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 Rights for nonhuman apes? 14 Jun 2007 New Scientist is reporting that a case in Austria (not Australia – we share a love of beer, but that’s about it) is set to decide if chimps have rights. They already do in Spain, and in New Zealand (which was, I think, the first country to enact rights for… Read More
General Science Some more on Toulmin 12 Dec 2009 The History of the Philosophy of Science list has been unusually active, and even more unusually fairly restrained and complimentary, in discussing Stephen Toulmin’s significance. One point, made by Avner Cohen, is that Toulmin himself had given an assessment of his work and his modus operandi in an interview in… Read More
Administrative The Bastards are emerging 17 Jul 2010 We have now had three posts on Opinionated Bastards . Lorax on grant funding, Mike Haubrich on why religion and science are incompatible on an inductive inference, and now Eamon Knight on why pedophile priests and women priests are equivalent in the eyes of the Vatican. Stay tuned for more… 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.