Vaccination inanity
palmd | September 27, 2009Warning: this post has a long, boring prologue. Proceed at your own risk.
I am an expert in the prevention and treatment of adult diseases. That's what I do from well before the sun rises until well after it sets every day of every week. To become an expert and retain this status is not a simple task. After college I completed four years of medical school, three years of residency in my specialty, and chose to become "board-certified". There are doctors who are not board certified in their specialties, and there's nothing nefarious about that---all that is required to practice medicine…
palmd | September 6, 2009Doug Bremner has a blog. That blog sucks.
Bremner is an apparently well-regarded psychiatrist, and takes a refreshing look at the influence of industry not just on pharmaceuticals but on the conduct of science itself. His outspoken views have led to attempts to squelch his academic freedoms. But his sometimes-heroic record does not excuse dangerous idiocy.
I can understand how wading into the shit pool that is conflict of interest can leave one cynical. But cynicism and suspicion turned up to "11" is no longer bravery---it's crankery. It's not his snarkiness that burns---it's his…
palmd | August 13, 2009There is no clear definition of "quackery". Stephen Barrett, founder of Quackwatch, discusses the slippery nature of the definition and the issues of intent and competence. Defining quackery of necessity involves some subjective judgment, but there are objective parameters we can apply. If someone is hyping a medical practice without adequate scientific evidence and is profiting from it, they are a quack.
Quackery differs from "fraud", which is a legal concept. In my state health care fraud is defined as:
Intentional deception or misrepresentation made by a person with the knowledge…
palmd | June 15, 2009It's just disgusting. Autism spectrum disorders are an important health problem (although not the "epidemic" claimed by some). While real scientists and clinicians (and parents) are looking for causes and treatments based on evidence, fake experts are pulling "answers" out of their backsides. Studies of families with autism have shown specific genetic defects associated with autism, and while this applies only to a small percentage of cases, it is an example of a good lead. Even if a minority of people with autism have similar genetic defects, these findings can lead to more generalizable…
palmd | June 10, 2009The Huffington Post put up a good piece about vaccination. It's by Dr. Harvey Karp, and he does an especially nice job looking at some of the "scary numbers" used by the infectious disease promoters.
He's also getting swamped with wackaloon comments, so if you don't mind giving HuffPo your clicks, you might want to check it out.
BTW, JB Handley has written that Karp is, "a completely arrogant asshole with little grasp of the facts," so you know his creds are legit.
Addendum:
Holy Karp! My head re-asploded! Thanks to our alert reader below, I see that Karp only made a little sense. I…
palmd | May 18, 2009In relation to my recent bits about Jenny McCarthy and her antivaccination nonsense, reader Isabel asks the following:
I've been following this discussion for awhile, PalMD, and while I agree that JM sounds like a nut, and while I feel sorry for her kid for being stuck with her as a mother, it's hard for me to see her as the evil force she is being portrayed as.
For starters, through no fault of her own, she's obviously not particularly bright, which makes it hard to take her seriously, in either a positive or negative way. She seems like countless other neurotic women who are desperate for…
palmd | April 23, 2009It's no secret that I think the Huffington Post is an teeming den execrable pseudoscientific snakes. Still, when it comes to fanning the vaccination manufatroversy, they are really off the deep end. Take the latest piece of dreck on Jenny McCarthy, GoD (Google Doctorate). It's written by the infamous "Dr." Patricia Fitzgerald, and this is where I get cranky. Worse than all the drivel spouted by Jenny is HuffPo giving their imprimatur of authority to Fitzgerald. Let me 'splain.
Look, there's a lot of ways to legitimately gain the title of "doctor". The most common are to go to a…
palmd | April 23, 2009Orac isn't known for his sound bites. He tends to write pieces which, in the blogosphere, might be considered rather long, and for good reason---he has a lot to say, and he says it well. But sometimes there is a gem of insolence that is so apt, it must be reshared:
But what really makes this analogy so brain dead is that it was the very epidemiological methods that have so consistently failed to find any correlation between vaccines and autism that led scientists to realize that smoking is strongly correlated with cancer. Jim [Carrey], while accepting the epidemiology linking tobacco smoke…
palmd | April 6, 2009I don't know what it's like to be autistic. I don't know what it's like to raise an autistic child. For this knowledge, I have to rely on others, and there are plenty of talented bloggers out there who write about these experiences all the time. What I do know is that there is a cadre of autism "activists" out there who do a great disservice to people who do know something about these experiences.
One such example is Dr. Jerry Kartzinel, who co-wrote Jenny McCarthy's latest monument to her own idiocy. "Dr. Jerry" is infamous among many parents of autistic children for this quote:
Autism,…
palmd | April 2, 2009"You know the moon landings were ginned up on a Hollywood sound stage, right?"
"Hey, how come it's so hard to get the Truth out there about the 9/11 attacks being staged by the CIA/Mossad?"
"I don't know why they think I'm crazy; the aliens really did probe my anus."
We hear crap like this all the time, but these wackos never get ink in major media outlets because, well, they are so clearly paranoid and deranged. So why do we see a similarly paranoid, deranged person like Jenny McCarthy on the pages of Time magazine? Is it because she's more photogenic than most alien abductees? Is it…
palmd | March 4, 2009OK, the title is inaccurate. Kirby is not bound by the same code of ethics as researchers and doctors, so perhaps he's not unethical. But his latest rant in HuffPo encourages unethical behavior. Honestly, I'm getting tired of writing about this guy, but he just keeps bringing the stupid, and something about that just calls out for a response.
So what's so horrible about his latest hunk of drivel? Well, first he starts with a blatant misinterpretation of the truth:
It is not accurate for members of the media to report that the link between vaccines and autism has been "disproven."…
palmd | February 25, 2009The Autism Omnibus Trial is a conundrum for the infectious disease promotion movement. Still, their ability to pick up the goalposts and run is unmatched, and that is just what David Kirby and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have done in today's Huffington Post.
To review, the recent Omnibus decision looked at a few test cases for the "vaccine causes autism" hypothesis, and tossed them for being inconsistent with reality. This correlates well with what science has to say about the issue.
But of course the overwhelming evidence isn't going to deter these superheroes. They know the answer, and they're…
palmd | February 19, 2009It seems the same questions keep coming up when looking at the cult leaders of the infectious disease promotion movement. When you listen to them preach or read their liturgy you can't help thinking, "dumb, evil, or both?" I think I'm going to vote for "both" when it comes to Deirdre Imus. Her sermon last week in the Huffington Post was so far over the top that my nose is still bleeding from climbing her tower of intellectual excrement.
Her title advises health consumers, "On Vaccinations: Consider the Source and Follow the Money."
I don't know what that means, but Deirdre explains, "…
palmd | February 18, 2009There was a piece of good news on vaccine front this week. The first judgments from the Autism Omnibus Trial were announced, and the special masters (who served as judges) agreed with the rest of the reality-based community in ruling that vaccines do not cause autism. The rulings weren't subtle, using phrases such as "misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment". This is the Dover of the "other" ID promotion movement.*
Like any cult, however, the infectious disease promotion movement is unlikely to be persuaded by any level of evidence. This, despite…