oracknows | June 12, 2007I normally like Crooks and Liars.
However, this time around, while blogging about the Autism Omnibus, Nicole let me down. Saying that "I don't pretend to have any special medical knowledge; so I will link both sides of the thimerosal debate," she then linked to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s totally dishonest fearmongering piece of crap from two years ago and Arthur Allen's voice of reason.
This is the sort of lack of critical thinking that comes from "presenting both sides of a debate" as though they are roughly equivalent when they are not. It's like the press presenting creationist arguments…
oracknows | June 12, 2007The first day's testimony for the Autism Omnibus has been posted, and Autism Diva has the scoop.
I haven't had a chance to peruse the PDF file of the testimony, but what the Diva reports is plenty damning. Maybe I was wrong to be so pessimistic in my earlier post. Dr. H. Vasken Aposhian's testimony is even lamer than my post suggested. On the other hand, the emotionalism in this trial still worries me, as does the uncritical press coverage concentrating on the plaintiffs' "feelings" and only mentioning in a single sentence or two, down near the end of the article or report, that--oh, by the…
oracknows | June 12, 2007Many of my fellow SBers have blogged about the Gallup poll showing just how scientifically ignorant Americans, and in particular Republicans, are:
PRINCETON, NJ -- The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.…
oracknows | June 12, 2007The Autism Omnibus is now officially under way, having begun with the first test case, that of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who "feel" that their children's autism was in fact caused by vaccines. Most, but not all, of the plaintiffs blame the mercury in the thimerosal in childhood vaccines, despite there being no good evidence to support such a link, so much so that both David Kirby, whose book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and…
oracknows | June 11, 2007After having been pointed yesterday to a video of an old Betty Boop short that strongly suggests that Boop may have been a homeopath, I couldn't resist clicking on the links to a couple of other old Betty Boop cartoons. One of them reminded me of just how different our culture was 72 years ago when this cartoon was released. What's astonishing to me, from the vantage of 2007, is the casual racism, done without a care in the world that it would offend anyone and done with the grossest racial stereotypes played for cheap laughs:
We can be grateful that such stereotypes are no longer…
oracknows | June 11, 2007Dedicated advocate of evidence-based medicine that I am, I am sometimes labeled by those who do not understand skepticism as a "shill" for big pharma. Of course, such accusations are simply the logical fallacy known as poisoning the well, in which the credulous engage in preemptive ad hominem attacks designed to associate me with the hated big pharma, but it's a common enough tactic that sometimes I can't help but joke that I wish pharma did actually pay me for my little hobby here. After all, why do for free (or for a pittance from my Seed overlords) what, if you believe the alties, I could…
oracknows | June 10, 2007Here is the myth of Simpsonwood being memorialized on the seventh anniversary of the meeting where, if you believe the mercury militia, the CDC, in cahoots with big pharma, tried to suppress the "truth" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. it is a myth that was popularized by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s misinformation-laden Salon.com article two years ago that trotted out every pseudoscientific and fallacious argument claiming that vaccines, specifically the mercury in the thimerosal preservative used in vaccines, causes autism.
Here are some commentaries that reveal the myth for what it…
oracknows | June 10, 2007There's not much to add to this other than...ouch!
1949 was not a good year for the treatment of prostatitis, was it?
Hat tip to Modern Mechanix.
oracknows | June 10, 2007While reading through a mailing list I belong to, I came across a link that demonstrates that alternative medicine has been ingrained in popular culture since at least the 1920's and 1930's. Indeed, I never realized that that icon of flappers, Betty Boop, practiced homeopathy. Don't believe me? Well, here's incontrovertible evidence in the form of a short called Betty Boop, M.D. released in 1932 and perhaps the most bizarre Boop short I've ever seen (particularly the last shot, which makes me wonder if acid had actually been invented six years before it was supposedly discovered). Basically,…
oracknows | June 9, 2007This article in Salon.com sums up my feelings about the whole Paris Hilton fiasco almost perfectly:
Even after years of watching Hilton direct the media like her own obedient little phalanx of winged monkeys, it would take a coldhearted cynic to doubt that Hilton was experiencing real pain and anguish upon returning to prison. At the very least, we were witnessing a coddled child having a severe allergic reaction to the real world. Hilton could certainly be losing her doughnuts in a medically authentic way, since by all appearances, she's never been punished, never been forced to eat anything…
oracknows | June 9, 2007This is what Orac would look like this weekend if he were his blog mascot and if those piles of papers surrounding him were NIH grants.
Yes, NIH Study Section time is coming up in less than two weeks. It's grant review crunch time, and this is how I will be spending the remainder of my weekend, other than taking an hour or two to mow the lawn and the occasional sanity break to blog. Fortunately, the grant load this cycle is not too bad for my study section compared to some past cycles. If I really push (excuse the term), I should be able to get more than half the remaining grants taken…
oracknows | June 9, 2007Car alarms probably annoy you. Certainly, they annoy me. I understand the reason for their existence, but some of them seem to be so finicky that just a truck driving by will set them off. Fortunately (or, unfortunately, depending on your point of view), there's the Orgasmalarm
If you're at work, you're definitely going to want to turn the sound down low for this one:
I don't know if this would work any better than a standard car alarm or get people's attention any more, but it'd sure be funny. Well, maybe the first couple of times. After that, I'm sure it would be just as annoying as any…
oracknows | June 9, 2007Here's a tragic story:
NEW YORK - A medical examiner blamed a 17-year-old track star's death on the use of too much muscle cream, the kind used to soothe aching legs after exercise.
Arielle Newman, a cross-country runner at Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island, died after her body absorbed high levels of methyl salicylate, an anti-inflammatory found in sports creams such as Bengay and Icy Hot, the New York City medical examiner said Friday.
The medical examiner's spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said the teen used "topical medication to excess." She said it was the first time that her office had…
oracknows | June 8, 2007It saddens people, but doesn't particularly surprise, when some professionals are killed in the line of duty. For professions such as soldier, police office, and firefighter, for example, it's expected that occasionally some will lose their lives in the line of duty because of the dangerous nature of the job. Less expected is when medical professionals suffer similar sacrifices. For example, a few days ago at my old alma mater, the University of Michigan, a Survival Flight air ambulance on the way back from Wisconsin after procuring organs for transplant crashed into Lake Michigan with no…
oracknows | June 8, 2007As we continue our countdown to having reached one full year of woo (namely, the one year anniversary of Your Friday Dose of Woo), it's occurred to me that there's one form of woo that I've dealt with before, but haven't revisited. It's a bit of woo that's so monumentally silly that it's hard to believe that anyone can take it seriously, although I will admit up front that it is not quite as silly as homeopathy. It's close though. I'm talking, of course, about pH woo, the concept that pretty much every disease (or at least a whole heck of a lot of them) is caused by alterations in your blood…
oracknows | June 7, 2007This is about as bad a way to go as I can think of.
No cell phone is worth it.
oracknows | June 7, 2007As I mentioned a few days ago, I was at the ASCO Meeting over the weekend, arriving home Tuesday evening. ASCO has to be, as far as I can tell, the largest cancer meeting in the world. How big? 30,000 or so attendees big. Hundreds of sessions and talks big. Filling most of McCormick Center in Chicago big. Filling most hotel rooms in the city of Chicago big. Or, as these photos show, this big:
And, to reflect the hugeness of the meeting, the exhibit hall is enormous:
As is the hugeness of many of the drug company displays...
Although I couldn't really take pictures of it (too…
oracknows | June 7, 2007It's that time again, time for a respite from the annoying credulity that permeates the blogosphere. Indeed, that credulity has even invaded Respectful Insolence in the form of two--count 'em, two!--homeopaths invading an old throwaway post about homeopathy and a woo-meister in my recent chelation post. I need a nice bracing shot of skepticism. On first blush, this Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle looks as though it might be suspect:
Welcome, friends! Welcome to our series of exhibits that reveals the truths that THEY don't want you to hear about!
Uh-oh. Fortunately, it's just the tease for…
oracknows | June 6, 2007Date: June 4, 2007, 2 PM CDST
Place: University of Chicago's bookstore
Depressing. At what is supposed to be a bastion of science, we find Michael Behe's latest tripe on the same bookshelves as Stephen Jay Gould's books (see the shelf below). On the other hand, Creatures of Accident looks potentially interesting.
Still, I'm disappointed that this book isn't in the philosophy or religion section--where it belongs.
oracknows | June 6, 2007Sixty-three years ago today, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, thus opening up a Western Front in the war against Germany. It was the beginning of the end; eleven months later, Nazi Germany, beset from the East by the Soviet juggernaut and from the West by the Allies, collapsed. Today is a day that we should remember the sacrifice of the thousands who died storming Hitler's Fortress Europe in order to hasten the end of his vile regime.
Larry Moran over at Sandwalk has a tribute, as do Andrew Bell and Dave In Texas.