Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | July 17, 2015Three weeks ago, I did a post about how prone the antivaccine movement is to conspiracy theories. At that time, one example that I used was the then-very recent death of an autism quack and antivaccinationist (but I repeat myself) who's been big in the "autism biomed" movement for a long time and a regular fixture at autism quackfests like Autism ONE for many years. I'm referring, of course, to Jeff Bradstreet, whose body was found in a river on June 19, dead from a gunshot wound to the chest that appeared to have been self-inflicted. It didn't take long (less than a week) for the antivaccine…
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 7, 2015One of my favorite quotes from classic literature comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, when Alice encounters a rather strange character named Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty, as you will likely recall, was a giant egg with whom Alice got into an argument about the meaning of words:
And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down…
oracknows | July 6, 2015Aside from deconstructing the misinformation and pseudoscience of the antivaccine movement, another of the top three or so topics I routinely discuss here is the infiltration of pseudoscience into medicine. In particular, I've found and discussed more examples than I can possibly remember of what I like to call quackademic medicine, defined as the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. This quackery mainly insinuates its way into medical schools and academic medical centers through the emerging specialty known as "integrative medicine," which used to be called "complementary and…
oracknows | July 5, 2015There can be no doubt that, when it comes to medicine, The Atlantic has an enormous blind spot. Under the guise of being seemingly "skeptical," the magazine has, over the last few years, published some truly atrocious articles about medicine. I first noticed this during the H1N1 pandemic, when The Atlantic published an article lionizing flu vaccine "skeptic" Tom Jefferson, who, unfortunately, happens to be head of the Vaccines Field at the Cochrane Collaboration, entitled "Does the Vaccine Matter?" It was so bad that Mark Crislip did a paragraph-by-paragraph fisking of the article, while…
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 2, 2015Sometimes, I think advocates of "integrative" medicine are trolling me. Of course, unlike antivaccine advocates, I realize it (usually) isn't about me at all and they're just writing what they believe and have (usually in the vast majority of cases) never encountered me and (usually in the vast majority of cases) aren't considering me at all. Even so, it's hard, when coming across an article like The Power of Integrative Medicine When All Else Fails by Emma M. Seppälä over on Psychology Today, not to think that I'm being trolled, so blatant are the alternative medicine propaganda and apologia…
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 19, 2015Even if you're a relative newbie to this blog, you probably wouldn't be particularly surprised to learn that I don't much like Dr. Mehmet Oz, a.k.a. "America's Doctor." Of course, I refer to him as something slightly different, namely "America's Quack," for a whole host of reasons, including his featuring psychic mediums like John Edward and Theresa Caputo, faith healers, Ayurveda, homeopaths, dubious dietary supplements, and even antivaccine loons like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Indeed, when about a year ago Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) hauled him in front of her Senate committee over his…
oracknows | June 17, 2015Antivaccinationists like Holocaust analogies. I've described this particularly loathsome phenomenon more times than I can remember, most recently when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. compared the "vaccine-induced autism epidemic" (vaccine-induced only in RFK, Jr.'s imagination and that of antivaccinationists) to the Holocaust. True, even he was forced to apologize, although it was a classic "notpology":
"I want to apologize to all whom I offended by my use of the word holocaust to describe the autism epidemic," Kennedy said in a statement. "I employed the term during an impromptu speech as I struggled…
oracknows | June 16, 2015A common question, rhetorical or otherwise, that skeptics are asked about alternative medicine is, "What's the harm?" It's seemingly an effective ploy for some modalities, so much so that years ago Tim Farley felt obligated to try to answer the question on a website (whatstheharm.net) that catalogues examples of the harm alternative medicine, supernatural and paranormal beliefs, and other pseudoscience do. After all, most homeopathy (at least anything diluted greater than around 12C, at least) is water, without any remaining remedy, effective or otherwise. On the other hand, some homeopathic…
oracknows | June 10, 2015I bet antivaccinationists would be annoyed if they knew what I was up to yesterday. This week, our department had a visiting professor for Grand Rounds, and that professor was a Nobel laureate. Of course, it's not every day that we have a Nobel laureate visiting us (actually, it's rare). This time around the Nobel laureat visiting us was Harald zur Hausen. He won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for a discovery he made decades ago, namely his discovery of the role of papilloma viruses in causing human cervical cancer. Yes, antivaxers, not only did I meet the man whose science…
oracknows | June 8, 2015Before 2005, I did pay attention to the antivaccine movement, but it wasn't one of my biggest priorities when it comes to promoting science-based medicine. That all changed when Robert F. Kennedy published his incredibly conspiracy-packed black whole of antivaccine pseudoscience entitled Deadly Immunity. Sadly, almost exactly ten years later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn't changed. He's still spewing the same antivaccine pseudoscience and conspiracy theories that he was spewing a decade ago, with no sign of letting up.
One thing that has changed over the last decade is the social media…
oracknows | June 5, 2015One of the odd things about having been a blogger as long as I have been is that, occasionally, posts that I wrote years ago rise up to bite me long after I've forgotten that I even wrote them. Actually, that's usually not the right way to put it. Blogging is a very short term activity in that most posts are very ephemeral. They're usually (but not always) about something immediate, of the moment. Don't get me wrong. There are quite a few posts that I've written that aren't so ephemeral and could be read now without reference to the events or news that inspired them and be just as good now as…
oracknows | June 4, 2015I've been paying attention to the antivaccine movement a long time. Indeed, it's been just under a decade since I made what was my first big splash in the blogosphere, namely my particularly "Insolent" takedown of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s conspiracy-laden, pseudoscience-spewing super-concentrated antivaccine nonsense known as Deadly Immunity. So here it is, almost ten years later, and RFK, Jr. is still around, spewing the same nonsense that he did ten years ago, except that this time he's using Holocaust analogies to describe the vaccination program. Unfortunately, some things never seem to…
oracknows | May 29, 2015I've frequently written about the "arrogance of ignorance," a phenomenon that anyone who's paid attention to what quacks, cranks, or antivaccine activists (but I repeat myself) write and say beyond a certain period of time will have encountered. Basically, it's the belief found in such people—and amplified in groups—that somehow they can master a subject as well or better than experts who have spent their entire professional lives studying the subject on their own, often just through the use of Google University and the echo chamber discussion forums that they frequent with their fellow…