autism
oracknows | January 22, 2010One week ago, The Chicago Tribune added yet another excellent addition to its recent series of articles exposing the dark underbelly of the anti-vaccine movement and, more importantly, the quackery that permeates the "autism biomedical" movement promoted by anti-vaccine groups such as Age of Autism. The first installment in the series, written by Tribune reporters Trine Tsouderos and Pat Callahan, examined Mark and David Geier's Lupron protocol for autism (which I had written about three years ago under the title Why not just castrate them?), and the second shone a light under the rock…
oracknows | January 18, 2010The double standard of the anti-vaccine "autism biomed" movement never ceases to amaze me.
Imagine if you will, that a pharmaceutical company examined a chemical used for industrial purposes. Imagine further that the chemical this pharmaceutical company decided to look at originated as an industrial chelator designed to separate heavy metals from polluted soil and mining drainage. Imagine still further that that pharmaceutical company wanted to use that chemical as a treatment for autism, a chelator to be given to children. Finally, imagine that the drug company was giving this chemical to…
oracknows | January 13, 2010Yesterday, I expressed dismay at how Dr. Mehmet Oz, the protege of Oprah Winfrey who now has his own popular syndicated daily show, recently named the quackery known as reiki as number one in his list of "Dr. Oz's ulimate alternatie medicine secrets," leading me to characterize him as having "gone completely over to the Dark Side." You, my readers, kindly provided me with a YouTube video of actual segments from the show in which Dr. Oz has a reiki master demonstrate reiki on an audience member:
Ugh. Get aload of this introduction:
Now you're about to see things that are going to challenge…
oracknows | January 11, 2010I've discussed why Barbara Loe Fisher is a hypocritical coward for trying to silence her opponents using the courts. Now Rebecca Watson, a.k.a., The Skepchick, schools Barbara Loe Fisher for in essence pissing on the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
For some reason, my irony meter didn't register the point that the Skepchick laid down. Perhaps it had already been so completely vaporized by the Loe Fisher's ranting about wanting a "fearless conversation about vaccines" hot on the heels of having tried to sue Dr. Offit for doing just that.
You know what's rather interesting, though? Ever…
oracknows | January 7, 2010As 2009 ended and 2010 began, I made a vow to myself to try to diversify the topics covered on this blog. Part of that vow was to try to avoid writing about vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement for more than a couple of days in a row. Unfortunately, even in the middle its very first full week, 2010 has already conspired to make a mockery of any "plans" I thought I might have for the blog, with a flurry of vaccine-related news items relevant to the pseudoscience that is the anti-vaccine movement coming fast and furious. Oh, well. I might as well just go with the flow and do what I do best--…
oracknows | January 6, 2010One of the key claims of the "autism biomedical" movement is that something about autism derives from or is exacerbated by the gut; i.e., that there is some sort of link between GI problems, particularly inflammatory diseases of the GI tract, and autism. Although I may not be as versed in the history of this claim as I could be, as far as I can tell, even if this idea didn't originate with Andrew Wakefield, he certainly did a lot to popularize it. Indeed, a common misconception about his misbegotten 1998 Lancet paper that launched the anti-MMR anti-vaccine movement in the U.K. is that it…
oracknows | December 30, 2009You know, when Age of Autism starts announcing its yearly "people of the year" awards, there's always a lot of blog fodder there to be had. Given that this is the time of year when I ramp the blog down a bit and, trying to relax a little, don't spend as much time doing detailed deconstructions or analyzing peer-reviewed papers, it's perfect for some quick observations about the anti-vaccine movement, of which Generation Rescue promotes through its propaganda blog, Age of Autism. This time around, I'm noting how these year end awards reinforce the point that "autism advocacy" of the type that…
oracknows | December 29, 2009Vaccines save lives. In fact, they arguably save more lives than any other medical intervention devised by human beings. Unfortunately, the converse is also true. Anti-vaccine beliefs and the vaccine refusal that results from them kill. They leave children vulnerable to preventable diseases, and, sadly, here's yet more evidence that this is true:
At least 30 children have died in eastern At least 30 children have died in eastern Zimbabwe where members of the Johanne Marange Apostolic Faith church have refused to allow their children to be vaccinated against the deadly communicable disease.…
oracknows | December 29, 2009Remember how I said that I was trying to take it easy this week? I still am, but there's something bugging me enough to draw me out of my grant-induced cocoon for a little while in order to pontificate on it in the not-so-Respectfully Insolent way that I am so often wont to do. True, it's something that's been annoying me for a time now, but it's becoming acute as the end of the year approaches. The reason is simple. The anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism is starting to announce its 2009 awards. Regular readers may remember when AoA announced its 2008 awards. Truly, that was a hoot,…
oracknows | December 24, 2009If there's one thing that's irritated the crap out of me ever since I entered the medical field, it's celebrities with more fame than brains or sense touting various health remedies. Of late, three such celebrities have spread more misinformation and quackery than the rest of the second tier combined. Truly, together, they are the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Quackery.
The first two of them, of course, are that not-so-dynamic duo of anti-vaccine morons, Jenny McCarthy and her much more famous and successful boyfriend Jim Carrey. Having apparently decided that selling "Indigo Child" woo was not…
oracknows | December 20, 2009If there's one thing that irritates me about the anti-vaccine movement, it's the utter disingenuousness of the movement. How often do we hear the claim from anti-vaccine loons that "we're not 'anti-vaccine'; we're 'pro-safe vaccine'"? I've tried to pin such people down time and time again to answer just what it would take in terms of scientific studies and evidence or in terms of what "toxins" would have to be removed to convince them that vaccines are sufficiently safe that they will have their children vaccinated? Inevitably, the answer involves levels of evidence that are beyond what can…
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 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 | 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 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 2, 2009...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.
True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)
Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their…
terrasig | October 27, 2009
Case in point:
A few days ago, I sang the praises of last week's article in Wired magazine by Amy Wallace on pediatric infectious disease and immunology specialist, Dr Paul Offit, and the anti-vaccination movement in the US.
Wallace's article has been widely heralded by the scientific community but has evoked the wrath of several anti-vaccination groups and individual followers.
When the target is a man, their motives are questioned and their intellect maligned. But when the target is a woman, guess what happens? Here is a compiled thread from a series of tweets yesterday from Amy Wallace…
terrasig | October 25, 2009
One of the most engaging and clearly-written pieces of science journalism over the last year or so was published in Wired magazine last week. Amy Wallace's, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," is part interview with rotavirus vaccine developer, pediatric infectious disease physician, Dr Paul Offit, and description of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States.
Wallace's work is the centerpiece of a collection of smaller articles providing science-based information about vaccination that also refutes common anti-vaccination myths including "…
oracknows | October 20, 2009...be sure to check out Dr. John Snyder's article on vaccines on the official blog of the NYC Skeptics. As a pediatrician practicing in areas with high levels of resistance to vaccines, he's on the front lines.