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Battleground movie theaters: Skeptical activism versus the anti-vaccine movement

It figures. I'm gone for a couple of days, paying little attention to the blogosphere or the Internet, and something big has to happen. Remember a couple of weeks ago, when in the context of asking how we should respond to the anti-vaccine movement I discussed a recent campaign by the anti-vaccine group SafeMinds to infiltrate theaters with its deceptive anti-vaccine public service announcement (PSA) over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend? Well, it turns out that two of the three biggest American anti-vaccine groups, SafeMinds and Generation Rescue, teamed up to try to raise money to get these…

Silence is the enemy

These days, I don't often participate in mass bloggings about various topics, at least not as much as I used to. I can't say if it's laziness or being jaded after having blogged on nearly a daily basis for over four years now, or an ornery tendency to want to go my own way these days. Whatever the cause, I'm making an exception today because I've been asked by Sheril Kirshenbaum, who writes: Today begins a very important initiative called Silence Is The Enemy to help a generation of young women half a world away.Why? Because they are our sisters and children-the victims of sexual abuse who…

Awww, Mike S. Adams noticed me!

Mike Adams latest column is all about his UMM visit…although, actually, it's more of a whine about me. Dr. P.Z. Myer did, in fact, make my talk Thursday night and something very strange happened: He, too, experienced a sudden and dramatic change in his level of courage during the course of the speech. During the question and answer session, Professor Myer simply leaned against a door post with his arms crossed and said nothing. He just stared at me blankly and stood motionless in the same place where he was standing for the last twenty minutes of the speech. During the "Q & A", I looked…

A tale of two estimates

As my readers know, the reason why the Lancet study and the ILCS give different numbers for deaths in Iraq is because the studies measured different things over a different time periods. Of course, that fact isn't going to stop pro-war columnists from claiming that the ILCS refutes the Lancet study. Here is Tony Parkinson writing in The Age. How many people, for example, still swear blind that 100,000 civilians have been killed in the war in Iraq? For some, it has become an article of faith that this is the cost of an illegal war of aggression waged by a ruthless imperial power. For this…

This week in Global Warming Denial

Four of the six government members on a committee examining geosequestration put out a dissent denying the existence of anthropogenic global warming. I was going to write a post on what they got wrong, but I realised that since they rely on Bob Carter so much, I'd already done it. John Quiggin comments on the affair: But now that the disinformation machine has been created, it's proving impossible to shut it down. Too many commentators have locked themselves into entrenched positions, from which no dignified retreat is possible. The problem has been reinforced by developments in the media,…

Bailey corrects mistake, Bolt does not

Writing about the new IPCC report, Andrew Bolt said The scientists of even the fiercely pro-warming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict seas will rise (as they have for centuries) not by Gore's 600cm by 2100, but by between 14 and 43cm. While Ron Bailey wrote: By 2100 sea level is expected to rise between 28 to 43 centimeters Both were wrong. The IPCC report says that the range is 18 to 59 cm if you ignore ice flow changes, and 28 to 79 cm if you include an estimate for ice flow changes. I let both Bailey and Bolt know of the problem. Bailey thanked me and corrected his…

More guns, more homicide

A Harvard School of Public Health Press Release describes a new study by Miller, Hemenway and Azreal: In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the February 2007 issue of Social Science and Medicine Earlier studies on the relationship between firearm ownership and…

The Denial Industrial Complex

Matt Nisbet reports: A new study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental Politics concludes that 9 out of 10 books published since 1972 that have disputed the seriousness of environmental problems and mainstream science can be linked to a conservative think tank (CTT). Following on earlier work by co-author Riley Dunlap and colleagues, the study examines the ability of conservative think tanks to use the media and other communication strategies to successfully challenge mainstream expert agreement on environmental problems. (Clarification: A couple of…

Despicable rhetoric from Rush Limbaugh about Michael J. Fox

Yesterday afternoon, while working on grants, I was flipping through radio channels, and I came across something that stopped my dial twiddling in its tracks. It was Rush Limbaugh, and he was trashing Michael J. Fox for making a commercial in support of stem cell research. As you may recall, Michael J. Fox is the unfortunate sufferer of a virulent form of Parkinson's Disease, which he contracted at the very young age of around 30. He's now had it for 15 years, and, as Parkinson's is wont to do, it's slowly gotten worse. Indeed, Fox has more or less given up acting since 2000 because of the…

The Australian's War on Science 68: getting your science from a chain email

Jane Fraser, columnist in The Australian , writes a column based on "facts" she got from a chain email: Back to Plimer. He says he knows how disheartening it is to realise all your savings on carbon emissions have been eaten up by natural disasters. You've suffered the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up 'til midnight to finish your kids' "The Green Revolution" science project, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet, selling your speedboat, holidaying at home instead of abroad, replacing all those light…

Natural does not equal safe: green tea edition

Poison ivy, nightshade, cobras, green tea. Uh, green tea? Yeah, you heard me right. Don't put down your cup of tea just yet, but if you're near a GNC please run, don't walk, the other way (good advice anytime). A review ($) came out in one of my two favorite journals, Chemical Research in Toxicology (the other being VQR - you've got to keep your nerd in check), on the chemicals found in green tea that are supposed to so healthy, polyphenols. A bit of background first. The major polyphenols found in green tea called catechins have shown some anti-cancer activity in vivo (in a living thing). A…

A Fatal Chemotherapy Error in Canada

Yesterday the results of two separate investigations into the death of a Canadian cancer patient were released. Both reports documented the mistakes made in the programming of a chemotherapy pump that was supposed to deliver a controlled infusion of fluorouracil over 96 hours: On Tuesday, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada released its independent report on the death of 43-year-old Denise Melanson last summer at Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute. A pump was supposed to deliver fluorouracil, a drug used to treat tumours, over four days, but it was given to Melanson over four…

The Party's Over...

"I am not overweight, I am underheight - My weight is perfect for a man of 7'9"." -- Victor Buono The party's over It's time to call it a day They've burst your pretty balloon And taken the moon away It's time to wind up the masquerade Just make your mind up the piper must be paid Being a little overweight can kill you, according to new research that leaves little room for denial that a few extra pounds is harmful. Baby boomers who were even just a tad pudgy were more likely to die prematurely than those who were at a healthy weight, U.S. researchers reported Tuesday. I try to be a good…

As long as a Presidential term in office...

For once, I actually managed not to miss it. For once, this day hasn't passed me by, leaving me not to remember its significance for a couple of days. For once, I haven't forgotten my blogiversary. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I've been at this more or less nonstop just as long as a Presidential term in office. It all began on a dank, overcast Saturday afternoon in December four years ago today. What whim struck me to sit down in front of my computer and use Blogger to create my original blog I have no idea, but I did. Maybe it was because I had become tired of sparring with Holocaust…

Grass Roots in the Desert

When I first decided to go to Las Vegas for YearlyKos, I thought I would just tag along with my husband, who was representing Progress Now. I figured I'd do some shopping, maybe some sightseeing, and definitely some rockhounding along the drive there and back. When I saw a number of science related discussions popping up on the YearlyKos schedule, I changed my mind, and registered. (Ok, so, I still plan to do a bit of the tourist bit, too.) Now, I'm so glad that I did. So far, this has been an incredible experience. Most of the people I've talked to have been bright and enthusiastic, thinking…

Weighing something

The other night, I started writing about one of the things I hate about the NICU, which is that no one there talks about death. I didn't finish it, so I didn't post it, thinking I'd get to it the next night. The following morning, instead of our usual attending rounds, we had a "debriefing," which is basically a meeting of everyone in the NICU involved in the care of a patient who has died. As these things often are, it was a lovely example of the support that people can show for each other at moments when they question their own actions and motives. But beyond that, the session helped me…

Finding Little Cubists the Perfect Gift

I had to visit an elementary school for a story the other day and had to wait a bit for my interview, so I started walking around the halls, looking at what the kids had been up to in class. There were the requisite scaled models of Native American abodes, teepees and wigwams, complete with little plastic figures and livestock. Behind that, hanging on a giant corkboard, were self portraits of the children, all smiles and scribbly shirts. In a smaller corner of the corkboard there was a cluster of little watercolor paintings surrounding a hand written construction paper sign that read "Mrs.…

The Evolution of a Holiday Appetizer: The Blue Crab

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science recently published an article discussing some progress in blue crab research and conservation, and mentioned a related report: The Chesapeake Bay blue crab population has stabilized, but at historically low levels according to a recent report by the Chesapeake Bay Commission's Bi-State Blue Crab Technical Advisory Committee. Though the news isn't quite heartening, it's better than nothing. Blue crab populations have been declining tremendously over the past few decades, not only threatening a population of the animals, but also…

Wind Power, Habitat Fragmentation and the Promise of Work

If you travel I-68 and any of the joining roads in the near future, you will almost certainly see creeping flat beds hauling gargantuan turbines, blades and other pieces of future wind towersup the mountain to join those already adorning the Western MD/PA ridgelines. One or two car escorts follow close behind in the far right lanes. Some of the pieces are so large that you have to pull halfway in to the adjacent lane to avoid them. Despite your feelings about wind towers, you just can't avoid feeling awe at their sheer size. I've watched wind towers sprout up rapidly in this area over the…

Reply to Verdon

Steve Verdon has responded to my critique of More Guns, Less Crime. Verdon starts by claiming that Lott's argument doesn't depend on their being more guns or less crime. He argues that you just need "more people carrying (concealed) existing guns legally" and that Lott found a substitution from violent crime to property crime rather than "less crime". Verdon then accuses me of being "extremely dishonest" for stating that Lott is arguing that more guns cause less crime. I find his accusation very strange. If, in a book entitled More Guns, Less Crime…

"artificial, engineerable, animal chloroplasts": coming soon to a laboratory near you!

As many of you are no doubt aware, both mitochondria and chloroplasts are thought to have come to us via microbial endosymbiosis (that is one cell living within another) with prokaryokes. Some photosynthetic bacteria eons ago found itself nestled inside another cell, realized it was a pretty sweet place to call home, and viola - a new cell organelle was born. OK fine, that is a bit of an oversimplification. The endosymbiotic theory is a bit more complicated, but that's the general idea. The details of how a symbiont over time could lose its unique identity and became a part of the host…

Weekend Review: Sterile Inflammation

If you've ever rolled your ankle (as I have many times), you have a visceral knowledge of inflammation. Clinically, inflammation is the redness, swelling, heat and pain that's associated with injury. From an immunologist's perspective, it's the set of molecular events that get the immune system going. All of the clinical systems associated with inflammation are due to increased vascular permeability, which is just a fancy way of saying leaky blood vessels. Actually, "leaky" implies that it's uncontrolled, when in fact there's a very orchestrated set of events that recruit immune cells and…

More from Ben Horwich

In his email to Mark Kleiman, Lott accused Ayres and Donohue of lying: However, the Stanford Law Review allowed Ayres and Donohue to add an addition to their piece commenting on all this. They said that: "It is important to note that what we now refer to as the PW response has already been widely circulated as a draft, whose first author is John Lott. Moreover, Lott has repeatedly told the press and/or publish to the Internet that Ayres and Donohue have simply misread their own results. But after seeing this Reply to the original Lott, Plassmann, and Whitley paper, Lott asked the Stanford…

Expanding the Genetic Code

Almost every living thing shares an identical genetic code, with three nucleic acids in an RNA sequence coding for a single amino acid in the translated protein sequence. While there are 64 three-letter RNA sequences, there are only 20 amino acids and degeneracy in the code allows some amino acids to be coded by multiple codons. Chemists and synthetic biologists in the past few years have been working to expand this genetic code, with unnatural nucleotides that can be incorporated into DNA and RNA sequences and unnatural amino acids that can expand the chemical functionality of proteins.…

Personal genomics: opportunities for public education

OK, so this GenomeWeb Daily News article is approximately four centuries old in internet time (i.e. around a week), but it's worth going back and reading. I've previously argued at length that although personal genomics currently offers little in the way of useful, predictive health information, that lack of information in itself represents an important opportunity to educate consumers about the fuzzy nature of common disease genetics. So long as personal genomics companies represent the data accurately (which the major reputable companies currently do quite well, by and large), their…

Free personal genomics... sort of

Helix Health's Steve Murphy rather breathlessly announces the launch of the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative website (for the uninitiated: you can tell Steve is really excited when he uses five exclamation marks at the end of a sentence rather than four.) To be fair, it is big news. Coriell is offering a free service - a full genome scan, plus a genetic health report and genetic counselling - that would cost you at least $500 from Navigenics. The pay-off to them is a massive database to mine for new gene-disease associations and information about patient responses to genetic…

New UCLA Pro-Test Chapter Announces April 22nd Rally

Via Tom Holder of Speaking of Research comes news that embattled UCLA scientists have formed their own chapter of the pro-research organization Pro-Test. And, they're already planning their first event: Following in the footsteps of the Pro-Test group in Oxford, UK, students and scientists at UCLA have pledged to stand up against the lies and misinformation of animal rights groups, and the violence of extremist organizations. They have formed the new group UCLA Pro-Test, which stands for science, reasoned debate and the belief that life-saving medical research must continue without violence…

Potential Changes to Mandatory Sentencing Laws

Mandatory sentencing laws are disliked by many, and for good reason. Judges often criticize these laws for taking away their judicial sovereignty, while others decry the inherent disparity in which they affect minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status. They often lead to inordinately severe punishments for arguably minor, generally drug-related, crimes. The good news is that, as The New York Times reported yesterday, there is reason to believe that some of the more extreme of these mandatory sentencing laws may change under the new Democratic Congress. Examples of why these laws…

Evolution Rap, Like This!

The Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. I've been exploring the use of rap and pop culture to teach science and mathematics, ranging from Lupe Fiasco to Linkin Park, but that topic is for another day. But anyone interested in evolution, whether student or teacher, could find this "Evolution Rap" a refreshing approach. Bottom line: learning should always be this fun. Lyrics: "Yo, yo, the Origin of Species Ain't no feces, dawg, believe me..." And that's all I could think of So then I thought, this needs to be re-written By looking at the similarities in…

Take a Dip Into The Medicines Patent Pool!

Last year, I taught a short course at Gilead Sciences in California and was impressed by not only the high quality of their scientific research but their efforts to increase access of their HIV medications to developing countries. Now Gilead has joined a group of pharmaceutical companies to try something bold and innovative - to share patents to both support basic research and to make their medicines more accessible. The mission of the Medicines Patent Pool is: ...to improve access to affordable and appropriate HIV medicines in developing countries. We are working to bring down the prices…

Publishing Original Research on Blogs - Part 6

Previous entries: Part 1 - Introduction Part 2 - The Backstory Part 3 - Obtaining Sequences Part 4 - Obtaining More Sequences Part 5 - Examining the Outgroups This post is part of a series exploring the evolution of a duplicated gene in the genus Drosophila. Links to the previous posts are above. Part 6 of this series (Evolutionary Relationships) can be found below. Evolutionary Relationships While we were probing the outgroup genomes for copies of aldolase genes using TBLASTX (Examining the Outgroups), we discovered that there are two excellent matches to aldolase genes in the honeybee,…

What Can We Learn from Cockroaches of the Sea?

In my Topics in Marine Science class that I teach at Western Washington University, we spend a week on marine mammals and a portion of that time talking about whaling. We discuss the use of whale oil for illuminants, the 1930s as the Whaling Olympic era, the devastation of certain whale populations, and the formation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). We examine the shift in values as a world that was largely pro-whaling became largely anti-whaling and how science (e.g., the discovery of whale song) and conservation (e.g., Greenpeace) played a role in that ethical shift. I ask…

Mapping of Greenland may aid understanding of sea-level mystery

"A University of Alberta Arctic ice researcher is closing in on some real understanding about the process that might be feeding rising sea levels." Using satellite microwave data, Martin Sharp, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has helped lead a team of researchers who remapped the summer melt extent and duration across Greenland for a five-year period stretching from 2000 to 2004. "What we're interested in is the problem of explaining why the rates of global sea level rising have more or less doubled since the early 1990s compared with the early part of the…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I

We braved ice and fog to go down to see Harry Potter this morning. And yes, it was indeed icy, which was a bit traumatic for me. Last time I was walking on glare ice, I fell and seriously injured my knee. That was last February and I'm still doing physical therapy and taking the occasional pain killer. We did make it across the glare ice of the parking lot safely, but the manager of the movie theater did find regret in his decision to put no salt out to keep his customers in said parking lot safe. Yes, it was an embarrassing spectacle for all but when we left the theater after the movie…

New model may help scientists better predict and prevent influenza outbreaks

Athens, Ga. - Each year, the influenza virus evolves. And each year, public health officials try to predict what the new strain will be and how it will affect the population in order to best combat it. A new study by an international team of researchers, led by assistant professor Andrew W. Park, who holds a joint appointment in the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology and in the College of Veterinary Medicine, may make their task a little easier. The study breaks ground by working across scales and linking sub-molecular changes in the influenza virus to the likelihood of influenza…

Greg Messes up the Triple Lutz, Breaks Leg

Yes, I fell and busted my knee on the ice. I don't want to go on and on about it, but here are the more important details: It made a loud noise. I might have preferred a minor contusion, hairline fracture of the ulna, a cracked rib, and a minorly damaged knee rather than all 200 plus knee-pounds of force bearing down on that one little poorly designed bone. The patella is severed into two parts: A part consisting of one part and a part consisting of a tablespoon of oatmeal. There are already conspiracy theories developing. A student who didn't want to take the exam I was carrying at…

Of Pepsi and ScienceBlogs...

I've gotten a few emails about the Pepsi-ScienceBlogs tempest. It's clearly taken a toll on ScienceBlogs' credibility. Some of my SciBlings have resigned in protest, and others are taking shots on the topic. Sponsorship is part of scientific publishing, even in the peer reviewed world. Remember how Merck published an entire fake journal to promote Vioxx? How much money gets spent on reprints that support a company's position, on articles paid for with corporate research funds? Today's hullaballoo is more honest than either of those. My gut reaction is: calm down, world. This was a miserable…

Disaster---McCain's health care plan will ruin us all

This may ruffle a few feathers, but I've decided to cross-post this one. --PalMD As a physician, I have a lot of politically conservative colleagues. Much of this stems from our experience with the government. The influence of Medicare helps set prices, which we are not at liberty to change, and affects how we practice. On the other hand, Medicare is usually pretty good at paying its bills---except when it doesn't. If our costs go up, say in increased rent, we can't raise our prices. And if we get together with a group of doctors to try to negotiate fees, it can be considered collusion…

Does Science Matter in this Election?

Welcome to Seed's latest blog, Vote for Science. Seed set this blog up to cover science, science policy, and science politics relevant to the November election. The current plan is that the blog will run only until the election. Maybe it will continue. We shall see. I have been told I am a "guest blogger," which means, I think, that I will disappear when the blog disappears. I am a chemist/physicist by training and have worked in science and R&D policy. I am now heading up the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), but my views expressed here do…

Lott claims Duwe "gets the same results I do"

Last week I commented on Lott's LA Times editorial where he claimed that Examining all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 shows that on average, states that adopt right-to-carry laws experience a 60% drop in the rates at which the attacks occur, and a 78% drop in the rates at which people are killed or injured from such attacks. I pointed out that he once again failed to mention the results in Duwe, Kovandzic and Moody. Homicide Studies 2002 6:4. Here is the abstract: Right-to-carry (RTC) laws mandate that concealed weapon…

Past time to pay attention to polio

In the winter of 1999, I stood in an outpatient clinic in a pediatric hospital in New Delhi and listened to a father sobbing over the paralysis of his only son. He was a farmer and lived in Uttar Pradesh; counting walks, minibuses and trains, it had taken him 24 hours to get to the hospital. He had carried the toddler the entire way. His son had gotten the drops, he insisted: Every time the teams came to his neighborhood -- which they did three, four times each year -- he or his wife had lined up all their children, the boy and his older sisters. His son had had 11, 12 doses, the man said.…

Sometimes words really do matter

Here's another little post about the Library Leadership Network (LLN)--naturally suggesting that you might want to go look, but also thinking about how it develops and some of the recent content. Some weeks, most new content goes into existing articles. Some weeks--this past one, for exmaple--most goes into new articles. And some weeks (also including this past one), a new article emerges from pieces of old ones. For the record, the new articles for the week ("week" being last Monday-Friday, June 22-26, 2009): Advocacy and marketing begins with thoughtful commentaries on advocacy from Leigh…

Medical nihilism

Human medicine advances in the way much of science does. People make systematic observations, form plausible hypotheses, and collect data. One of the more important questions in medicine is how people are affected by certain exposures. When that exposure is a medicine, we prefer data from double-blinded, randomized controlled trials. Other types of exposures (such as cigarette smoke) are less amenable to RCTs and we must rely on case-control, cohort, and other studies that examine correlation. But before we can run RCTs on human subjects we need more than just a plausible hypothesis;…

Fake medicine to get Ontario's imprimatur

I live about ten miles due north of "Canada's automotive capital". We often look across the straits to the medical system in Ontario, one in which all citizens have a provincial insurance card. We see how everyone has access to care---or at least some care. I've treated many Canadian patients who have access to American insurance and prefer to get their care on this side of the border, where there are fewer hassles. Of course if you have no insurance at all, hassles abound, and we'll leave a discussion of the merits and difficulties of the Canadian system to another day. But one move…

They also serve who only stand and wait

On July 4th at 5 a.m., I'm loading the family into the car and driving very far away, where cellphones, pagers, and most critically the internet, do not work. Blogging has been very hard for me lately. I love writing, but due to work and family mishegos it's been hard to keep up with the posting. I'm hoping a stint up in the woods providing medical supervision to 400 souls will be rejuvenating. While I'm gone, I'll leave you with some of my favorite posts about the human side of medicine. I hope you enjoy reading them again, or for the first time. --PalMD Mr. D. is one of those guys who…

Katherine Harris for President!

The Florida Baptist Witness got various candidates for office to answer a few questions. They're bad questions, almost entirely focused on the issues of the religious right, but Katherine Harris clasped them to her bosom and ran with them. It's actually kind of creepy. The Bible says we are to be salt and light. And salt and light means not just in the church and not just as a teacher or as a pastor or a banker or a lawyer, but in government and we have to have elected officials in government and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the…

Tim Worstall on the Lancet study

Sometimes I think that there must be a qualifying exam in order to write for Tech Central Station. Fail the exam and you're in. They seem to have exams in at least physics, economics, statistics, and epidemiology. Tim Worstall, the author of today's article seems to have failed both the statistics and epidemiology exams. Worstall is criticizing a recent study published in the Lancet that found very roughly 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq after the invasion, almost all of which were violent. He writes: At the very least one would have to add The Lancet to that list of mainstream…

How literal can a creationist get? And do they all have such dirty minds?

Over at All-Too-Common Dissent, the conversation has turned to Terry Trainor. You've probably never heard of him; he's one of those garden variety self-infatuated creationists who frequented talk.origins some years ago, using the pseudonym "American Patriot" (which does rather tell you a lot about him right there.) He has now retreated to his own little MSN discussion group, to which I will not link—he really doesn't deserve the attention. However, all the talk lately about Darwin as the source of all racism, and the comments that noted a peculiar tendency of creationists to think very, very…

Get out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is getting interesting (part 3)

The other day, I took note again of a rather amusing internecine war going on between various factions of antivaccine cranks. On the one side, spearheaded by everyone's favorite inept conspiracy theorist and bumbling epidemiologist wanna be, Jake Crosby, there are the true believers, who believe that the other side, the more "mainstream" antivaccine groups (such as SafeMinds) and elder statesmen (such as Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill) somehow shafted Jake's hero, the even more bumbling antivaccine "scientist" Brian Hooker out of a role testifying in front of Darryl Issa's last antivaccine…

Legal thuggery, antivaccine edition, part 2: An interesting connection

The plot thickens. Earlier, I discussed how disgraced, struck-off anti-vaccine physician Dr. Andrew Wakefield, deciding that being humiliated once by the courts in a libel action wasn't enough, has apparently decided to have another bite at the apple. Given that he was so thoroughly humiliated in the notoriously plaintiff-friendly (for libel cases, at least) British legal system, it beggars imagination that he or his attorneys would think that he has a prayer of prevailing in Texas, but sue Brian Deer Andrew Wakefield has done anyway. His legal complaint accuses investigative journalist Deer…