Tales from the Tubes — 3/09/09
03Sep. 09
- Ever wondered where the odd names in science fiction come from? Sometimes, it’s simple astronomy.
- Australian coverage of the dangers of the antivaccine movement continues.
- Pfizer fined for promoting drugs not approved by the FDA. “Natural remedy” makers go about their business unmolested.
- New app lets us own the epidem-iPhone.
- The internet turns 40!
Tags: Links, Tales for the Tubes
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
It seems that the article on the antivaccine movement is essentially just the transcript from last night’s 7.30 Report (which I missed).
Still, wow. The comments from Meryl Dorey are just batshit insane. (Which we know and expect from her, but still…)
“There can be autism, ADD and ADHD, which are both very common right now, which were almost unheard of 20, 30 years ago. They have been related to vaccinations.”
Umm, no, Ms Dorey. They haven’t been related to vaccinations. In fact, any links to vaccines and vaccination have very explicitly been shown to be false. And they weren’t unheard of, they just weren’t acknowledged as publicly as now. (That and all sorts of behavioural issues have now been brought under these tags.)
“The mother of four [Dorey] has written about her own family’s experience with whooping cough, describing it as a storm in a teacup, which was treated with homoeopathy.”
Says it all, really. If only she’d turn her attention to something more useful, like the plight of the unicorn.
Shame on the ABC for giving so much space to her bogus, crackpot nonsense in the article (and in the original report). I would have expected better journalism from them. (ABC was certainly the bastion of good journalism 20 years ago, even 10. Not so much, now. Like Andrew Wakefield’s appearance on NBC Today, it seems to be in the interest of ‘balance’.)
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I partially skipped over the article, but the parts I did read sounded very much like a word for word transcript.