Antivaccine nonsense

Not too long ago, I posted a rather amusing little video called Immunize! One line in the song that amused me went something like this: Don't give Chuck Norris shots! That'd be dim. Chuck need vaccines? Naw Vaccines need him? Actually, not too surprisingly, it turns out that the word "dim" should be applied to Chuck Norris, particularly when it comes to "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), also known as "integrative medicine" (IM), or, as I call it, "integrating" quackery with real medicine. Of course, as fellow Sb bloggers have demonstrated, Chuck's well-toned biceps aren't the…
Confusing correlation with causation. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. These are two of the most common errors human beings make. Indeed, they're natural errors that our brains appear hard-wired to make, and, without scientific training, it's virtually impossible to avoid making the conclusion that, because two occurrences correlate with each other they must be related or because and event precedes the onset of a condition (like autism), then that something must have caused that condition. One can see how, living in the wilderness, seeing patterns and causes quickly was likely to be beneficial more…
Over the years, I've pointed out just how horrible British libel laws are. If there is a set of laws more designed to be used and abused by the wealthy to silence criticism, it's British libel laws. Indeed, I was pointing out the travesty that is British libel law in the context of David Irving's use of it to try to silence Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt years before Simon Singh became a cause celebre in the skeptical community after the British Chiropractic Association sued him on the flimsiest of grounds. Fortunately, the BCA lost, but only after coming very close to winning and costing…
Why do these things always have to happen when I'm out of town? As you might be aware, the anti-vaccine movement is very, veyr unhappy with the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Bruesewitz vs. Wyeth. Basically, the Supreme Court upheld the primacy of the Vaccine Court in adjudicating vaccine injury claims and preemption of federal law over state law in such lawsuits. Not suprisingly, the anti-vaccine movement has lost its mind over this ruling, falsely labeling it as having taken away the right of parents to sue over vaccine injury and having eliminated any incentive that…
Now here's something that can be used to counter the idiocy of Mike Adams Don't Inject Me: ZDoggMD's Immunize: Take that, Mike Adams!
Blame Comcast, I say. Blame Comcast for the fact that I don't have a typical pearl of Orac-ian logorrheic majesty for your edification this morning. And there's so much that requires such a pearl to be thrown at it, too, in particular a study claiming that cell phone radiation alters brain metabolism in the areas where the cell phones are typically held. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow; that is, if something else doesn't catch my attention--and if my Internet service has decided to work long enough to let me do it. Yes, the reason there's no Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, laid down this…
Hard as it is to believe, it's been nearly a year since I first learned that the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding the legitimacy of the vaccine court. The long version can be found here, but the short version is that last March SCOTUS agreed to hear a case regarding the constitutionality of the law that set up the Vaccine Court back in the 1980s. As you might recall, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed in 1986 in order to establish a no-fault compensation system for children who suffer vaccine injury. The NCVIA was necessary because a flood of lawsuits in the…
Even Boopsie gets it: it's good to note how those holding anti-vaccine viewpoints are being increasingly viewed as punchlines. That is how it should be.
Here's a chance for some skeptical activism if you happen to live in New York and its environs. It's book promotion event for the most recent anti-vaccine propaganda piece, Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children by Louise Kuo Habakus and Mary Holland. Naturally, the propaganda blog for all things anti-vaccine, Age of Autism, is furiously pimping away in a histrionic post entitled Is it Ethical to Kill Children to Save Children? Friday Night NYC Event Explains: Should the government promote a…
I was originally going to write about Dr. Oz's show yesterday, entitled What Causes Autism? But then I started watching and realized that I just didn't have the constitutional fortitude to sit through the whole thing. Sorry to let you down, but there are some blogging tasks that I just can't handle, at least on some days, particularly Dr. Oz's faux outrage at one point. Last night was just one of those days. I was too tired and just not in the mood. Maybe I'll do it later. In the meantime, I'm going to do something that I don't do very often, namely use a new post to answer a comment. The…
A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of fun with a position statement by the International Medical Council on Vaccination (IMCV), which I called, in my own inimitable fashion, The clueless cite the ignorant to argue against vaccines. That's exactly what it was, too, some truly clueless anti-vaccinationists arguing against vaccines and bolstering their argument with a hilariously pathetic list of signatories, among which were noted anti-vaccine activists, chiropractors, homeopaths, and other dubious practitioners totaling only between 80-90. Among those signatories was a woman named Suzanne…
Four days later, I still can't figure it out. I really can't. Remember the other day when I said I was debating whether or not to respond to the latest excretion from one of the first hangers-on of the anti-vaccine movement I ever encountered after I started blogging. I'm referring, of course, to freelance journalist David Kirby, whose book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Mystery, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s unbelievably brain dead Deadly Immunity, helped ignite the anti-vaccine fear mongering about mercury in vaccines back in 2005. My…
It's been pointed out to me that our old pal David Kirby, perhaps the cleverest antivaccine propagandist out there, is back at (where else?) The Huffington Post (a.k.a. HuffPo) asking why The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won't Go Away (short answer: because opportunists like Kirby have teamed with believers in pseudoscience to keep fanning the flames of this manufactroversy whenever they fade to embers). I've been debating whether it's worthwhile to produce a response to his disingenuously slimy arguments yet again, given that Kirby's being even more disingenuously slimy than usual. In the…
There's a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. I hate this quote with a bloody passion. Actually, that's not quite true. Rather, I find it rather amusing in a pathetic sort of way, first because it's not true. Really, it's not. For instance, in science Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity wasn't exactly "violently opposed," and a lot of other scientific findings that challenge the existing paradigm have…
I never thought I'd be praising Bill Gates, being a Mac person and all and not being at all fond of Microsoft, but it's impossible for me not to in the wake of a recent interview Gates did with CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. As you probably know, since retiring from Microsoft, Bill Gates has dedicated himself to philanthropy in the form of the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the greatest works of this foundation has been to initiate vaccination programs in the Third World. These activities are likely to save thousands, if not millions, of lives over…
Yesterday, in the course of applying a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a particularly brain dead exercise by the anti-vaccine movement, in which the International Medical Council on Vaccination (the most deceptively named anti-vaccine organization this side of the National Vaccine Information Center) gathered 80 signatures of "health care professionals" who warn about the danger of vaccines, I pointed out something I have noticed about not just anti-vaccine groups by by may different cranks groups. I'm referring to the "petition" or the statement attacking consensus science…
Remember Medical Voices? It's a group that I first discovered a year and a half ago that represented itself as a group of physicians and medical professionals who wanted to produce the "most comprehensive educational center on the Internet for physicians seeking the truth about vaccines." Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that MV was packed to the gills with the usual characters, antivaccine loons all, people such as Sherri Tenpenny, DO; Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH; Harold Buttram, MD; and Leo Rebello, MD, ND, PhD. So copious were the utter nonsense, pseudoscience, misinformation…
Paul Offit on the anti-vaccine movement: The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Paul Offit www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive Looks like a win to me. Colbert appears to get it. I like how he doesn't mention Andrew Wakefield's name and he asks Dr. Offit a bunch of questions based on talking points the anti-vaccine movement likes to use to frighten parents.
Of the two, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, I tend to favor The Daily Show because there are times when I find Stephen Colbert's schtick tiresome. True, Colbert can at times rise to the level of being brilliant, but there are other times when he gets on my nerves. In contrast, Jon Stewart tends to be more consistently funny. However, tonight, there'll be a guest on who'll very likely get me to tune in to The Colbert Report on the night the show airs, rather than my usual practice of watching its rerun the next day. That's because on Monday, January 31 (i.e., today), Stephen Colbert's…
If there's a single TV show out there that has the widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, there is no doubt that it's Oprah Winfrey's show. If there's a show that has the second-widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, arguably it's Dr. Mehmet Oz's show. Whether it be his recent show featuring quackmaster supreme, Joseph Mercola, or his upcoming show featuring a faith healer, I fear that Dr. Oz has given up whatever claim he once had to promoting science-based medicine. Yes, it's true that he has had a soft spot for reiki for a long time, but other than that he's…