autism
oracknows | September 24, 2008Here we go again.
Tuesday night and yesterday, you probably saw it, plastered all over the media, in the newspapers, on ABC, on the radio, in press releases, and around the blogosphere. Yes, it was another bit of science by press release, with news outlets practically falling all over themselves to hype the results of an acupuncture study reported earlier this week at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO). Leading the pack was ABC News:
A new medical study finds that acupuncture, an ancient form of healing that has been around for thousands…
oracknows | September 23, 2008Thanks to our "friends" at the Age of Autism, I've learned something interesting.
I knew that antivaccinationist "mother warrior" and Indigo Child Supreme Jenny McCarthy was slated to appear tomorrow, September 24, on the television show that arguably serves as the most powerful and pervasive promoter of woo, magical thinking, and dubious health advice in the world, The Oprah Winfrey Show. I hadn't actually planned on watching it (I'm never home when it's on anyway), and setting the DVR to record it for later viewing seems more than I'm willing to do to expose my brain to the neuron-…
oracknows | September 22, 2008Every blogger encounters a post that he wishe he or she had written. Here's one such time, as Prometheus schools us on how alternative practitioners manage to be so persuasive and convincing:
How they do the voodoo that they do so well - Part 1
How they do the voodoo that they do so well - Part 2
oracknows | September 17, 2008Well, well, well, well.
Sometimes science and ethics do win out after all:
CHICAGO (AP) -- A government agency has dropped plans for a study of a controversial treatment for autism that critics had called an unethical experiment on children.
The National Institute of Mental Health said in a statement Wednesday that the study of the treatment -- called chelation -- has been abandoned. The agency decided the money would be better used testing other potential therapies for autism and related disorders, the statement said.
The study had been on hold because of safety concerns after another study…
oracknows | September 17, 2008Forgive me, dear readers.
I realize that I've already subjected you once to the contagious supernova of stupidity that is an Olmsted on Autism blog post. I broke my usual rule about not directly linking to the crank blog Age of Autism unless there is a compelling need. One reason is that I hate to drive traffic there, Even though I do always make sure to use a rel="nofollow" tag whenever I link to AoA or any other blog whose Google ranking I don't want to contribute to, increasing AoA's traffic risks letting its "management" (such as it is) charge higher rates for advertising for the…
oracknows | September 16, 2008Dr. Paul Offit's book Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure has hit the bookstores, and, as predicted, the mercury militia is going into a frenzy of spin and smear. As is usual, because they have no science to support their viewpoint, they are reduced to extended ad hominem attacks. For example, the clueless wonder of a reporter who couldn't find the Clinic for Special Children and the autistic children treated there but nonetheless confidently exclaimed that he couldn't find any autistic Amish children, goes for a full frontal assault in a little…
oracknows | September 3, 2008This is getting to be monotonous, but it's a monotony that I like, as should anyone who supports scientific medicine and hates the resurgence of infectious diseases that antivaccinationists have been causing of late with their fearmongering about vaccines that frightens parents into refusing to vaccinate their children. It's the drumbeat of studies, seemingly coming out every few months, that fail to find even a whiff of a link or correlation between vaccines, thimerosal-containing or otherwise, and autism. You'd think that the pseudoscientists who are so utterly convinced that it absolutely…
oracknows | August 23, 2008While, thanks to the recent CDC report documenting the resurgence of measles in the U.S., thanks to worrisome pockets of decreasing vaccine uptake that could portend a much wider resurgence if the antivaccine brigade, now led by Jenny McCarthy, has its way, I'm back on the topic of vaccines after having amazingly managed to stay away for an uncharacteristically long time, I thought that one last post for a while (I hope) is in order.
Yes, in September, there is reason for some optimism in the P.R. war, which the antivaccination forces have clearly winning in recent months. That's because a…
oracknows | August 22, 2008Since vaccines seem to be back in the news again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a fantastic post that I saw the other day over at A Photon in the Darkness.
Read it. Read it now.
I've done fairly long posts about how pseudoscientists and antivaccine advocates are capitalizing on the case of Hannah Poling, who had a mitochondrial disorder that, the government conceded, may have been exacerbated by vaccines. Meanwhile, antivaccine mouthpiece David Kirby is shouting to the world that new findings that mitochondrial disorders are more common than previously thought is somehow vindication…
oracknows | August 22, 2008Regarding the recent antivaccinationist-fueled outbreak of measles reported yesterday, quoth J. B. Handley, founder of Generation Rescue, now arguably the most prominent antivaccine activist group in the U.S., given that its coffers are filled with money from celebrity and pro wrestling fundraisers:
Autism and antivaccines advocates are unapologetic about the return of measles.
"Most parents I know will take measles over autism," said J. B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, a parent-led organization that contends that autism is a treatable condition caused by vaccines.
Except that…
oracknows | August 21, 2008I realize that I've thanked Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield before for giving the U.S. the gift of a measles resurgence. Originally, when I started this sarcastic little exercise, I assumed that it would be 5-10 years before we in the States caught up with the level of endemic measles that has been resurgent in the U.K. in the decade since Andrew Wakefield published his shoddy, fraudulent, pseudoscientific, litigation-driven article in The Lancet claiming that the MMR vaccine was responsible for "autistic enterocolitis," leading to an anti-MMR hysteria that drove down vaccination rates…
oracknows | August 9, 2008...that I and a bunch of other ScienceBloggers will be at the following location from 2-4 PM today:
Details:
2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9
Social
795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.)
New York, NY 10019
A couple of warnings:
Point one:
I'm a lot more boring and unassuming in person than I am on the blog. Really. Just ask my family and friends. As PZ would say, I don't breath fire or eviscerate alt-med mavens. If you're expecting the same level of scintillating (or not-so-scintillating) wit seen here, you're likely to be disappointed. Fortunately, my fellow ScienceBloggers will more than take up the…
oracknows | August 1, 2008Remember how on Monday I posted a dissection of some truly execrable reporting on vaccines and potential conflicts of interest (COIs) by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News that aired one week ago today? As you may recall, my main point was that Attkisson's reporting was lazy, describing nothing that couldn't be found from public sources, and biased in that it intentionally used inflammatory language in order to bias the reader/audience against Dr. Paul Offit and the American Academy of Pediatrics right off the bat before even describing the supposed COI. I further made the point that it's rather…
oracknows | July 28, 2008You know, I think I've found a bride for Steve Wilson.
You remember Steve Wilson, don't you? He's the local "investigative reporter" in my hometown who recently did a truly awful "report" (it actually makes me cringe to call it a "report," but I couldn't think of anything else to call it) a couple of weeks ago, in which he regurgitated just about every anti-vaccine talking point about mercury and thimerosal there is out there. I hadn't seen anything like it, ever (at least not that I can recall). So bad was it that I feared the hyperconcentrated stupid might lower my blog bud PalMD's IQ by a…
oracknows | July 23, 2008I'm envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he's somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props.
You may have wondered why I haven't written much about Amanda Peet giving an interview in which she pointed out that she had looked into the matter and had found no reason to believe that vaccines caused autism or were unsafe. In the same interview, she referred to parents who don't vaccinate…
oracknows | July 21, 2008...professional wrestling!
You know, it seems eerily appropriate. Generation Rescue always struck me as being akin to pro wrestling anyway, especially its founder J. B. Handley. His antics in the service of the scientifically discredited notion that mercury in vaccines cause autism (or, these days, that it's vaccines that cause autism) always struck me as being largely for show more than anything else, and certainly his trademark bluster is very much like that of a pro wrestler taunting his opponents.
Generation Rescue apparently gets the celebrities it deserves.
I also have to wonder if this…
oracknows | July 21, 2008In the celebrity vaccine wars, as we all know, Jenny McCarthy has become the de facto leader of the "vaccines-cause-autism" lunatic fringe. However, apparently she has managed to recruit another celebrity to help her out. Her choice is amazingly appropriate: Britney Spears, who was seen at a fundraiser for "Jenny McCarthy's autism charity Generation Rescue."
Because no one knows parenting and science like Britney Spears, I guess.
On the other hand, I have to wonder what J. B. Handley, founder of GR, thinks of having the Hollywood press refer to his baby as "Jenny McCarthy's autism charity"?…
oracknows | July 19, 2008I suppose I had better get ready for another e-mail with a wounded, puppy-dog, plaintive complaint of "I'm not really anti-vaccine" in it. You see, that's what has happened in the past a couple of times after I wrote about that pediatrician to the children of the stars (in particular Jenny McCarthy's child) and ubiquitous go-to pediatrician whenever the media wants to hear some "skepticism" about the safety of vaccines, Dr. Jay Gordon. Clearly, it really, really bothers him when someone refers to him as being "anti-vaccine," but what other term fits him so well these days? After all, Dr.…
oracknows | July 17, 2008Oh, no.
I don't know how they got it. I don't know where they got it. But somehow, they got it. Somehow, those advocates of the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism have gotten a hold of the white paper telling how big pharma fooled everyone about the real mercury content of vaccines!
It's a veritable smoking gun! How could our Big Pharma and CDC paymasters have allowed this to happen? Even worse, our plans for using D2O to stabilize vaccines have been exposed! Someone will pay for this. The super-secret vaccine police are now questioning every operative, threatening to pump them up…
oracknows | July 16, 2008One of the great "myths" of the mercury militia, that movement that insists no matter what the actual scientific evidence shows that it absolutely, positively has to be mercury from vaccines that cause autism is the Myth of the Poor Excretor. In other words, the claim is that autistic children are somehow "poor excretors" of mercury, thus making the mercury that used to be in vaccines more toxic to them so that it gave them autism. One of the key pieces of evidence cited to counter this myth is a study by Ip et al (2004) that failed to find any correlation between hair and blood mercury…