vaccines
Tag archives for vaccines
Student guest post: The Fallacious Fad of Foregoing Vaccinations
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 23, 2013 It’s time for this year’s second installment of student guest posts for my class on infectious causes of chronic disease. First one this year is by Dana Lowry. Humans have a long history of illness and death from infectious diseases. It wasn’t until the 1790s that we had a solution. Edward Jenner recognized that milkmaids…
Temple Grandin is wrong on vaccines and autism
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 15, 2013 Temple Grandin is undoubtedly one of the most famous women with autism of our time. Trained in animal science, Dr. Grandin is a widely read author and noted speaker on autism. April is National Autism Awareness Month, and Dr. Grandin has a new book out, “The Autistic Brain.” Together, this must have seemed like a…
An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 3, 2013 Dear Pa, I know you care deeply about many issues, especially social justice. You’re tired of wars, you’re ashamed of the attempts to destroy social programs in this country, you hate seeing the unions that helped you as a worker provide for our family get dismantled by wealthy CEOs whose only goal is to make…
“Rabid” by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
Posted by Tara C. Smith on September 28, 2012 Rabies is a disease without a public relations firm. In developed countries, human disease is incredibly rare–we see typically one or two deaths from rabies each year. In contrast, lightning is responsible for about 60 deaths each year. However, worldwide, rabies is another matter. Today is World Rabies Day, a reminder that 55,000 people still…
CBS airs anti-vaccine Jumbotron ad
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 9, 2011 Via Skepchick, CBS will be airing ads from the National Vaccine Information Center and Mercola on the CBS Jumbotron in Time’s Square (NVIC announcement here). This, while there’s a measles outbreak in Minnesota (and another one being investigated in Utah), and we’re on the heels of the worst pertussis outbreak in generations in California. Shameful.…
“Pox” by Michael Willrich
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 4, 2011 Next to Ebola, my favorite virus would probably be smallpox (Variola virus). I mean, now that it’s eradicated in nature, what’s not to love about the mysteries it’s left us–where it came from, why it was so deadly (or, not so deadly, as in the emergence of the “mild” form, variola minor), and will a…
New site–”History of Vaccines”
Posted by Tara C. Smith on October 4, 2010 This is great. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has launched a site on The History of Vaccines. I’ve been poking around, and there’s an incredible amount of stuff to check out. They have a nice FAQ, Top 20 questions about vaccination, as well as some great activities (herd immunity! learn about Koch’s postulates! understand…
The development of a conspiracy theory
Posted by Tara C. Smith on August 5, 2010 Interesting post today at juggle.com, showing the evolution of a conspiracy theory akin to a game of telephone. Interestingly, it starts with an article in Wired by author (and former Scienceblogger) Johah Lehrer. Lehrer wrote an article on the effects of chronic stress on health outcomes, and one researcher’s work to develop something akin to…
Fear & vaccines
Posted by Tara C. Smith on October 21, 2009 I realize that, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary, there is still a lot of fear and misunderstanding about vaccine safety. Two recent articles discuss this “epidemic of fear” and why it affects us all, the first here at Wired magazine, and the second here at the Gotham Skeptic. I especially like the second,…
Vaccines and autism–can we stick a fork in it now, please?
Posted by Tara C. Smith on February 8, 2009 Last fall, I wrote about a new research paper which tried to replicate some of Andrew Wakefield’s original results, which not only claimed a correlation between MMR vaccination and autism, but also the presence of measles virus in intestinal tissue. Wakefield had suggested that an inappropriate response to the presence of measles virus in this…