Steven Rubio's Online Life

i read the news today, oh boy

With permission, I quote from an email my friend, Dr. Jean Smith of the CDC, wrote about vaccines (speaking as an individual here, not as a spokesperson for her organization):

[T]he young parents of today don’t have any first-hand knowledge of what vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) can do, and of the remarkable dedication and work of scientists and doctors of the past 2 centuries to protect children from the early deaths that were a staple of every generation until OURS….. i.e., we were the first cohort (U.S. baby boomers) to benefit from the advances in vaccinology and development of life-saving vaccines.  Starting with Edward Jenner (smallpox vaccine) and continuing on…. Real break-throughs were only made in the very late 50s and mid-60s.  I am sure that all … will recall the breakthrough of polio vaccine… The Salk (“killed”- i.e. inactivated) vaccine coming first (injectable), when we were young children in 1955; later … the development of the attenuated live poliovirus vaccine by Alfred Sabin… which we all received on sugar cubes at school, 1962.  Our parents breathed a huge sigh of relief, as one of the biggest polio epidemics in history had hit [in] 1952 … .   In that epidemic/outbreak, 20.000 children in the US were paralyzed… poliovirus hits the spinal cord, and paralysis is fully evolved within 4 days.  As I am sure you all will recall, children ended up trapped in “iron lung” machines that provided external breath-in, breath-out pressure to allow the lungs to fill and empty out. …

Before our time, children died of pertussis (whooping cough) and diphtheria, and neonatal tetanus, and smallpox.  By the time we were young children, vaccines against these diseases were already widespread, so we were not plagued by these diseases, in general.  Go to an old-time cemetery and look at the grave-stones… you’ll be able to discern what was going on with infectious diseases at a certain time, especially when you see tomb-stones of children in a family who all died around the same time.

Since the days of the 60s-70s, more advances in vaccinology have been made … Pneumococcal vaccines, haemophilus influenza (Hib) vaccine, and others and resulted in sharp decreases in death and disability. …

At every ACIP meeting, we have members of the public come to the microphone, telling their sad stories of their children dying or being disabled by VPDs.  (These are healthy Americans!  Not people from India or Mexico….)   One mother came with her daughter, who has prosthetic arms and legs, as a result of meningococcal disease….  (widespread, meningococcal sepsis, which caused death of arteries/veins in legs/arms, necessitating amputation).  Others come with stories of their childrens’ deaths.  There is a group of parents called Families Fighting Flu, who had healthy children playing in the backyard one day, dead the next. …

I am sad to see such skepticism about the motives of those who work on continuous societal improvements and advances, of which vaccines are just one example. … [I]f your grandchildren have not been vaccinated against certain VPDs, they will be at risk if they should ever undertake int’l travel; and if they have kids from developing countries move into their communities.  There have been any number of cases of unvaccinated Americans being infected in these settings.

i read the news today, oh boy

Jody Rosen:

[T]he All Songs Considered audience has a fuzzy understanding of the word "all." "The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)" consists almost entirely of indie-rockers: acts like The Decemberists, Wilco, Grizzly Bear, Neko Case, Andrew Bird, Regina Spektor, and Animal Collective, the Brooklyn art-rock group that took the top spot in both the best songs and best albums tallies. On the Best Songs list, there are no songs that cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and none by African-American performers. Two black artists, Danger Mouse and Mos Def, made the Best Albums list, at numbers 20 and 23, respectively.

None of this is a surprise, of course. NPR's audience skews white and college-educated; so does Animal Collective's fan-base. In matters of musical taste, everyone has a God-given right to provincialism and conservatism, even those NPR listeners who consider themselves cosmopolitan and liberal. The numbers, of course, tell a different story. The NPR list leans not just white, but male—dudes with beards and guitars. So far in 2009, the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts has been by a black or female artist—or by groups featuring both blacks and whites or men and women—a total of 41 out of 42 weeks. (The exception is the current No. 1 hit, "Down," a collaboration between an Anglo-Asian R & B singer, Jay Sean, and an African-American rapper, Lil Wayne.) Who are the progressives again—the public radio crowd or the Top 40 great unwashed?

Stephen J. Dubner:

Humankind has long witnessed periods of time marked by the rise of new cultural, religious, and political movements. Well known examples (to the Western world) include protestantism, the renaissance, the inquisition, the industrial revolution, socialism, etc. I don’t know the answer to this question but I think it is a fair one: Is the global warming movement about science, religion, politics, or a little of all three?

Heather Havrilesky:

Marriage is like an inflamed bunion. It requires a lot of care and attention, but all it does is make you itch and wince in return. You can never get away from it, but you can't touch it as often as you want to, either. You're not supposed to ignore it, but if you look too closely at it, it'll only make you nervous.

i read the news today, oh boy

Zen Habits:

What’s the fastest way to get a task off your to-do list?

Just delete it … or don’t put it there in the first place. …

Because not doing it at all is often the best way to get things done.

Phil Plait:

Incidentally, saying that the Universe is meaningless doesn’t imply there’s no reason to live. What I am saying is that there is no direction to the Universe, no intent, no internal morals or purpose or meaning. But we still exist. People look for meaning in everything, even when it isn’t there, and it can lead them astray. …

And finally, don’t ask what I think the meaning or purpose of life is. I think it has neither, but that makes it no less magnificent or joyous to me. I know what I want my life to be like, and I have enough real questions to keep me busy for a thousand lifetimes. I don’t feel the need to look for ones that aren’t there.

i read the news today, oh boy

danah boyd:

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

Amy Larocca on Carrie Fisher:

The happy ending of the story, if it really can be called that, is that she underwent electroshock therapy and now feels much, much better than she ever has before, even if she sometimes doesn’t remember things that happened in the past few months. “But that could be all the acid I did,” she says. “You do the math. But fuck the past four months anyway. Worth it!” Fisher likes to shout things for emphasis sometimes. “Totally. Fucking. Worth it!”

Australian Associated Press:

A HOMEOPATH has been sentenced to at least six years in jail and his wife will serve at least four years for the manslaughter of their eczema-stricken daughter.

Thomas Sam, 42, and his wife Manju, 37, were convicted in June of the manslaughter of their nine-month-old baby Gloria by failing to seek proper medical treatment.

The tertiary-educated couple were accused of "gross criminal negligence" by failing to get the treatment, instead mainly relying on homeopathic remedies. …

A "very wide chasm" lay between how they had acted and how any other reasonable parent would have acted, Justice Johnson said.

"The omission of the parents to seek proper assistance for her can be characterised accurately as cruelty," he said.

"Gloria was totally dependent on her parents complying with their clear duty of care for her and each offender fell profoundly short of their parental obligations to their daughter." …

"This is not a case of a hidden condition going untreated and ultimately causing death.

"Rather this case involves an accumulation of obvious health problems which, whilst not properly treated, saw the child descending towards death."

i read the news today, oh boy

Phil Plait:

So, as always, don’t listen to people like Lipman, or even to me when it comes to this stuff. Instead, go to your doctor, a board-certified and science-based doctor, and ask them about the H1N1 swine flu, and see if they recommend getting the shot. And yes, as soon as it’s available here I’ll get vaccinated, as will my wife and daughter. We talked to a real doctor about it, and we understand the threat of H1N1, and we understand what vaccines do.

Maybe he can take Sabean with him:

Omar Vizquel is done catching massive snakes. Next up, he wants to become a matador.

The Texas Rangers infielder, who last winter searched for anacondas, plans to try bullfighting when he goes home to Venezuela this winter.

"Just go and learn the basics and stuff," Vizquel said. "It's one of my things on the to-do list. There's a lot of things still to do."

i read the news today, oh boy

Doug Henwood:

The common practice of treating financial crises as extraordinary events is obviously very wrong. That applies to apologists and critics. Cheerleaders for capital want to treat crises as unusual events in an otherwise well-functioning system. Radicals want to believe that crises can somehow be politically decisive, greasing the way to a postcapitalist future. Clearly both camps need dates with a factchecker...

io9:

Judging from the pilot, FlashForward wants to be Lost for people who don't really want to invest the time into Lost - we'll have less mysteries, and everything will be made very obvious by people repeating themselves over and over until they're sure you understand. It's not a bad show, at all, but it seemed a bit too hesitant and nervous, and more than a little unoriginal - maybe it was first episode nerves, but here's hoping next week sees less repetition and more development.

The Skeptical Teacher:

Like many of you, I was saddened to read the news of Patrick Swayze’s untimely death – Roadhouse will forever be one of my most favorite movies.  Unfortunately, there are those who will look to take advantage of any opportunity to push their pseudoscientific nonsense, just as the douchebags over at NaturalNews.com have done regarding Swayze’s death.…

Folks, this is the same kind of argumentation employed by pseudoscientists of numerous stripes, from creationists to global warming deniers to all manner of medical quackery such as the “natural cures” crowd. Note that these folks do not offer any actual science-based evidence that their supposed cures will actually cure people’s cancer, they merely talk trash and attempt to make the medical & scientific communities out to be the bad guys. They are offering no solutions that can be scientifically tested & verified, they are merely feeding into people’s most base & nasty emotions in an attempt to pawn off upon them completely useless and un-regulated snake-oil “cures” which will do nothing but lighten your wallet while making you suspicious of actual medicine which works.

You know, now that I think about it, calling these people douchebags is kind of an insult… to douchebags.

stuff i read today

Bad Astronomy:

[I]f people want to believe whatever they want, it’s up to them. We have freedom from and of religion in the United States. But if they want to convince me they’ll have to do a lot more than give me anecdotes or non-scientifically based evidence. And if they want to affect politics and legislation, then they’d better sit down with the Constitution and give it a good read.

Monitor Mix:

Yesterday, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe, eating lunch with friends and listening to songs designed to enhance the experience: Vanessa Carlton, late-period Rod Stewart and Mike + The Mechanics. The restaurant thought it was placating its clientele, appealing to the masses by playing non-music; that is, music for people who would otherwise hate music. It's like this: Something happening in the background is suggestive of sound and implies melody; it could be music, or it could just be a cat wearing a fake mustache talking to a dog. It's hard to tell.

I'm fascinated by music that is designated as background noise. Do artists set out to be the soundtrack to mommy-and-me lunches, facials and waiting-room smudged-with-chocolate magazine perusals?

stuff i read today

Masturbatory insanity: the rise and fall of an idea:

Great harm can occur when religion is confused with medicine and medicine is harnessed for religious ends.

April Winchell:

Suzanne Somers … told a Toronto-based columnist that it was Swayze’s chemotherapy, and not cancer, that ended his life prematurely.…

“Why couldn’t they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins in his body? I hate to be controversial. I’m a singer-dancer-comedienne. But we have an epidemic going on, and I have to say it.” …

You don’t “have to say it”.

Not everything that limps into that shriveled cortex of yours needs to be immediately vomited out into the media. Not only is it not responsible, it’s just none of your fucking business.…

“Why couldn’t they have built him up nutritionally?” Well I guess that would have been one way to go, except that YOU CAN’T FUCKING EAT ANYTHING BECAUSE YOU HAVE CANCER IN YOUR PANCREAS, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT.…

Shut your fucking mouth, you hypocritical, disgusting fuck bag.

Life in the Minors:

I have to remember that my teammates don’t grow up in cushy little suburbs in the United States, playing 60 games a year for traveling Little League teams that extort $5,000 for the “opportunity” to play. Instead, they come from a still developing country with a high crime rate, where $5,000 represents more than half of the average household income.

Latino Like Me:

So…when we say is racism the cause of the anti-Obama groundswell, we’re asking the wrong question.  We’re debating whether or not the people who oppose him hold beliefs of racial superiority and inferiority.  But who cares?  What we need to ask is HOW race is involved.  In a system where race has figured into our allocation of wealth, power, and privilege, it also shapes our understandings of what is right and wrong, good and bad.  This in unavoidable.  We need to better understand how race shapes the collective debate, from what is said to what is heard, by moving our understanding of its presence as something that is due to individual deficiency.  It isn’t about individual’s beliefs as much as it is about what shapes our shared understanding.

vaccinate

From the Sunday Times via the Daily Kos:

MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism

The doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal....

Despite involving just a dozen children, the 1998 paper’s impact was extraordinary. After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%. Populations acquire “herd immunity” from measles when more than 95% of people have been vaccinated.

alternative

I'm not implying that all "alternative medicine" is bunk; only that it should be tested with the same rigor as more traditional medicine. If a technique is shown to be useful, it should be a part of medicine -- there is no need for the "alternative" distinction. Either something works, and it's medicine, or it doesn't, and it's nonsense.

-- Thomas Kida, in Don't Believe Everything You Think