(The picture is of my son’s leg after getting his vaccinations)

Andrew Wakefield kicked off the anti vaccination movement with his paper published in 1998 that claimed to show a link between Autism and vaccines. His  findings  have been proven false over and over again. It was also found that he most likely faked his data.

Last week  the UK’s General Medical Council found that Andrew Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” when doing his research. And now The Lancet (who published the paper) has issued a full retraction.

This is very good news and I hope that this will help put parents concerns about vaccinating their children to rest.

In other news, Bill Gates has committed $10 Billion (yes Billion!)  to develop and deliver vaccines to children in the developing world. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

I get a daily email from the American Council on Science and Health called “Health Facts and Fears”. In that news letter Dr Gilbert Ross is quoted as saying of Bill Gates, “We must give credit to him for taking a very effective, targeted, lifesaving approach to charitable giving as opposed to activists, who prefer to wage irrational attacks on substances that have no nexus with human health.”

I’m a Mac girl but this makes me want to buy a PC!

The HPV vaccine has been in the news a lot lately, when a British girl died shortly after being vaccinated. (The vaccine was ruled out as a cause for her death.) So, how safe is the HPV vaccine? Safe. But, to see how safe, check out this great visualization chart by the folks at Information is Beautiful.

How Safe is the HPV Vaccine

Rob T. over at Science-Based Parenting blog just posted a review of tonight’s Dateline NBC special, Dose of Controversy. He says that although Matt Lauer interviewed several people to refute the claim that vaccines cause autism, including reporter Brian Deer and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, in the end, Matt dropped the ball.

So they explained the controversy, and they had some good takeaways for parents, but all in all, Dateline failed to spend enough time pounding home the multiple studies that have shown no link between vaccines and autism.  Sure, they mentioned the conflicting studies in passing a couple of times, but then they spent an entire segment on an 11-year-old getting a controversial treatment at Dr. Wakefield’s Thoughtful House.  If they truly wanted to have their show be science based, they would have spent a segment on those other studies.

Head on over there and read Rob’s entire review.

Skepdad compiled a fantastic list of blogs, book recommendations, and other links:

These are sites I read, books I reference, documents I consult, or information I find otherwise useful and interesting. I’ve put it here specifically to be a central hub of information (hopefully useful for others) for all things skeptical, science, parenting, educational, or otherwise tangential to that.

Check it out.  You will be reading for days and days.

“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!”

I’ve always been a skeptical person, even as a child. When my Dad explained the idea of Santa Claus to me, I pointed out that we didn’t have a fireplace for Santa to enter. Then I did some research and compared my Dad’s handwriting to the sample Santa left next to the cookies, and that was the end of that. As I became an adult, my skepticism continued. When they said eggs were bad for us, I read the fine print. Yes, eggs have 71% of your daily cholesterol intake, but if you eat them in moderation, they provide exceptional nutrition.

All this changed when I had a baby.

» Continue reading “Post from Jennie M.: The Great Baby Bottle Scare of 2008″

Two weeks ago, the New York Times published an article called “Debunking an Autism Theory”, which traced the history of the purported link between autism and the mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. It was great timing for me, because I was teaching about the scientific method in one of my classes, mainly comprised of college sophomores. This is the way science is supposed to work, I told them. Someone raised the question of whether a normal practice was putting kids at risk, which is something we’d really want to know if it were true.  They did a study—perhaps not the greatest study, but it was a start—and then other researchers joined in. But after the first study raised the question, no evidence could be found to support the idea that the vaccine cause autism.  Study after study was conducted, hundreds of thousands of children were examined, and there was just no evidence for this claim.  Finally, according to the Times, an attempt to repeat the original study resulted in failure. Science did what it was supposed to do: asked an important question, considered it carefully, collected objective data, and came to a conclusion. The conclusion is clear: the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. 

» Continue reading “Really, it’s not the vaccine…”

I’m not pregnant yet and my husband and I have been trying for a while, which is pretty fun, but we recently went to a doctor to help things along a bit. (That’s a subject for another post.) When I mentioned to a friend of mine that that we are going to need a little help from the doctor, my friend looked concerned and said, “I prefer Eastern medicine to Western Medicine in general. Western medicine waits until you’re sick to do anything, but Eastern medicine is about overall health and preventive care.” He then went on to say that Western doctors want you sick because that’s how they make their money.

» Continue reading “Post #2 Electric Boogaloo or Why I Trust My Doctor”