autism
oracknows | March 25, 2006While I work on winging my way back to the East Coast, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of links that I became aware of but didn't get the chance to post.
First up is the older piece by that tireless debunker of dubious medicine and quackery and fellow skeptic, Prometheus. In a piece entitled Mercurial Laboratories, he dissects in detail why the laboratories that purport to show parents that their autistic children have elevated mercury levels almost certainly do not do any such thing. Indeed, what he has written can apply to almost any set of lab tests, particularly this part:
One of…
oracknows | March 19, 2006A couple of weeks ago, I lambasted Mark and David Geier for their irresponsible proposal to treat autism by using Lupron to lower testosterone levels, in essence chemically castrating autistic children, because, they claimed, it would make the mercury that supposedly caused the autism in the first place "easier to excrete."
Naturally, Prometheus couldn't resist piling on too in an article entitled Armchair Science vs. Real Science, which complements my previous analysis by looking at an infamous video the Geiers made, in which they explain the "revelation" that led them to the concept that…
oracknows | March 14, 2006I'm feeling a bit envious right now.
Kevin Leitch has something I haven't. He's acquired his very own blog sockpuppet:
Someone (and it's really not hard to guess who) has created a little sockpuppet site for me. Whomever (ahem) it is has also started sprinkling the blogosphere with spicy comments from 'me'.
How cool is this? Someone (ahem) is worried enough about what I say to start a whole new blog to sockpuppet me!
I could get annoyed about such a thing but really, we have to look at it this way - I must be making a much bigger impression on someone (ahem) then I thought I was. Enough for…
oracknows | March 9, 2006Light blogging today, as I'm in the O.R. (Although there will be one more brief post, which, thanks to the wonders of Movable Type's ability to let me schedule a time when posts are published, will be appearing early this afternoon, while I'm still working.The reason why I'm delaying it will, hopefully, be apparent.)
Light blogging or not, I couldn't resist mentioning a post by Kathleen Seidel in which she's picked up on something that I hadn't noticed but wish I had.
In a long, multi-topic "roundup" sort of post, near the end, she mentions RFK Jr.'s essay Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal…
oracknows | March 6, 2006I was going to give this a rest for a while, but this is too good not to post a brief note about.
Posted in the comments of my piece debunking the Geiers' pseudoscience and their laughable "scientific" article claiming to show a decrease in the rate of new cases of autism since late 2002, when thimerosal was removed from vaccines completely other than some flu vaccines was this gem of a comment, by one MarkCC, which stated the essence of what was wrong with the Geiers' so-called "statistical analysis" of the VAERS database:
Here's the key, fundamental issue: when you're doing statistical…
oracknows | March 6, 2006Curse you, Mark and David Geier.
I'm getting tired of having to subject my scientific and critical thinking skills to the assaults on science and reason that you routinely publish in dubious journals to use as weapons in your apparently never-ending crusade to extract as much money as possible out of vaccine manufacturers and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Dissecting your pseudoscientific claims causes me pain, not so much that I'm driven to take a hiatus from blogging, as Matt was by Kent Hovind's creationism, but almost.
I had hoped to let this cup pass, given how much I've…
oracknows | March 2, 2006I had wanted to let this cup pass, but couldn't, not after several readers e-mailed it to me and I went and experienced its inanity first hand. As Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III: "Just when I thought I was finally out, they drag me back in again!" In this case, it was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who did the dragging.
Yes, RFK Jr. has dropped one more steamy, stinky turd on the blogosphere. No, it's not nearly as big and stinky as the first one that he dropped back in June, but that's almost certainly only because it's a short blog piece, rather than a full feature article for…
oracknows | February 26, 2006An autistic teen named Jason McElwain made the most of his chance to shine.
How long before this is a movie of the week or even a feature film?
oracknows | February 23, 2006Treating autism with chemical castration
I thought I'd seen it all.
Ever since I found myself critically examining the claim that autism and autistic spectrum disorders are caused by mercury found in the preservative(thimerosal) used until recently in childhood vaccines, I thought that I'd heard of every dubious or quack autism therapy there is out there. Indeed, it is from that concept (that "autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning,", which is not supported by epidemiological or preclinical evidence) that flows all sorts of dubious therapies to "remove" the mercury. Foremost among…
oracknows | February 13, 2006As promised, here is the first list of links of "classic insolence" from the old blog. For new readers, this is a place to start as far as my writings about quackery and dubious alternative medicine:
What is an "altie"?
Understanding alternative medicine "testimonials" for cancer cures
Battling quackery in conventional medicine
How can intelligent people use alternative medicine?
The Orange Man
How not to win friends and influence people
Polio returns, thanks to anti-vaccination zealots
Antivaccination rhetoric running rampant on the Huffington Post (Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6)…