Category: Health

  • Amanda Peet speaks out for vaccination with backup

    Defending Vaccines: Actress Dispels Link To Autism:

    My newfound respect for Amanda Peet keeps increasing.

    Instead of spreading fear and junk science about vaccinations like Jenny McCarthy, Amanda Peet us speaking out in favor of vaccinating children and actually has a prominent doctor backing her up.

    After her baby was born in early 2007, she decided to speak out publicly. Since then, she’s been advocating vaccination through interviews, talk show appearances, and public service announcements.

    But Peet says parents shouldn’t look to her as a scientific expert. She defers scientific questions to Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital.

    And who does Jenny McCarthy have backing up her ridiculous claims?

    *crickets*

    That’s what I thought.

  • Jenny McCarthy Slams Amanda Peet Over Vaccines

    jennymccarthy

    Link

    LOS ANGELES — Actress and new mom Amanda Peet referred to parents who choose not to vaccinate their children as “parasites” in a recent interview. But despite her public apology aimed at parents of autistic children who believe that vaccines may have caused the illness, Jenny McCarthy hasn’t forgiven or forgotten.

    “She (Peet) has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong,” McCarthy (whose 6-year-old son has autism) tells the upcoming issue of Spectrum magazine, which hits stands Wednesday.

    If I was Amanda Peet I would not only have not apologized I would have called her ignorant, misinformed, a Luddite, and a fearmonger as well.

  • Public needs to know vaccines are safe, docs say


    Public needs to know vaccines are safe, docs say – Yahoo! News

    A new coalition of 22 major medical groups says public confidence in vaccine safety needs to be restored to avoid risks for deadly disease outbreaks.

    Thursday’s message comes from the Chicago-based American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and 20 more of the nation’s most influential health-related groups.

    It’s not public confidence. It’s an ignorant and very loud minority that would rather have an epidemic happen than have an unproven side effect of the vaccine happen to their precious little snowflakes.

  • No Connection Between Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) Vaccine And Autism, Study Suggests

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    We found no relationship between the timing of MMR vaccine and the onset of either GI complaints or autism.”

    Not that this will convince the Luddites of anything. They’d rather have their kids die of infectious diseases than embrace current scientific data. As much as I feel for kids with autism a lot of their misinformed parents have elevated it to almost a zealous religion of sorts.

  • FDA probes allergy drug’s suicide link

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    Now I’m sure some asthma sufferers are going to get all huffy and puffy over this. Pun intended by the way. But I’ve been on Singulair for years. As a matter of fact, I even quit smoking while on Singulair and I have not had any suicidal thoughts.

    I realize that this is anecdotal evidence from only one person but I’ll start listening to what the FDA says about drugs when they take actually dangerous drugs like Accutane and Ambien off the market.

  • How to Fight a Health Insurance Denial

    Link

    As someone who has worked on both sides of the healthcare industry, I can vouch that this article is the real deal.

    I’ve been wanting to write something like this for years now but never got around to it.

    Now I don’t have to. 🙂

  • Parents may be jailed over vaccinations

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    Calm down conspiracy-minded autism fearing parents. This is in Belgium. But if it did happen in the states I wouldn’t mind. Then we could wipe out the childhood diseases that we already wiped out once.

  • Study: Number of ‘Misleading’ Anti-Vaccination Videos on YouTube Growing

    Study: Number of ‘Misleading’ Anti-Vaccination Videos on YouTube Growing

    Link

    This is why childhood diseases that, we thought, were wiped out are making a comeback. Some tin foil hatters who buy into the unproven alleged link to autism and various other crackpot theories post this crap on the web and then get other stupid people to buy into it.

  • Study: Anti-Depressants Lower Teen Suicide Rates

    Study: Anti-Depressants Lower Teen Suicide Rates

    Link

    Not that this would ever shut the anti-anti-depressant Luddites up. They’re just as bad as the immunizations cause autism freaks.

  • Asperger’s as a criminal defense

    Asperger’s as a criminal defense

    I first heard of Asperger Syndrome when I was blogging about the case of William Freund. Freund was a 19-year-old from Aliso Viejo, California who donned a paintball mask and a cape, armed himself with a shotgun, and went on a neighborhood shooting spree. He entered the unlocked home of Vernon Smith and shot and killed Smith and his 22-year-old daughter Christina before turning the gun on himself.

    Now before we go any further, I’ll give you just the briefest of rundowns on Asperger’s. There are many who argue about the precise definition of Asperger’s, but it is believed to be a mild form of autism in which the afflicted have an extremely hard time with social interaction. For example, an AS patient may have a difficult time detecting sarcasm or reading a person’s body language and may take everything as fact. AS patients may also have an obsession with one particular subject or pastime. I realize this is just barely scratching the surface of Asperger’s, but it will do for now.

    William Freund’s obsession was more than likely guns. On the Asperger’s forum, WrongPlanet.net, Freund often spoke of wanting a real friend, being suicidal, and threatening to start a terror campaign. On the site SomethingAwful.com, he asked what kind of buckshot was the best for home protection. He stated that on Halloween, he was going to wait out on his porch with his shotgun and shoot anybody who tries to vandalize his pumpkins. That was possibly the worst site that he could have posted that on. The Something Awful community is not known to be kind to any user who posts such outrageous statements, and I’m sure his Asperger’s didn’t help.

    The moderators of WrongPlanet tried to reach his family to tell them of the terror plot he was allegedly planning, but they could not. Since Freund took his own life, no trial was ever held, but at the time I commented that Asperger’s would be eventually used as a murder defense. At the time, not knowing that it already had been tried.

    The next time I heard about Asperger’s was from the case of John Odgren. He is the 15-year-old student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts who stabbed and killed another student by the name of James Alenson in a school bathroom.

    Alenson was stabbed in the heart and abdomen and slashed across his face and neck with a 13-inch kitchen carving knife. Odgren is alleged to have two obsessions, forensics, and his knife collection. He had a penchant of bragging to classmates that he could pull off the perfect murder. After the murder took place, Odgren ran into the school hallway and admitted what he had done to school officials and police. By all accounts, he didn’t act like someone who had just committed a murder. Some reports say that he was joking with police and when Crime Scene Services arrived he excitedly offered to assist them.

    While the case has not yet gone to trial, his defense attorney was quick to offer up Asperger’s as a defense to the media.

    While blogging about the Lincoln-Sudbury murder, I asked some blogging doctors I know what they thought about using Asperger’s as a medical defense.

    One medical doctor explained to me that Asperger’s patients can sometimes have explosive episodes and that AS patients can have a lack of impulse control. A surgeon told me that since the explosive outbursts are a part of the disease, he doesn’t think the suspect should be sent to prison but should be under constant supervision and a controlled environment. I asked a Ph.D. who has a son with autism what her opinion was, but I’ll get into that a little later.

    Both crimes that I’ve mentioned so far do not seem like explosive episodes. Freund had been threatening to go on a rampage for a while. In my opinion, John Odgren had his crime planned out very far in advance, as he had the day of the murder circled on his calendar.

    Yesterday I read about the story of Robert Derderian. He’s an 18-year-old who is accused of sexually molesting a 12-year-old girl and videotaping what basically amounts to rape.

    He has also been charged with sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl several times over the course of last summer. According to his defense attorney, he may not be competent to stand trial because he has Asperger’s and autism and will not speak to his attorney.

    I find this claim hard to believe. One of the symptoms of autism and Asperger’s for many sufferers is an extreme dislike of physical contact. That’s not to say that is the case for all AS and autism patients, but it is rather prevalent among them. My point is this. Any criminal defense attorney who has an iota of integrity should not use Asperger’s as a criminal defense.

    The Ph.D. whose opinion I asked about this told me the following. Using autism/Asperger’s as a criminal defense is seen as having a very negative effect on the public perception and understanding of autism and Asperger’s as it suggests a direct link between autism/Asperger’s and violence.

    If this becomes standard practice among defense attorneys, it could lead to a sort of witch hunt against Asperger’s patients.

    AS patients are probably having a hard enough time as it is without this kind of social condemnation. A few bad apples, so to speak, should not let society cast a bad light on a group of people who are already misunderstood.