TAM stands for The Amaz!ng Meeting and is put on by the James Randi Educational Foundation every year in Las Vegas. According to the web site, “TAMs are the premier conferences for critical thinkers across the globe, and always feature great speakers, good times, and a warm and wonderful community. TAM 7 will continue that tradition.”

I went to my first TAM last year and had an absolute blast! I highly recommend going to it if you can. Beside all of the great speakers and fantastic company, if you are a teacher they offer Continuing Education Unit Credits. » Continue reading “Registration for TAM 7 is open!”

This month’s Skeptical Parent Crossing is up, with thought-provoking discussions from a number of skeptical parents!!! There’s an interesting personal narrative about our favorite topic (vaccines and autism), a cliff-hanger on baby-food safety, our own Rational Moms article on organic baby food, and much more!

And note that this carnival will be held right here at Rational Moms next month! We’re looking forward to your submissions!

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last 3 months, I must tell you that I’ve been in my home, caring for my now-almost-10-week-old daughter, Lucidia. Aside from being the most adorable human being on this planet, I’m pretty sure she is also the happiest. She sleeps through the night, smiles all the time, is starting to giggle, and farts like a champ. Yes, she is truly her mother’s daughter.

The Family and Medical Leave Act stipulates that employers must give expecting women (as I was back in 2008) the option of taking up to 12 weeks off (unpaid, of course) in order to care for their newborns.

This means I go back to work next week… and I want to.

» Continue reading “She Works Hard for the Money”

Letters! We got letters!

I’m thrilled that anyone thinks we know the answers to these questions. After I answered an email a little while ago, we got another one:

Hello there. I am a soon-to-be skeptical Dad, and I have been reading
(and enjoying!) your site. (You can thank Phil Plait for that)

I was wondering if any of you have done research about organic foods?
Are they healthier for you and your kids then their normal
counterparts? Have there been any studies done? I have heard that
organic tomatoes can have a naturally produced pesticide in them that
can be worse then the ones they spray on.

It seems like organics would be better for you, but as you know, that
kind of thinking can get you in trouble.

Thank You,

Derek Cramer

» Continue reading “Super Baby Woo: Is Organic Baby Food Better?”

“Properly packaged, you can sell anything to an American.”
–Frank Zappa

New parents can be suckers for any product that claims to make their children smarter, safer, or healthier. And I can understand why. Who doesn’t want to make their child all that he or she can be? Unfortunately, manufacturers know this, and, in many cases, take advantage of this well-meaning instinct. From CDs and DVDs that purport to make your baby smarter, to gadgets that claim an inside knowledge of every baby’s woe, there’s always someone trying to make a quick buck through exploitive marketing.

» Continue reading “It’s All in the Marketing”

I had heard that the Huffington Post could be startlingly anti-vaccine, and sure enough, here is Jay Gordon’s post there. He says:

Let me state very simply, vaccines can cause autism.

» Continue reading “And More From Jay Gordon in the Huffington Post”

Well, we’re all about vaccines lately. This is a post from one of my online support groups. It is an email sent to everyone on his list by Dr. Jay Gordon, who is an avid supporter of attachment parenting as well as a vaccine “safety” advocate. » Continue reading “Dr. Jay Gordon’s Response to Vaccine Court Decision”

“As a follow up, this story was online today (February 12) :

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/12/autism.vaccines/index.html

A special vaccine court ruled that, in the case of three children, there was not enough evidence to support the claim that the MMR vaccine had caused autism. But there will be more court decisions to come. From the article:

“Since 2001, thousands of parents of autistic children have filed petitions seeking compensation from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program at Health and Human Services.

» Continue reading “Court Rules that Vaccines Didn’t cause Autism!”

Yesterday, a brief story appeared in the Times Online (UK) about how the data was fixed in the MMR/Autism study that sparked the current controversy.

The Sunday Times, along with the General Medical Council (our AMA), investigated into the claims made by Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study. In the original study, 8 of 12 families at one clinic blamed the MMR shot for their child’s autism. The Times reviewed medical documents and witnesses from the original study, and they have discovered that Dr. Wakefield changed and manipulated the patients’ data. In fact, in many cases, medical concerns regarding the child had been raised before the shot was administered.

If this one little study doesn’t sound like a big deal, here is an alarming fact from the article:

Despite involving just a dozen children, the 1998 paper’s impact was extraordinary. After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%. Populations acquire “herd immunity” from measles when more than 95% of people have been vaccinated.

Last week official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year, compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.

It will be interesting to see if the anti-vaccinators acknowledge this new information, or if they continue to gloss over the facts.

Please, please, please…vaccinate your kids.

A couple interesting vaccination discussions have come up lately on one of my online mom support bulletin boards. One was about the MMR vaccine, and how it is apparently difficult to get it split up these days. Some women were going as far as ordering their vaccines from somewhere so they could take the separate shots to their doctors. It’s disheartening to read this kind of paranoid buzz. But the more surprising post was a query about homeopathic vaccinations. » Continue reading “Homeopathic Vaccinations?”