Antivaccine nonsense

In my eagerness to pivot back to an area of my interest after having had a little fun with anti-vaccine cranks, I ignored a paper to which several of my readers referred me over the last few days. Many of them had first become aware of it when everybody's favorite smugly condescending anti-vaccine crank, Ginger Taylor, started pimping it on her blog. Before that, it apparently popped up on the only anti-vaccine site almost as loony as Age of Autism, namely SaneVax, and it wasn't long before this paper started making the rounds of the anti-vaccine crankosphere, showing up at Gaia Health, and…
While I'm having a bit of fun with the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism, I notice that its Boy Wonder Jake Crosby, the one-trick pony whose trick is playing "six degrees of separation" in order to try to link anyone who supports the science of vaccines with big pharma, the CDC, the FDA, or any other company or regulatory agency he doesn't like, has a new post up at AoA. In it he complains about being kicked out of a conference, the Research Ethics Book Group Lunch and Book Signing at the annual Advancing Ethical Research Conference held by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (…
After the lengthy post from yesterday, I must admit, I'm a bit tired; so I think it's time to slum a bit for a day. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to throw up a video and call it a day. That's not how Orac rolls (well, usually, at least). I just need a bit of something that doesn't take a lot of mental firepower to take on, unlike the discussion of "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy" yesterday and why what Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski doesn't qualify as anything other than a parody of "personalized" therapy. It didn't take me long to find just the place to find what I was looking for.…
A while back I wrote a brief, snarky post about a bizarre hypothesis that I considered so risible as not to be worth applying my usual 1,500 to 3,000 words of not-so-Respectful Insolence to. My original post was in response to a press release announcing a book by Michael J. Dochniak and Denise H. Dunn entitled Vaccine Delivery and Autism (The Latex Connection). Basically, the book posits a ridiculous hypothesis that the Latex in some vaccine delivery systems is a cause of autism. Not long after I posted it, Mr. Dochniak himself showed up in my comments, and hilarity ensued. Boy, did it ever!…
As I said yesterday, it's time to take a break from blogging about Stanislaw Burzynski; that is, unless something new happens that I consider to be worth commenting on. Fear not, though. I will return to the subject. As I said yesterday, Burzynski is now pushing some sort of nonstandard "personalized gene-targeted therapy" in addition to his antineoplaston therapy. In the meantime, it's back to business. I'm a bit tired, but I'm (almost) never too tired to analyze a claim made by a supporter of pseudoscience. Amazingly, sometimes the gods of the blogosphere are kind and benevolent. They…
I've spent nearly seven years and an enormous amount of verbiage writing about the difference between pseudoscience and science, between cranks and skeptics, between denialists and scientists. Along the way, I've identified a number of factors common to cranks and denialists. For example, two of the most prominent characteristics are a tendency to cherry pick studies and evidence and--shall we say?--a major "inconsistency" in how they deal with data. If a study appears to support their viewpoint, it doesn't matter how small it is, how preliminary it is, how poorly designed it is, or how weak…
One of the greatest gifts anyone can give is to donate his body to science after death. Such anatomic gifts contribute to the training of medical students, residents, and other medical professionals as well as being used for research that can contribute to the advancement of medical science. One of the things that makes an anatomic gift such a profound gift is that the donor usually has little control over what their body or body parts will be used for. There is, thus, more than a little trust in medical science involved in these gifts. When the deceased is a child, the donation of a child's…
I've heard it said (actually, I've said it myself) that if you don't have the science and evidence to back up your point of view, in order to persuade someone, make a movie. At least, this seems to be the philosophy of a number of cranks who have produced movies promoting pseudoscience over the last five years or so. The first one of these movies that really caught my attention was an anti-evolution, pro-"intelligent design" creationism documentary narrated by Ben Stein and released in 2008, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie was pure creationist propaganda, complete with Ben Stein…
When it rains it pours, as they say. Yes, sometimes there's so much going on that I can't possibly blog about it all, particularly now that I've cut back a bit. This week seems to be turning into one of those weeks. Yesterday, I couldn't resist having a bit of fun with the grande dame of the anti-vaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher when she released a seriously hypocritical and silly press release whining about how mistreated she thinks her organization, the Orwellian-named National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has been because the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) had the audacity…
A couple of weeks ago, I sounded the alarm regarding a highly deceptive public service announcement/infomercial being run on some Delta Airlines flights, courtesy of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). That's the organization founded by the grand dame of the anti-vaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, who features prominently in the PSA. I call this PSA deceptive because, although it tries mightily to pass itself off as a reasonable series of strategies for avoiding catching influenza, in reality this PSA is a very sneaky and clever bit of anti-vaccine propaganda. Why do I say this…
This morning, I was forced to do something that I rarely do, namely shut down a comment thread and ban a particularly noxious troll for sockpuppetry. The post in question dealt with one Michael J. Dochniak and his ridiculous and scientifically unsupportable notion (I refuse to dignify it by calling it a "hypothesis") that Latex used in the packaging of some vaccines causes autism. In truth, I probably let that thread go on far longer than I should have. Also, I probably should have banned Mr. Dochniak a couple of months ago for repeating the same arguments again and again and again after…
I had been wondering why the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism had been gearing up the slime machine against Brian Deer lately. For example, former UPI reporter turned vaccine/autism cran Dan Olmsted has been attacking the BMJ. As you recall, the BMGpublished Brian Deer's latest revelations earlier this year when he quite pithily and correctly referred to the now infamous (not to mention fraudulent and consequently retracted) 1998 Lancet case series published by vaccine/autism quack and crank Andrew Wakefield "Piltdown medicine." Particularly curious are the more recent articles, which…
Believe it or not, sometimes I rather miss Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. Although McCarthy is still nominally the head of the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue, she's really faded to a rather low profile over the last year or so. Indeed, the last time I even remember her spouting off about vaccines was way back in January when she defended Andrew Wakefield and, even more amazingly, during Autism Awareness Month (April) this year I don't recall seeing her on the major media anywhere. It used to be an annual thing that she'd show up on Larry King Live! or some other TV show. True, it's…
Fridays are usually a bad time for blogging for me, but it's a choice, not due to any circumstances. Usually, on Friday nights, I consciously make an effort to stay away from the computer and the blog. Frequently, I'm tired, and not infrequently I'll crash on the couch, only to wake up after midnight and wander upstairs to bed. Consequently, when something happens on Friday afternoon or evening, I often don't find out about it until Saturday morning, which means I probably won't blog about it before Monday because I've intentionally been trying not to post anything on the weekends. As hard as…
The nearest major airport to me happens to be a Delta Airlines hub. Consequently, nine times out of ten, whenever I have to fly anywhere I'm usually stuck using Delta Airlines. It's actually not too bad, as major airlines go, better than some but about the same as most. Unfortunately, during the month of November, Delta's in-flight entertainment will leave much to be desired. The reason? Apparently, not satisfied with renting the CBS JumboTron in Times Square last year, this year the highly Orwellian-named National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) somehow slithered their way into the in…
It's a wonder no one ever thought of this before (at least, not to my knowledge), but Todd over at Harpocrates Speaks has. Over there today, what do we find? A Quacktion Figureâ¢: Ever wanted to enjoy the adoration of tens of others? Had an idea for a new product to patent, but had pesky competitors that needed discrediting? Have you ever dreamed of creating a controversy where there was none? Have you thought that violating research ethics would be a quick way to accomplish all this, but never had the narcissistic chutzpah to pull it off? Well, now you can. You'll have to click through to…
Oh, geez. Mike Adams is at it again. I know, I know, saying that Mike Adams has just laid down yet another hunk of napalm-grade--nay, hydrogen-bomb grade--burning stupid is akin to saying that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that water is wet, that we need oxygen to survive, or that the moon goes around the earth. It's part of nature and a well-established fact. Even so, sometimes Adams surpasses even himself. Sometimes, when doing so, he even gives me an opportunity to discuss a scientific study and thus look as though I'm actually blogging about peer-reviewed research…
I usually don't do requests, at least not very often. As selfish as it might sound, I do this blog mainly to amuse myself, which means that I choose whatever topics interest me and write about them. Believe it or not, I'd probably still be doing this even if my readership were 1/100 of what it is. After all, I did it seven years ago before anyone had ever caught on to the glory (and ego) that is Orac. I've just been fortunate in that, for the most part, the topics that interest me enough to write about them are generally interesting enough to a bunch of people every day to read them. That…
Yesterday, I congratulated that bane of anti-vaccine movement and great vaccine scientist, Dr. Paul Offit, for having been accepted into the Institute of Medicine. It's a huge honor, and one well-deserved. At the time, I contrasted Dr. Offit, who has ascended to the highest heights of his profession through good science, with Dr. Andrew Wakefield, architect (or at least the most important architect) of the anti-MMR hysteria that gripped the U.K. in the late 1990s that's only now starting to abate, who is reduced to speaking in front of crank physician groups, being feted at anti-vaccine…
Congratulations are in order. Earlier this week, someone whom I admire has received a well-deserved honor: The IOM announced the names of 65 new members and five foreign associates today in conjunction with its 41st annual meeting. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. "It is a great pleasure to welcome these distinguished and accomplished individuals to the Institute of Medicine," said IOM President Harvey V. Fineberg…