Are their laws against the subjection of children who cannot possibly know this information to protect them from their parents insanity?

http://shirt.woot.com/Friends.aspx?k=5338

Thought not.

Happy now?

I support vaccination 100% and feel the government in all countries needs to advertise its importance more efficiently and explain the benefits more readily. I know in Australia there is practically no government based media on the subject. I can’t think of the last time I saw an ad on TV regarding the issue. Actually I was in the doctor’s office the other day and recall not seeing any posters on the wall regarding anything other than getting a tetanus shot.

Maybe we could point the finger at the government, rather than some hack celebrity. I mean … ask who Jenny McCarthy is here in Australia and I bet you get maybe 80 – 90% of people going .. “huh .. who?”

Let’s take the focus off these anti-vaxxers and promote vaccination itself and its benefits more readily.

Negative advertising is still advertising.

Phil, what has Jenny McCarthy, an American ex-playboy bunny and now well publicised American antivaxxer, got to do with the antivax situation in the UK? I know this is a little tongue in cheek but, wouldn’t people in the UK get their antivax information from .. UK based antivaxxers? What has McCarthy got to do with it? Is this a vague connection you are making based upon your obsession with McCarthy?

It’s the other side of the world. You seem to be making out she is solely responsible for the entire world antivax movement. … huh ?

Nowhere in that BBC article does it even mention her name. Mate … I know you have issues Jenny McCarthy .. but come on. This is bad journalism. Pointing out the BBC news report would have been enough on its own. The way you did it just makes you look like you have an obsession with her.

I’ve been thinking lately that the anti-evolution impulse comes from the “black and white” thinking that religious fundamentalists tend to have: you’re either good or you’re evil. You’re with us or against us. You’re a patriot or you hate America. Etc. (Not saying that others don’t have this kind of thinking, but fundies are big on it.)

Evolution suggests that the differences between individuals and species isn’t a matter of rigidly-defined kind, but of degree, which is harder to pin down. It means ambiguity and uncertainty. It forces one to think about one’s ethics and makes it harder to judge and condemn others. Religious fundamentalists prefer things to be clear-cut: men wear blue and are dominant, women wear pink and are submissive. Women are either virgins or evil whores. X is always right, Y is always wrong.

The headline of the Reuters article says “Homeopathy Patients Often Say Health Improved”. When combating anti-science, one should look at how the media does their reporting. Besides the headline, the first 2 paragraphs are uncritical of the study’s findings and source Claudia Witt, a proponent of homeopathy. Her saying the study does not allow for determination of causality between homeopathic treatments and well-being does little to minimize the impact of the headline. The upshot of the whole study is that, 8 years after initial complaint, people felt better. The Reuter’s article and the study leads you to believe that it was due to their homeopathic treatment. They could just as easily have reported that people who wore blue jeans on their first visit to the clinic were found to have reduced or no symptoms after 8 years. So the whole study, specifically because it had no control group, is meaningless – as was my more precise headline that some people had died after being treated. I also do not make any determination of causality between death and any homeopathic remedy.

The news here is that BMC published a useless study in the first place, and that Reuters followed up with an article – both lending legitimacy to a form of alternative treatment which has been shown to be no better than placebo. That was the whole, sarcastic point of my blog post, and Phil happened to give it a wider audience.

I appreciate the criticism, but I’ll stand by what I wrote.

This implies that they died because of homeopathic treatment. I’m no fan of homeopathy, but BA’s research here especially on 2nd hand stories (like the recent abstinence pledge story) has been rather shoddy. So, I read the relevant pieces.

What is actually said at Way of the Woo is this:

Based on the evidence provided in the report, I’ve formed my own conclusion: some patients who receive homeopathic treatments are likely to die or go missing.

. . . which actually means nothing. C’mon–”some?” “likely?”

The actual study was an observational prospective cohort study, which doesn’t require (necessarily) a control group. They started with 3709 patients; at the end of an 8 year follow up period, 32 patients were found to have died. There is no mention of the causes of death in this group, or if they were in any way related to either their homeopathic treatments or the reasons for which they sought homeopathic treatment.

The Reuters article was not rah-rah supportive at all. One of the study authors is quoted as saying “This observational study design does not allow (us) to determine any causality between the improvement and the given homeopathic remedy, nor does it exclude the placebo effect.” Moreover, the authors say that it’s not possible to tell whether the homeopathic treatments bestowed the benefits, because many patients also used other types of alternative care, as well as conventional medicine.

So basically, it’s a kind of useless study, that BA has made much ado about nothing.

http://channels.isp.netscape.com/news/story.jsp?floc=ne-story-9-l9&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20090109%2F1824677862.htm&sc=1500

Except kids don’t get much of a choice — their parents make the call on what shots they get. Call me nosy, but I hate to read about a five year old suffering from something that could easily be avoided but wasn’t, because his or her parents are ignorant, regardless of if the five year old is my family member or not.

And babies don’t get MMR vaccines until age 1. Ideally, they shouldn’t be around a population where they can get MMR, but if we have crowds of children and adults without vaccinations.

(for the England & Wales areas anyway)

Bath Uni had to offer vaccinations when I was there in 2005.

Bring on the geology vs ID book though, that’s going to make its way to the top of my list. Well, after I have the money to buy a certain book about potential end-of-the-world scenarios anyway