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As I scientist, I find it offensive that Republican Presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are allowed to spew false claims and scientifically-wrong information to the public without a peep from the scientific community. Perhaps many scientists choose to not publicly speak out--even though they know that the information is wrong or unsubstantiated--because they don't want to attract attention to their often arcane research for fear that their funding may be cut.  Or, maybe,scientists too often believe that the public won't understand what they say anyway. Whatever the reason, I applaud two bioethicists, Art Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania and Steve Miles at the University of Minnesota, for standing up to Michele Bachmann, a tea party Republican presidential hopeful, assertions that  human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines--that protect against cervical cancer --cause mental retardation in those girls who are vaccinated with them.

Caplan accomplished this by publicly offering $10,000 to charity if  Bachmann can prove her claim that she mad during a GOP debate on Monday night that HPV vaccination causes mental retardation. Similarly, Steve Miles offered $1,000 to Bachmann if she could substantiate her claims.

At present, HPV vaccination is voluntary. Further, there is absolutely no clinical data that links HPV vaccination to the onset of autism or for that matter mental retardation. As many of you know by now, the research that was used to show a link between childhood vaccinations and autism was fabricated and the scientist who performed the work was found to be a fraud.

Unfortunately, many politicians feel compelled to share their scientific views-- and make claims to support those views--without being qualified or trained to analyze whether or not the claims they make are scientifically accurate or valid.  Anecdotal, scientifically-unproven rhetoric is unacceptable when making scientific claims for or against a specific product.  To that end, I suspect that if Merck and GSK, the manufacturers of two FDA-approved HPV vaccines, were so inclined they could possibly file defamation lawsuits against Bachmann. This is because I believe that she intentionally made comments that are known not to be true with malicious intent. Interestingly, sales one of the HPV products, Merck's Gardasil, have recently hit an all time low!

I think it is time for the scientific community to publicly debunk many of the scientific myths e.g., vaccination and autism, creative design and that global warning is not real,  perpetrated upon the public by bat-shit crazy members of the tea party, right wing conservative republicans  and religious zealots.  Failure to do so will lead to the ongoing decline in STEM preparedness and competitiveness in the US.

Hat tip to Drs. Caplan and Miles for publicly challenging one of the many scientifically-illiterate candidates running for president.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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Christopher Rutty, a science writer and historian and member of a LinkedIn Group that I belong to, posted a link to a Penn and Teller  YouTube video on childhood vaccinations.  I had no idea what to expect, but after viewing the video all I could say was "Wow, how brilliant."  I don't think that I have ever seen a more elegant and easy-to-understand piece on the science and ultimate benefits of childhood vaccinations! 

Hat tip to Penn and Teller and the creative folks behind the video!

Until next time,

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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Despite a court ruling last week that dismissed the bogus link between vaccination and autism, I continue to receive comments from so-called “non-vaccinators” about a post that I published last week about New Jersey’s dismal vaccinations rates. Most of the comments are anecdotal and suggest that childhood vaccination was the likely culprit for their children’s autism, brain damage or other ailments. While I feel their pain, the notion that children should not continue to be vaccinated is misguided and has serious negative public health implications.

There is ample public health and scientific information that suggests that childhood vaccination has worked well to reduce the incidence of morbidity and mortality in Western nations. Ironically, if it wasn’t for mandatory childhood vaccinations, the death and lasting physical or neurological damage caused by many preventable diseases like smallpox, measles, mumps, diphtheria and whooping cough would be much higher. Unfortunately, we Americans have been lead to believe —intentionally or not—that there should be no side effects associated with drugs, vaccines and other medicines. The bottom line is that all drugs, vaccines and medicines have side effects; some more serious or noticeable than others! Further, the decision to develop new drugs and vaccines is always based on a risk to benefit ratio. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies will only develop products to address unmet medical needs when the benefits of these products clearly outweigh the potential risks. However, in some cases, most notably cancer drugs, the risk to benefit ratio becomes less obvious. There is no question that most cancer drugs have serious and potential life threatening side effects. Nevertheless, the benefit—survival and not death—far outweighs potential downstream risks!

Like it or not, the medical benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks associated with them. As many of you may know, there is currently a whooping cough epidemic in California. California health officials assert that the epidemic likely started among unvaccinated individuals and then spread to the larger population. The observation that many of the patients with whooping cough were previously vaccinated against the disease in childhood suggests that either their immunity to whooping has declined over the years or that the causative bacterium, Bordetella pertussis has become more virulent. 

The former hypothesis is more likely than the later mainly because Bordetella infections were almost non-existent until increased immigration and the non-vaccination movement began in earnest about 15 years ago! Students of infectious diseases will tell you that virulence of infectious agents tends to increase as they are passed from one infected individual to the next. Consequently, the lack of any significant B pertussis outbreaks (until very recently) suggests that changes in the underlying virulence mechanism of the bacterium are not responsible for the current outbreaks.

Again, as a parent, I understand the pain and suffering of those whose children may have experienced debilitating effects coincident with childhood vaccination regimens. However, as more parents continue to eschew vaccination against childhood disease, the incidence of death and children with serious life long debilitating effects associated with many common childhood diseases is certain to rise. With this in mind, I will continue to write and post articles that support childhood vaccinations. I will gladly stop posting these articles when someone can provide me with scientifically accurate and valid data that suggest that vaccination does more harm than good!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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If you are not convinced that vaccines are safe, please listen to a conversation between Dr. Ginger Campbell of the Brain Science Podcast and Dr. Paul Offit.

Dr. Offit is a pediatrician who is also Chief of Infectious Diseases and Director of Vaccine Education at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine and author of the book Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. This book should be read to obtain a complete appreciation of the vaccine-autism controversy. However, I found the podcast also highly compelling, because Dr. Offit is extremely knowledgeable and an excellent speaker.

The furor surrounding childhood vaccines began when Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a Lancet article in 1998 claiming to show a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) and development of autism in children. Although the study was flawed, it established a clear question: does MMR cause autism? This question has been addressed in 12 different epidemiological studies involving millions of children who either did or did not receive the vaccine. The answer is quite clear: that vaccine never caused autism. Here are Dr. Offit’s thoughts on this:

…science is enormously self-correcting. Andrew Wakefield stands up in 1998 and says, ‘I believe MMR causes autism.’ Well, he raises a hypothesis. It’s a testable hypothesis. It’s been tested. He was wrong. And that’s what I love about science. It’s just enormously self-correcting, and I just think people don’t see it that way¹

The original Wakefield paper has been retracted by 10 of the 13 authors. However, the damage has been done: immunization rates with MMR have dropped in the UK, Europe, and the US. The incidence of measles is increasing and there have been deaths of children from the disease. Deaths that could have been prevented had parents chosen to have their children immunized with MMR. The controversy over MMR has lead the public to distrust all viral and bacterial vaccines, and consequently the incidence of other preventable diseases is rising.

The notion that MMR causes autism was accompanied by safety concerns about thimerosal - a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines to prevent microbial contamination. The results of several large epidemiological studies found no connection between autism and thimerosal. Nevertheless, the preservative was removed from most childhood vaccines - probably an error, according to Dr. Offit, which simply made parents more suspicious. Autism rates have not dropped since the use of thimerosal was discontinued.

Many parents still do not believe the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. Part of the problem is that the etiology of autism is not understood. To a parent, the temporal association of immunization with onset of autism is difficult to ignore. Dr. Offit recalls a story which addresses this issue:

…it’s hard to make a statistical argument, or an epidemiological argument, to a parent who’s seen something that’s very emotional. There’s a story that I tell, because I think it’s a powerful one. My wife is a privately practicing pediatrician in the suburbs. And she was in the office one day and there was a four-month-old sitting on her mother’s lap. And my wife was drawing a vaccine into a syringe that she was about to give this child. Well, while she was drawing the vaccine into a syringe the child had a seizure, and actually went on to have a permanent seizure disorder—epilepsy. And there had been a family history of epilepsy, so she was certainly at risk for that. If my wife had given that vaccine five minutes earlier, I think there’s no amount of statistical data in the world that would have convinced that mother that anything other than the vaccine caused the seizure, because I think those sort of emotional events are very hard to argue against.

Some have accused Dr. Offit of pandering to the pharmaceutical establishment and enriching himself by publishing Autism’s False Prophets. I don’t think these arguments contain a shred of truth. Dr. Offit is donating all the royalties from the boook to autism research. More compelling are his words from the interview:

I worked on that (rotavirus) vaccine because I thought that it could do a tremendous amount of good for children. It’s the same reason that I stand up for the science of vaccines and the science of vaccine safety. I care about children. That’s my motivation.

¹Quotations by Dr. Offit are taken from a transcript of his conversation with Dr. Ginger Campbell.

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A European friend of mine sent me a link to a video of Sarah Palin espousing her understanding of the relationship between basic research and it application to solving human disease. Along with the video (see below) she sent the message "Please ,please don't tell me they (McCain and Palin) are going to win..."  I hope for science's sake they don't....

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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