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Friday, April 24, 2020

Trump and light therapy

Trump:

Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous - whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful - light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it?

And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too? Sounds interesting.

And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs? So it would be interesting to check that, so that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills in one minute, that's pretty powerful.

It seems to me many people are unfairly criticizing Trump on this:

1. Granted, Trump can speak ignorantly, but that's nothing new. In fact, previous politicians including Obama have made many ignorant statements, but do liberals including the mainstream media ever parse and criticize their own side as much as they criticize Trump and conservatives? Many liberals are acting like Trump is telling people to throw themselves onto a burning pyre in order to kill the coronavirus.

2. It's not as if Trump is suggesting it's definitive treatment. He's not acting like Elon Musk did several days ago. Rather Trump is asking medical experts to investigate.

3. For that matter, light has long been used as treatment for some conditions. For example, UV light treatment (e.g. PUVA therapy) is not uncommonly used in certain cases of psoriasis, eczema, vitiligo, lichen planus, cutaneous lymphoma, etc. Ask any dermatologist.

4. Granted, these aren't infectious diseases. Again, Trump doesn't have a medical background (and in fact he's deferring to medical experts on this), so one wouldn't expect Trump to be able to make the distinction. Maybe the criticism should be that Trump shouldn't make apparently impromptu remarks like this. If so, his critics might as well try to rein in what Trump says on Twitter too. /s

5. At the same time, there's some precedence in the use of phototherapy in other coronaviruses. Take the use of phototherapy in the first SARS-1 coronavirus back in 2003 (e.g. here). (Our pandemic is SARS-2.) Also, phototherapy was used in MERS (e.g. here). And even a prestigious science journal like Nature has published on the use of phototherapy against other pathogens. Granted, these aren't all great studies or anything, but it's not like there's zero precedence for phototherapy. Perhaps this is the kind of thing Trump had in the back of his mind.

6. This isn't to suggest phototherapy is a good idea with regard to the coronavirus. Indeed, phototherapy has distinct disadvantages. Not least of which is increased risk of certain cancers (e.g. BCCs, SCCs, melanoma), especially in certain skin types (e.g. Fitzpatrick scale). And I certainly don't think phototherapy should be pursued if it means less focus or attention is placed on other therapies like drug based antivirals and vaccines.

7. I should be clear: I'm not defending Trump's proposal so much as I'm criticizing his critics.

18 comments:

  1. You've dealt with the light issue. What about the comments re: disinfectant?

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    1. Basically, I don't think Trump should have said what he said. However, I don't think Trump's critics fare any better.

      Of course, it's a bad idea to inject or ingest any disinfectant (e.g. Lysol). Perhaps what Trump was fumbling to say is that he thinks physicians and scientists should investiage whether we can isolate certain active ingredients in disinfectants which could help combat the coronavirus. At least that's my bending over backwards to make sense of his words.

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    2. Also, in the context of the quotation above, it's possible Trump could have been referring to light as a disinfectant.

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    3. He has since clarified. He was just being sarcastic.

      https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-claims-he-was-being-sarcastic-about-disinfectant-comments

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    4. But his press secretary said he was taken out of context. Which is it? They can't even get their story straight. The "sarcastic" explanation is just a lie. Anyone who watches the video can see he wasn't being sarcastic - he was directly asking Brix if she could look into his "medical" suggestions. There as no sarcasm whatsoever.

      No one believes that Trump is suggesting people throw themselves on pyre. The fact is that Trump is just amazingly ignorant while actually believing he knows more. How many times has he stated that he knows more than the experts do? Here's just a sample:

      Campaign finance: "I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I'm the biggest contributor." (1999.)
      TV ratings: "I know more about people who get ratings than anyone." (October 2012.)
      ISIS: "I know more about ISIS than the generals do." (November 2015.)
      Social media: "I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?" (November 2015.)
      Courts: "I know more about courts than any human being on Earth." (November 2015.)
      Lawsuits: "[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I'm the king." (January 2016.)
      Politicians: "I understand politicians better than anybody."
      The visa system: "[N]obody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. ... Nobody else on this dais knows how to change it like I do, believe me." (March 2016.)
      Trade: "Nobody knows more about trade than me." (March 2016.)
      The U.S. government system: "[N]obody knows the system better than I do." (April 2016.)
      Renewable energy: "I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth." (April 2016.)
      Taxes: "I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world." (May 2016.)
      Debt: "I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me." (June 2016.)
      Money: "I understand money better than anybody." (June 2016.)
      Infrastructure: "[L]ook, as a builder, nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump." (July 2016.)
      Sen. Cory Booker: "I know more about Cory than he knows about himself." (July 2016.)
      Borders: Trump said in 2016 that Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he was endorsing him for president because "you know more about this stuff than anybody."
      Democrats: "I think I know more about the other side than almost anybody." (November 2016.)
      Construction: "[N]obody knows more about construction than I do." (May 2018.)
      The economy: "I think I know about it better than [the Federal Reserve]." (October 2018.)
      Technology: "Technology — nobody knows more about technology than me." (December 2018.)
      Drones: "I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have." (January 2019.)
      Drone technology: "Having a drone fly overhead — and I think nobody knows much more about technology, this type of technology certainly, than I do." (January 2019.)

      And the scary thing is he actually believes this. He really thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, no matter what the topic is. If a liberal were acting and saying that things Trump was saying, you'd be all over him/her. The lengths to which people go to defend Trump is just mind boggling to me.

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    5. Grifman

      1. You're utterly misreading me. For starters, I explicitly stated Trump can speak ignorantly as well as that I'm not "defending" what Trump is saying. How much clearer can I get?

      2. That doesn't preclude me from attempting to try to grasp what might lie behind Trump's words. At worst, I'm giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, but that's hardly tantamount to "the lengths to which people go to defend Trump".

      3. Also, you have a tin ear. Obviously I don't believe people are acting like Trump is literally asking them to jump on a burning pyre to kill the coronavirus. It's called hyperbole. The point is that Trump's critics are ridiculing Trump for phototherapy as if phototherapy is foolish. As I said, I don't think phototherapy will likely work in this case, but it has been tried in other coronaviruses (I gave links to scientific publications in my post), so it's not completely outlandish.

      4. And yes, Trump says a lot of dumb stuff. And yes, Trump has an ego the size of Manhattan. And yes, Trump is hardly a moral person. These were obvious before he became president.

      5. At the same time, Trump has done a lot of good for the country. I'd still pick Trump over Hillary or Biden.

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  2. I actually lol'd at Trump's comments. I mean, I like a lot of what he does and says, and I dislike a lot of what he does and says, but that one was a chucklefest for me.

    It was a chucklefest *for me* because I realize Trump makes off the cuff comments, and he's well known for that. Sometimes it's a helpful trait because he gets viewed as being unvarnished and straight talking. And sometimes it's unhelpful because he gets viewed as being boorish, or as a bully, or as a moron.

    Public figures get a lot of scrutiny, it comes with the territory, and Trump is a *VERY* public figure and has been for decades, the Presidency only amplified that feature.

    Apropos his position, and the blindingly obvious fact that most media outlets utterly detest him openly, and the fact that it's an election year, and the fact that people do stupid things like drink fish tank cleaner and die as a result and Trump gets blamed, his latest comments *for me* fall into the moronic category to me where I chuckle and shake my head and think, "Sheesh...how can he be so ignorant?", whereas those that despise him are probably thinking something along the lines of, "bad orange man just encouraged every single American to irradiate themselves and shoot up with Lysol!"

    What a world we live in!

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    1. Lol, thanks, CD. :) Good points!

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    2. Lol. Trump being a moron shouldn't let other morons off the hook. If anyone injects themselves with disinfectant, they deserve what they get.

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    3. To be fair, injecting yourself with disinfectant does technically cure you of the Corona Virus, along with anything else that is wrong with you.

      Reminds me of a phrase I picked up from an old roommate.
      Brute force and ignorance can solve any problem. Other problems may arise from the application of brute force and ignorance, but your original problem is "solved".

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  3. Imagine we were living in the Middle Ages. A monk marvels at the incredible power of lightning. A second monk says, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could encapsulate electrical energy-- put it into a little box and use that power to do all kinds of useful things." The first monk mocks: what do you know about the energy of lightning? You're not a scientist." And so it goes.

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    1. I originally had a direct rebuttal typed up but I deleted it out of respect for Prof. Frame. I guess I fanboyed out. Love your work, brother, you've been immensely helpful to my Christian worldview development, particularly your work "The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God".

      And although I still think Prof. Frame's analogy missed the mark in this particular instance, it's impossible to prove a negative so we can't say for certain that someone someday won't figure out a way to irradiate a human body (or even develop a Lysol injection I suppose) such that it won't have deleterious effects on the human body at the cellular level but will instead have healing properties, killing only invading viruses while preserving normal cellular functions, and that Trump should be cast as simple but brilliant, misunderstood, ahead-of-his-time musing visionary who's being unfairly and ignorantly derided by his closed-minded anti-science contemporaries.

      Buuuuuuuuut I don't think this is the case. :0)

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    2. Thanks, Prof. Frame! Well said.

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  4. Hawk--

    I guess my complete lack of medical knowledge leaves me vulnerable to thinking speculatively in a manner similar to Trump. Penicillin was discovered to have antibacterial properties outside the body and was first used on skin and then eyes and sinuses. It was quite a while before it was made potent enough and stable enough to be of use internally.

    If isopropyl alcohol is an effective antiviral outside of the body, why is it so far fetched to believe it might be modified for internal use?

    Evidently, it's not even all that toxic in low doses:

    Ten volunteers exposed for 3-5 min to isopropyl alcohol vapor at concentrations of 200, 400, and 800 ppm reported mild to moderate irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat at the two higher concentrations (Nelson et al., 1943).

    Daily oral intake of low doses of isopropyl alcohol (2.6 or 6.4 mg/kg of body weight) by groups of eight men for 6 wk had no effect on blood cells, serum, or urine and produced no subjective symptoms (Wills et al., 1969).

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    1. Thanks, Eric. I think it's fine to ask questions which is basically what Trump was doing. I think a lot of people are misconstruing what Trump said and ridiculing him for no good reason.

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    2. Hawk--

      For his part, Trump shouldn't have tried to make excuses. He wasn't being "sarcastic" or any such thing. He was merely asking questions: Why not this? Why not that?

      He could have just said, "Look, I said I was no doctor. We need to examine every possibility, no matter how dumb it appears at first glance. Sure, what I said was probably silly from a medical standpoint. But all I wanted was to find some answers,"

      They're not ridiculing Trump. They're ridiculing the country. And there was a time when they would have known that.

      I don't particularly like Trump. But then again, there have been a fair number of past Presidents I didn't particularly like either. Before this administration, the Press has always acted with a modicum of respect and professionalism. I'm deeply, deeply ashamed of the media...and of my countrymen.

      (As for Prof. Frame, once, long ago, that man had the audacity to give me a B+ on a term paper. I still hold a grudge!

      It WAS a great class though.... 😃 )

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  5. Seems that we’re over analyzing this: He heard “sun light kills the virus”, his stable genius leads him to “lets get the sunlight on the inside”. I don’t think his comment was a poorly articulated phototherapy based treatment angle.

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    1. Could be true.

      What I meant - though perhaps poorly articulated (I wrote my post in a rush) - was that Trump may have heard from one of his physicians that phototherapy can help in certain diseases or conditions (which it can), then he thought about applying it to the coronavirus.

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