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Religion is simply a powerful placebo – offering priests a sense of ritual, but little else

Colin Brewer
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Religion is simply a powerful placebo – offering priests a sense of ritual, but little else

This is a story about a much-loved parish priest who looked, dressed, sounded and acted like a parish priest, but lacked what most people (including, one presumes, the Pope) would regard as the single most important and defining feature of parish priests: a belief in the Christian god and at least some of the doctrines of Christianity. In other words, he was a placebo priest.

In simple terms, a placebo is a tablet, injection or procedure – such as a surgical operation or talking and listening – that is claimed (and usually believed by the recipient) to have a specific healing effect, but actually has no such effect. The tablet and injection contain no active drug. The surgery involves just a very superficial incision into the skin that goes no further. The talking and listening are just that and are designed to exclude any specific features of particular kinds of psychotherapy. However, the recipients are either not told that they are having placebo treatment, as was generally the case until half a century ago, or they are taking part in a placebo-controlled trial and don’t know whether they are in the placebo group or having the supposedly real and effective thing.

Strictly speaking, placebo effects relate to the nature and specific features of the treatment – eg tablet, injection, surgery. Non-specific effects are also important but they include things like taking a history, listening, physical examination, reassurance, ordering investigations and establishing a good therapeutic relationship. All of these can be very comforting but are common to most therapeutic encounters. However, what reassures one patient – lots of tests and impressive machines taking electrocardiograms and X-rays – may worry another (‘Does all this attention mean I’m seriously ill?’).

Similarly, the distinctive rituals of religions, and the underlying evidence-free belief in a deity who both listens and responds to prayers, involve exactly the same placebo and non-specific effects that are still so infamous in medicine. The healing professions – orthodox and generally evidence-based as well as so-called ‘alternative’ – have their own rituals. When the roles of priest and healer were combined in the shaman, the overlap was very obvious. It still is at shrines like Lourdes.

Unsurprisingly, the more impressive the placebo and the accompanying sales-talk, the stronger the placebo effect. Impressively large or intriguingly small tablets versus average size and coloured rather than white; expensive rather than cheap; involving impressive equipment featuring flashing lights and beeping noises; extra attention, even if scripted and entirely insincere. That sort of thing.

Some placebo tablets were gold-plated to add both legitimate expense and a dash of theatre. The last gold-plated pill, a precursor of Viagra, could still be prescribed on the NHS until the 1970s.

For many people who attend churches, the drama, ritual and theatricality of the services are important parts of the overall attraction. That’s also true for many of the priests who perform at these events, especially High-Church Anglicans and the traditionalist wing of Roman Catholicism but ‘charismatic’ sects often have rituals derived from an African or Afro-Caribbean background.

Rows of plastic homeopathic remedy vials set in blue foam, with white lids containing spherical 1.4g sucrose (sugar) pills, each labelled with the remedy name and showing 30C dilution
30C homeopathic sugar pills. Image by Elderberry Arts, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

It is in the nature of ritual that, at one level, it needs no explaining or justification. Conversely, deviations from important rituals can make people uncomfortable or angry, even if the ritual in question has no particular function beyond its performance. Priests and parishioners can get very worked up about seemingly trivial details of liturgical practice.

The importance of ‘correctly’ performing religious rituals or, conversely, of using the Latin Mass rather than modern vernacular translations, is very similar to the importance attached by homeopathic practitioners to the ritual of ‘succussion’ (ie the hitting of containers of homeopathic solutions against a leather cushion exactly one hundred times) in the preparation of their remedies. There is no rationale to succussion or the slightest evidence for its relevance, but it’s a fine old custom. The homeopathic literature insists that proper succussion and therapeutic success are causally linked and the websites of leading homeopathic pharmacies stress the importance of following the correct homeopathic rituals.

The philosopher Roger Scruton noted that:

In all places and times, people have believed that there is a way into the eternal, a door out of time into a place where nothing changes and all is at rest within its being. And the key to this door is repetition. That is what sacred rituals, sacred words, and sacred places provide: the prayers, chants, costumes, steps and gestures that must be repeated exactly, and for which there is no explanation other than that this is how things are done.

Scruton R Fools, frauds and firebrands: thinkers of the new left. London. Bloomsbury. 2015. p 185.

Notice that God is absent from Scruton’s description. Alain de Botton feels that “Secular society has been unfairly impoverished” by the loss of these and other practices:

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

de Botton A. religion for atheists, London, Penguin, 2012, 14

Most religious procedures and rituals are supposed to have beneficial effects, including healing ones, but for a sceptic, all of these procedures are essentially placebos. That is because for atheists and agnostics (much the same thing in behavioural terms) as well as deists, they lack the one allegedly vital and specific ingredient – the existence of a deity who both listens to the prayers and responds favourably to them. Einstein said of believers in such a deity:

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modelled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. …although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

If the deity was firmly believed not to respond, there would be no theological point in praying to it, though the ritual might still be comforting.

In most religions, priests undergo lengthy training. They are symbolically invested with allegedly special powers when ordained, and thus become intermediaries between their parishioners and the relevant deity. Like the priest-healers (AKA shamans) of homoeopathy and acupuncture, they are generally assumed to have specific knowledge that gives them specific and effective therapeutic ability. Unless they accept that their nostrums have only placebo effects, which most of them don’t, they must believe in their therapeutic doctrines.

A placebo-controlled trial of religious procedures might therefore involve exposing a group of parishioners to prayers and rituals conducted by a real believer in the relevant faith while another group was exposed to a placebo priest who made the same movements and spoke the same words but did not believe in the doctrines he was expounding. One of Edzard Ernst’s first controlled trials was of spiritual healing. It showed that actors did as well as professional healers, and that real but invisible healers sitting in kiosks got the same beneficial results as kiosks containing only air. However, the spiritual healers were not using any specific religious faith, and it was thus not a trial of Christian prayers vs Islamic or Hindu ones, Catholic vs Protestant entreaties or godly vs godless practitioners.

When modern clergy lose their faith, they do not necessarily lose or leave their clerical employment. A study by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola asked the question: what is it like to be a pastor who stays the course in this situation? One short answer, not much discussed in their paper, is that from the point of view of their parishioners, it makes no difference, particularly if the priest keeps his doubts to himself.

Even today, the roles of the priest and the physician often overlap. Both doctors and priests spend much of their lives demonstrating that a problem shared is often a problem halved, or at any rate a problem reduced. Both are walking and talking placebos but whereas modern doctors are rather more than that, priests – ancient or modern – are not. Provided that they look like a priest, talk like a priest and act like a priest, neither parishioners nor other priests will be able to detect priests who lack what in theory ought to be a crucially important qualification for the job; the possession of a specific religious faith. Though I argue that no priest has more than placebo and non-specific effects, a disbelieving cleric can be regarded as a sham priest for comparative purposes.

The doubting American priests interviewed by Dennett and La Scola come across as a rather sad bunch – partly because they were doing a job that made them increasingly uncomfortable, but mainly because most of them had nobody with whom they could share their sadness and discomfort. The interviews with researchers were often the first time they had been able to do that. There were only five of them in the study and they came from churches ranging from Southern Baptist through Methodist to Presbyterian, but all insisted that they were not alone and were simply the tip of a very large and rarely-mentioned theological iceberg.

The recently founded Clergy Project, ‘a confidential online community for current and former religious professionals without supernatural beliefs’ has 1,263 members as of 2024; 332 current and 931 former priests. In the US, they come from nearly all states, including the Bible Belt. Most wanted to leave their posts but wondered what they would do instead, and how they would make an equally comfortable living, especially if they lived in a church-owned house. Some couldn’t even come out to their spouses and children. One Methodist pastor who went public, Tim Prowse, admitted that:

As an active minister, I did not discuss my atheism with colleagues or parishioners. Facing lost wages, housing and benefits, I chose to remain silent. However, I did confide in my wife who provided a level of trust, understanding, and support that proved invaluable. Unfortunately, some ministers do not enjoy mature confidants.

Happily for him, friends offered him cheap housing and a job.

Placebo priests of the past

That was not an option for Jean Meslier, the first recorded Christian priest to say publicly and in print (or at any rate, in manuscript) that the whole thing was essentially a myth, that the Bible was clearly man-made and full of contradictory and unpleasant stories, and that religion had been co-opted by ruling elites to consolidate their hold over the lower orders. This first placebo priest that we know of spent most of his priestly life providing completely insincere prayers and rituals for his appreciative parishioners in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, apparently without any of them noticing the missing ingredient.

That he is so little known probably reflects the fact that it has taken nearly 300 years for his only work to be recently translated into English. None of the ‘new atheists’ has mentioned him, and he didn’t appear in Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, Sir Jonathan Miller’s short 2004 TV series (when it was broadcast in the US, the shocking word ‘atheism’ was removed from the title).

Father Jean Meslier’s neglect by historians is surprising, because as well as being probably the first European since Roman times to put his name to an overtly atheist document, Meslier was also unusual in being an early agrarian socialist and anti-monarchist, like his near-contemporaries the Levellers of the English Civil War, though he doesn’t mention them. Furthermore, his clerical credentials were impeccable, since he passed his entire adult life as the apparently popular priest of Étrépigny, a tiny village in North-East France, and knew exactly what he was rejecting. At some personal cost, he supported his downtrodden and impoverished parishioners against the local tyrant De Toully, a rapacious and wicked squire straight out of central casting.

Too scared to speak his mind to anyone during life, in 1729 he left by his death bed three copies of a mordant, well-referenced denunciation of supernatural beliefs. He called it a Mémoire of his thoughts and sentiments about the religions of the world but it is often referred to as his Testament. “All religions are nothing but errors, illusion and imposture” is a typical chapter heading. “The wisdom and learning contained in the so-called holy books are only human” is another. To read Father Meslier is to read an earlier, rustic incarnation of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. There’s nothing new about the ‘new atheists’.

Despite his small library and apparent lack of intellectual company, he criticised the numerous errors and inconsistencies in the Bible well before German theologians got round to it over a century later and over two centuries before Catholics were officially allowed to, in 1943, including asking, “What certainty do we have that the four Gospels…were not corrupted and falsified, as we see happen to so many other books even today?” We also find proto-evolutionary thinking (Nature “acts blindly…without knowing what it is doing or why it is doing it”) – even some proto-Malthusian anxieties. All very modern, as is his defence of divorce when domestic strife makes children miserable and parents “give them bad examples every day and fail to educate them… in the arts and sciences as well as in good manners”. Meslier himself had a young ‘housekeeper’ (he passed her off as a cousin) and evidently had relaxed views about sex. Though not a vegetarian, he deplored the prevalent brutality towards farm animals.

Father Jean Meslier - a portrait drawing on a yellowed page
Father Jean Meslier, from page 6 of “Superstition in all ages: by Jean Meslier, a Roman Catholic priest, who, after a pastoral service of thirty years at Etrepigny and But in Champagne, France, wholly abjured religious dogmas, and left as his last will and testment, to his parishioners, and to the world, to be published after his death, the following pages, entitled Commmon sense.” Via Library of Congress

His neglect by historians may also be due to another dangerously heretical book titled ‘Common Sense’, wrongly attributed to Meslier since the 1790s and still confusingly published under his name. In some ways, ‘Common Sense’ is better written, but its real author was an amiable aristocrat, the Baron d’Holbach, who wisely published everything pseudonymously and almost certainly rejected Meslier’s radicalism, which was briefly recognised during the Revolution that followed d’Holbach’s perfectly-timed natural death in 1789. In contrast, Voltaire said that Meslier wrote “like a carthorse”. It’s true that Meslier can be repetitious, but there are several flashes of scorn and humour, though his most famous (and invariably mis-attributed) phrase – “I would like to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest” – is not his own, as he truthfully records.

In 1761, Voltaire published a dishonest and much-shortened travesty of the Mémoire that made Meslier appear a deist, like Voltaire himself. It excised all reference to Meslier’s anti-monarchism and egalitarianism (both of them absolute anathema to Voltaire), presenting him as a death-bed convert rather than the life-long disbeliever he had undoubtedly been.

Meslier’s parishioners knew nothing of his heretical views, and neither did his priestly neighbours, nor his superiors. The local Archbishop, down the road at Reims, rapped his knuckles when he preached against the rapacity of Squire de Toully, but records of parish inspections confirm that in all other respects, he was regarded even by Reims as a good and well-organised priest, in an age when the village priest was an important provider not just of spiritual comforts and rituals but also of official pronouncements and news.

One thing that I find rather endearing about Meslier is that despite his rejection of religion, he seems to have enjoyed his pastoral work which, in the absence of a welfare state, must have been much more comprehensive than anything a modern village priest has to contemplate. I think of him as a bit like an old-fashioned country doctor – a Dr Finlay figure, knowing almost everything that went on in the village and possibly the only really literate and well-read inhabitant.

His neat entries in the parish register indicate a sound education and confirm the authenticity of the Mémoire manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale. We can easily imagine what went through his mind as he intoned every day the words of the mass and of all the other services – baptisms, weddings and funerals – that were so central to village life. Especially funerals, for the post-mediaeval ‘Little Ice Age’ reached one of its peaks during Meslier’s tenure. The winter of 1708-9 was probably the coldest on record and over half a million died of famine in France alone. In Venice, people skated on the lagoon and as if what was known in England as ‘The Great Frost’ wasn’t enough of a disaster, 1709 also included the War of the Spanish Succession. The site of Marlborough’s victory at Oudenaarde is an hour’s drive from Étrépigny today, just over the Belgian border. Even in happier periods:

a provincial economy within a hundred miles of Paris [in the mid-18th century] was a precarious balance between subsistence and dearth, with its agricultural technique hardly changed at all since mediaeval times.

Darwin J. After Tamerlane: the rise and fall of global empires 1400-2000. London. Penguin. 2008. 141

We know exactly what Meslier thought about Holy Communion, the most solemn and impressive bit of theatre and audience-participation in the whole, impressive business of the Mass, because he tells us. “Le dieu de pâte et farine”, he writes dismissively. “The god of dough and flour”.

Another 21st century Meslier – an unbelieving American priest who regularly blogs under the name of ‘Stan Bennett’ – describes his own feelings in church:

But while I like to study and think, the Sunday morning presentation fills me with dread because at some point, I’m going to be saying something I don’t believe. My whole life, I have tried to be truthful, and now I am intentionally saying something I don’t believe is true. This is what causes my heart to race, my blood pressure to rise, and bones to ache… I no longer speak of developing a personal relationship with Jesus, but instead speak of being loyal to his cause, which might include social justice issues as well as concepts of love, truth, and generosity.

Asked during the same interview if he ever got any interesting or challenging questions after his Easter sermons, he replied:

I never have seen much of that. They don’t want me to rock their boat too much and force them to think because it might ruin their day. They expect me to use the religious language to which they are accustomed. Beyond the ritualism, it’s not real to most of them.[my italics] Actually, it’s hard to disturb them because they aren’t listening. …And they’ll crowd into one pew, sing the same songs as when they were young, watch the latest crop of children get baptized, smile at each other, and none of them will be able to repeat even a word or two of what I said, except maybe the funny story I told or an old thought that resonated from their Sunday school days.

A similar survey of rabbis who no longer believed in God found less unhappiness and more adaptation. As yet, no Muslim academic seems to have been brave enough or optimistic enough to question Mullahs and Imams in a similar way. Healers who don’t believe in science – homeopaths, for example – will do a lot of damage if you let them treat your hyperthyroidism or diabetes homeopathically, even if they look and sound to you like real doctors; but Roman Catholic priests who don’t believe in God and think that communion wine is just wine can be absolutely indistinguishable in their rituals and the earthly results of their ministrations from the real thing. This is placebo effect with real style.

I don’t know what the official Vatican line is on the validity of Holy Communion performed by apostates with bread and wine that they have supposedly consecrated, though apparently the actual words still do the trick even if the speaker has doubts. The Anglican church says that the sacraments “are not rendered ineffectual by the unworthiness of the minister” because “they do not do these things in their own name but in Christ’s and minister by His commission and authority”, but what happens if ‘unworthiness’ means not sexual or financial misbehaviour, but a fundamental rejection of Christ’s existence, genealogy, commission and authority? Were Meslier’s deceived parishioners automatically excluded from heaven? It seems that having an unbelieving and privately blasphemous priest made no difference to their daily lives as compared with neighbouring parishes served by conventional and conforming priests.

If there had been any obvious differences between Étrépigny and its neighbours as regards infant mortality, fertility, longevity, the incidence of common childhood and adult diseases and the health of its flocks and crops, I think the locals would have noticed and commented. The same presumably goes for Stan Bennett’s parishioners, except that today’s detailed mortality and morbidity statistics would have revealed any differences even more quickly. Epidemiologists would soon descend on any town or suburb with unexpectedly large or small numbers of patients with particular diagnoses, or of deaths.

We certainly know, as Meslier did, what that official Vatican line was when it came to unbelievers themselves, because he mentions a particularly brutal example that occurred only a few decades before his birth. Lucilio Vanini, who sometimes called himself Julio Cesare Vanini, was a well-connected itinerant academic and philosopher from a prosperous Italian family – a sort of Alain de Botton of his time. He had a lively and irreverent writing and lecturing style but his contacts with the movers and shakers of Parisian society kept him out of trouble until 1619.

In that year, a book that he had written came to the attention of some of the ecclesiastics and magistrates of Toulouse when he was staying in the area. It was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue and did not advocate atheism, but one of its fictional characters discussed the forbidden topic in an oblique and almost apologetic way. That was too much for the defenders of the status quo, who convicted him of atheism and blasphemy. Vanini managed to give a brave little speech before his tongue was cut out and he was strangled and burned to ashes aged only 33. Even when they had less barbaric deaths, that sort of heretic was often buried in an unmarked grave, as Meslier was when his Testament was quickly discovered and read – the Vatican equivalent of Moscow’s air-brushing of dissident communists from the official record.

These days, unhappy people in Britain are much more likely to discuss their unhappiness with a therapist than with a priest. However, there is increasing evidence that like the doctrines that supposedly lie behind satisfying religious rituals, the doctrines supposedly making for successful outcomes in counselling and psychotherapy are very much less important than the ritual, symbolic and non-specific components of ‘therapy’. Cognitive behavioural therapies are an exception but, even in CBT, the ritual and symbolic aspects may be paramount. So are other non-specific components like suggestion, expectation, hope, belief (justified or not) and the therapeutic relationship. That certainly applies to psychoanalysis. In the index to the complete works of Sigmund Freud, the highly significant missing word between ‘penis’ and ‘pleasure’ is ‘placebo’.

Nobody undergoes egg donation for the money – it is about altruism, not exploitation

Emma McClure
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Nobody undergoes egg donation for the money – it is about altruism, not exploitation

Should we be paying people to give parts of themselves away? More specifically should we be paying those with ovaries to donate their eggs? This is the question that has recently come to the fore in England with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announcing that from 1 October 2024 they will be increasing the compensation paid to egg donors from £750 to £986 per donation cycle. It is currently illegal to pay for eggs in the UK, but it is possible to offer compensation for expenses, which is what the £750/£986 figure represents. The maximum compensation for sperm donation is £35 per donation.

The reason given by HFEA for this increase is partly to reflect price rises. The amount paid to donors has been £750 since 2011 and it is therefore now worth significantly less than when the payment was introduced.

“It’s going up to just under £1,000 which the HFEA felt was a right balance between compensating people for their time but really recognising that, in the UK, egg donation is an altruistic act,” explained Clare Ettinghausen, director of strategy and corporate affairs at the HFEA, as reported by the BBC.

I am familiar with the old figure, as I have donated eggs on a number of occasions and have received this compensation. Young women (between 18 and 35) on social media may also be familiar with this figure, as it appears prominently in the many adverts they will likely have seen from fertility services seeking donors.

In addition to the inflationary explanation for the increase, it is also suggested that the increase will encourage more people to donate, as there is a shortage of donors, particularly from Asian and Black backgrounds.

The prominence of offers of payment, the reported shortage in donors and the imminent increase in compensation are a source of concern in some quarters, as set out in some detail by the Independent, where campaigners express the view that donation can in no way be considered altruistic when there is payment involved.

Helen Gibson of Surrogacy Concern, a campaign group which opposes surrogacy puts the issue this way:

We do not pay kidney or blood donors: why is an exception made to incentivise women to sell their eggs, which are then often sold on in packages by fertility clinics at huge profits? We are clear: this is exploitation of women.

The article also sets out a concern that disadvantaged women are being encouraged to damage their bodies and their own fertility for the wealthy.

I am fairly confident in stating that donating eggs is significantly more involved and taxing than donating blood, and somewhat less taxing than donating a kidney. I am as close as someone can get in the UK to a ‘professional’ body part donor; I do it a lot. I am on the bone marrow register. I have donated blood 45 times and counting. I have donated eggs on multiple occasions. It is only the strong objections of my loved ones that have kept both of my kidneys inside my body up to this point. I am working on it.  

I am also a stereotypical egg donor in terms of demographics, an affluent white woman.

Blood donation takes around an hour of my time every 4 months. As a result, I experience mild discomfort from the needle in the arm and the need to take it slightly easier for the rest of the day. I am given biscuits and crisps and zero money.

A close up of gloved hands holding medical sample tubes

Egg donation has asked much more of me in a number of ways. In terms of financial commitment, it involves at least half a dozen trips to the hospital with parking costs and time out of work. There are invasive and uncomfortable transvaginal ultrasounds, frequent blood tests and medication with unpleasant side-effects. This includes taking the oral contraceptive pill for a period of time to control the timing of the cycle.

The donation process itself involves going through the first half of IVF. This involves the overstimulation of the ovaries to mature a much larger number of eggs at one time, as opposed to the usual one or two per menstrual cycle. This is done through the self-injection of various drugs/hormones on a daily basis for several weeks.

After that stage came the retrieval procedure, where I was sedated and the eggs retrieved through the vaginal wall with a whacking great needle. This led to some bleeding, period-like cramps, and feeling fairly delicate for the remainder of the day.

I have felt significantly unwell on a couple of occasions as a result of some of the medications and the retrieval procedure. It interrupts the usual menstrual cycle, and there are a long list of potential complications including a small risk of damaging my own fertility. I am at higher risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS) which is a potentially fatal condition. OHSS is a particular worry of Surrogacy Concern, which I will come on to.

Those are the practical and physical ramifications. There are also the emotional expenses. Pumping a large amount of fertility and contraceptive hormones into the body unsurprisingly has an impact on how you feel mentally. There is also the emotional impact of the importance of what you are doing: choosing to assist in the creation of a child or children, who you may never know anything about beyond their year of birth and assigned gender. There are then other lifestyle impacts, such as navigating the feelings of my own family and partner around the idea of my procreating but no one from my family playing a part in the children’s lives.

I had to have ‘implications’ counselling along with my partner. This was a lengthy interview with a counsellor going through my reasons for donating, and the potential implications for me and for others of donating. There was discussion around the small risk of damage to my own fertility, and my own plans in terms of children as well as how my personal relationships would be affected should any children born as a result of my donation choose to seek me out once they turned 18.

I was advised at multiple points about the potential risks of the treatment. In preparation for this piece, I have gone through the papers provided to me for each of my donations. They go into significant detail about the potential health implications for me and symptoms to look out for. In total each cycle has lasted several months.

I do have some criticisms of the process having gone through it a number of times. These are criticisms I have raised with the organisation that my donations were coordinated by. For example, a lot of the written material provided was generic, as it was to cover everyone who was undergoing the egg retrieval process – the vast majority of whom will be trying to create their own embryos and hopefully become pregnant themselves. The booklets recording my treatment also included sections for embryo transfer and pregnancy. Being provided with all of this information in addition to the information specific to me had the potential to make me feel like an after-thought – something that was all the more acute given the heightened hormone-induced emotional state.

Beyond this, however, I was given copious amounts of information about the impact on me, access to counselling, and the ability to pull out at any time up to the eggs being implanted in another person. While it is true that risks to the donor are not explicitly set out in adverts, they are thoroughly dealt with during the process. The same is true for blood donation, or indeed any form of elective medical procedure.

My reasons for donating are complex and personal to me. The £750 was never a factor in my decision. To some extent this may be because I am a professional with a good income. I almost certainly lost more money in lost work time than I gained in donation compensation. However, the highly involved nature of the process and the timescale make it hugely unlikely that someone would engage in this process purely for financial gain.

HFEA currently allow donors to create up to ten families, where multiple families could be created through one donation. Even if this involved ten donations and they took place every six months, this would equate to an annual income of £1972 over five years, if the donations were back to back. It’s not exactly lucrative, given the time of other work required – time a regular job may well not allow for.

I would submit that being paid £750 or £986 in expenses for this process is not particularly enticing or exploitative.

Surrogacy Concern also express the view that egg donation is too dangerous for donors, pointing to there having been two deaths related to OHSS in England in recent years. Looking into this, there are two reported deaths that occurred in 2005 and 2006 in the UK – they are recorded by the Office for National Statistics in a report recording deaths attributed to OHSS between 2001 and 2016. A cursory google also throws up an autopsy case report from 2022 for an OHSS death that occurred in India.

There is no information available about whether these deaths occurred in women who were simply donating eggs, or those going through IVF for their own fertility. The risk of OHSS was the biggest concern that was discussed during my own treatment, and a lot of mitigations were put in place to minimise that risk. While any death caused by treatment is a terrible thing, that there have been two reported deaths in the UK – almost 20 years ago at that – suggests the risk is well within the window of tolerance for medical procedures in the UK.

As the name suggests, Surrogacy Concern’s main issue appears to be with the broader concept of surrogacy – of which egg donation can play a part. Their website sets this out more explicitly:

We believe surrogacy to be a form of human trafficking. We do not believe it is right to separate a baby from its mother, and do not believe surrogacy is a legitimate way to create a family.

We believe the days and weeks after birth are crucial to a baby’s future development and health, and believe women’s bodies and reproductive capacity should not be exploited or commodified.

We do not believe the law should be liberalized on surrogacy, but that it needs to be significantly tightened.

Elsewhere Helen Gibson has set out a view that essentially excludes gay couples from using surrogacy to become parents.

Rather than a fear over the exploitation of women, Surrogacy Concern’s objection here appears to be more a moral or ethical one around the necessity or otherwise of being raised by a biological mother.

IVF egg donation and surrogacy are ways of creating families and very dearly wanted children who would otherwise not exist. I think this is something which should be celebrated. So, while groups like Surrogacy Concern seek to withhold this opportunity from families, I hope that the increase in compensation, as well as the subsequent publicity these reports have generated, will encourage more and a more diverse group of donors in the future.

Labia peels: it is a very bad idea to apply chemicals to your labia in the name of beauty

Alice Howarth
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Labia peels: it is a very bad idea to apply chemicals to your labia in the name of beauty

If there’s one area in which society appears to have a near-limitless supply of innovation and imagination, it’s in the marketing of products designed to make women feel insecure about their bodies – and the more intimate the body part, the greater the scope for marketable insecurity.

Screenshot as described in the main text.

Take, for example, anal brightening products, like anal bleaching. These are products that usually contain acids that chemically exfoliate the skin of the anus, and often inhibit melanin production, which is the pigment that contributes to both natural skin colour and hyperpigmentation build up, which some people choose to correct.

More troubling than those products is a listing I came across on AliExpress – or, at least, a Twitter post screenshotting a product from AliExpress. The accompanying photo showed one of those glass vials that you often find vaccines in, filled with a reddish liquid, and bearing the label read “Labia Peeling. Ladies only. Private parts whitening. Restore the virginity. Chelnokova”.

What are chemical peels?

Chemical peels are non-surgical cosmetic procedures that can be used to correct a variety of skin complaints, such as acne scars and hyperpigmentation. For skin peels that are applied to the face, there are a range of options. At one end, there are very mild acids that you can apply topically at home – they aren’t strong enough to burn deeply into the skin so you can use them day-to-day as a mild chemical exfoliant. They lift the uppermost layer of skin cells and encourage new skin cells to grow. Most people will experience some mild tingling and redness, and then their skin might feel a little tight afterwards. At the other end of the scale, stronger acid chemical peels need to be applied by a professional.

There are three types of common chemical peels: superficial peels, which remove skin cells from the top layer of skin (epidermis), are applied for a few minutes and need to be repeated regularly to maintain effects; medium peels, which remove skin cells from the top and middle layers of skin, are applied for a few minutes, can cause burning and stinging sensations, and will last for up to six weeks but need to be repeated every six to twelve months; and deep peels, which may require a local anaesthetic and sedative under constant supervision, as they’re left on for thirty minutes or more.

With deep peels, your heart and blood pressure need to be monitored, because the chemical used (phenol) can affect your heart and kidneys. At the end, you’ll be left with some peeling, redness and discomfort for a few days, some swelling for up to two weeks, and some redness for up to three months. These have long-lasting effects, so usually they do not need to be repeated.

As you might imagine when it comes to applying acids to the skin, chemical peels come with some risks – these can include darkening or lightening of the skin (which can even be permanent), the return of cold sores in regular sufferers, scarring or an infection (although this is rare), and increased sensitivity to the sun as your skin heals.

Why are labia peels?

Labial peeling is a different thing entirely. Intimate peels are, these days, available from a wide range of cosmetic clinics. One practice based in Dallas says:

Ladies, it’s no secret that we pour a lot of effort into taking care of ourselves.  From the hair salon to the nail salon to spa treatments and at-home pampering, we all perform regular rituals that indicate a healthy commitment to ourselves and our bodies. This is a good thing! Self-care is important to our overall wellbeing and confidence. So, why should the aesthetic appearance of our lady parts (more specifically the appearance of the skin “down there”) be excluded?

Another website explained why women might want an intimate peel:

The routine daily maintenance that so many women do on their Hoo Haa can cause discoloration. The stress of regular shaving can leave dark patches. Many times in grown hairs can leave dark spots. Routine waxing can also stress the skin, causing areas of darker skin tone. This hyperpigmentation on the bikini line leaves women feeling uneasy. Intimate bleaching is a solution that many women are taking advantage of.

Personally, I’m neither for nor against feminine hair removal – women get to decide for themselves whether they remove hair, how they remove hair and which hair they remove. I love to see the backlash against its requirement, and seeing women proudly sporting armpit or leg hair. And I love seeing women have the confidence to invest in permanent hair removal if that is their preference.

But it is undeniably frustrating to see a cycle where women are expected by society to remove their body hair, and then they are encouraged to have chemical peels to undo the damage some of those hair removal methods have on our skin. Waxing damages the skin, because the skin can darken as it heals. All hair removal methods can cause ingrown hairs and those can scar leaving discolouration. This is the natural consequence of hair removal. And reversing that isn’t “self-care” or about our “well-being”. It isn’t empowering for women to spend time and money, and to endure physical pain, to fix insecurities that society and the wellness industry created in the first place.

If you do have serious insecurities about any skin discolouration, you’re welcome to go to a clinic and get a chemical peel. There are some additional things to consider, however.

In the UK, non-surgical cosmetic procedures are not currently regulated. That means you do not have to have any particular qualifications or license to apply a chemical peel in the UK. This is changing. At the end of 2023 the UK government published a consultation on “The licensing of non-surgical cosmetic procedures in England” in which they said:

The current regulatory framework places few restrictions on who can perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures. The government recognises the concerns about the lack of regulation in this field and the potential dangers that this poses to the public. We want to ensure public safety and public protection through a regulatory framework that enables consumers to make informed and safe choices when undergoing procedures which have the potential to cause serious injury or harm.

The UK government set out a plan to introduce a new licensing scheme that they say will identify the procedures that present a risk to the public, and introduce for them a practitioner licence and a premises licence. These licences will be administered and enforced by local authorities, and it will be illegal to carry out non-surgical cosmetic procedures without such a licence. They would also introduce a minimum age of 18 for those people seeking to receive these procedures.

It is not clear yet which procedures will be covered by the licensing scheme but, under the heading “Procedures in scope of the licensing scheme”, they explain that a ‘cosmetic procedure’ is something other than a surgical or dental procedure, carried out for cosmetic purposes, and including the injection of a substance, the application of a substance that is capable of penetrating into or through the epidermis, the insertion of needles into the skin, the placing of threads under the skin, or the application of light, electricity, cold or heat.

Sadly, this regulatory framework is still under development and, until its introduction, it is something of a Wild West when it comes to non-surgical cosmetic procedures. For now, there are two voluntary regulatory bodies that the UK government recommends. The first, called Save Face, is for doctors, nurses, dentists and prescribing pharmacists who provide non-surgical cosmetic treatments. The second, called called the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP), is for all practitioners working in the fields of cosmetic treatments. Both of these bodies carry PSA accredited registers and the JCCP also holds a non-PSA accredited register.

That AliExpress listing

So where does the AliExpress product come into play? On the (now geo-locked) listing on AliExpress, this product is called: “CHELNOKOVA Red Clitoris Labia Peeling Acid Virgin Mammary Areola Woman Clitoris Stimulator Powerful Sucker Clitoris Virgin TCA”.

As far as I can tell they sell three types of acid: TCA, glycolic and citric acid.

They sell these at a variety of concentrations including 60% TCA, which is used for those deepest of deep peels – the ones that get into the deepest layers of the skin and do not need repeating because it has a near-permanent effect. These chemicals should absolutely not be used at home, and deep peels can cause scarring and long-lasting damage to the skin.

The sellers say:

Use a cotton swab, dip in a little liquid, and continuously wipe the labia/areola. After a few seconds, white frost will appear. At this time, spray neutralizing solution, wait for 5 minutes, then implement again, and then end the entire process. During the application process, there will be a tingling sensation, like flames burning on the skin. When white frost appears, it needs to be stopped immediately. Within 1-3 days, the stratum corneum will turn black, wrinkle, and then fall off. Within 10-28 days, a new stratum corneum will be formed, bringing you a shiny, fresh, and smooth new stratum corneum. The previous skin aging problem will be perfectly resolved. And it will become more sensitive. If necessary, it can be done every 2-3 months.

In one of the images provided, they say that if the white frost appears the acid must be neutralised immediately to prevent burning the skin.

I cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to buy an acid on the internet and apply it to your genital area.

Do not do it. Under any circumstances.

As for general intimate peels? They’re not regulated, they’re not medically tested and while they might not cause you harm, a variety of acids sometimes used for some chemical peels do have carcinogenic properties. I wouldn’t take the risk, I don’t think they’re necessary and I really do hate that we have a society that pushes women to have insecurities about their bodies in this way.

Comparing misinformation to a virus is neither accurate nor useful in preventing its spread

Ariana Modirrousta-Galian
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Comparing misinformation to a virus is neither accurate nor useful in preventing its spread

In recent years, there has been a surge in public discourse and academic research on misinformation. A search for the term “misinformation” on Google Ngram Viewer – a tool that tracks the occurrence of words and phrases in printed materials dating from 1500 to 2022 – reveals a sharp increase in its usage beginning in the early-to-mid 2010s. This upward trend shows no signs of levelling off, reflecting the still growing attention on this issue.

A Google 'Ngram' shows a spike in the use of the term 'misinformation' at the end of the 2010s
Google Ngram Viewer shows a sharp increase in mentions of the term ‘misinformation’

The rising interest in misinformation is not surprising considering its pivotal role in various tragic events in the last decade. In 2016, a man fired shots with an assault rifle at a pizzeria after encountering false stories claiming that Democratic Party leaders were running a paedophilia ring in the restaurant. In 2021, a mob stormed the US Capitol, resulting in several deaths and many more injuries, due to the unfounded belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump. And in 2024, violent race riots broke out across England as a result of baseless claims that an attacker who had murdered three young girls was a Muslim asylum seeker (he was actually a British citizen born in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan parents). The list goes on…

To combat the negative impact of misinformation on society, researchers have developed interventions to help people detect false news. Among the most popular are inoculation interventions, which are based on the idea that misinformation is like an infectious disease. Much like a virus, misinformation spreads from person to person, and people become infected by misinformation much like they become infected by a disease. Inoculation interventions are described as metaphorical vaccines that deliver mental antibodies to fight and confer resistance against misinformation. They aim to do this by teaching people about manipulation techniques that are thought to be common in false news. The manipulation techniques that people learn about are considered weakened doses of attacking material that help foster immunity.

This biological analogy is appealing. It provides an easy way to conceptualise the issue of misinformation, especially given the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, both (mis)information and viruses are shared and propagated among people, making their comparison intuitively satisfying. It is therefore not surprising that the virus metaphor was also adopted by the World Health Organization, which describes too much false or misleading information during a disease outbreak as an ‘infodemic’. Nevertheless, as intuitive as it may be to use this epidemiological comparison when it comes to misinformation, there are concerns with its potential wider implications.

By likening misinformation to a virus, it is implied that we are all vulnerable to false news (albeit perhaps some people more than others) and in need of a psychological vaccine to resist its harmful effects. As a case in point, consider the following article titles: “We need to “vaccinate” people against misinformation so that they can identify suspicious information on their own” and “COVID-19 misinformation: scientists create a ‘psychological vaccine’ to protect against fake news”. This perspective paints a rather alarming picture, portraying people as passive and gullible consumers of (mis)information at constant risk of being misled. Is this accurate? Are people really at the mercy of misinformation unless they are immunised against it? Research suggests that this is not the case.

Several glass vials labelled "COVID-19 Coronavirus vaccine"
We can vaccinate people against many viruses but can we do so metaphorically, against the concept of misinformation?

A recent meta-analysis with data from 193,282 participants across 40 countries and all seven continents showed that people are generally able to tell apart true and false news before experiencing any type of intervention. Accuracy estimates from our own work are as high as 79%, and we found that even when people think they are guessing, they can distinguish between true and false news with 67% accuracy. Moreover, other research suggests that most people are generally sceptical rather than gullible when navigating news on social media, which may be one reason that their ability to distinguish between true and false news is naturally quite good. Perhaps as a result of this scepticism, people report using various strategies to detect misinformation, such as fact-checking and relying on traditional fact-based media.

These data suggest that the average person is far from an easily deceived victim under the heel of misinformation. In fact, some researchers have suggested that the idea that people struggle to discern true from false information is a misconception and even a myth. Thus, the virus metaphor can not only be considered alarming, but also alarmist. Researchers have called for it to be abandoned completely, arguing that it is an oversimplified, incorrect, and ultimately misleading analogy.

But how do we reconcile these research findings with the real-world tragedies fuelled by misinformation? Well, it appears that certain groups of people are more vulnerable to believing misinformation than others. Factors such as conservatism and poor reasoning skills have been identified as contributing to this susceptibility. Note, however, that the susceptibility of conservatives to misinformation may be partially explained by the fact that widely shared false news tends to promote conservative positions. In line with this, the 2016 “Pizzagate” incident, the 2021 Capitol attack, and the 2024 England riots were all fuelled by right-wing misinformation and mostly carried out by individuals with far-right ideologies.

Therefore, while misinformation may not be an equally pervasive threat to everyone, it remains a significant issue, and there is still room for improvement. People are not perfect identifiers of misinformation, and there are individual differences in susceptibility to misinformation. Interventions could therefore be useful for boosting people’s ability to discern the veracity of news (which is already pretty good) even further, and targeting individuals who are most susceptible to misinformation. Ironically, using a virus analogy for misinformation, and thus a vaccine analogy for interventions against it, could alienate specific groups of people that may be most in need such interventions, such as vaccine sceptics.

In summary, it is not productive to use overextended, alarmist analogies that depict misinformation as a viral contagion that could infect anyone and everyone. Equally, anti-alarmist narratives should not be misconstrued to suggest that misinformation is not a problem – it is. There is a middle ground here, and to reach a consensus on the issue, we must view misinformation as the unique problem that it is, rather than relying on metaphors that provide an alluring but inaccurate perspective.

Beware of commercial microbiome tests: how at-home testing can mislead consumers

Cesar Baima
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Beware of commercial microbiome tests: how at-home testing can mislead consumers

This story was originally written in Portuguese, and published to the website of Revista Questão de Ciência. It appears here with permission.

In recent years, more and more research has pointed to the importance of the microbiome – the set of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies, such as the bacteria and fungi in our intestines that aid in digestion, or the bacteria present on our skin or saliva – in various aspects of human health, both physical and mental. With this in mind, many companies have begun offering “microbiome tests” directly to the public. Companies sell the tests by claiming that they can detect whether a customer’s microbiome is “healthy” or “dysbiosis” (out of balance) and suggest that, if the latter is the case, it may be the cause of various health problems.

However, like the genetic tests for ancestry and alleged hereditary health risks that are also sold directly to the public, these microbiome tests have no analytical validity or clinical relevance. In other words, they do not provide information that can be used correctly and responsibly in making health decisions. Therefore, there is a need for greater regulation of the sector by health authorities, as called for by researchers in the field in an article published in an issue of the prestigious journal Science earlier this year.

“Companies’ claims of being able to detect ‘abnormal’ microbiomes are not supported by research; their testing procedures lack analytical validity, and their results have no demonstrated clinical validity,” they write. “As a result, consumers may be financially exploited or harmed by the inappropriate use of test results that neither they nor their physicians understand.”

Independent assessment

The authors of the paper did not draw these conclusions out of thin air. As part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), they first conducted an online survey of companies around the world that are offering these tests, and reviewed the information they provide to the public about their services. The researchers also conducted interviews and focus groups – a qualitative research method – with microbiome researchers, physicians who treat chronic bowel and vaginal conditions, patients, and consumers who have used or have access to these types of tests. Finally, they assembled a working group of microbiome researchers, physicians, medical device and service regulatory experts, and industry and consumer representatives to discuss the regulatory challenges posed by these tests.

In all, the researchers identified 31 companies offering microbiome testing directly to consumers, 17 of which were based in the US. They found that the industry primarily attracts healthy people who are curious to learn more about their microbiome, as well as individuals suffering from chronic conditions that may be linked to it, such as Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and bacterial vaginosis.

While most companies focus on the gut microbiome, some also offer testing of the vaginal and skin microbiomes. Again, their processes are similar to those used by genetic testing companies; consumers order a test kit, complete a health and lifestyle questionnaire, collect stool, vaginal or skin samples, and send them to a company lab for analysis.

This analysis generally describes the taxonomic composition of the microorganisms present in the samples and their relative abundance, and in some cases includes the metabolic functions present or observed of these microbes. It also includes an assessment, often using a graph, of whether the microbiome is in a “healthy” range or not, a conclusion supposedly based on comparisons with healthy people or those with chronic diseases or conditions.

And therein lies the first problem, the authors of the article point out: it is not known exactly which databases companies use to make the comparisons, or what their composition is. In some cases it may be proprietary to the company, composed of the results of all its customers, and not representative of the population at large. The company may also have purchased data from patients diagnosed with certain diseases or chronic conditions, again not based on a representative sample of the population.

Additionally, if customers’ microbiomes fall outside the “healthy” range, companies supplement the report with suggestions for dietary changes or supplements to improve the “balance” of their gut microbiome. It is therefore no surprise that the authors of the paper found nearly half of the companies that sell these at-home microbiome tests also sell the supplements those reports recommend.

An array of open and closed supplement and drug buttles with their colourful pill contents spilled out in front of them
An array of supplement pill and drug bottles with their contents spilled out

Finally, companies also seek to keep these customers coming back by advising them to repeat the tests periodically to assess the effects of dietary changes and/or supplements. Some companies even offer subscriptions and nutritionist services, the authors of the paper note.

No scientific validity

The researchers then highlight that the three fundamental characteristics of the suitability and benefit of a test, in the context of human health, are: the analytical validity of the test itself, its clinical validity and its usefulness. These are characteristics these “home” microbiome tests do not have, they say.

Analytical validity involves, for example, establishing false positive and false negative rates, which, in the case of microbiome tests, would involve knowing whether they overestimate or underestimate the relative abundance of microorganisms in the samples. However, they say in the case of the microbiome this is impossible to determine, since the bioinformatics tools used by companies are not capable of recognising and identifying all microorganisms in the samples, thus not allowing for knowledge of relative abundances.

Clinical validity is based on the principle that the test is capable of determining the existence of a disease, which in the case of microbiome tests, means knowing whether they can actually define a state of health or disease. This, in turn, leads to their clinical utility. That is, whether this determination can lead to a useful clinical action – an intervention that could be applied to “treat” the individual. The authors emphasise that the clinical utility of microbiome tests is questionable, since there is little or no evidence supporting the interventions generally recommended based on the results of these tests such as diets, supplements, exercise or other lifestyle changes.

“Without analytical validity, the first of these fundamental characteristics of test suitability and benefit, test results are meaningless,” the researchers state. “Furthermore, determining whether a sample is characteristic of a ‘healthy’ state or not requires comparison to a standard. And, at present, there is no consensus on what constitutes a healthy human microbiome in any population or subpopulation.”

Worse, many of these tests have proven to be unreliable in their results, with variations in the analyses of the same sample performed by different companies, and even by the same company. The authors cite as an example preliminary results from an ongoing study by researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in which three identical samples of standardised faecal material were sent to seven different companies. Despite the identical composition of all the samples, the results were discrepant both between the different companies and in the analyses performed by the same company.

Need for regulation

Given all this, the authors of the Science article advocate for stricter regulation of the marketing and performance of these microbiome tests. They note that although many of the companies claim that their tests are not for “diagnostic” purposes, their marketing strategies often imply this, leading people to believe that they are based on scientific and clinically relevant evidence. This also leads many people to believe that these tests are overseen by health regulatory agencies, when in fact they are in the limbo of unregulated health and wellness products, like dietary supplements.

“The lack of regulation of these tests may put consumers at risk of harm when they rely on inaccurate results and follow unproven nutritional or dietary supplement recommendations,” they say. “These harms may include erroneous self-diagnoses, delays in seeking medical treatment, and replacing prescription drugs with non-drug supplements.”

Another concern is for people who already suffer from diagnosed diseases or health conditions, another large audience for these tests, and who may see them and their results as a treatment alternative:

“Many individuals seeking these tests have chronic illnesses and are desperate to try anything to alleviate their pain and suffering. Because these tests are largely unregulated, they are not subject to reporting of adverse effects, but we have had cases reported by gastroenterologists of harm. In one of the focus groups we hosted, a paediatric gastroenterologist reported patients who developed dietary restriction disorders after following the microbiome testing companies’ recommendations to avoid certain foods.”

The wealthy, conservative American Christian groups pushing anti-abortion protests in the UK

Michael Marshall
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The wealthy, conservative American Christian groups pushing anti-abortion protests in the UK

Last month, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was awarded £13k from the West Midlands Police and given an apology for her wrongful arrests in November 2022 and February 2023 when she was detained by the police while silently praying on the street.

Put that way, the case sounds like a huge infringement on her right to practise her religion without persecution. Put that way, it sounds like egregious over-policing, bordering on thought crime, which should appal every right-thinking person who loves freedom. Put that way, she is a hero. And it has certainly been put that way a lot – by people like GB News regulars, Darren Grimes and Calvin Robinson. The former tweeted a video of her arrest, saying:

This is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen the police do. She’s *silently* praying. Yet the police routinely choose not to investigate burglaries, muggings and fail to prosecute knife crime. How pathetically puerile our cops have become — a woman praying is now enemy #1!

And Calvin Robinson tweeted a video of her second arrest, saying:

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has been given a fixed penalty notice by the Thought Police.

Clearly not protesting.
Clearly not harassing anyone.
Clearly causing no harm.

Arrested for silently praying in her head, again!

However, as is often the case when the likes of GB News pick up on a culture war cause célèbre, there is some vital context missing from their reporting. Vaughan-Spruce was not arrested on the street at random – she was standing outside an abortion clinic, and had been for several days.

When the police asked if she was protesting, she said that, while she is part of an anti-abortion protest group, she was not acting in that capacity and was merely praying “in her head”. When asked if she could do that somewhere other than outside an abortion clinic, she said she wanted to pray in that spot, because it is an abortion clinic.

Whether she admits it or not, choosing to spend several days standing outside an abortion clinic in silent prayer, in full view of the people working at and visiting it, is undeniably a protest – and I say that as someone who has travelled around the country to hand out advice leaflets about cold reading, outside psychic shows. What I was doing was a protest, and what Vaughan-Spruce was doing was also protest; she travelled to a location for the specific purpose of engaging in a public action against something she disagrees with.

Her actions were chosen in such a way as to send a message to the people using the clinic – after all, if this were really about prayer, her omniscient god would have received the message regardless of where she was when she sent it. It is the definition of a protest, whether her actions were vocal or silent; to deny that is an act of cowardice, rather than a principled stand against over-policing.

The denial of the protest, however, was deliberate and tactical; Vaughan-Spruce’s colleague filmed her on both occasions, as the police ask if she is aware of the Public Space Protection Order in place outside the abortion clinic, and she confirms she was aware. They ask her to move along and to answer some questions and she refuses, which ultimately leads to her arrest.

Her protest on those days, and the several others, was designed to test those Public Space Protection Orders, which is why she made a point of filming throughout. That might be a reasonable and principled stance, to protest against anti-protesting legislation – but not if she denies that what she’s doing is a protest.

In my opinion, the purpose was not to protest against the unjust nature of anti-protesting laws. It was a stunt designed to create exactly the kind of headlines GB News and dozens of other outlets delivered, where it appears that an over-zealous police force is clamping down on thought crimes, to the point where even existing in public as a Christian makes you a target.

Isabel Vaughan-Sprice and March for Life

I first heard of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce in 2016 when I reached out to the organisation she runs, March for Life, to invite them onto an episode of my podcast, Be Reasonable. March For Life organises anti-abortion marches and protests around the country. At the time, they were preparing for their big 2016 event, and were too busy to be interviewed, as they were all volunteers working on their anti-abortion protests in their spare time.

For the last eight years, I’ve been on their mailing list, receiving regular updates on their marches, their protests, and their organising. I’ve had emails from them about “pro-choice training days”, where they train you to make your anti-abortion protests more effective – what rhetoric to use, which buttons to push, which beliefs to hold back, and how to frame an anti-abortion position in as palatable a way as possible.

On June 24 2022, I received an email update headlined: “ROE V WADE IS OVERTURNED – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE UK?” In it, they celebrated the ruling in America, and highlighted that they wanted to go even further in the UK:

What Roe v Wade has done is provide a strong talking point for us in the UK let’s use this to our advantage and not shy away from discussing this issue. We don’t want abortion to become illegal as much as we want it to be unthinkable.

To achieve that goal, Isabel and her team explained what they need their supporters to do:

At March for Life UK we often talk about the importance of being publicly pro-life. This doesn’t necessarily mean standing in the town centre with a poster, although it most certainly can do… we should be happy to talk about the science of the child in the womb, whose heart is beating from week 3, a fact which can, and should, make abortion supporters squirm… we should readily speak up about post abortion trauma and the symptoms of grief that can follow this decision as well as how to find healing and peace no matter how many abortions someone may have had.

And the newsletter, which is signed off by “Ben, Sarah and Isabel”, includes the following:

I sometimes suggest this litmus test – ask yourself the question: ‘If it became illegal tomorrow to be pro-life would there be enough evidence to convict you?’ If the answer is ‘no’, don’t berate yourself but rather think how can you change that?

A few things are clear, here: firstly, Isabel is not a random Christian who happened to be silently praying on the street, she is one of the three leaders of a national campaign group who exists to protest against abortion. Secondly, the protest her group trains people to engage in explicitly includes anti-abortion posters and conversation designed to make people squirm. And thirdly, Isabel believes you should engage in that protest regardless of what the law says about it.

Source: March For Life UK website

Anti-abortion protests and the law

So, what does the law say about protesting against abortion? In 2017, Ealing council proposed to use Antisocial Behaviour Orders to tackle groups organising daily protests outside the local abortion clinic to allow women to access “legal healthcare without intimidation”. Those protests were led by The Good Counsel Network, part of a network of anti-abortion groups, including March for Life, and 40 Days For Life. These two groups began in America, but now have UK-based arms run by Vaughan-Spruce (as well as being Co-Director of March for Life, she is listed as leader of Birmingham 40 Days For Life).

In 2013, I interviewed one of the other leaders of 40 Days For Life, Andrew Burton, after learning that the group hands out baby clothes, while shouting “mummy”, to women going into abortion clinics. Other clinics around the country have reported having baby socks left in hedges outside, with protesters holding up plastic foetuses, filming patients who enter, and calling the staff “murderers” and “baby killers”. It is easy to see why these protests, even back then, were causing people at abortion clinics to feel intimidated.

By 2021, according to an article in Elle, those UK protests had become more extreme and “Americanised” in their approach, with protesters emboldened by the extremists’ success in the US. And so MPs put forward plans for a Safe Access Zone around abortion clinics, meaning no anti-abortion protests would be allowed within 150 metres, enforced through Public Space Protection Orders. March for Life was incensed, and their March 2023 newsletter called these protest buffer zones a “national disgrace” that must be fought, arguing:

It is appalling that this proposal was ever put forward when there has never been any evidence demonstrating that intimidation or harassment has taken place outside any abortion centre in the country.

Given the actions of many anti-abortion protest groups, that March for Life believes there is no evidence of any intimidation is clearly more of a comment on their perception than their actions.

It is in this context that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce headed to the abortion clinic in Birmingham in December 2022, to engage in a protest while denying she was protesting. To my eyes, this looks an awful lot like someone hanging around outside a medical facility, knowing that doing so will provoke a reaction, to put these new laws to the test and find weaknesses in them.

The Alliance Defending Freedom UK

Videos of both of her arrests were uploaded to social media by the Alliance Defending Freedom UK, the UK-based offshoot of a well-financed American conservative group dedicated to ending abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. The video of her second arrest was branded with the ADF UK logo, and the group organised her case against the police , providing her with a legal team. Vaughan-Spruce’s stunt and subsequent PR victory would not have been possible without the funding and organisational support of the ADF UK.

March for Life cannot deny that their UK operation is entwined with the ADF – the host at their upcoming anti-abortion summit will be Lois McLatchie-Miller, Senior Legal Communications Officer for ADF UK. McLatchie-Miller posted an analysis of Vaughan-Spruce’s arrest to the website Conservative Home, where commenters wryly highlighted that, while her bio lists her as working for “ADF UK, a legal advocacy organization which promotes freedom of speech”, the UK outfit spells ‘organisation’ with an American Z.

Organising and supporting anti-abortion protest groups is not the extent of the ADF’s recent attempts to export their brand of American Christian lawfare into the UK. A Guardian article from April highlights how the ADF UK had more than doubled its spending on lobbying the UK government since 2020, and successfully partnered with senior Tory figures, including former Tory MP Fiona Bruce. In March, Bruce spoke alongside two members of the ADF at a conference on how to fight social hostility to religious beliefs. And if you’re wondering which religious beliefs need protecting, Bruce has voted against legalising abortion in the UK, and voted against same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.

A collage of Alliance Defending Freedom imagery featuring an American bill as background and protest signs against abortion
An ADF protest and values collage by Open Democracy featuring signs saying “Pray to end abortion” and “Every human person is #irreplaceable, let’s make abortion unthinkable”

The ADF also joined forces with Christian Concern to launch the Wilberforce Academy to train young Christian professionals in matters of faith. It’s hard to say how long this has been going on, because there is very little information online about the Wilberforce Academy beyond a very sparse website, a brief mention in the Guardian in 2011, and a form you can fill in to apply to be part of the 2024 intake (as long as you can tell them how you found out about them).

Christan Concern operates the Christian Legal Centre and seems to have picked up a few tips from the ADF’s playbook on finding and pursuing legal cases that push a Christian agenda, as the Guardian noted in 2011.

Close observers of the centre believe it is adopting the tactics of wealthy US evangelical groups, notably the powerful Alliance Defence Fund, which, through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, trains an army of Christian lawyers to defend religious freedom “through strategy, training, funding and direct litigation”.

The CLC denies being funded by the ADF or ADF UK, and argues that “all of the centre’s work was done on a pro bono basis by committed Christian lawyers” and that what money it had came in “small donations from more than 30,000 people” who received its regular email updates. It is worth noting that at least some of those committed Christian lawyers passed through the ADF-funded Wilberforce Academy.

It is also worth noting that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce’s lawyer was Jeremiah Igunnubole, Legal Counsel for ADF UK, in a case that was “supported by the Christian Legal Centre”. So, in this case at least, the lawyer working towards the goals of the CLC was paid by the ADF UK, without it needing to be true that the ADF UK gave money to the CLC.

The conservative Christian agenda

It is not just through anti-abortion protest cases that the Christian Legal Centre’s agenda seems to align with that of the ADF – the CLC takes a keen interest in end-of-life and dying-with-dignity cases. Earlier this year, it was even reported that medics were leaving their jobs due to the “considerable moral distress” caused by right-wing Christian groups, including due to legal cases brought by the CLC.

The issues page of Christian Concern’s website shows their priorities – which is to push a Christian view on the beginning of life, end of life, marriage, gender, and sexuality. They stress the importance of education, by which they mean faith-based education, because “the children of our society become more vulnerable to the secularising and sexualising trends of culture”.

They claim that there are Sharia law councils across the UK, creating a parallel legal system. They oppose secularism, which they claim “privileges atheism in public life, and squeezes out other religions and beliefs, including Christianity”. And, of course, they campaign against gay and trans people, and what they term ‘gender ideology’. Their lawyers at the Christian Legal Centre are behind a string of cases in which they defend people who were sacked for discriminating against gay and trans people.

In 2014, they represented Richard Page, a magistrate who tried to deny a same sex couple the right to adopt a child, because of his religious beliefs. In 2018, they represented Svetlana Powell, a teacher who was sacked after telling a lesbian pupil in her class that homosexuality was against God’s will, and that she “will be going to hell if she does not repent her sins”, comparing homosexuality to murder.

They represented Kristie Higgs, a teacher in Gloucestershire who said that lesson plans about relationships and gay rights as part of the Equality Act were “brainwashing” kids. And in 2021, they sued the government on behalf of Nigel and Sally Rowe, who argued they were forced to pull their child out of school and homeschool him after he saw a six year old boy wearing a dress at school.

In 2023, they represented Glawdys Leger, a languages teacher who refused to teach about LGBTQ rights as part of the year seven syllable. According to evidence presented at her hearing, she told the school: “This was going too far now and that I am going to tell my pupils the truth”. That “truth”, according to Leger, was being LGBTQ+ is “a sin” and “not fine”. Instead, she used the lesson to tell pupils a story about a gay man, who had “given up being gay to become a Christian because it was not right” and that “People who are transgender are just confused about themselves”. The Telegraph reported that she had been sacked for refusing to teach “extreme LGBT ideology”. The Spectator raged about how she was hounded out of her profession for her views. Laurence Fox whined about her being sacked for sharing Christian beliefs in Church of England schools – which she wasn’t, but it was arguably the goal of these organisations to portray it that way.

The CLC also represented Joshua Sutcliffe, a teacher who, according to last month’s ruling in the case, lost his job after repeatedly used female pronouns to refer to a trans male pupil, first in the classroom, and then on national television when interviewed about the case – outing the kid in the process. Supporters of Sutcliffe’s views on trans people might not have bothered reading that he also told his class that homosexuality was a sin that can be cured by god, and that he played a video in class about men who are “not masculine enough”. He blamed the loss of his jobs on the “LGBT+ mafia” and the “Islamic mafia”.

Reasons for concern

There is evidently a well-financed, well-organised push from American ultra-conservative organisations to export their agenda to the UK on several fronts. What is most concerning is that they’re actually finding supporters here in places that ought to be unexpected.

The agenda of an organisation that seeks to discriminate against gay people is celebrated and championed at GB News by Darren Grimes and Andrew Doyle – conservative commentators who are both gay. But those attacks on gay rights are packaged as a free speech issue and the freedom to hold conservative beliefs, and so the GB News commentariat laps it up without examination.

Equally, ‘gender critical’ activists who would still call themselves feminists have cheered on legal cases about teachers being sacked for their views on trans people, despite the fact that those legal cases are pushed by groups that are currently lobbying the government to make abortion illegal, and to make it acceptable for people to intimidate women at abortion clinics.

This is strategic: couch your regressive agenda in language they can like and share, and they won’t care enough to notice that everything else you’re saying and doing is antithetical to the values and principles they purport to hold; hate the people they hate and they will help you, without ever noticing that you hate them too.

It’s hard to know how far this will go and how much of a threat it is. The UK is not America, and that American style of radical Christian ultra-conservatism isn’t part of our cultural fabric, regardless of what organisations like Christian Concern might say. But we also have to appreciate that when it comes to attacks on secularism, bodily autonomy, gay and trans rights, and women’s rights, it actually doesn’t take much to start rolling back hard-fought rights. And with the funding and organisational strength of groups like the ADF, and the strategic sophistication those groups can bring, it’s easy for them to find fault lines in society, and to mould their regressive views into the perfect shape to exploit any cracks.

If we care about freedom from religion as much as we care about freedom of religion, we should pay attention. And to the free-speech-absolutist crowd and the gender-critical crowd, next time you’re high-fiving a group for something you agree with, maybe check to see whether their other hand is holding a knife at your back.

Are ‘gacha’ games and loot boxes merely gambling in disguise?

Shao Zihang
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Are ‘gacha’ games and loot boxes merely gambling in disguise?

Have you ever willingly paid for… nothing? Or at least, something completely useless? And no, I’m not talking about buyer’s regret – I’m talking about buying something that you know you would have absolutely no need for even at the time of purchase.

This may come as a shock, but millions of people worldwide do just that every day, albeit not through conventional means like gambling or lotteries. Instead, they’re drawn into a digital realm where the allure of virtual rewards sometimes outweighs the importance of making rational use of one’s finances – the digital world of “gacha” games.

What is gacha? The term “gacha” is derived from the Japanese word “Gashapon”, which is the name of a toy vending machine commonly found throughout Japan. These vending machines dispense a random toy or trinket encased in a small capsule, and “gacha” is an onomatopoeia of the sound made when cranking the toy dispense lever.

Two vertically stacked rows of 'Yujin' Gashapon machines in Hong Kong
Row of gashapon machines in Hong Kong. By Mk2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

These machines typically have a colourful poster on the front, advertising all the possible prizes to attract potential customers. But here’s the catch – you don’t get to choose which item to get, and none of the prizes are guaranteed to appear. This means that one may potentially buy dozens of capsules without ever getting their desired item. Gacha games refer to games that employ a similar mechanic where characters, equipment and other resources can be obtained by ‘pulling’ from a ‘banner’ showcasing all the possible rewards.

The introduction of gacha into games, with its elements of uncertainty and anticipation, has revolutionised the gaming industry. Games with zero up-front cost or subscription fees, also known as F2P (Free-to-Play) games, have become a norm. Developers and publishers can easily recoup a game’s development costs and create constant revenue streams by turning their games into lucrative platforms for players to shell out large amounts of money in a bid to obtain their desired item.

In fact, this business model has become so successful that it has resulted in a paradigm shift in the gaming industry, especially during the 2010s when gacha games started to gain prominence following the release of the first notable gacha game, “Dragon Collection”. This shift has not only reshaped player expectations but has also fuelled the rise of microtransactions and loot box systems in various gaming genres over the past decade.

Today, F2P games with gacha or loot box mechanics generate an estimated 117.7 billion US dollars a year, which is almost 30% of the entire global video games industry market cap, making them a dominant force in the gaming market.

With a clearer picture of what gacha games are, you may be wondering: “So what makes these games different from just… gambling?” While both are forms of entertainment, there are significant distinctions between the two. Casinos, for instance, are a long-standing industry with established regulations and practices. Studies have shown that most people only gamble for fun as opposed to having gambling addictions, and that recreational gamblers often have strict loss thresholds they are not willing to cross. Coupled with the fact that casino chips often display their real-world currency value, allowing gamblers to effectively keep track of their spending.

In contrast, gacha games operate within a relatively new and less regulated landscape. Some of the top-grossing gacha games feature immersive storytelling and compelling characters that deeply engage players on an emotional level. These narratives can create a sense of attachment and investment in the game world, driving players to spend more time and money in pursuit of their in-game goals.

For many players, gacha games offer more than just entertainment; they provide a form of escapism where they can assume different roles and experience a sense of achievement through in-game progression. The allure of escapism, where players can temporarily distance themselves from real-world stressors and immerse in fantastical adventures, further amplifies their engagement with the game.

The psychological rewards of overcoming challenges, unlocking new content, and building relationships with virtual characters can be deeply fulfilling, and these are just some of the tactics that gacha games will use to lead players into investing significant time and resources into their gaming experiences.

Being a gacha player myself, I know all too well the emotional roller coaster that accompanies gacha pulls. That said, I was eager to hear about how other gacha game players’ experiences differed from mine. To that end, I interviewed “Johnnie”, a third-year university student.

I first learned of Johnnie after hearing about the time he spent over S$2,000 on a single character in Genshin Impact, the highest-grossing gacha game of today developed by China-based game company miHoYo. This is an astronomical amount to spend on a video game for most people, which made me all the more interested in his perspective.

Johnnie’s introduction to miHoYo’s gaming universe began with Honkai Impact 3rd, where he experienced moderate success without significant financial investment. However, it was the allure of Genshin Impact’s expansive open-world and dynamic gameplay mechanics that truly captured Johnnie’s attention upon its release in late 2020.

“I didn’t have any particular goals going into the game, but there was an insane amount of hype surrounding Genshin Impact, which made me want to try it out,” Johnnie recalls. The promise of exploration and adventure beckoned him into the fantastical realm of Teyvat, where he quickly became engrossed in the game’s rich tapestry of quests, characters, and challenges.

Since day one, Johnnie’s journey into Genshin Impact’s gacha realm was marked by strategic investments and evolving priorities. Initially captivated by the game’s expansive world and immersive gameplay, he opted to enhance his experience through carefully chosen purchases.

A screenshot of the Genshin Impact game, featuring the player's character sat on a stump looking out on a green and mountainous landscape with trees dotted across it under a blue sky. The Traveler character's belongings lean against the stump behind them
‘The Traveler’ observes Teyvat from a treestump. Genshin Impact photo mode image from Nostre NZ, Flickr.

His first foray into spending involved acquiring the Welkin Moon, a monthly subscription offering a steady influx of Primogems, the currency used for gacha pulls. This decision was driven by the undeniable value proposition presented by the Welkin Moon, which provided a significant boost in resources compared to direct purchases of Genesis Crystals.

“The Welkin Moon offered so much more value compared to just buying Genesis Crystals,” Johnnie explains. “It was a no-brainer for me to invest in something that would enhance my gaming experience without breaking the bank.”

Johnnie’s strategic approach to spending meant that he abstained from directly purchasing Genesis Crystals for gacha pulls, and instead purchased Welkin Moons and monthly battle passes known as Gnostic Hymns. This continued until the addition of Raiden Shogun, one of the seven Gods that ruled over Teyvat, into the gacha. As the name implies, her design is based on Raiden Mei from Honkai Impact 3rd, which compelled Johnnie to pull for her.

“Raiden Mei was one of my favorite characters in Honkai Impact 3rd, so when I saw Raiden Shogun in Genshin Impact, I knew I had to have her,” Johnnie admits. “I really liked her character design, and I’m a fan of the character’s voice actress as well.”

The rush

On the day of the character’s implementation, Johnnie grapples with a mix of anticipation and apprehension while waiting for the game update to end, acutely aware of the potential financial implications of his actions. The prospect of overspending looms large, casting a shadow of doubt over his decision-making process. Despite his best efforts to rationalise and budget, the possibility of being extremely unlucky in his pulls is real and frightening.

“It’s kind of a mixed feeling, there’s definitely the excitement and anticipation of finally being able to pull for her, but then I also agonise over the idea of spending more than necessary and having to eat into the rest of my savings.”

During the pull itself, a surge of adrenaline courses through Johnnie’s veins as comets streak across the screen, each shard laden with promise and possibility. With each passing moment, the tension mounts, heightening his anticipation as he awaits the outcome. When one of the comets finally turns orange, signifying that the item is of the highest rarity in the game, the dopamine-fueled rush that accompanies this revelation is almost palpable, serving as a moment of triumph amidst the uncertainty of chance.

In the aftermath of a pull, Johnnie experiences a complex array of emotions ranging from jubilation to disappointment, depending on the outcome. Securing the coveted character elicits a sense of triumph and validation. Conversely, facing repeated setbacks or failed attempts can evoke feelings of frustration and disillusionment, prompting introspection and reassessment of his approach. Yet, regardless of the outcome, each pull serves as a testament to the powerful allure of gacha mechanics, weaving a tapestry of emotions that reflects the highs and lows of virtual pursuit.

For Johnnie, the decision to spend over S$2,000 on a single character wasn’t just a financial transaction; it was a testament of his dedication to the game and the emotional bond he formed with its virtual inhabitants. As he reflects on his gacha journey, Johnnie’s story serves as a poignant reminder of the multifaceted motivations that drive players to invest in their gaming experiences, whether financial or emotional.

Johnnie’s experience underscores the immersive nature of gacha games, where players become emotionally invested in the stories and characters they encounter. When asked about his motivations for spending money on gacha pulls in Genshin Impact, Johnnie’s response echoed a sentiment shared by many players: a desire to obtain unique items and enhance their gaming experience. His decision-making process when considering a gacha pull reflects the complex interplay between personal preferences, gameplay mechanics, and financial considerations. While factors like character playability and futureproofing influence his choices, Johnnie’s unwavering devotion to certain characters, like Raiden Mei, transcends mere gameplay mechanics.

The interview with Johnnie highlights the psychological rewards inherent in gacha gaming, where the pursuit of virtual treasures intertwines with a deeper longing for connection and fulfilment. For Johnnie, each gacha pull is not just a gamble; it’s a moment of anticipation, excitement, and, occasionally, disappointment.

When asked if he would pay a fixed price to get the character instead, Johnnie promptly refused. “The feeling of getting a desired character through my own luck is something I still very much enjoy.” Perhaps for the truly hardcore gacha players, or ‘whales’, the thrill of the gamble outweighs the certainty of purchase. It’s testament to the unique appeal of gacha mechanics, where chance holds an allure all its own.

However, the line between immersive entertainment and exploitative monetisation practices is a thin one. In the realm of gacha games, distinguishing between healthy engagement and excessive involvement can become difficult, especially amongst those with spending impulses or lack self-control.

Before I spoke with Johnnie, he was on a hiatus from gacha games in general to focus more on his coursework and other hobbies. Unlike Johnnie, in some players the continuous cycle of anticipation, reward, and reinforcement built into gacha mechanics can trigger addictive behaviours and compulsive spending patterns, especially among vulnerable individuals, such as children and adolescents. As players become increasingly invested in the game’s narrative and progression systems, they may find themselves more susceptible to the persuasive tactics employed by developers to encourage in-game purchases.

Safety and regulation

In some regions, governments have recognized the potential harm posed by gacha games and have taken steps to address these concerns. For instance, in Japan, regulations against certain gacha mechanics were implemented as early as 2012. The Consumer Affairs Agency deemed “complete gacha” illegal due to its exploitative nature, where players were required to obtain a full set of rewards to progress in the game (eg getting one of every single item from a Gashapon machine). This model, once popular in social games, was outlawed for violating laws against unjustifiable premiums and misleading representation.

Similarly, in 2016, China passed legislation requiring games with loot boxes to disclose the probability of receiving specific rewards, aiming to enhance fairness and transparency. Furthermore, China imposed restrictions on the number of loot boxes that can be purchased in a day, aiming to mitigate excessive spending and potential gambling-related harms.

The Netherlands and Belgium have also taken decisive action against loot boxes, with the former prohibiting certain types of loot boxes deemed to have market value, while the latter declared loot boxes to be a form of illegal gambling. These regulatory efforts underscore the growing recognition of the need to protect consumers, particularly vulnerable individuals, from the potential risks associated with gacha games and loot box mechanics.

Ultimately, gacha games are a form of entertainment, drawing players into immersive virtual worlds, but often with a more sinister side. However, concerns persist regarding addictive tendencies and excessive spending, prompting regulatory responses from governments worldwide. The ongoing debate surrounding the classification of gacha mechanics as gambling showcases the need for continued awareness and discussion within the gaming community. As the industry evolves, striking a balance between engaging gameplay and player well-being remains paramount.

In the end, amidst the glitz and glamour of gacha games, the true randomness lies in the unseen algorithms orchestrating each pull. Behind the flashy screens, from the moment the small loading icon appears after the player spends their resources, the fate of their pull is sealed, determined by the intricate mechanics hidden within the game’s code.

Each spin becomes a dance with destiny in the silent realm of algorithms, where the emotions of the players are at the whims of machines.

References

JD Vance is right – for anti-intellectuals like him, the professors are the enemy

Edzard Ernst
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JD Vance is right – for anti-intellectuals like him, the professors are the enemy

JD Vance, the ‘running mate’ of Donald Trump, recently proclaimed: “The professors are the enemy”. Unsurprisingly, this remark alarmed me; I had not been previously aware of being an enemy of the people. Vance stressed that this was a quote by Richard Nixon made some 40 or 50 years ago. I looked up Nixon’s quote and found that the original is apparently a little different:

Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard a hundred times and never forget it.

So, why does Vance quote Nixon, who arguably is not one of the most honest men in the history of US politics? Why does he and Nixon insist that the professors are the enemy? Why was this puzzling quote followed by plenty of applause from his audience?

The answer could be that it is a populist theme that touches a nerve with right-wing audiences. But what does the sentence actually mean?

Until recently on Vance’s campaign website, he explained that “hundreds of billions of American tax dollars” get sent to universities that “teach that America is an evil, racist nation”. These universities “then train teachers who bring that indoctrination into our elementary and high schools”. Vance doesn’t want public funds to go to institutions that teach “critical race theory or radical gender ideology”. He rather wants them to deliver “an honest, patriotic account of American history”.

Vance and Nixon are not the only politicians to make claims of an anti-intellectualism nature. In 2016, the UK conservative Michael Gove refused to name any economist backing Britain’s exit from the European Union, saying that “people in this country have had enough of experts”.

According to Wikipedia, anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits. Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk – populists against political and academic elitism – and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people. 

Totalitarian governments have, in the past, manipulated and applied anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War and the following dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably anti-intellectual, with most of the 200,000 civilians killed being the Spanish intelligentsia, the politically active teachers and academics, artists and writers of the deposed Second Spanish Republic. During the Cambodian Genocide, the totalitarian regime of Cambodia led by Pol Pot nearly destroyed its entire educated population.

Fascist movements are notoriously anti-intellectual and anti-science. Adolf Hitler apparently stated that he regretted that his regime still had some need for its “intellectual classes,” otherwise, “one day we could, I don’t know, exterminate them or something”. Joseph Goebbels was more explicit saying that:

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be the man in the street. Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

And the infamous ‘bon mot’, “when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, is attributed to several of the top Nazis of the Third Reich.

Here, I suspect, we might have a reason why a certain type of politician dislikes intellectuals and feels that the professors are the enemy. Professors do science, science is about finding the truth, and the truth is something that politicians like JD Vance must fear like a pest; it might disclose their agenda as being fascist.

It therefore seems to me that claims like “the professors are the enemy”, are arguments of politicians who have good reason to fear the truth, appealing to voters who are unable to understand the danger posed by those they wish to elect.

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Expert skeptical analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal.

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