Numberwang! Child Health Safety On Measles
Here, Child Health Safety tackles the fascinating topic of measles incidence and mortality. CHS refers to “grossly false claims by the US Centers for Disease Control [‘CDC’] – vastly exaggerating the threat measles as a disease poses” and accuses them in the title of lying.
Children’s Immunisation Centre’s Advertising: Misleading And Unsubstantiated
In August 2012, I wrote about an ASA judgement on a complaint I’d submitted about Richard Halvorsen’s Babyjabs clinic. A new adjudication on a different website’s marketing of single vaccines is now available on the ASA website. The ASA received six complaints and investigated seven issues, all of which were upheld. Read the rest of this entry »
Dr Jayne Donegan On Measles
Here, Dr Donegan gives her views on measles. When I read it, I couldn’t resist giving my opinions on her article. I have to say, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Read the rest of this entry »
WDDTY: How To Misunderstand A Paper
In an article on MMR and measles in the June issue of What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY), Bryan Hubbard reports on the DeStefano et al paper that found no association between autism and the number of antigens children receive from vaccination. That is what the paper actually found. What Hubbard reports is something quite different. I have no idea how Mr Hubbard manages to get it so wrong. I’d have thought pretty much anyone would be able to figure out what the researchers studied, but apparently not.
Now, I’m no expert – far from it – but I think even an ignorant layman like me can work out what research question the authors were investigating. Read the rest of this entry »
Measles in Pakistan: Anti-Vaccine Websites Go Cherry-picking
In this post, Child Health Safety uncritically repeats a report from NSNBC based on a comment made by Dr. Tabish Hazir in the Tribune.
Dr Hazir stated that more than 50% of the 550 patients with measles seen at a children’s hospital in Islamabad had previously been vaccinated (though he did not state whether they had received the recommended two doses or just one). NSNBC, quite unjustifiably, turned this into the headline “More than 50 % of those Diagnosed with Measles in Pakistan had been Vaccinated”. Read the rest of this entry »
The Arrogance of Ignorance: Anti-Vaccine Website Blunders Again
Misnamed anti-vaccine website Child Health Safety posted a blog recently in which a number of surprising claims were made with great certainty. I thought these claims sounded very dubious and it turned out that they were. It’s taken me a few days to get round to posting this debunking partly because, unlike Child Health Safety, I like to check my facts before I publish. Read the rest of this entry »
Dr Richard Halvorsen, Babyjabs, and Single Vaccines: Misleading Advertising, Exaggeration, Harm & Offence
Dr Richard Halvorsen is the founder of Babyjabs, a clinic that offers single vaccines and baseless scaremongering about the MMR vaccine. I took a look at some of the claims on the Babyjabs website and submitted a complaint to the ASA. Read the rest of this entry »
Vaccination Council: Misleading
Vaccination is one of medicine’s great success stories, preventing deaths and serious ill health caused by infectious diseases – and almost always doing so without causing serious harm in the process. I will be discussing the lives saved and harm prevented by vaccination against diseases such as pertussis and measles in this post, but first a note on safety. As Rümke and Visser wrote: “During recent years a scala of diseases or symptoms have been associated with vaccination (presumed side effects). Careful and extensive investigations have shown that such hypotheses could not be supported. […] The total number of cases where at least a possible relation between side effects and vaccination is observed–apart from local reactions and moderate general symptoms–is very rare (about 0.25 per 1000 vaccinations) and does not balance the benefits from vaccination.” Not everyone accepts that vaccination is safe and effective. Sadly, some of these people mislead others into thinking that vaccination is less effective or more dangerous than it actually is. Read the rest of this entry »
PCC Upholds Daily Mail’s Right To Distort
Recently, I wrote about the zombie Daily Mail article on MMR. I made a complaint to the PCC about the article in question, and have now received notice of their decision. Read the rest of this entry »
Stuff And Nonsense 