Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | December 10, 2009Arguably, the genesis of the most recent iteration of the anti-vaccine movement dates back to 1998, when a remarkably incompetent researcher named Andrew Wakefield published a trial lawyer-funded "study" in the Lancet that purported to find a link between "autistic enterocolitis" and measles vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) trivalent vaccine. In the wake of that publication was born a scare over the MMR that persists to this day, 11 years later. Although peer reviewers forced the actual contents of the paper to be more circumspect, in the press Wakefield promoted the idea that…
oracknows | December 8, 2009My irony meter exploded in a near-nuclear conflagration, leaving nothing but a sputtering, molten puff of plasma when I was referred to this gem from Kim Stagliano over at Age of Autism directed at the enemy of all anti-vaccine pseudoscience, that Dark Lord of Vaccination (to anti-vaccine loons) himself, Paul Offit:
You'll blame the "anti-vaxxers" for the public refusal of this vaccine. Spare me. We are a cap gun compared to your nuclear bomb when it comes to the media. We're ragtag colonials hiding behind trees as you Red Coats march in military precision with fine weapons. How much money…
oracknows | December 7, 2009Well, well, well, well.
What is this I found forwarded to me in my in box? It's from the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue, and it is most interesting:
Generation Rescue is in the final stages of receiving grant funding for a vaccine research study on the long term effects of the current U.S. recommended schedule. The last thing we need are declarations of support from our community who purchased Airborne Health.
Did you purchase Airborne during May 1, 2001 - November 29, 2007?
Do you support a vaccine research study on the long term effects of the current U.S. schedule?
Do you…
oracknows | December 3, 2009Remember the truly despicable and disgusting post by Age of Autism, in which its enemies were portrayed in a crudely Photoshopped picture as preparing to eat a dead baby for their Thanksgiving feast? It was an image that I likened to the blood libel against the Jews, as did Rene at EpiRen in a much more detailed post.
It's gone now. If you go to the link, earlier this evening you'd get a message "Nothing to see, move along now." Now, if you go to the link, it's a blank page. Fortunately, for now at least, the it's stlll cached in Google, and I, of course, have saved web archives, a screen…
oracknows | December 1, 2009I debated whether or not to blog about this. The reason is that I suspect that gathering a lot of attention and controversy is exactly what Generation Rescue wanted when it posted what I'm about to blog about. On the other hand, no matter how low my opinion is of the principals who run Generation Rescue's anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism, there were limits below which they wouldn't go. Oh, sure, AoA has launched at least three broadsides at me over the last year and a half, all penned by the ever-offensive blowhard J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue who's allowed himself…
oracknows | November 30, 2009A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, "crank magnetism," describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety (for instance, HIV/AIDS denialists, will be attracted to another form of crankery (for instance, anti-vaccinationism or the 9/11 Truth movement) because, as Mark put it, cranks and pseudoscientists see themselves as iconoclasts, brave mavericks opposed…
oracknows | November 24, 2009As hard as I find it to believe, the fifth anniversary of this blog is fast approaching. When I started this whole endeavor, it was more or less on a whim that struck me on a cold, dreary, gray Saturday in December, and I had no idea that five years later I'd still be at it, much less that I'd have this many readers. One thing that trying to apply a skeptical and scientific world view to various pseudoscience has allowed me to do, more than just the occasional fit of depression at looking at pseudoscience now, comparing it to pseudoscience then and back in my Usenet days in the late 1990s and…
oracknows | November 23, 2009I hate to revisit this case again. However, some of my readers have sent me links to something that compels me to dig up the rotting corpse of Generation Rescue's despicable attempt to use the suffering of a troubled young woman to push the idea that vaccines are harmful. I'm referring, of course, to the Desiree Jennings case. As you recall, Desiree Jennings is a 25-year-old woman who claimed to have developed dystonia after receiving the seasonal flu vaccine back in August. Based on the disconnect between her symptoms and what real cases of dystonia look like, discovery of what was very…
oracknows | November 22, 2009There are times when I look back, and I can't believe I've been at it this long. It's not just the blogging, the fifth anniversary of which is rapidly approaching for me. Hard as it is to believe, not only have I become a "venerable" medical and skeptical blogger, but there are actually a lot of people who like to read what I regularly lay down. It's not false humility when I say I'm still shocked when I contemplate that. However, when you add to the blogging my time on that Internet wilderness known as Usenet, I've been fighting the good fight against pseudoscience for close to 12 years now…
oracknows | November 21, 2009A lesson that's worth learning. Of course, I only wish people ignored vaccine denialists; unfortunately, enough people don't that vaccines are a frequent blog topic for me:
oracknows | November 17, 2009If you want a dose of science and rationality about the H1N1 flu pandemic, and you need it now, check out The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Led by Steve Novella, the discussion involves more than one friend of the blog, if you know what I mean and can be downloaded here.
oracknows | November 17, 2009Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again.
Yes, I know I've used this clip before at least twice and the line in it several more times over the last couple of years. However, sometimes it's just so completely appropriate to how I'm feeling about a topic I'm about to write about that I just don't care and have to use it again. This is one of those times. The 2009 recipient of the Richard Dawkins Award bestowed upon him by the Atheist Alliance International (a.k.a. Bill Maher, anti-vaccine comedian and host of Real Time With Bill Maher, has decided, after an all too brief…
oracknows | November 13, 2009Remember how I proudly proclaimed the other day that I gotten my H1N1 flu vaccine? Maybe I shouldn't have been so happy. After all, if Eric is right, then the H1N1 vaccination program is nothing more than a socialist plot by Obama-Hitler to poison Wall Street executives, and I fell for it!
The shame. The shame.
oracknows | November 12, 2009Over two weeks ago, I wrote a rather withering assessment of a truly bad article published by one of my favorite magazines, a magazine to which I've subscribed continuously since the mid-1980s. I'm referring, of course, to Shannon Brownlee's and Jeanne Lenzer's execrable article about the H1N1 vaccine entitled Does the vaccine matter?
I have been surpassed.
I say that because Mark Crislip has written what is to my mind the very best fisking of Brownlee and Lenzer's article I have yet come across, entitled Yes, But. The Annotated Atlantic. Stick a fork in Brownlee and Lenzer. They're done.
oracknows | November 11, 2009It's been more than 24 hours since I received my H1N1 vaccine, and so far the only problem I've had is a bit of a sore arm. (Maybe I shouldn't have had the nurse use the left arm again, as that's where I got my seasonal flu vaccine, too. On the other hand, I am right-handed.)
Sadly, I have not become autistic, despite having had all that mercury, formaldehyde, and witches brew of "toxins" injected "directly into by bloodstream." I guess it's just not to be.
I did notice one "side effect," though. Shortly after I received my vaccine yesterday morning, I received an urgent call to the clinic…
oracknows | November 9, 2009Woo-hoo!
I just found out late yesterday that finally--finally--our cancer center has enough H1N1 vaccine to start vaccinating its employees involved in patient care. I thought the vaccine would never get here in sufficient quantity. Later this morning I'll be right there, getting mine.
You know, I think I'll ask the nurse for extra thimerosal. After all, I got vaccinated for seasonal flu about a month and a half ago, and I'm not autistic yet. Rather disappointing, actually. Maybe another good shot of killed influenza, formaldehyde, mercury, and all sorts of other "toxins" will fix that.
Damn…
oracknows | November 8, 2009In a nod to fellow ScienceBlogger Ed Brayton, with his hilarious Dumbass Quote of the Day, I hereby inaugurate the "Idiotic Comment of the Week," culled from this very blog. I don't guarantee that I'll do it every week, but when I see neuron-necrosing idiocy below and beyond the usual call of pseudoscientists and quackery boosters who occasionally like to try to match their "wits" (such as they are) with my reality- and science-based commenters, usually to hilarious effect, I'll give it the "honor" it deserves. This week, despite highly intense competition (thanks to a recent infestation of…
oracknows | November 6, 2009Remember how I promised that I'd do my next installment of my blogging Suzanne Somers' pile of idiocy, namely her own book, before the end of the week?
Plans change, and neurons melt, which they did in response to reading the first several chapters of Suzanne Somers' book.
Don't worry, though. I'll definitely try to get back on track with my--shall we say?--extended multipart review by Monday. Sometimes, though, when you're blogging, news drives what you do, and news is driving my decision to forego the pleasure and pain of the next installment of my "fun with Suzanne Somers" series, at least…
oracknows | November 5, 2009riley'smom is very unhappy with Amy Wallace:
I wrote Ms. Wallace a private email. I intentionally wrote it directly to her private email and DID NOT post it in the comments section of Wired Mag. I asked her about her one sided-biased interview with Mr Offit and asked if she planned to NOW do a fair and balanced report as many were questioning her porfessional reasoning. I also asked her how it felt to be one of Offit's whores...that perhaps she and Amanda Peet should get together and compare notes on how Ms Peets career was doing since she joined the Offit band wagon.
I received an email back…
oracknows | November 5, 2009Over the last week or so, I've been confronted full bore with cranks, staring down the barrel, if you will, of a crank shotgun, one barrel being the anti-vaccine movement in general (with J.B. Handley and his misogyny being the buckshot, so to speak) and the other being Suzanne Somers and her despicable cancer quackery. Indeed, over the last five years, I've subjected myself to some of the most outrageous bits of unreason, conspiracy mongering, and pseudoscience. Be it the anti-vaccine movement, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, creationists, or any of a variety of other bits of…