Yes, I said “Wacky”

It seems that a few readers have taken exception to my characterization of Jenny McCarthy (and her anti-vaccine crusade) as “wacky,” so I thought I’d explain some of the wackiness, as I see it…

Her motivation stems from her child’s display of autistic symptoms that she only began to notice after he received his first vaccines. As a result, she “just knows” it was the vaccine which caused the autism. Repeated studies and testing have shown no connection. Immunization specialists and most of the medical community are united in agreement. Here are a couple articles to give you background on “the evidence:”

http://www.livescience.com/health/080905-bad-autism.html

http://www.livescience.com/health/080401-bad-vaccine.html

 In fact, a new book, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, chronicles the whole situation in detail. The book is billed as:

Amanda Peet versus Jenny McCarthy! But alas, no Wrestling…

This Holywood anti-vaccine thing is really getting fun. Apparently, Amanda Peet has decided to enter in on the side of evidence and medicine. Watch the video (it’s easier than reading) — toward the end you get to see JM do a nice bit of fear mongering… Meanwhile, I’m of to Mr. Skin to do a search on “Peet”, cao!

Wheatgrass and Autism

Michael Shermer has a short article over at Scietnific American titled “How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Result.” It touches on both my posts over the last two days. He’s a smart guy. You may know him as the “skeptic” on several History Channel programs; he is also a former Evangelical Christian. I reccomend his books Why Darwin Matters and How We Believe. The first one is short, the second one is longer, but better…

That is all.

The Alternative Medicine of Genocide

Radovan Karadzic has been caught. The leader of an area of Bosnia dominated by “Serbs” (that is to say Orthodox Christians) — he was in control during the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in 1995 and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, where 11,000 people died from sniper fire, mortar attacks, starvation, and illness.

I am writing about this event for one key reason, Karadzic was living out his life openly and publicly as a practitioner of “Alternative Medicine”… here is a link to his website, http://dragandabic.com/

For me, the curious thing about alternative medicine is not the large number of programs out there, many sponsored by well known and reputable universities, nor is it that such therapies, stripped bare of other external/internal stimuli fail to show efficacy – what interests me is that somehow, in some fashion, at least some people are benefiting from it.