Level-headed discourse can often be difficult, so I was pleased with Zubin Damania, MD’s recent video blog and his ideas for better communication between healthcare providers and patients with concerns about vaccines.
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Parenting boundaries are a thing we all have. We expect people to respect them, right? So what do we do when they don’t?
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There’s a fundamental misunderstanding that drives the whole debate over vaccination. It needs to be cleared up, now.
Continue ReadingKennedy still thinks vaccines cause autism. He’s also managed to make some pretty offensive remarks about autism just in time for “Autism Awareness Month.”
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Check out this poster from 1977, which has your favorite Star Wars droids promoting immunization.
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We learned today about polio. Once a fear-inducing, rampant disease, now it is all but eradicated in the world, thanks to widespread vaccine use.
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Another study shows there is no link between autism and childhood vaccines.
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Mayim Bialik is best known for her child acting career as the title character on Blossom. She currently plays the nerdy Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory and holds a real-life PhD in neuroscience. I really want to adore her, but then she had to go ruin it all by practicing unsafe parenting.
Continue ReadingToday is the beginning of one of the toughest (and most egalitarian) races in the world. The Iditarod covers 1,160 snow-covered miles. The race commemorates the heroism of sled dog mushers who, against the odds, delivered serum from Anchorage to …
Continue ReadingFlying during the holidays has always been fraught with problems: fighting traffic, long lines at security, tempers at the breaking point, and — of course — being trapped in a small container in close quarters with a bunch of strangers …
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For years–at least a decade, as it was a question among the psychology community when I studied abnormal psychology about one decade ago–there have been questions regarding why autism rates are rising. One of the many theories is that rates are not rising. Instead, the medical community has gotten better at recognizing and diagnosing Autism […]
Continue ReadingFor years—at least a decade, as it was a question among the psychology community when I studied abnormal psychology about one decade ago—there have been questions regarding why autism rates are rising. One of the many theories is that rates …
Continue ReadingAnti-vaccine groups are still working hard to spread their scientifically-unsupported message to the masses, this time via an ad on a jumbotron in Times Square, New York City. This ad has the potential to reach many tens of thousands of …
Continue ReadingI get a ton of press releases every day in my inbox every day; most of them I just ignore, but yesterday I got one whose subject, in all-caps and bold, read: OUTRAGED AUTISM GROUPS AND LEADERS TO ANNOUNCE 50,000-PARENT …
Continue ReadingI get a ton of press releases every day in my inbox every day; most of them I just ignore, but yesterday I got one whose subject, in all-caps and bold, read: OUTRAGED AUTISM GROUPS AND LEADERS TO ANNOUNCE 50,000-PARENT …
Continue ReadingIt once was believed that a woman’s role and worth was to bear children. Throughout history it may have been the men that fought the wars but the women produced the soldiers. There was a time that most women gave birth to upwards of six times in their lives. It wasn’t so much a matter […]
Continue ReadingBack in October we had a lively discussion here on GeekMom on the subject of vaccinations, so it seemed like a good idea to post an important update to that topic: The controversial study that linked increased occurrences of autism to childhood vaccinations has been declared a fraud by the British Medical Journal. (The study’s […]
Continue ReadingI’m talking about vaccinating your kids, of course. You’ve heard most of this before, from Amy Wallace’s Wired cover story in November to Matt Blum’s piece about the H1N1 vaccine in October. But last week there was one more piece …
Continue ReadingOkay – there’s been lots and lots of interest in vaccinations on wired.com recently. Here’s a well-reasoned explanation as to why one reasonably smart and well-informed family won’t be getting flu shots this year. First, my disclaimers – I’m not …
Continue ReadingIn honor of what appears to be Vaccine Appreciation Week around here, I found this excellent graphic about the relative risks of the HPV vaccine at the Information is Beautiful blog. HPV stands for human papillomavirus. Though not nearly as …
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