vaccines
kkrisberg | October 17, 2017In more encouraging public health news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that vaccination rates among kindergarteners have remained stable, with the median vaccine exemption rate at 2 percent. Some states even reported an increase in immunization rates.
In a study published last week in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers examined 2016-2017 data from 49 states regarding coverage of three vaccines: measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); and varicella, more commonly known as chickenpox. Researchers also…
oracknows | October 9, 2017I've written on quite a few occasions about a pair of scientists beloved by the antivaccine movement. I'm referring, of course, to Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic. Whether it is their publishing dubious "evidence" that HPV vaccines cause premature ovarian failure or even death or demonizing aluminum as a vaccine adjuvant, Shaw and Tomljenovic publish nothing but antivaccine pseudoscience that antivaxers love to cite whenever they dump some turd of a study on the medical literature.
Just last month, they dumped their latest turd of a study, in which they basically tortured mice in the…
oracknows | October 4, 2017I sometimes like to write about things happening in my neck of the woods that are relevant to the kinds of things I normally blog about every day. This habit of mine dates back at least to the days when investigative reporter Steve Wilson of our local ABC affiliate used to lay down fear mongering barrages of nonsense about mercury in vaccines that would have made Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. proud if he ever knew about them. Then there was a report on "orbs" seen in photographs where the reporter speculated whether they were actual spirits. Then there's the periodic fascination with veterinary…
oracknows | September 28, 2017Two years ago, I wrote about a study that demonstrated how the antivaccine movement had learned to use Twitter to amplify their antiscience message. At the time, I noted how in 2014, when the whole "CDC whistleblower" conspiracy theory was first hatched, antivaxers were so bad at Twitter, so obvious, so naive. The Tweeted inane claims at government officials, scientists, legislators, and whoever else might have influence on vaccine policy, using hashtags like #CDCwhistleblower and #hearmewell. (These hashtags are still in use, but much less active.) However they did get better, to the point…
oracknows | September 27, 2017Last week, an antivaxer "challenged" me to look over a paper purporting to show that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines cause inflammation of the brain and therefore contribute to autism, a paper that she would be "citing frequently." Being someone who lives by the motto, "be careful what you wish for," I looked it over in detail. Not surprisingly, my conclusion was that the experiments were poorly done using obsolete and not very quantitative methodology and that the results do not support the conclusions made by the authors. I was not alone in this conclusion. Skeptical Raptor was, if anything…
oracknows | September 21, 2017
"Why, oh, why do I have to die in the cause of such crappy science?"
For antivaxers, aluminum is the new mercury.
Let me explain, for the benefit of those not familiar with the antivaccine movement. For antivaxers, it is, first and foremost, always about the vaccines. Always. Whatever the chronic health issue in children, vaccines must have done it. Autism? It’s the vaccines. Sudden infant death syndrome? Vaccines, of course. Autoimmune diseases? Obviously it must be the vaccines causing it. Obesity, diabetes, ADHD? Come on, you know the answer!
Because antivaxers will never let go of…
oracknows | September 15, 2017It's Friday, and it's been a rough week. So, after digging into an epidemiology study yesterday, I'm in the mood for something a bit less...heavy. Antivaxers sometimes call me to task when I point out what to me is a simple fact, namely that antivaxers are basically conspiracy theorists. In essence, to believe many antivax views, you have to believe that there is a vast conspiracy among big pharma, the government, and the media to hide great harm from vaccines because...well, it's never quite clear. To protect pharma profits? Really, this is no different than the cancer quacks who claim that…
oracknows | September 6, 2017I've frequently distinguished between those who are vaccine-averse and the true, hard core antivaxers. The vaccine-averse tend to fear vaccines because of what they've heard about their supposed adverse effects, while it is the hard core antivaxers who are really originating and spreading the misinformation claiming that vaccines cause autism, autoimmune diseases, chronic disease, neurologic damage, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), just to name some. There are even those who claim that shaken baby syndrome is a "misdiagnosis" for vaccine injury. To them, it is, above all, always all…
oracknows | August 31, 2017There are many ways to combat antivaccine pseudoscience. Personally, I've chosen my favored methods, namely blogging, giving talks, and generally combatting pseudoscience on social media wherever I find it. That's not all I do (for example, I do have a couple of papers in the peer-reviewed medical literature designed to combat the infiltration of pseudoscience into academia), but it is where I put most of my effort. For one thing, I'm good at it. For another thing, it's fun. Also, it's something I can work into my busy schedule more easily. It even brings me a bit of notoriety now and then,…
oracknows | August 21, 2017Poor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He went from admired environmental activist to reviled antivaccine campaigner so quickly. It began when he outed himself in 2005 with his infamous conspiracy mongering screed about thimerosal in Salon.com and Rolling Stone. Basically, RFK Jr. is a member of what we used to call the mercury militia, a branch of the antivaccine movement that believes, more than anything else, that it is the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that used to be in several childhood vaccines until 2002 drove an "epidemic" of autism. He's still a member, too, having recently…
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…
milhayser | August 11, 2017"Who fears or rejects vaccines, why do they do so, and how might we reach them to change their minds?" On Aetiology, Tara C. Smith answers these questions with a new paper written as a primer for those who want to stand up for vaccination. She says, "for many individuals on the vaccine-hesitant spectrum, it’s not only about misinformation, but also about group identity, previous experience with the health care field, and much more." The stakes of the vaccine debate are high. On Respectful Insolence, a mathematical model from Stanford shows that slight dips in uptake of the MMR vaccine would…
oracknows | August 9, 2017Over the years, I've frequently contemplated just where many of the ideas that underlie alternative medicine in general come from. Certainly, I'm not the first to have thought of this by any stretch of the imagination, but over the last 13 years, I've become convinced that it is a fear of bodily "contamination" that harks back to ideas found in many religions. Think about it. Where does the fear of "toxins" in vaccines come from? Vaccines are portrayed as "foreign," as something "unnatural" that is "injected right into the bloodstream." Never mind that vaccines are not injected directly into…
oracknows | August 9, 2017One of the reasons I'm so passionate about pushing back against antivaccine pseudoscience is because I view it as an extreme threat to public health, particularly the health of children. I'm a history buff. I study history. I know what child mortality was like before vaccines. I'm also a scientist, which is why I know that antivaccine claims and arguments are either misinformation, pseudoscience, utter nonsense, or a combination of the three. Vaccines are safe and effective, and there's no scientific evidence that is even the least bit convincing that they cause autism, the main fear of the…
oracknows | August 8, 2017Yesterday was a busy day for a number of reasons. I thought of skipping it, but I couldn't resist taking notice of one particularly hilarious bit that I found on what is perhaps the wretchedest of all the wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet, NaturalNews.com. There, yesterday, on a very special day for me, I saw this headline by Mike Adams: Facebook blocks all Natural News article posts to 2.2M fans after site posts White House petition citing immunization dangers:
In the latest outrageous example of total censorship against the independent media, Facebook has blocked nearly…
kkrisberg | August 3, 2017Public trust in science is a fickle creature. Surveys show a clear majority of Americans believe science has positively impacted society, and they’re more likely to trust scientists on issues like climate change and vaccines. On the other hand, surveys also find that factors like politics, religion, age and race can greatly impact the degree of that trust. It presents a delicate challenge for agencies that depend on trust in science to do their jobs.
“Trust in science is high, but it’s not unanimous and it’s not completely unquestioned — and nor necessarily should it be,” Joseph Hilgard, an…
kkrisberg | July 28, 2017Another day, another study that underscores the societal benefits of vaccines and the consequences we’d face without them.
In a study published earlier this week in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers took on the issue of vaccine hesitancy by estimating the disease burden and economic costs associated with declines in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rate. They noted that while overall childhood vaccine rates remain high in the U.S., there are areas where nonmedical exemption policies are materializing into declining immunization coverage.
For example, this 2016 article in PLOS Medicine…
tsmith | July 26, 2017I recently finished a 2-year stint as an American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer. It's an excellent program--ASM pays all travel expenses for lecturers, who speak at ASM Branch meetings throughout the country. I was able to attend Branch meetings from California and Washington in the West, to Massachusetts in the east, and south as far as El Paso, Texas, with many in-between. Each Lecturer selects several topics to speak on, and the Branch chooses from those which they want to hear. Mine included basic research (zoonotic disease, antibiotic resistance) as well as science…
oracknows | July 26, 2017One of the most common tropes used by antivaxers is to attack herd immunity as not being real. Herd immunity, or as its sometimes called, community immunity, is a name for a phenomenon in which in a population with high levels of immunity to a disease members susceptible to the disease are protected. Basically, because the vast majority of members of the population are immune to a disease, that disease can't gain a foothold in the population and lead to an outbreak or an epidemic. Basically, transmission from person to person is interrupted because any susceptible person who becomes infected…
oracknows | July 20, 2017One of the problems we as skeptics and advocates for science-based medicine face is that quackery and pseudoscience are legion. They are everywhere. Worse, in many cases, they can be a good business model. For example, back when Oprah Winfrey was peddling The Secret, the magical mystical belief that if you only want something badly enough, the universe will somehow provide it, and promoting Jenny McCarthy's antivaccine beliefs, skeptics were all over her. Many were the refutations of the nonsense that she promoted published in a wide variety of blogs, websites, and magazines; yet her brand…