Shingles, a reactivated form of the chickenpox virus, is a painful rash that afflicts many people decades after the initial chickenpox infection. Now, we have data that shingles increase heart attacks (myocardial infarction) and strokes. This is more evidence that… Read More »Shingles increase heart attacks – time for the vaccine
Research has provided evidence that there is an increased risk of shingles, or herpes zoster, after a COVID-19 infection.
When I was a child, I contracted chickenpox, a disease many dismiss as not dangerous. Unfortunately, I nearly died of the disease
The varicella vaccine has had over 25 years of success in preventing chickenpox, a disease that killed 145 children per year pre-vaccine.
This article about ICAN and its anti-vaccine rhetoric about informed consent was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.
Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about vaccination’s social and legal policies. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.
In a misleading “White Paper,” the anti-vaccine organization, Del Bigtree‘s Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) argued that “eliminating vaccine exemptions and curtailing criticism is unethical and un-American” because, they argue, it invalidates vaccination informed consent. The initial statement is wrong, and the arguments brought to support it are wrong. This article corrects the record.
Read More »ICAN anti-vaccine rhetoric — getting it wrong about informed consent
And here we go again with more anti-vaccine nonsense from Del Bigtree‘s Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) – now, it’s the VARIVAX chickenpox vaccine. And, of course, there’s nothing that ICAN claimed that is accurate or worrisome about the chickenpox vaccine.
VARIVAX is a well-studied vaccine that is both demonstrably safe and demonstrably effective. However, Bigtree and ICAN always think they have some amazing catch that shows that vaccines are bad. And they are never right, so that’s why we have to spend time taking it down.
Let’s see what they have to say, but first a little bit about chickenpox.
Read More »VARIVAX chickenpox vaccine — falsely attacked by Del Bigtree and ICAN
And here we go again with more anti-vaccine nonsense from Del Bigtree‘s Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) – this time it’s about Merck’s VARIVAX chickenpox vaccine. And, of course, there’s nothing that they present that is accurate or worrisome.
VARIVAX is a well-studied vaccine that is both demonstrably safe and demonstrably effective. However, Bigtree and ICAN always think they have some amazing catch that shows that vaccines are bad. And they are never right, so that’s why we have to spend time taking it down.
Let’s see what they have to say, but first a little bit about chickenpox.Read More »VARIVAX chickenpox vaccine – newest target of the anti-vaccine ICAN
With so much sense and nonsense about coronavirus, I set to the side an important MMR vaccine systematic review that I’ve been wanting to review for a few weeks. Well, it’s time to focus on that.
Ever since Mr. Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent, and subsequently retracted, study that seemed to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the anti-vaccine crowd has embraced it as if it were a scientific fact. Of course, they ignore over 150 published scientific articles that show that there are, in fact, no links at all.
This Wakefield chicanery has spawned a cottage industry of other anti-vaccine zealots like Del Bigtree and his fraudumentary Vaxxed, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Christopher Exley, Christopher Shaw, James Lyons-Weiler, Tetyana Obukhanych, and many others.
And now we have a new, large, impressive MMR vaccine systematic review that once again provides affirmative evidence that there are no links between ASD and the MMR vaccine. None. Read More »MMR vaccine sytematic review – science finds no link to autism AGAIN
“Natural immunity” is the trope du jour of the anti-vaccine world – they want us to believe that contracting a dangerous pathogen is somehow better than preventing that disease with a vaccine. Their pseudoscientific beliefs rely upon logical fallacies, a complete misunderstanding of how the immune system works, and a healthy dose of bad math.
In other words, the same old same old from our anti-vaxxer “friends.”
The purpose of this article is to discuss why natural immunity is a bogus concept when it comes to vaccines. I need to make one warning upfront – immunology is complicated and cannot be described in 1000 words or less. So, I’m going to do a lot of linking to good articles that describe various things about the immune system.
But here we go – hang on for some science.Read More »Natural immunity – more vaccine denier pseudoscience with no merit
There are so many random claims from the anti-vaccine activists about evil chemicals in your child’s vaccines. Aluminum in vaccines is dangerous? No. Mercury in vaccines? No. Formaldehyde in vaccines is killing our kids? Nope. And of course, MSG in vaccines is causing something.
Of course, many of you have heard about MSG in our food. It’s up there on the evil food chemical list along with aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, GMO‘s, and whatever else is the food danger of the day. But MSG certainly has been on the top of the “avoid” list for decades.
I’ve been refuting nonsense about chemicals for at least 25 years on the internet (back before we had social media, yeah I’m an old dinosaur). From my perspective, I think that 50% of the issues with “chemicals” is their long complex names. And the other 50% is because of the appeal to nature logical fallacy, which is the argument that natural substances are somehow superior to “chemicals.”
Ironically, everything in nature is a chemical, and unless you think everything in the universe is designed for human health (ridiculous), a “natural” chemical is not even close to being superior to a “man-made” chemical.
But let’s get back to MSG – how many times have you seen “No MSG” in a sign Chinese restaurant? So if we don’t want to put MSG in our kung pao chicken, then why would we want MSG in vaccines?
What we’re going to show in this article is that MSG dangers are a myth. And the dangers of MSG in vaccines is a bigger myth.
Read More »MSG in vaccines – is it another evil chemical causing harm or not?