Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I wouldn’t be surprised at all that, if Jenny McCarthy were impaled on a unicorn’s horn, she’d blame vaccines. After all, her organization Generation Rescue has shamefully blamed them on totally unrelated things before, and no doubt will again.

This is a serious topic, since the antivaxxers are a public health menace, and the rise of preventable diseases can in many cases be traced back to their propaganda. But sometimes, just sometimes, mocking them is the way to go.

Hey, antivaxxers! I just wanted to send you guys a quick note of thanks for all the work you do.

For example, that whole thing about getting mumps to resurge due to lower vaccinations rates in the UK? That’s very cool. We all missed mumps so much.

Also, the way you guys dupe parents is simply brilliant!

You’ve been pretty effective getting the word out, especially the way you market yourselves as just trying to be questioning, just trying to get all the facts out. It works! You’ve been able to trick inquisitive, rational people into thinking maybe you’re onto something, when of course we all know you’re using outdated ideas, twisted facts, and sometimes out-and-out lies (which, of course, appeals to people prone to conspiracy thinking anyway). I mean, taking something that almost certainly has nothing to do with vaccinations but making that a meme spreading across the media? Great stuff! And the way you viciously attack people who disagree with you? Fantastic!

But you should really sit back and take a look at Suzanne Somers. Now there’s someone who takes incoherent nonsense about cancer and is able to market and spin it into quite an industry for herself. And who can blame her? She gets on Oprah, CNN, radio shows… and the only cost is a maybe a few thousand people dying of cancer because they tried her provably wrong "cures" instead of seeking real medical help. But hey! We all have to die someday! I mean, let’s have some perspective here. After all, what has science ever done for us?

Hat tip to Gerick Lee and many others for these tips.

Just a few things from here and there:

1) The 126th Carnival of Space is spacing it up at The Gish Bar Times (where I think they serve nice cold Gish Gallops). You know the deal: astronomy, space, blog posts, etc. Go there and read good stuff!

2) Speaking of good stuff, my Hive Overmind colleague Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance is taking antivaxxers to task, and got a visit by none other than JB Handley, head of the mouthfoaming antivax group Age of Autism. Handley left some spin in the comments, and I’ve taken him to task there, asking him some simple questions about studies which show that everything he claims is wrong. We’ll see what happens there.

3) I forgot to post Script PhD’s interview with the Mythbusters from Comic Con! It’s old, I know, but you might like it. Scroll waaaay down to get to it. Unless you’re a Lost or Fringe fan, then you can read the whole thing.

According to Wikipedia, the last naturally occurring incident of smallpox (Variola minor) happened on this date in 1977:

By the end of 1975, smallpox persisted only in the Horn of Africa. Conditions were very difficult in Ethiopia and Somalia, where there were few roads. Civil war, famine, and refugees made the task even more difficult. An intensive surveillance and containment and vaccination program was undertaken in early and mid-1977. The last naturally occurring case of indigenous smallpox (Variola minor) was diagnosed in Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook in Merca, Somalia, on 26 October 1977.

In the 20th century, smallpox is estimated to have killed hundreds of millions of people. Hundreds of millions. Imagine the United States — the entire country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic — empty, devoid of people, dead. Smallpox wiped out that many people with room to spare.

And yet, today, it’s gone.

Why do you think that is? Homeopathy? Detoxification? Thinking good thoughts?

Nope. Vaccinations. A global campaign was undertaken in 1950, and within 30 years smallpox was struck from the face of the Earth.

Hey Jenny McCarthy, Meryl Dorey, and all you antivaxxers and your ilk: got a response to this? Still want to claim vaccines don’t work? Still want to stop people from getting them? Do you want to see this happen to children all over the planet again (WARNING – SERIOUSLY! -VERY DISTURBING IMAGE). Because if you are successful in your campaign to stop vaccinations, that’s what we’ll be facing again.

Vaccines are perhaps the single greatest triumph of modern medicine. Yet a vocal minority willing to trash facts, spin the truth, and generally spout misinformation is putting not only themselves but you, me, and everyone at risk.

Happy anniversary, smallpox, gone these past 32 years. And may I add, good damn riddance. May reason, rationality, and science-based medicine do the same for every other threat to the health and well being of the human race as well.

Tip o’ the syringe to Reddit.

Skeptic Michael Shermer wrote an open letter to antivaxxer Bill Maher, and to be frank, Shermer hit it out of the park. There’s nothing I need to or can add to what he wrote. Go read it.

Fighter for truth and science Ben Goldacre tweeted a link to a nifty blog post showing just how safe the Gardasil HPV vaccine is. Using easy-to-understand graphics, the post (on the very nice Information is Beautiful blog) makes it very clear that comparing the good it does to the very tiny risk, Gardasil is a monumental achievement. Actually, just all on its own it’s a big advancement in the fight against cancer. The post also puts it in place among other low-risk dangers like getting hit by lightning or being killed in an earthquake. I like that; I myself have compared it with dying from falling off a chair.

Also, there is a website called the Vaccine Information and Awareness Service (gotta love that URL) which provides a great repository of info about the truly awful shenanigans of Meryl Dorey and the (ironically-named) Australian Vaccination Network, the loudest and — amazingly, given how reality-free these people tend to be — perhaps least-accurate antivax group in Australia. It’s a good place to go when you hear the latest health scare nonsense from the AVN. I’m glad so many people are rising up against the voices of scare-mongering and antiscience. They pose a real health threat, as far too many people have learned.

While I’m at it, my friend and pediatrician Joe Albietz has another slam-dunk article about the awful antivax nonsense being spread about the H1N1 vaccine.

One of the problems with being an ideologue who abandons reality is that it makes for very, very strange bedfellows.

For example, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — two guys who would rather soul kiss Michael Moore than be identified as lefties — have both jumped on the antivax bandwagon. Beck is spouting long-debunked paranoid antivax rhetoric, and Limbaugh is, well, he’s just being Limbaugh. He’s long planted his flag in knee-jerk anti-government silliness, never admitting that maybe, just maybe, sometimes the government is right.

I don’t know who this speaks worse for; the antivaxxers or the talk show bloviators.

In the end, though, we all lose. Because either way, this shows that nonsense doesn’t have political boundaries. Once you step off that narrow path that is reality, you’re surrounded by antireality in every direction. So it doesn’t matter if you face left or right; you’re still wrong.

If you want arguments rebutting the offal flying from the above group, go to Antiantivax, Joe Albietz’s swine flu FAQ, and Steve Novella’s antivax FAQ.