#233: Mary Leitao

The inventor of Morgellons Disease, the biologist Leitao found the term in a very old reference book and used it to describe her child's rash, which doctors described as common eczema. Fuelled by various sensationalist news stories, Morgellons has achieved a life of its own, despite the fact that few serious researches have found anything novel about the conditions (apart, possibly, from the fact that the patients may suffer from delusional parasitosis). The disease seems to affect a particular group of people predisposed towards mistrust towards “established medical science”, and the people doing serious discussions of the condition at morgellonswatch appears to have closed down.

No one doubts that patients are suffering, of course, but the "research foundation" (where Leitao is executive director) has already decided what’s going on. They have started with a conclusion rather than a hypothesis, and are hence working on making the data fit. Which is, of course, not how science is done. In fact, the little research there is in support of the diagnosis is often (well, consistently) rather poor, such as this one (where Leitao herself was involved).

This is, in short, one of the plagues of modern day healthcare. The afflicted people surely need treatment, but knowing about your own symptoms does not confer authority regarding what the cause of the illness, or the correct diagnosis, is. People who have encountered Morgellons usually ask for the medical establishment to show some empathy, be tolerant and open-minded – failing to recognize that it is they who have already decided on what the correct conclusions are (which is, of course, anything but open-minded), not those who are skeptical of the nature of the disease. Having reached the conclusion without evidence (and then attempting to fit the evidence to the conclusion) makes Leitao and her associates (such as Marc Neumann) crackpots (and that is the case even if it should – contrary to what evidence suggests today – turn out that she is, in the end, correct about Morgellons being a real disease).

Diagnosis: Surely worthy of empathy, and Leitao certainly has people’s best interest in mind; but she is definitely a crackpot, and as such, she may end up – unintentionally – doing quite a lot of harm.

#232: Brock Lee

Brock Lee is an unimportant, local creationist in Owatonna, Minnesota, whose sole claim to fame is his sheer idiocy and the fact that his ramblings have been picked up by PZ Myers. He is apparently fond of writing letters to newspapers; for instance see here, where he claims that evolutionary biology (analytically) implies that as long as you are not having sex or are pregnant, you don’t count as a human and hence have no moral status. Because of this analytic connection, evolutionary biology is responsible for teenage pregnancies – teenagers are having sex because they wish to be human. I don’t think there is any point in trying to unravel the various layers of misunderstanding here.

He has also been involved in arranging the Minnesota Creation Science Fair.

Diagnosis: You can’t fake this. Moronic loon (Hovind-sycophant). Probably relatively harmless.

#231: Dave Leach (and Scott Roeder)

Dave Francis Leach is an anti-abortion activist and publisher of the utterly insane, extremist newsletter Prayer & Action News. He also runs the web site The Partnership Machine. Both support the doctrine of “justifiable homicide” in the case of abortion doctors, and one of his subscribers was Scott Roeder, who cited the doctrine prior to the assassination of George Tiller. In the January 1996 issue, Leach reprinted the Army of God manual, which lists ways to damage abortion buildings from putting super glue in locks to two simple bomb recipes.

The Army of God, by the way, is a terrorist organization featuring members such as Clayton Waagner, Eric Robert Rudolph, Michael Bray, Donald Spitz, Shelley Shannon, and other known domestic terrorists.

Leach, while avoiding association with terrorists according to legal definitions, has nevertheless staunchly supported Roeder’s actions; he wrote a legal brief for Roeder, pointing out that shooting Dr. Tiller was justified by the Bible (and more obviously falsely, by various court rulings). Roeder was officially associated with the insane domestic terrorist organization “Operation Rescue”, which will be covered in more detail in a later entry.

Diagnosis: Totally insane, and demonstrably dangerous.

#230: Marcus Laux

Not exactly a household name, Marcus Laux is in any case a very typical example of how woo is peddled. He is “a licensed naturopathic physician who earned his doctorate at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. He has been clinically trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine, among other healing modalities.” His biography is here.

It’s all there. He chose the woo route because “[science-based medicine] doctors seemed more interested in money than their patients” and – predictably – because naturopathic medicine “looks beyond the symptoms to the source, treating you as a whole person rather than a bunch of separate, unrelated symptoms”. But of course, Laux initially thought naturopathic medicine was quackery, However, he “knew in [his] heart [i.e. rather than by evidence] that the natural path was the right path” (in short, he found fallacious appeals to nature extremely intuitively compelling). He is also coauthor of “Natural Woman, Natural Menopause” (with Christine Conrad) and “Top Ten Natural Therapies” (with Melissa Block).

His web page is here. Now, Laux is the founder of Qivana, a network marketing company peddling all sorts of wellness products (woo-based, of course – no, you don’t get a link) in what they call the “Qivana Qore” series (it even has “Qi” in the name to give them away).

Diagnosis: This is how great woo is done; while Laux may be a fraud, it's more likely he is completely oblivious to the fishiness of his approach to medicine or business. Not very influential or likely to become very influential, but he is still not unlikely to cause some harm.

#229: Wayne Laugesen

To include the clinically insane Hungarian crackpot Ervin Laszlo in our encyclopedia would have been too much of a stretch, even though he does, in fact, occasionally write for Huffington Post (where else).

The next installment thus goes to columnist, gun right activist and journalist Wayne Laugesen. Laugesen writes for the National Catholic Register, Faith & Family magazine, and Soldier of Fortune. Laugesen is also a co-producer of Holy Baby! and Holy Baby! 2, multilingual prayer videos for Catholic children broadcast internationally on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and on New Evangelization Television (NET) in New York. His sycophantic Wikipedia vanity article must have been written by Laugesen himself (or perhaps a lunatic fan).

His main claim to prominence is his helpless defense of the Catholic church during the recent scandals. Laugesen has pointed out that the Catholic church is not worse off than other organizations in terms of the amount of child abuse, something which was hardly the point about the scandal (as opposed to the systematic cover-ups).

His batshit insane responses to criticism of his defense is, however, his main application for inclusion in the Encyclopedia.

He displays certain theocratic tendencies and bigotry in his stance on public observance of religion (national days of prayer etc.). His arguments are delightfully incoherent at best. He is, apparently, afraid of atheist extremists (Laugesen claims that e.g. the Columbine shooters displayed an evangelical adherence to Darwin) who are motivated by evolutionism and relies on certified loon David Klinghoffer to justify his fears.

Diagnosis: Relatively insignificant loon, but apparently a rather aggressively bigoted one.

#228: Lyndon LaRouche

A.k.a. Lyn Marcus

Lyndon LaRouche is a legend. Perennially running for president, LaRouche manages to be a wingnut/moonbat on the radical left and the radical right at the same time. He has a severe messiah complex and runs his organization like a fundie cult, and is – fortunately – insane enough to be rather toothless.

So why should you vote for LaRouche (given that he – as he certainly will – runs for president again)? Among the issues LaRouche is firm on, and that no one else seems to deal with effectively are (more details here):
- Using tactical nukes to build a canal across Africa to solve the world's water crisis.
- Break the Satanist conspiracy between Henry Kissinger (and/or George Soros), the Queen of England, ADL, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund that controls the world’s drug trade.
- Avoiding the imminent global economic collapse (which has been immediately around the corner since the 60s, apparently). His suggestions on how to deal with it are rather diffuse.
- Banish rock & roll (especially the Beatles), which is a tool used by British Intelligence to control American minds. In fact, according to LaRouche, British liberalism is the main threat to the world at present, and they are secretly working to take over the world and bring it back to the dark ages (other conspiracy theories are dismissed as British propaganda).
- Remove any trace of the politics of the betrayer Barack Obama (LaRouche’s followers have compared Obama to Hitler, but were staunch supporters of John Kerry); in fact LaRouche has called for the impeachment of Obama.
- Dismiss and end the propaganda for the fraudulent idea of global warming (a conspiracy).
- Drawing on the resources of the already existing (worldwide) LaRouche Youth Movement to do, well, whatever youth movements do? (It really exists, btw, and bears all the hallmarks of a cult; the spokesperson is one Barbara Boyd and it seems to be led by Lakesha “Kesha” Rogers, a certified nutcase.

LaRouche was originally a Trotskyist (under the name Lyn Marcus), instigating several labor strikes among students during his leadership of the sectarian leftist National Caucus of Labor Committees (LaRouche promoted the use of physical violence, however, against his competitors in the Communist Party). He established relations to the extreme right – e.g. Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby – during Reagan (particular over drug policy and staunch opposition to environmentalism). He eventually turned from (some semblance of confused) Marxism to anti-Semitism. This quote, from 1978, is, uh, interesting: “America must be cleansed for its righteous war by the immediate elimination of the Nazi Jewish Lobby and other British agents from the councils of government, industry, and labor" (more quotes here).

He also erected a quite wide-ranging intelligence network and a surprisingly large international organization (or somewhat militia like cult) with ties to a frighteningly many questionable regimes, including South Africa’s apartheid regime and Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. He also achieved a certain success in the 80s, before being imprisoned for tax evasion (sharing a cell with Jim Bakker). LaRouche’s followers are known to be among the most persistent at comparing Obama to Hitler. They’re still running a variety of fronts and publications (including the crackpot science cesspool “21st century Science and Technology”, known in particular for its rabid and completely unscientific papers arguing (ranting) against global warming). This one is worth a visit.

More here. This one seems to have gone a little over the top, however.

Diagnosis: Schizophrenic, megalomaniac raving lunatic who seems to wish to establish a socially conservative, fiscally socialist political system based on cult-like worship of the strong man (himself). That political system has been tried before. Fortunately LaRouche doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of implementing it in the US, despite the fact that he has a frighteningly large number of followers.

#227: Robert Lanza

Robert Lanza is an American Doctor of Medicine, scientist, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He’s got his credentials in order, and – as his Wikipedia article also emphasizes (exclusively) – he has done some important research on and development of stem cell technology. He is, in other words, one of the good guys.

In his spare time, however, Lanza likes to fight reality – he seems to be something of a megalomaniac – by writing tripe for – you guessed it – Huffington post and by developing his own, shall we say controversial, ideas about how the universe hangs together (his book “Biocentrism” received some attention). In these he deploys the worst kinds of quantum woo and bad math and enters into a problematic relation with mereology (the fallacy of division seems to be one he never quite managed to grasp). A good example is the, uh, fascinating and dubiously coherent “What happens when you die? Evidence suggests time simply reboots”.

Humans never die, you see, because we are only energy, and our constituents only get rearranged (in other words, Lanza got stuck on Goodman-style extensional mereology and hardcore nominalism – he also seems to gleefully adopt while failing to recognize the solipsistic element of his view). He backs this up by – of course – further babble about how reality works at the quantum level. More here.

You’ll read gems like “Biocentrism tells us space and time aren't objects -- they're the mind's tools for putting everything together” or “Quantum theory ended the classical view that particles exist if we don't perceive them.” Knowing nothing about the literature on consciousness, Lanza asserts that consciousness is a mystery to physics and draws, from that assertion, the conclusion that the universe is (at least in a sense) created by the mind. More here. Thing is, you need this idea to understand why the physical constants are so fine-tuned for life (ah, the anthropic principle so beloved by creationists, but Lanza does at least not go down that road): “At the moment, there are only four explanations for this mystery. One is to argue for incredible coincidence. Another is to say, "God did that," which explains nothing even if it is true. The third is to invoke the anthropic principle's reasoning that we must find these conditions if we are alive, because, what else could we find? The final option is biocentrism pure and simple, which explains how the universe is created by life. Obviously, no universe that doesn't allow for life could possibly exist; the universe and its parameters simply reflect the spatio-temporal logic of animal existence.” I hope anyone with a background in probability theory or critical thinking can spot the delightful plethora of fallacies invoked in that paragraph.

He also reacts to dismissals in a fairly typical crackpot manner.

Yup. Respectable scientist Lanza’s alter ego is a mixture of Deepak Chopra and Denyse O’Leary (and Lawrence LeShan) – without the religious insanity, admittedly, but with enough crackpottery to not sustain a perpetual motion machine. It is, frankly, not a completely uncommon situation for otherwise respectable scientists.

Diagnosis: Crackpot, and as cranky as they come (despite his real and respectable daytime job). Seems to have gained some prominence in the Chopra-inspired community.