autism
oracknows | February 23, 2009One thing that's become apparent to me so far in 2009 is that, while 2008 was the year of the antivaccinationist, 2009 is already shaping up to be a very bad year for antivaccinationists. A very bad year indeed, and this is a very, very good thing--if it can be sustained.
But first, let's take a look at last year. In 2008, Jenny McCarthy was the new and fresh celebrity face of the movement that believes that autism and all manner of other neurodevelopmental disorders are caused by vaccines and that the government and big pharma are suppressing The Truth. She had emerged in the fall of 2007…
oracknows | February 20, 2009I knew it. I just knew it.
I just knew that when I finally decided to come back from my absence from this blog that something very unpleasant and sad would be waiting for me. True, there had actually been one very nasty thing that I simply had to deal with a few days ago, but that was a particularly vile and despicable human being who, believe it or not, was not John Best. That is not the case here, although the misinformation being pushed is truly disturbing.
Not surprisingly, what awaited me upon my decision to come back was posted earlier this week on that repository of antivaccine…
palmd | February 19, 2009It seems the same questions keep coming up when looking at the cult leaders of the infectious disease promotion movement. When you listen to them preach or read their liturgy you can't help thinking, "dumb, evil, or both?" I think I'm going to vote for "both" when it comes to Deirdre Imus. Her sermon last week in the Huffington Post was so far over the top that my nose is still bleeding from climbing her tower of intellectual excrement.
Her title advises health consumers, "On Vaccinations: Consider the Source and Follow the Money."
I don't know what that means, but Deirdre explains, "…
palmd | February 18, 2009There was a piece of good news on vaccine front this week. The first judgments from the Autism Omnibus Trial were announced, and the special masters (who served as judges) agreed with the rest of the reality-based community in ruling that vaccines do not cause autism. The rulings weren't subtle, using phrases such as "misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment". This is the Dover of the "other" ID promotion movement.*
Like any cult, however, the infectious disease promotion movement is unlikely to be persuaded by any level of evidence. This, despite…
oracknows | February 15, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I foresaw this day coming, however, I did set up a series of "Best of" reposts to autopost for you while I am in mourning. Some I have even updated and/or spiffed up with actual editing. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. This particular one I've updated slightly.…
oracknows | February 13, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I foresaw this day coming, however, I did set up a series of "Best of" reposts to autopost for you while I am in mourning. Some I have even updated and/or spiffed up with actual editing. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don'…
oracknows | February 12, 2009I would like to thank all of you who have notified me of the decision for the three test cases in the Autism Omnibus hearings before the Vaccine Court. Science actually won in the courts, something you just can't count on with any reliability. It even won resoundingly. I also realize that, as much as it still shocks me, a lot of people look forward to what I have to say on this issue, as I've become one of the main "go-to" bloggers on all things vaccine. Normally, I'd be all over this, reading the decision in detail, culling choice quotes, and spreading my special brand of Respectful and not-…
purepedantry | February 12, 2009A trio of Federal judges have ruled against three separate plaintiffs who alleged that vaccines caused their child's autism:
These three decisions, each looking into a different theory as to how vaccines might have injured the children, are expected to guide the outcomes of all those claims.
The judges ruled that the families seeking compensation had not shown that their children's autism was brought on by the presence of thimerosal, a mercury vaccine preservative, by the weakened measles virus used in the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine, or by a combination of the two.
For example, in a case…
oracknows | February 12, 2009Last night, I lambasted Countdown host Keith Olbermann for having been played by the antivaccine movement and having unjustly slimed British journalist Brian Deer. Clearly, Olbermann was so blinded by his hatred of Rupert Murdoch that all chief apologist for the antivaccine movement, former freelance journalist David Kirby, had to do was mention that The Times of London, the newspaper that published Brian Deer's excellent investigative report nailing anti-MMR guru Andrew Wakefield to the wall for falsifying data, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it was like waving the proverbial red cape in…
oracknows | February 10, 2009I'm not as big a fan of Keith Olbermann as I used to be. Indeed, sometimes he strikes me as the liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, not to mention a blowhard. However, occasionally, he still has it, and when he's on, no one skewers the dishonest better than he does. For instance, after a media flack and the usual inclusion of Bill O'Reilly as runners up, meet Andrew Wakefield, the Worst Person in the World for February 10, 2009:
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
That about sums it up right now.
I wonder how long before the antivaccinationist loons…
oracknows | February 10, 2009Poor Jeni Barnett.
You remember Jeni Barnett, don't you? She's the U.K. radio host whose ill-informed rants against vaccines Ben Goldacre exposed so gloriously last week. Unfortunately, the price Ben paid consisted of threats of legal action for "copyright infringement" in the form of his having posted audio of the relevant segment of Barnett's show. Yes, LBC, the radio station on which Barnett's show runs, threatened to sue, forcing Ben to take down the audio. However, as almost always happens when a blogger is threatened in such a manner, the specter of legal action led to the audio files…
denialism | February 10, 2009I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised (even if Orac isn't). We all knew that Andrew Wakefield's research was bogus and the link between vaccines and autism was engineered by ideologues who fear vaccines irrationally. But fabrication of data? Sloppy research is one thing, but the need for cranks to be correct, no matter what reality reflects, has resulted in yet another example of egregious dishonesty.
This is in line, however, with what we know about cranks. Mark Crislip recently wrote an interesting piece on mathematics crankery which bears upon just this phenomenon. Mathematics is a…
oracknows | February 9, 2009Not again.
I have no way of knowing if the media in my hometown happen to be more credulous when it comes to pseudoscience than average, but, given the number of stories referred to me emanating from Detroit and its surrounding suburbs, you'll forgive me if I'm very depressed right now. For instance, we have "investigative reporter" Steve Wilson of WXYZ Channel 7 Action News, who, although claiming the title of "Chief Investigator" for that station, clearly couldn't investigate his way out of a paper bag--at least when it comes to medical stories--given that he is known for routinely…
tsmith | February 8, 2009Last fall, I wrote about a new research paper which tried to replicate some of Andrew Wakefield's original results, which not only claimed a correlation between MMR vaccination and autism, but also the presence of measles virus in intestinal tissue. Wakefield had suggested that an inappropriate response to the presence of measles virus in this tissue may trigger conditions such as bowel disease and autism. The more recent study was unable to replicate any of Wakefield's findings--not surprising, since so many papers in the last decade have found no connection between vaccination and autism…
oracknows | February 7, 2009Pity Andrew Wakefield.
Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the colon, a study that was followed up four years later with a paper that claimed to have found the strain of attenuated measles virus in the MMR in the colons of autistic children by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). It would be one thing if these studies were sound…
ddobbs | February 7, 2009The Questionable Authority (apt name for this one!) ponders a disturbing report from the Times of London.
gregladen | February 7, 2009An investigation by the Sunday Times (UK) indicates that the doctor who reported information suggesting a link between MMR vaccine and autism may have "misreproted results in his research." The investigation purpots to show that ...
...Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients' data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
The research [originally] claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on…
palmd | February 7, 2009The movement against vaccination is old---very old. All medical interventions require scrutiny. Like any medical intervention, vaccines require systematic investigation before deployment, and monitoring during their use. Still, vaccines have done more for public health than most Westerners under the age of fifty can imagine.
Inoculation and vaccination have been vilified in many ways, from interfering with the will of God, to being a vast conspiracy to infect [insert ethnic group here] with [insert disease here], to a cause of autism.
There have been "bad" vaccines, and when this has…
oracknows | February 6, 2009If I lived in the U.K., I don't know if I could blog. After all, the U.K. has some of the most plaintiff-friendly libel laws in the world, far more so than here in the U.S., in that in a libel case it is up to the defendant to prove that what he wrote is true, not the plaintiff to prove it false and defamatory. Just go back to 2000 and the most depressing exhibition of that very principle, namely disgraced pseudohistorian David Irving's libel suit against Professor Deborah Lipstadt for having referred to him as a Holocaust denier (which he undoubtedly is) in her book Denying the Holocaust:…
palmd | February 5, 2009A delusion is usually defined as "a fixed, false belief". Anyone can be wrong, but to persist in being wrong despite all the evidence is the hallmark of delusional thinking. In their latest senseless rant at HuffPo, infectious disease promoters David Kirby and Robert Kennedy, Jr. cling to thin strands of tainted reality as the gaping maw of insanity opens beneath them.
Of course, delusions are very closely related to lies. The only difference is that liar doesn't believe his bullshit, while the psychotic does. It's hard to know where K and K fall. There latest article, entitled, "Autism…