Jenny McCarthy

I cringe every time I see Jenny McCarthy open her mouth and talk about science and medicines, two areas she’s completely unqualified to comment on.  But here’s an interesting tidbit I found this morning: McCarthy changed her story as strong evidence that there is no link between thimerosal or the MMR vaccine and autism has been piling up. She went from:

“Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something,’ and he swore at me, and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot,” she says. “And I remember going, ‘Oh, God, I hope he’s right.’ And soon thereafter — boom — the soul’s gone from his eyes.

To:

I don’t think it was just the MMR shot that caused any kind of trigger with autism. I think it was a compilation of so many shots to a kid that obviously had some autoimmune disorders. So I would saymaybe a couple of months, a month or so after the MMR, I started to notice some physical ailments such as constipation, rashes, eczema. That was like the first little sign. And then the train just kind of descended from there.

Now, that’s not really surprising, it is a hallmark of the pseudo-science crowd to move the goal posts every time their position becomes untenable. But it is despicable that people who rare totally unqualified to comment on the science and medical aspects of something like vaccines and autism use their celebrity as a platform to convince people that vaccines are bad.  These folks don’t even understand the difference between correlation and causation. Because an event happened soon after another one, doesn’t mean the first one is the cause of the second one. It just so happens that autism is most often diagnosed right around the same time that kids receive several vaccines, but research shows clearly that the two are not related. As the evidence comes in, the anti-vax crowd just keeps moving the goal posts. Meanwhile, valuable time and money that could be spent on actual autism research is wasted on this instead.

Andrew Wakefield

In related news, Andrew Wakefield, the crooked doctor who started the whole anti-vax movement has lost his MD license.

Burch’s conversation with his rowing coach epitomizes the problem:“I want you to keep your heart rate at 85% of max for the next hour and a half.” “Why?” “Because it’s the best way to improve your fitness.” “How do you know?” “Because I’ve done it before and it worked. Because that’s what the people who win the Olympics do. I know, I’ve trained some of them.” “But has anyone actually done an experiment?” “What on earth are you talking about?”

This book is Burch’s answer to his coach’s question. Medicine’s “beautiful idea” is that we should test all hypotheses and beliefs using the kind of tests that are reliable for determining the truth. Instead of going by tradition, authority, theory, common sense, or personal experience, we now have effective tools to find out for sure whether a treatment really works.

Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It

via Science-Based Medicine » Medicine’s Beautiful Idea.

In light of recent events at the Texas and Florida education boards, this cartoon hits the nail right on the head: