vaccines
sa smith | April 15, 2010Vaccines rock.
So many diseases my mom and dad, my grandparents had to deal with, had to fear-- I never have to even think about. Viruses I read about in books, like a 5-year-old reads about dinosaurs.
And I really, really appreciate this fact.
Nowhere is this appreciation more vivid than with the HPV vaccine. Gardasil became widely available when I was 23, so I was still young enough that insurance humored me and covered the series of shots (though I had to harass the hell out of my OB/GYN at the time to actually get them). I feel like Indiana Jones, like I barely slid under a stone door…
oracknows | April 15, 2010Although this blog is not the Denialism Blog, there is no doubt that one of the overarching themes of Respectful Insolence has been, since its very beginning, combatting science denial. Go back to the very beginning and read a couple of my earliest posts, dating way back to 2004. In one of them I discussed cancer cure testimonials and why they are almost never evidence of efficacy of a given alt-med therapy, a post that, in my ever-insolent opinion, holds up with anything I write today. In another one, I wondered how intelligent people could use alt-med, and in another one I discussed "…
oracknows | April 13, 2010Believe it or not, there was once a time when Dr. Mehmet Oz didn't bother me that much. At least, for all his flirting with woo, I never quite thought that he had completely gone over to the Dark Side. Although I probably knew deep down that I was fooling myself. Maybe it was because Dr. Oz is a surgeon--and not just a surgeon but a cardiac surgeon. After the enthusiastic embrace of pseudoscience by so many surgeons, and in particular Dr. Michael Egnor's embrace of "intelligent design" creationism and mind-brain dualism, maybe I didn't want to believe that yet another surgeon had fallen for a…
oracknows | April 12, 2010Six days ago, celebrity spokescouple for the anti-vaccine movement, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, announced their breakup over Twitter. Some of us who have been following the antics of "Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's Autism Organization - Generation Rescue" have wondered what this would mean for the pro-disease movement pushing the idea that vaccines cause autism. Would Jim Carrey still lend his considerable Hollywood clout, which is at least an order of magnitude greater than Jenny McCarthy's, to Generation Rescue? We didn't have long to wait. By Friday, Generation Rescue had completely…
oracknows | April 11, 2010It has now been nearly two months since Andrew Wakefield was forced to resign from Thoughtful House in the wake of his being found guilty of research misconduct by the British General Medical Council (GMC), the withdrawal of Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper, and the withdrawal of Wakefield's last grab at scientific credibility, his infamous hepatitis B "monkey study." After a period of silence, over the last week, Wakefield has started to pop up in the public eye again, most recently last week in an interview for an independent filmmaker that is getting wide play in the anti-vaccine…
revere | April 9, 2010This week Canadian public health researchers published the long awaited paper on possible association between vaccination for seasonal influenza the previous flu season and risk of having a medically diagnosed infection with pandemic influenza during the first wave of infections (April to July) just as that season was ending. When preliminary results were first announced there was only vaccine against seasonal flu, which was still being given, and the results were contrary to what we thought we knew about flu biology and the immune system. Inevitably it became caught up in the wider anti-…
sa smith | April 7, 2010Metastatic melanoma is definately one of the Cancers That Suck.
We basically have the same treatment options in 2010 as they had back in 1975... and not because we have chemotherapy/immunotherapy that works super great, no reason to change it. Our treatment options just suck, with horrible consequences-- Say you have 100 friends that are diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic melanoma today. One year from today, only about 25, 26 of those friends will still be alive.
~25.
Out of 100.
Survive one year after diagnosis.
Maybe fewer (this paper Im reading says 25.5%, Wikipedia says 9-15%).…
oracknows | April 7, 2010Beware, North Carolina. Beware. Your law has become quack-friendly to the point where doctors can do almost anything.
Why, you may reasonably wonder, am I saying this? The answer is what appears to be the end of a long and painful story of cancer quackery and anti-vaccine celebrity that has tainted North Carolina for years now. Do you remember Dr. Rashid Buttar? Regular readers know who he is, as he's been a recurring character on this blog since the very beginning. Most recently, he figured prominently in the case of Desiree Jennings, the young woman who claimed that the flu vaccine caused a…
oracknows | April 6, 2010He's baa-aack.
You knew he couldn't stay gone for long, I'm sure. He's just like the zombie who rises again just as the hero turns his back, thinking the zombie dead, or the blond terrorist in Die Hard who appeared to have met his end hanging from a chain only to appear later in the movie, just when it looks as though it's all over and Bruce Willis has triumphed, to try to take a shot at him. That's right. I'm referring to the anti-vaccine quack whose trial lawyer-funded, incompetent, and probably fraudulent research launched a thousand autism quacks looking to "cure" autism "vaccine injury…
sa smith | April 3, 2010From my post on testicular cancer and ERVs earlier this week, to Randys balls in the last episode of South Park, the word of the week appears to be "BALLS!"
This trend is continuing, considering Judy Mikovits/the Chronic Fatigue communities vociferous support for anti-vaccination cranks:
The increasing incidence of mumps orchitis: a comprehensive review-- There has been a recent increase in mumps orchitis among pubertal and postpubertal males. These outbreaks can be attributed to a reduction in the uptake of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine during the early to mid-1990s in children who…
sa smith | April 1, 2010One of the coolest things I learned last week in Banff is the 'why' behind an odd AIDS phenomena:
So you all might know that the cut-off, the mark for being diagnosed with AIDS (and not just 'HIV-1+') is a CD4+ T-cell count of <200 cells/mm3.
Okay, so, you lose all your CD4+ T-cells, your immune system loses its ability to work properly, and you start getting all these secondary infections-- infections that 'healthy' people get, but they arent a big deal. But secondary infections are a big deal to AIDS patients, I mean, thats what they die of, not the HIV-1 specifically.
What is weird, is…
revere | March 30, 2010There is a good Canadian Press by Michael Macdonald about the often long time it takes to make a full recovery from flu. A full blown case of classical influenza can really lay you low for days or weeks. People often report never having felt so sick. But once you are "recovered" and back to work or your daily activities you aren't necessarily fully recovered:
Marga Cugnet thought she knew what she was in for when she came down with swine flu last October.
But the health administrator from Weyburn, Sask., said she was annoyed and somewhat dejected when the potent H1N1 virus left her with…
oracknows | March 29, 2010If there's one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I've learned over the last five or so years, it's that it's virtually completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter how much evidence is arrayed against it, it always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent it to combat the evidence. Not that this is any news to readers of this blog or other skeptical blogs that make combatting anti-vaccine propaganda one of its major themes, but it bears repeating often. It also bears repeating and emphasizing examples of just the sort of disingenuous and even outright deceptive…
oracknows | March 27, 2010As far as silly Internet memes go, given my interest in World War II history, I have a weakness for Downfall parodies, which have grown up on YouTube like kudzu over the last couple of years. I also thought it was only a matter of time before someone did something like this and wondered why it hadn't been done before:
(Note: In case you don't know or remember who Poul Thorsen is, read this.)
I love it:
"Perhaps that 14 Studies website was too high brow." Heh.
"Now I'll have to pay for another stupid telephone survey." Heh heh.
"But what's the use? Orac will only make fun of me." Heh heh heh…
oracknows | March 24, 2010It has often been written on this blog and elsewhere that the mark of a true crank is hatred of the scientific consensus, be it consensus regarding the theory of evolution, the science that says homeopathy is impossible, anthropogenic global warming; various areas of science-based medicine; or the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps the most famous expression of distrust of a scientific consensus is the famous speech by Michael Crichton, in which he famously said:
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science…
sa smith | March 23, 2010Oh for fucks sake.
Just after Jenny McCarthys 'keynote address' at an 'autism' conference sponsored by AUTISMONE and Generation Rescue, Judy Mikovits is going to talk to everyone about XMRV (3-4 pm).
Judy, you are one pathetic excuse of a 'scientist'.
oracknows | March 15, 2010Perhaps you've heard of the case of Poul Thorsen. Perhaps not. Either way, that anti-vaccine movement was making a huge deal over this Danish psychiatrist and researcher for two reasons. First, he has become embroiled in some sort of scandal involving research funds at his former place of employment, Aarhus University, leading the ever-hyperbolic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to post a characteristic bit of conspiracy mongering nonsense to that font of anti-vaccine nonsense, The Huffington Post, in an article entitled Central figure in CDC Vaccine Cover-Up Absconds with $2M. The second reason is…
oracknows | March 12, 2010My first big splash in the blogosphere will have occurred five years ago in June, when I first discovered the utter wingnuttery that is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It was then that I wrote a little bit of that not-so-Respectful Insolence that you've come to know and love entitled Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet, a perfect description of an article by RFK, Jr. published in Salon.com and simultaneously in Rolling Stone entitled Deadly Immunity. As I look back, I realize that, as widely linked to and discussed as it was at the time, that post, arguably more than any other, was the…
oracknows | March 11, 2010These days, I'm having a love-hate relationship with Elsevier. On the one hand, there are lots of reasons to hate Elsevier. For example, Elsevier took payments from Merck, Sharp & Dohme in order to publish in essence a fake journal designed to promote its products, and then got caught doing it again. On the other hand, Elsevier owns both The Lancet and NeuroToxicology. The former recently retracted Andrew Wakefield's original 1998 Lancet paper that launched the latest iteration of the anti-vaccine movement in the U.K., as well as a thousand quacks, to be followed by the latter, which…
ddobbs | March 11, 2010Helen Branswell, ace flu reporter, delivers the goodsl:
TORONTO A landmark study looking at how to limit the spread of influenza has shown what experts have long believed but hadn't until now proved: Giving flu shots to kids helps protect everyone in a community from the virus.
The study, led by Dr. Mark Loeb of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., showed the risk of catching the flu was lowered by nearly 60 per cent in communities where a substantial portion of kids aged three to 15 got flu shots.
That level of indirect protection is nearly as good as what healthy adults might expect…