Today the death toll from measles in Samoa rose to 32. All but four of the dead were less than 5 years old. Absolutely terrible, heartbreaking, news. That statistic alone should be enough to give the lie to the common claim by antivaccination activists plague enthusiasts that “measles is a benign childhood disease”. Clearly it […]
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oh, the ridiculousness!
So, today I was blocked on Facebook. It happens. Especially if you’re engaging with antivax activists plague enthusiasts who don’t particularly like your message. But, I thought the context of this particular blocking too delicious to keep to myself. It started like this: Black took exception to this; apparently she wasn’t actually advocating that people […]
Continue readingzombie ants, updated
Image source: David P. Hughes, Maj-Britt Pontoppidan – http://www.plosone.org/article/showImageLarge.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004835.g001 CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17917778 Back in 2010 I wrote about the strange tale of the zombie ants, which do the bidding of their fungal overlords. (They’re not an isolated example; a range of parasites change their hosts’ behaviour. See here and here for example – though as you’ll find, […]
Continue readingjournalism, clickbait, & ideas of classical beauty – but not science
A couple days ago the NZ Herald published a story with the headline, “Science says Bella Hadid is world’s most beautiful woman“, and followed up with the ridiculous statement that Supermodel Bella Hadid has been declared as the world’s most beautiful woman following a scientific study into what constitutes as a “perfect face”. Really, NZ […]
Continue readingmeasles: the quackery that is homeopathic “vaccination”
A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a link to a health-related FB page that had published a post from a homeopathist, offering homeopathic “vaccination”¹ against measles (using something called a “Morbillinum nosode” at a “potency” of 200C, which I’ll explain shortly). I followed the link, left a comment asking for evidence that […]
Continue readingmeasles: a ‘gotcha’ moment that is nothing of the sort
On Monday this week, Seven Sharp carried the story of a Whangārei school where so many of the students are immunised that the school has attained herd immunity against measles. This is an enviable achievement – tautoko, Hora Hora Primary School! Most of the comments are strongly supportive at the moment, but – predictably, not […]
Continue readingmeasles & cancer, part 2
I’ve written previously about an anti-vaxx plague enthusiast claim that measles can cure cancer (it doesn’t). However, it seems that the search for positive attributes for a measles infection knows few bounds. Thus a friend shared this with me – it’s something posted by an antivaxxer in a FB thread: Presumably this is an example […]
Continue readingmeasles: NOT a “benign childhood disease”
Pretty much everyone in NZ should be aware by now that the country is facing its biggest measles outbreak in years, with Counties Manukau being particularly hard-hit. Here’s the data for the week ending August 23rd, from ESR’s Public Health Surveillance page: This hasn’t stopped those opposed to vaccination plague enthusiasts pushing all their usual […]
Continue readingtelling good science from bad (a cautionary tale)
Recently I came across the claim that cystic fibrosis (CF) can be cured by diet. This was news to me, given that the mutation that causes CF is well-documented, as are the necessary treatments, and I wasn’t aware of any evidence that diet alone would correct the faulty membrane pump involved. So I said so. […]
Continue readinga new study on the heritability of autism spectrum disorder
Science has known for a while now that there is a strong genetic component in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), although those opposed to vaccination tend to deny this. (David Gorski points this out in his commentary on this new 2019 paper.) In this paper, Bai et al. cite data from a meta-analysis of twin studies that […]
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