Category: Vaccines
The dangers of opponents of science-based medicine
Michael Specter, author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, on the danger of science denial: Given that more than half of the video is devoted to discussing vaccine denialism, supplements, and HIV/AIDS denialism, I think Spector’s talk is quite appropriate for this blog. Perhaps the best quote in Specter’s entire speech is this:...
Social Factors in Autism Diagnosis
There is no question that the incidence and prevalence of autism are on the rise. Starting in the early 1990s and continuing to today, there has been a steady rise in the number of children diagnosed with autism. Prior to 1990 the estimates of autism prevalence were about 3 per 10,000. The most recent estimates from the CDC and elsewhere now have...
Steven Higgs: Another antivaccine reporter like Dan Olmsted in the making?
April is National Autism Awareness Month, and as of today April is nearly half over. Do you notice anything different compared to the last couple of years? I do. Can you guess what it is? The anti-vaccine movement’s usual suspects haven’t been all over the mainstream media, as they usually are this time every year, often as early as April 1 or...
Outbreaks
There have been, in the last 20 years, natural, or perhaps unnatural, experiments that have helped shed light on the efficacy of vaccines. Many societies, for reason of political unrest, religion, or a lack of understanding of science and medicine have seen the rates of vaccination decline and, with that decline, an increase in the cases of vaccine-preventable diseases. Infectious disease spread...
Mercola, Gardasil, and Toyota?
Joseph Mercola, D.O. should be well known to readers of SBM for reflexively opposing science-based medicine while providing an endless stream of misinformation on his blog, advocating detoxification, homeopathy, the tapping of meridians chiropractic and more at his clinic, and peddling a treasure trove of vitamin supplements, foods, and Mercola-endorsed devices (on sale at his site for your convenience, no conflict of...
“Vaccines didn’t save us” (a.k.a. “vaccines don’t work”): Intellectual dishonesty at its most naked
If there’s one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I’ve learned over the last several years, it’s that it’s almost completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter how much evidence is arrayed against it, its spokespeople always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent the evidence to combat it and not have to give up the concept that vaccines cause...
Vaccinations and autism: are we number 1?
It has been alleged by Great Minds such as Jenny McCarthy that the US recommends far more vaccinations than other countries. Her precise statement was, “How come many other countries give their kids one-third as many shots as we do?” She put this into the context of wondering if our current vaccine schedule should be less rigid. The entire piece was filled...
J.B. Handley and the anti-vaccine movement: Gloating over the decline in confidence in vaccines among parents
UPDATE, 4/25/2011: I can’t resist pointing you to a hilariously misguided attack against me that proves once again that, for the anti-vaccine activists, it’s all about the ad hominem. Clifford Miller, a.k.a. ChildHealthSafety, was unhappy that I showed up in the comments of Seth Mnookin’s post complaining about J.B. Handley’s attacking him solely based on his having once been a heroin addict,...
Just the Facts
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. —Mark Twain There is an educational approach to becoming a doctor. It involves learning massive amounts of basic science, followed by massive amounts of pathophysiology, which barely prepares you for the clinical years of the last half of medical school and subsequent residency, with the massive knowledge...
A Welcome Upgrade to a Childhood Vaccine – PCV 13
Children aren’t supposed to die. That so many of us accept this statement without a blink is remarkable and wonderful, but it is also a very recent development in human history. Modern sanitation, adequate nutrition, and vaccination have largely banished most of the leading killers of children to the history books. Just look at the current leading causes of childhood death in...