autism
oracknows | September 22, 2015Antivaccine quackery is arguably one of the worst forms of quackery. First, the pseudoscientific beliefs undergirding such quackery are based on the fear and demonization of one of the greatest medical advances in the history of the human race, the result of which are children left unprotected against preventable diseases that routinely used to populate cemeteries with little bodies. Almost as bad, one of those beliefs, namely the scientifically discredited belief that vaccines cause autism, has led to a cottage industry of quack "treatments" based on the idea that autism is a manifestation…
oracknows | September 14, 2015Note added 9/17/2015: I knew it. The vaccine issue came up during the second debate and Donald Trump repeated basically the same nonsensical antivaccine tropes that he's been repeating for at least eight years. It rather puts the lie to his claim that he listens to experts and changes his opinion based on what they tell him. Hilariously, Mike Adams is painting it as an attempt by CNN to "destroy" Donald Trump using the vaccine issue. Depressingly, Ben Carson, while defending vaccines, fell into the "too many, too soon," trope, something a pediatric neurosurgeon should know better than to say…
oracknows | September 10, 2015NOTE: Orac is on vacation recharging his Tarial cells and interacting with ion channel scientists, as a good computer should. In the meantime, he is rerunning oldies but goodies, classics, even. (OK, let's not get carried away. Here's one from all the way back in 2008 in response to Dr. Offit's excellent book Autism's False Prophets. Notice how, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
One of the major points made by Dr. Offit in Autism's False Prophets is how badly the media deals with scientific issues and stories in which science is a major component. Indeed, he devotes two…
oracknows | September 4, 2015It's not a secret to anyone who reads this blog that I have an incredibly low opinion of celebrity pediatricians who are, if not outright antivaccine, antivaccine-sympathetic or leaning antivaccine and use their authority as physicians to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about vaccines. Without a doubt, chief among these pediatricians in this country right now is "Dr. Bob" Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child. His book is a veritable object lesson in how to pander to the fears of vaccine-averse parents and make them feel special and superior for "…
oracknows | August 30, 2015If there's one thing that is true of the antivaccine movement, it's that its members are rarely willing to admit that they are, in fact, antivaccine. Sure, there are uncommon exceptions who say it loud that they are antivaccine and proud and through their refreshing honesty and lack of self-delusion cause no end of problems for the more "reasonable" and "moderate" antivaccine activists determined to convince the world that they are "not antivaccine" but "pro-safe vaccine," "pro-vaccine safety," or "vaccine safety activists." The less deluded antivaccine activists are, after all, masters of…
oracknows | August 28, 2015I must admit that I'm surprised. Pleasantly surprised, but quite surprised. The reason is that yesterday the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Director Mike Zimmer rejected the recommendation of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Review Panel to add autism to the list of qualifying conditions for which cannabis can be prescribed in the state of Michigan. I didn't expect this outcome, but I am pleased.
Although I've changed my mind over past stands and am now in favor of legalizing marijuana for recreational use, I have been harshly critical of the "medical marijuana" movement. Indeed…
oracknows | August 24, 2015I don't review books that often. The reason is simple. My posts for this blog sometimes take as much as a several hours to write (particularly my more "epic" ones that surpass 5,000 words), and I usually don't have the time to add several more hours to the task by reading an entire book. Also, by the time I've read a book I might want to review, weeks—or even months—have often passed, and a review is no longer of much interest to our readers anyway.
Today, I'm making an exception for a book hot off the presses. The main reason is curiosity, because the book is about a topic that I've blogged…
oracknows | August 23, 2015As hard as it is to believe after over ten years of existence and over 5,000 posts on SBM, every so often, something reminds me that I've missed paper that cries out for some not-so-Respectful Insolence. So it was a couple of weeks ago, when I saw a familiar name in a news story that wasn't about vaccines. You might recall a news story last month when a shadowy group with ties to radical antiabortion groups, the Center for Medical Progress, led by a man named David Daleiden, ran a highly questionable "sting" operation (complete with fake IDs) to "prove" that Planned Parenthood was selling…
oracknows | August 14, 2015File this one under the category: You can't make stuff like this up. (At least, I can't.)
Let's say you're a die hard all-conspiracy conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine believer (a not uncommon combination). You love Alex Jones and Mike Adams and agree with their rants that there is a New World Order trying to suppress your rights. You strongly believe that vaccines not only cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, a shaken baby-like syndrome, autoimmune diseases, sudden ovarian failure, and even outright death but are a depopulation plot hatched by Bill Gates and the Illuminati…
oracknows | August 11, 2015There's a delightful meme going around Facebook right now, featured above, that portrays five African women, fists raised, all wearing aprons proclaiming "Kick out polio!" Accompanying the meme is a message from the American Academy of Pediatrics celebrating that yesterday marked one full year since the last case of polio was recorded on the continent of Africa and praising African leadership in executing successful vaccination campaigns against this dread disease, in particular recent declarations in support of eradication from the African Union Heads of State Summit and the Organization of…
oracknows | August 7, 2015Listicles. I hate Listicles. I don't do them. Yet, as much as I hate them, I can't deny that in this brave new world of click bait, listicles bring the clicks, which is why so many blogs and websites post them. Indeed, there's a website, Thrillist, that is dedicated to pretty much nothing but listicles. Not surprisingly, quacks and cranks love listicles as well, because they can go viral, getting passed around through the fevered swamp of antivaccine and quack Facebook pages and Twitter feeds like measles through a Waldorf School.
So it was that I came across yet another one of these annoying…
oracknows | August 6, 2015When I first started writing about the claims made for medical marijuana and the cannabis oil derived from it, it didn't take long for me to characterize medical claims for cannabis as the "new herbalism," as opposed to pharmacognosy, the branch of pharmacology devoted to the study of natural products. The reason is simple. Although I support legalization of marijuana for recreational use, when I look at how medical marijuana has been promoted as a "foot-in-the-door" prelude to legalization, I see testimonials and flimsy evidence ruling over all. I see all the hallmarks of alternative…
oracknows | August 5, 2015Here we go yet again.
I'm half tempted to use a YouTube clip of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part 3, where he says, "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." I'll restrain myself this time. Instead, I'll just tell you what I'm talking about, which is the manufactured scandal known as the "CDC whistleblower." It's an antivaccine conspiracy theory that I've written about many times before, most recently less than a week ago. The long version of the explanation is in the links, but the short version is that a CDC psychologist named William Thompson, who was…
oracknows | August 4, 2015About a month ago, a number of news stories were published reporting that the University of Toronto had offered a course in alternative medicine taught by a homeopath named Beth Laundau-Halpern that presented a segment that was clearly highly biased towards antivaccine pseudoscience. It was worse than that, though, because this homeopathy just happened to be married to a dean at the university named Rick Halpern. The whole thing blew up into an embarrassing fiasco that demanded a response from the University. Unfortunately, this came in the form of a weaselly report, in which Vivek Goel,…
oracknows | July 29, 2015A couple of weeks ago, I first took note of a new conspiracy theory that's been brewing in the antivaccine crankosphere, namely the claim that big pharma has been systematically murdering alternative medical doctors, starting with autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, who committed suicide the day after the FDA raided his office. Of course, it didn't take long for various supporters of quackery to conclude that it was a hit job. Heck, just yesterday, Julie Wilson, a staff writer working for uber-crank Mike Adams, posted a whopper of a conspiracy theory in which Bradstreet and other alternative docs…
oracknows | July 29, 2015Antivaccine activists amuse me.
Obviously, I think they are a major risk to public health. Their relentless demonization of vaccines as causing autism, autoimmune diseases, "shaken baby syndrome," and even sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) serves no purpose other than to frighten parents and discourage them from vaccinating. As despicable as some of their antics are—for instance, blaming vaccines for SIDS and shaken baby syndrome or comparing the vaccine program to the Holocaust because it's a "mass poisoning program" (I'm talking to you, Jake Crosby)—some are just as entertaining as others…
oracknows | July 26, 2015Many are the lies and epic is the misinformation spread by the antivaccine movement. For instance, they claim that vaccines cause autism, autoimmune diseases, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), cancer, and a wide variety of other conditions and diseases when there is no credible evidence that they do and lots of evidence that they don't. One particularly pernicious myth, designed to appeal (if you can call it that) to religious fundamentalists, is the claim that vaccines are made using fetal parts. This particular claim reared its ugly head again in the context of a propaganda campaign…
oracknows | July 22, 2015My topic yesterday was When doctors betray their profession. In my post, I talked about some very unethical doctors representing tobacco companies in lawsuits against them seeking compensation for death and injury due to smoking, as well as to doctors and scientists peddling pseudoscience and quackery representing claimants in the Autism Omnibus action several years ago, in essence supporting the scientifically unsupported idea that vaccines cause autism. The reason I brought this up was to show doctors behaving badly in "conventional" and not-so-conventional medical-legal situations.…
oracknows | July 17, 2015Three weeks ago, I did a post about how prone the antivaccine movement is to conspiracy theories. At that time, one example that I used was the then-very recent death of an autism quack and antivaccinationist (but I repeat myself) who's been big in the "autism biomed" movement for a long time and a regular fixture at autism quackfests like Autism ONE for many years. I'm referring, of course, to Jeff Bradstreet, whose body was found in a river on June 19, dead from a gunshot wound to the chest that appeared to have been self-inflicted. It didn't take long (less than a week) for the antivaccine…
oracknows | June 29, 2015Late last week, something happened that I never would have predicted, and it's all due to how the politics of the issue changed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak earlier this year. The state that contains some of the most famous pockets of low vaccine uptake and some of the most famous antivaccine "luminaries," including pediatricians like Dr. Bob Sears and Jay Gordon, as well as actual celebrities like Rob Schneider, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Maher, Charlie Sheen, and Mayim Bialik, actually passed a law, SB 277, that eliminates non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates.…