Category: Vaccines
The fall of Andrew Wakefield
I must admit, I never saw it coming. At least, I never saw it coming this fast and this dramatically. After all, this is a saga that has been going on for twelve solid years now, and it’s an investigation that has been going on at least since 2004. Yes, I’m referring to that (possibly former) hero of the anti-vaccine movement, the...
Autism Onset and the Vaccine Schedule – Revisited
This week on Science-Based Medicine I wrote an article about a new study looking at the onset of autism symptoms, showing that most children who will later be diagnosed with autism will show clear signs of autism at 12 months of age, but not 6 months. This is an interesting study that sheds light on the natural course of autism. I also...
The Winkler County nurse case and the problem of physician accountability
A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE THAT HAD A (SORT OF) HAPPY ENDING Back in September and then again last week, I wrote briefly (for me) about an incident that I considered to be a true miscarriage of justice, namely the prosecution of two nurses for having reported the dubious and substandard medical practices of a physician on the staff of Winkler County Hospital...
Changing Your Mind
Why is my mind so clean and pure? Because I am always changing it. In medical school the old saying is that half of everything you learn will not be true in 10 years, the problem being they do not tell which half. In medicine, the approach is, one hopes, that data leads to an opinion. You have to be careful not...
Success in the fight against childhood diarrhea
Rotavirus is the world’s most common cause of severe childhood diarrhea. In the U.S. alone, rotavirus disease leads to around 70,000 hospitalizations, 3/4 million ER visits, and nearly half-a-million doctor office visits yearly. But it rarely causes death. The same is not true for the developing world. Rotavirus disease is estimated to kill around a half-million children a year world wide. ...
The General Medical Council to Andrew Wakefield: “The panel is satisfied that your conduct was irresponsible and dishonest”
BACKGROUND In my not-so-humble opinion, the very kindest thing that can be said about Andrew Wakefield is that he is utterly incompetent as a scientist. After all, it’s been proven time and time again that his unethical and scientifically incompetent “study” that was published in The Lancet in 1999 claiming to find a correlation between vaccination with MMR and autistic regression in...
You can’t hide in the herd
Can you hide in the herd? Well, I suppose the title has given away the punch line. Herd immunity is a fascinating effect, and one of the mainstays of a public vaccination effort. The idea is that if enough people in the community are immune to a particular disease, then those who are susceptible will rarely come into contact with a person...
$10,000 reward not offered for scientific proof of supplements and alternative medicine therapies and effectiveness
Inspired by a post today In conjunction with UNaturalNews, the non-profit Consumer UnWellness Center has publicly not offered a $10,000 reward for any person, company or institution who can provide trusted, scientific evidence proving that any of the supplements or alternative medical therapies being offered to Americans right now are both safe and effective. Supplement or alternative medical therapies promoters keep citing...
The “pharma shill” gambit
It's the oldest, laziest trope used by quacks and those who love them. Facing science-based criticism? Obviously, then, your critic must be in the pocket of big pharma! I present...the Pharma Shill Gambit.