Category: Vaccines
In Jenny McCarthy’s own words
Jenny McCarthy, regular readers of SBM know, has been a frequent target of criticism here. The reasons, of course, are very simple. She has become the most famous public face of the antivaccine movement, releasing a book every year or so since 2007 about how her son Evan has been “cured” of autism through the dubious biomedical treatments she’s given him and...
Pockets of Vaccine Noncompliance in California
The LA Times recently published their analysis of data provided them by the state of California and found that there are pockets of high rates of exemption from vaccines among kindergarteners. In the US public schools require that all children receive the recommended vaccines. However, states can allow exemptions for the religious beliefs of the parents. Over the years anti-vaccine activists have...
Where’s the outrage?
I thank everyone for my warm welcome to the SBM community. Although vaccine myth is of particular interest to me, I promise that my posts wont all be vaccine related. There is, unfortunately, much to discuss. In fact I had a difficult time deciding which vaccine-related issue to write about for my inaugural post. In the end I came up with more of...
Lies, Damned Lies, and ‘Integrative Medicine’
Last week, two events took place in Washington that ought to inspire trepidation in the minds of all who value ethical, rational, science-based medicine and ethical, rational, biomedical research. One was the Senate Panel titled Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation, previously discussed by my fellow bloggers David Gorski, Peter Lipson, and Steve Novella, and also by the indefatigable Orac (here and...
The incredible shrinking vaccine-autism hypothesis shrinks some more
Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in. Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part 3 I hadn’t planned on doing two vaccine posts with such a short interval between them, but all too often, as the they say in the weakest of the Godfather movies, I get pulled back in again. So, after noting last week that 2009...
2009: Shaping up to be a really bad year for antivaccinationists
I will begin this post with a bit of an explanation. Between one and two weeks ago, there appeared two momentous news about the manufactroversy regarding vaccines and autism. No doubt, many SBM readers were expecting that I, as the resident maven of this particular bit of pseudoscience, would have been here last week to give you, our readers, the skinny on...
Fakin’ it
Last week the Times of London revealed inside information from the General Medical Council (UK, responsible for physician licensing) of an ongoing investigation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and from its own investigation. This revelation recalled other instances of fakery from reports of sectarian medicine (“CAM”) successes. The Medical Council information contained evidence that the data from the now famous Wakefield cases used to...
/
February 19, 2009
Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud?
Pity poor Andrew Wakefield. Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity at all. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the colon, a study that...
Since when did an apologist for the antivaccination movement, Dr. Jay Gordon, become an “expert” in vaccine law?
I am an alumnus of the University of Michigan twice over. I completed a B.S. in Chemistry with Honors there in 1984 and then I stayed on to do obtain my M.D. in 1988. I look back very fondly on those eight years spent in Ann Arbor, as several of my longtime friendships were forged or solidified during those years. Consequently, I...
More Data on Vaccine Safety Amid New Outbreaks
The more recent issue of the Journal Pediatrics contains two article providing further evidence for the safety of vaccines and is published amid news reports of recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in those who chose not to vaccinate over unwarranted fears. This highlights the need to continue our PR battle against the antivaccinationist movement that seeks to spread pseudoscientific fears about vaccine...