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Al Gore's planet fever: Stupidest analogy about global warming ever?

I just heard on the radio last night while driving home what has to be one of the worst analogy about global warming that I've ever heard, and, at the risk of annoying fellow SB'ers who frequently write about these topics, like Chris Mooney or Tim Lambert, I felt like commenting. Oddly enough, the soundbite came from Al Gore, of all people, the last person I would expect to make such a flawed analogy: The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told…

Agri-tourism could help save colorful prairie chicken

This is a photo of a Tympanuchus cupido male drumming away on the lek to find a mate. The lek is the traditional breeding ground of the prairie chicken (and many other animals uses lek's) on which the males display, and to which the females travel to pick a male with whom to mate. This bird, the greater prairie chicken, is threatened, and there is now a move to employ ecotourism to save it. Once prevalent in every Wisconsin county, prairie chickens have been on the state's threatened species list since 1979, as fragmentation and degradation of the birds' native habitat has reduced their…

The Framing Critique (Dawkins-Myers-Expelled!-Gate)

Here is an updated set of links to postings on the critique of Myers and Dawkins' response to Myers-Dawkins-Expelled!-Gate. The point of these links is to provide quick access to the critiques coming from The Intersection and Framing Science blogs, and responses to them. I'm not going to keep updating this entry, so if you have any links please add them in the comments. If your comment gets moderated it is probably because links with comments get tossed automatically in the dungeon, sometimes. I'll be checking the dungeon now and then and freeing such links. It all started here: EXPELLED!…

Nader is Running for President

Our worst fears have been realized. We finally have a chance to boot the Republicans out of the White House, and now Ralf Nader has announced his insane plans to do whatever he can to make sure that a Democrat does not take that position. Nader announced his quixotic and potentially destructive plan, in which he will abuse his name recognition, manipulating legions of mindless, moronic Nader-Simps, and get his jollies telling us all how much the system is broken while he single handedly guarantees eight more years of economic strife and bloody warfare ... in a Sunday interview on Meet the…

The Physics of Tatiana

Tatiana was the captive Siberian Tiger who, on Christmas Day, leaped out of her cave to attack teenage boys who were taunting her. She killed one of them. Zookeepers are investigating how she did it, considering the possibility that the wall of her enclosure was not high enough (technically, it was lower than recommended height by a short distance). Tatiana's leap has, indeed, has rekindled a long term dialog regarding zoos, and big cats in zoos in particular. Now, a physicist at Northeastern University in Boston, has produced an analysis indicating that what did happen was possible.…

Springtime for Stupid, or: Beware, a wave of stupid is about to fall upon the nation. Again.

Get ready for some serious stupid, folks, stupid that threatens to engulf all reason, as a black hole engulfs all nearby matter that falls into its gravitational field. Although I knew that Jenny McCarthy was soon to release another book promoting autism quackery, I had thought it wasn't coming out for a month or two. The book is entitled Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide, written by Jenny and her partner in autism quackery Dr. Jerry Kartzinel. Dr. Kartzinel, some may recall, wrote the foreword to Jenny McCarthy's very first paean to autism quackery back in 2007 and was…

Daniel Hauser continues to do well

Remember Daniel Hauser? He's the the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who underwent one course of chemotherapy and then decided he wanted to pursue "alternative therapy" based on fear of chemotherapy and because of the influence of the faux Native American religion that his mother had taken up with. Ultimately, after a judge ordered Daniel's parents to make sure that Daniel received the chemotherapy and radiation therapy he needed, Daniel and his mother Colleen went on the lam, but ultimately Daniel's mother decided to turn herself in. As a result, Daniel began live-saving chemotherapy…

Surgeons get $30,000 to $50,000 for an amputation? On what planet?

I'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…

Curate's egg from the BBC

James Annan writes about two programmes on the BBC. First, a good one on overselling climate change. I think that what gave the programme credibility was that they didn't talk to any of the global warming skeptics. RealClimate also has an interesting discussion. Second, a crappy one where Bob Carter was allowed to misinform listeners and Phil Jones was given insufficient time to reply. Carter said this: We are at the top of a little temperature cycle. And as Professor Jones knows, since 1998, which was a peak and an extra peak because of an El Nino warm year, that since 1998 the…

Andrew Bolt and the climate change debate

The Australian government's conclusion that the climate change debate is over has prompted a column from Andrew Bolt, who insists that there is to a big debate still going on. Bolt writes: Just look at the big Greenhouse 2005 conference [environment minister Ian Campbell] department is sponsoring in Melbourne in a week. See how free of yucky debate it is, with speaker after speaker picked to say, yes, man-made global warming is so true that we must, the organisers say, "work closely together to tackle this significant environmental issue". There will be so little debate that one of the four…

Lancet study still flypaper for innumerates

Daniel Davies has a new post on Lancet denial, with some particularly egregious examples. The worst example is by Harry of Harry's Place whose "discussion" of the study is to make a statement that he must surely know to be false: Dsquared is a serial bullshitter who has never given a straight answer to any question. Davies also links to a transcript by Seixon of the Hitchens-Galloway debate, where Seixon touts his own debunking of the Lancet study. Seixon's debunking fails because he makes basic errors in his statistics, but at least they are original, so let's look at where he goes wrong…

Nature it ain't

Last week I wrote about how Bob Carter was out by a factor of 20 in an estimate of how much warming could be attributed to human activity. He has now posted the text of another talk where he gives a source for his bogus claim. It's href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123013,00.html" rel="nofollow">this FOXNews opinion piece by Steve Milloy. Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University, so you would have thought he would be aware that opinion columns by non-scientists aren't the best source of scientific information, but I guess not. Some highlights of his talk: He…

Shannon Love and Andy S take swipes at the Lancet study

Andy S, last seen criticizing the Lancet study without reading it, has now read it. Sort of. He writes: Of Iraq's 18 provinces only 12 were actually visited. ... Now clusters assigned to the unsurveyed provinces were replaced in the sample by selecting clusters in adjacent provinces as proxies. The net effect of this is that of the five provinces in northern Iraq only Ninawa and Sulaymaniya were surveyed. ...In a similar manner Iraq's three southernmost provinces were left unsurveyed. Somehow or other the Northern Kurdish population and the Southern Shiite population were undersampled…

Bachmann on ID

Eva sent me a link to a wingnut's account of a debate between some 6th Congressional District candidates: Patty Wetterling (Democrat), John Binkowski (Independent), and Michele Bachmann (Rethuglican). It's not a very good transcription—for one thing, the wingnut's commentary is all tangled up with the words of the candidates, making it hard to tell who said what—but there's one part of interest. They were asked the ID question. Q5: Should "Intelligent Design" be taught (along with Darwinian Theory) in the p science curriculum in public schools? Bachmann: "We need to trust teachers and the…

A new theme band for Your Friday Dose of Woo?

The name of this band is damned near perfect: No, not the Shut-Ups (although that's a pretty cool band name, too). Anyone who reads this blog would know that I'm referring to Down With The Woo. I wonder if their music is any good. If so, they could become the blog band of Respectful Insolenceâ¢. (or at least of Your Friday Dose of Woo, although most people seem to actually like Friday Woo). Fortunately, in that interest, I was informed of their MySpace page, which says: Up from the ashes of cult heroes, Heros Severum. Powered by Macintosh. DWTW is a live production experiment. Every show is…

A politically correct holiday greetings

Found on the Internets via e-mail: With with the holidays fast approaching, please accept -- with no obligation, implied or implicit, on behalf of the wisher or wishee -- my best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially-responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice, practiced within the traditions and/or within the religious or secular belief(s) of your choice and with respect for the traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs of others or for their choice to not practice traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs at all; and for a…

Surgeon age and complications

As much as I try to deny it, I can't anymore. Now that I'm on the wrong side of 40, I have to face what we all eventually have to face, the fact that we will age and that our physical and some of our mental abilities will decline. For some of us, the decline will be slow, and we will retain much of our previous abilities into our 60's, 70's, and even 80's. For others, the decline may not be so slow. We all have experience seeing people in their 50's or 60's who look and move as though they are in the 80's, and we all hope that we will be in the former group, retaining most of our physical and…

Nuclear Power

Way back in August 1988 on Usenet I wrote: Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all (if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until its too late) caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power. The evidence I've seen since then has convinced me that it is almost certain that greenhouse gases are causing warming and that burning fossil fuels is more harmful than nuclear power. Fran Barlow kicked off a discussion on nuclear power in the open thread with…

Matthew England challenges the climate science skeptics at the Ultimo Science Festival

Matthew England will talk about climate models this Sunday 23rd August in the Powerhouse Museum as part of the Ultimo Science Festival. The press release says: Climate modeller challenges skeptics With the Government's emissions trading legislation now delayed, one of Australia's leading climate scientists, UNSW Professor Matthew England has thrown down the gauntlet to climate skeptics to update their thinking. "Those that deny basic climate science question climate modelling and fundamental climate physics. But each of their arguments is wrong, outdated, or irrelevant. Most of their…

Reaction to Ashley's review of Plimer

Harry Clarke It is not wrong to challenge orthodoxy anywhere but the work of Plimer is unscientific and both irresponsible and dangerous - he has provided a social diservice. The extensive publicity he has received has had an entirely undeserved impact. Forget Plimer, read the science. John Quiggin In the Oz of all places, a demolition of Ian Plimer so scathing, and so convincing, that it's hard to imagine how he can salvage any kind of academic reputation, other than by a full retraction (which would be a pretty impressive move, admittedly). ... If there are any genuine sceptics left…

John McLean and the NRSP

Hey, remember John McLean? The guy who kept steering Andrew Bolt into brick walls? Well he's teamed up with Tom Harris of the NRSP to accuse the IPCC of lying about the scientific support for its reports: In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change". Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert…

Background Briefing on Monckton

Check out Wendy Carlisle's Background Briefing episode on Monckton and the Galileo Movement I'd like to highlight a couple of things. Monckton denied that he compared Garnaut to a fascist (at 15:20): Monckton: You said that it's been reported that I compared Ross Garnaut to a fascist? Carlisle: Correct. Monckton: I did no such thing. I suggest you listen to the tape and think again. You see, Monckton's exact words about Garnaut while standing in front of a swastika: that again is a fascist point of view that you merely accept authority without question. Heil Hitler, on we go. Of course, a…

ABC on Cartergate: Opinions on the shape of the Earth differ

Well, now we know why McLean's Reply to the demolition of their paper was rejected. In a response being published by SPPI (was it rejected by even Energy and Environment?), they claim this was because of a vast conspiracy against them. But they make the mistake of including the rejected Reply, so anyone can see that they admit that their analysis was "based on differentials between 12 month averages", which removes any long term trend. That they don't find a long term trend after removing does not show that there is no long term trend. No doubt the referee's reports made this point as…

Andrew Bolt's mountain of disinformation

Andrew Bolt claims that "new research" "once more shows Al Gore faked his findings in An Inconvenient Truth". He offers his own translation of something which he attributes to "Elsevier": (Yes, the company that publishes The Lancet.) Frormer [sic] American vice president and Nobel Prize winner Gore has for years used the melting snow on Africa's highest mountain (5892 metres) for his climate propaganda. The snow cover is shrinking and that is caused by man and his greenhouse gases! The Dutch scientist Jaap Sinninghe Damsté debunks this story of climate guru Gore in the leading periodical…

Tamoxifen abuse?

Holy crap. Just when I thought I had heard or seen it all, something comes up that proves me wrong. This time, the "something" comes to my attention via Corpus Callosum. It's a story about people abusing a drug. Only it's not just any drug, but a drug commonly used to treat breast cancer (which, given that a large part of my practice is the treatment of breast cancer patients, is why this item caught my attention). They're abusing tamoxifen. A survey of male and female gym attendees found not only growing rates of steroid abuse but also greater misuse of prescription drugs. Prescription drugs…

CPSC, Start Working Out!

Over at the Pump Handle, David Michaels has a post on how ineffectual the CPSC is. He makes the point that the CPSC is "toothless", wimpy and uses a NYTimes article that talks about the Magnetix case as an example of how the CPSC can't get the job done. Although David does acknowledge how much of the problem comes from the current administration (the last guy they tried to get to run it was the VP of a manufacturing lobbing group - the nomination was since withdrawn). I generally agree with the post but I don't think that the CPSC is toothless. While they need much stronger regulatory tools…

"Is There a Ring of Debris Around Uranus?"

"Drinking green tea may fight prostate cancer" To: MSNBC Chief Editor Re: Headline writers Dear Sir: It has come to our attention that many of your readers are misinterpreting the headlines of news stories you post on MSNBC. We bring this to your attention in order to forestall any unfortunate behavior that could be linked to anyone acting on a potentially misleading headline posted on your site. For example, the lead listed above implies that drinking green tea may be an effective treatment for prostate cancer. As the body of your story correctly states, what the researchers from Japan…

The Tyranny of NAD+, or Where'd My Dessert Go?

More evidence has just been published showing how reducing the caloric intake of cells influences their survival. Anyone want to take a guess as to what happens when a living organism (eukaryotes only, please) is subjected to noshing only on insultingly small morsels of food? Such asceticism of course is an outrage to those of us who follow the modern method of nutritional ingestion. Again, the question: What happens when eukaryotic cells are subjected to nutrient restriction? A. Cell survival is promoted by a reduction in apoptosis. B. Cell survival is impaired by the genotoxic effects…

Message to Abraham Cherrix

My fellow SciBling Orac has commented once again on the case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix, the 17 year old man with relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma who rejected potentially curative therapy (called "stem cell transplantation") in favor of alternative/unproven therapy and localized radiation therapy. According to interviews Mr. Cherrix and his radiation oncologist have given to the AP (why a patient would let his oncologist continue to spill such intimate details of a controversial treatment to the mainstream media is beyond me - doesn't anyone value privacy anymore?), his latest x-rays show that…

Hanging's Too Good For You!

In a significant policy change, Bush administration officials say that Medicare will no longer pay the extra costs of treating preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals, a move they say could save lives and millions of dollars. Bravo! It's about time the government started sticking it to hospitals that don't care about the preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals. Not paying for the cost of care associated with preventable errors in hospitals is one way to send a message, although I would have preferred public hangings, which is a much…

What Does It Mean to Have 'Relapsed Breast Cancer?'

I am up late tonight (several hours ahead of U.S. time), just heard the news that Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer and wanted to let ScienceBlogs readers know what information we medical oncologists look for in this situation. Reading the news reports about her relapse is an exercise in futility; even if her doctors provided all of the details of her tumor most (if not all) reporters would be unable to translate it into anything comprehensible. This is one of my gripes about medical news reporting - no reporters can understand what the data actually…

Best of the Cheerful Oncologist: Reflections of Autumn - and Cancer

[Editor's Note: In honor of the first day of October (and by request) here is a brief essay first posted the C.O. in 2004. In honor of the practice of improving one's prose, I've asked him to re-write the thing, to which he has grudgingly agreed to.] Last weekend I got off the couch and took a long walk through the crisp forests of Missouri, a journey long overdue. As I tramped along, the bronze and yellow-gold giants of autumn towered over me, lightly swaying in the October breeze. Fall is a poignant time for many people, representing turning points that are deeply embedded in the psyche…

The Waiting Game

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. - Winston Churchill It goes without saying that oncologists often rely on pictures of tumors to determine whether or not a cancer has responded to treatment. These images of tumors are obtained via x-rays, CT scans, PET/CT scans and other studies. One of the caveats in cataloging pictures of the inside of the human body is that some of us have holes, masses or lumps that we were born with or acquired as a result of a non-malignant event. It behooves the doctor, therefore, to document any…

What Page Are We On?

"The true art of memory is the art of attention." -Samuel Johnson An Open Letter to All Those Who Love to Read: Have you ever got involved in a good book, be it a mystery, biography or even a delightful review of the geological history of Mothership Earth, set it aside for a few nights and then realized that you can't recall what is going on? Pehaps you have forgotten which relative Sir David visited before he was found with a cord tightly woven around his neck, or maybe you lost track of Teddy Roosevelt's activities prior to his election as governor of New York. If you're like me your…

A short update

I don’t know what it is... maybe weeks with holidays in them will naturally cause writer’s block. Indeed, writers probably need an occasional break from their craft, just like anyone else. Unfortunately, they tend to feel more like a block than a break. I’ve had a few things lined up to write about, mostly the usual environmental science news along with a few oddities, and, naturally, a Friday Fractal. That’s where my recent block/break forced itself on me. I finished the fractal, no problem. I’ve been working on a large fractal art project lately, so those come easily. The fractal was fine;…

Dam Bioblitzing: Final Wrap-up

As my week of bioblitzing was wrapping up, so were my classes. Add to that an eager 6-year-old, who wanted to help with spring preparations by cleaning the pond-with windex-and you can see, I've been busy. I never did get around to counting the flora in my two bioblitz locations, but I have no regrets. This has been a wonderfully enlightening experience for me. While my counts don't show it, I managed to stumble onto one of the richest ecological niches in my area. I've visited site A at Standley Lake regularly since moving to this part of town. Now, I'll be visiting site B (B is for…

Kleck's DGU numbers

J. Neil Schulman writes: If you start a survey by asking "Have you ever been a crime victim?" and do not survey people who answer NO because (a) their DGU prevented them from being damaged so they don't think of themselves as victims, therefore they are telling the truth but don't get counted AND The NCVS does not ask any question like "Have you ever been a crime victim?". You haven't actually read the questions in the NCVS have you? This is the current screening used by the NCVS for their violent crimes survey. It replaces one which was even more crime-oriented than threat-oriented, in…

Dog Swallows Knife and Alien Found (then lost) Inside a Duck

Yesterday, one of my dogs got into a stash of chocolate (sigh), which had me up at 2am doing the dreaded hydrogen peroxide trick, since chocolate is toxic to dogs. When I complained about my night a friend sent me this link (!!) saying, Just be glad your dog didn't eat a kitchen knife (which is always something to be glad about).  The x-ray image in that story (left) reminded me that it was high time I posted this rom the Culture Dish archives:  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've always had a thing for animal x-rays. I had a…

How to talk to you doctor about God.... really?!

Let me first start by saying that if your doctor tells you that praying is your last hope of your loved ones survival GET A NEW DOCTOR. Now that I've said that let me show you part of this ridiculous article from CNN's medical correspondent, who is clearly in the wrong specialty of journalism (don't they have a religion or faith section?!) Christopher was just a few days old and had a rare blood infection and fungal meningitis, a brain infection. "I could tell in their eyes they had no hope for my son," Gorman said. "They told me to prepare for his death. They told me he might not make it…

Is TV changing our circadian rhythms?

So I hate daylight savings time. It doesn't save energy, I doubt it helps farmers like it supposedly did, and I always forget to set my clocks back. How many of you have a clock that is only correct half of the year because you don't want to set it? Now I have something else to get pissed off at for messing with my sleep. According to a study entitled "Cues for Timing and Coordination: Latitude, Letterman, and Longitude," by Daniel S. Hamermesh, Caitlin Knowles Myers, and Mark L. Pocock published in the Journal of Labor Economics, television is impacting our circadian rhythms, especially…

A way unusual for me

I have a secret crush on one of my patients, an 85-year old man who's recovering from a bad pneumonia. After a weeklong stay in the intensive care unit, he has recovered at a remarkable pace: the day after he was extubated, he was out of bed with a physical therapist, making his way slowly around the ward with a walker and a big smile. What motivates him to work so hard at recovery, the nurses say, is his love for his wife. They have been married 60 years. She comes in to see him every day, wheeled around by their daughter. The whole time she is there, they say, he holds her hand as if it is…

The story of ignorance

Today, I admitted a week-old baby whose mother didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth to him. Let me repeat that. Today, I admitted a week-old baby whose mother didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth to him. When her contractions started last Friday afternoon, the 13th of October, she ran a hot bath to soothe what she thought were cramps, but leapt out of the tub when she saw a head appearing between her legs. She cut the umbilical cord with a pair of kitchen scissors, but because she hadn't clamped it first, she bled extensively prior to delivering the placenta.…

Sleep ethic

I was drinking my coffee unawares the other morning when I somehow got roped into a rather unpleasant exchange. "I don't know if anyone's told you yet," said the blonde-haired senior resident who comes from money, "but your role in the NICU is to stay awake. Don't ever, ever go to sleep when you are on call. You need to be available to answer questions about the patients you're covering." "That's bullshit," said the brown-haired senior resident with the eating disorder. "It's not like anyone ever comes to us with questions about our patients--they go straight to the nurse practitioners, who…

Structural analysis of a chocolate chip cookie

I probably shouldn't have baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday, what with today being one of the two biggest chocolate-buzz holidays on the American calendar. But I did. I've had a lot of trouble figuring out the best recipe adjustments for high elevation. My cookies have a tendency to puff up big, and then collapse into goo. The end results look like this: All wrinkled around the edges, and flat in the middle. In fact, it looks like something I could map: Those are fold symbols for the wrinkles around the edge, and normal fault symbols for the places where the crust broke open to reveal…

Geophagy in Amazonian Bats: Detox or Nutrition?

I finally got around to blogging about this study published in PLoS One a few weeks ago, regarding geophagy in tropical species of bats. The study provides a nice overview of the literature and some of the potential reasons why they (and we) do it. We all eat dirt, in a sense, through mineral supplements or through the minerals and inorganic nutrients contained in our food, but there is a long history of the consumption of clay by human beings, and some tribes in sub-Saharan Africa continue to visit these "clay licks". Pregnant women in particular will frequent these licks. Scientists…

Busy Busy/Random Thoughts

It's been a bit nuts at work this week so far (or was it last week?) so pardon the lack of blogging. We had a user conference for the past few days and it's been off a bit. I've been working on a couple posts about acid mine drainage which I hope to have up in the next couple of days. I also have a couple of stories about working at that small town newspaper that I've been sitting on for a while now. I needed some distance before I could go into it. I'm hoping that I also be able to get to a state park this coming weekend, maybe Sunday morning. It's been tough because Heather's schedule and…

Vertical Agitation in Action

To make a real difference, we're going to have to change patterns of consumption at levels higher than just households. This vertical agitation can take lots of different forms, but I want to highlight some of the great work being done academically and on the ground. Last year, an article in the International Zoo Yearbook by Heather Koldewey and two colleagues pointed out that zoos and aquariums should be leading the way in the push for sustainable seafood. Indeed, as the authors, point out, some already are. Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, for instance, has teamed up with a culinary school to…

Panamaladies: Why Uncomfortable Vacations Are Actually Good

I am traveling in Panama (have been for the last couple weeks, hence the sparse blogposts) as a post-dissertation vacation. I started at Bocas del Toro, which several friends of mine recommended. Despite being somewhat hard to get to, Bocas is overrun with tourism and is thus overrun with overbearing hoteliers and is overpriced (in addition, both bank machines in town went the way of Zimbabwe and were short on cash). The Caribbean's glory days seem over to me: the coral reefs were part beautiful, part wrecked. There were no big fish to be seen. It might not be a bad idea to pour sugar on…

author's initial entry, AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS

My name is Paul Offit. I'm the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and my published expertise is in the area of vaccine safety and rotavirus-specific immune responses. (I'm the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq). I've written a book about the vaccine-autism controversy titled AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS: BAD SCIENCE, RISKY MEDICINE, AND THE SEARCH FOR A CURE. First: a little background on autism and the birth of the controversy. There is no known cause or cure for autism. But in the late 1990s two hypotheses garnered a great deal of…

Why we will never defeat the microbes (repost)

[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com] The best defense against pathogens is to never let them gain access to our delicious, gooey insides. Our skin is pretty good for this purpose: it's pretty tough and mostly impermeable, and the only way most of our surface tissues can get infected is if that skin barrier is broken. But we can't have skin everywhere. Our airways and digestive tract have to be permeable so that we can absorb air and nutrients. In our gut, we can't have skin, but we do have tens of trillions of commensal (friendly) bacteria that colonize us, and…