December 5th, 2011 by ErikDavis in Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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There has been much abuzz about “pox parties” – the practice of parents getting a bunch of unvaccinated kids together with an infected one (pick one, really, though chicken pox is the focus of the recent article in Time) in the hope that their little sweethearts become ill and therefore “naturally” immune to the disease. This deliberate infection involves things as seemingly innocent as breathing the same air as the infected to the stomach-turning sharing of bodily fluids (Saliva lemonade, anyone?). To compound the issue, it seems that parents aren’t always taking into account how the viruses are transmitted, and end up trying oral transmission to transmit a disease that is transmitted through the air. And yes, the whole thing is as stupid as it seems.
Given that the people partaking in these events have likely not vaccinated their children against anything else, these parties could be a source point for multiple highly contagious infections. Most of us have had chicken pox as children and don’t remember it fondly – now imagine having chicken pox with mumps, mono, and maybe a little hepatitis A to top it off. It is also easy to forget in Western luxury that these innocuous childhood illnesses are actually lethal. Just measles? Well, one death per 3000 measles infections might not seem like much, until you consider the fact that in 2008, 164,000 people died of the measles worldwide – approximately the same number of civilians that have died in the entire length of the current Iraq war. That’s an annual number, and it’s gone down by almost 80% over 10 years. How? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North*
November 20th, 2011 by ErikDavis in News, Quackery Exposed
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Hey there skeptifans. Here are the media Fails and Wins you sent me last week.
Edzard Ernst on alternative medicine
After Steve Jobs death, which we now know may have been hurried due to his decision to choose alternative treatments over evidence based ones, Maclean’s chose to run this Q&A with alternative medicine expert Edzard Ernst. Several years ago Dr. Ernst set out to find out if there is evidence to support the most popular alternative treatments. His findings were that the vast majority of alternative medicine is quackery. I hope this interview will help sway some people on the fence about chiropractic and other placebo treatments.
Family Doc Says No To Perilous Chickenpox Pops
Anna spotted this story on NPR. Apparently, there is a mom in Texas selling chicken pox infected lollipops to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North*
August 2nd, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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One of the basic human “needs” is the desire for simplicity. We have limited cognitive resources, and when we feel overwhelmed by complexity one adaptive strategy is to simplify things in our mind. This can be useful as long as we know we are oversimplifying. Problems arise when we mistake our schematic version with reality.
In this same vein we also like our narratives to be morally simple, so there is a tendency to replace the complex shades of gray with black and white. This is perhaps related to cognitive dissonance theory. We have a hard time reconciling how someone can be both good and bad, or how a good person can do bad things. So there is also a tendency to see people as all good or all bad. We can transcend these tendencies with maturity and wisdom, but that takes work.
A good example of the desire for simple moral clarity is the anti-vaccine movement. Their world is comprised of white hats and black hats (guess which one they perceive themselves as wearing), as evidenced by the blog posts and comments over at Age of Autism. There is a certain demand for purity of thought and message that seems to be getting worse over time in a self-reinforcing subculture. Many now see their struggle in apocalyptic terms.
The desire for simplicity even extends to factual claims. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
