oracknows | November 13, 2009
Things have been getting a bit serious around here. Of course, there's been a lot to get serious about, what with Suzanne Somers promoting cancer quackery, Generation Rescue exploiting a young woman with problems in order to promote its anti-vaccine agenda (leading to my "friend" J.B. Handley launching yet another hilariously off-base love letter to me), and my ruminations on the disappointment of cancer screening, things have gotten heavy to the point where they may be a bit of a downer. Add to that the fact that over the last week we've had one of the most persistent and annoying…
oracknows | November 12, 2009Over two weeks ago, I wrote a rather withering assessment of a truly bad article published by one of my favorite magazines, a magazine to which I've subscribed continuously since the mid-1980s. I'm referring, of course, to Shannon Brownlee's and Jeanne Lenzer's execrable article about the H1N1 vaccine entitled Does the vaccine matter?
I have been surpassed.
I say that because Mark Crislip has written what is to my mind the very best fisking of Brownlee and Lenzer's article I have yet come across, entitled Yes, But. The Annotated Atlantic. Stick a fork in Brownlee and Lenzer. They're done.
oracknows | November 12, 2009I detest Holocaust denial.
Relative newbies who haven't been reading this blog that long may be wondering why I, a physician, booster of science-based medicine, and scourge of the anti-vaccine movement (well, at least in my mind, anyway) would blog about Holocaust denial, but in actuality my interest in combatting Holocaust denial predates my interest in combatting quackery by at least two years. Indeed, one of my earliest long-form posts for this blog, written more than a year before I joined ScienceBlogs and reposted after I joined relates how I discovered Holocaust denial, my confusion and…
oracknows | November 11, 2009It's been more than 24 hours since I received my H1N1 vaccine, and so far the only problem I've had is a bit of a sore arm. (Maybe I shouldn't have had the nurse use the left arm again, as that's where I got my seasonal flu vaccine, too. On the other hand, I am right-handed.)
Sadly, I have not become autistic, despite having had all that mercury, formaldehyde, and witches brew of "toxins" injected "directly into by bloodstream." I guess it's just not to be.
I did notice one "side effect," though. Shortly after I received my vaccine yesterday morning, I received an urgent call to the clinic…
oracknows | November 10, 2009Here we go again.
I see that the kerfuffle over screening for cancer has erupted again to the point where it's found its way out of the rarified air of specialty journals to general medical journals and hence into the mainstream press. This is something that seems to pop up every so often, much to the consternation of lay people and primary care doctors alike, often trumpeted with breathless headlines along the lines of "What if everything you knew about screening was wrong?
It isn't, but some of it may be. The problem is the shaking out process. I'll try to explain.
Over the last couple of…
oracknows | November 9, 2009Woo-hoo!
I just found out late yesterday that finally--finally--our cancer center has enough H1N1 vaccine to start vaccinating its employees involved in patient care. I thought the vaccine would never get here in sufficient quantity. Later this morning I'll be right there, getting mine.
You know, I think I'll ask the nurse for extra thimerosal. After all, I got vaccinated for seasonal flu about a month and a half ago, and I'm not autistic yet. Rather disappointing, actually. Maybe another good shot of killed influenza, formaldehyde, mercury, and all sorts of other "toxins" will fix that.
Damn…
oracknows | November 9, 2009
This project is behind schedule. The reasons, I hope, are forgivable. First off, there was just too much other stuff going on last week, to the point where, even though I've read several chapters of Suzanne Somers' new book (if you can call it that) Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place (Random House website), I couldn't force myself to sit down in front of the computer, copy of Knockout in front of me in order to pick choice brain-necrosing quotes from. Besides, the whole issue of Desiree Jennings came up, as well as a…
oracknows | November 8, 2009In a nod to fellow ScienceBlogger Ed Brayton, with his hilarious Dumbass Quote of the Day, I hereby inaugurate the "Idiotic Comment of the Week," culled from this very blog. I don't guarantee that I'll do it every week, but when I see neuron-necrosing idiocy below and beyond the usual call of pseudoscientists and quackery boosters who occasionally like to try to match their "wits" (such as they are) with my reality- and science-based commenters, usually to hilarious effect, I'll give it the "honor" it deserves. This week, despite highly intense competition (thanks to a recent infestation of…
oracknows | November 7, 2009...back when they believed that humors were responsible for your health. Oh, yes, I know it's now "politically or medically incorrect" now to practice medicine the way they did in the days of our Founding Fathers, but that's because the socialist libero-Nazis took that away from us. After all, remember who else didn't answer medical questions.
That's right. Hitler!
We must take back our country and the medicine of the Founding Fathers, lest our organs organize against us and the government be given the power to remove your appendix and eat it in front of you and your children!
Genius!
oracknows | November 6, 2009Remember how I promised that I'd do my next installment of my blogging Suzanne Somers' pile of idiocy, namely her own book, before the end of the week?
Plans change, and neurons melt, which they did in response to reading the first several chapters of Suzanne Somers' book.
Don't worry, though. I'll definitely try to get back on track with my--shall we say?--extended multipart review by Monday. Sometimes, though, when you're blogging, news drives what you do, and news is driving my decision to forego the pleasure and pain of the next installment of my "fun with Suzanne Somers" series, at least…
oracknows | November 5, 2009riley'smom is very unhappy with Amy Wallace:
I wrote Ms. Wallace a private email. I intentionally wrote it directly to her private email and DID NOT post it in the comments section of Wired Mag. I asked her about her one sided-biased interview with Mr Offit and asked if she planned to NOW do a fair and balanced report as many were questioning her porfessional reasoning. I also asked her how it felt to be one of Offit's whores...that perhaps she and Amanda Peet should get together and compare notes on how Ms Peets career was doing since she joined the Offit band wagon.
I received an email back…
oracknows | November 5, 2009The 123 Congregation of the Skeptics' Circle will now come together over at Blue Genes, in which Simplicio is schooled in skepticism. Sort of.
Go. Read. Don't be like Simplicio.
Next up to host the Skeptics' Circle will be Beyond the Short Coat. Start getting your skeptical blogging skills wound up to participate in this biweekly orgy of skepticism!
oracknows | November 5, 2009Over the last week or so, I've been confronted full bore with cranks, staring down the barrel, if you will, of a crank shotgun, one barrel being the anti-vaccine movement in general (with J.B. Handley and his misogyny being the buckshot, so to speak) and the other being Suzanne Somers and her despicable cancer quackery. Indeed, over the last five years, I've subjected myself to some of the most outrageous bits of unreason, conspiracy mongering, and pseudoscience. Be it the anti-vaccine movement, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, creationists, or any of a variety of other bits of…
oracknows | November 4, 2009The other day, I wrote about an unfortunate young woman named Desiree Jennings, who claimed to have had a rare neurological disorder known as dystonia as a complication of being vaccinated for seasonal flu, when it appears that her condition is likely to have at least a strong psychogenic component and is unlikely to be due to the vaccine. Despicably, the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue tripped over itself to exploit Jennings' case and use it as "proof" that vaccines are dangerous and, by extension, that their fantastical claims that vaccines cause autism are plausible. Even after…
oracknows | November 4, 2009As regular readers know, one of my interests outside of medicine is the phenomenon of Holocaust denial. Granted, I haven't written as much about it lately as I used to, but that doesn't mean I've lost interest. Actually, I think it may be because I seem to be encountering fewer and fewer major issues of Holocaust denial, although the Bishop Williamson case did draw my ire earlier this year, and I have been perturbed by Holocaust denier David Irving's traveling anti-Semitism show that's now slithering its way through the U.S. and is now in the eastern part of the country.
One thing that I have…
oracknows | November 4, 2009Oh, hell. I actually used to like Smashing Pumpkins back in the 1990s. Unfortunately, its leader, Billy Corgan, has just revealed himself to be as medically ignorant as Jenny McCarthy in a recent blog post:
If you follow some of the links I have been supplying as of late, you'll notice many are focused on the propaganda build up to our day of reckoning with the Swine Flu virus. I say 'propaganda' because, in my heart, there is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic. merican President Obama has declared a…
oracknows | November 3, 2009Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it's finally here:
Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.)
I can only say that, after having perused the next couple of chapters after Chapter 1, I can already feel my brain melting and oozing out through my ears, screaming as the neuron-necrosing stupidity liquifies it. I've also noticed that, by and large, this book is…
oracknows | November 2, 2009...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.
True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)
Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their…
oracknows | November 2, 2009Several of my readers have been writing in with links and stories about the case of Desiree Jennings, a 28-year-old cheerleader who was apparently healthy until sometime in August, when she received the seasonal flu vaccine. A typical news story on Jennings can be seen here:
I'm not a neurologist, which made me reluctant to take this on, but right from the beginning something didn't seem right. I had never heard of a case of dystonia that looked anything like the above, particularly the part where walking backwards reversed (if you'll excuse my word choice) her jerky motions or where she…
oracknows | November 1, 2009I just looked over my statistics for the month of October 2009, and I was shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but shocked nonetheless.
Why do I say that?
I say that because traffic from October 2009 is more than twice the traffic from October 2008. Moreover, it's not an anomaly. Although there have been fluctuations in traffic over the last year, so far the trend has been steadily upward, so that I've more than doubled my traffic since this time last year. Not bad, not bad at all. Actually, it's more than that. It's friggin' unbelievable. If, when I started this thing nearly five years ago, someone…