Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | February 19, 2008In response to my post yesterday castigating J. B. Handley of Generation Rescue for hypocritically accusing the American Academy of Pediatrics of "manipulating the media" when manipulating the media is Generation Rescue's raison d'être, Mike the Mad Biologist turned me on to a rather fascinating article in the New York Times by its Public Editor Clark Hoyt entitled The Doctors Are In. The Jury Is Out. It discusses a topic very near and dear to my heart, namely how newspapers report scientific or medical controversies, specifically, how the NYT covers controversies in which one side is the…
oracknows | February 18, 2008Three weeks ago, I wrote about some truly irresponsible antivaccination propaganda masquerading as entertainment that aired in the form of a television show called Eli Stone. This show, which portrayed its hero taking on the case of an autistic boy whose mother blamed his autism on thimerosal (going under the fictional name "mercuritol") in vaccines and scoring a $5.2 million settlement in the process. One consequence of this show was that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was shaken out of its inaction enough to draft a letter protesting the show and urging its cancellation of the…
oracknows | February 17, 2008Dave Munger has done the science blogosphere a service by spearheading the effort to highlight and aggregate serious posts about peer-reviewed research through his Research Blogging aggregator website and his Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting blog. It's a great idea and a great source for what science and medical bloggers say about the latest published research. Dave is to be commended for creating such a useful site.
Of course, aggregating serious research blogging is all well and good, but the assumptions behind it are that the research and the blogger are serious and honest and…
oracknows | February 14, 2008It figures.
I'm deprived of full Internet access for a few days, and--wouldn't you know it?--the merry band of antivaccinationists over at Generation Rescue have to go and provide yet more evidence to back up what I've been saying all along about the mercury militia, namely that, once again, J. B. Handley's protestations otherwise, it really, truly is all about the vaccines, not the mercury. It always was. This new bit of confirmation of what I've said time and time again comes in the form of a full page ad taken out in USA Today on February 12 that I found about thanks to the credulous…
oracknows | February 5, 2008I love it when advocates of "alternative" medicine start combining their therapies. Well, I don't "love" it because they are combining two wildly improbable therapies so much as I love it for the entertainment value. Here's one that didn't quite reach the level of craziness needed for Your Friday Dose of Woo but that I can't resist mentioning. It's the combination of the ultimate woo with one of the most popular forms of woo. I have two words for you:
Homeopathy and acupuncture.
What an excellent combination! They call it "acupoint injection therapy" because they inject homeopathic remedies…
oracknows | February 5, 2008I hadn't planned on blogging about vaccines again for a while. Really, I hadn't. Even I realize the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse just one time too often. Also, It seems that I've been writing about antivaccination loons a lot lately, even more than usual. However, aside from a prime time spot for antivaccinationist propganda, the news has been mostly good, with study after study poking holes below the waterline in the hull of the rickety rustbucket of a boat that is the whole antivaccinationist belief that vaccines cause autism.
Here's another one.
This time, in yet another in a…
oracknows | February 4, 2008I did not watch Eli Stone last Thursday.
I didn't really need to, given that prerelease descriptions made it clear that the show's pilot episode was nothing more than a load of antivaccination propaganda. Indeed, it was so bad that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually took the step of drafting a public letter to ABC asking it either to can the show or run a disclaimer stating that science does not support the contention in Eli Stone that mercury in vaccines is a major cause of autism. In response, David Kirby, the Energizer Bunny of the mercury militia, posted a predictable screed…
oracknows | February 2, 2008It's been a while since I've posted any fan mail, but I did get one a few days ago that amused me. It came from someone with a 'nym of "Baxtour". I post it because it represents a common flavor of antivaccinationist response to my blog:
You are a fucking moron, which I'm sure you already know, but if there is one thing you know absolutely nothing about it's thimerosal! You shouldn't even talk about it because you are so fucking clueless!!!
Sincerely,
Someone that actually has a brain
Truly, against such intellectual firepower, even Orac has a hard time standing. My first thought was that it…
oracknows | January 30, 2008Three and a half months after Kevin Leitch announced that he was shutting down his most excellent blog, Left Brain/Right Brain, it appears that, thankfully, he's changed his mind. Appearing yesterday on the archives of his blog, Kev announced that his blog is open for business again.
Join me in welcoming Kev back to the blogosphere. Head on over and leave a message. It's good to see that he decided not to let bastards like John Best silence him permanently.
oracknows | January 29, 2008Last week, I did one of my inimitable rants about an ABC television show set to air on Thursday called Eli Stone, in which a lawyer sues a pharmaceutical company for "mercuritol" (an obvious allusion to thimerosal) in vaccines and how it supposedly caused a child's autism. Basically, I called it an irresponsible bit of antivaccination propaganda, given that in the story the jury awards the child $5.2 million, while the lawyer (Eli Stone) is portrayed as a "prophet" crusading for the "little guy."
Now Steve Novella weighs in. In the process, he can't resist doing in his much less--shall we say…
oracknows | January 28, 2008Pity poor David Kirby.
Nearly three years ago now, he published his now-infamous Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Mystery. Hooking up with the most vocal of the mercury militia, his book blamed mercury in vaccines as the major cause of autism. Unfortunately for Kirby, time has not been kind to him. Although he still manages to retain his rock star status among the antivaccination glitterati, each successive study failing to find a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism put another nail in the coffin of Kirby's relevance, to the…
oracknows | January 26, 2008I'll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He's predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides to rant about her belief in the undead myth that mercury in vaccines was a major cause of autism, but he's the calm and reliable voice of vaccine stupidity, spitting out the same antivaccination lies over and over again in that sleep-inducing mumbling drone that he calls a voice. He's only been back on the air for a month and a half now, and it's become…
oracknows | January 23, 2008It's times like these that I wish the Hollywood writers' strike had really and truly shut down production of new dramas completely. A new series on ABC set to premiere on January 31 looks as though it's going to dish up a heapin' helpin' of the vilest antivaccination lies and propaganda that will potentially endanger children's lives by stoking fears about the safety of vaccines:
LOS ANGELES -- A new legal drama making its debut this month on ABC is stepping into a subject that is the source of heated debate among some parents -- the relationship between autism and childhood vaccines -- and…
oracknows | January 22, 2008...and ERV has the scoop, along with pictures.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about April Renée, the former President of The Autism Autoimmunity Project and a frequent speaker for Vaccine Injured Children, who was scheduled to speak in Oklahoma City on Saturday; so I'm not surprised at ERV's observation:
As for April Renée's presentation, I was shaking I was so angry. It was a hate speech against scientists that would make any Creationist proud. After ranting about how scientists and physicians get pleasure from killing children she said 'I dont mean to degrade any of the pediatricians in…
oracknows | January 18, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 14, 2008I haven't written before about the tragic case of Katie McCarron, the three year old autistic girl whose mother killed her in May 2006. It's an incredibly sad tale, and others have covered it better. However, the trial started last week, and on Friday there was some testimony that suggests an effect of all the antivaccination fear-mongering that blames autism on either mercury in thimerosal-containing vaccines (a contention against which strong evidence was published just last week, to add to all the other studies that show no link between thimerosal and autism) or vaccines in general. Indeed…
oracknows | January 12, 2008Someone sent me a transcript of part of the appearance of Deirdre Imus on her husband's radio show that's been making the rounds in various discussion groups. I'm glad I don't listen to the show, as this segment might have made me take a baseball bat to my radio, if I had enough neurological function to do so after being exposed to the toxic, intelligence-sucking effects of her black hole of ignorance. If you think her two Huffington Post articles that I deconstructed a while back were bad, just listen to her on Imus. Truly, it is hard to do so without losing some brain cells, but give it a…
oracknows | January 10, 2008The other day, I mentioned what Prometheus termed the "arrogance of ignorance," in which people with no training in a complex, scientific issue have the hubris to think that they know enough to be able to lecture medical scientists on shortcomings of their research. Here's another example of just such arrogance by antivaccinationist Barbara Loe Fisher:
As usual, it is not the M.D. or Ph.D. "experts" but parents of vaccine injured children, who understand the bigger picture involving accumulating clinical evidence that many children are regressing and becoming chronically ill after receiving…
oracknows | January 8, 2008Cectic tells us why we should be afraid:
But who will save us from this menace? Click on the picture to see!
oracknows | January 8, 2008I've pointed out before how MotheringDotCom and its associated discussion forums are supportive havens for the worst antivaccinationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anti-amalgam wingnuts, which is one reason why I do not recommend them for any parent as a source of health information. So, out of curiosity, before I move on to other topics tomorrow, I was curious what the reaction on the MDC discussion boards was to the study by Schechter and Grether yesterday that provided strong evidence against a link between the mercury in thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism/autism spectrum…