Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | August 29, 2008I hesitated about whether to post this, knowing how many antivaccine activists read this blog, which is why I didn't post it yesterday. Still, I think this might be of sufficient interest to my readers that I thought I'd announce it, just with relatively short notice.
It turns out that today's Science Friday with Ira Flatow features a discussion of childhood vaccines, complete with an appearance by a man whom antivaccinationists consider the Dark Lord of Vaccination himself, Dr. Paul Offit. It's on at 2 PM, and I'm told that Dr. Offit will be in the 2:20 to 2:40 PM segment, but I generally…
oracknows | August 28, 2008A reader of this blog was outed by a moron posting as "Mark" on the Age of Autism blog. I will not link to the outing, nor will I link to Age of Autism. I have, however, kept a nice screen shot of the page, just in case someone over there has an attack of conscience, and I will also comment on the observation that "outing" its enemies is a favorite technique of cranks in general. However, it seems to be a particular favorite of antivaccine cranks. So is hypocrisy, it would appear. After all, "Mark" did not post under his full name but only under his first name, while he thinks nothing of…
oracknows | August 27, 2008I've been sarcastically "thanking" Jenny McCarthy for bringing the U.S. the gift of measles through her tireless efforts on behalf of Generation Rescue and other antivaccine groups and will continue to do so whenever I deem it appropriate. But Jenny isn't the only one who deserves our "thanks" (no, I'm not going to thank Andrew Wakefield again). Let's not forget all those religions who, either because they think vaccines are messing with God's will or because of some interpretation of a holy book written in prescientific times, religions like this one in Canada:
With the number of confirmed…
oracknows | August 27, 2008Last night was a late night at work, and I didn't have time to apply my usual annoyingly long-winded analysis to a study that I found interesting and had intended to look at today. It'll keep. In the meantime, there are always the brief "link-and-comment" (or in my case "link-and-snark") posts. Also, there was an article a couple of days ago that I have been meaning to bring up since I saw it but somehow allowed myself to get distracted. With the impending resurgence of measles and other previously controlled or even vanquished infectious diseases, courtesy of Jenny McCarthy, Generation…
oracknows | August 24, 2008This has been an annoying week on the old blog. In fact, I can't remember the last time we had an infestation of antivaccinationists this persistent and prolonged in a while. Heck, even one of the "big kahunas" of that blogospheric repository of all things antivaccine, Age of Autism (Dan Olmsted) showed up in the comments to spew non sequiturs about the Hewitson "vaccinated versus unvaccinated" monkey study (I'm devastated he apparently read my discussion of that very study) and misleading claims about measles. I guess that's what mentioning Dr. Offit with anything other than a sneer does; it…
oracknows | August 23, 2008While, thanks to the recent CDC report documenting the resurgence of measles in the U.S., thanks to worrisome pockets of decreasing vaccine uptake that could portend a much wider resurgence if the antivaccine brigade, now led by Jenny McCarthy, has its way, I'm back on the topic of vaccines after having amazingly managed to stay away for an uncharacteristically long time, I thought that one last post for a while (I hope) is in order.
Yes, in September, there is reason for some optimism in the P.R. war, which the antivaccination forces have clearly winning in recent months. That's because a…
oracknows | August 22, 2008Since vaccines seem to be back in the news again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a fantastic post that I saw the other day over at A Photon in the Darkness.
Read it. Read it now.
I've done fairly long posts about how pseudoscientists and antivaccine advocates are capitalizing on the case of Hannah Poling, who had a mitochondrial disorder that, the government conceded, may have been exacerbated by vaccines. Meanwhile, antivaccine mouthpiece David Kirby is shouting to the world that new findings that mitochondrial disorders are more common than previously thought is somehow vindication…
oracknows | August 22, 2008Regarding the recent antivaccinationist-fueled outbreak of measles reported yesterday, quoth J. B. Handley, founder of Generation Rescue, now arguably the most prominent antivaccine activist group in the U.S., given that its coffers are filled with money from celebrity and pro wrestling fundraisers:
Autism and antivaccines advocates are unapologetic about the return of measles.
"Most parents I know will take measles over autism," said J. B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, a parent-led organization that contends that autism is a treatable condition caused by vaccines.
Except that…
oracknows | August 21, 2008I realize that I've thanked Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield before for giving the U.S. the gift of a measles resurgence. Originally, when I started this sarcastic little exercise, I assumed that it would be 5-10 years before we in the States caught up with the level of endemic measles that has been resurgent in the U.K. in the decade since Andrew Wakefield published his shoddy, fraudulent, pseudoscientific, litigation-driven article in The Lancet claiming that the MMR vaccine was responsible for "autistic enterocolitis," leading to an anti-MMR hysteria that drove down vaccination rates…
oracknows | August 15, 2008I was called upon once before, and now I'm called upon again. Jenny McCarthy needs me:
From: "Jenny McCarthy" volunteer@generationrescue.org
Reply-to: volunteer@generationrescue.org
To: orac@scienceblogs.com
Date: Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 11:26 AM
Subject: News From Jenny McCarthy
Become a Rescue Angel Today!
Dear Orac,
It's Jenny!
Please join my team and help other families!
I'm about to go on tour to promote my new book, Mother Warriors, which hits the bookstores everywhere, September 23rd (38 days from now!). I will also be on all the major talk shows showing the world that autism is…
oracknows | August 14, 2008We seem to have an infestation of a couple of very persistent anti-vaccinationist trolls. (It happens; every so often someone new thinks they can take me and my readers on. They're usually pretty quickly disabused of that notion.) That infestation is why I thought now would be an opportune time to refer my readers to a post that shows the world to which we could return if the anti-vaccine contingent gets its way. Written by the always irascibly sarcastic Dr. Mark Crislip of Quackcast, it's entitled Amanda Peet is My Hero (1).
Remember, Dr. Crislip is an infectious disease specialist. As he…
oracknows | August 13, 2008THWOMP!
THWOMP! THWOMP!
TWHOMP! THWOMP! TWHOMP!
That's the sound of me hitting my head against the table. Hard.
What provoked this reaction in me is Medscape, specifically an article that my blog bud PalMD turned me on to. That the article, entitled HPV Vaccine Deemed Safe and Effective, Despite Reports of Adverse Events, seems to have been written in response to criticism of its previous article on the HPV vaccine Gardasil, both by me and others, criticism that led Medscape to quietly pull the old article, makes the resultant article seem even worse, particularly in wake of a truly dumb poll…
oracknows | August 9, 2008...that I and a bunch of other ScienceBloggers will be at the following location from 2-4 PM today:
Details:
2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9
Social
795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.)
New York, NY 10019
A couple of warnings:
Point one:
I'm a lot more boring and unassuming in person than I am on the blog. Really. Just ask my family and friends. As PZ would say, I don't breath fire or eviscerate alt-med mavens. If you're expecting the same level of scintillating (or not-so-scintillating) wit seen here, you're likely to be disappointed. Fortunately, my fellow ScienceBloggers will more than take up the…
oracknows | August 7, 2008This is disturbing.
No, it's not disturbing because it's a story potentially about autism. It's not even disturbing because it indicates that Jenny McCarthy might soon have some competition in the brain dead antivaccinationist autism mom competition. It's disturbing because of who Jenny's new competition might be:
Britney has a whole new problem on her hands to deal with. According to In Touch, she fears that her youngest son Jayden James may be autistic.
Family friends say he often seems to be off in his own little world, playing by himself, and he starts crying for no reason.
Britney and…
oracknows | August 6, 2008A couple of days ago, I did a Respectfully Insolent⢠takedown of a disappointingly credulous and misinformation-laden article published on Medscape about the human papilloma virus vaccine Gardasil. The article was clearly biased, and, worse, it quoted Oprah's favorite woo-loving gynecologist Dr. Christiane Northrup parroting germ theory denialism and the myth that Louis Pasteur "recanted" on his deathbed. All in all, it was a terrible article.
Today, multiple people have pointed out to me and I have seen at the blog Holford Watch that the link to the Medscape article now leads to a "page…
oracknows | August 5, 2008Yesterday, there was a press release announcing the "Vaccinate Your Baby" campaign being promoted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Every Child by Two. This morning in New York, there will be a press conference to unveil the initiative, described thusly:
Every Child By Two (ECBT) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are launching a new campaign with actor Amanda Peet to urge parents to immunize their babies from vaccine-preventable diseases. This new initiative will address misinformation about vaccines that causes confusion among parents and puts children at risk. These myths…
oracknows | August 4, 2008I've lamented time and time again how much woo has managed to infiltrate academic medicine, even to the point where prestigious medical schools such as Harvard and Yale have fallen under its sway. I've even gone so far as to lament that resistance is futile when it comes to the rising tide of woo threatening to wash over academic medicine, although lately I've been in a more pugnacious mood.
But what good is a pugnacious mood when denialist pseudoscience starts popping up credulously reported in news sources tailored for physicians and other health care professionals? That's exactly what…
oracknows | August 1, 2008Remember how on Monday I posted a dissection of some truly execrable reporting on vaccines and potential conflicts of interest (COIs) by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News that aired one week ago today? As you may recall, my main point was that Attkisson's reporting was lazy, describing nothing that couldn't be found from public sources, and biased in that it intentionally used inflammatory language in order to bias the reader/audience against Dr. Paul Offit and the American Academy of Pediatrics right off the bat before even describing the supposed COI. I further made the point that it's rather…
oracknows | July 29, 2008I just can't escape them. Even when I want to, even when I'd like to take a break, they're there.
The anti-vaccine nutcases.
This time around, they showed up at, of all places, Netroots Nation, where the deceptively named National Vaccine Information Center, an explicitly antivaccination group that spreads nothing but lies, set up a booth. Fortunately, the reaction to this incursion was not positive, but it just goes to show that these groups are trying to insinuate themselves anywhere they can.
oracknows | July 29, 2008The stupid continues to metastasize.
I wrote yesterday about a truly bad and irresponsible hit piece on Paul Offit and the American Academy of Pediatrics written by the anti-vaccinationist sympathizer Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News. Since I've already rehashed what was so bad about it, I won't go on about it. However, it appears that Alicia Mundy at the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog picked up the story yesterday and ran with it--stupidly, as demonstrated by this passage:
Drugmakers have given millions in grants and other kinds of payments to the AAP and helped build its headquarters, CBS…