A little history and an explanation are in order.

Jessie and I started Rational Moms in October, 2008.  We knew we’d need more contributors to keep it going, so we put the word out.  Phil Plait was kind enough to help, and we received many emails from interested moms.  We picked a few and got going, and we’ve been lucky to have a great mix of contributors.  Recently, however, we’ve slowed down in terms of posting regular content.  I know for myself, this has involved a mix of extra family obligations due to illnesses of the elder folks and also wanting to get back to dramatic writing, which is ostensibly what I went to film school to do.  Oh, and being a parent didn’t make it any easier to get back to posting frequently.

Our male counterparts over at Science Based Parenting have been closely connected to us all along.  We have often been in contact, read each other’s posts, and our very own Laurie Tarr is part of SBP’s podcast, Parenting Beyond Belief.  We also both have had the good fortune to lean on sources from SBP’s name inspiration, Science Based Medicine.  With all of us working together, we can bring all our readers into one place, post more regularly, and unify all that testosterone and estrogen into one big rational gender balanced family of bloggy goodness.

We’re stronger together than apart.  So we want to take our readers along to our new home, where you’ll continue to see our posts, along with the writings of the fab dads who have been posting at SBP.  Rational Moms will still be here for a while, with all our old posts, but we might migrate old content over to Science Based Parenting in the future.

Monty and a camper at Camp Inquiry '09

Let me tell you a story about one of Monty’s songs. Monty and I met at Camp Inquiry last summer, where he taught songwriting to the campers during the day, and entertained us with his own songs around the campfire in the evenings. It is hard to say which of his songs was our favorite, since they were all so fun, but one that had everyone humming all week was his astronomy-based ditty Roundy Round. Monty couldn’t come to camp this year, so my Handsome Skeptic Husband brought along his twelve-string and played several Monty tunes each evening as we ate S’mores. On the first night of camp this year, Roundy Round was new to many of the campers, but the younger girls who had been at camp last year jumped up to dance and spin in circles as soon as it began. By the end of the week, all the campers knew the song. I was surprised, though, at the last campfire, to see kids of all ages, even teenagers, jump up and start spinning in circles to Roundy Round. In my experience, it takes a lot to get a teenager to act goofy in front of their peers, and to let go and have fun, rather than worry about how they look. But the infectious fun, and sneaky science, of a Monty song has the power to get a cool teenager to let loose and enjoy the moment.

You could wait until later in the fall to buy Monty’s new album, or you can play a part now in getting it produced. Monty is crowd-sourcing the cost to professionally produce this album by getting pledges on Kickstarter. You can listen to Episode 21 of Podcast Beyond Belief to hear Monty explain the whole project, or watch the video on the Kickstarter page.

Monty is already more than half way to his goal, but the deadline of August 22, 2010, is fast approaching. If, instead of waiting to buy the album later, you go to Kickstarter and pledge $20 now, you will receive a physical copy of the CD once it is ready, as well as two bonus MP3s. Of course you could pledge more to help him reach his goal faster. In fact, if you pledge $750 or more he’ll give you and your group a free concert. $2000 or more will even get you your very own song, based on your favorite science topic, included on the album! This is a great idea for your local skeptics group. Band together to raise $2000, and Monty will write a song specifically for your group. How awesome!

Watch this fan video my Handsome (and Multi-Talented) Skeptic Husband made for Monty’s song Roundy Round and try to picture 70 people around a campfire, singing about Copernicus, and dancing in circles. Because Monty makes science fun.

Roundy Round by Monty Harper

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the book and website we wish had been available when our children with autism were first diagnosed.

Autism misinformation clouds and is perpetuated by the Internet. We want to make accurate information about autism causation and therapies visible, accessible, and centralized.

Think of us as a little bit of Snopes for the autism community — trusted, accurate, and friendly.  Our essays will cover informed approaches to autism and autism treatments, as well as the personal experiences of people with autism and their families.

I’m adding them to the blog roll (the badly in need of updating blog roll, yeah, that one).  While I was perusing the site, one personal post by Devon Koren Asdell caught my eye.  She writes that she is positive vaccines did not cause her own child’s autism:

For some reason (I’m assuming due to the controversial and heated nature of the discussion), many people, upon learning that Aisling is autistic, ask me if I believe her early childhood vaccinations caused the condition. My answer to this is always, emphatically, “no.” Aisling did receive all of her vaccinations on time, and would occasionally become slightly feverish and irritable after those first few sets, but I personally never saw any evidence that Aisling regressed in development, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary compared to the little checklist of probable side-effects that the health department sent home with us.

Not wanting to offend anyone who might believe otherwise, Asdell offers this disclaimer:

I’m not about to try to “prove” or “disprove” that childhood vaccinations cause autism in children. What I am absolutely certain of, however, is that childhood vaccinations did not cause autism in my own child.

The accounts of her memories of her baby being “different” are poignant:

Once I knew what the symptoms were, I was able to backtrack through Aisling’s life and see evidence of the disorder everywhere. I could remember how difficult it was to get her to breastfeed when she was a small baby, because she seemed to dislike being snuggled up to me. I remembered how I’d heard all these stories about how breastfeeding brought you closer to your child, because they’d make eye-contact with you, interact with you, “bond” with you during those early moments. I remembered feeling like I must have been doing something wrong, or that she simply wasn’t interested in me, because she would actively avoid eye contact with me when I was breastfeeding her, and would only eat when she was very, very hungry or when she wanted to go to sleep. I remember feeling as if I was just a “food machine” a lot of the time — Aisling really only seemed interested in interacting with me when she wanted something and couldn’t get it.

While Asdell is very, very careful not to step on the toes of anyone reading her personal account, she does offer this at the end of her post:

Autism didn’t “happen” to her; autism is very much a part of who she is, who she’s always been. I feel she’s imperfectly perfect just as she is, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

This is a sentiment I’ve come across a few times, that considering a child “different” rather than “damaged” is actually much better for the parent and empowering for the child.  While Asdell herself would not come out and say this, viewing these kids as damaged probably has severe negative impacts on parents’ emotional states, in addition to lowering vaccination rates.

We’re looking for someone to take on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment: spend a Month at the Museum, to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From October 20 to November 18, 2010, this person’s mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here and reporting your experience to the outside world. There will be plenty of time to explore the Museum and its exhibits after hours, with access to rarely seen nooks and crannies of this 77-year-old institution.

If the contestant is successful in staying inside for one month, he or she will win $10,000 and a bunch of tech gadgets. Plus, you get to explore as much as you want! The museum has a lot of very cool things, like the only German U-Boat in the U.S., a coal mine, and the Silver Streak passenger train.

The contest information page is here. But hurry–submissions are due by August 11th.

Click here for super cool video.

“Here, let me kiss it and make it better.”

— moms from time immemorial

In a recent post on wellness and woo, a commenter pointed me to one of the most interesting articles I’ve ever read about medicine: Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. The most interesting part of the article (for me) was the idea that — rather than dismissing the placebo response as gullibility and a nuisance to research — it’s an effect that scientists can research, to benefit patients.

One finding was that the health-care practitioner’s empathy can give the placebo response a huge boost:

Volunteers in the third group got the same sham treatment from a clinician who asked them questions about symptoms, outlined the causes of IBS, and displayed optimism about their condition. Not surprisingly, the health of those in the third group improved most. In fact, just by participating in the trial, volunteers in this high-interaction group got as much relief as did people taking the two leading prescription drugs for IBS. And the benefits of their bogus treatment persisted for weeks afterward, contrary to the belief—widespread in the pharmaceutical industry—that the placebo response is short-lived.

That immediately reminded me of this cartoon discussion of Homeopathy. Despite being just a cartoon, it’s correct that people derive benefit merely from talking to a practitioner about their symptoms.

There’s one big obstacle to using the placebo response in a clinical setting: by definition, the patient has to believe that s/he is getting a real treatment in order for it to work. If the practitioner is intentionally lying, that raises real ethical questions. And if the practitioner is not lying (and believes the bogus treatment is real), that’s even more dangerous. The intentional liar (like the mom who kisses the boo-boo), knows to get a real doctor if the condition is serious. As outlined in the cartoon above, a Homeopath will often continue to recommend only placebos, even in cases (eg. cancer, vaccines) where that advice is totally inappropriate.

Even aside from the danger, there’s the ethical question of selling goods and services through deception and fraud. Here’s a personal example of what I mean:

A couple of years ago, one of my kids came down with pink-eye (conjunctivitis). So I went to a local pharmacy (here in Zürich) and asked the pharmacist to recommend a treatment. I bought the one she recommended. When I brought it home to my husband, he pointed out something I hadn’t noticed — the product was marked “Homéopathie” — and he told me that means it’s just a placebo.

Now, I consider myself to be a relatively well-informed and well-educated person. But a couple years ago (when I bought this product), I had no idea what “Homeopathy” was. As soon as my husband told me it was a placebo, my immediate reaction was that that can’t be. A professional pharmacist isn’t going to recommend me a placebo when I ask for a medicine for my sick child, right? Homeopathy sounds so homey — I figured it must just be another word for “home remedies.” You know, like herbal tea, which might potentially have a physical effect (even if it’s not the same as medicine).

Nope. Homeopathy is not “home remedies.” I later learned that Homeopathy is water. It is placebo pills whose active ingredient is water. (For details, see this earlier post on Homeopathic teething remedies.)

Once I found this out, it pissed me off that the pharmacist would take advantage of my ignorance like that. I know that I’m not an expert on medicines, which is why I went to a professional — and I expected ethical, professional advice. I won’t call it fraud because I’m not 100% certain she didn’t say the word “Homeopathy” at some point when she was pulling this choice off the shelf for me. But since I had no idea what Homeopathy was, the word would have gone right past me without my notice. She certainly didn’t make it clear that she was suggesting an “alternative” or “complementary” medicine. If pharmacists’ professional organizations don’t have guidelines about this sort of unethical behavior, they should.

So the question remains: Is it possible to use the placebo response ethically and responsibly? It’s quite effective and useful in a lot of cases — it seems a shame not to use it. Based on the findings in the above-linked article, I think the following would work:

Create a class of medical practitioners who have enough medical training to dispense basic advice and (important!) who know how to identify symptoms that are serious enough to require referral to a doctor. This practitioner would listen carefully to the patient’s symptoms and offer appropriate suggestions. For example: “Take an aspirin, and if the fever doesn’t go down in a few hours, call a doctor,” or “If you get plenty of rest, your condition should go away in a week or so — come see me again in a few days, and we’ll see how it’s progressing.”

Logically, this should yield the benefits of the placebo effect without the disadvantages. It wouldn’t give any money to “big pharma” — or to the big business of Homeopathy — but it might help some patients. Thoughts?

What present? She’s trying to raise enough money to send adorable Will Phillips and his folks to Dragon*Con. Will is the brave Arkansas boy who refused to recite the pledge at school until gay people are given liberty and justice, by being allowed to marry and adopt.

Heidi interviewed Will and his Dad on Podcast Beyond Belief Episode 17.

So head over there and give a few bucks (or 20), then go register yourself for Dragon*Con, and you can meet little Will over Labor Day weekend and share his birthday cake!

Camp Inquiry 2010 is coming up! From July 18-24, boys and girls ages 7 to 16 will ponder the ideas of science and reason. The theme for this year’s camp is “Young Minds, Big Questions,” and skeptic luminaries such as Ben Radford, Dale McGowan, and James Randi will all be there–so your kids should go too!

California is currently experiencing an whooping cough epidemic. Five infants have died already, and the state is urging everyone there to get vaccinated if they have not been already. The peak whooping cough season is the summer, and health officials have already seen a FOUR-fold increase in cases over 2009. Yikes. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate!

More American women are choosing not to have children. A new report said that nearly 20 percent of women remain childless, compared with 10 percent in the 1970s. When you read that the average cost of raising a child is now a staggering $222,360, without college costs, it’s not really surprising that some couples are opting out of parenting.

The largest study done on cell phone towers and childhood cancers has been concluded. The British researchers found that living close to a cell tower did not increase the chances of a child developing cancer.

Did you hear about the 7th graders who discovered a mysterious cave on Mars? The students were participating in a Mars Student Imaging Program at the Mars Space Flight Facility, and found what looks to be a hole in the roof of a cave on Mars. Cool!

I couldn’t agree more with #1 and #3, and my husband and I are still–TWO kids later–trying to do #8. Sigh.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!