oracknows | August 20, 2009This time, the evidence comes from New Zealand:
Notified measles cases so far this year are already seven times higher than the total number of measles cases last year.
The reason? The third-lowest immunisation rate in the OECD, despite the fact immunisation is free and widely and readily available. Our immunisation rate is about 83 percent - to be effective it needs to be 95 percent.
This video goes into more detail.
Whenever vaccination rates fall below the threshold of herd immunity, the door is left open for diseases once thought vanquished to return with a vengeance, first through…
oracknows | August 20, 2009I don't normally like Barney Frank. At times, I've thought him to be a blithering idiot. However, this time around, he gets it exactly right in dealing with a woman who was carrying around a picture of President Obama with a Hitler mustache and comparing his health care reform initiative to Nazi policies.
Best quotes:
On what planet do you spend most of your time?
And:
Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.
Indeed. I actually have a bit more respect for Barney Frank than I once did.
In other news, Rush Limbaugh has cheered on this idiot of a…
oracknows | August 20, 2009One of the advantages of hanging out around home on the proverbial staycation is that, instead of actually paying more attention to the news, I've paid less attention to the news. That's why I didn't notice some stories from earlier this week about what the new director of the NIH, Francis Collins, plans to do.
Regular readers probably know that, other than the occasional snarky comment on other people's blogs, I haven't (much) engaged in the blogospheric kerfuffle over Collins' religion and the (in my opinion) vastly overblown fear in some quarters that he would inject his religion into his…
oracknows | August 19, 2009Time and time again, I've had requests from readers for good resources for countering the nonsense emanating from the anti-vaccine movement. Time and time again, I've pointed out sites like Every Child By Two and The Vaccine Education Center.
Now, thanks to the efforts of some friends of mine, especially Steve Novella, there is another handy dandy resource that was just announced today:
Vaccines and Autism on Science-Based Medicine
It includes a list of SBM posts about vaccines, an overview of the question, and a list of key studies. This page is a work in progress; so we appreciate any input…
oracknows | August 19, 2009As a "prominent" (as hard as I find it that anyone would apply the word to me) blogger about the anti-vaccine movement, somehow I ended up on the Every Child By Two mailing list. ECBT, as you may recall, is the organization founded by former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and former First Lady of Arkansas Betty Bumpers to promote vaccination against childhood diseases. It's a fine organization, and a much delayed counterweight to antivaccine propaganda mills like Age of Autism, Generation Rescue, the National Vaccine Information Center, and the up and coming antivaccine doctors' website Medical…
oracknows | August 18, 2009Vacation or no vacation, something's bubbled up in the comments that I consider worth commenting about. If you remember (or even if you don't), about a week and a half ago I wrote about how Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, has let the mask drop. I entitled the post Dr. Bob Sears: Stealth anti-vaccinationist? This time around, I was half-tempted to remove the question mark, based on the comment of a commenter by the 'nym of Science Mom, who turned me on to this post by Dr. Bob in the forums of his website entitled Weekly Disclaimer about SM and…
oracknows | August 18, 2009Now here's some perfect reading for a lazy stay-at-home vacation day. It's even pretty science-y. Well, math-y, at least. It may even be the best scientific paper ever. The title says it all:
When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection
The long version is at the link above.
The short version is that, if this ever happens, we're screwed.
The intermediate version is at Night of the Living Model.
oracknows | August 17, 2009Believe it or not, I happen to be on vacation this week. Fear not, it's a stay-at-home vacation (sometimes the best kind) and therefore my vacation doesn't mean I'll stop blogging. In fact, I consider blogging to be part of my recreation. What my vacation does mean is that I will probably slow down a bit and not do posts that force me to do a lot of background reading. It also means that, because I went to an actual rock concert last night (something I haven't done in years), not only did I sleep in a bit and therefore not have that post that usually goes up here by 8 or 9 AM, but I didn't…
oracknows | August 15, 2009It's amazing where anti-vaccine nuttery will metastasize to when you're not looking.
This time around, Tom Chick (who, I'm told but don't know for sure, is actually Jack Chick's son) warns us about a new Wii game by Ubisoft called Your Shape. It sounds as though it's nothing more than another of "personalized" exercise guides, but what it does have that other such exercise guides lack is a certifiably loony anti-vaccine wingnut as one of its "health experts." Indeed, as Tom points out, this is what Ubisoft says in its press release:
In addition to being the face of Your Shape featuring Jenny…
oracknows | August 15, 2009Yikes! How did I forget to plug the Skeptics' Circle? This time around, it's the Skeptics Circle #117: The Chiropractic Edition and it's here to readjust your subluxated skepticism. Or something. Either way, it's a hoot.
I do fear one thing though. Mike Meadon referred to the Skeptics' Circle as "venerable." Back when a blogger named St. Nate started this whole thing and then a few months later handed it off to me, way back in 2005, I never would have ever thought that one day the Circle would be referred to as "venerable."
God, I'm so old. Or my blog is. Or something.
In any case, next up on…
oracknows | August 14, 2009No comment other than I'm not surprised at the hypocrisy:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
No comment here either. As they say in law, res ipsa loquitur.
I've been intentionally vague regarding my position on the Obama health care reform initiative because, well, mainly I haven't entirely made up my mind about it. However, what I have made up my mind about is that I'm tired of seeing such obvious lies about it.
oracknows | August 14, 2009Effect Measure is a site I highly recommend with experienced epidemiologists in charge. In other words, it's run by adults. But scientists often disagree about things. This is apparently a secret to non-scientists and many reporters who assume that when two scientists disagree, one is lying or wrong. But it's true nonetheless. Whatever the subdiscipline, there are disagreements. If you pick up almost any issue of Science or Nature you will find plenty of them, usually (but not always) couched in polite language in the Introduction or Discussion section of a paper or in the Letters. So it's…
oracknows | August 13, 2009I've been ragging a lot on some of the right wing critics of President Obama's health care reform initiative. Without a doubt, with their talk of "death panels" and their likening the health care reform bill to the beginning of another Nazi-like euthanasia program, they deserve it. But I just saw something on YouTube that has been spreading virally among surgeons, and, depressingly, it's President Obama engaging in a bit of nonsense of his own in support of his agenda:
Yes, it's our President contrasting what primary care docs make treating diabetes with what docs can make if a diabetic…
oracknows | August 13, 2009Let's face it, I've been at this "anti-antii-vax" thing for quite a while now. This December, this blog will have been in existence for five years. Even before that cold, gray Saturday afternoon nearly five years ago when, on a whim, I started up a blog on Blogspot that became the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence, I had been a regular presence on the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative for at least three years before that. There, besides quackery, I got my first taste of the lies of the anti-vaccine movement from the likes of denizens of the newsgroup like Jan Drew and Ilena…
oracknows | August 12, 2009I hadn't planned on writing about this topic again. Really, I hadn't. The reason is mainly that politics is usually not my bag. I've said it time and time again: political bloggers are a dime a dozen, and I have no reason to suspect that my pontifications and bloviations on politics would be any more valuable or worthy of your attention than anyone else's pontifications and bloviations on politics. Besides, I've made quite the little niche for myself in the blogosphere writing about skepticism, critical thinking, and science in medicine, in particular how unscientific or pseudoscientific…
oracknows | August 11, 2009...leave it to the Investor's Business Daily to kick it up a notch to thermonuclear as an anonymous editorialist tries to criticize President Obama's health plan by invoking the dreaded British NHS:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
I realize that many of you saw this quote over at Ed Brayton's blog, but the searing stupidity of the above statement just stands out so much that I had to add my little snark too. Can…
oracknows | August 11, 2009While I've let myself get sucked into commenting on health care politics (well, not exactly "sucked in"; I was pissed off enough at the "Obama = Hitler" analogies that I enjoyed skewering some of the idiots making them), there's another issue that's popped up that I can't resist commenting on in my usual inimitable fashion. It comes from, of all places, this blog's favorite den of quackery propaganda, NaturalNews.com and from, of all places, one of our favorite wingnut politicians, a man who's been a tireless promoter of quackery in Congress for many years now.
That's right, Ron Paul's back,…
oracknows | August 10, 2009
Remember the Hitler Zombie? He doesn't show up all that much anymore. The reason is not because a lot of brain dead Nazi analogies aren't being used to demonize political opponents. In fact, If I had a mind to, I could probably populate this blog with nothing other than people whose brains have obviously been eaten by the zombie, leaving so little intellectual firepower left that they actually believe that comparing President Obama to Hitler makes sense. Mainly, the reason that I don't do Hitler Zombie bits so often anymore is that the monster has chomped so many brains, producing so much…
oracknows | August 10, 2009If there's one theme that's run through this blog since the very beginning, it's that the best medical care should be based on the best science. In other words, I like to think of myself as being far more for science- and evidence-based medicine, than I am against against so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM).
Unfortunately, even though the proportion of medical therapies not based on science is far lower than CAM advocates would like you to believe, there are still more treatments in "conventional" medicine that are insufficiently based on science or that have never been…
oracknows | August 9, 2009Too bad it's missing one big one. There's nothing about the birther movement there:
See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.
I think that about sums it all up: moon hoax, 9/11, the Illuminati, the Masons. What more could there be?