Comments for Aetiology

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by michael parett

michael parett — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:58:57 +0000

looks very interesting is this your work i realised you and your family were very inspirational to us parrett kids say thanks to your family for me ours is well i hope you guys are too hope to catch up soon well wishes i support anything trueful behind money my great grandfather especicially was a massive labour man

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by David Grant

David Grant — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:53:57 +0000

Excellent post, Tara. I would probably agree with your father on a lot of issues, but on vaccines I don’t. I have these people in my hometown who are generally pretty good about accepting science in regards to evolution and climate change, but when it comes to vaccines and complementary medicine they become just like the deniers that they are critical of. It is true that there are risks in everything in life and when people understand them, they can live with them. I hope that your father will consider these science before reading any of these other claims.

Comment on Scarlet fever–past and present by cortney

cortney — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:01:39 +0000

I am 28 years of age and have had Scarlett fever when i was about 7 or 8? I don’t remember a whole lot except for laying on my grand fathers couch with a high fever and pinkish red cheeks. Thank fully we have the technology today to help with this kind of stuff.

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by This is truly awesome. | STATE OF BLISS

This is truly awesome. | STATE OF BLISS — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:59:36 +0000

[...] “An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his anti-vax Facebook postings“ [...]

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by Rob

Rob — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:34:18 +0000

A well written letter. It baffles me that people find this in some way offensive on behalf of your father. “He’s allowed to have his own opinion on this” was an idea I found in the comments. How can anyone possibly think that this is a matter of opinion? As if scientific fact hinges on belief or what people reckon. Freedom to express ideas should not and simply cannot stretch to falsehoods that cause real harm to people. Vaccines causing autism is exactly that. There is no backing, no leg to stand on, no manner of support for it. Ignorance should not be tolerated because all it causes is real suffering.

Comment on Treatment of Chronic Otitis Media: Guidelines versus Practice by Cindy Eisenhart

Cindy Eisenhart — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:42:41 +0000

Recent research has associated chronic ear infection with biofilm formation. The biofilm protects bacteria from the antibiotic. They do no damage while in the biofilm, but they eventually come out of the biofilm, become planktonic and created infection – again!
The key is finding a way to disrupt or destroy the biofilm while killing the bacteria with the antibiotics. There are a number of potential therapies being studied in the US, but in Europe they are beginning to employ. Take a look at the research. Very hopeful.

Comment on Temple Grandin is wrong on vaccines and autism by Weekend Reading | Science-Based Pharmacy

Weekend Reading | Science-Based Pharmacy — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 21:15:08 +0000

[...] And Temple Grandin is wrong on vaccines and autism. [...]

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by Another comic related to correlation and causation | Douglas Whitaker

Another comic related to correlation and causation | Douglas Whitaker — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:49:48 +0000

[...] said than done. Recently ScienceBlogs had a post using the context of anti-vaccine sentiment ("An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings") which examines the issue of familiarity with the literature and the need to not seek out reports [...]

Comment on An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings by Anti-vax father gets a lecture from his daughter – who happens to be a science blogger | Scientia Crastina

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:42:23 +0000

[...] a judgement?” Science blogger Tara C. Smith recently wrote an open letter to her father ”on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings”. It’s a text which oozes with feelings – a blend of professional anger and daughterly [...]

Comment on What’s up with H7N9, the new avian influenza? by Magpie

Magpie — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:33:01 +0000

Well, emerging zoonotic beasties are related to proximity between humans and animals, but it’s not necessarily a sanitation thing. For flu, birds have it in their faeces (it’s a gastro disease for them), but in those cases when we get it from pigs it’s just a matter of inhaling respiratory particles. That’s hard to prevent even in quite clean piggeries.

Ultimately not a hygiene problem – it’s a problem of human activity encroaching on the territory of another species. Our domestic species interacting with the wild species, and humans (inevitably) interacting with those domestics.

So this one doesn’t look like it’s coming from pigs at all – but wild birds carry it asymptomatically, and they give it to domestic birds asymptomatically. We’ve seen that some of the infected people seem to have gotten the virus from food preparation. Others have gotten it from simply buying a bird in a live poultry market. In other words, if (when?) this bird-related virus gets to western countries, there’s no reason to think we’ll be immune due to any sort of hygiene. We’ll probably do better because we have much less interaction with live birds, thanks to more widespread use of refrigeration, but it’s impossible to tell yet exactly how it’s being transmitted.

And of course, if it adapts to humans it’s got a good chance it’ll be pretty damn bad. But there are probably a million pandemic potential candidates we have no idea about. Just because this one is more likely than some (it’s very recently gotten a fairly decent foothold in a new host with a lot of new infections, so if there are some selectable steps to make it better adapted it might get lucky quite quickly), that still doesn’t mean the next pandemic will BE this one. Probably won’t.

But SOMETHING will. So hey, fund that public health, you people!

(I’d put money on this *not* becoming a human pandemic any time soon, but I wouldn’t put *all* my money on it).