vaccines

Claim: Vaccines cause Autism

by

Too my complete astonishment the claim still persists and so when challenged up pops stuff like this … why have autism rates gone up several orders of magnitude over the past fifteen – twenty years and why is autism virtually unheard of in the Amish community as the Amish don’t vaccinate? It is the anecdotal … Read more

Anti-Vax Lunacy “Melanie’s Marvelous Measles” gets trounced on Amazon reviews

by

Stephanie Messenger, an anti-vaccine advocate who truly believes that giving your kids Measles is the best approach, published a book on Amazon entitled “Melanie’s Marvelous Measles”. In this she advances the following absurd idea … Melanie’s Marvelous Measles was written to educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from … Read more

The Anti-vaccine movement – one picture is all you really need

by

Michael Hiltzik, the prize winning journalist and columnist, has a fabulous article in the LA Times entitled … “The toll of the anti-vaccination movement, in one devastating graphic“, you should check it out. He starts off with … Aaron Carroll today offers a graphic depiction of the toll of the anti-vaccination movement. (H/t: Kevin Drum.) It comes from a Council … Read more

Vaccines save lives … anti-vaccine beliefs kill.

by

25 year old Gareth Williams has become the first person with measles to die in the latest Swansea outbreak. So why in the 21st century, an age of highly effective vaccines, do we now once again have an outbreak of a very preventable highly infectious disease? It is all down to one man, Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced Doctor who was struck … Read more

Vaccines and Foreign aid

by

There is a great article in today’s UK Telegraph by Hugh Pennington , the emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen. It has been written in response to the news that Bill Gates and also the UK government have comitted huge sums to money, when  yesterday they pledged £814 million on top of the UK’s existing commitment to GAVI (the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation) of £680 million between 2011 and 2015.

Here are a couple of choice quotes that I’ve plucked out because I really like them …

Read more

Booted out of AutismOne

by

The AutismOne conference was greatly disrupted by a couple of skeptics who jumped up on stage carrying banners proclaiming “Death of all purveyors of Woo”, so they were ejected … er no, that is not quite right, so let us step back and get the facts right.

AutismOne is woo central for the anti-vax movement, this is the conference for the folks who believe that Vaccines cause Autism. There is one little problem with that belief, it is not true, there is no evidence for it. Many studies have been conducted and all conclude “No evidence”. Much of the current anti-vaccine hype comes from a chap called Andrew Wakefield who wrote a paper that linked vaccines to Autism, but a few serious problems later emerged. He had huge financial conflicts of interest and he also faked the data, so his paper was redacted and he was struck off the medical register for ethics violations (he cannot call himself a Dr in the UK anymore). So how did the AutismOne folks react when this happened last year? They gave him an award. Now that in itself tells you all you need to know about the credibility and ethics of these folks.

Read more