Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | May 1, 2008Yet another dubious study has been making the rounds of mercury militia websites and discussion forums. The study is being played up and touted by certain very excitable and scientifically not-too-bright militia members and woo-meisters like Mike Adams as some sort of vindication of the scientifically discredited hypothesis that mercury in vaccines somehow causes autism.
It doesn't.
It is, however, somewhat interesting in that their embrace of this bit of questionable research shows how desperate the mercury militia is to grasp to any bit of peer-reviewed published research that they can spin…
oracknows | May 1, 2008...because Paul Offit's written a book:
AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS
Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure
Paul Offit, MD
Columbia University Press
September 2008
Genre: Non-Fiction/Medicine
Format: Hardcover
AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS will show the reader the incredible history of how greedy lawyers, doctors, and unknowing parents have helped prevent the search for the real cause of autism. As these forces conspire to blame vaccines or the preservatives used in vaccines for causing autism, the search for a real cure is hampered while millions of dollars go chasing after the wrong…
oracknows | April 29, 2008One of the most contentious and difficult aspects of trying to improve medical care in this country is enforcing a minimal "standard of care." Optimally, this standard of care should be based on science- and evidence-based medicine and act swiftly when a practitioner practices medicine that doesn't meet even a minimal requirement for scientific studies and clinical trials to support it. At the same time, going too far in the other direction risks stifling innovation and the ability to individualize treatments to a patient's unique situation--or even to use treatments that have only scientific…
oracknows | April 28, 2008Over the weekend there was a very good article in the Concord Monitor about Kathleen Seidel and her legal battle with Clifford Shoemaker, whose intrusive "fishing expedition" subpoena recently drew condemnation even from prominent antivaccination activists such as David Kirby and Dan Olmsted and was ultimately quashed with the possibility of sanctions. What this article does a good job for those new to the debate is to put things in some perspective in a relatively brief treatment; I encourage you to read the whole thing, and I will focus mostly on a couple of interesting tidbits in the…
oracknows | April 26, 2008Ah, a lazy Saturday morning. So here I am in the late morning, perusing my e-mail (including e-mail notifications of blog posts) after purposely not having checked them at all last night (and, in fact, even having gone to see a movie for the first time in many months), and what should a reader send me but a bit of very good news:
RALEIGH --A panel of the N.C. Medical Board recommended Thursday that Huntersville's Dr. Rashid Buttar be prohibited from treating children or patients with cancer because his alternative medicine practice is below accepted medical standards in North Carolina.
The…
oracknows | April 22, 2008Ack!
Well, so much for Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's reputations for supposedly being well-informed about scientific issues. True, they didn't sink as far into the stupid as John McCain did about vaccines and autism, but what they said was bad enough. Let's put it this way: If David Kirby thinks what they said about vaccines and autism is just great, they seriously need to fire all their medical advisors and get new ones who know how to evaluate evidence:
No matter who wins in Pennsylvania today, the next President of the United States will support research into the growing evidence of…
oracknows | April 21, 2008Just reported by Kathleen Seidel:
From the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Case No. 1:08-mc-00013-JM:
ENDORSED ORDER granting MOTION to Quash Subpoena.
Text of Order: "Granted. Attorney Clifford Shoemaker is ordered to show cause within 10 days why he should not be sanctioned under Fed R Civ P 11 - see Fed R Civ P 45(a)(2)(B) which requires that a deposition subpoena be issued from the court in which the deposition is to occur and Fed R Civ P 45 (c)(1) commanding counsel to avoid burdensome subpoenas. A failure to appear will result in notification of Mr…
oracknows | April 21, 2008A couple of weeks ago, I commented about a frivolous, SLAPP-style subpoena directed at one of the most thorough, rational bloggers about autism out there, Kathleen Seidel by Clifford Shoemaker, the attorney for Rev. Lisa Sykes and her husband Seth Sikes, both of whom who are suing Bayer for alleged "vaccine damage" as a cause of their child's autism. The subpoena in question, issued mere hours after Seidel published a well-researched but particularly unflattering post about Clifford Shoemaker's activities suing vaccine manufacturers, was so obviously a fishing expedition designed to…
oracknows | April 18, 2008...death from pertussis.
Delaying effective treatment by taking the baby to a naturopath first didn't help either. With antivaccinationists making so much noise, look for more cases like the one above in your local emergency department soon. That will be the true legacy of the so-called "green our vaccines" movement.
oracknows | April 16, 2008I'm not normally one to do link roundups or Instapundit-style one sentence "link and comment" posts. Sure, I do them occasionally, but I think the reason that I don't is that to me blogging is a way to express my views, not just to point to the views at others (in other words, because I'm just too enamored of my own prose). However, because of a bizarre confluence of my being at the AACR meeting and a bunch of good stuff showing up, there were some items that I just didn't have the chance to comment on, even though I wanted to. Moreover, because I want to do a couple of posts on the AACR…
oracknows | April 15, 2008Regular readers may have noticed that the usual prodigious amount of verbiage has fallen off a bit over the last few days. That's just because I've been very busy and not always around a reliable Internet connection. In some ways, I almost like the way I've been forced to write a bit better in that my posts are shorter. However, I know that after I return home from San Diego, my old habits will probably return fairly quickly.
I actually wasn't going to post anything today other than the plug for the Expelled Exposed website (oh, look! another plug!), mainly becauase I got in rather late last…
oracknows | April 14, 2008Between sessions here at the AACR meeting, I started thinking. (I realize that's often a dangerous thing to do, but sometimes I can't help myself.) What I was thinking about was my annual bit of "fluff with a bite," the 2008 edition of "What is an altie?" Why, I don't know, but I was. Then, this morning while quickly perusing a few blogs and reading my e-mail before heading off to the meeting's morning session, I noticed something in yesterday's post about the commonality between creationists (evolution denialists), Holocaust deniers, and other forms of denialists. It was a term, a throwaway…
oracknows | April 11, 2008It's that time of year again. Actually, it's well over a month past that time of year.
Long-timers may remember that, near the very beginning of my old Blogger blog over three years ago, I did a post entitled What is an altie? It was basically a Jeff Foxworthy-like listing of "You just might be an altie if..." statements that, I think, had a good point. For those of you not familiar with the term "altie," it was coined on the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative to describe a certain hardcore variety of alternative medicine aficianado who is utterly immune to evidence or reason. The…
oracknows | April 10, 2008Whenever I'm looking at fringe scientific claims, I'm always on the lookout for things that help me conclude whether I'm looking at "legitimate" fringe ideas or pseudoscience and woo. One observation that I've found helpful in leading me in one direction or the other is to look for certain dead giveaways that what we're looking at is almost certainly pseudoscience or woo is the presence or absence of conspiracy-mongering based on unverifiable "evidence." I find a lot of it, and the other day I found one of the best examples of it I've ever seen. It comes, not surprisingly, from Dan Olmsted,…
oracknows | April 9, 2008I don't much like The Huffington Post.
My dislike for The Huffington Post goes way, way back--all the way back to its very beginnings. Indeed, a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington's little vanity project hit the blogosphere, I noted a very disturbing trend in its content. That trend was a strong undercurrent of antivaccination blogging, something I wrote about nearly three years ago. At the time, I pointed out how Santa Monica pediatrician to the stars and "vaccine skeptic" Dr. Jay Gordon had found a home there, long with David Kirby, author of the mercury militia Bible Evidence of…
oracknows | April 8, 2008I am presenting this without comment, other than that this message from David Kirby and Dan Olmsted was e-mailed to me yesterday evening in response to my open letter from three days ago.
This is Kirby and Olmsted's reply to me:
We both take this matter very seriously, and strongly oppose any effort to subpoena the records of Ms. Kathleen Seidel. We have also clearly expressed our feelings to Mr. Shoemaker. While we may not agree with her opinions, we consider Ms. Seidel to be a colleague. Rights to privacy, and to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment, must be upheld for all. We…
oracknows | April 8, 2008Here's another case of measles associated with failure to vaccinate:
Health officials in Milwaukee County are urging parents to make sure their kids are up to date with vaccinations. This comes on the heels of a confirmed case of measles in a 23 month old Franklin resident.
Measles is a highly contagious airborne virus that's easily spread. Symptoms are similar to a common cold: coughing, a runny nose, a high fever and eventually, a red blotchy rash that starts on the head and spreads to the arms and legs. While health officials aren't sure how the 23 month old contracted the virus, they do…
oracknows | April 6, 2008Dear Mr. Kirby and Mr. Olmsted:
You are both journalists. I realize that neither of you at present work for the traditional press and that both of you seem to devote yourselves mainly to blogging (Mr. Olmsted at the Age of Autism and Mr. Kirby at the Huffington Post), but I have to believe that you both still consider yourselves to be at heart journalists. That is why I am writing this to you and posting it publicly on my blog. If you've ever read any of my posts on this issue, you probably realize that I strongly disagree with your positions and that at times I have been quite harsh in my…
oracknows | April 4, 2008Your Friday Dose of Woo has been interrupted to bring you an important rant. The previously scheduled installment will be delayed and will appear later on in the day.
This is more important.
A common characteristic of cranks and denialists, be they antivaccinationists or large corporations or whatever, is an intolerance of criticism for their views. All too frequently, this has taken the form of the abuse of the legal system in order to try to silence their opponents. The Society of Homeopaths did it to a blogger a while back. A quack by the name of Joseph Chikelue Obi did it to the same…
oracknows | April 3, 2008I thought it was an April Fools' joke, but it wasn't. It was posted one day too late, but there it was staring at me:
On World Autism Day: A Plea for Better Journalism.
On the surface, who could argue with that, particularly with David Kirby's regular carpet-bombing logic and science with unctuous and slimy speculation and prevarication? Definitely, such deceptive antivaccination-sympathetic "journalism" needs to go.
But then I noticed who wrote this article.
Dan Olmsted.
Yes, Dan Olmsted, perhaps the worst journalist ever when it comes to autism, the man who swallowed whole anecdotal and…