SB 277
oracknows | August 17, 2017Before I get into the topic at hand, I want to explain why there was no post yesterday. Some of you on Facebook might have seen my post about why, but basically, we lost power last night. We're still without power. In fact, the only reason I can write this is because I'm staying at my parents' house tonight. No, it wasn't weather. Rather, basically a nearby substation caught fire. Michigan infrastructure is great, and I really need to get a generator.
It also reminds me how much I wouldn't mind living in California. For one thing, it's a beautiful state. Even better, California was willing to…
oracknows | April 13, 2017The Disneyland measles outbreak began over the Christmas holidays of 2014 and continued for several months into 2015, ultimately spanning eight states and two additional countries (Canada and Mexico). It also represented a seismic shift in the battle to contain the malign influence of the antivaccine movement in that the outbreak centered the Magic Kingdom made it possible for California legislators to do something that would definitely not have been possible before the outbreak: Pass a law outlawing "personal belief exemptions" (a.k.a. nonmedical exemptions) to school vaccine requirements.…
oracknows | October 5, 2016Whenever we discuss vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, thanks to Andrew Wakefield the one vaccine that almost always comes up is the MMR, which is the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. In 1998, Wakefield published a case series of cherry-picked patients in which he strongly inferred that the MMR vaccine was associated with autism and “autistic enterocolitis.” Of course, even the way Wakefield spun it, this wasn’t enough evidence to link the MMR vaccine to autism, which is no doubt why Wakefield never explicitly said that it did in the paper describing his case series. My guess has always…
oracknows | September 27, 2016It’s been nearly three weeks since we learned that the Medical Board of California had initiated disciplinary proceedings against the most famous antivaccine physician not named Andrew Wakefield. I’m referring, of course, to “Dr. Bob” Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child and creator of an “alternate” vaccine schedule that “spreads out the vaccines.” Unfortunately, it’s a book that’s been very influential, in particular promoting the idea of “too many too soon” and claiming that delaying vaccines will reduce a child’s risk of autism. Basically, the…
oracknows | September 8, 2016After all the bad news that I’ve been blogging about, it’s a pleasure for me to end the week with a bit of very good news, very good news indeed. That news came in the form of an article published in the Orange County Register with the glorious title Dr. Bob Sears faces medical board discipline in recommendation not to vaccinate.
Behold:
Dr. Bob Sears, the Capistrano Beach pediatrician who is an outspoken critic of mandatory vaccination laws, faces possible state Medical Board discipline after he recommended that a 2-year-old patient forgo immunizations, according to legal documents made…
oracknows | July 29, 2016After writing about the failure of state medical boards to discipline physicians who practice quackery and an apparent notable exception in Tennessee just yesterday, my attention was brought back to California and the topic of SB 277, the law enacted last year that, as of July 1 this year, eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. As anyone who’s read this blog for more than a year knows (or anyone who’s just paid attention to the political battle to pass SB 277 lsat year in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak), once the battle was over and antivaccine activists…
oracknows | July 25, 2016As long as there have been vaccinations, there has been an antivaccine movement, and as long as there has been an antivaccine movement, there have been parents who refuse to vaccinate. In a past that encompasses the childhood of my parents, polio was paralyzing and killing children in large numbers in yearly epidemics, the fear of which led to the closure of public pools every summer. In such an environment, the new polio vaccine introduced by Jonas Salk in the mid-1950s wasn’t a hard sell. In fact, satisfying the initial demand for it was the problem, not parents refusing to vaccinate their…
oracknows | July 5, 2016This weekend was the 4th of July, Independence Day. It’s the most patriotic holiday of all, at least for Americans. We celebrated it in the usual way, with parades, fireworks, the odd lost digit or two, and barbecues. Unfortunately, there’s another thing that the 4th of July inevitably brings on as well, and that’s the invocation of liberty to support dubious causes. Given what happened last year around this time in California, regular readers probably have an idea where I’m going with this. Yes, I’m referring to antivaccine activists invoking “rights” and “freedom” to justify their refusal…
oracknows | May 8, 2016I realize that it's a cliché to say so, but some clichés are true. Time really does fly. It's hard to believe that a year ago California—and, by proxy, the rest of the country—was in the throes of a major political war over the bill SB 277. SB 277, you will recall, was a bill introduced into the California Assembly in the wake of the Disneyland Measles outbreak in early 2015 that eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates beginning with the 2016-2017 school year. Ultimately, SB 277 passed and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown last July. It was an uncommon victory…
oracknows | February 4, 2016Well, it's finally done.
The grants that have been taking up so much of my time are finally with the grants office and, hopefully, won't have too many errors flagged as they go through the validation process. So it's time to get back into that blogging thing again, even though I'm admittedly tired. So I'll start out slow. No Orac-ian epics today, just another rather satisfying bit of news mirroring a previous post that I did last week about how making it more difficult to obtain personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements works. In states where PBEs are difficult to obtain or…
oracknows | October 20, 2015If there's one thing that's amusing about the antivaccine movement, it's the disconnect between its members' perception of their own importance and the reality of it, which is that they tend to be a pretty pathetic, risible band. They post their blogs, full of the rage of Dunning-Kruger, thinking that they are putting forth the most sophisticated scientific arguments that real scientists, who have spent their entire professional life studying vaccines and autism, somehow missed and finding evidence of a link that no other scientist can. Of course, pesky things like rigorous study design tend…
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 14, 2015Ever since SB 277 became law, I didn't think I'd be writing about it much anymore. Actually, I probably won't be writing about it much any more, because it's now a done deal. It's the law of the land in California. Beginning in 2016, non-medical exemptions (i.e., religious exemptions and personal belief exemptions) to school vaccine mandates will go away. Only medical exemptions will be permitted, which is as it should be. Sure, implementation will be a big deal, and I'll probably have something to say about it as news of how it will happen filters out. However, right now, not much is going…
oracknows | July 2, 2015Dammit.
I had planned on posting something else tomorrow that, because it had been posted elsewhere, would be minimal work. The reason, of course, is because it's the 4th of July weekend and today is a federal holiday. Unfortunately, sometimes things happen that I cannot ignore, even though all sorts of other bloggers are writing about the same thing, because, well, it's something that goes to the very core of what this blog stands for. As you know, one of the most frequently addressed topics (certainly in the top three, if not number one) is the antivaccine movement, its pseudoscience, and…
oracknows | July 2, 2015In the wake of the passage of SB 277 into law in California, the antivaccine contingent went full mental jacket. SB 277, as you might recall, eliminates non-medical exemptions (i.e., religious and personal belief exemptions) to school vaccine mandates. One thing watching the crazy was good for, at least for me, was to note how various antivaccinationists behaved. For instance, Jim Carrey, former paramour of the celebrity queen of the antivaccine movement, Jenny McCarthy, issued a series of Tweets in response:
Greed trumps reason again as Gov Brown moves closer to signing vaccine law in Cali…
oracknows | July 1, 2015My original intention was to write about something entirely different today, but, really, how could I, given that SB277 has become law in California and non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates are a thing of the past? The topic I had in mind for today can easily keep for a day or two anyway. Besides, what I want to contemplate now is how SB277 will work in practice. Sure, it's fun to watch the antivaccine fringe completely lose it as SB 277 got closer and closer to passing. Indeed, if you want to experience a combination of amusement and revulsion, just peruse the comments of this…
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.…
oracknows | June 25, 2015About a year and a half ago, I began an intermittent series that I called How "They" View "Us." There are several posts in the series now. Basically, given the amount of nastiness directed at those of us who refute pseudoscience, in particular quackery and antivaccine pseudoscience, by those who believe in it, I tried to envision, quite literally, how "they" view "us." I even did a talk on the topic at the Science-Based Medicine workshop at The Amazing Meeting last year. Basically, I pointed out that we might think of ourselves on the side of right (and, let's face it, we are), the believers…
oracknows | June 21, 2015Last Thursday I took note of a rather fascinating confluence of cranks who have come together to oppose SB 277 in California. For those not familiar with SB 277, it is a bill currently under consideration in the California Assembly that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. It was passed by the Senate last month, and a couple of weeks ago it cleared its first hurdle in the Assembly, having been passed by the Assembly Health Committee on a 12-6 vote. So now it's in the full Assembly to be debated, and it shouldn't be too long before it comes to a vote. As I've said…
oracknows | June 18, 2015The saga of SB 277 just keeps getting stranger and stranger as its end game comes into view.
SB 277 is, of course, a big deal. If it's passed by the California Assembly and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, it would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, making the largest state in the union only the third state that only allows medical exemptions. Since its passage by the California Senate last month and its clearing the Assembly Health Committee last week on a 12-6 vote, SB 277 has taken on the air of inevitability. Sure, it could still stall or be hopelessly…