciting and espousing violence and harassment, hiding behind his microphone, he vented over the passage of what he previously termed health reform -- reparations. "We need to defeat these bastards," he frothed. "We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. Defeat the Democrats, every one of them that voted for this bill. They need to be exposed and hassled and chased from office."

Glenn Beck screamed, and cried and confused himself, asking "Are you an American or are you a mouse? Are you an American or a European?" Whether he was asking his listeners or himself wasn’t clear.

John McCain, the senile Senator from Arizona emphatically vowed that his party "will no longer work with the president." A real loss, mind you, given how much his party had worked with the President already. Sounding like an angry schoolgirl who just had her hair pulled, he told an Arizona radio station: "There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year." Seemingly having forgotten why he was elected and for whom he works, and wondering why an inexperienced hack swathed in Jack Abramoff’s money and who can’t tell the difference between a man and a horse, is set to oust him in a primary election.

Yet for all the rhetoric and all the anger, and exposure of the litany of corruption, lies and misinformation, defeated and deflated Republicans will no doubt continue to do everything in their power to put a genie back into a bottle, tossing about overused and tired claims of liberty thwarted and freedom denied.

Hypocrites will continue to use abortion to demonize the bill and the people who voted for it, while sentencing people to death, proposing bombing campaigns, selling weapons and advocating war, seeking to roll back the clock and repeal the legislation.

Media pundits who have proved wrong on every issue time and time again will weigh in with their Monday morning quarterbacking and unreliable predictions for November that mean as much as a McCain Palin bumper sticker.

But here are some facts that no amount of posturing can take away as this becomes the law of the land.

Six months after the President signs the legislation, the majority of plans will be prohibited from placing lifetime limits on medical coverage, and will not be able to cancel policies of those who fall ill. Children with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied coverage. In 2014, no one with pre-existing conditions will be denied insurance, all lifetime and annual limits on coverage will be eliminated.

On Tuesday, March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law.

No matter how loudly the angry right stomps, screams, swears and complains, a holocaust perpetrated by greedy insurance company executives is coming to an end.

No matter how much the confused tea partiers cling to their Medicaid cards while decrying socialism and the "government takeover of healthcare," and no matter how many hateful epithets they hurl at blacks, gays, immigrants and anyone who isn’t part of their narrow, white field of vision, this murder spree is wrapping up.

A Harvard study conservatively estimated that somewhere in the region of 45 000 people die annually in the United States for no other reason than that they don’t have health insurance. Those numbers aren’t just statistics. That’s a child losing his dad because he didn’t get a check up and had an easily preventable heart attack. It’s a parent losing a child because they couldn’t afford to give her chemotherapy.

Treatments for high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol that can now prevent complications and lengthen the lives of someone’s mother or father will no longer be denied. How many hundreds of thousands of people or millions should die before we call this holocaust what it is?

When insurance companies use algorithms to identify who among those paying them obscene amounts of money to begin with is sick, so they can cancel their coverage when they need it the most, denying them life saving treatments and drugs, how is that different to placing a yellow star or pink triangle on their arm and leading them into a gas chamber?

Opponents of healthcare reform and those seeking to undermine the bill in a futile quest to get it repealed need to own the fresh blood they seem to want back on their hands. We were already killing grandma. The death panels were already rationing care, with names, like WellPoint and Aetna.

No matter how much they continue to shriek, posture, cheat, lie, and manipulate, America passed a bill that, for all its shortcomings, seeks to put an end to this insane, profit-driven insurance company killing rampage once and for all.

Not one Republican voted for it.

And they call themselves pro-life.

Saudis, Sense & Sensibilities

In today's New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd refers to an article in Arab News titled "Working mothers in a double bind," in which the author suggests it is possible to juggle the demands of husbands, kids and housework, as long as the husband isn't a nag. Or if he finds out you've been hiring a cook, in which case, he'll divorce you.

Arab News has always been slightly ahead of the curve. In a an article about a San Jose printer destroying my prints, they told readers they could access my prints through local ISPs even though the Kingdom’s Internet authority has blocked local access to Annoy.com, and that they couldn't reproduce them in a "family publication." (sounds very American to me).

Dowd's column, and Arab News' tackling of this kind of subject matter might suggest a relaxing of sorts of the religious fervor governing Saudi Arabia. They might just look to this article in Arab News, with its no doubt unintended if not unfortunate title: "Homosexual-cum-impostor cop sentenced to jail, lashes" (See the "offensive" video below.)

Sloppy Science & Callous Calculations Damage UCLA’s Credibility

In a damning transcript released by University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Professor Sally Blower, the besieged UCLA director of of the Disease Modeling Group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)is exposed to have deliberately ignored concerns raised by UCSF in the first draft of a joint press release, and rewrote it, “changing both tone and substance” of the original draft. Dr. Blower had attempted to focus accountability on Enrique Rivero of UCLA Health Sciences Communications and Government Relations, headed by Executive Director Dale Triber Tate, and UCSF.

The alarmist press release on January 14th, 2010, headlined "Study predicts HIV drug resistance will surge," touted the publication of a study by Dr. Blower, co-authored by UCSF’s Dr. Jim Kahn in the journal Science.

In early February, demands for an explanation and retraction from UCLA by me and activist Michael Petrelis, were sent to Dr, Blower. I suggested that UCLA follow the lead set by Barbara French, associate vice chancellor of University Relations at UCSF and UCSF's liaison for LGBT health issues, Ms. Shane Snowdon, who met with us following fallout from a MRSA study that turned into a scandal in 2008, and established a set of concrete steps to take to ensure it didn’t happen again.

A letter requesting an explanation was also sent by San Francisco Supervisor, Bevan Dufty, to which Dr. Blower responded two weeks later, in which she wrote: “We wish to stress that the press release was written by the UCLA media person for HIV and was approved by the media team at UCSF.”

Seeking clarification from UCSF, a statement by Ms. French was issued to Michael Petrelis through Ms. Sonwdon.

Categorically disputing Dr. Blower’s claim, Ms. French stated that UCSF media personnel did not “have the opportunity to approve the UCLA press release.” Ms. French further stated: “When the study was circulated at UCLA and UCSF, Jeff Sheehy, Communications Director at the AIDS Research Institute at UCSF, told Enrique Rivero, the UCLA media representative for the study, that he thought it would be controversial. Rivero drafted a press release about the study that used qualifiers such as 'could' and differed significantly from the final UCLA release.”

Dr. Blower, it appears, didn’t like qualifiers that would water down the sensational and unsubstantiated claims being touted by her study.

According to Ms. French, “On receiving this draft release, Dr. Blower apparently rewrote it, changing both tone and substance.” Again, according to Ms. French, UCSF’s Mr. Sheehy warned Rivero that the rewritten release “would create problems, but the release was distributed.” Mr. Sheehy “did not have an opportunity to edit or approve the rewritten release” and considered it problematic enough that he “did not submit it to UCSF channels for distribution and did not send it to his contacts.”

Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's HIV prevention chief, had told us at a community event on February 10, 2010 (sponsored in part by UCSF, and as a result of the MRSA mess from two years ago), that HIV drug resistance is not a public health crisis, and that Blower’s supposedly new model revealed nothing new, adding that the study “should not change clinical practice or public health policy.”

According to Ms. French, Mr. Sheehy “directed media to Dr. Colfax to ensure that DPH concerns were presented.”

I recently wrote a long expose on Professor Sally Blower, who has a history of fabricating information, and falsely accusing her colleagues of sexual harassment and other damaging lies that she’s been required to retract publicly.

Fellow scientists criticize her publicly, denouncing her as unpleasant and difficult to get along with, let alone work with. Her tumultuous departure from UCSF under a cloud of lies and strong-armed tactics, designed to hurt individuals and the university, was replicated at UCLA, where incredibly, she still works.

Despite her unfortunate personality traits – no one enjoys working with colleagues that will lie and fabricate charges against them – it appears that her lies and mischaracterizations don’t just apply to destroying people personally, but are part of her work ethic, and where her over-bloated ego and desire for attention at any cost, actually risks lives.

In 2005, Sir Roy Anderson, of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College at the University of London wrote a terse letter to The Journal of Infectious Diseases, providing evidence of a mathematical model he had originally published in Nature in 1991 which was “the first transmission model of HIV vaccines to assess the potential epidemic-level impact of imperfect vaccines.” His letter followed an attempt by Dr. Blower to discredit his claim in 2005 by falsely claiming that her 1993 and 1994 articles represented the first publication of the first transmission model related to the potential epidemic-level impact of imperfect vaccines.

While Sir Anderson has his own baggage around failures to disclose business associations, he is widely respected for his expertise. He is a is a leading British expert on epidemiology, and also currently chairs the science advisory board of WHO's Neglected Tropical Diseases program, is a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges advisory board, and chairs the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative advisory board (SCI) funded by the Gates Foundation. He is a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline.

Dr. Sally Blower, on the other hand, has a history of lying, fabricating and then publicly having to apologize in addition to criticisms by scientists and colleagues who question the veracity of her claims and feasibility of her models. Dr. Blower deliberately eliminated the cautions and qualifiers inserted by UCSF in order to sensationalize the findings of her study. "If the resistant strains we have identified in our analyses evolve in these countries, they could significantly compromise HIV treatment programs. Consequently, currently circulating NNRTI-resistant strains in San Francisco pose a great and immediate threat to global public health," the study said.

Dr. Blower further used the media opportunity to cast doubt on current HIV prevention strategies, particularly the “test and treat’’ approach being advocated by the World Health Organization, which aims to reduce high quantities of the virus being generated in an infected person to low enough levels that little to no HIV is passed along to a partner.

These actions are dangerous and deadly and impact the lives of other people.

Dr. Blower’s response to the questions raised by this study has been to mischaracterize and obfuscate the truth.

Originally I had called for an explanation, which I later changed to a demand for an apology or a retraction. In light of these new revelations and Dr. Blower’s deliberate and calculated attempt to give more credence to her findings by removing qualifiers, ignoring legitimate concerns raised by UCSF and her willingness to demonize a community in the process is reprehensible and represents a black eye to UCLA’s credibility.

UCLA needs to qualify why they continue to support Dr. Blower, or Dr. Blower should resign.

Math Debate

“…the situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man's reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled.”

Camille Paglia, Playboy interview, May 1995.

Who is Dr. Sally Blower? Why is Head of the Disease Modeling Group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA making claims in writing that are confusing, contradictory and so easily refutable? Why is she, along with her researchers, churning out alarming press releases that inspire confusion and panic among populations already stigmatized? Why are her findings based on these studies being published in supposedly respectable journals and magazines? Why would the director of the Center for Biomedical Modeling at UCLA, claiming to design effective, ethical and optimal implementation strategies for the rollout of HIV treatment in Africa, demonstrate such astonishing cultural, social and political tone deafness in San Francisco and Los Angeles? And why are so few media organizations challenging the extrapolations and misinformation they yield, which have the very real potential to interfere with AIDS/HIV prevention and treatment strategies on a global scale?

In July 1992 Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie, a version that spoke little phrases. Among the 270 phrases was "Math class is tough!" By October, in response to criticism from the American Association of University Women, Mattel apologized, hastily removed the offensive phrase from the chip containing the phrases, reducing the number of phrases to 269, (even though only 1.5% of the dolls were said to utter the phrase), and agreed to exchange any Barbie doll commenting on math. Admitting they had made a mistake, Mattel's president, Jill E. Barad, wrote to the American Association of University Women, stating: “In hindsight, the phrase 'math class is tough,' while correct for many students both male and female, should not have been included." She added: "We didn't fully consider the potentially negative implications of this phrase, nor were we aware of the findings of your organization's report."

A number of issues from this incident are instructive. Did Barbie’s subjective opinion on math perpetuate stereotypes regarding girls and math? Did the American Association of University Women have a legitimate point, and was their demand for action effective? Did Mattel act appropriately once attention was drawn to potential damage based on perpetuating stereotypes?

Fast forward to January, 2010. An alarmist press release from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on January 14^th headlined "Study predicts HIV drug resistance will surge," touted the publication of a study in the journal Science. It was remarkably similar to an August 2001 headline on a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) release about another drug resistance study based on a math model by Dr. Blower, which read "Researchers predict future of drug-resistant HIV epidemic." Dr. Blower, the 52 year old Head of the Disease Modeling Group at UCLA, stated that by “2013, the proportion of new infections resistant to NNRTIs may have increased by 30 per cent in the city compared with now.”

"What I'm concerned about is that people will use this paper either to not treat or to delay treatment."

Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's HIV prevention chief, San Francisco Chronicle, January 2010

Like the fallout over the MRSA (multi-resistant staph infections) over two years ago, in which an ill-conceived press release and erroneous extrapolations from a UCSF study resulted in widespread condemnation from the gay community, as well as a collaborative series of steps to ensure it didn’t happen again, the findings from UCLA's study offered nothing new. A deliberately sensationalized press release from UCLA overstated both the relevance and importance of the results. Worse, one of the researchers, Justin Okano, quoted in the release implied that, if not evoked, irresponsible, drug-imbibing, HIV-infected gay men were responsible for a “surge” of epidemic proportions of multi-resistant HIV strains over the next five years. "Our model showed that what is going on in San Francisco is very complicated — but in a nutshell, it is due to the bug, the drugs and sex," he said.

The refutations were fast and furious.

Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's HIV prevention chief, told us at a recent community event (sponsored in part by UCSF, and as a result of the MRSA mess from two years ago), that HIV drug resistance is not a public health crisis, and that Blower’s supposedly new model revealed nothing new, adding that the study “should not change clinical practice or public health policy.” In a meeting of the HIV Prevention Planning Council on January 14^th, 2010, Dr. Colfax advised that the San Francisco Public Health Department was responding in real time to concerns raised by the article in Science, stressing however, that he did not want to over respond to the article giving it more credence than necessary. He stated that they “used data to make assumptions and came up with a scenario based on modeling which is not incorrect.”

"I have been extremely troubled by the emails that I have received from Mr. Petrelis and Mr. Clinton Fein as they have been extremely insulting to me both personally and professional (sic)."

Dr. Sally Blower, Letter to Supervisor Bevan Dufty, February 25, 2010

Dr. Colfax had little choice other than to deal with questions raised by the alarming press release. In an interview with Bay Area Reporter’s Seth Hemmelgarn, he stated that “in San Francisco, as more people have gone on treatment, we've seen dramatic drops in morbidity and mortality, and we're starting to see a decline in newly reported HIV infections." Dr. Colfax added, unambiguously, that San Francisco’s “treatment options are better than ever before, and while resistance is an ongoing concern, and always will be, we also need to be clear that the benefits of treatment are high and that the new guidelines regarding treatment have swung toward recommending treatment earlier.” Dr. Blower dismissed Hemmelgarn’s suggestion that the study might be considered alarmist or unbelievable by touting that the paper was being published in "one of the best" scientific journals in the world.

"What I'm concerned about is that people will use this paper either to not treat or to delay treatment," Dr. Colfax told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Carl Dieffenbach, director of the division of AIDS at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland confirmed Mr. Colfax’s assertion that development of resistance is not an insoluble problem. “The emergence of HIV drug resistance is not a dead end,” he said. “We can identify patients who are failing treatment and switch them to other, effective regimens.”

However, despite dire predictions from a 2001 study using her math models, in which Dr. Blower predicted that by 2005, 42 percent of all HIV cases will be drug-resistant, the transmission of drug-resistant virus seemed to increase from 2003 to 2007, to the point where, in San Francisco in the year 2007, 28 percent of all new cases of HIV were resistant to at least one drug. Not the alarmingly high percentage she predicted by looking into her increasingly murky crystal ball then, or now.

On February 18^th, 2010, I sent Dr. Blower and her team a letter (see full text here) demanding an explanation. Seasoned AIDS/HIV and gay activist, Michael Petrelis, had already sent her and her team a letter demanding an explanation, which had been ignored, as had San Francisco Supervisor, Bevan Dufty, requesting a dialog to quell growing community anger. In my letter, I raised objections to the extrapolations pulled from the study, criticized the UCLA communications structure that could enable a press release with dubious findings and flippant, vague and divisive quotes to pass muster for distribution, and expressed doubt that this study had implications for treatment anywhere in the United States, let alone third world or developing countries. I noted that the study and expression of its refuted findings had the potential to inject uncertainty into critical prevention methodologies and inspire hate legislation aimed at gays and people with HIV/AIDS like we are seeing in Uganda.

I added that it was dangerous, callous and inexcusable, and demanded an apology, retraction or both.

"She wanted pretty math…So we ended up writing down equations for them that really didn't have anything to do with what they were saying."

Sally Blower, The Scientist, April 1, 2009

On February 25^th, 2010, Dr. Blower finally responded to Supervisor Dufty’s letter. My initial reaction, upon reading it, was disbelief, which soon turned to anger. Dr. Blower’s letter was defensive, dismissive of the concerns raised, and bereft of any accountability. Although she ignored my letter, she did unsuccessfully attempt to address some of the issues I had raised, but also falsely accused me of insulting her personally, which I had not done, (it was her work, extrapolations, and manner of expression I took issue with) without even bothering to copy me on it.

Something about Dr. Sally Blower’s passive aggressive response and fabricated accusation didn’t smell right to me. Something about the pitch of her self-righteous indignation struck me as less than sincere. So I decided to do a little research. What I learned about this woman blew my mind. The more I found out about her past, her reputation, her standing and her behavior, the more incredulous I became by her response.

In her letter to Supervisor Dufty, sent on behalf of all of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Blower began by expressing how “extremely sorry” they were that the “UCLA press release has caused such concern,” before instantly shifting the blame. “We wish to stress that the press release was written by the UCLA media person for HIV and was approved by the media team at UCSF.”

In my email to her, I relayed an email message sent to Michael Petrelis from Dale Triber Tate, Executive Director, UCLA Health Sciences Communications and Government Relations, in which she had deflected blame from Enrique Rivero (whose name appeared on the official UCLA press release), and placed the accountability firmly in the hands of the researchers. Ms. Tate outlined UCLA’s procedures through which researchers review and edit the release, and upon consensus, a final version is published. Ms. Tate did acknowledge that if a public information officer discovered a factual error, or if they had problems with the language or tone provided by a scientist, they would convey as much, but that “the researcher is the ultimate arbiter of what is contained in the press release that is distributed.”

Dr. Blower essentially contradicts what Ms. Tate had said. That Ms. Tate, Rivero nor any other public information officer challenged the extrapolations, nor had issue with Mr. Okano’s flippant quote is embarrassing enough for UCLA. But, Dr. Blower is punting blame to Enrique Rivero, in turn suggesting Ms. Tate is actually accountable, not Dr. Blower or her team of researchers. Yet nowhere does she cop to disagreeing with the characterizations, headline, language or tone of the press release. This is precisely why I had recommended UCLA and anyone associated with the Semel Institute or David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA ensure that researchers stick to statistics, and leave media communications related to these kinds of studies to professionals who are trained to understand the implications of communications released by a renowned educational institution.

And why I had wondered, in writing, how Mr. Okano’s quote could pass muster in an official UCLA press release, suggesting UCLA has some urgent, time-sensitive work to do. Clearly I was correct, since the first step would be to figure out who is actually accountable for communications issued by UCLA. Based on a preponderance of evidence in other areas, I am inclined to believe Ms. Tate first.

Dr. Blower goes on to say how the “clinical aspects of my work, over the past decade, have been informed by” her friend and colleague at UCSF, Dr. Jim Kahn, a co-author of the study who she touts as having worked with HIV infected individuals for twenty five years and that “the majority of the patients that he cares for are members of the LGBT (sic).” Perhaps so, but on February 19^th, 2010, when reporter Joe Vazquez of KPIX attempted to discuss the mounting criticism over this study and its findings with Dr. Kahn, he refused to appear on camera.

“Simple models can yield important insights into transmission dynamics; however overly simplistic models can produce misleading results.”

Dr. Sally Blower, Voluntary universal testing and treatment is unlikely to lead to HIV elimination: a modeling analysis, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles

"Consequently, currently circulating NNRTI-resistant strains in San Francisco pose a great and immediate threat to global public health," warned the ominous final sentence of their study. Surely if the alarming extrapolations from this study were even close to true, that there was this great and immediate threat to global health, the authors would do everything in their power to use the media as an opportunity to further awareness, not shy away from a camera like a cockroach being exposed by a flashlight. It certainly didn’t help Dr. Blower, now using Dr. Kahn’s twenty five years of experience to establish her professional bona fides with the LGBT.

With a nauseatingly patronizing tone and disingenuous flair, Dr. Blower continued in her letter to Supervisor Dufty, perhaps confusing him with his young daughter. “We understand that our research has generated strong feelings and emotions however science by its very nature can be controversial, and the press release did reflect the scientific findings in our article. Our major finding is that resistance to antiretrovirals is likely to rise in the next few years in San Francisco. Our findings are based on solid evidence and complex analyses of data collected in San Francisco. Before publication of our article it was thoroughly reviewed by the world’s top thought leaders and editors on the subject.”

Perhaps the economy or a strong commitment toward environmental awareness prevented her from citing the name of just one of the world’s top thought leaders and editors. Like the names of the vocal critics just below. The point we made – experts and non-experts alike – was that the likely rise of resistance to antiretrovirals is already well known. Not news. Despite the “thorough review” by all these nameless thought leaders and editors, this study and its findings were a non-story.

As an editorial in Bay Area Reporter, following our community meeting, stated: “based on modeling and calculations looking at the transmission of drug resistant strains of HIV involving just one class or type of antiretroviral drug – non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs). It was not a study examining the actual levels of drug resistant HIV and rates of its transmission in San Francisco. Other studies that have been done looked at actual levels of transmission of drug resistant strains of HIV and found rates declining, not rising.”

Another recent study touted in an UCLA press release by Dr. Blower touted how her math model, applied to the H1N1 flu virus had determined that “many infections could occur if the infected individual was traveling in economy class but relatively few if the individual was traveling in first class." I suppose there were rocket scientists at NASA figuring out that fifty kids peeing an a baby pool were more likely to warm the water than a single adult in a big pool, so Dr. Blower didn’t use her model for that.

In a letter to The Journal of Infectious Diseases in 2005, Sir Roy Anderson, of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College at the University of London wrote to counter claims by Dr. Blower after she attempted to discredit a 2005 publication by Anderson and Hanson, writing that "the model of an imperfect vaccine with therapeutic effects presented recently by Anderson and Hanson was one that had been designed and analyzed previously by Blower et al." Sir Anderson responded that Dr. Blower "falsely claims that her 1993 and 1994 articles included, to quote, 'the first transmission model of HIV vaccines to assess the potential epidemic-level impact of imperfect vaccines.' This is incorrect — the 1991 Nature article by Anderson et al. was the first."

Of course rivalries exist among scientists, and Sir Anderson has his own fair share of controversies, (such as being on the board of GlaxoSmithKline and his resignation from Oxford University after breaching rules by failing to disclose his business interests), but Sir. Anderson flat out accused Dr. Blower of deliberately falsifying facts. "I hope your readers will draw their own conclusions as to the origins of both the first mathematical model (and associated analyses)," Sir Anderson wrote tersely, allowing the model to speak for itself.

An eye-opening article in The Scientist in April 2009, written by Virginia Hughes, reveals that not everyone is enamored by Dr. Blower’s predictive models, which appear to have been drawn from the same template and applied to a variety of different diseases. Critics responded specifically to a controversial paper that suggested a vaginal microbicide against HIV could benefit men more than women by pointing to her models as overly simplistic and not grounded in reality.

The very criticism Dr. Blower uses to debunk World Health Organization HIV prevention and treatment strategies, and tout herself as an "infamous WHO critic," as evidenced in her recent study, “Voluntary universal testing and treatment is unlikely to lead to HIV elimination: a modeling analysis.” And the same excuse she and her team use to avoid discussing how they arrived at their conclusions. Hence, Okano’s quote, “Our model showed that what is going on in San Francisco is very complicated — but in a nutshell…”

"I have not felt that there was a high degree of credibility [in some of Blower's work] mainly because some of the clinical and biological underpinnings or assumptions in her work just were not particularly realistic in my view."

Reproductive epidemiologist and HIV specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

According to Ms. Hughes, microbicide experts took issue with the model's real-world relevance, some willing to go on record, such as Lori Heise, director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, in Washington, D.C. who published them in a letter to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in November, 2008.

"In some way, we felt like they slightly missed the point… It's not clear whether the microbicides are absorbed in the bloodstream, where drug resistance would occur. Plus, in order for men to benefit from the microbicide, it would have to protect them from an HIV-positive woman… There's not much biological plausibility at this point to know that that would be the case," Ms. Heise wrote.

Ms. Hughes also quoted Ron Gray, a reproductive epidemiologist and HIV specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who stated: “I have not felt that there was a high degree of credibility [in some of Blower's work] mainly because some of the clinical and biological underpinnings or assumptions in her work just were not particularly realistic in my view.”

Ms. Hughes admitted there were some scientists who had nice things to say about her, but an astonishing seventeen international experts in infectious disease modeling declined to talk to Ms. Hughes about Dr. Blower's research. And three cited “specific unpleasant personal or professional interactions with her.”

Dr. Blower flaunts her expertise as a Hollywood consultant on her resume and other self-promotional collateral, supported by Ms. Hughes article in which she relays a story told by television art director Karen Steward, who was seeking to develop a mathematical model as a plot device for an episode of the CBS drama NUMB3RS, and who despite knowing little about the subject, found Dr. Blower’s equations too simplistic. Recalling the occasion, Dr. Blower said to Ms Hughes what must be the most revealing of anything she’s said to date: “She wanted pretty math. So we ended up writing down equations for them that really didn't have anything to do with what they were saying." The question today, is whether Dr. Blower’s extrapolations amount to anything more than a bunch of simplistic, made up, self-validating shit, made to look pretty – for some communities.

“Both Jim and I have discussed our findings with Dr. Grant Colfax at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and we are all in agreement that there is no need for alarm,” Dr. Blower wrote. A position Dr. Colfax has held from the outset, and that flies in the face of the alarmist nature of the study findings and press release. If there really was likely to be a “surge” of epidemic proportions in the next five years, why wouldn’t that be cause for alarm unless it was all a crock of shit?

Attempting to save face from having just agreed that there was nothing in her findings or study that was cause for alarm, she continues: “However my coauthors and I believe that our results indicate that more widespread and more frequent testing for HIV is essential. We hope that our results will both inform Public Health officials in San Francisco of the potential for an increase in drug resistance and build awareness in the community.”

Let me try being nice here. Perhaps Dr. Blower can help explain why the comment above looks nothing like the press release. Perhaps she can help the idiots among us who wonder where the similarity lies between a finding that warns of an unequivocal epidemic “surge” of HIV resistance in the next five years, and this insipid, non-committal “potential” increase in drug resistance and that “more widespread and more frequent testing for HIV is essential.” Perhaps she can help the illiterate, lobotomized and stoned morons among us understand how “hoping to build awareness” in the community you’ve targeted with big bulls eye on its back is achieved by demonizing them, refusing to listen to their concerns and running away from the cameras when they ask questions.

Dr Blower’s letter continues: “We strongly believe that scientists, clinicians and members of the HIV/AIDS communities need to work together to advance research, policy and the clinical care of people with HIV/AIDS. However to achieve these aims we do not believe that we should hold back enhancing the awareness of critical science because some individuals don’t feel comfortable with the findings.”

Dr. Blower’s understanding of community would be funny if it was not so smug and arrogant. First, despite her unprofessional and hypocrisy-riddled letter, Dr. Blower makes assumptions. I wrote to her as an individual who was insulted and angered by the false, homophobic and sensational extrapolations in her press release, and how dangerous and irresponsible it was. As it happens, I am not a member of the HIV/AIDS community, and nor do I need to be in order to engage in this dialog.

“Both Jim and I have discussed our findings with Dr. Grant Colfax at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and we are all in agreement that there is no need for alarm.”

Dr. Sally Blower, Letter to Supervisor Bevan Dufty, February 25, 2010

Secondly, no one asked anyone to sugarcoat studies or hold back enhancing awareness of legitimate studies, and intelligently formulated interpretations. Dr. Blower’s disingenuous, defensive posturing is as relevant as if I was to conduct a study, using a rehashed template model to prove how a surge in misogyny in Westwood, California can be possibly be traced to self-identified feminist researchers who have also filed false sexual and gender harassment charges. And then feign indignation at the very suggestion I should hold back on the findings because they may make the community of faux feminists uncomfortable.

Yes, let me explain. Rather than address any of the real issues and concerns raised in my letter, or Michael Petrelis’ letter, Dr. Blower chose this route: “I have been extremely troubled by the emails that I have received from Mr. Petrelis and Mr. Clinton Fein as they have been extremely insulting to me both personally and professional (sic). I have previously received such emails from Mr. Petrelis over the past decade and I am no longer willing to discuss any topics with him or with other any individuals who use the same approach. It is unproductive and divisive.”

Never mind that my letter was very different from the letters sent by Michel Petrelis. Never mind that my goal was to engage her in a legitimate dialog. According to Dr, Blower, sending an email is unproductive and divisive. Really? Not according to what I discovered about her. If anything, email -- especially public -- is a weapon she uses with considerable aplomb.

First, there was her scandalous departure from UCSF. On April 6, 2000, in a jaw-dropping, unprofessional tirade in the form of an email to colleagues at UCSF, Dr. Blower wrote: “It was obvious that my career was not going to ‘flourish’ in [Dr. Lee Goldman (Chairman of Medicine)] Goldmans department & I wanted to leave UCSF - I started looking for jobs elsewhere - the Senior Boys wanted [husband, Nelson Freimer] Nelson to stay – so it was decided that I could move to Microbiology & Immunology - I did.” She also admitted to sending an email containing all her grievances “to a handful of senior male colleagues at Yale, MIT, Harvard, NIH, Stanford, Berkeley & Cornell.” As well as to “the publisher of Nature Medicine (Dr. Adrian Ivinson).”

"If they think this is the correct way to treat women, I find it offensive. I don't want to be at this kind of institution," Dr. Blower told Science magazine who wrote that Dr. Blower “told Nature Medicine that her experiences during five years at USCF have adversely affected her career, health and home life and she now wants to go public with her allegations to ‘expose institutional sexism’ within UCSF School of Medicine in the hope of changing the system for others.” Of course, the “whistle-blowing” email was sent only once Dr. Blower had been offered a position at UCLA’s School of Medicine.

“Dr. Blower also admitted “her disparaging statements about the Department of Biomathematics ... and the university were unwarranted. ... Professor Blower further acknowledges that she has not been the subject of gender discrimination, retaliation, harassment or improper exclusion of departmental activities,” the statement read.”

Sara Taylor, The Daily Bruin, Oct. 18, 2006

In response to her allegations, UCSF Chancellor, J. Michael Bishop wrote, on the same day, April 6, 2000: “Many of you by now know that Dr. Sally Blower, Associate Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine, has made allegations of misconduct and discrimination against UCSF and several of our faculty. Dr. Blower chose not to file these allegations as a formal grievance with the campus, but instead has publicized them by means of several widely distributed emails to colleagues, scientific journals and the press.”

Bishop was forced to disclose the fact that he had tasked Professor and Associate Dean Zina Mirsky from the School of Nursing to investigate Dr. Blower’s allegations, despite usually keeping such investigations confidential, adding: “The allegations are not entirely explicit. But they have been interpreted to include institutional sexism, gender discrimination, sexual harassment and professional misconduct.” Concluding, Bishop revealed the conclusion of the investigation: “In examining each and every one of Dr. Blower's charges, Dr. Mirsky found no misconduct or inappropriate behavior on the part of any of the faculty named by Dr. Blower. I have accepted these findings and plan no further action on this matter.”

Apparently Dr. Blower, this barrier-breaking, self-described scientific feminist, didn’t plan on actually doing anything either. In a January 2001 article in Nature Medicine magazine, Dr. Blower demonstrated just how egregiously UCSF had treated her, telling the publication: “Class action suits are the way to go. Universities can easily discredit an individual." She also told the publication that the reason she didn’t seek legal remedy was because she had taken another job and that legal action "would have dragged on for years."

According to the San Francisco Examiner’s Ulysses Torassa, even “the head of the school's affirmative action office, [Diane Wara] who has been sympathetic to Blower, called her portrayal of events ‘overblown and out of perspective.’” Dr. Blower told Ms. Torassa there is nothing Ms. Wara can do so “she spends her time arranging lunches for women faculty to get together and making sure that there are tampon machines in every women's restroom."  Can you get any more condescending?

So in 2000, following her husband to Los Angeles, the feminist Dr. Blower, joined the Department of Biomathematics at UCLA. "If people want to think I've made up a bunch of crazy stories about people at the university, they can think that. I know what's happened, and I have a great job" Dr, Blower told the Examiner in an abrasive, unresolved parting shot at UCSF. "I'm not trying to extract any money out of the university. I'm trying to point out the terrible way women are treated here."

Dr. Blower would later reveal that the “School of Medicine initially wanted to hire her as an associate professor, but her husband said he would join UCLA on the condition that Blower was also offered a full-time position.” That’s feminism for you.

On 12 November 2004, the dean of the UCLA School of Medicine, Gerald Levey, served Blower notice that Dr. Blower was barred from entering the biomathematics administrative offices pending resolution of charges filed in June. The November letter accused Blower of “causing hives and increased blood pressure in two department administrators because she allegedly refused to leave their offices until security was summoned.” Of course, Dr. Blower denied intimidating the administrators, noting that the incidents left her “almost in tears.” Just as she wrote in her mass email to her colleagues, how she had been “reduced to tears” following her meeting with Dr. Lee Goldman Chairman of Medicine at UCSF.

A lot of “almost crying,” Dr. Blower.

Dr. Blower left the Department of Biomathematics to become a professor in residence at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the Department of Psychiatry.

“3. Aggravated homosexuality. (1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the (b) offender is a person living with HIV; (2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.”

Bill No. 18 Anti Homosexuality Bill 2009, Uganda

An April 2005 article in Science revealed that she was under attack from UCLA this time. She was accused of “threatening students and harassing faculty, according to documents supplied to Science by Dr. Blower and her husband, UCLA geneticist Nelson Freimer. According to the documents, UCLA Vice Chancellor Donna Vredevoe referred five charges against Blower to the school’s Committee on Privilege and Tenure. The charges included “failure … to hold examinations as scheduled,” “use of the position or powers of a faculty member to coerce the judgment or conscience of a student,” and “verbal abuse, false statements, disparagement, and harassment of faculty.”

According to UCLA’s Daily Bruin, Dr. Blower and her husband, Nelson Freimer, now a UCLA professor of psychiatry and behavioral science in the neuroscience department, “claimed the university was trying to push her out of the department,” calling the accusations “ridiculous.” But regarding the charge of verbal abuse, she admitted “to sending ‘rude e-mails’ to members of her department,” because they had not “responded to her inquiries,” according to Science Magazine.

UCLA’s Daily Bruin also reported that Dr. Blower had filed countercharges against David Meyer, an associate dean of the School of Medicine, William Friedman, an associate dean of the School of Medicine, and Elliot Landaw, the chairman of the biomathematics department. Dr. Blower “declined to discuss the specifics of the charges, but said they were filed because she felt she was not included in the department’s graduate program and was being ignored altogether.”

But the ridiculous, supposedly false accusations in April were remarkably different by October, 2005. In a statement released by UCLA, Dr. Blower “acknowledges that over the course of several years her behavior was at times inappropriate.”

Dr. Blower also admitted “her disparaging statements about the Department of Biomathematics ... and the university were unwarranted. ... Professor Blower further acknowledges that she has not been the subject of gender discrimination, retaliation, harassment or improper exclusion of departmental activities,” the statement read. Once again, Dr. Blower was embroiled in a slew of false accusations and gender discrimination, which she was forced to retract, just as Chancellor Bishop had found her claims at UCSF meritless and unwarranted.

Despite her track record, and her willingness to sensationalize the results of her studies, Dr. Blower fancies herself as an activist, yet even this exercise in ego boosting is two-faced. In a brochure for a Neremberg lecture at The University of Ontario in March, 2008, she positions herself as “Scientific feminist,” “Infamous WHO Critic,” “AIDS Activist,” and “Movie consultant.”

Her official resume on the UCLA site, however, boasts of her membership of World Health Organization’s HIV Drug Resistance Surveillance & Monitoring Network Planning Group and World Health’s HIV Drug Resistance & Monitoring Network Mathematical Modeling Working Group. How infamously critical can you be of an organization if you're touting your membership or affiliation on your resume?

“It is very important to note that the model developed by Granich et al. cannot show anything but a beneficial impact of ARVs as the model does not include the possibility of drug resistance emerging, nor risk behavior increasing.””

Dr. Sally Blower, Voluntary universal testing and treatment is unlikely to lead to HIV elimination: a modeling analysis, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles

Summing Up...

Having learnt these things about Dr. Blower makes me less hopeful that she has an interest in genuinely addressing legitimate anger over her extrapolations and the extent to which they, along with the press release and comments can be damaging. Dr. Blower’s refusal to apologize or recognize the social implications of her actions in her own back yard, let alone retract the statements and findings, are enough to make me shudder to think about the extent to which she has the cultural awareness to be contributing to the debate positively in developing countries.

The issue with Dr. Blower is that these incidents are not far away in the distant past, where they shouldn’t be considered. These incidents happened just a few years ago. To send public emails to magazines and professional colleagues referring to the “Senior Boys” whilst touting herself as a scientific feminist, appears as if she’s a college student who just discovered feminist studies in 1995.

This scientific feminist is from the old school. But not quite. Certainly not the pioneering kind like Susan B. Anthony, Ida Jackson or Betty Friedan. Not even like reviled feminists and anti-porn activists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, who despite everything, still had an iota of interest that extended beyond the self. Dr. Blower is the self-proclaimed kind that corrosively damages real gains made by women to legitimately protect themselves and not because of an intelligent aversion to contemporary feminism’s much inherent hypocrisy, like Camille Paglia. Hers is a narrower, selfish, self-interested, privileged, white middle class appropriation of feminism that uses her gender to manipulate people, threaten lawsuits, allege gender discrimination, and when all that fails, relies on her husband to get her a position.

It is mind boggling. In terms of how she must perceive men. In terms of how she must perceive gay men. Her failure to even predict the fall out, based on the Bay Area Reporter Seth Hemmelgarn’s questions in January, and her assertion that the comments in the press release were not intended to be homophobic reveals everything. As does her defensive posturing and manipulation in this response to Supervisor Dufty. In a remarkable follow up editorial, the Bay Area Reporter pointed out that Dr. Blower’s paper “also infers, through that final sentence, that somehow this resistant virus will be widely transmitted to folks in the developing world. How, when, and where will that happen? NNRTI resistant virus is being transmitted at this moment through heterosexual sex in Johannesburg and other Sub-Saharan locations where NNRTIs are widely prescribed. What may or may not be happening in San Francisco has nothing to do with HIV transmission there.”

These aren’t petty grievances. Playing games with communities is dangerous, with the potential to inject uncertainty into critical prevention methodologies and inspire hate legislation aimed at gays and people with HIV/AIDS like we are seeing in Uganda. It is dangerous, callous, ignorant and inexcusable.

In her letter to Supervisor Dufty, Dr. Blower agrees to talk to him if he wants to talk... about the science. Of course she can only discuss the science. Beyond that, and even that is questionable, she hasn’t the slightest clue what she is talking about.

Or maybe, she does.