shaken baby syndrome
oracknows | May 4, 2015Whenever I discuss the concept of being "antivaccine" and how almost nobody wants to have the label "antivaccine" applied ot her, it's not uncommon that I hear the whinging retort from antivaccinationists claiming that "I'm not antivaccine; I'm pro-vaccine safety," or some similar claim. Of course, whenever I see antivaccinationists likening vaccination to the Holocaust (and themselves to Jews wearing the Yellow Star of David), rape, and felonious assault, I realize that denials tend merely to help antivaccinationists convince themselves that they don't stand for something that society…
oracknows | November 4, 2014
I was a bit angry yesterday. I’m never happy when I see the overarching narrative that prescientific and pseudoscientific beliefs are equivalent and worth doing clinical trials on them. But the irritation I feel when I see examples of journalists credulously swallowing that narrative whole and regurgitating it in mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal is nothing compared to the anger that is provoked when I see one of the worst antivaccine lies of all being promulgated by a person known for promoting it.
The person is Christina England. The tactic is trying to blame the…
oracknows | September 4, 2013About a week ago, I wrote about something that really irritates me, namely that most despicable of antivaccine claims, which is that shaken baby syndrome is somehow a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury. It is a claim that, as far as I can recall, began when, for reasons that have continued to elude me more than a decade later, the antivaccine movement glommed onto the case of Alan Yurko, a man convicted of shaking his girlfriend's baby to death, and tried to get him freed based on the claim that the baby had really died from encephalitis caused by vaccine injury. The claim was so ridiculous as…
oracknows | August 26, 2013About ten or twelve years ago, back when I was in essence, a newly minted skeptic and public supporter of science-based medicine, I was so naive. There I was, having just discovered the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and confronting the original wretched hive of scum, quackery, and pseudoscience, and I thought I had seen everything. Yes, I realize these days that, even a decade on I haven't seen everything and will never see everything, but back then I couldn't believe that, having learned for the first time about coffee enemas, various forms of cancer quackery, each seemingly more…
oracknows | October 7, 2012On Friday, I wrote about the sort of case that outrages me every bit as much as cases of cancer quackery that lead to the death of patients. I'm referring to the case of Amanda Sadowsky, a four month old infant who died after suffering traumatic brain injuries that appeared consistent with shaken baby syndrome (SBS). As I've pointed out before, what I've found to be one of the most disturbing antivaccine claims of all is the assertion that SBS is a "misdiagnosis for vaccine injury." As you might recall, SBS is the name originally given to a triad of findings consisting of subdural hemorrhage…
oracknows | October 5, 2012Remember Alan Yurko?
To remind those of you not familiar with this particularly odious excuse for a human being, I'll briefly relate who he is and why he's so vile. Alan Yurko is a baby killer, pure and simple. He shook his 10-week-old son to death. Normally, such a pitiful excuse for a human being would not be "worthy" of comment, much less admiration, but not to the antivaccine movement. Yurko was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his crime but somehow managed to find himself the "hero" of a campaign
I first learned of this vile concept when I learned of the case of Alan Yurko…