National Vaccine Information Center
oracknows | November 11, 2015I've used my current pseudonym since at least the late 1990s, first on Usenet and then on the first incarnation of this blog. Not surprisingly in retrospect (although it surprised me at the time), people who didn't like me began trying back in the 1990s to "unmask" me. It began with Holocaust deniers. No, I'm not trying to Godwin this post; it really did begin with Holocaust deniers because, as longtime readers know, my "gateway drug" to skepticism was refuting the lies and misinformation of Holocaust deniers. So, round about the turn of the millennium, a group of Holocaust deniers managed to…
oracknows | March 12, 2015How quickly things change.
If there's one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it's that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit as powerful as religion and political ideology. It's powerful not just among antivaccinationists, but also because it taps into belief systems that are very much part and parcel of being an American. In fact, depressingly, yesterday I learned of a perfect example of…
oracknows | January 6, 2015
Readers who've been following this blog a while would probably not be surprised to learn that one of my all time favorite movies is Ghostbusters. In fact, it's hard to believe that the movie is now 30 years old. It makes me feel so old, given that I saw the movie in the theater when it came out. Be that as it may, there's a scene near the end of the movie, where an ancient god Gozer the Gozarian, takes the form of a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, tromping through New York City destroying things, all thanks to a stray thought by Ghostbuster Ray Stantz (played by Dan Ackroyd) that inspired…
oracknows | October 27, 2014Grant deadline today, which means I didn’t have time to produce yet another scintillating epic for my not-so-super-secret other blog. I did, however, have time to take note of a highly annoying thing on Facebook that was brought to my attention last night and is worth a brief mention here, so that the blog doesn’t go without a post today.
The National Vaccine Information Center, founded and run by Barbara Loe Fisher, is about as antivaccine as they come. It’s also pretty blatant about spreading misinformation about vaccines hither, thither, and yon, disguised as “vaccine safety” public…
oracknows | October 16, 2014
Does anyone remember the H1N1 influenza pandemic? As hard as it is to believe, that was five years ago. One thing I remember about the whole thing is just how crazy both the antivaccine movement and conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself) went over the public health campaigns to vaccinate people against H1N1. It was truly an eye-opener, surpassing even what I expected based on my then five year experience dealing with such cranks. Besides the usual antivaccine paranoia that demonized the vaccine as, alternately, ineffective, full of “toxins,” a mass depopulation plot, and many other…
oracknows | September 11, 2013My goodness, when it rains, it pours, to use a cliche. (And I'm not about anything if not throwing in the odd cliche in my writing from time to time.)
Just yesterday, I discussed the resurrection of an antivaccine zombie meme, namely the claim that Maurice Hilleman admitted that the polio vaccine that was contaminated with SV40 in the early years of the polio vaccine causes human cancer and that the polio vaccine also brought AIDS into the US. That came hot on the heels of another antivaccine zombie meme three weeks ago, specifically the claim that Diane Harper, one of the main clinical…
oracknows | October 18, 2010Posting will probably be very light the next couple of days because I'm at the Lorne Trottier Symposium. Not only have the organizers have packed my day with skeptical and science goodness, but I only have Internet access when I'm back at the hotel, which isn't very much. This is somewhat distressing to me because several readers have sent me a truly bad study implying that (with the press out and out saying that) because investigators couldn't detect signs of cancer in Egyptian mummies there must not have been cancer in pre-industrial times, the further implication being that all cancer is "…