vaccines
oracknows | December 4, 2016I’ve frequently written about a form of medicine often practiced by those who bill themselves as practicing “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” (or, as I like to refer to it, “integrating” quackery with medicine). I’m referring to something called “functional medicine” or, sometimes, “functional wellness.” Over the years, I’ve tried to explain why the term “functional medicine” (FM) is really a misnomer, how in reality it is a form of “personalized medicine” gone haywire, or, as I like to refer to it, as “making it up as you go along.” Unfortunately,…
oracknows | November 30, 2016A week and a half ago, a conference was held at the NYU Langone Medical Center, Confronting Vaccine Resistance: Strategies for Success. It featured speakers and panelists whom I admire quite a bit, including Paul Offit, the man who is to antivaccine loons Satan, Darth Vader, Voldemort, and Sauron all rolled up into one. Also featured were Richard Pan, the California state senator who co-sponsored SB 277, which passed and is now a law that bans nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates; bioethicist Arthur Caplan, a strong advocate for vaccines; Dorit Reiss, a law school professor and…
oracknows | November 29, 2016I’m always hesitant to write about matters that are more political than scientific or medical, although sometimes the sorts of topics that I blog about inevitably require it (e.g., the 21st Century Cures Act, an act that buys into the myth that to bring "cures" to patients faster we have to neuter the FDA and a retooled version of which is still being considered). This is one of those times. Yesterday, I woke up to the news that President-Elect Donald Trump had chosen Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) as his new Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS),…
oracknows | November 28, 2016I don’t have many “rules” per se about blogging, but one informal rule that I do live by is that I never blog about a study if all I can access is the abstract. In general, I insist on having the complete study before I will blog it, because to me the abstract isn’t enough. Basically, if I’m going to blog a study, I generally want to do it right and be able to read the whole paper, because that’s the only way to properly analyze a paper. I find this rule particularly important when analyzing the latest bit of antivaccine pseudoscience, especially because most antivaccine activists don’t go…
oracknows | November 25, 2016This post is a bit later than usual, but there’s a good reason for it. Last night, I was in full food coma, having consumed the traditional Thanksgiving feast, along with a fair amount of wine. Besides, even a sometimes arrogant bloviator like myself, who uses a pseudonym based on a fictional, near-all-knowing supercomputer from a 35-year-old British cult science fiction series needs a break now and then.
So today I’ll be, for the most part, slumming a bit today as I recover. What better place to look for material when you’re not interested in exerting yourself too hard than the antivaccine…
oracknows | November 21, 2016One of the great things about America has been the First Amendment, particularly the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. These are rights allow us to gather together to protest when we see something that we don’t think is right and want to change. Unfortunately, there is one downside to these freedoms, and that is that cranks, quacks, and outright twits have just as much right to free speech as anyone. Fortunately, my right to free speech allows me to ridicule these twits for annoying people, endangering public health, and in general making publicly making idiots of themselves…
oracknows | November 20, 2016It’s been two weeks since Donald Trump unexpectedly won the Presidential election despite losing the popular vote. Regular readers of my not-so-super-secret other blog know my opinion of this; so I won’t belabor it too much here. If you’re curious, I have written about Donald Trump’s antivaccine views here many times dating back to 2007, and, amusingly, I’ve even been at the receiving end of criticism from an “integrative medicine” activist in which my snark was compared to that of Donald Trump and my criticism labeled not just once, but twice. As you might imagine, I was not pleased.
Leaving…
oracknows | November 18, 2016Of all the vaccines out there, it’s hard for me to decide which among them antivaccine activists fear and detest the most. Sure, there’s the MMR vaccine, the original granddaddy bete noire, demonized so successfully by Andrew Wakefield as causing autism based on some of the flimsiest evidence ever, evidence later shown to be fraudulent. That has to be near the top of the list of any of the vaccines demonized by the antivaccine movement, despite is safety and efficacy. After all, it is the mMR vaccine that people like Del Bigtree, Andrew Wakefield, and Polly Tommey are still flogging as the…
oracknows | November 10, 2016Well, I’m back.
Yes, late last night, I re-entered returned home from vacation in Mexico before our new President-Elect has a chance to build his wall. I was so exhausted that I had no time to write anything and remain so. At least I wasn’t stupid enough to go back to work today and instead took the whole week off. Like most of you, I’m still processing he cluster—oh, wait, no major profanity here—that was the US election, whose results definitely put a damper on the trip home.
In particular, I fear for what the new administration will do to science in this country, and might write about that…
oracknows | November 1, 2016As I write this, the 2016 Election is lurching painfully to its conclusion, with about a week to go. In my entire adult life, dating back to when I first reached the age where I started paying attention to politics in the late 1970s, I cannot remember a more bizarre or painful election, nor can I remember an election in which one possible outcome actually terrifies me. I’m referring to the possibility of Donald Trump becoming our next President. I’ve made no secret of my contempt for his xenophobia, his blatant sexism and misogyny, his change from using racist dog whistles to racist bullhorns…
oracknows | October 28, 2016Remember the scene in The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood are sitting in the Bluesmobile and come across a Nazi rally taking place on a bridge? Jake says with utter disgust, “I hate Illinois Nazis,” before driving over the bridge, forcing the Nazis to flee and jump into the river below. That’s basically the way I feel towards Michigan antivaccine activists. What’s even worse, though, is when out-of-state antivaccine agitators show up to give aid and comfort to our own homegrown antivaccinationists, which is what happened this week. I'd never actually drive a car at a bunch of them to…
oracknows | October 20, 2016There are many myths that undergird antivaccine beliefs, such as the myth that vaccines cause autism, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and basically anything antivaccinationists like to blame on them. Basically, if you believe antivaccinationists, there’s nothing bad thta vaccines can’t do to children. The flip side of this myth is perhaps the central myth of the antivaccine movement, which is that unvaccinated children are somehow so much healthier than vaccinated children and that fewer vaccines equates to better health. This one pops up time after time after…
oracknows | October 16, 2016I noticed the other day that I haven’t been visiting the merry band of antivaccine activists and bloggers over at their very own wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism, nearly as much as I used to. I have mentioned them in passing a couple of times recently, but nothing caught my attention sufficiently to be worth applying a bit of the old Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful. Part of that has been intentional, as I no longer like to give them any more attention than I need to. Part of it was unintentional and more because, quite frankly, AoA has been mighty boring lately. I…
kkrisberg | October 14, 2016Another day, another study on the benefit of vaccines. This time, it’s a study on the economic cost of vaccine-preventable diseases among U.S. adults — a cost that likely surpasses your wildest guesses.
Published this week in Health Affairs, the study found that vaccine-preventable diseases affecting adults cost the American economy $8.95 billion in 2015, with unvaccinated adults accounting for $7.1 billion of that total. To conduct the study, researchers examined the economic burden associated with 10 vaccines that protect against hepatitis A; hepatitis B; shingles (or herpes zoster); human…
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 15, 2016When I first heard that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, was scheduled to appear on The Dr. Oz Show, my first thought was, basically, “Of course he is. What took him so long?” After all, it’s a crank pairing made in heaven. Given that, I considered it my skeptical blogging duty at least to watch the show, even if I never actually blogged about it. So I dutifully set my DVR to record it, and, after I got home from work, did my evening bike ride and ate dinner, I settled down in front of the television to see if this appearance would be as bad as I predicted in my mind.
I’m…
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 | September 5, 2016Believe it or not (and you probably won’t believe it), but I never intended to post today, as it’s a holiday, and I had to write my usual level post for my not-so-super-secret other blog. But then one of you had to send me this:
I couldn’t resist at least a quick comment on this.
That’s right. Kent Hovind, one of the world’s most famous young earth creationists and frauds (given that he went to jail for tax evasion) is marrying Marry Tocco, Michigan’s own most annoying antivaccinationist and someone about whom I’ve written several times, most recently in 2014. In the video, he goes on about…
oracknows | September 1, 2016It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been approximately 16 years since I first discovered that there was such a thing as antivaccinationists. Think of it this way. I was around 37 or so when, while wandering around Usenet (remember Usenet?), I found the newsgroup misc.health.alternative (or m.h.a. for short), a discussion group about, appropriately enough, alternative medicine. It was there that I first encountered the claim that vaccines cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, autoimmune diseases, and a panoply of just about every chronic disease known to humankind. Much like when I had…
oracknows | September 1, 2016Last night was one of those nights where I was working late because I was asked to do a panel discussion on breast cancer last night. Such are the perils of being a breast cancer expert, I guess. That doesn’t mean I don’t have time for an uncharacteristically brief notice of some particularly dumb bit of antivaccine nonsense. Just as I said in yesterday’s post, such things are like waving a cape in front of the proverbial bull. Even worse, it’s a lawyer. Let me just put it this way. When I discuss the law, I’m very circumspect. I’m not a lawyer, which means that I am acutely aware of my…