vaccines
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for vaccines
Representative Dan Burton’s last antivaccine hurrah is scheduled for November 29
Posted by Orac on November 23, 2012 Whenever I blog about atrocities against science like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I’m frequently asked how just such an edifice designed to promote pseudoscience could have come to be as a full-fledged center in the National Institutes of Health. The answer is simple and boils down to woo-loving legislators. In…
Stephanie Seneff: Following the Geiers dumpster-diving in the VAERS database
Posted by Orac on November 20, 2012 As I looked over the ol’ blog last night, I was shocked to realize that I haven’t blogged about the antivaccine movement and its offenses against science in nearly three weeks. That’s right! The last time I did a vaccine post was when I examined a particularly egregiously bad paper from a couple of scientists…
The “toxin gambit,” resurrected
Posted by Orac on October 26, 2012 Well, I’m here. That’s right. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m at CSICon. As is the case when I’m at conferences, be they skeptical conferences or professional conferences, it’s hard to predict the blogging time available. It could be a lot; it could be a little. Or it could be none. (Well, obviously it’s not none,…
The “no debate” debate, briefly revisited
Posted by Orac on October 23, 2012 Just yesterday, I commented on a typical whine from the antivaccine crew at the crank blog Age of Autism in which Dan Olmsted became indignant over being reminded that science does not support his belief that vaccines cause autism, that they don’t work, and that they are dangerous. Olmsted, clueless as ever about science, viewed…
The “no debate” debate
Posted by Orac on October 22, 2012 I like the word “manufactroversy.” It’s a lovely made up word that combines the two words “manufactured controversy” and is, to boil it down, defined as the art of creating a controversy where none really exists. In the case of science, it’s the concerted effort to make it seem as though there is a legitimate…
Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser (one last word)
Posted by Orac on October 8, 2012 On Friday, I wrote about the sort of case that outrages me every bit as much as cases of cancer quackery that lead to the death of patients. I’m referring to the case of Amanda Sadowsky, a four month old infant who died after suffering traumatic brain injuries that appeared consistent with shaken baby syndrome…
Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser
Posted by Orac on October 5, 2012 Remember Alan Yurko? To remind those of you not familiar with this particularly odious excuse for a human being, I’ll briefly relate who he is and why he’s so vile. Alan Yurko is a baby killer, pure and simple. He shook his 10-week-old son to death. Normally, such a pitiful excuse for a human being…
Science is quite safe from your pitiful little band…
Posted by Orac on October 4, 2012 I’m having a hard time keeping myself from laughing uproariously. I’m talking gut-wrenching belly laughs, the kind that are so intense that you have trouble catching your breath between paroxysms of laughter, the kind that threaten to force the contents of your stomach to go the wrong way, up and out. What, you may ask,…
“Genetically modified” vaccines and GMOs: Sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids?
Posted by Orac on October 2, 2012 About a week ago, I wrote one of my usual meandering posts in which I pointed out the similarities between two different anti-science movements. On the one hand, there are anti-vaccinationists, who fetishize the naturalistic fallacy (i.e., the belief that anything “natural” is better and that anything human made or altered by science is dangerous)…
Rob Schneider: Auditioning for Jenny McCarthy’s job as world’s most famous celebrity antivaccinationist?
Posted by Orac on October 2, 2012 I suppose it’s possible that there might be doubt that Rob Schneider has become a complete and total antivaccine wingnut. Possible, but not reasonable. After all, he’s shown his cards and risen to prominence with his attacks on vaccine science made as part of his effort to oppose the passage of California Bill AB 2109,…
Governor Jerry Brown signs California Bill AB 2109, but tries to water it down in a sop to religion
Posted by Orac on October 1, 2012 I’ve been blogging a lot about California Bill AB 2109. Basically, it’s a bill that was proposed as a means of addressing the increasing problem of non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates because religious and philosophical exemptions are too easy to obtain. Boiled down to its essence, AB 2109 would require parents to see a…
The problem of nonmedical exemptions from school vaccine mandates is getting worse
Posted by Orac on September 21, 2012 It’s feast or famine in the ol’ blogging world, and right now it’s such a feast that I can’t decide what to blog about. For instance, there are at least two studies and a letter that I wouldn’t mind blogging about just in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine alone. Then…
Journalists of the future make a vaccine documentary
Posted by Orac on September 20, 2012 I was out late last night for a function related to my work. As a result, by the time I got home I was too tired to blog. (I know, I know, how can a Tarial-cell powered megacomputer ever get tired?) However, I did have enough time this morning before work to act on a…
Fear and loathing and vaccines
Posted by Orac on September 19, 2012 As hard as it is for me to believe when I look back at it, I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement now for more than seven years here on this blog and combatting it online for at least a decade now. I like to think that over the years my response has evolved somewhat.…
Respecting parental concerns versus pandering to antivaccine fears
Posted by Orac on September 13, 2012 In common colloquial usage, there is a term known as “gaydar.” Basically, it’s the ability some people claim to have that allows them to identify people who are gay. Whether gaydar actually exists or not, I don’t know, but I claim to have an ability that’s similar. That ability is the ability to sniff out…
More data on why people reject science
Posted by Orac on September 10, 2012 Although I focus mostly on medical topics, such as vaccines, alternative medicine, and cancer quackery, I don’t limit myself to such topics. True, I used to write a lot more about evolution and creationism, the paranormal, and other standard skeptical topics, but over the last couple of years I’ve realized where my strength is and…
Andrew Wakefield appeals?
Posted by Orac on September 7, 2012 On the antivaccine front, this year began with antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield filing suit against investigative reporter Brian Deer, the BMJ, and Fiona Godlee (the editor of BMJ) for libel based on a series that Deer published in the BMJ outlining the evidence for Wakefield’s scientific fraud in his (in)famous 1998 Lancet case series. This…
Does all this blogging about quackery really accomplish anything?
Posted by Orac on September 7, 2012 Believe it or not, after nearly eight years blogging and around five years before that cutting my skeptical teeth on that vast and wild (and now mostly deserted and fallow) wilderness that was Usenet, I have occasionally wondered whether what I’m doing is worthwhile. Sometime around 1998, after I first discovered Holocaust denial on Usenet,…
If only… (Or, no science for you!)
Posted by Orac on September 6, 2012 I must admit, there are times when I see something that someone else has written and, in a fit of intense envy, wish very much that I had written it. This is just such a time, and Tony Ballantyne has written just such a piece. Even better, his piece, entitled If only…, was published in…
Pertussis outbreaks and vaccine effectiveness
Posted by Orac on September 5, 2012 About a month ago, I deconstructed a typically dishonest and deceitful attempt by that Overlord of Quackery on the Internet (in my opinion, of course), Joe Mercola, to claim that the acellular pertussis vaccine doesn’t work. It was a typical Mercola bit of prestidigitation that, as so much antivaccine propaganda does, took a grain of…
Perhaps this line of work is not for you…
Posted by Orac on September 4, 2012 Over the long weekend, I came across a bunch of things that in normal times I would have blogged about, but because I was trying to chill, work a little on the yard, and also work a bit on grants, I intentionally took Monday off of blogging. As I get back into the swing of…
They say that about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as though it were a bad thing
Posted by Orac on September 4, 2012 Why is it after a three day weekend, it always feels as though I have to “catch up”? After all, it’s only one day more than the average weekend, and I didn’t really do anything that different. A little yard work, out to dinner, a bit of grant writing, a bit of chilling, that’s it.…
Wielding religion as a weapon against vaccines
Posted by Orac on August 28, 2012 I might as well lay it on the line right at the beginning. It’s not as though it will surprise my regular readers given what I’ve been writing here, most recently about when Rob Schneider played the Nazi card to express his opposition to California Bill AB2109. It’s a bill that does something very simple…
Alternative medicine as religion, one more time
Posted by Orac on August 17, 2012 A couple of days ago, I did one of my usual bits of pontification about alternative medicine, this time around pointing out how religion facilitates the magical thinking that undergirds so much pseudoscientific medicine and how the belief systems that underlie so so much of alternative medicine resembel the belief systems that underlie religion. However,…
Jamy Ian Swiss on science-based skepticism
Posted by Orac on August 10, 2012 As the last full weekday of my vacation passes, I thought about whether I’d bother to post anything or not, given that I happen to be traveling. After yesterday’s post, the subject of which was profoundly depressing to me because I hate it when quacks take cynical advantage of a grieving family to promote their…