Murder in Kansas

Dr. George Tiller was a physician providing abortion services in Wichita, Kansas up until yesterday when he was murdered at his church.

From 1989-1992, I helped women enter health clinics despite rows of protesters from Operation Rescue (OR) sitting in front of the doors.

I helped women over fences and through back doors. I learned to create a "toothpaste corridor" and was kicked and punched by old men and young women alike. I met some of the loveliest people in the world who awoke with me at 4 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings and staked out womens health clinics throughout the city waiting to learn which one would be "hit". I worked on Westmoreland and Figueroa, in Sherman Oaks, East L.A. and Tustin.

I learned what humiliation a woman would go through to see her doctor and what humiliation a group of people would resort to in order to prevent a woman from taking care of her health.

Dr. Tiller was a frequent target of anti-abortion violence throughout his career and yet, despite the risk to himself and his family, he continued to provide these essential health services in a place where those services were almost, if not absolutely, non-existent.

Bill O'Reilly has targeted Dr. Tiller for 4 years for providing abortion services. He deserves some of the fault in this murder. His campaign made Dr. Tiller a nationwide target warning of Dr. Tiller's "judgment day."

Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, said yesterday: "George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions."

Today I made a donation to Medical Students 4 Choice, whose mission is to make reproductive health including abortion services a part of standard medical education.

To Dr. Tiller's family and friends, I wish you peace. To anyone who would deny a woman the right to make her own decisions about her health, I hope you never have to make a choice, but if you do, I hope it is your choice to make.

The cure for woo.

While I have written about the issue of vaccines here and here, I don't know if I've ever specifically made clear my contempt for the pseudo-scientific ramblings and dangerous tracts of Jenny McCarthy and her boyfriend Jim Carrey about the whole vaccine issue.

Jenny McCarthy believes that her son, Evan's autism was caused by receiving childhood vaccines. There is no science to back this up.

In June 2007, McCarthy began promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. She has appeared on several television shows and has published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. This has led to a dramatic increase in the number of vaccine preventable illnesses as well as an increase in the number of vaccine preventable deaths.

Now mainstream media has picked up on this movement of unscientific claims by people utterly unqualified to utter them.

The HUFFINGTON POST
Recently, the Huffington Post published an article by Jim Carrey on how children should not be vaccinated and then last week Arianna published an article by woo-meister herself, Marianne Williamson on how we should pray away swine flu and how all of our "bad thoughts" about Mexico's drug cartels caused the swine flu to occur.

The head. It wishes to explode.

OPRAH
Oprah, that monster of the media, in addition to promoting the Secret, in which you shouldn't look at fat people as it will make you fat and in which disease is caused by thinking bad thoughts (mmm, I always thought it was viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc.) has now taken Jenny under her wing, inking a deal with HARPO productions and giving her a substantially wider audience to spread her misinformation.

I am furious with the spread of woo. Fine. Sell your product and make a mint off of people who are willing to believe that the universe will bring them a Mercedes. It's been done for millenia. But when you are blaming people for having diseases by not being cheerful enough, which causes them to smile and think good thoughts while avoiding any personal responsibility, not to mention shame for getting sick, not getting said Mercedes and encouraging people to ignore science and not get their children vaccinated, while putting other preschoolers at risk, I want to take some action.

Not one to rest too much on any laurels, I have started a new website. It's called "Is it Science?". I look forward to getting questions and when questions aren't coming in, I plan to have a few notes about things like the panic over the pandemic that wasn't and other problems with relying on mainstream media and "this guy I know" for news. ENJOY!

Also, if you want to do something about the Jenny/Oprah marriage made in hell, here's a suggestion from Skepchick, one of my favorite skeptical websites.

Since sending mail to Oprah herself has been futile in the past, at least in my experience, sending a letter to her target audience might be more effective so the following is their sample letter to your mom. Happy Mother's Day!!!

Dear Mom,

I know how much you enjoy Oprah, and I also know how much you enjoy children not dying. That’s why I’m sending you a quick heads-up that Oprah is about to make a big mistake by giving a lot of money and publicity to a terrible person: Jenny McCarthy, who is trying to convince people not to vaccinate their children because she mistakenly thinks vaccines are harmful. Her actions have directly led to injuries, deaths, and the spread of diseases like measles that were previously considered to be eradicated in the United States thanks to the vaccination program.

You may want to avoid McCarthy’s new ventures and maybe even let Oprah know how you feel about this.

Love,
Your loving daughter

I'll also be sending a letter to Oprah herself. Mostly because I'm a glutton for punishment. Or just a glutton.

Anyway, if you feel encouraged to do so, here's her address:

Oprah Winfrey
Harpo Productions
PO Box 909715
Chicago, IL 60690
USA

Douchenozzle of the Year - 2009

So, it seems that research published in the February 1998 issue of The Lancet showing some link between the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was manipulated and misreported.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the lead author of this study and his co-authors are now defending themselves to the General Medical Council of Britain (equivalent to the AMA) for serious professional misconduct, specifically in regard to conflict of interest and manipulating data.

Meanwhile, advocates of the link continue to encourage families to skip vaccination leading to a jump in outbreaks of measles and other preventable diseases. Whereas previously there had been one outbreak a year, in 2008 there were 30 outbreaks between January and July. 131 individuals were infected prior to July 30th and of those cases, 63 were in children whose parents had refused vaccination. Thankfully, at least in these cases, none died though 11% were hospitalized. Andrew Wakefield and his followers are lucky in this regard.

The Sunday Times of London stated this week that the rates of vaccination fell from 92% (below measles herd immunity) to below 80% after the publication of Wakefield's study, and that confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales have risen from 56 in 1998 to 1348 in 2008, with two child fatalities.

As I have learned, over and over again working in research, anecdotal information is NOT science. Peer reviewed and repeatable data is science. Period.

H/T Hoyden About Town

PEPFAR, authorized.

So Big Belt Buckle Bush signed the PEPFAR reauthorization which, among other things, lifted the travel restrictions against people with HIV.

Essentially, those people who were not allowed in the country were classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission based on health-related grounds. The health-related grounds include those aliens who have a communicable disease of public health significance, who fail to present documentation of having received vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases, who have or have had a physical or mental disorder with associated harmful behavior, and who are drug abusers or addicts (see Boy George and Amy Winehouse).

So, for the first time since 1990, before protease inhibitors and cocktail therapies, when everyone was dying of things like PCP and PML, we can once again allow people with HIV to visit us in the U.S. Not that they haven't been coming here all along, geniuses, they've just not been telling you about it. Welcome to the 21st century on this one. Glad to have you here.

ON THE OTHER HAND!!!!!
Congress and the president's failure to rectify serious flaws regarding PEPFAR’s prevention policies will have harmful implications for the health and rights of women and girls worldwide. These serious issues include funding directives for abstinence and be-faithful programs, the inclusion of the anti-prostitution loyalty oath, and the failure to integrate HIV prevention services with family planning services.

So yay. And boo. Again.

All the news that's unfit

Damn, there's a lot of news out there today but I'm just going to pick up one issue at a time (actually 2 because I can't help myself).

Today I'll spend a moment in the HIV mines and then a brief moment with J.Mac.

1. Knowing a country by the company it keeps

What do the following countries have in common?

Armenia
Colombia
Qatar
Russia
Iraq
Oman
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Solomon Islands
Sudan
United States
Yemen

Any guesses? All of these countries prevent people with HIV from entry. Period. No exceptions.

This means that your friend with HIV visiting from the UK best not have his meds on him. It also means that the U.S. has not hosted the International AIDS Conference since the Act went into effect in 1987. This means that before every other scientific conference on HIV, numerous scientists, officials and community activists are effectively sneaking into this country.

The European Commissioner for Justice, Jacques Barrot, has raised the issue of people with HIV being banned from entry with Michael Chertoff, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, asking for the reason people with HIV remain barred from entry after all these years.

As HIV remains the only disease in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes it inadmissible for entry in the United States we are far behind any sort of scientific rationale and we are still making laws based on fear, judgment and knee jerk reactionism.

Progressive-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have added a provision to repeal the ban to Senate legislation to reauthorize PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Section 305 of the Tom Lantos & Henry J. Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (S. 2731) will repeal that ban.

To support the repeal, please email your senator to support this act.

It is ridiculous that my colleagues with HIV cannot come to this country to work. Not to mention, Andrew Sullivan may have to go back from whence he came, which frankly, sucks on so many levels. Mostly it sucks that I have to support Andrew Sullivan.

2. John McCain needs to think and then rethink. And then maybe think again.
John. Seriously? You don't believe in gay adoption? That's what you said. Here's the transcript from the New York Times (07/13/08):

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

So here, let me parse this out for a moment. You and Cindy are adoptive parents. You believe that that girl, who was in need of medical treatment when you adopted her from Bangladesh 17 years ago would have been better off in that orphanage than with same gender parents. I would like for you to explain this.

Today, while news media is reporting that McCain is "backing off his previous statement," what he actually said (through his communications director) was that it is a "state issue." Which actually isn't a position at all. It's a cop out.

Semantics/Semiotics/Propaganda

The way we speak, how we refer to certain things affects the way we behave.

AIDS/HIV
18 years ago, when I started working in the HIV field, I was amazed at how the media ignored the science to go with the vernacular - for instance, "AIDS victim" and "AIDS virus". A person who has HIV is a person with HIV, not an AIDS victim and it's HIV, a virus that may cause AIDS. The first is an unbelievably sensationalist term and the second prevents effective education about HIV transmission, prevention and treatment. I spent years undoing the damage that was done around that term.

I won't go into all of the media misuse of scientific terms because it could be an entire textbook.

SEX/RAPE
Recently, Liss at Shakesville has been championing the cause against the defiant misuse of "sex" when the word that should be used is "rape". When a man has forced sexual intercourse with his daughter while keeping her in a basement, it is rape and should be considered as such by the media. I imagine it is search engines looking for the word "sex" that makes CNN continue using the "forced her to engage in sex acts" when the more concise term would be "raped her".

ABUSE/LOVE
What brings up all of this rumination on semantics is this survey, commissioned by Liz Claiborne Inc., which polled 1,043 "tweens" ages 11 to 14; 523 parents of tweens; and 626 teens ages 15 to 18.

The article, published by Reuters was entitled, "Young love often marred by abuse."

In the survey, among youths who reported sex by age 14, 33 percent said they had been hit, choked or punched, while 58 percent had been verbally abused. In comparison, about 10 percent of all 15- to 18-year-olds reported physical abuse by a partner, and 29 percent reported verbal abuse.

I don't know if author, Julie Steenhuysen, wrote this headline or not but what is described in this survey is not young love. When a teen hits another teen while in a relationship, it is violence. When the abuser apologizes and promises never to do it again, it is the beginning of a long road which often leads to someone being seriously injured or killed and too rarely results in the abuser going to jail. Romanticizing it as "young love" serves no further purpose than sensationalism.

Public Health Notice of the Day

Despite public health authorities trying to get the word out, they have somehow failed miserably.

MYTH: Dead bodies cause disease.

FACT: Diseases die along with dead bodies and are overgrown quite quickly with microorganisms that are responsible for decomposition. These microorganisms are not capable of causing disease in humans!

The major health epidemic that occurs after a natural disaster, such as the ones in Myanmar and China, are as a result of contaminated water, food, famine and especially poor sanitation. Drinking water that has been contaminated with feces being the primary issue.

When people start getting diarrheal disease due to drinking contaminated water, the whole thing becomes more and more cyclical.

Unfortunately, the misperception that bodies need to be buried quickly or cremated or covered in disinfectant causes unnecessary waste of time and money while clean water would be a better use of precious resources.

That is your public health notice of the day.