antivaccine
oracknows | January 27, 2015
Here we are, into a new week, and the Disneyland measles outbreak continues to grow, the total number of cases now having topped 100 and the disease attributed to someone visiting Disneyland now having reached my state. More than ever, given the high proportion of victims who weren't vaccinated, antivaccinationists are feeling the heat. Rober, "Dr. Bob" Sears, MD might have been the most petulant one trying to downplay the seriousness of measles and then letting out a whole bunch of antivaccine dog whistles to his patients to let them know that, despite his assertion that the measles vaccine…
oracknows | January 21, 2015
In the wake of antivaccine-pandering pediatrician "Dr. Bob" Sears' attempt to paint the measles as no big deal, so much so that it totally escaped his notice that it might not be a bad idea to recommend that the unvaccinated get the MMR vaccine in the midst of an outbreak, the bad news about the Disneyland measles outbreak just keeps coming in. Hot off the presses yesterday:
There are now 67 confirmed cases of measles in an outbreak centered in California, health officials said.
The California Department of Public Health said there are now 59 cases in the state – 42 that have been directly…
oracknows | January 21, 2015
Poor, poor, pitiful Dr. Bob.
For those of you not familiar with him, I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, MD, the antivaccine-sympathetic (or, more appropriately, antivaccine-pandering) pediatrician in Capistrano Beach, CA (between Los Angeles and San Diego in Orange County) known for his Vaccine Book, a veritable font of antivaccine misinformation gussied up as a "reasonable" middle ground. Too bad it's not.
In any case, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, Dr. Bob has found himself under a lot of criticism, along with our "good buddy," the other famous…
oracknows | January 16, 2015
It looks like this year's going to be a bad flu season.
Hard as it is for me to believe, it was only five weeks ago when I discussed an announcement by the CDC that this year's flu vaccine would likely be less effective because it isn't a good match for the influenza strains in circulation this year. Those familiar with how the flu vaccine is developed every year know that the composition of the vaccine depends on the WHO's choice of the three or four strains that its experts deem most likely to cause significant human suffering and death in the coming flu season. Basically, the WHO has to…
oracknows | January 14, 2015
Brief Orac follow up note, January 21, 2015: Antivaccine pediatrician "Dr. Bob" Sears responds to his patients' parents' concerns about the Disneyland measles outbreak. Hilarity ensues.
Last week, the self-proclaimed "happiest place on earth" wasn't so happy.
You've probably figured out that what I'm referring to is the latest measles outbreak. Some of you have been talking about it in the comments, and I keep seeing news about it. Finally, I couldn't resist applying a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence to the whole situation. I realize that some of you might have seen this at a certain…
oracknows | January 13, 2015
He's ba-ack.
Remember J. B. Handley? He and his wife were the founders of the antivaccine crank group Generation Rescue (GR) back in the day. When I first started blogging, GR was new and shiny, with JB and his wife showing up all over the media blaming autism on mercury. In fact, I think it's worth reminding my readers, for the benefit of newbies (and in this case, newbies could be anyone who hasn't been reading at least five years) just what GR used to say about autism:
Generation Rescue believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger’s, ADHD/ADD, speech delay,…
oracknows | January 8, 2015
So here it is, already a week into 2015. Truth be told, I'm still finding myself having a hard time believing that it's already 2015, but then I say that about every year in early January. Be that as it may, I've already seen one hopeful sign that it could be a decent year when it comes to science refuting claims of the antivaccine movement. In fact, there's already been a study that once again fails to find even a hint of a whiff of a whisper of evidence for a link between vaccines and autism. It comes in the form of a study from Japan published online in Vaccine on January 3 (which, oddly…
oracknows | December 29, 2014
Christmas is over, and we're in that weird time between Christmas and New Years Day, when, usually at least, I have to work but so many people are out and so few patients seem to want to come in that it hardly seems worth the effort. So it is with the blog, too. The week between Christmas and New Years tends to be the lowest traffic period of the year. Although that's been true this year as well, I've noticed more commenting activity than I usually see. So, I figured, what the heck? There are odds and ends worth writing about, although I don't plan on doing an epic posts before next Monday…
oracknows | December 26, 2014
After I woke up this morning, the haze induced by feasting and hanging out with family only slowly clearing, I debated about whether I wanted to post anything at all today. After all, in much of the English-speaking world, it's still a holiday, Boxing Day. Although not an official holiday here in the US, when Christmas is on a Thursday, as it was this year, Boxing Day becomes an unofficial holiday that the majority of people not working in the retail sector seem to take off, the better to produce a four or five day weekend, depending upon whether they took Christmas Eve off as well. Also, it…
oracknows | December 23, 2014
Having recently discovered a veritable Library with Doctor Moon of antivaccine misinformation and quackery known as Modern Alternative Mama's blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and YouTube channel, I couldn't resist taking one more drought from the same well. It is, after all, almost Christmas, and truly, as far as the blog is concerned, the discovery of Kate Tietje, a.k.a. Modern Alternative Mama, was an early Christmas gift that could not but be opened immediately. Besides, with Christmas coming up in a couple of days, after today I plan on taking a brief blog break until Friday, with…
oracknows | December 22, 2014
One of the depressing things about having dedicated over a decade of one's life to combatting pseudoscience and quackery is that, no matter how much I think I've come to be familiar with all the woo that can be out there and all the players promoting that woo, there are always new people popping up. It's impossible for one person to keep track of them all. Sometimes, however, there are, for example, antivaccine activists that I haven't heard of before whom I really think I should have heard of sooner than this. Such is the case with Kate Tietje, who blogs at Modern Alternative Mama.…
oracknows | December 12, 2014
After yesterday's post on the depressingly high (and increasing, apparently) rate of personal belief exemptions to vaccination requirements for entering school in the state of Michigan, I felt the need to pontificate a bit further. The reason is that MLive.com has posted some followup stories. Also, I didn't have a lot of time last night to write because I had the pleasure of attending the CFI-Michigan Solstice dinner to hang out with fellow skeptics and heathens. Unfortunately, the topic of the high exemption levels in Michigan came up.
First up on the follow up story parade is one…
oracknows | December 10, 2014
One aspect of my life that's kind of strange is how I've basically ended up back where I started. I was born and raised in southeast Michigan (born in the city of Detroit, actually, although my parents moved to the suburbs when I was 10). After going to college and medical school at the University of Michigan, I matched at a residency in Cleveland (regular readers know that it was Case Western Reserve University), and then did a fellowship in surgical oncology at the University of Chicago. Finally, I ended up taking my first "real" (i.e., faculty) job at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey…
oracknows | December 5, 2014
If there's one thing about having a demanding day job, it's that the cranks usually have the advantage. They can almost always hit first when a news story comes out that they can spin to attack their detested science. On the other hand, it usually ensures that by the time I get home, have dinner, and settle down in front of the TV with my laptop to discusse the latest bit of science, there's some tasty crankery to deconstruct.
Oddly enough, tonight appears not to be one of those times. Heck, as of this writing, even that wretched hive of antivaccine scum and quackery, Age of Autism,, doesn…
oracknows | December 1, 2014
Every so often there's an article that starts making the rounds on social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter, that cries out for a treatment by yours truly. Actually, there are more such articles that are constantly circulating on social media that I could work full time blogging and still not cover them all. So I'm stuck picking and choosing ones that either (1) particularly pique my interest; (2) irritate me enough to goad me into action; or (3) reach a level of ubiquity that I can no longer ignore them. I don't think this one's hit #3 yet, but it certainly scores on #1 and #2.…
oracknows | November 21, 2014As this goes live I’ll be heading to the airport, my purpose being to wing my way to Skepticon 7, where I’ll be speaking tomorrow on a little ditty I like to call The Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine. It’ll be fun, and I’m looking forward to it. However, in true Orac fashion, I haven’t finished the slides and outline for my talk yet, something I hope to do on the planes (there are no direct flights to Springfield, MO from here) and the 3+ hour layover I have to look forward to in Chicago.
What this means is that I was busily tweaking my talk and making some slides last night instead of…
oracknows | November 19, 2014
It was a long day in the operating room again, albeit unexpectedly so as a case that I had expected to be fairly straightforward turned out to anything but. Let’s just say, when I’m peeling tumor off of a major blood vessel, my anal sphincter tone is such that if someone were to stick a lump of coal up there it would come out a diamond. Fortunately, everything turned out fine (damn, if I don’t sometimes know what I’m doing), but that, plus the other cases, drained. This seems to be happening more and more often these days, which means that I’d better get my lab funded quick before I’m…
oracknows | November 13, 2014
Of the many lies and myths about vaccines that stubbornly persist despite all evidence showing them not only to be untrue but to be risibly, pseudoscientifically untrue, among whose number are myths that vaccines cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, and a syndrome that so resembles shaken baby syndrome (more correctly called abusive head trauma) that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury, the lie that vaccines are being used for population control is one of the most persistent. In this myth, vaccines are not designed to protect the populations of impoverished…
oracknows | November 7, 2014
Gayle DeLong has been diagnosed with what she refers to as “autism-induced” breast cancer.” She’s even given it an abbreviation, AIBC. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell by the name she’s given her breast cancer, she is also showing signs of falling into the same errors in thinking with respect to her breast cancer as she clearly has with respect to autism. As a breast cancer surgeon, regardless of my personal opinion of DeLong’s anti-vaccine beliefs, I can only hope that she comes to her senses and undergoes science-based treatment, but I fear she will not, as you will see. Her…
oracknows | November 4, 2014
I was a bit angry yesterday. I’m never happy when I see the overarching narrative that prescientific and pseudoscientific beliefs are equivalent and worth doing clinical trials on them. But the irritation I feel when I see examples of journalists credulously swallowing that narrative whole and regurgitating it in mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal is nothing compared to the anger that is provoked when I see one of the worst antivaccine lies of all being promulgated by a person known for promoting it.
The person is Christina England. The tactic is trying to blame the…