NVIC

I hesitated over discussing this story because it only comes from one source and that source is not one that I normally trust, The Washington Free Beacon. It might be fake news. On the other hand, it is a story that is not implausible and appears to be reasonably well reported, complete with a reproduction of an invitation to the event being reported on. Moreover, even though this particular source is unabashedly conservative and partisan, it has done some reporting that even Nick Baumann at Mother Jones admitted to be pretty good. So it is with a little bit of trepidation that I note this…
It seems hard to believe that the Disneyland measles outbreak occurred more than two years ago. It was during the Christmas holiday of 2014 that an measles outbreak occurred centered at—of course—Disneyland, thanks primarily to unvaccinated children facilitating the spread of the highly contagious disease at the "Happiest Place on Earth." What made this particular outbreak so important, though, was that it provided the impetus Senator Dr. Richard Pan and Senator Ben Allen to introduce a bill (SB 277) into the California legislature for consideration. What made SB 277 unique and its…
I frequently point out how antivaccine activists really, really don’t want to admit that they are, in fact, antivaccine, so frequently, in fact, that I have a series that I call The annals of “I’m not antivaccine.” It’s already up to part 21. It could easily be up to part 51, or 101, or even 1,001. The only reason it isn’t is because I don’t want to devote this blog to nothing other than how antivaccine activists who deny they’re antivaccine routinely inadvertently reveal the truth. If there’s one area in which antivaccinationists reveal themselves to be antivaccine, it’s in their reaction to…
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…
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…
Posting 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 "…
Having followed the anti-vaccine movement continuously for nearly six years now, I had come to think that I had seen it all as far as deceptive strategies for frightening parents about vaccines. Obviously, becoming too complacent is foolish, because, as misguided and scientifically ignorant as they are, many of the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement (Jenny McCarthy excepted) are not stupid. In fact, some of them are damned clever; otherwise, they wouldn't be so successful at demonizing vaccines and promoting the scientifically discredited myth that vaccines cause autism. Every so often, the…