Harpocrates Speaks: SB277 Opposition: The Smokescreen of Parental Choice
Humans love to have choices. From early on in our childhood, we like to be able to choose what we want to do. Play with this toy or th...| www.harpocratesspeaks.com
I know I've been rather quiet, with no new posts in almost a year. Frankly, I got rather burned out dealing with the ignorance and vitriol of anti-vaccine activists. On top of that, there was the whole debacle in which a fascist cheetoh was elected president.| Harpocrates Speaks
Arrr. Ahoy there, mateys! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Time t' hoist the jolie rouge. Avast, ye wee creepies, for ye'll have no quarter.| Harpocrates Speaks
Click to enlarge.| Harpocrates Speaks
Back to school time. Show your child you care about their health.| Harpocrates Speaks
Cinema Libre Founder and CEO, Philippe Diaz| Harpocrates Speaks
Photo: Facebook/Prayers for Ezekiel| Harpocrates Speaks
There are quite a number of things that people take for granted today, regarding their health, at least in developed nations, like the United States. The majority of the population doesn't think much about the possibility of starving or being malnourished. If we suffer an injury, we can find treatment at a nearby pharmacy or convenience store. For something more serious, medical care is generally not too far away along roads that are kept in good repair. The same thing if we get sick.| Harpocrates Speaks
May 13-15 marked the eighth annual Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS). This was the sixth time I've attended, though I almost skipped this year (more on that later). For those who have never attended, NECSS is a joint effort by the New York City Skeptics and The New England Skeptical Society. The conference, once more held at the Fashion Institute of Technology, fills three days of science, critical thinking, and education for attendees on a wide range of subjects. Some to...| Harpocrates Speaks
This post originally appeared at The Scientific Parentblog on 4/13/16. | Harpocrates Speaks
This post originally appeared at The Scientific Parentblog on 4/12/16.| Harpocrates Speaks
"This is not an anti-vaccine movie. We're just going to use ominous imagery to make people scared of vaccines."| Harpocrates Speaks
It's not all that regular that I venture away from the topic of vaccines. I should do it more frequently (and there is one topic I really want to write about if I find the time), but for the most part, I stick to immunizations and the anti-vaccine movement. Now and then, though, I do venture onto other, rather more nuanced subjects. There are certain areas of medicine and ethics that are far less clear cut than whether or not vaccines are safe and effective. For instance, what happens when pa...| Harpocrates Speaks
Conflicts of interest (COIs) are very important considerations in research. The most obvious COIs are financial; the researcher may receive financial gain for one result versus another, or they will at least avoid losing current or future income if they get a specific result. But COIs could also be non-financial. Perhaps they have family or close friends that would prefer one outcome versus another. Or they might hold a volunteer position of authority in the sponsor's organization. Whatever f...| Harpocrates Speaks
The other day, I wrote about the incorrect claim that there are 69 doses of vaccine on the U.S. recommended childhood immunization schedule. That claim has morphed into 71 (or 72 [Edited to Add (2/24/15): apparently, anti-vaccine groups are now dishonestly claiming 74!]) doses since the publication of the 2016 schedule, which added the Meningococcal B vaccine for at-risk individuals, as well as those for who would like to get the vaccine and their doctor agrees it is indicated. The MenB vacci...| Harpocrates Speaks
Every now and then, we hear about some event in the news. Sometimes it can cause unjustified panic, like when people in the U.S. started panicking about Ebola virus, despite the risk to the average American being next to nothing. Other times, it can cause realistic concern, such as we see among the people of Flint, Michigan, or among members of communities where there are disease outbreaks. Reactions to these events run the gamut from the rational to the irrational and absurd. There is always...| Harpocrates Speaks
Please note additional edits to this article, particularly those added after 2/3/16, with the publication of the new 2016 recommended schedule.| Harpocrates Speaks
The other day, I got into a discussion with someone calling for Congressional hearings on the DeStefano 2004 study that is the latest to-do in anti-vaccine circles. I won't go into the background; you can read about it here. Instead, I'll just present the Storify curation of tweets. My interlocutor just didn't understand what she had read. There is nothing wrong with that. We all have areas in which we lack the requisite knowledge to fully grasp the subject. The real trick is figuring out whe...| Harpocrates Speaks
The other day, a friend of mine wrote a blog post about how an anti-vaccine Facebook page was taken over by someone who worked their way up to admin privileges, locked out all of the other admins, and then started posting goat memes, a practice known as "goating". My friend had been invited to take part, but by the time he took a look, the goating was well underway. All he did was write up a blog post describing what had happened, mentioned in passing that he had enjoyed watching events unfol...| Harpocrates Speaks
This will be a very brief post. As I was reading Orac's post about Donald Trump's anti-vaccine musings, one thing kept jumping out at me. Trump kept talking about "massive shots" that kids get, going so far as to say that "tiny children are not horses". I get the impression that Trump has either never seen an actual vaccine syringe or he is so terrified of needles that when he did see one, his interpretation of reality was so warped he imagined it to be some huge monstrosity.| Harpocrates Speaks
Be a community immunity superhero!| Harpocrates Speaks
Nothing weird or dorky to see here.| Harpocrates Speaks
There's a topic that I've touched on a few times over the years here, but I've never really delved into it. It's something that comes up pretty frequently in discussions of children's health, particularly when talking about vaccines or so-called alternative medicine. It's even something that arises around issues of which real treatment a child should receive. I've mentioned it in passing in posts about vaccines (e.g., when talking about why it actually does matter to others if you vaccinate y...| Harpocrates Speaks
Did you learn nothing from this movie, Jim?| Harpocrates Speaks
June 30, 2015 - A happy day for California children!| Harpocrates Speaks
Humans love to have choices. From early on in our childhood, we like to be able to choose what we want to do. Play with this toy or th...| www.harpocratesspeaks.com
Poor, poor Mark Geier. For those who don't know, Dr. Mark Geier is half of the father-son team that developed the "Lupron Protocol" for tre...| www.harpocratesspeaks.com
