autism
oracknows | July 16, 2010
Ever since I somehow stumbled into a niche in the blogosphere where I seem to be one of a handful of go-to bloggers for issues having to do with vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement, like Spider-Man I realize that with great power comes great responsibility.
Wait a minute. That beginning was too pompous and pretentious even for me. I know it's hard to believe, but even Orac has limits when it comes to pretentiousness.
Orac-ian pomposity aside, there are indeed certain topics that I can't resist. Whether it's because they intensely interest me or my being an aforementioned "go-to" blogger…
oracknows | July 15, 2010As much fun as I had at TAM8, there is one consequence of being out of town and not paying attention to the blog or the Internet as much as I usually do. Well, actually, there are multiple consequences. One is a momentary lapse in insanity. In other words, it's good for the mental health to cut back on the blogging. True, such is the level of my insanity that I didn't just stop altogether for five or six days, as I probably should have, but what can I say? Another consequence is that inevitably one or more things pop up that under normal conditions I'd be going full mental Orac on that…
oracknows | July 14, 2010Orac note: Please be sure to read the addendum.
Say it ain't so, Jill! Check out this e-mail notice from the latest Generation Rescue mailing list sent to me by a reader. It's apparently legitimate, because I found a copy of it on the Generation Rescue website itself. Look at who's being featured at a fundraiser for anti-vaccine guru, discredited and delicensed U.K. physician and "researcher" Andrew Wakefield:
A Private Evening with Dr. Andy Wakefield
To benefit Dr. Wakefield's research:
"Strategic Autism Initiative"
WHEN: Sunday, July 25th
WHERE: Private house in Woodland Hills, California…
oracknows | July 13, 2010Finally, I'm winging my way back home after TAM8 plus a couple of days. It seems as though I've been away a long time, even though it's only been less than six days. While I'm on a travel day, check out this video that a few of you have been sending me:
Not bad. Not bad at all. How'd I miss it a couple of months ago when it first popped up on YouTube?
oracknows | July 6, 2010Oh, goody.
It looks as though the fall is going to be a repeat of the spring as far as anti-vaccine lunacy goes. This spring, we had the release of a book by the now disgraced granddaddy of the most recent incarnation of the anti-vaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield. The book, entitled Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines--The Truth Behind a Tragedy, was released to great fanfare by the antivaccine movement and then promptly tanked. This is not surprising, given how bad it apparently was. Only the die hards would want a copy, and it's currently languishing around number 23,576 on the Amazon…
oracknows | July 4, 2010Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Since it is a holiday here in the States, I'm chilling out and recovering. I'll try to be back tomorrow, but, worst case scenario, I'll be back for sure on Tuesday. (Monday just so happens to be a holiday, too, this year. Gotta have those three day weekends.) In the meantime, here's a little something you might want to know about, particularly if you live in New York City..
The skeptics in Chicago did a truly excellent job countering what fortunately turned out to be not much of an anti-vaccine "protest." Now here's a chance for NYC skeptics (both belonging to…
oracknows | July 1, 2010Regular readers may have noticed something happening around ScienceBlogs. As PZ pointed out, a little malware somehow infiltrated the ScienceBlogs collective, and many of us appear to have turned into zombies. It's a veritable Zombie Day, complete with illustrations by Joseph Hewitt, creator of Gearhead.
Obviously, with anything having to do with zombies, there's only one thing for this blog, namely a certain undead German dictator with an insatiable thirst for human brains, who leaves idiotic analogies in his wake. Unfortunately, with the 2008 election being behind us, there was a dearth of…
oracknows | June 30, 2010ORAC SAYS: Please note my disclaimer.
After the events of last week, I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to matters like the one I'm about to discuss. Having the anti-vaccine cranks over at the Age of Autism weblog trying to get me fired over my blogging has a tendency to do that to me. (The details are out there if you haven't heard of it; I will say nothing more of it here.) In any case, if there's anything the events of last week drove home to me, it's that a sina qua non of anti-science cranks like the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement is that, when faced with serious scientific…
oracknows | June 29, 2010I wish it were otherwise, but not all that many reporters "get it" when it comes to science and quackery. Fortunately, Chicago Tribune reporter Trine Tsouderos does. She's shown it multiple times over the last year with stories about the autism "biomed" movement and Boyd Haley's trying to pass off an industrial chelator as a dietary supplement.
It just so happens that she's going to be taking part in a live web chat Thursday, July 1, at noon CDT (that's Chicago time). The topic is going to be alternative treatments for autism, pegged to her story last week about OSR#1 and Haley. The chat will…
oracknows | June 24, 2010Remember Boyd Haley?
He's the Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky whose formerly respectable career tanked because he fell into pseudoscience. For whatever reason, a while back he became enamored first of dental amalgam quackery to the point where he became involved in organizations like Consumers for Dental Choice (a.k.a. "Toxic Teeth"), whose expressed raison d'etre is to "work to abolish mercury dental fillings"). From that position, he promoted the idea that mercury-containing dental amalgams are horrifically toxic, helping to spread…
oracknows | June 21, 2010Coming soon: Penn & Teller take on the anti-vaccine movement on an upcoming episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! No doubt it will resemble this little preview that Penn himself has taped:
Note: Lots of NSFW language. It is, after all, Penn.
I will mention one thing. Penn's wrong when he says that Wakefield is no longer a doctor. He still has the degree; he's still a doctor. It's just with his having had his license to practice in the U.K. stripped from him he is no longer a licensed physician. He can no longer treat patients. I understand why Penn keeps repeating the "not a doctor"…
oracknows | June 17, 2010If there's one thing that the loons over at the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism might actually be somewhat good at, it's leaping on a news story and trying to liken it to their unshakable pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for our our amusement), the merry band of anti-vaccine activists over there is so utterly, irredeemably bad at constructing a coherent and logical metaphor that whenever they try the result comes out something like these two posts:
If President Obama Had Been Talking About the Autism "Spill"
Olmsted on Autism…
oracknows | June 15, 2010Time and time again, anti-vaccine activists respond to charges of being "anti-vaccine" with a self-righteous wounded whine that goes something like this: "We aren't 'anti-vaccine.' We're pro-safe vaccine." Alternative claims are that they are "vaccine safety watchdogs" and that they'd vaccinate if only the government would "green our vaccines" or "space them out" or that they think the government isn't listening to them or whatever. Of course, all of these are smokescreens for their true agenda, which, at least among the activists, is anti-vaccine to the core.
In fact, so engrained are anti-…
oracknows | June 13, 2010Remember my post about the genetics of autism last week? Remember how I predicted that the knives would come out from anti-vaccine loons? My original prediction was that Mark "Not a Doctor Not a Scientist" Blaxill would pull one of his usual brain dead attacks on genetic studies, such as his " immaculate mutations" gambit.
I guessed wrong, apparently. It wasn't Mark Blaxill who went on the attack first. Although Blaxill hadn't tried his hand at a pseudoscientific deconstruction of this study as of Sunday afternoon, John Stone over at the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism has already…
oracknows | June 11, 2010I wonder what the loons at Age of Autism will say about this.
Actually, I know what they'll say. Whenever a scientific study like the one just published earlier this week the top tier journal Nature, which examines genetic variations (CNVs) associated with autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), comes out, they have a standard reply. Even though, as of this writing, I haven't seen yet seen a reply on the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism to the study I'm about to describe, I'm sure it's coming and I'm sure it will look something like this article from a year ago by Mark "Not A…
oracknows | June 2, 2010First, it was anti-vaccine "martyr" Andrew Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper.
Then it was his equally incompetent 2009 NeuroToxicology paper.
Now it's Wakefield's 2000 American Journal of Gastroenterology paper:
Errata, Corrigenda and Retractions
Am J Gastroenterol 2010; 105:1214; doi:10.1038/ajg.2010.149
Retraction: Enterocolitis in Children With Developmental Disorders
A J Wakefield, A Anthony, S H Murch, M Thomson, S M Montgomery, S Davies, J J O'Leary, M Berelowitz and J A Walker-Smith
Am J Gastroenterol 2000; 95:2285-2295
On 28 January 2010, the UK General Medical Council's Fitness…
oracknows | May 28, 2010The week is coming to a close, and the Memorial Day holiday beckons for those of us in the U.S. I've spent most of this week blogging about the anti-vaccine movement, and I do need a rest. Next week, I promise to try to stay away from this issue as much as possible, not just to keep you from getting bored with it but, more importantly, to give myself the periodic rest from the concentrated idiocy to preserve my sanity. True, I can never guarantee that something won't come up that will force me to break my self-imposed vacation from the craziness, but I think that a few days away from this…
oracknows | May 27, 2010After a week of some of the most amazing anti-vaccine craziness that I've seen in quite a while, a week that started with anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield's name being struck off the list of licensed medical practitioners in the U.K. During the entire week, there was (and is ongoing) an anti-vaccine crank conference known as Autism One. By midweek, the anti-vaccine loons had their rally in Grant Park, a perfect storm of crankery in which the "health freedom" movement met the anti-vaccine movement. When Harry Met Sally, it wasn't. In any case, skeptics, despite short notice, still managed to…
oracknows | May 27, 2010I don't mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don't. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of "denialism," to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of "suppressing" free speech. Normally, that criticism would have been enough. If Dr. Fitzpatrick answered, that would be all well and good; if he didn't, I'd move on and forget about it. Unfortunately, I was made aware of another article he published at his usual gig at Spiked Online entitled Censorship is not the answer to health scares.
Damn if it…
oracknows | May 26, 2010I love it when cranks write petitions.
They're hilarious. Usually, they're oh-so-serious and ominous, sprinkled with unintentionally, un-self-aware bits of pure comic gold. For example, check out this "petition" being circulated by the anti-vaccine activists, called The Chicago Principles on Vaccination Choice:
We, the people who affirm our belief in personal rights, in order to promote the general health and welfare for ourselves and our children and to establish justice, advocate the following principles:
1. Vaccination choice based on complete and accurate information is a fundamental…