New Zealand’s measles outbreak keeps on ticking along. So do the media stories about it. (The FB posts associated with each article aren’t moderated and I suspect this is partly because they generate so many clicks.) A couple of days ago, TVNZ’s Breakfast show carried an interview with a doctor, on the importance of Gardasil, […]
Continue readingMeasles infection has a couple of longer-term sequelae. One, SSPE, is thankfully rare (although for infants with measles the odds of subsequently developing SSPE are considerably higher than for other age groups). The other, “immune amnesia”, is also strongly associated with having had measles, though this doesn’t stop those opposed to vaccination claiming otherwise. In […]
Continue readingUNICEF estimates that in the period 2010-2017, 169 million children missed their first dose of the measles vaccine – that’s around 21 million children each year. Sadly, this has simply set the conditions for the measles outbreaks we’re seeing around the world, in high- and low-income countries alike. In the first three months of 2019, […]
Continue readingI never thought I’d need to write that title for a post. We’re continuing to hear of new measles cases in New Zealand, most recently in this Stuff story about 4 new cases in Auckland (with the possibility that up to 1600 people may have been exposed). One of those ill with the disease is a […]
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Image source: By T. Michael Keesey – Zanclean skullUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8541387 The hominid known as “Ardi” (a specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus) was discovered in 1994, at a site near Ethiopia’s Awash River. Once excavated, it turned out that this was – for its age – a remarkably complete specimen: 125 fossilised bones, comprising […]
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Recently Grant Jacobs discussed a paper which indicates that many people strongly opposed to genetic modification think they are well-informed, but in reality know little about the subject. On current evidence, the same applies to those opposed to vaccination. I originally sat down to write about this piece of nonsense, but it can wait. Instead – NZ […]
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Glyphosate is another of those substances (like fluoride & 1080) that can be the focus of a lot of unease. So it wasn’t entirely surprising to see the claim on WAVES’ FB page that glyphosate is found in vaccines. Predictably, various little Gish gallops saw Yellow told that injection & ingestion aren’t the same, & […]
Continue readingExcept, perhaps, if it’s used to develop critical thinking skills. But I don’t think that’s what happened on the occasion reported under the headline Creationism taught in science class at Villa Education Trust school: [A student who’d studied at] Mt Hobson Middle School said Darwinism was taught as an unproven theory and students were shown […]
Continue readingThere's a lot of rhetoric these days around educating students 'for the 21st century', and the need for '21st century skills', while (not always but often) disparaging what is currently taught & how it's delivered. Catherine Kelsey has a good op.ed. on this on the Education Central site, in which she comments on two other […]
Continue readingI was idly skimming the Herald's website when I came across an article with the headline "Is plant medicine really that effective?" Since the article appears to be in the nature of an advertorial, the answer is, it depends on who you ask. Unlike man-made chemical drugs that have been developed as novel medicines from the 19th […]
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