• Do humans have reproductive limits? And if not physical, how about ethical?

• Scientists give a big thumbs up to Obama’s environmental plan.

• A handy list of all the biggest “global cooling” hacks, now in bar graph form.

• Poor Tesla. The bad news just keeps on comin’.

• A universal flu vaccine nears completion—but will we have the cash to distribute it?

• Finally, some sliding profits news to be happy about. Oh no wait, never mind.

• Senate decides (thank goodness) that children and health insurance are two things that should really continue to go together.

How many times do we have to say it? At least once more, apparently: The anti-vaxer movement is wrong, it’s dangerous, and it’s having major effects on public health. Like this one: More than 12,000 cases of measles, around four-fifths of which were in unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated children, surfaced in Europe in the two-year period from 2006 through 2007, with an additional 6,000 infections reported in the first three quarters of 2008.

These results come from a study published in the upcoming issue of The Lancet, and were written up by Mark Muscat of Copenhagen’s Statens Serum Institut. The study includes data from 32 countries, though 85 percent of the cases were in Romania, Germany, the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy—all of which have vaccination rates below 90 percent, well below the World Health Organization’s 95 percent recommendation.

So here it is, a highly-contagious and also highly-preventable disease making its way into children because their parents saw some study or read some pamphlet filled with inaccurate and scientifically disproved information.

To make matters worse, there’s also the class problem that anti-vaxers are causing:

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This month in DISCOVER, Mark Anderson has a feature story on the medical controversy surrounding shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The crux of the debate is this:

On one side of the courtroom, representing mainstream medical opinion, are those who believe shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a valid diagnosis. They say that decades of clinical experience and criminal confessions—in which a parent has admitted to shaking a child with symptoms of SBS—bolster their case to the point of near-certainty. On the other side, a growing number of skeptics are now claiming that the evidence for the syndrome rests on dubious medical ground with questionable biophysical models supporting it.

The confusion centers around the trio of symptoms that lead to an SBS diagnosis: bleeding between the brain and skull, bleeding behind the retinas, and brain swelling. Conventional medical wisdom holds that some or all of these mean a baby is suffering from SBS. But a growing number of skeptics say the symptom list could come from any number of other sources, from infections to diet to a fall.

While the final medical verdict is still up in the air, the issue highlights the tricky—and potentially devastating—fallout when medical uncertainty headbutts the legal system. SBS presents a clear dilemma: If a baby has it, the “fact” that the baby’s death or injuries were caused by SBS is in and of itself evidence that a parent, caretaker, or other handler intentionally committed a crime.

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Newsweek reports that the children displaced by Hurricane Katrina who spent the longest amount of time in government-provided temporary housing—a.k.a. FEMA’s toxic trailers—are “the sickest I have ever seen in the U.S.,” according to Irwin Redlener, Children’s Health Fund president and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The ailments, according to a study of 261 post-Katrina kids, range from mental health disorders to anemia, and are astonishingly widespread: Forty-one percent of the children are anemic—twice the rate found in minors in New York City homeless shelters—and 42 percent have respiratory infections and other problems likely linked to the excessive formaldehyde in the trailers.

As we’ve discussed on Discoblog, formaldehyde is a probable carcinogen as well as an allergen, and is used in many products, including the wood used to build these disaster homes. The formaldehyde gas levels in FEMA’s trailers were so toxic that Katrina victims began complaining of illnesses, including breathing difficulties, bloody noses, and even gas-linked deaths, almost immediately after they moved into them.

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Now that the worldwide euphoria over Obama’s victory is abating, it’s time to look at some dismal facts: The air is still thick with pollution, the globe is still warming, and the science community is in a frenzy over who the president-elect will choose to head up the battered, broken EPA.

The short and distinguished list of candidates includes include former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection head Kathleen McGinty; California Air Resources Board chairwoman Mary Nichols; Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection head Ian Bowles; Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius; New Jersey environmental commissioner Lisa Jackson; and, finally, environmental lawyer, activist, and prolific blogger Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

While all are talented and have the potential to breathe life into the foundering agency, the one receiving the biggest pounding is Kennedy. Across the Internet, science writers have lambasted the longtime environmentalist for his alleged “anti-science” views—in particular, his public criticism of vaccines.

There’s no question that Kennedy has been vocal in his campaign against the CDC, particularly regarding its stance on Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative. In 2005, he published a controversial piece in Salon charging that the government had concealed data showing that Thimerosal-containing vaccines were harmful. Critics excoriated the article, and Kennedy has since been labeled a traitor to science and affixed with the anti-vaxer label.

Still, the reality isn’t quite so simple. While Kennedy has indeed pointed accusatory fingers at certain vaccine practices—and has fallen victim to the “hand-picked studies” effect on at least one occasion—the charges that he’s a full-on anti-vaxer are incorrect and arguably irrelevant.

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You’d think that recent news about autism—i.e., the increasing amount of definitive evidence proving it’s not linked to vaccines—would be vindication for Paul Offit, the prominent pro-vaccination advocate and medical director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. As you might recall, Offit sounded off earlier this year on the Hannah Poling case, offering an opinion that led to all sorts of name-calling and borderline hysteria.

Now, it appears, the hysteria has made a sharp right into psychosis. ABC News reports that Offit has been receiving death threats (as in, more than one) from anti-vaxers. On a recent “Today Show” appearance, Offit revealed that “the threats [he] received included a ‘phone call from an unidentified man who mentioned specific and private details’ about Offit’s family.”

And he’s not the only one: Flu vaccine advocate Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, describes the following:

“Among the most egregious things — I got a letter once railing against my involvement in vaccines and hoping that something serious would happen to me and hoping that something serious would happen to one of my children,” he said. “I had people come to the door of my home and harass my wife and kids, so I no longer have my address listed in the phone book.”

And at one point, Poland said, someone broke into his lab and attempted to hack into his computers. As a result, Poland’s lab is now locked down for security purposes.

Granted, leaders of anti-vax groups respond that they’ve also been the victims of harassment, with taunts like “baby-killer” hurled their way.

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We decided to take a break from the creative environmental fables springing forth in Minneapolis to hit yet another field where fact and fabrication have been scarily intertwined: autism and vaccines. The anti-vax celebrity movement is going strong—now they can add Lance Armstrong to their ranks—and more parents are jumping on the “screw public health, we don’t want autistic kids” bandwagon.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is already seeing a measles spike, while Canada is reporting a mumps epidemic and the U.K. is bracing itself for a possible measles outbreak. All while the actual research continues to show that there is absolutely no link between vaccines and autism, Crohn’s disease, colitis, asthma, teenage pregnancy, incurable foot odor, etc.

A stock anti-vax response to these facts? “So what? Who says the measles are so bad?”

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We’re not one to say “I told you so” (oh, who are we kidding) but reports are in from the CDC that the number of measles cases in the U.S. has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of the reported cases involving children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated for the disease.

Granted, the number of cases is low, 131 total, but that’s only from January through July of 2008—and that increase is significant, considering that 2007 saw a grand total of 42 cases. Thus far, none of the newly infected have died, though 15 were hospitalized. To make matters worse, the AP reports, at least 17 children contracted whooping cough (which can be fatal to children) at a private school in the San Francisco Bay area, and 13 of them weren’t vaccinated against the disease.

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While the celebrity smackdown between former Playboy bunny Jenny McCarthy and actress Amanda Peet has been working its way through the media python coils, another autism/vaccine showdown has sprung up—this time at the New England Journal of Medicine. Pro-vaccination guru Paul A. Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has gotten into it with Jon S. Poling, a Georgia neurologist and the father of Hannah Poling, who was diagnosed with autism after receiving five standard vaccines.

The dispute is over a piece Offit did for NEJM on Hannah’s successful lawsuit against the government after her diagnosis, which made her the first autistic child to collect damages under the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Offit argues that, while anti-vacciners have pointed to the case as proof that the government knows vaccines are dangerous and can cause autism, in reality the Poling win was one in a chain of sketchy decisions by the VICP, which “seems to have turned its back on science.” Sure enough, in swooped Poling Sr. with the following response:

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We’ve written at length about autism at DISCOVER, including the scientific debunking of the myth that vaccines are behind the disorder. But thanks to growing celebrity support, the vaccine-autism movement has been spreading misinformation and gaining converts in Hollywood and beyond at an alarming rate.

Media attention on the issue skyrocketed last month, when Playboy model-cum-actress-cum-autism activist Jenny McCarthy led a Washington D.C. march demanding changes to the CDC’s child vaccination guidelines. McCarthy, hailed by supporters as “the biggest thing to happen since the word autism was coined,” is throwing her weight behind chelation, an unproven and possibly dangerous treatment that removes heavy metals from the body—and increasing numbers of parents are backing her. The government has begun feeling the heat over the rise (which may not be a rise at all) of the disorder (which may not be a disorder at all), and the National Institute of Mental Health is pushing to begin tests of chelation.

Still, some big names in Tinseltown are less than convinced by McCarthy’s efforts.

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