oracknows | January 7, 2009One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. When it came to imagining the end to which totalitarianism could take us, no one before or since has written a more compelling book about living under such a regime.
One aspect of Oceania, the fictional totalitarian state ruled by Big Brother, that still stands out when I think about the book is how Big Brother dealt with inconvenient news and history. In the book, Winston Smith, the protagonist, works at a government agency called the Ministry of Truth (also called Minitrue), one of the…
oracknows | January 6, 2009As I was sitting in the O.R. lounge yesterday afternoon between cases, the television in the lounge was tuned to CNN. One thing I noted was some rather fawning coverage of President Bush regarding the military that seemed as though it belonged on FOX News rather than CNN. Not long after that, Wolf Blitzer breathlessly reported that CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, had apparently been approached by the Obama Transition Team about becoming the new Surgeon General. I thought to myself, "Hmmm. That's interesting." And then I went back to the O.R. to finish up my schedule.…
oracknows | January 6, 2009
Unbelievably, it looks as though I've been nominated yet again for another blogging award. Really, folks, this is too much. How on earth am I going to live up to this level of accolades in 2009?
Not that that would stop me from pointing out that I'm in the running for the Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog at Medgaget. So, if you like what I've been laying down, please vote for me here. If not, vote for Getting Better with Dr. Val, who would be my second choice if I can't win.
Another blog I can't help but recommend a vote for is in the category of Best New Medical Weblog. It's Science-…
oracknows | January 6, 2009If there's one thing I've learned over the last four years of examining the various forms of woo out there, it's to be very, very skeptical whenever an advocate of a highly dubious-sounding "therapy" points to a study as "proof" that the therapy, whatever it is, works. Usually, what I find is a small pilot study with inadequate controls or even a poorly designed study. For example, the acupuncture literature is rife with these sorts of studies. It's also rife with larger studies for which the control was inadequate--or for which there was no real control at all. This phenomenon is…
oracknows | January 5, 2009...for me as Best Medical/Health Issues Blog.
At the very least, put me past Junkfood Science!
While you're at it, vote for the Best Science Blog. There are two fellow ScienceBloggers (PZ and Greg Laden) in contention, as well as one of my blog buds, Steve Novella of Neurologica and another of my favorite blogs, Bad Astronomy. A tough choice.
oracknows | January 5, 2009Over the last year and a half, Jenny McCarthy has been, unfortunately, a fairly frequent topic of this blog. There is, of course, a reason for this. Ever since she published her first book on autism back in the summer of 2007, she has become the public face of the antivaccine movement and autism quackery. Indeed, Generation Rescue, that reliable bastion of antiscientific antivaccine pseudoscience and autism quackery, has been--shall we say?--rebranded as "Jenny McCarthy's Autism Organization." In the process, she has demonstrated a level of burning stupid that defies description, a stupidity…
oracknows | January 4, 2009When first I commented on the unfortunate death of HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore a few days ago, little did I expect to be descended upon by several of her fellow denialists, who promptly swelled the comment thread after the post to close to a couple of hundred comments. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. It's an emotional story, and whenever, for example, Tara Smith wrote about HIV/AIDS pseudoscience it was not uncommon for her posts to provoke well over a thousand comments. It also doesn't help that HIV/AIDS denialists tend to be among the most persistent of cranks.
In any…
oracknows | January 4, 2009Having recently learned that David Tennant plans to give up the TARDIS at the end of the next abbreviated series of Doctor Who (we Yanks tend to be a bit late on the uptake for news like that from across the pond), I just found out who the 11th Doctor will be after Tennant leaves: Matt Smith.
Forgive me, my UK readers, but before I found the BBC press release, I'd never heard of this guy before. (Of course, I had never really heard of David Tennant before he was chosen and only later realized that he had played Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and he turned out OK…
oracknows | January 3, 2009I can only guess that being voted Age of Autism's "Reporter of the Year" went to David Kirby's head. Of course, the only real competition was Dan Olmsted, who apparently couldn't find the Clinic for Special Children in Amish country (or, more likely, didn't bother to look for it) yet bravely claims there are no autistic Amish (which probably explains why he no longer works for UPI); Steve Wilson of WXYZ News in Detroit, who trotted out long-discredited canards about mercury in vaccines to produce a dishonest, fear mongering report and then showed up in the comments of a blog to make a fool of…
oracknows | January 2, 2009Now that 2009 is about to kick into gear, I have to look back at 2008 one last time to acknowledge one failure. As a backdrop to that failure, I note that the antivaccine propaganda site Age of Autism has posted a series of their People of the Year "awards" for 2008, including, antivaccine luminaries such as:
Person of the Year: Dr. Bernardine Healy. Just because a hack political appointee known to tilt science to be in line with ideology hops on the "too many too soon" bandwagon, AoA thinks it has a legitimate argument from authority. It doesn't.
Couple of the Year: Jenny McCarthy and Jim…
oracknows | January 2, 2009Here we go again.
You know, now that it's 2009, I had hoped that one of the most irritating people alive would continue his blissful quiet. I'm referring, of course, to Deepak Chopra, that Indian physician who demonstrates that a medical training is no protection whatsoever against pseudoscientific and anti-scientific thinking. Indeed, Chopra goes far beyond that in that, not only has he become a leader of the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement, also sometimes called the "integrative medicine" (IM) movement that seeks to "integrate" treatments that range from…
oracknows | January 1, 2009I realize that I said I would take New Years Day off, but I saw this and felt a brief post was in order.
I also realize that some will never believe that it's not false modesty when I express amazement that so many people show up here day in and day out to read my written meanderings. It's also not false modesty when I marvel that I actually am nominated from time to time for various blogging awards and even (on rarer occasions) win.
So it is again that I've been nominated for Best Medical/Health Issues Blog of 2008 for the Weblog Awards.
Cool. My thanks to everyone who nominated me.
I also…
oracknows | December 31, 2008Happy New Year, everyone! Here's hoping that 2009 is better than 2008 was, which, quite frankly (at least for me) sucked big time.
In any case, I'm taking the day off. In the meantime, enjoy Jib Jab's 2008 Year in Review:
Not Jib Jab's best, but still amusing enough. Perhaps it's appropriate for the year that was 2008.
oracknows | December 31, 2008Yesterday, I commented on the tragic death of HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore, who was HIV-positive herself and refused to use antiretroviral drugs during her pregnancy to prevent maternal-fetal transmission of the virus and insisted on breast feeding even though the virus can be transmitted to the baby through breast milk. Her cultish clinging to the belief that HIV does not cause AIDS against all scientific evidence showing otherwise cost her daughter her life in 2005 and, very likely, cost her her own life a few days ago. I concede that it is quite possible that Maggiore did not die…
oracknows | December 31, 2008I know, I know, I've criticized P.Z. Myer's poll-crashing proclivities as being childish and pointless. However, so few people seem to agree with my take on it that I'm wondering whether, if I can't beat 'em I should join 'em. So let's try it out.
On the Obama Transition Team website, Generation Rescue has put up this question (just type in the search term "Generation Rescue" to find the question:
Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey were named 2008 Couple of the Year (www.ageofautism.com) due to their advocacy work for Generation Rescue. Why hasn't the Transistion Team made autism a top priority…
oracknows | December 31, 2008Now here's something that'll go to Orac's head (if, in fact, he actually had a head instead of a Plexiglass cube of blinking colored lights). He's been named by Rebecca Watson (a.k.a. The Skepchick) as one of the Top 10 Skeptics Who Kicked Ass in 2008!
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I'm tellin' ya, to be included in a list with luminaries such as Ben Goldacre, Amanda Peet, Susan Jacoby (whose book, The Age of American Unreason, I really really need to get around to reading), Phil Plait, and fellow ScienceBlogger P.Z. Myers. Of course, my…
oracknows | December 30, 2008...who needs a lot of practice still?
I would say he might look like this.
I still have to figure out what Zionist juice is, though.
oracknows | December 30, 2008Longtime readers of this blog may remember the case of Eliza Jane Scovill. For newbies and those who might not remember, I've copiously linked to posts written by me and others.
To boil it all down, three years ago a child named Eliza Jane Scovill (often called EJ) died tragically three years ago of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and HIV-associated encephalopathy. The reason is that her mother, Christine Maggiore, was a prominent HIV/AIDS denialist, who, after having been found to be HIV positive back in the early 1990s fell under the sway of Peter Duesberg and came to believe that HIV does…
oracknows | December 30, 2008Here's one for our favorite creationist neurosurgeon: A whole Grand Rounds all about the interface of and application to medicine of the theory of evolution.
oracknows | December 29, 2008Last week, I gave everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Egnor, the gift everyone loves to read but not to receive: the gift of not-so-Respectful Insolence. Christmas or no Christmas, he did ask for it, and far be it from me, given my benevolent nature, not to respond to his plaintiff plea with a resounding "Affirmative!" Nor was I alone. Others joined in. But apparently not everyone thought Dr. Egnor deserving of such a group slapdown. Apparently there is at least one blogger out there who thought that Dr. Egnor needed a defender. Apparently there is at least one blogger…