oracknows | May 13, 2011I and others have often written about how "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) represent a "bait and switch." The basic concept is that CAM/IM has co-opted several ostensibly science-based modalities, such as diet, exercise, relaxation, and the like. These are used as the bait by representing them as being somehow "alternative" and outside of the mainstream of medicine. The switch occurs when CAM/IM advocates use the known efficacy of modalities like this to argue that other woo works. They do this through a "big tent" policy, where diet, exercise,…
oracknows | May 12, 2011It's been a busy and rough week. The news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, with the release of one bad study and another highly touted great white hope of a legal study. As much as I'm tired of blogging about vaccines this week, it's still mandatory for me to note that something very wonderful has happened. So bear with me, please. Remember how recently, after well over five years of his flouting the law, the State of Maryland suspended "autism biomed" quack Dr. Mark Geier's medical license? In fact, Maryland didn't just suspend it, but emergently suspended it. Well, on…
oracknows | May 12, 2011Recently, there have been grumblings in the ranks of Orac-philes. All is not entirely well. Or, at least, all is less well than usual. Even more unusual, I feel your pain. I really do. We've been enduring a stretch when the anti-vaccine movement has been unusually busy for an unusually long time, leading vaccines to take over and dominate as the main topic of this blog for more than the last week. This has led not only to my getting tired of the topic, but to some of you apparently becoming tired as well of the sheer burning stupid that only the anti-vaccine movement can lay down with such…
oracknows | May 10, 2011Knowing what you are destined to blog about on a given night three days beforehand is a two-edged sword. On the plus side, I don't have to worry about writer's block or lack of suitable material to use as fodder for my Insolence, Respectful and not-so-Respectful, and that's usually a good thing. On the other hand, by the time the evening rolls around, my attention can easily stray to other things, and I might not be as enthusiastic about deconstructing the latest example of, for example, anti-vaccine idiocy as I was when I first learned of its impending arrival. Yet not blogging about it…
oracknows | May 10, 2011Let's review.
Once upon a time, according to anti-vaccine zealots, the MMR vaccine caused autism. Soon after that, the explanation morphed. No, it wasn't so much the MMR that caused autism; rather, it was the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be in several childhood vaccines in the U.S. until the end of 2001. Then, as evidence accumulated exonerating mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism, it became the "toxins." (Antifreeze, formaldehyde, and human fetal parts, oh my!) Finally, it became "too many too soon."
And the anti-vaccine movement rested, because its latest excuse…
oracknows | May 10, 2011As hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, I've been at this blogging biz a long time--well over six years now. However, I've been engaged, in one form or another, in combatting pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and crankery online since the late 1990s. Although I try hard not to fall into the same cognitive traps that a certain pediatrician to the stars does, namely considering my own anecdotal experience to be superior to controlled studies, that is not to say that personal experience is without value. At least, that's what I was thinking when I came across Steve Novella's post A failure to…
oracknows | May 9, 2011One theme that I keep revisiting again and again is not so much a question of the science behind medical therapies (although certainly I do discuss that issue arguably more than any other) but rather a question of why. Why is it that so many people cling so tenaciously to pseudoscience, quackery, and, frequently, conspiracy theories used by believers to justify why various pseudoscience and quackery are rejected by mainstream science and medicine? Certainly, I've touched on this issue before on several occasions, for example, with respect to the anti-vaccine movement, the claim that abortion…
oracknows | May 7, 2011I can hardly wait to see what the "proof" is this time:
Investigators and Families of Vaccine-Injured Children to Unveil Report Detailing Clear Vaccine-Autism Link Based on Government's Own Data
Report Demands Immediate Congressional Action
Directors of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy (EBCALA), parents and vaccine-injured children will hold a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (717 Madison Place, NW in Washington, DC) on Tuesday, May 10 at 12:00 PM to unveil an investigation linking vaccine injury to autism. For over 20 years, the federal…
oracknows | May 6, 2011Anti-vaccine activists are constantly repeating the claim that they're "not anti-vaccine" but rather are "pro-safe vaccine" or "vaccine safety activists." Depending on the specific anti-vaccine activist, it's either a lie or self-delusion, of course, although I suppose it's good that anti-vaccine activists do have enough of a sense of shame to realize that being anti-vaccine is frowned upon by the sane parts of society. Still, it is amusing every so often to see the "vaccine safety activist" mask drop, as it did in the comments of the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism earlier:
When the…
oracknows | May 5, 2011The other day, I wrote about how mercury militia general and autism quack extraordinaire Dr. Mark Geier had his medical license suspended by the State of Maryland. At the time, I lamented how it was at least five years two late, but there was one aspect of the story that I didn't really dwell on, although I did mention it. It's something I hadn't known about before, something I was actually pretty shocked to find out, and I wanted to know how it could possibly have happened. I'm referring to the fact that Mark Geier's son David Geier had somehow slimed his quacky way onto the State of…
oracknows | May 5, 2011It's official now. The U.S. is on track to accumulate more cases of measles than it has seen in a decade:
The United States seems to be on track to have more measles cases than any year in more than a decade, with virtually all cases linked to other countries, including Europe where there's a big outbreak.
Already there have been 89 cases reported so far. The U.S. normally sees only about 50 cases of measles in a year thanks to vaccinations.
Health officials are reluctant to make predictions, but acknowledge the pace of reports is unusually hot.
"It's hard to say, but we're certainly getting…
oracknows | May 4, 2011I see I've managed to attract another anthropogenic global warming denialist in the comments again, I figured that now is as good a time as any to post this video. True, it's over a year old, but it does as good a job of describing the multiple interlocking strands of evidence supporting the concept that the climate is warming and that human activity is causing it.
In particular, I like how this video sums up multiple lines of evidence supporting AGW. The same sort of reasoning applies to every major scientific consensus, be it evolution, the germ theory of disease, the scientific consensus…
oracknows | May 3, 2011One of the most persistent myths is one that's been particularly and doggedly resistant to evidence, science, clinical trials, epidemiology, and reason. It's also a myth that I've been writing about since a couple of months after the beginning of this blog. Specifically, I'm referring to the now scientifically discredited myth that the mercury-containing thimerosal preservative that used to be in quite a few childhood vaccines causes autism. The myth began in the late 1990s and was later fed by the publication of David Kirby's book Evidence of Harm, which was basically a paean to various…
oracknows | May 3, 2011"Personalized medicine." You've probably heard the term. It's a bit of a buzzword these days and refers to a vision of future medicine in which therapies are much more tightly tailored to individual patients than they currently are. That's not to say that as physicians we haven't practiced personalized medicine before; certainly we have. However it has only been in the last decade or so that our understanding of genomics, systems biology, and cell signaling have evolved to the point where the vision of personalized medicine based on each patient's genome and biology might be achievable within…
oracknows | May 2, 2011Here's a brief one for you all. Former UPI editor and now editor of the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism has a talent for incredibly un-self-aware statements. This time around, in the wake of President Obama's having released his "long form" birth certificate, ol' Danny Boy posted a quickie statement (in amongst a bunch of other almost as amusing quickie statements) that reads:
Now that the "birther" myth has been debunked, maybe we can get rid of the ridiculous but widespread notion -- pushed by people who should know better -- that vaccines don't cause autism.
Uh, no, Dan. You have it…
oracknows | May 2, 2011After more than ten years, finally, Osama bin Laden is dead:
This is such monumental news that I think it's appropriate to pause blogging in order to pay tribute to the brave men and women who finally not only killed the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11 but brought his body back. Well done!
I've written about my experiences in 9/11 before. Although I wasn't in Manhattan and didn't know anyone personally who was killed in the attacks, I was close enough, and I knew people who had family and friends killed in the attack. That was more than enough. Too much, in fact.
oracknows | April 30, 2011Dedicated to a certain commenter who thinks I'm an "eco-fascist" because I criticized Ann Coulter for abusing physics and biology for claiming that "radiation is good for you," I present a video that succinctly describes everything you need to know about the "Climategate" affair:
I posted it on my Facebook profile, too, and already a certain Libertarian comedian with a monumentally poor understanding of science and a chip on his shoulder when it comes to scientists has been drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
Actually, I had been planning on posting this video anyway sometime during the…
oracknows | April 29, 2011I'm pretty hard on anti-vaccine activists. I know that. One in particular provokes my ire because of his particular brand of loutishness, intimidation, and stupidity. I'm talking about, of course, J.B. Handley, founder of Generation Rescue and blogger at its propaganda arm Age of Autism. As much as JB and I detest each other though, on rare occasions (of which this appears to be the first) I'm forced to admit that JB actually did something right.
Five months ago, JB wrote a hilarious bit of detection work in which he concluded that a blogger by the 'nym of Sullivan was, in reality, Dr. Paul…
oracknows | April 29, 2011With the utter ridiculousness of the arguments laid down by Dr. Oz when Steve Novella appeared on his show and the even more ridiculous silliness of J.B. Handley thinking that Matt Carey, a.k.a. Sullivan, is really Bonnie Offit, I had originally thought that I should find some peer-reviewed scientific article today to do a sober, serious analysis of some cool bit of science. Hey, it sounded like a good idea. Then I finished my day, which was my clinic day, and I was simply too tired to summon up the effort it would take to go through a paper, analyze it, and write up that analysis for the…
oracknows | April 28, 2011Among the most bizarre and risible conspiracy theories currently going around, rising to the top (or near the top) has to be notion that President Obama was not actually born in the United States and therefore is not a U.S. citizen and not eligible to be President of the United States. Indeed, ever since the heat of the 2008 election, this particular unsinkable rubber duck of a conspiracy theory keeps getting slapped down by reason and evidence, only to rise to the surface again and again and again. It's truly a wingnut paradise, because, quite frankly, the people who passionately believe it…