Anti-Vax Denialism
denialism | February 8, 2015I'm glad to see clips like this from the daily show appropriately mocking the deluded, and supposedly "educated" types that don't vaccinate.
But have we forgotten this episode from 2005 when he allowed RFK Jr to basically spout his nonsense about vaccines without challenge?
It's good and fine for Stewart to mock these people now. But he seems to forget he helped contribute to this problem. Is anyone aware of an apology from Stewart for allowing this crackpot to use his megaphone? Isn't it precisely members of the media like him that are to blame for failing to vet the claims made…
choofnagle | June 13, 2014I'm reading Jeffrey Kacirk's delightful Forgotten English, which includes this anecdote concerning boanthropy, a condition where a person believes himself to be a cow or ox:
In 1792, Edward Jenner successfully developed a vaccine for smallpox by injecting a boy with closely related cowpox germs. He did this despite his medical critics' attempts to scuttle his project by circulating boanthropy scare-stores. The critics alleged that those inoculated would develop bovine appetites, make cowlike sounds, and go about on four legs butting people with their horns...
denialism | January 5, 2012Seth Mnookin has reasons to hope. It has been clear though for years that Huffpo was a clearinghouse for what I would describe as liberal crankery, which includes things like Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine crankery, or Bill Maher's anti-pharma paranoia.
But now they have a new site, Huffpo Science, and after my head stopped ringing from that particular oxymoron I went and checked it out.
A lead article on going to Mars by Buzz Aldrin was interesting. An article on Frankenmeat came out relatively clean without getting all paranoid about GMO foods or lab-grown nutrients being less pure…
choofnagle | November 14, 2009The Viking and I ventured out early this morning to get the H1N1 vaccine and found long lines in the tony neighborhoods. SF Gate reports that the Marin public vaccination clinic was swamped. (The irony!--Marin is a hotbed of the anti-vaccination movement.) So where can you get the vaccine quickly? Downtown! We were in and out in less than an hour! There's almost no one there.
denialism | June 1, 2009PZ brings to my attention this article in Newsweek which sums up Oprah's views on health, and one sadly must come to the conclusion that Oprah is a crank. Based on our definition of crankery, one of the critical aspects is the incompetence of an individual in judging sources of information. How else can you describe her dismissal of legitimate medical opinion for the pseudoscience of celebrities like Suzanne Somers or Jenny McCarthy?
That was apparently good enough for Oprah. "Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo," she said. "But she just might be a pioneer." Oprah acknowledged that…
denialism | May 13, 2009If you have been keeping up with Pal or Orac in my absence, you already know the bad news. Oprah has decided to up her woo quotient from promotion of the Secret and relatively harmless nonsense to actively promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in the form of a Jenny McCarthy TV show. Gawker suggests a good title, "Finding Someone to Blame When Bad Things Happen".
Jenny McCarthy is an insipid, dangerous idiot. And a Wacko. Oprah's move isn't just some harmless addition to the drivel that occupies our screens known as "daytime TV". This is actively dangerous. This is, as Pal says,…
denialism | February 10, 2009I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised (even if Orac isn't). We all knew that Andrew Wakefield's research was bogus and the link between vaccines and autism was engineered by ideologues who fear vaccines irrationally. But fabrication of data? Sloppy research is one thing, but the need for cranks to be correct, no matter what reality reflects, has resulted in yet another example of egregious dishonesty.
This is in line, however, with what we know about cranks. Mark Crislip recently wrote an interesting piece on mathematics crankery which bears upon just this phenomenon. Mathematics is a…
denialism | November 7, 2008I would beg everyone who reads the scienceblogs and cares about science to contact the transition team in the Obama administration as Orac has requested.
It should be clear by now to readers of this blog that pseudoscience is not a problem of just the right. The left wing areas of pseudoscience are just as cranky, just as wrong-headed about science, just as likely to use the tactics of denialism to advance a non-scientific agenda. We have been dealing with the denialism of the right more because they've been in control. Now is the time to nip the denialism of the left in the bud so it…
sb admin | November 6, 2008I can't cover this topic better than Orac; he's the expert. I would like to suggest that you go read his post.
This is important. I voted for Obama. I believe that he is one of the brightest people we've every had the chance to vote for, and I think that after 8 years of open hostility to science, we have a chance to remove some of the politics from the issues that affect all of us.
But Obama has floated a lead balloon for the head of EPA. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is an anti-science wacko. He has drunk the Kool Aid (I know, Flav-R-Ade, stop correcting me!) of the anti-vaccine movement, and…
sb admin | October 19, 2008How stupid do you have to be for Jenny McCarthy to legitimately toss the epithet back at you?
This question may seem unanswerable, but in this case, McCarthy may have gotten it half right regarding Dennis Leary. The headline at MSNBC delcares: McCarthy calls Leary 'obviously stupid'
I don't know much about Leary, but like many comedians he has said something that he will probably regret and move on. In attempting to be funny, Leary scored an epic fail (you can tell it's an epic fail because Jenny did get it half right):
"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers…
sb admin | August 24, 2008Dear Jenny,
Thank you! Thankyouthankyou thank YOU!
You see, my medical education had a few gaps. I was unfortunate enough to do my training during the last couple of decades, which means I never saw measles, pertussis, polio, and many other vaccine-preventable diseases.
Well, last year, I saw three cases of pertussis! Sweet! And it looks like, if I play my cards right, I may get to see some measles.
It's not that I don't know anything about measles. I mean, I've read Hippocrates, Rhazes, Osler, and all the other ancients. But to see the real thing, to experience the real fear, well…
sb admin | August 22, 2008I'm rather angry.
Strike that.
I'm furious. Indescribably outraged. Disgusted.
The rise of the antivaccination cults is finally affecting public health. If you want details, go and read Orac, or Steve Novella, or some of my other writing. I'm too angry to deal with details today.
Infectious diseases have stalked us across the millennia. Centuries of advances, from sewerage to inoculation to vaccination have saved billions of people from death and disability due to infectious agents. Having a child used to mean joy tempered with fear---fear that one of the "men of death" would come…
denialism | August 22, 2008Prometheus brings us the best article I've seen to date on why the new push for a mitochondrial basis for autism is total nonsense.
Once I saw this push from denialists like David Kirby towards a link between mitochondria and autism I knew we were in for a world of trouble. If only because mitochondrial diseases are a relatively new area of study and there are enough unknowns that they'll be able to milk this nonsense for a decade at least.
Prometheus, however, does an excellent job showing how the likelihood of a mitochondrial explanation for autism is prima facie absurd. This is not…
sb admin | August 14, 2008OK, if you insist. This comes with the usual caveat directed at scientists that I know this is oversimplified, but I wish to reach the largest audience possible. Feel free to correct my mistakes, but please don't bother me about oversimplification.
So here's the deal. Several decades ago, it became scientifically fashionable to believe that most cancer had a viral cause. This belief coincided with the discovery that some viruses do cause cancer. And while it turns out that most cancers are not caused by viruses (probably), many of them are. Viruses can cause cancers in a number of ways…
sb admin | August 12, 2008Last week, Orac reported on Medscape's execrable article regarding Gardasil. As a reminder, the article spouted every antivaccination lie imaginable. The link subsequently disappeared, although a poll later appeared that parroted the article's misinformation.
Well, today Medscape has a new Gardasil article. It's definitely an improvement, but still has some problems...
The article appears with the following note:
Editor's note: This article replaces "HPV Vaccine Adverse Events Worrisome Says Key Investigator," which was posted on July 26, 2008, and was removed after editorial review.
Not…
sb admin | August 6, 2008Orac had a nice takedown of an idiotic piece on Medscape about the Gardasil vaccine. As he reported, the link to the bad article is now dead, perhaps as a result of blograge. Now, on the front page of Medscape is a poll---a poll regarding physician prescribing habits given the "news" about Gardasil:
Serious neurologic, thromboembolic, and autoimmune complications have been reported in a small number of patients who received Merck's HPV vaccine, prompting a recent joint advisory by the FDA and CDC. But the agencies emphasize that the vaccine is safe. How will this news change your use of the…
sb admin | July 21, 2008Here and in other venues, we've written quite a bit about the tactics used in the anti-vaccination movement (or as I like to call it, the "infectious disease promotion movement (IDPM)"). Let's examine some less subtle tactics.
The disease promoters are good---very good. Take this, for instance:
From a public health department:
An alternative suggested by disease-promoters:
It's hard for the rational among us to compete with this garbage. We can talk until we're blue in the face (no pun intended) about how SIDS and vaccines have nothing to do with each other, but once the propaganda…
sb admin | July 21, 2008Who has the moral high ground in the vaccination wars?
My initial response is that I do, "I" meaning the medical and public health fields---those of us who prevent disease, disability, and death.
But it's much more complicated. Many anti-vaccine activists are "true believers". They really believe that vaccines do more harm than good. But, without getting all Godwin, being a true believer doesn't insulate one from moral responsibility.
Those of us who are professionals have made the evidence available. The science is clear---vaccination is a good thing, and more important, it is better…
sb admin | July 19, 2008I've had a bit of writer's block lately, but I've learned to take my own advice and just wait it out. And so I did. Then, today, I read Orac's piece on framing the vaccine problem. It set my mind a-whirring, so I've put the coffee on, and I'm setting fingers to keyboard.
I don't care about the whole "framing science" thing. The systematic evaluation of science communication is too far outside my field. I am stuck being a "empiric framer."
(Jargon alert! Outside of the blogosphere, my communications are basically one-on-one, doctor and patient. My framing is the equivalent of a RCT n=1…
sb admin | July 17, 2008Right now, I'm looking out my window to see the spreading pall of burning stupid rising over Channel 7's tower in Southfield. And the stupid isn't just for Steve Wilson anymore. What reporter Carolyn Clifford lacks in adiposity, she easily makes up for in credulity. Her "investigative report" tonight on the HPV vaccine Gardasil is another example of embarrassingly bad health reporting.
A few preliminaries:
Feel free to read my previous posts on Gardasil for some background, but just to catch you up, almost all of the 11,000 yearly cervical cancers are caused by a series of biological…