Comment and Opinion

American Iatrogenic Association

I received the following email:

Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 19:33:36 -0800
From: Nicolas Martin
Subject: American Iatrogenic Assoc

Just by chance I found my organization, the American Iatrogenic Assoc., listed on your web site. Perhaps I'm wrong but I'm of the impression that you have us listed with organizations that promote quackery. If so, I'm curious why that should be the case. What sort of quackery do we promote? Surely you don't think that the examination of medical error is quackery in itself. Is there some specific content of the AiA site that you think endorsed quackery? I'm curious.

Regards,

Nicolas Martin
American Iatrogenic Assoc

Your site has been listed for about two years, but there is nothing on it now that offends me. I don't really know why it was listed in the first place unless I just happened to catch it when it some outrageous claim on it which is no longer there. It is possible that I was referred to it by one of the people who keep telling me that prescription drugs alone kill 250,000 people each year who would otherwise have lived (yes, I have been told that).

I want real doctors to be held just as accountable for their actions as the quacks are. I support what you are doing and I apologise for listing your site with its current content.

I will display your email and my response on my site until the end of February 2002. After that date all reference to your site will be removed.

Then this came in:

Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 20:30:31 -0400
Subject: Iatrogenic letter on your site
From: AiA

>
>
> I see that you still have my letter posted well beyond the date you
> said it would be removed. Why have you not removed it? By the way,
> itsn¹t it a matter of courtesy to ask someone permission to publicly
> post a private letter?
>
> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/iatrogenic.htm
> --
> Nicolas Martin
> Executive Director
> American Iatrogenic Association
> http://iatrogenic.org/index.html

> > I see that you still have my letter posted well beyond the date
> > you said it would be removed. Why have you not removed it?

All links to that page and other references were removed. Unfortunately, the page itself was reloaded when a reorganisation was done. It has now been removed and the internal site search index has been rebuilt.

> > By the way,
> > itsn¹t it a matter of courtesy to ask someone permission to
> > publicly post a private letter?

In my reply to you I said that it would be displayed. I also refer you to http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/about.htm where the email publication policy for the site is made quite clear.

And Mr Martin wrote back:

Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 20:23:12 -0700
From: Nicolas Martin
Subject: Re: Iatrogenic letter on your site

Mr. Bowditch:

I'm sure that everyone feels compelled to read the small print on your site. Your concern for courtesy is matched by your penchant for accuracy. You acknowledge that you have no idea why the Iatrogenic Association site was listed on yours. You claim that it might have been modified, causing you to no longer have a complaint with it, but the AiA site had actually not been changed AT ALL for several years prior.

I frankly don't give a damn if we are on your site, which is silly, gaudy, and demagogic, but I think your readers ought to know that you play fast and loose with the truth.

Nicolas Martin American Iatrogenic Association

As Mr Martin sees some problem with my saying "I will display your email and my response on my site" and then doing just that, and as he doesn't really care whether his site is listed here or not, and as he had ample opportunity to tell me that his site never gets updated when I first replied to him, and as he is one of the loons who campaign against the idea that there might be a reality to psychiatric illnesses, his site is right back in there and has been added to the "Buffoonery" category for good measure.

And more comes, although why it was all quoted as if it came from another message is a mystery.

Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 16:29:38 -0400
Subject: Iatrogenic

> Delighted to be back on your list, though it took some doing! It¹s
> just as useful to be known by one¹s critics as one¹s allies. You
> might want to add the Szasz.com site since you are such a fan of
> psychiatry and Dr. Szasz is the leading critic of what is known as
> the medical model and shrink abuses. There are too many
> anti-psychiatry sites to list, but you surely don¹t want to miss The
> Antipsychiatry Coalition (antipsychiatry.org) or Mindfreedom.org.
> And what about all those sites opposing the use of Ritalin on kids?
> You don¹t seem flush in that hand.
>
> Given your inattention to detail and fact, I can see why, after you
> have gotten 5 emails from me that you haven¹t yet figured out how to
> spell my name. Regarding the AAPS, you say, that you have ³always
> known that the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons was
> opposed to vaccination.² Not surprisingly, so much of what you know
> is untrue. As anyone who visits the AAPS website can read, ³The
> Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) recognizes
> that vaccines, in the past, have prevented many serious illnesses.²
> AAPS opposes MANDATORY vaccination, but this might be too subtle a
> distinction for you.
>
> You might want to read the new review we have posted of Tom Szasz¹s
> new book, Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery
> and Psychiatry. It is written by Dr. Robert A. Baker, former
> chairman of the psychology department at the University of Kentucky
> and a CSICOP Fellow who has several books in print with Prometheus
> Books and has written many articles for The Skeptical Inquirer. He
> enthusiastically endorses our attack on the psychiatric
> pseudoscience.
>
> We get into a little debunking of our own with a page quoting some
> of quack psychiatric diagnoses of the past.
> (http://iatrogenic.org/library/psycheffect.html) Now that psychiatry
> imagines it has embraced science, I¹m sure we¹ll never have any more
> idiotic diagnoses like stress ulcer, or neurotic gingivitis. Now we
> only have ADHD and depression caused by brain chemistries that
> cannot be tested. Good thing the shrinks have you to certify their
> scientific credentials.
>
> Your site has one indisputable value. It illustrates the common
> prejudices of the time. I¹m not referring to the groups and people
> you have listed, but to your own views. People will be able to visit
> a an archive of your site in the next century and use it as a pocket
> guide to political correctness of our period.
>
> Keep up the sloppy work!
>
>
> Nicolas Martin
> Executive Director
> American Iatrogenic Association
> http://iatrogenic.org/index.html