Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Jenny McCarthy, Queen of the Anti-Vaxxers

photo 1391196430_jenny-mccarthy-560.jpg

This has been "Vaccination Week" in the news, as Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and ABC's Laura Ingraham decided they would set modern medicine back about 100 years and diss vaccinations in the middle of a Measles Epidemic.

But they are just minor players in this meme. Many on Twitter are pointing fingers at actress and erstwhile Playboy Bunny Jenny McCarthy as the real Evil Queen of the Anti-Vaxxers because she was so outspoken about her belief that childhood shots are the cause of autism. Without her help, that debunked theory might have died long ago. Thanks to her, humans may die long before the Anti-Vaxx movement dies.

From Huffington Post
...Jenny McCarthy has been described as a "Playmate turned pseudoscientist" who "by dint of sheer energy and celebrity... became the nation's most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxxer ideology." She is president of Generation Rescue, a non-profit group founded in 2005 by Lisa and J.B. Handley, which promotes the discredited idea that children with autism can be cured by unscientific, non-medical methods. Its website claims, "Conventional medicine treats the symptoms of autism. Biomedical treatment addresses the root cause." McCarthy stumbled onto this website within weeks of its debut in 2005, shortly after her son was diagnosed with autism, and soon afterwards began her anti-vaccine crusade.
. . . Now that long-dormant diseases are reappearing, McCarthy has tried to deny her anti-vaxxer history. Worse, she is still misinforming the public.
"I am not anti-vaccine," she said last November, right before the debut of her new SiriusXM radio show. "I'm in this gray zone of, I think everyone should be aware and educate yourself and ask questions. And if your kid is having a problem, ask your doctor for an alternative way of doing the shots," meaning receiving fewer doses at once, which is not medically recommended, since it increases the time children remain unvaccinated and vulnerable to illness.





















Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, February 2, 2015

Chris Christie and Rand Paul Want "Measure of Choice" for Vaccinations ~ Updated

photo tumblr_lu5d6kONLS1qg3ox0o1_400.jpg


Previous Related Post:
Measles Epidemic Pits Anti-Vaxx Parents Against Public Health

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Presidential hopefuls Chris Christie and Rand Paul have decided that raising money for their 2016 campaigns is more important than the health of children everywhere. Both are pandering to the Anti-Vaxx movement, saying that vaccinating your kids should be a "choice" and not a mandate from the government. This is an epic fail on their parts, and completely irresponsible!

But what do they care about the public good? They only want to be President of the United States, right?

In order to get elected, these guys have to be seen as the "Anti-Obama," and the President is pro-Vaccination (because he is also pro-science and has a brain).





It's bad enough that Rand Paul's father, perpetual candidate Ron Paul, is a medical doctor, and Rand Paul himself is some type of doctor. But Chris Christie is worse, since he recently had an Ebola patient quarantined and basically held at house arrest in New Jersey, but for kids who get measles from the unvaccinated - you're on your own, kids!

UPDATE: The Nurse who was quarantined by Chris Christie for Ebola had some words for him:

"I think this is a good example of Gov. Christie's making some very ill-informed statements. We heard it a lot during the Ebola discussion, and now it seems to have happened again," Maine medic Kaci Hickox said in an interview that aired Monday night on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes."
. . . "I think the unfortunate thing or the scary thing is that I want a leader who consults experts and thinks about sort of all of the different sides to an issue before making statements and — and policies that are unfounded in science," she said.



They are both being intellectually dishonest about their true beliefs. Notice they both used the phrase "measure of choice," which tells me that this is probably a GOP talking point and not something they actually wanted to say. They are pandering to the base.

From Guardian UK
Christie, who is considered a leading presidential candidate, told press during his visit to the UK that parents should have “some measure of choice” in the decision to vaccinate their children.
“It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official,” said Christie. “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
Within hours, Christie’s office had sent a clarification. “The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated,” wrote a representative. “At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate.”

From The Hill
Paul was asked to weigh in on vaccines, after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a likely rival for the GOP nomination in 2016, said Monday morning that there should be "some measure of choice" for parents leery of vaccinating their children.

"I'm not anti-vaccine at all, but most of them ought to be voluntary," Paul, an ophthalmologist, said Monday on the "Laura Ingraham Show," in a segment circulated by the Democratic National Committee along with criticism of Paul's views.

Paul added a shot at potential presidential primary rival former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who made an HPV vaccine mandatory in his state before later calling it a "mistake."

"I think there are times where there can be some rules, but for the most part it ought to be voluntary and the biggest one is — I don't know if you remember when Governor Perry made it mandatory to get, for a sexually transmitted disease, to have everybody have to take it," Paul said. "While I think it's a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that's a personal decision for individuals to take and when they take it."































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Measles Epidemic Pits Anti-Vaxx Parents Against Public Health

photo ece800f4-ce50-47f6-8696-d17f5e71b1d7.jpg

No parent enjoys taking their infants and toddlers in for vaccinations. My husband hates needles, which meant that I was the one who always had to take our kids to the health department for shots against Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) or Diptheria(whooping cough) and Tetanus (DpTt) shots. I would go in with a happy smiling baby, come out with a screaming, cranky baby who would then run a fever for several days as the antibodies from the shots built up immunity in the blood.

No parent enjoys taking a little lamb in for shots, but I always reminded myself that children once died from things like Measles and Whooping Cough. Vaccines are a miracle. The kids in the U.S. are lucky to have nearly free vaccines for the asking.

Except when parents don't ask and don't care, and don't take the steps to get their children vaccinated. And when there's an actual "Anti-Vaxx" movement, then many more children are at risk. And now it is causing a dangerous epidemic that started, of all places, in Disneyland!

From Time Magazine
Somewhere in Orange County, Mary Poppins and Ariel the mermaid may be running a fever. The same could be true for her coworkers—any of the other 23,000 people (OK, or characters) who punch in for work at Disneyland every day. And the same could be true too for any one of the estimated 16 million people who will pour into the theme park this year.

The reason? Measles. The cause? This may not come entirely as a surprise: the anti-vaccine crowd.

. . . The outbreak has spread to five other states—which is to be expected when the place that is ground zero for any infection attracts visitors from all over the world. Of the first 20 Disneyland victims, 15 were unvaccinated. Concern about the infections has gotten so great that California State epidemiologist Gil Chavez warned the public that anyone who has not had the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine should avoid all California theme parks “for the time being.”



Schools were once the frontline against epidemics, either becoming makeshift clinics for vaccinations, or by insisting that parents have their children vaccinated before they could attend school. But thanks to the Anti-Vaxxers, some systems began to allow parents to opt-out of the requirement for religious or personal reasons. In politically red states, the Anti-Vaxx movement has been helped along by a GOP that appears to hate any type of mass health care, and who like to pander to far-right Libertarians and Homeschool parents.





How did the Anti-Vaxx movement get started? Mostly because there are "clusters" of autistic children around the country and no one has proven scientifically why that is happening. One scientist decided to "prove" that it was the vaccination mixtures causing autism. And since autism remains vastly more frightening to parents who have never actually seen what measles can do to child, they bought the idea hook, line and sinker.



From Forbes
...The wave began with a 1998 paper published in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, claiming that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. Wakefield’s work was later shown to be fraudulent, and his claims about the vaccine “dishonest and irresponsible.” After lengthy investigations, the paper was retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license. Despite this very public repudiation, Wakefield has stuck to his claims, though, and has spent much of the past 15 years speaking (or perhaps “preaching” would be a better term) to anti-vaccine groups, to whom he is a kind of folk hero.
It’s not just Wakefield, though. Anti-vaccine messages have been broadcast aggressively by the group Generation Rescue, led by former Playboy playmate and MTV host Jenny McCarthy, and by Age of Autism, a group dedicated to the proposition that vaccines cause autism. (Age of Autism is doing it again right now.) And just last summer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published a new book further promoting the long-discredited claim that thimerosal causes autism.

Who are these parents?

From Washington Post
. . . the anti-vaccination movement is fueled by an over-privileged group of rich people grouped together who swear they won't put any chemicals in their kids (food or vaccines or whatever else), either because it's trendy to be all-natural or they don't understand or accept the science of vaccinations. Their science denying has been propelled further by celebrities, like Jenny McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and actress Mayim Bialik, who is also a neuroscientist and even plays one on TV.

Of the 34 patients in the current measles outbreak whose vaccination status is known, only five were fully vaccinated, according to the Los Angeles Times. And the worst of the outbreak is centered in Orange County, ground zero for the anti-vaccination movement that's put children at risk over junk science.
























Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Right-Wing Troll Todd Kincannon Says Kill the Ebola Victims

photo BzNQowdIcAAE4fI.jpg

Previous Related Post:
Wingnuts Blame Obama for Ebola Virus Because "African"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Todd Kincannon is a foul-mouthed twitter troll and a lawyer who brags that his family money will get him out of any trouble. He was also once leader of the South Carolina Republican Party, but they have distanced themselves (even though some of them probably love his nasty tweets).

Well, yeah - that guy thinks we ought to just kill the victims of Ebola.

Did I mention he is pro-life?

And really there's no end to his horribleness. Execution for sick people is just the tip of the shit-show with him. He will mention any body part of any human, particularly democrats, used in any vile way on his twitter account, and he's completely shameless about his racism and misogyny. When I read his tweets I am at a loss to understand why anyone would spend their days spreading filth all over twitter, but that's what he has been doing for years now. What a waste of time.












Stephen Colbert had some choice words for him:

My home state of South Carolina has a plan to eradicate this virus. As former executive director of the GOP and current middle school debate club treasurer Tom (Todd) Kincannon tweeted, "The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate humane execution and sanitization of the whole area. That will save lives."

Finally, a way to save lives. Humanely execute the victim.

Of course the shotgun-blast to his chest could spread some bodily fluids. So to be saved, someone will have to compassionately murder whoever executed the patient, and that person of course will have to be sensitively bludgeoned to death by a fourth person, and so on and so on. Until the chain of humane homicide makes it back to whomever wonderful idea this was (shows pic of Todd Kincannon).


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

GOP Fearmongering about "Diseases" on the Border

photo GOP-Fear.png

Previous Related Posts:
Oops! Rick Perry Looks Like Grumpy Cat
Murrieta Mob Screams at Immigrant Children
Ann Coulter Rants that Immigrants will Ruin GOP
GOP Painful Rebranding on Immigration
Grinchy Jan Brewer Denies Dreamer Rights
Sheriff Joe Arpaio Arrests 6-year-old Girl
Obama Immigration Speech Makes Right Wing Heads Explode

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Prophets of Doom, that is to say the Republican Party and Fox News, are spreading more lies about the poor immigrant children arriving on our southern border. The key word of their talking point is "disease," and the hyperbole making the rounds is that all the kids are infected with everything from HIV to Leprosy, and they are "invading" a town near you!!!

What Republicans are saying is the stereotypical racist diatribe against the "other" arriving on our shores. They said it about the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Chinese - just name any ethnic group. And don't forget the strange "Kenyan" President. It's a story old as time.

These fear-mongering doofus-twits forget that most large cities in the U.S. have an epidemic of bedbugs right now. Homegrown bedbugs. And every elementary school in the country, private as well as public, has had recent bouts with head lice, fleas, chiggers, or something else. Same thing with summer camps, where all sorts of itchy and crawly things run rampant in hot weather. For all we know, these kids on the border are catching parasites after arriving in the American camps.

You can't just glance at a child and diagnose whether they merely have a heat rash, allergy, or mosquito bites as opposed to being "infected" with something more sinister. Maybe it's not measles, it's merely chicken pox? The GOP just loves to play doctor, and here they go again.

What is the harm in giving these poor chidren some nutritious food, a bath, and a clean place to sleep? Is that too much to ask from the richest country on earth? What would Jesus do? Didn't he heal the sick and say "suffer the little children to come unto me." Those words are lost on the faux-Christians pretending to be holier than the immigrants. Shame on them!









No Ill-Eagles Graffiti in Maryland:



Via Raw Story
Fox News has reported, repeatedly, that the children entering the country are doing so “with active scabies,” one of the three most common skin infections among children.
However, The National Review cast doubt about verifiability of the scabies claims, noting that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent who made them, Ron Zermeno, received a cease and desist order from his employer, reminding him that he should not speak without prior authorization.

From the Texas Observer
With thousands of children from Central America arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, an old plague is once again sweeping the country—the fear of the diseased immigrant.

“Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don’t even know what all diseases they have,” U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said recently. “Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx.”

Fox News commentator Cal Thomas asks, for example, if “the unaccompanied minors pouring over the border…have brought with them proof of vaccination?” Thomas accuses the border-crossers of harboring vaccine-preventable diseases such as “mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria.”

Before demonizing undocumented children, we should look at the facts: The vast majority of Central Americans are vaccinated against all these diseases. Governments concerned about health, and good parents investing in their kids, have made Central American kids better-vaccinated than Texan kids. We fear them not because they are actually sick, but because of powerful anti-immigration narratives that link foreigners to disease.

In fact, as the Texas Observer notes, the kids arriving on the Texas border are actually better vaccinated than our own children in the U.S., thanks to smear campaigns by famous celebrities blaming vaccines for everything from autism to cancer, as well as a lack of health insurance up till now for the poorest families.

By comparison, one in six kids in Texas is uninsured, and even insured families often must pay for vaccination. That means that many Texas kids fall behind on vaccinations, or miss them altogether when their family can’t afford a doctor’s visit. Other families refuse vaccination.
. . . Fact check: UNICEF reports that 93 percent of kids in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are vaccinated against measles. That’s better than American kids (92 percent).


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Oklahoma and the Unusually Cruel Execution

photo OK.png

Oklahoma gave an inmate an untried chemical cocktail in an attempt to perform an execution. The only problem was the prisoner didn't die right away, and instead suffered a horrible death that was witnessed by reporters. Thanks to the secrecy of the state of Oklahoma, we'll probably never know exactly what went wrong, but at least they stayed execution for the next prisoner in line. As if OK wasn't backward enough, now they have this new blot on their record. One more good reason to get rid of Governor Mary Fallin.

Live Tweets of horror by reporter Bailey McBride:













Her feelings the next day, April 29, 2014:



From The New Yorker
Oklahoma’s secrecy laws make it impossible to know anything beyond the names of the ingredients injected into the condemned prisoner. The state has declined to provide the public with reasons for selecting a particular drug cocktail, or with any details about the drugs themselves, or about the supplier. The state reportedly buys the drugs with petty cash, to make the purchases more difficult to track and, therefore, harder to legally challenge.

What is known, though, is that, ten minutes into Lockett’s execution, a prison official told a doctor, “Go ahead and check to see if he’s unconscious.”
After checking, the doctor said, “Mr. Lockett is not unconscious.”
“I’m not,” Lockett said.

Courtney Francisco, a reporter for KFOR-TV, in Oklahoma City, was one of the witnesses at the execution. She told the BBC that Lockett, strapped to the gurney, was moving his arms and legs and mumbling, “as if he was trying to talk.”

We have a fundamental standard in this country that even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely. I think everyone would recognize that this case fell short of that standard.
~ White House Spokesperson Jay Carney

You’d think that a modern society endlessly searching for a “humane” way to kill people, and finding that all of its methods turn out to be some form of torture, would do one of two things: realize there’s no humane way to kill people, and stop it, or accept that the point is cruelty, and just torture the hell out of them. Mary Fallin and her Oklahoma allies appear to have decided the latter. They should be honest about it.
~ Joan Walsh on Salon

The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma this week is yet more evidence that the death sentence is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society.
The fact that, as reported, Lockett was left "writhing in agony" on the gurney of the death chamber of Oklahoma state penitentiary after a cocktail of lethal drugs had been administered, and that it took 43 minutes for him to die of a heart attack, should be reason to call a moratorium on the death sentence in the US, else it can no longer claim to be that symbol of freedom and justice it claims.
~ John Wight, Huffington Post

The death penalty may be on its death bed.
The botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate Tuesday night has temporarily halted planned executions in that state, but the horrifying death of Clayton Locket is only the most recent in a series of executions to illustrate that lethal injection is not a humane alternative to options like the electric chair or firing squad. With crime rates dropping across the U.S., states abolishing capital punishment, and drug companies abandoning the execution market – forcing the creation of secret and unproven drug combinations – the fight to end the death penalty may have reached a tipping point.
~ Meredith Clark, MSNBC

From KFOR News in Oklahoma City
ACLU of Oklahoma Says Governor’s Proposed Investigation is Not Independent

UPDATE 7:38 p.m. - Shortly after the execution of Clay Lockett, the American Civil Union of Oklahoma called for a moratorium on all executions in Oklahoma pending a complete and independent investigation into the botched execution and the events leading up to the fundamental breakdown in the state’s execution process.

The ACLU of Oklahoma issued a statement in response to Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin call for an investigation to be conducted by a state agency under her control.

The Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma Ryan Kiesel said, “It is impossible for the Department of Public Safety, the Attorney General’s office, or anyone who is under the control of any agency or politician who played a role in this matter to offer a truly independent assessment. It is absurd to think that the same group of people that unnecessarily rushed last night’s execution and fought openness at every turn, can now be expected to hold themselves accountable in an investigation. This began as a question of whether we trust the government to kill its citizens, even guilty ones, in a secret process. Now we add to that the question of whether we trust the government to investigate itself and hold itself accountable when something goes horribly wrong during its secret execution process.”

Excellent reporting by Rachel Maddow on this horrible topic:





Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, September 19, 2013

GOP Releases "Creepy Uncle Sam" Obamacare Ad

photo EvilUncleSam.jpg

From Yahoo News
Generation Opportunity, a Virginia-based group that is part of a coalition of right-leaning organizations with financial ties to billionaire businessmen and political activists Charles and David Koch, will launch a six-figure campaign aimed at convincing young people to “opt-out” of the Obamacare exchanges. Later this month, the group will begin a tour of 20 college campuses, where they plan to set up shop alongside pro-Obamacare activists such as Enroll America that are working to sign people up for the insurance exchanges.
. . . Their message: You don’t have to sign up for Obamacare. And they want students to sign a pledge not get insurance plans set up by the law.

“What we’re trying to communicate is, 'No, you’re actually not required to buy health insurance,'” Generation Opportunity President Evan Feinberg told Yahoo News in an interview about the campaign. “You might have to pay a fine, but that’s going to be cheaper for you and better for you.”
Under the law, those who do not sign up for health insurance in 2014 will be required to pay $95 or one percent of household income through the Internal Revenue Service. The fine will increase after that. Generation Opportunity activists will try to convince young people that it’s better for them to pay the fine, even if it means lacking coverage.

The group’s college tour will coincide with the release of an online video series featuring an Uncle Sam character that looks more like a terrifying circus clown than the guy who wants you to join the Army.





The Russians, the Chinese and the Japanese used to use Uncle Sam as a creepy warmonger in their propaganda too.
~ Bill B. on Mediaite

..So the Republicans are accusing Obamacare of forcing the government onto a woman's body.
OH THE IRONY, HOW YOU SWAYETH ME.
~ Derek R. on Mediaite

It's shockingly disgusting, incredibly insulting and a bald-faced lie. It's gone too far, even for them.
~ Ethan Rome, Exec. Director with Health Care for America Now

It is hard to tell if this is real or if it’s a ‘Saturday Night Live’ parody about the hypocrisy of extremists who want to be in every exam room in America but don’t want to expand access to quality health care. These are the same extreme Koch-funded political groups who have tried to pass transvaginal ultrasound laws and other laws allowing politicians to interfere with people’s personal medical decisions. These videos are the height of hypocrisy, but more importantly they are irresponsible and dangerous, designed to spread misinformation and discourage people from getting access to high quality, affordable health care.
~ Eric Ferrero, vice president for communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Uncle Sam as your OB/GYN. Yes, the thrust of the “Opt Out” campaign is that Obamacare automatically replaces your medical professionals with patriotic cosplay perverts.
The spot—which is paralleled for men with a version where Uncle Sam is the guy examining your prostate—is like a mashup of a torture porn movie and a lesser Burger King ad.
~ Miles Klee on Daily Dot


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Texas #Tampongate


photo 8ef01291-1a8a-4abd-95f2-d5569edc2848.jpg

source: @TuxcedoCat



















































































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

North Carolina Senate GOP Railroads Abortion Law

photo flag_north_carolina.gif




















































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)