Musgrave on vaccine denialism 4 Sep 2009 Ian Musgrave has a smackdown of the false claims and, let’s face it, criminal lies by the antivaxxers in Australia here. Since Ian always knows whereof he speaks, it is a useful and educational post. About a decade ago, a medical researcher at the place I worked, who also practised as a general practitioner, said to me that he was seeing babies die painfully from pertussis (whooping cough) for the first time in thirty years, because of the antivaccine movement. They are murderers in my opinion. Australian stuff General Science
General Science Can an elephant paint? 30 Mar 2008 Watch the video under the fold, from Chang Mai in Thailand. There’s a moment where you realise what the elephant is representing, and a shock that comes when you see that it is representing something. I don’t know if it’s been trained to do this but it looks real to… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Community, unbelief, and the rise of secularism 21 Apr 201221 Jun 2018 One of the things that losing full use of a limb causes, is that everything takes four times as long as it used to. So I haven’t blogged due to my being very busy, tired, or both. Sorry. I promised to reflect out loud on the Global Atheist Conspiracy Convention,… Read More
Academe AAHPSSS site now up 16 Nov 201316 Nov 2013 The Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science now has a permanent and updateable website, courtesy of yours truly. It’s at aahpsss.net.au/ All Australasian folk, and visitors to the Lucky Lands, should check to see what is happening. I will put anything up that is relevant,… Read More
I had whooping cough when I was a kid, and I was old enough to remember what that was like. Pretty grim. But it was nothing compared to the measles, which very nearly killed me and permanently weakened my eyesight. There wasn’t an effective vaccine for these diseases then, so one simply had to try to survive. Just because some of these childhood illnesses sound quaint now, doesn’t mean they aren’t a real threat or can’t come back.
It’s very unfortunate that these nuts have gained so much traction in some parts of the world. It’s hard to imagine that one of the great advances in public health is under such assault, but a combination of quacks, crooked lawyers, and yes, a supposed scientist or two, has done some real harm. Jim Harrison makes a good point. All these people live in the post-vaccine world. Their ignorance of just how terrible and destructive these so-called “childhood” diseases can be is at least part of the problem, though as usual, the real enemy is psuedo-scientific and anti-scientific quackery.