Vaccination inanity
palmd | May 24, 2010Too many too soon: that's Jenny McCarthy's rallying cry. The disingenuous activists of the antivaccine movement use this motto as a foot in the door, claiming that they are not truly "anti-vaccine", just pro-"safe vaccines". This is despite the fact that vaccines have proved themselves to be one of the safest and most effective medical interventions in human history.
Pediatricians in the community are struggling with the fallout of the antivaccine propaganda, having to spend their finite patient-care hours trying to explain to parents why they should vaccinate their children properly. …
palmd | April 3, 2010Some crazy, currently unbloggable crap is going down around Casa Pal this week, so I'm going to have to open up a bloggy doggy bag for you. I have a nice piece in the works for Sunday or Monday which is brand, spanking new. This was originally published on 5/6/2009. --PalMD
Some bad ideas refuse to die. Others die and then come back to eat your brains. Of course, zombies don't just rise from the grave for no reason. They need some sort of animating principle, like meteors, puffer fish toxin, a voodoo priestess, or all three.
Brain-eating, measles-promoting zombies. Not pictured:…
palmd | March 31, 2010The recent arrests of the Hutaree cult here in Michigan are part of a tradition of militant separatism in this part of the country, beginning with the militia movements in the late 20th century and climaxing (hopefully) in the terrorist acts of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. This latest incident is interesting in that it appears to share some qualities of the militia movement, the Christian Identity movement, and the Tea Party movement (although what sorts of ideologic connections there really are will take some time to figure out.)
Cults in general scare me. They scare me not just…
palmd | March 27, 2010I love Icelandic names. Just reading them makes me think of Vikings and valkyries. One name that I can't get out of my head right now is "Iris Erlingsdottir". She's an Icelandic journalist who put up a pro-vaccine piece on Huffington Post. Not only is the piece pro-vaccine, but it is quite critical of her fellow HuffPo blogger "Dr." Jenny McCarthy, the actress who, after having a child and doing a lot of googling, decided that vaccines are evil. She is so convinced of the danger of vaccine that she explicitly wishes our children to suffer from vaccine-preventable diseases to try to prove…
palmd | March 24, 2010It has been alleged by Great Minds such as Jenny McCarthy (D.Goog.) 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 with what could charitably called less-than-truthful assertions, but I'm not feeling that charitable: they are lies (or the rantings of an idiot, or the delusions of lunatic. There are probably other possibilities that I haven'…
palmd | January 7, 2010As we mentioned earlier, Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the infectious disease promotion group NVIC, is suing a bunch of people for "defaming" her.
Today she posted a piece at Age of Autism entitled, "2010 Needs A Fearless Conversation About Vaccination." She is suing a nationally-known vaccine expert, the reporter who interviewed him, and the magazine which ran the story about vaccination.
So much for fearless conversation.
palmd | January 2, 2010Being a physician and a father, I keep an eye out for news about childhood vaccinations. I've always been concerned about local statutes that allow kids to be admitted to school unvaccinated, especially when all that is required is an affirmation or a letter from a doctor or religious figure. This not only endangers these individual children but also others. As the rates of vaccination drop vaccine-preventable diseases regain a foothold. Children and adults who are either ineligible for vaccination or in whom vaccination was not completely effective can become ill. Parents can, of course…
palmd | December 30, 2009Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is reportedly a doctor, although according to her website, she no longer practices medicine in any recognizable way. Perhaps that's why she utters completely idiotic statements such as this one pointed out to me by Brother Orac:
Study these numbers. We've had SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu. On average, approx. 190 children/year die from the flu. Considering there are about 62M kids under the 14 years of age in the US, this is NOT "statistically signficant" and should not even make the radar screen. See how they manipulate parents into vaccinations?
Next year, PLEASE do not…
palmd | November 25, 2009We already know about the Huffington Post's war on science and its shameless publication of snake oil ads disguised as journalism. Now, Mark Hyman, an evangelist for the cult known as "functional medicine", is giving even more bad flu advice (and shilling for his books).
He begins his blathering, misleading sales pitch with this bit of mendacious drivel:
The main question my patients have been asking is whether they should get vaccinated against H1N1 or against the regular flu.
This is not a simple yes or no answer. The guiding principle of functional medicine is personalized care, not the…
palmd | November 18, 2009There are a couple of quotes circulating widely claiming that major players in flu vaccine development are "denouncing" the vaccine.
From (shudder!) mercola.com:
"Dr. Anthony Morris, a distinguished virologist and former Chief Vaccine Office at the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), states that "There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza" and that "The producers of these vaccines know they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway."
And:
And in November 2007, the UK newspaper The Scotsman,…
palmd | November 7, 2009I'm told that mathematicians and physicists get a lot of mail from folks with "big discoveries". These discoveries are often of the "Einstein was wrong and I figured out the Theory of Everything" variety. Many of us refer to these folks as "cranks", a catch-all, derogatory term for people who, through their own arrogance and ignorance, think they have, despite little education or work, disproved ideas that have taken lifetimes to assemble.
Enter the anti-vaccination cranks. Immunoprophylaxis---the manipulation of the immune system to prevent disease---is centuries old, and over those…
palmd | November 2, 2009One of my dear readers just left the internet equivalent of a flaming bag of turd on my bloggy doorstep:
Everybody should read this article by Dr. Russell Blaylock http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/What-We-H…
These are the facts folks, all information is derived from Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Whenever stamping out the flaming bag of poo, it's wise to remember ones shoes may become sullied. Still, how can I…
palmd | October 28, 2009A hat-tip to my buddy Abel over at TerraSig for keeping this story alive and inspiring me to chime in. --PalMD
It's no secret that I find the anti-vaccination crowd to be abhorrent. The public's health is the first victim, followed closely by individual patients and parents struggling with individual health decisions. I cannot fault patients for making bad decisions---the anti-vaccination movement has a very effective propaganda arm. Folks like Jenny McCarthy have a large audience and make no secret of their desire to see infectious diseases increase in others:
I do believe sadly it's…
palmd | October 21, 2009How may topics are there on which Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Arianna Huffington, Bill Maher, and now Louis Farrakhan can agree?
One, and one only: flu vaccination.
Let's give a run down of the "reasoning":
Glenn Beck: the safest option is doing the exact opposite of what the government recommends.
Limbaugh won't get one because HHS Secretary Sibelius recommends it
HuffPo: need i say more?
Maher: too bat-shit insane to think properly about it
Farrakahn thinks it's a plot to reduce the Malthusian crush of minorities
Anything that unites these folks just has to be wrong.
palmd | October 20, 2009Michigan has suffered enough. We've been devastated by economic and manufacturing changes, leading to mass unemployment, poverty, and poor education. That last one is really killing us.
According to news reports, more than half of Michiganders plan to forgo vaccination, mostly for reasons that betray a lack of education. This is at a time when schools across the state are closing their doors because of the flu. They aren't closing their doors out of irrational fears, or for quarantine or isolation purposes, but because so many people are sick that it's not worth it to keep the doors open…
palmd | October 14, 2009First let me remind you that I've written extensively about HPV infection, cervical cancer, and Gardasil, the vaccine to prevent these. The links are at the bottom of the post for your reference.
OK, here's the deal. A bloggy friend of mine is dealing with some serious health concerns due to HPV infection. I've written lots of pieces about the more intimate side of medicine, but no one can tell it like a patient. How someone deals with disease is a personal matter, and she has decided to "come out" and share her story in order to help others. (Digression: a great book called Everything…
palmd | October 11, 2009I was going to try to sleep in this morning but my kid couldn't find her femur---long story. So I figured I might as well brew up a pot of Pal's Special, put up some Irish steel cut oatmeal, and review this weeks insanity.
This has been a rough week for the public's health education. The flu pandemic is still on the rise, and if trends continue, we will hit a record number of cases quite soon. Currently the best primer on influenza is Joe Albietz's, which I encourage you to read. But rumors about the flu are spreading nearly as fast as the virus, and we need a nearly real-time response to…
palmd | October 9, 2009Alternative medicine boosters promote bad health practices that hurt real people---that's been a theme in my writing for nearly three years. It's bad enough that they sell people fake cures and encourage them to avoid real medical care, but apparently, that's not enough anymore. It's getting to the point where they might as well line their victims up against a wall and shoot them. You see now, not satisfied with their current body count, they are suing the FDA to remove the current pandemic flu vaccine. This not only affects the members of their medical cults, but all of us.
According…
palmd | October 5, 2009From time to time, my wife or one of our friends will forward one of the latest health rumors going through the email lists in our community. The usual email list is the one that goes out to moms of young kids living in our ethnic/geographic community. Usually I shrug it off, but every once in a while, my wife and I get fed up and try to spread the truth.
The latest was sent by a friend and colleague who took one look at it and thought, "I bet this'll piss off Pal." She was right. The email contained a link to a notorious anti-vaccination site, and to one post in particular that repeats…
palmd | October 2, 2009Of course you know what my answer will be. It was predictable that the death of a girl shortly after receiving an HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer would attract the immoral agents of the anti-vaccine movement. Like zombies to brains, they descend on the tragedy, ready to consume it and gain strength. And just as zombies will eat anything cerebral, even Dana Ullman's brains, the fact that the vaccine didn't cause the death won't slow them down a bit. (Have I finished straining the zombie analogy? Maybe...)
The media certainly loves this story. What could be better than a poor,…