Science News

Doctors Taking A Stand Versus Treating Unvaccinated Children

9:30 am EST February 8th, 2011 | Science | 17 Comments

pediatricianThe problem of non-vaccination is reaching a crisis point, and doctors are reacting to this by turning away patients who aren’t vaccinated:

“If an adult caregiver or parent decides not to vaccinate their children, we feel that they’re taking an unnecessary risk, so we wanted to take a strong stand and say this is so important to us that it’s a deal breaker for us,” Dr. Dyer says matter-of-factly.

Dyer published his vaccine manifesto in the journal ‘Pediatrics’.  He says, “I think more physicians need to be more aggressive about vaccinating kids.  If you’re not willing to vaccinate your kids, if you’re not willing to trust us and trust our judgment and education then we have a philosophical difference here.”

I don’t think public schools should admit any child who hasn’t been vaccinated (with exceptions for kids who may have some sort of provable allergy or related sickness that prevents vaccination), but this is another area of defense.

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are endangering our society via their actions.

Topic: ,

 

Universal Flu Vaccine Being Tested

4:04 pm EST February 7th, 2011 | Science | 1 Comment

Thankfully, science keeps marching on.

A universal flu vaccine has been successfully tested on humans with the disease for the first time, it was reported Monday.

The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper said that unlike existing vaccines, this one, which was tested by scientists at Britain’s Oxford University, does not need to be changed every year to match the latest strain of the virus.

Topic: ,

 

Andrew Wakefield Autism-Vaccine Study An “Elaborate Fraud”

9:59 pm EST January 5th, 2011 | Science | 38 Comments

Andrew Wakefield’s study linking vaccination to autism is the lodestone of the idiotic anti-vaccine movement, a movement that has led to the unnecessary death of innocent children, a movement led by former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy and actor Jim Carrey. It is a complete fraud:

A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an “elaborate fraud” that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.

“It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”

Britain stripped Wakefield of his medical license in May. “Meanwhile, the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession,” BMJ states in an editorial accompanying the work.

In other words?

VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN!!!

Topic: , , ,

 

2000-2009 Is Hottest Decade

4:17 am EST December 9th, 2009 | News | 11 Comments

The World, Maybe We Should Protect It. We Don't Have Another.

The World, Maybe We Should Protect It. We Don't Have Another.

Scientists, yes scientists and not a bunch of pundits in lockstep/paid by the oil industry, have reported that our current decade is the hottest ever since we’ve recorded such things. And here’s the deal: Let’s assume global warming is a myth designed by Al Gore and a bunch of test tube toting scientists to make them rich (how exactly nobody knows but James Inhofe and Matt Drudge need some kind of boogeyman), the worst that could happen is that the world becomes more ecofriendly and the planet becomes a cleaner, better place to live.

I’m the furthest you’ll get from a stereotypical liberal tree hugger and I can’t quite see the downside to this. “Oh no, clean water in the Chesapeake” doesn’t exactly keep me up at night in cold sweats.

Topic: , , , , ,

 

CTRL-Z: The Climate Edition

3:39 pm EST January 26th, 2009 | News | 19 Comments

Fixin’ it.

President Barack Obama began reversing the climate policies of the Bush administration on Monday, clearing the way for new rules to force auto makers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars.

The president told the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider immediately a request by California to impose its own strict limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for contributing to global warming.

Topic: , ,