text:
In this week's New Yorker, I wrote about NGLY1 disorder, a new genetic disease first identified in 2012. Bertrand Might, a six-and-a-half-year-old boy who lives in Salt Lake City with his family, was the index patient, and I began reporting the story not long after Bertrand was first diagnosed just over two years ago.
I learned about Bertrand's story after reading a blog post his father, Matt Might, had written about the family's diagnostic odyssey. I got in touch with Matt a few days later, and since then have spoken with him and his wife, Cristina, dozens of times, usually for hour long Skype sessions. I've visited the Mights in their home, have met Matt's and Cristina's families, and have had Matt over to our house in Boston for dinner. I've even sung duets from Frozen with their adorable daughter, Victoria. They are truly a remarkable family. They've endured more than most people could imagine and somehow remain simultaneously relentless and upbeat. They also happen to be two of the kindest, most generous people you could meet. Read more.
Mahalo, the "human search engine" with the motto "Learn anything,"^ has asked me to take part in their "ask me anything" author video series. If you have a question you'd like to throw into the mix, put it in the comments of this Reddit thread before tomorrow, June 27, at 4pm Eastern time.
I'm sure there'll be lots of questions about The Panic Virus, but as the name of the feature indicates, it'll cover pretty much everything — and some of the questions posted up there so far have to do with the future of print media (a topic I write about in this week's New York magazine) and the common threads between my books. I'll be answering some of the most interesting queries via Skype; the video will be posted sometime in the next week.
^ Mahalo is a Hawaiian word that actually means "thank you." If you haven't previously checked it out, there's an explanation of how the Mahalo Answers work here and the answers to some other Mahalo FAQ over here.
Read more.I have a piece in tomorrow's Washington Post Outlook section titled "An early cure for parents' vaccine panic." It outlines some thoughts I have about implementing a standard pre-natal appointment for parents to discuss vaccines and vaccine safety. In a recent post on my blog at the Public Library of Science, I started what I hope will be a fruitful back-and-forth for doctors and parents to share their thoughts on the issue. Check it out — I'd love to hear what you think.
Post: Parents and pediatricians: Do you think a pre-natal discussion about vaccines would help assuage fears? (The Panic Virus Blog, The Public Library of Science.)
Read more.At the end of April, I moved my blog to the Public Library of Science's Blog Network. Since then, I've been trying to figure out the best way to keep readers of this site informed about what's going on over there. There doesn't seem to be any elegant solution…at least that I've been able to figure out.
So: from now on, those folks interested in The Panic Virus Blog should go here — and for those of you who prefer using RSS readers, you can get my feed here.
I'm also on Twitter, I recently joined Tumblr, and I'm going to be building up The Panic Virus Facebook page over the next few weeks — so there'll be plenty of ways to keep up with what's going on.
Read more.According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Washington State has one of the highest school-immunization exemption rates in the country — and the current measles outbreak that's spreading across the country has reached there as well.
Today at 1:35 pm PST, I'll be on KOMO-Newsradio AM 1000/97.7 FM to talk about the ways in which declining vaccination rates have contributing to the situation. If you're not in the station's broadcast range, you can also listen online.
Read more.Earlier today, the CDC released a report about the measles outbreaks that have been occurring across the country since the beginning of the year. (Hat tip to USA Today's Liz Szabo for this story.) One reason measles outbreaks are so scary (and so difficult to contain) is that measles is the most infectious microbe known to man–it's transmission rate is around 90 percent. It has also killed more children than any other disease in history.
Read the rest of this post on The Panic Virus PLoS Blog…
Read more.Among the news I wrote about this week was a press conference in Washington DC ginning up the latest manufactroversy over vaccines and autism. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Fox News was one of the few news organizations to take the bait.) There are also highlights from a recent review on Blogcritics and a shout-out in the New York Post from Sarah Vowell. I also noted that Rolling Stone revived the error-filled Robert F. Kennedy Jr. story about thimerosal that the magazine ran in 2005 and disappeared sometime last year.
The most amusing post (for my money, anyway), was titled "In which my Seussian name is drafted in service of an Orwellian conspiracy," and it deserves reprinting in full:
Back in late 2002, when I was a Newsweek media columnist covering the implosion of The New York Times, Mickey Kaus married my name with my employer's and came up with Mnoosweek. It wasn't quite a nonce usage — Kaus used it once more in Slate the following spring and Daniel Drezner referenced a Mnoosweek piece that summer — but that was pretty much it. It's hard enough to spell Mnookin, never mind needing to turn it into a witty aphorism.
But! I needn't have worried: It turns out I've recently been conferred the status of my very own eponymous neologism: the Mnooklear attack, which, according to Urban Dictionary, is:
The type of desperate attack in which public health officials and drug companies engage when trying to hide their causal roles in the the autism epidemic. Usually involves hiring drug addicts. The main goals of Mnooklear Attacks are to protect shareholders and to keep CDC staff out of jail. Ex: Did you see the Mnooklear Attack on universally respected journalist Robert MacNeil?
Occam's Razor it ain't…but hey, with a name like mine, I'll take what I can get.
Read more.My latest PLoS blog post went up on Friday; in it I discuss a comment I made back in January at American University in Washington DC. It begins:
If there's any one thing I've stressed in my talks over the past three months, it's that parents of children who believe that their children have been vaccine injured deserve compassion and understanding. (That doesn't mean they should be pandered to or be allowed to dictate public health policy.) I've also said many times that I can't pretend to know beyond any doubt how I would react if I was in their shoes.
I do, however, know what it's like to be a parent who feels uneasy when a doctor asks you to take off your newborn's pants so your child can be injected with a vaccine. It's scary. I don't know anyone in the world who likes needles or likes watching needles pierce their child's skin. However, the fact that something is scary does not convey a license to blithely deny reality — which is why I find the actions of parents who have simply decided for themselves that vaccines and dangerous and at the same refuse to acknowledge the potential repercussions of not vaccinating on those around them to be morally repugnant. This is not a new position of mine; I wrote about it at length in a chapter of my book titled "Medical NIMBYism and Faith Based Metaphysics"…
Click here for the rest of the post.
Read more.
In my haste to get through all of my work yesterday while simultaneously letting folks know about my move over to the PLoS Blog Network, I left off four (geesh!) ScienceOnline 2011'ers who are also on the site, namely…Emily Anthes (Wonderland) , Peter Janiszewski (Obesity Panacea) , Martin Fenner (Gobbledygook), and John Rennie (The Gleaming Retort). They're all excellent, too…
Read more.Two days after The Panic Virus was released, I traveled to North Carolina's Research Triangle for ScienceOnline 2011, aka #SciO11. The annual conference, which has been transformed into one of the premier science journalism events in the world, is the brainchild of Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker — and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. (Thanks again, Rebecca Skloot and Ivan Oransky, for lighting a fire under my ass and making sure I attended.) Read more.
With the exception of Andrew Wakefield, there are no more infamous anti-vaccine "researchers" than Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David.
Last week, the Maryland State Board of Physicians suspended Mark Geier's license to practice medicine. (As far as I can tell, this doesn't affect Geier's ability to practice in the other states in which he's licensed, including California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington.) That this move comes years too late for scores of children does not mean it is not incredibly welcome.
Read more on The Panic Virus PLoS blog…
Almost three months ago, a writer named David Kirby wrote a 3,800-word piece for The Huffington Post titled "The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won't Go Away." It was not an impressive piece of reporting. As I wrote in Scientific American at the time,
By obscuring the difference between anecdotes and evidence, fomenting unfounded fears, and disguising tendentious tracts as objective analyses, he might be influencing public opinion, but he's not helping the search for verifiable truth. Read more.
On Tuesday, Robert MacNeil was on The Emily Rooney Show, which airs on WGBH in Boston. Rooney asked him about my criticisms of his reporting. This was his response:
Well, he's entitled to his opinion and to sell his book.
It's true that I expressed my opinion — but I assume what Rooney was asking him about were facts, like, for instance, the fact that he quoted his daughter saying that she believed her son had gotten autism from vaccines but didn't quote a single scientist or public health official or epidemiologist or vaccine researcher or spokesperson from the American Medical Association or the American Academy of Pediatrics. Read more.
This morning, The New York Times Magazine posted Susan Dominus's lengthy profile of Andrew Wakefield.
As I told Dominus, I have conflicted feelings about pieces like this. On one level, I think they run the risk of simply giving more oxygen to someone who has already taken significantly more of the media's attention than he deserves. There's a sort of bizarro-world nature to the correlation between the attention Wakefield receives and the total scientific bankruptcy of his notions…and in a month when an entire Virginia school had to be shut down because of a whooping cough outbreak spread by non-vaccinated students and ten (and counting) children have been hospitalized in Minnesota because of a measles outbreak started by a deliberately unvaccinated child, I'm not sure the rantings of a disgraced doctor who was caught on tape joking about drawing blood from children at his son's birthday party needs any more attention. Read more.
As you might have heard, PBS's Newshour is in the midst of a six-part series on autism. It's being hosted by Robert MacNeil, who returned to the show for the first time in 16 years to work on a special that he says is the first time in his career that he used his family's personal stories to inform his reporting.
As I said on Monday, he shouldn't have come out of retirement. The series has been an embarrassment. (For my take on the series's first episode, see my post titled "An embarrassing, reckless, and irresponsible coda to Robert MacNeil's career." For my thoughts on the ineffective counter-tactics of the AAP, see "[Abstracts] vs. anecdotes: What we have here is a failure to communicate." And for an example of how the series will be used by anti-vaccine activists to legitimize their efforts, see "The first of many statements yoking Robert MacNeil to the vaccine-autism canard.") Read more.
Exhibit A in why Robert MacNeil's "Autism Now" series has been reckless and irresponsible is a press release issued by Alison MacNeil and SafeMinds* titled, "Daughter of Journalist Robert MacNeil States that Son Regressed Into Autism After Vaccines."
Notice that it does not say "Alison MacNeil believes that son regressed into autism after vaccines," or "Family member featured on Newshour believes son regressed into autism after vaccines." Instead, it invokes a trusted, even revered, newsman and links his name to the "statement" that a child's autism was called by vaccines.
The rest of the press release contains a drum-beat of half-truths presented as fact (the U.S. has the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world, the U.S.'s vaccine schedule is a "grand experiment"), either-or fallacies and rhetorical sleights of hand ("are we trading the elimination of childhood disease for a lifetime of disability?"), non sequiturs ("one-fifth of all U.S. children take at least one prescription medication"), and scare tactics ("I have never met a family willing to sacrifice their child for the good of the herd").
Obviously, any group (or person) has the right to release a statement that makes all sorts of claims. The problem here is that by framing the first hour of his autism special the way he did, Robert MacNeil opened himself (and Newshour) to charges that he's actually promoting a scientifically disproven (and dangerous) theory. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in the days to come.
* SafeMinds is an acronym for Sensible Action For Ending Mercury Induced Neurological Disorders. It is a parent-advocacy group founded in the wake of fears that an ethyl-mercury based preservative used in some childhood vaccines was causing autism. That preservative, thimerosal, was shown in numerous studies not to cause autism; it was also removed from childhood vaccines a decade ago.
Read more.The fact that so many people still believe vaccines cause autism is due to many factors — but ultimately, I think it's a failure of communication on virtually every level.
Today, Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, unintentionally provided another example of how the medical infrastructure in this country has a lot to learn in that department. In what was intended to be a partial antidote to the embarrassing PBS Newshour series "Autism Now," Pediatrics released 18 vaccine-safety reports for free. As far as scientific journal articles goes, they're fairly easy to understand…but compare Pediatrics's point of entry: Read more.
PBS's Newshour is currently in the middle of a multi-part special on autism. The series brings Robert MacNeil back to the show for the first time in 16 years. If it turns out to be MacNeil's swan song, it'll be an embarrassing coda to his career.
The series kicked off with an episode titled "Autism Now: Robert MacNeil Shares Grandson Nick's Story." Here's MacNeil's introduction:
I've been a reporter on and off for 50 years, but I've never brought my family into a story, until Nick, because he moves me deeply. Also because I think his story can help people understand his form of autism and help me understand it better.
The rest of the hour-long program shows in spades why MacNeil would have been well-served by sticking to the principles that he'd followed for so long. Read more.
Kim Stagliano is one of the best-known figures within the anti-vaccine autism advocacy community. She can be brash, funny, and blunt. (If the National Vaccine Information Center's Barbara Loe Fisher is the movement's TV-ready super-ego, Stagliano is its id.) In November, she published a book titled All I Can Handle: I'm No Mother Theresa, which details her experiences raising three daughters with autism. (Jenny McCarthy wrote the introduction.) Read more.
One of the most painful chapters to write in The Panic Virus was the story of Danielle and Ralph Romaguera, whose infant daughter, Brie, died of a pertussis infection when she was less than two months old. (In January, I recorded a Vanity Fair podcast with that chapter of the book.) Whooping cough is a scary, scary disease — as the Romagueras, or the parents of any of the ten infants who died of pertussis last year in California, can attest. (Nine of those children were under six months old, which is the age at which a child following the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule would be fully vaccinated.) Read more.
For years, CBS News's Sharyl Attkisson has been one of the least responsible mainstream journalists covering vaccines and autism. Again and again, she's parroted anti-vaccine rhetoric long past the point that it's been decisively disproved. To take but one recent example: In January, she posted (and then removed) a story claiming that a study in the Archives of Neurology said almost precisely the opposite of what it actually reported.
She's at it again: A few hours ago, she posted a story under the heading, "CBS News Investigates." The piece starts out thusly: Read more.
I've been traveling a lot over the past week, which has translated into lots of activity in the real world and very little in the virtual one. Instead of a bunch of mini-posts, I'm going to do a couple of catch-all updates; this one has links to news about some of the events I did on the road, and over here you can see some recent interviews and articles about The Panic Virus. Read more.
As I said in my post detailing some of the events I've been involved with over the past week, I haven't had a lot of time to update my site; as a result, here's a catch-all post featuring some of the interviews and articles about The Panic Virus that have run recently. Read more.
It's been a busy couple of days, and as I result I've half-started about a dozen posts that now will likely never see the (virtual) light of day. On Tuesday morning, Paul Offit and I were guests on WHYY's Radio Times, on Tuesday evening, Dr. Offit and I spoke at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, which was sponsored by the College's History of Vaccines program. (Sometime soon, a video of an interview with the College's director, Dr. George Wohlreich, will be posted on the medical society's YouTube channel.)
There's plenty to report about all of the above, but I feel compelled to at least briefly bow to the genius that is The Mutter Museum, a sort of cabinet of medical/anthropological curiosities housed within the College's headquarters in downtown Philadelphia. It's awesome. Read more.
I was cleaning out some old files on my computer and I came across this clip of C3P0 reminding "parents of earth" to make sure their children are "fully immunized against childhood diseases."
Can you imagine what the outcry would be if Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear were in a modern-day vaccine PSA?
Read more.Earlier today, I got an email from Randy Dotinga, who writes regularly for Voice of San Diego, an online watchdog news site. One of the site's regular features is called "Fact Check," and Randy was factchecking something I said on Anderson Cooper 360 on January 5:
In 2010 alone, 10 infants died of whooping cough in California, which is astounding that that is happening today. There are children that have died of Hib, diseases that I have always assumed were definitely in the past in this country. There was a measles epidemic several years ago in California, in San Diego, that cost $10 million to contain, and resulted in a quarantine of dozens of children. That meant that those parents then had to find some way to take care of those kids, either not go to work or pay for day care. So, even when you have a case like with that measles epidemic, where it's true that children didn't die, you had one infant that was hospitalized for a serious amount of time, and dozens of families that had to pay an enormous amount of money because of this.
In today's Doonesbury, Boopsie bemoans the bum wrap Jenny McCarthy is giving to all of those former Playmates that don't write books about bogus health scares…
As a wise man once said, Don't Ever Change, Boopsie. Don't ever change.
Read more.Yesterday morning I was a guest on ABC Radio National's "Late Night Live" program (audio link) in conjunction with the release of the Australian edition of The Panic Virus. (Coincidentally, I also received my copy of the AU edition yesterday afternoon.) It was an interesting program: A little more talk about 9/11 conspiracy theorists than I'm used to, but clearly vaccines were of much interest to the host and the audience.
When I got off the line and checked my email, I saw a message from David McCaffery, whose four-week-old daughter, Dana, died in March 2009 after being infected with pertussis. The McCafferys live in New South Wales, and I got to know them while working on my book (their story is included in the preface to the Australian edition). "Sad news, Seth," David wrote, before pointing me to a story about a newborn baby in Melbourne who died last week of whooping cough. (More information about vaccine awareness efforts in Australia can be found on Dana McCaffery's Facebook page.) Read more.
I haven't hid my feelings about The Huffington Post's track record when it comes to responsible science reporting, and earlier in the week, I speculated as to what effect AOL's purchase of the site would have on the combined entity's future coverage. (As part of the deal, Arianna Huffington will assume editorial control of AOL news operations.)
If today's HuffPo story by David Kirby is any indication, the site will continue to run misleading and inaccurate stories about vaccines and their supposed connection to autism. Kirby is a more felicitous and intelligent writer than many of the site's other contributors, but his conclusions are no less irresponsible or off-base. Earlier today, I unpacked a handful of the problems with Kirby's effort in a Scientific American guest blog. Read more.
Last night, AOL finalized a deal to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million. From my perspective, the biggest news is that Arianna Huffington will, according to The New York Times, "take control of all of AOL's editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL's national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company's other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone."
Much of the hand-wringing about Arianna's ascension has focused on her liberal political views. (The headline on the Fox Nation website read, "AOL veers hard left, buys Huffington Post.") I'm more worried about whether The Huffington Post's history of publishing baldly inaccurate stories about science and medicine will now infect the rest of AOL's content. Read more.
Earlier today, California Watch, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting, posted a short piece on rising rates of autism and declining rates of students with "learning disabilities": Read more.
I've been a bluegrass fan for years — which means I've come across a fair number of high lonesome oddities.
This video of Jimmy Martin lip-syncing along to his song "20/20 Vision" takes the cake. I'll leave it here without any further comment.
(Hat tip to guitarist/singer extraordinaire Michael Daves, who also happens to be a kick-ass mandolin teacher. Look out for Michael's album with Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers sometime in the next year.)
Read more.Yesterday, The New York Times energy and environment blog ran a post titled "Are We Hard Wired to Doubt Science?" The central question posed by the piece — "How, in a rational society, does one understand those who reject science, a common touchstone of what is real and verifiable?" — is also the central question of my book, so it's obviously a topic I'm very much interested in.
What struck me right off the bat was the use of the following illustration, which described "The cerebral cortex and hippocampus amygdala (in red) in a normal brain."* The image was credited to Dr. Martha Herbert of Mass General Hospital. Read more.
It didn't take long for comments to start showing up on my post criticizing Sharyl Attkisson's misleading flu vaccine story on the CBS News site. (A very quick recap: Attkisson implied, incorrectly, that a study by Amy Brooks-Kayal indicated that febrile seizures linked to the flu vaccine put children at an increased risk of developmental disorders.)
Before I get into the substance of those comments, I want to share the contents of an email Brooks-Kayal sent me this morning after I asked her about the CBS News report: Read more.
Two days ago, CBS News's Sharyl Attkisson posted a story on the CBS web site titled, "Child Flu Vaccine Seizures?" It ended thusly:
I've been swamped the last few days: I was in North Carolina over the weekend for the truly inspiring ScienceOnline 2011 conference and since then have been trying desperately to dig out from under the mound of unfulfilled obligations that have piled up already in 2011. As a result, I have a whole mess of half-written blog posts. One day, hopefully, I'll finish those. In the meantime, here are some links to online chats, Q/As, podcasts, and interviews that have taken place over the last few days.
Here's a partial transcript of a conversation I had with Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health. (Ivan also writes the excellent blogs Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch.)
This is a link to an e-interview with Kev from Left Brain/Right Brain.
You can find an in-depth interview by Shannon Rosa of The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism here.
And if you want to download a podcast of an appearance I did on KERA, an NPR affiliate in Dallas-Ft. Worth, you can do that right over here.
Read more.On Sunday, Salon.com's editor-in-chief, Kerry Lauerman, did something that's far too rare in the media: He acknowledged his publication had made a mistake in judgment and he took steps to correct the damage. The piece in question was "Deadly Immunity," an error-laced story by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that initially appeared in both Salon and Rolling Stone. It was filled with outright errors, embarrassing misquotes, and clumsy mischaracterizations. From Lauerman's statement: Read more.
It was recently brought to my attention that when I initially announced the"Get a Kiss, Win a Book" contest, the comments section of the blog were, um, experiencing technical difficulties.* So! The contest has been extended for one week. Here are the basics:
* Read Sheril Kirshenbaum's awesome/sexy/fun/interesting The Science of Kissing.
* Write in the comments your favorite thing about the book. Read more.
Tomorrow I'll be making a bunch of different media appearances, and many of them allow for live audience interaction. At 1 pm, Gawker will be featuring The Panic Virus as its latest Book Club selection. (An excerpt will be posted sometime in the morning, and from 1 to 2 I'll be answered questions in the comments section.)
Earlier in the day, I'll be on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, which airs on NPR stations around the country and streams online. The segment I'll be on is scheduled to run from 11:25 to 11:45 am.
And for those of you listening to drive-time radio bright and early, I'll be on a number of different ABC Radio stations bright and early in the morning. Below is a list of the segments that will be aired live; all times are EST.
8:00 AM WTAM-Cleveland
8:10 AM WOR-New York
8:20 AM KMBZ-Kansas City
8:50 AM KTRH-Houston
9:05 AM KEX-Portland, OR
9:15 AM KOMO-Seattle
9:20 AM KTRS-St. Louis
* This morning, I talked with CNN's T.J. Holmes on American Morning; here's the video.
* Also this morning, The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Hobson ran a Q&A with me on the paper's health blog.
* On Sunday, I was on NPR's Weekend "All Things Considered" with Guy Raz. Raz is exceedingly astute interviewer — but even if you have no interest in hearing me, it's worth listening to the first several minutes of the segment, in which Raz interviews a remarkable woman named Kelly Lacek, whose story starts out The Panic Virus. Read more.
In 89 minutes, it'll be the official on-sale date for The Panic Virus. What are you waiting for? Go get yourself a copy.
Also, for those interested, I'll be on CNN's American Morning at 8:40 am. Since I'll already have been awake for three hours, I'm sure I'll be looking my finest.
Read more.The Boston Globe, the newspaper I grew up reading, ran David Shribman's review of The Panic Virus in today's paper: Read more.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has, over the years, been refreshingly outspoken on the subject of vaccines and autism. On December 29, 2003, it published a piece titled "The Politics of Autism" that took an unusually definitive stand on an issue about which most of the media was presenting as an "on the one hand, on the other hand" debate: Read more.
This weekend, NPR's On the Media included a segment on my book, The Panic Virus, which will officially go on sale on Tuesday (although people who pre-ordered off of Amazon have reported already receiving their copies).
You can listen to the segment below — or, if you want to have your very own copy to hold own forever, you can download it from the show's website.
Michael Shermer has devoted his life to truth-seeking and fact-finding, and his work has long been an inspiration to me. In addition to being the founder of Skeptic magazine, Skeptic.com, and The Skeptics Society and he writes a regular column for Scientific American and is a frequent blogger. The range and scope of Shermer's work and interests is awesome, in the old-school sense of the word. (Here's a sampling of some of the past speakers at the Skeptics Society's lecture series at Caltech: Richard Dawkins, Leonard Mlodinow, Barbara Ehrenreich, Carl Zimmer, Alison Gopnik, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Pinker, and Daniel Dennett.)
Shermer reviewed The Panic Virus in the January 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is an incredibly generous and humbling review: Read more.
Yesterday, the news broke that the British Medical Journal was running a series of stories that labeled Andrew Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet study that posited a link between the MMR vaccine and autism an "elaborate fraud." Dr. Fiona Godlee, the BMJ's editor-in-chief, compared the MMR scare to the Piltdown man hoax, in which a series of fossilized remains found near East Sussex, England were claimed to be a previously unrecognized early ancestor of humankind. (I'm hoping that has more resonance in the UK than it does in the US, because when I first read that I had absolutely no recollection of the whole Piltdown mess.)
As someone who has spent two years doing nothing but looking into various vaccine scares, I found the way these latest revelations, which were based on reporting by Brian Deer, were packaged to be problematic. Read more.
On January 24 at 7pm, I'll be doing a reading at the Harvard Book Store, in Harvard Square — which is particularly poignant for me not only because it's been my favorite bookstore for the past twenty years but because my brief employment there back in 1998 was a bit, um turbulent. (I hope to see all you Boston folk there.)
Last week The Boston Phoenix's Eugenia Williamson listed that reading as one of 13 must-attend book events of the winter. Read more.
My essay/excerpt for Newsweek, titled "Autism and the Affluent," is now online.* Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:
Like other persistent untruths—the belief that Obama is a Muslim, say—the endurance of these vaccine scares is due to multiple, interconnected causes. The Internet, where no view is too outrageous to masquerade as fact, has played a role, as has the media's habit of giving every story "two sides" long after one has been discredited. There's also politicians' instinct to pander to their most vocal and strident constituents, and public officials' ineptitude at communicating with the public.
(January 13, 2011: The contest has been extended for another week — see all the details here.)
Sheril Kirshenenbaum's The Science of Kissing — a great book with arguably the cover/title of the year — was published today. For anyone who has ever made snap judgments based on the books people are reading on the train/subway/bus/plane — well, think of all the possibilities if someone saw you reading this: Read more.
As you might have heard, Oprah Winfrey launched her own TV network on New Year's Day. OWN (the initials stand for Oprah Winfrey Network) took over Discovery Health Channel's slot with cable providers, and will offer around-the-clock programming designed to teach viewers how to "live your best life." As Winfrey recently said in the pages of O, her glossy magazine, "My goal in life is to live out the truest expression of myself as a human being." Read more.
In one of his responses to yesterday's post on his Twitter feed, Jay Gordon writes:
Seth, only a very small percentage of formula used is not the "standard" variety. Hypoallergenic formula is almost always a last resort. Infant formula increases the incidence of many childhood illnesses and this Pediatrics story adds to that verified list.
I'm assuming this is true — I have no idea what the ratio of hypoallergenic to standard infant formula is, but I'm guessing it's small — but it is also completely beside the point. Read more.
In his blog, the Sports Illustrated writer and all-around genius/great guy Joe Posnanski frequently refers to his commenters as "brilliant readers." His point is that they often prompt him to look at issues from a different perspective, which improves his ability to create a thought-provoking blog, which prompts more reader comments–you get the idea.
My hope is that the same type of community can be established here. That will undoubtedly be a challenge. Having written a book about baseball, I know sports are a topic about which people can get very emotional…but it's nothing compared to child-rearing/health-care/vaccine safety/autism. I've thought a lot about the best way to oversee/moderate comments — more on that later — but for now, I'm incredibly happy to see that there is already some real dialogue going on. Read more.
Earlier this morning, Jay Gordon, who is perhaps best known as the pediatrician who supported Jenny McCarthy in her belief that the MMR vaccine had contributed to her son's autism, posted the following tweet: Read more.
Earlier this morning, Jenny McCarthy's re-tweeted to her 225,354 followers the following message: "Pertussis vaccine (whooping cough) legal cause of epilepsy/death of boy. This will NOT make news during 'outbreaks' http://bit.ly/i20hmR." That link brings the reader to a post on Age of Autism (one of whose editors was the source of the initial post, which has already been re-tweeted 50 times), which states unequivocally that a young boy named Elias Tembenis "died as a result of a reaction to his DTaP (P = Pertussis/Whooping Cough) vaccination." Before I get into the multiple problems with such a statement, here's some background: Read more.
Last week, an old high school friend of mine named Krister Johnson posted about my book on his Facebook wall. The result has been an interesting discussion–one of the first comments was, "Except that the way in which vaccines are given today [i.e. the volume within a small time frame – not to mention the ones that shouldn't be given] is directly related to autism…"
This morning, a friend of Krister's wrote the following: Read more.
To say the NFL's institutional response to the risks of repeated head trauma has been poor would be a vast understatement. It's a subject I wrote about for The Boston Globe back in 2007. (The reporter who has been driving this coverage for years is The New York Times's Alan Schwarz. It's not an exaggeration to say that his investigative work and relentless pursuit of this story has done as much or more to influence the national discourse on the subject as anything. For my money, Schwarz's traumatic brain injury (TBI) reporting has made him one of the country's best medical reporters. But I digress.)
One factor in football's foot-dragging on this has been a shocking approach to the problem by the players union. Read more.
There hasn't been a whole lot written in the American press about the story of an unidentified German doctor who walked out of surgery when he saw a swastika on the arm of his already anesthetized patient. (According to The Telegraph's translation of an article in the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, the doctor said, "I can't operate on this man. I am Jewish." The BMJ's translation has a slightly more poetic ring to it–"I cannot operate on this man. I am a Jew"–but their piece is also stuck behind a typically absurd medical journal paywall.)
The unidentified surgeon found a colleague to take his place, and while he was the subject of a lot of public criticism, he was not reprimanded. Read more.
The past several years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of pertussis (more commonly known as whooping cough) cases in areas around the country. California has been especially hard hit: Already this year, ten children there have died after being infected. Nine of them were under two months old, the age at which the first dose of the pertussis vaccine is administered. (According to the California Department of Public Health (pdf), there were 7,297 pertussis infections in the state through November 30. That's the most number of cases since 1947, which was before the pertussis vaccine was put into widespread use.)
One side effect of these outbreaks has been increased awareness that teenagers and adults need regular pertussis boosters–and that even those fully people who are fully vaccinated are not necessarily immune. (No vaccine is 100 percent effective. There'll be more on that in a later post.) Recently, a pair of fully vaccinated teenagers in Washington, DC were diagnosed with whooping cough. As a result, the parents of children at the Sidwell Friends School–including, I assume, President and Mrs. Obama, whose two daughters are enrolled there–received the following e-mail: Read more.
One of the unexpected bonuses of writing The Panic Virus was working with Kevin Hartnett, an incredibly talented writer who helped me with just about every facet of my book. For a couple of years now, Kevin has been working with the online books/arts/culture/etc magazine The Millions; this year, he asked me to contribute one of the site's "Year in Reading" features.
My piece ran today — it's a (very) brief essay about my love for Richard Stark's Parker novels and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books*. (For a wonderful introduction to Stark, check out The Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson's obit/essay on Donald Westlake. Stark was one of Westlake's many pseudonyms.) There are lots of other great "Year in Reading" essays as well, ranging from Joanna Smith Rakoff to the booming-voiced Richard Nash to The Hours author Michael Cunningham to Allegra Goodman, whose remarkable book Intuition was another one of my favorite reads of '10.
* The Boston Globe's brilliant Hiawatha Bray pointed out that I'd initially given Wolfe authorship over his creator. (Thanks, Hiawatha.) That also gets to several things I should have noted earlier: My policy will be to always indicate where I have made corrections to initial posts; if I'm lucky — and this indicates that I will be — I'll have readers that are many times smarter than I am; I'll depend on said readers to let me know when I've screwed up; and the comments policy is still a work in progress. Right now, I need to approve all comments. My intention is not to limit debate or discussion, but to keep things civil…and to limit spam pitches for bodily enhancements and illegal pharmaceuticals. I'll write more about this as it evolves.
Read more.I'm not sure how I missed this, but this is an excellent interview by Left Brain/Right Brain's Kevin Leitch with UC-Davis prof Cecilia Giulivi, the lead author of the aforementioned JAMA piece on mitochondria and autism. It offers a fairly convincing rebuttal to anti-vaccers arguing that the JAMA study provides more ammunition to the charge that somehow, someway, vaccines are to blame:
Read more.KL: Do you think, based on available science (including your paper) that vaccines cause autism?
CG: We do not have any evidence for this in our study. Our study was cross-sectional not longitudinal so it cannot point to any cause (not just vaccines), meaning we do not have any data supporting one way or another.


text:
Benazir Bhutto: A Pakistani Tragedy
On December 27, a little more than two months after her return to Pakistan from years of exile, Benazir Bhutto was killed while leaving the grounds of Liaquat Bagh after addressing a rally of party faithfuls. Daughter of the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, with no inconsiderable charisma of her own, driven, talented, distinguished, the career of Pakistan's bestloved political leader had been cut short by unknown assassins. She was still young at 53.
Did Benazir Bhutto's life have to end this way?
Benazir Bhutto had entered politics to 'avenge' her father's hanging in April 1979 by ZiaulHaq, Pakistan's third military dictator. Having twice avenged her father's murder by assuming the office of Pakistan's prime minister in April 1988 and October 1993 she has now paid with her life trying to reach that office a third time.
Sadly, the truth is that her violent end could have been foretold with near certainty. What are the circumstances that caused her inevitable assasination? She did not have the military security and luck, one must add that has shielded General Parvez Musharraf from several assassination attempts. With some expense and planning, Benazir Bhutto too could have made better security arrangements, but, fatefully, she seemed to be in too much of a haste to be slowed down even by 150 deaths during the first attack on her life in Karachi.
Immediately after her death, a spokesman for Al Qa'ida operations in Afghanistan claimed that this was their work. "We terminated," the spokesman claimed ominously, "the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat the mujahideen."1
That Benazir Bhutto was a 'precious American asset' perhaps, even the 'most precious' few anywhere would deny, least of all the Americans. It is widely known that her return to Pakistan was brokered by the United States. She could return to Pakistan's politics and, most likely, to the prime minister's office by dropping her opposition to another term of five years for President Musharraf. Indeed, Benazir Bhutto instructed the members of her party not to resign from their seats in the national assembly but abstain from voting. This defeated the opposition's plan to deny the quorum necessary for the deeply flawed presidential elections.
One of the most remarkable developments in Pakistani politics since the events of 911 is the transparency shall we say, daring with which the United States now intervenes in Pakistan's affairs. Conversely, Pakistani leaders also work openly to advance American interests in Pakistan. In an earlier era, the Americans generally took care to conceal their meddling in Pakistani politics. As a result, only the politically astute understood the depth of their influence over Pakistan. Now, this knowledge has become commonplace.
Although greatly weakened since the protests that erupted over his firing of Pakistan's Chief Justice in March 2007, the Americans believe that General Parvez Musharraf is still the best person to lead their war against the militants in Pakistan. However, they were now convinced that the General's badly battered reputation had to be salvaged: and a partnership with the proAmerican Benazir Bhutto would do just that. In turn, the General, under duress, had accepted a partnership with Bhutto as the price he must pay or lose US support.
A tripartite deal was brokered involving the US, General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto. This deal freed Bhutto from the corruption cases pending against her in Pakistani courts. She was also allowed to return to Pakistan to lead her party to she was convinced a nearly certain electoral victory: and a third term as Pakistan's prime minister. The elections would give the General the democratic veneer that he now so badly needed.
As the New York Times reveals in a recent article, "How Bhutto won Washington," Benazir Bhutto's deal-making with the Americans has a long history.2 She had decided quite early that she would return her party to power by trolling the corridors of power in Washington.
In the words of her friend from Oxford days, Peter Galbraith, who was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, Benazir Bhutto first began her campaign in Washington in the spring of 1984. She was on a mission to persuade the Reagan administration that "she would much better serve American interest in Afghanistan than Zia."" Under the tutelage of Galbraith and his friend, Mark Siegel formerly executive director of the Democratic National Convention she cultivated the friendship of important power brokers in Washington.
These Washington contacts paid off handsomely. In the parliamentary elections of November 1988 Benazir Bhutto's party gained only a plurality of seats. Since Pakistan's military establishment looked upon her with considerable distrust, they could easily have pulled strings to deny her the right to form the government. US pressure, however, persuaded Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the President at the time, to invite Benazir Bhutto to form the government.
Benazir Bhutto never gave up on this winning strategy. As the NYT writes, "she kept up her visits to Washington, usually several a year." She continued to cultivate friends amongst the Washington elite, including the Congress and the media. In the first six months of 2007 alone, Benazir Bhutto spent $250,000 in lobbying fees to gain access to Washington insiders.
Once again, to win American backing for her return to Pakistan in 2007, which could only happen with US pressure on General Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto used the same strategy that had worked before: she would promise to do better than General Musharraf in advancing American interests in Pakistan.
Over the past year, Benazir Bhutto has repeatedly pointed out that General Musharraf's war against terrorism in Pakistan was failing. Instead of curbing terrorism, the militants had become more daring during the General's tenure. She promised to do better. She would wipe out the "religious extremists," shut down "extremist" madrasas, and even hand over Dr. Qadeer Khan the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program to the US for questioning. Insistently, and loudly, Benazir Bhutto was seeking to assure the United States that she would do a lot better than their General.
This strategy won her the support of the United States, but it was fatally flawed. If Musharraf had not acted more vigorously against the militants that was not because he had gone soft in his commitment to America's plan. Instead, it was because he faces restraints on three fronts: the opposition within the army, especially from its lower ranks; the very real fear that stronger measures against the militants would provoke a domestic outcry and, worse, a more determined response from those militants; and, there are concerns too that defeating the Taliban would entrench Indian influence over Afghanistan. Would these constraints be any different for Benazir Bhutto?
In presenting herself as the only Pakistani politician to openly challenge the militants, wasn't Benazir Bhutto in effect also daring them to target her? Since these Islamists were regularly targeting the Pakistan military itself even inside the security of their cantonments would they hold back from attacking a politician who threatened to take even stronger actions against them than General Musharraf?
General Musharraf's decision to make Pakistan the leading partner in America's war against terrorism had already revealed its deep flaws. Most ominously, it had provoked the Islamists into targeting the Pakistani military. Already there were defections from the army, and if the clashes continued, there could be rebellion in the ranks of the army: or clashes between Pukhtoons and the Punjabis within the army.
In pushing Benazir Bhutto into this dangerous corner, a corner in which she could not have survived, the US too has shown its gross ineptitude. By openly anointing her as the American candidate, the US had effectively hastened the violent end that she has now met. The US helped to bring about the untimely death of the 'Daughter of the East' by transforming her into the 'Daughter of the West.' In the process, Pakistan too has lost a flawed but charismatic leader, who might have risen to the occasion at a time of crisis.
Benazir Bhutto crafted her political career by embracing her father's populism, but decisively rejected what was its natural complement: his independent foreign policy. Could she have followed a different path? Was she free to claim the legacy of her father's independent foreign policy?
Benazir Bhutto's embrace of her father's populism was indispensable: without it, she could not lay claim to his charismatic following amongst Pakistan's largely illiterate masses. On the other hand, by rejecting an independent foreign policy, she opened a path to the centers of American power without losing any of her popularity. The mostly poor and illiterate Pakistanis could not have cared much for the arcana of foreign politics.
Benazir Bhutto saw her courting of the US as necessary to her ascent to power? The Americans have long cultivated Pakistan's military as the best vehicle for subordinating Pakistan to its ends: first, Pakistan's military became a US partner in the Cold War, and since 911 it has been drafted as a leading ally in the 'global war against terror.' The 1990s the interim between the two wars was a window of opportunity for Pakistan's politicians.
But Benazir Bhutto first had to neutralize the Pakistani generals whose power had been challenged only once by her father, and, who, therefore, were opposed to the return of his populist party to power. She had used this strategy to neutralize Pakistan's military establishment before. Now, with the generals in trouble, she struck the same bargain.
Tragically, this time, it was fatal mistake. Benazir Bhutto was binding herself to a strategy waging America's war against the militants that had already pushed Pakistan to the brink of a civil war and disintegration. In her impetuous quest for power, she had acted in blind disregard of realities.
But did Benazir Bhutto have an alternative?
Perhaps she did. Pakistan has a chance of averting a civil war, but only by distancing itself from the United States. This distancing is now vital for Pakistan: and one could argue, for the United States too. Only by distancing itself from the United States does any Pakistani government now have a chance of preventing the militants from overwhelming Pakistan itself. No government that cleaves to the United States and Israel has a chance of winning popular support in its efforts to contain the spread of the Islamist insurgency. Sadly, Benazir Bhutto too like Musharraf has cultivated the Israeli lobby in the United States.3
It is perhaps unrealistic to expect that Benazir Bhutto, had she had wanted to, could have done this on her own. However, if she had joined a pro-democracy and nationalist partnership with Nawaz Sharif and perhaps some of the other parties in the opposition together they had a fair chance of sending the Pakistani generals back to the barracks. It would not take Hazrat' Ali's oratory to convince the Pakistanis that this partnership and an independent foreign policy were at this juncture indispensable for the integrity of Pakistan.
Sadly, this was an option that Benazir Bhutto rebuffed. She did not want to remove the generals: she sought to join their fight against the Islamist militants as a civilian cheerleader. Perhaps, she could not think of another option, given how much of her political capital she had invested in gaining the support of the United States. Trapped in her myopia, she saw this as the easier option, the only option. Sadly, she had chosen to enter a blind alley. Worse: it was a death trap.
That is what makes her death a Pakistani tragedy. It is a tragedy because she was the only political figure in Pakistan who commanded the charisma to try to galvanize Pakistanis into a vital coalition that could reverse the damage done by the military generals. But, instead, she chose to outdo the failed generals.
That was Benazir Bhutto's fatal flaw; but it was not only a personal flaw. Behind this fatal flaw lay the a sad history of a country whose elites time and again chose to prostitute the state, to compromise national interests, and sacrifice the lives of Pakistanis for their personal gains. That is what makes Benazir Bhutto's murder a Pakistani tragedy. In a single tragic event, it crystallizes the malfeasance of Pakistan's political classes and the failure of Pakistanis to bring them to account for their treasonous crimes.
1. Syed Saleem Shehzad, "AlQaeda claims Bhutto killing," Asia Times (December 29, 2007). <www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IL29Df01.html
2. Elisabeth Bumiller, "How Bhutto won Washington," New York Times (December 27, 2007).
3. According to Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Benazir Bhutto send him a copy of new autobiography, Daughter of Destiny, including "a warm dedication to Israel." He added, " She {Benazir Bhutto] wrote me of how she admired Israel and of her desire to see a normalization in the relations between Israel and Pakistan, including the establishment of diplomatic ties,..." Tali Rabinovsky, "Gillerman: Bhutto told me she feared for her life," (December 28, 2007). <www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L3487651,00.html>
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston. He is the author of Challenging the New Orientalism (North Haledon, NJ: IPI, 2007). He may be reached at [email protected].
Topics: Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Channel: Opinion
Views: 3590
Related Suggestions
Good article in any case.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection
We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
Services for Technology Vendors
We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
For most people involved with business intelligence (BI), these are exciting times. Using BI to improve business processes continues to motivate organizations to invest in BI. The focus on BI also empowers business analytics and can be rented in the cloud computing model of accessing software. New technologies are adding dimensions to BI and creating both excitement and confusion for enterprises implementing them. We offer a variety of accomplished research that can help organizations overcome the hype and understand how to use these technologies to improve business decision-making, and we're planning new research in 2012 on these topics.
Big data continues to be one of hottest topics in the market. Every vendor wants to claim it has a solution for managing it. Multiple approaches exist to tackle the proliferation of huge volumes of data at accelerated paces, which we addressed recently in our Big Data benchmark research. We also see the pace of business forcing organizations to analyze data more frequently; one-fourth of research participants now analyze data hourly or even more often. In 2012 we will continue our research by exploring specific vendor offerings in big-data analytics. We'll also be conducting new benchmark research into operational intelligence to explore how streaming data and event-based data impact organizations.
The march to add mobile capabilities across smart-phones and tablets to business intelligence is becoming a stampede. Nearly every vendor I cover has added such capabilities or significantly enhanced those it already has. However, questions remain on the best ways to utilize mobile capabilities and which parts of the organization really need them. Our upcoming Next-Generation BI benchmark research will look at how businesses are utilizing mobile BI or intend to. In addition, it will examine how collaborative technologies are influencing BI processes and organizational decision-making. We've already seen the consumerization of collaborative BI. This research will explore how well businesses understand the intersection of collaborative technologies and social media with BI. Vendors such as QlikTech, Tibco Spotfire and Yellowfin recently enhanced their products with collaborative capabilities joining others like IBM and SAP who have advanced in collaboration capabilities with BI. As you consider your organization's requirements, the best practices identified in this research will help you plan to incorporate these capabilities into your business processes.
We also continue to explore the role of analytics, closely associated with BI. Next week we will share the results of our Predictive Analytics benchmark research Our published business analytics research shows only one-quarter of organizations using planning and forecasting and only 13 percent using predictive analytics. Yet nearly 80 percent said both of these capabilities are important or very important. Organizations need to address that gap to enhance their business decision-making abilities.
Because business intelligence also is closely entwined with information management, I encourage you to review our Information Management research agenda as well. Almost one-third of organizations have more than 10 sources of data they have to integrate, and more than two-thirds spend more time preparing data than analyzing it. Without addressing these issues, no organization is likely to realize the full potential of business intelligence.
Business intelligence continues to be a strategic business imperative. Our research will deliver education and best practices that can help you reduce the costs, time and risk of making the wrong choices or being uninformed of this strategic imperative.
Ventana Research
Ventana Research, now part of Information Services Group (ISG), is the most authoritative and respected market research and advisory services firm focused on improving business outcomes through optimal use of people, processes, information and technology. Since our beginning, our goal has been to provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies. In short, we want to help you become smarter and find the most relevant technology to accelerate your organization's goals.
Ventana Research's Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business,
Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research's strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Please visit our Open House at 15 MILLER BAY in OKOTOKS.
Open House on Sunday, September 1, 2013 1:00 pm
This custom built 3bedroom with option of 4th bedrm bungalow in Okotoks is Feng Shui designed. The home is calming, peaceful & relaxing. Located on a quiet friendly cul de sac on a 3rd acre! Prof landscaped yard has a maintenance free deck, hot tub, fire pit, shed, lots of trees, flowers & underground sprinklers. It's an oasis! Inside is stunning, loaded with the highest quality & upgrades. With it's sleek architecture, open floor plan and roughly 3290sq feet of living space this home is sure to please! Starting with beautiful vaulted ceilings, floor to ceiling windows, 2-fire places one is a 2-way, Brazilian cherry hardwood, porcelain tile, air conditioning, on demand hot water, granite, wired sound, ceramic counter top stove. Master suite is very large & private, the ensuite is elegant with granite counters & oversized shower. This home boasts a private loft/bedroom & or office with separate bathroom. The Lower level is an entertainers dream with full bar, huge family room, sports room & extra bedroom.


text:
As you know, for many years my interest in painting and hill-walking were kept well apart. My work was based around man-made environments, building sites; townscapes etc and the days spent in the hills were just for fun. When I moved to Scotland in 1998 however, things started to change. After attending a very successful mountain skills course for visually impaired people at Glenmore Lodge in 2001, I met up with Guy Hansford (one of the fully sighted volunteer guides on the course) and with his help and that of the folk in our local mountaineering club Air na Creagan, we started tackling more serious hills and getting out into the wilds on a very regular basis. In February 2002, Guy and I joined 11 members of Air na Creagan on a weekend trip to Corrour and on the Saturday we headed into the hills on a day that was to change my work as an artist. We experienced a 'proper' Scottish hill day …..one that included all four seasons in just a few hours, from patchy sunshine and heavy clouds, to driving snow and back to almost cloudless skies and bright sunshine. At the end of the day I realised that I just had to start using all these amazing views and scenes as the basis for my paintings …..the rest, as they say….. . Now, when I'm out walking I'm constantly looking for things that I might be able to use in my paintings. Hill-walking is not just for fun now …it's work too! It's a tough job but somebody has to do it!
Anyway, you've heard all that before, but on Tuesday, we once again joined forces with our friend Guy and headed up to Ben Lomond for a leisurely wander together. We had picked another perfect day and the misty atmospheric conditions as we started, quickly cleared and by lunchtime we had bright sunshine . Our walk took us up the normal 'tourist' route until we reached the long almost flat section at around 600m. It had been a great ascent and we heard lots of different birds as we passed through the lower now partially wooded sections …including a very active woodpecker somewhere close by… ..it was really wonderful.
From the 600m mark though, we left the main path with its walkers making their way to the summit, and instead, cut off down the side of the hill to reach a perfectly quiet and secluded spot by the stream that flows from between the main bulk of Ben Lomond and the Ptarmigan ridge. This was the perfect lunch spot and being out of the breeze, it was really quite hot too. A short way further on and we picked up the Ptarmigan path which we followed back to our starting point. The views out over Loch Lomond from this path are wonderful and on Tuesday the loch was almost completely calm, reflecting the big clouds and skies. As we looked down I suddenly noticed that I was looking at something that quite closely resembled the new large 120 x 120 cm canvas I'm working on…….it was quite strange to see!


text: Packaging Design Kjaer Weis Make-up collection by Marc Atlan The design of the Kjaer Weis cosmetics line distills the fundamentals of women's makeup to its three essential areas of application: lips, cheeks and eyes. We designed compacts shaped to mirror the features they will be used to enhance: slim and long for the lips, large and square for the cheeks, small and round for the eyes. Tangibly, the compacts swivel open with an innovative lateral movement, fanning out like the wings of a butterfly. Entirely refillable, these compacts are purposely conserved rather than recycled.


text:
I am developping a web part that customizes the SharePoint Ribbon (hide or show buttons).
Can I store some properties in a separate file? If the web part is active on three sites, I should have three separate files because it can have different settings.
I don't want to make use of the property panel from the web part because power users will eventually do something wrong.
Is this possible and how should I do it.
Thanks in advance!


text:
Hvad er inkluderet?
The boat stays out on sea for two dives and will be back for lunch. The boat will depart at 13:00, returning around 16:30 after another two dives. It is possible to do two morning dives or a combination of a morning and an afternoon dive or just two afternoon dives.
A third dive or a night dive can be organized on location for an extra fee.
There will be no refund on dives not used. Check-out of the accommodation is at 10:00 on the last day. But luggage can be stored if you are leaving on the afternoon or evening boat.
Fundiving Koh Tao - 3 days & 2 nights with 4 dives included.
This package is a good introduction to the diving around Koh Tao, with 4 dives spread out on 2 days of diving and 2 nights of accommodation in dorm or private accommodation. The dive sites will vary depending on weather and experience level.
If you have plenty of time on hand, and if you want to take it super slow, we recommend you add 1 extra night of accommodation to your package.


text:
WESTALL '66 - a suburban UFO mystery - a documentary you must see
Director Rosie Jones came across the story via a story in the Melbourne Age which connected her to the efforts of Canberra academic Shane Ryan to get to the bottom of the enigmatic events. After 3 years of solid research, filming and editing we now have the opportunity to view the fascinating result of all those efforts.
It is a powerful narrative of a reality denied by authority but revealed in compelling ways through the words of the witnesses and the wonderfully inspired decision to use the charcoal drawings and animations of animator Lee Whitmore. Anyone who has seen the film "The Safe House" (which gives an extraordinary perspective on the Petrov affair) will be immediately attracted to this documentary, as it uses Lee Whitmore's artistic skills to great effect. The black and white renderings of the key 1966 Westall events hauntingly evoke the 1960s era and the visions of the impossible witnessed mainly by school children. There were adult witnesses who also share their stories.
I should reveal that this is a biased review. I too have been haunted by what happened at Westall in 1966. 1966 was a pivotal year for me as it marked my embrace of the subject in a personal way - my home town of Grafton had a police UFO chase that gained media prominence. It wasn't long before my teenage interests in the UFO subject started to give me glimpses of the 1966 Westall mystery, but the astonishing magnitude of the saga was a slowly revealed thing, mainly because of the effectiveness of the cover-up that clearly took place. It captured my attention even further when it was apparent that the events even feature physical evidence - ground traces - an aspect of the UFO phenomenon that became a central interest for me. It was a case that I returned to many times as leads turned up. By the early 1980s a number of witnesses were starting to create a critical mass of interest. I devoted a lot of pages in my Australian UFO history "The OZ Files" to the Westall affair as I recognised it as a very strong case. But it wasn't until the Internet allowed for a greater communication among researchers and witnesses that the momentum developed into a great tide of information. Shane Ryan was instrumental in drawing these more recently revealed factors together and his persistence has been rewarded with a rich picture of the events. I closely followed the efforts of Shane Ryan, Rosie Jones and her documentary team, assisting where I could.
It is the witnesses though that have told the story and I hope they feel that their extraordinary experiences back in April 1966 have been well served by these efforts and the documentary. The profile of the events will be further enhanced and I hope it will bring further evidence to the surface, particularly the elusive details of the heavy hidden hand that originally supressed the extraordinary events.
Watching WESTALL '66 you will be entertained, intrigued and struck by the realisation that something quite extraordinary took place in Westall on April 6, 1966. I hope it gets you enthralled with the possibilities it reveals. Hoax or hysteria - I don't think so. Experimental aircraft - maybe, but the totality of what occurred there seems to argue for the more extraordinarly possibility - that something that wasn't ours intruded into our world. I know I'm not alone wanting to know what happened. WESTALL '66 - a suburban UFO mystery - is a powerful evocation of the mystery. Don't miss it. There will be a DVD release. Details will eventually appear on http://www.westall66ufo.com.au/
See also my past posts on the 1966 Westall affair: The Westall UFO "Black Swan" and Once upon a time in Westall


text:
Color: Green
Care: Machine washable at 30 degrees
Collection: Kala
Made in Georgia
Great hospitality begins with elegant table settings. Our tablecloths are close replicas to original pieces held in Tbilisi museums. Original tablecloths were blue to disguise stains caused by the spills of dark Georgian red wines. Modern versions include red and green fabrics but the composition and elements remain the same.


text:
Watercolor Herb Nasturtium Flower Digital Download
Watercolor Illustration of hand painted nasturtium flowers, orange flowers of herb nasturtium, garden flowers. It is perfect for kitchen decor, greeting card and wall art.
What is included in this download:
Herb digital print, 8"x10", jpg and png, 300 dpi.
It is made for printing at home on A4 paper. You can simply print as it is. With png format you can also change background color with any photo editing program. The maximum print size is 12"x16" to maintain good quality of the print.
How to download
The file should be available for download after cleared payment. Please contact me if there is any problem downloading the file and I will sort it out for you.
Terms of Use:
The digital clipart has 3 license options, please choose the right one when you make purchase.
For detailed "Terms of Use" please check out the last 3 screenshots or here
Corner Croft retains all copyright to the digital artwork. You are not allowed to redistribute the clipart as it is or as part of a bundle.
There are no physical items to be shipped.
Thanks for looking.


text:
HVAC Energy Saving Tips
Each year, up to half of your energy bill in California can be consumed with heating and air conditioning. Making intelligent decisions about your system can have a big effect on how much you spend each month – and your comfort. Grand Heating & Air Conditioning recommends that our customers consider the steps below to increase heating and air conditioning efficiency:
Change your air filter regularly
Check your filter every month, especially during heavy use months. If the filter looks dirty, change it. At an absolute minimum, change the filter every 2 months. A dirty filter will slow down air flow and make the system work harder to keep you warm or cool – and we call that wasting energy
Get on a seasonal maintenance plan
Grand Heating & Air Conditioning offers scheduled maintenance plans to keep your equipment tuned. This helps prevent future problems, and unwanted costs in repair and the loss of cooling and heating efficiency.
Install a programmable thermostat
A programmable thermostat is ideal for people who are away from home during set periods of time throughout the week. Through proper use of pre-programmed settings, a programmable thermostat can save you money in energy costs.
Seal your heating and cooling ducts
Ducts are used in most homes, and move air to-and-from a forced air system, and can be huge energy wasters. You don't want to invest in a new furnace, heat pump or air conditioner, only to have your ducts leaking out that conditioned air into the attic, and wasting your money. Sealing and insulating duct work can improve the efficiency of your heating and air conditioning system by as much as 20 percent – and sometimes much more.
Consider installing ENERGY STAR® for efficient air conditioning & heating
If your furnace, air conditioner or heat pump is more than 10 years old, or not keeping your house comfortable, Grand Heating & Air Conditioning can evaluate it and provide you with information on the best route to take to more efficient air conditioning and heating. Each of our customers have unique needs, and we take the required time to evaluate your situation in order to give you the best recommendations.
Trust Grand Heating & Air Conditioning for proper installation
Replacing your old system with new, energy efficient models is a great start. But to make sure that you get the best performance, the new equipment must be properly installed. In fact, improper installation can reduce system efficiency by up to 30 percent – costing you more on your utility bills and possibly shortening the equipment's life. As your trusted California HVAC contractor, we design and install systems to run efficiently and give you years of reliable service.
Contact us today at (323) 870-2923 if you have questions or need HVAC service in Los Angeles or surrounding areas.


text:
Peter Wagner of KGMI News and Talk Radio in Bellingham, Washington has also reported on the story, interviewing the family's attorney, Stephen Pidgeon.
Attorney to court: Charge parents or give babies back
King 5 News has reported on the Rengo family case:
Couple fights for custody of children after home birth
Representative Jason Overstreet, representing the 42nd district in Washington, and who has taken an interest in this case, just posted an update on his Facebook Page:
The Rengo Family placement hearing was moved up this morning to 10 a.m. from the scheduled 4 p.m. hearing. I will withhold comment on that move.
Security was heavy. The courtroom was packed.
The allotted timeframe was 1 hour with an expected decision on placement either with the parents or a semi-permanent out of family placement. If your a poker player, this will be your "tell."
The State Attorney General's Office stood in place of the County legal team in the prosecution of this hearing. A rare move indeed. Attorney General Ferguson, the same AG who is persecuting Christian business owners for refusing to participate in weddings that conflict with their closely held religious beliefs, sent his legal team to take over in an attempt to spare the State embarrassment.
The Attorney General's Office took the entire hour, discussing police reports where no arrests were made, save one, prior to the birth of the children. No mention of the babies' health and welfare was even attempted by the State.
The court commissioner was frustrated at the State's extended attempt to muddy the water, even commenting on the rare nature of such extended testimony on a case that should be cut and dried after a forcible taking of children from their parents.
The hearing was extended to tomorrow at 2:30 on the 4th floor of the Whatcom County Courthouse, where he demanded that the State rap up and allow the family's legal team to present it's case.
Constitutional Attorney Steven Pidgeon petitioned the court for a writ of habeus corpus, asking that the charges be laid or the children be released to the parents. The writ of habeus corpus, a fundamental tool of liberty guaranteed by both our State and Federal Constitutions, was ignored by the court, the clerk stating that they hadn't even seen one in 20 years, with one judge refusing to even look at the writ.
There is much talk of "more to the story." There certainly is. There always is. If you are tempted to make that statement, ask yourself where your information is coming from and what the validity of that information actually is. This is not a comfortable conversation, it's true. I shudder the horror of your family, or mine, under a microscope of the bureaucracy that is CPS.
Constitutional Attorney Stephen Pidgeon has agreed to represent the Rengo Family in an attempt to reunite babies Levi, Morna, and Daniel with their parents. He will accompany the family to the hearing tomorrow, and the public and the media are encouraged to show up at the:
Whatcom County Courthouse
311 Grand Avenue
Bellingham Washington
Tuesday December 2nd – @ 9:00 A.M.
More details to follow. A Facebook Page has also been setup for the family.
by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
All three of their babies have been taken away from them and placed in the care of strangers. Levi was 10 months old when his mother, local singer and songwriter Erica May Rengo, gave birth to his twin brother and sister, at their home in Bellingham, Washington.
"Our birth was glorious," she said, and the twins were reportedly healthy, full-term babies, who had no problem quickly figuring out how to breastfeed. The little family was overjoyed until CPS stepped in to "help."
It is another medical kidnapping according to the parents. The Rengos have chosen a wholesome, holistic lifestyle, based in their Christian faith. But CPS has stepped in to override the parents' decisions. Now Erica and Cleave are living what they call a nightmare, separated from their children for reasons that don't make any sense at all to them.
Decision to Home Birth
It was only natural for Erica to choose normal, family-centered birth. Erica herself was born at home, and says that her mother was a homebirth educator and La Leche League leader (a world-wide support and education group for breastfeeding mothers). She and Cleave chose a birth-center birth with their first baby, but decided to birth at home the second time. She knew that her body was perfectly designed to work for birth. She believed this was the direction God was showing them for the birth. Erica was very careful during her pregnancy to watch her diet and exercise, in preparation for the birth. She read, researched, and prepared.
She describes her homebirth as "exquisite" and "empowering." Morna Kai Grace and Daniel Clemente were born into their parents' loving arms.
The birth was perfect. There were no complications with the birth or afterwards. But Erica and her husband Cleave had agreed to notify the local paramedics, in an effort to appease concerned family members who were fearful of their decision to birth at home. That is where their problems began.
The Medical System Gets Involved
Sometime after the babies arrived on October 2, paramedics arrived to find the twins nursing and everybody doing fine. The twins each weighed over 5 lbs, and the paramedics allegedly verified that everyone appeared healthy. The paramedics allegedly recommended that they go to the hospital for evaluation, which is standard procedure for EMTs.
The Rengos say they declined, telling them they didn't want to expose their newborns to the dirty environment of the hospital. They were planning to follow recommendations they had found, which stated that newborn twins should stay home for the first six weeks of life, to give their immune systems the opportunity to build up.
CPS Shows Up
Because they chose not to go to the hospital at that time, the paramedics allegedly called CPS. A couple of social workers showed up the next day, and wanted to see all of the children. CPS told Erica that they were "here to help." But Erica says that is not at all what happened.
When the social worker found some eczema on Levi's skin Erica told her that she was treating it with some herbal remedies, including comfrey and calendula, as well as applying coconut oil and giving probiotics. She was also doing an elimination diet to try to locate what could be causing the skin condition. Even though it was in the healing process, the social worker became critical that Erica wasn't treating his eczema with steroids, a treatment option that Erica wanted to save as a last resort because of the side effects. The CPS agent would later testify to the judge that Erica had neglected to treat him completely.
Even so, the eczema was the only thing wrong. Erica says, "right away they found out that the children were not in danger." The twins were completely healthy; the house was clean; and there are no drugs or alcohol involved.
The Rengos agreed to take the children to a pediatrician, who said the babies were doing fine. The only concern was that the twins were slow to gain weight. At the time, Erica was trying to maintain a supply for three breastfeeding babies. She says she followed the pediatrician's advice to supplement with formula, and the babies promptly got back on track with weight gain.
This was allegedly verified by a nurse sent out by CPS to check on them.
Erica May and Cleave are holistic in their approach to life and health, preferring natural alternatives, like herbs and diet changes, to medicinal treatments. Those things appear to be options only if CPS is not involved.
CPS Takes Custody of Children
On November 6, CPS showed up at the front door while Erica was softly singing and playing her guitar to her resting babies. When she checked the door, they told her that they were there to take her children, citing neglect for not giving Levi steroids for his eczema, and the home-birth without medical prenatal care with the twins, as well as the allegations of abuse, accusations which Erica had already assured them were completely unfounded. She also had prenatal care, just not with a doctor.
With one baby on her back, the frightened mother fled out the back door with her children to a neighbor's house, but police and CPS "hunted her down," and took all three breastfed babies from their mothers' arms. The twins were 5 weeks old.
Erica broke down into sobs as I spoke with her. "My children were safe and healthy with me." Since they have been taken by CPS, Daniel has reportedly had pneumonia, and Levi has reportedly been diagnosed with "behavioral problems" because he screams and cries all the time.
He is screaming, Erica says, because he wants his mom and dad.
Why Are Children with No History of Abuse Being Taken Away from Loving Parents for Medical Reasons?
Children who have not been abused in any way have been taken by CPS from loving parents for reasons so flimsy that it has left the Rengos and their friends stunned. Several of their friends write that Erica is "a great mama."
"This is not the right thing to do to mothers and children," Erica emphasizes. "If they thought we needed help, they should have brought help in, not taken the children out. They have suffered and I have suffered since our separation."
Erica feels that she and her children are being abused by the system. When they separate babies from their loving mothers, she says "they are dehumanizing people. The outcome of that is so much worse than any kind of dispute for medical reasons."
Cleave and Erica were supposed to have their visitation with their children on Monday, but there wasn't a social worker available to supervise the visit. Levi's first birthday is on Black Friday. The day will be black for Erica and Cleave, but for very different reasons than the holiday retailers. They will miss their first child's first birthday because CPS won't have any workers available to supervise a visit that day either.
The Stressful Separation of Infants from Parents
Erica is a brokenhearted postpartum mother who wants nothing more than to be at home with all of her children by her side. Research shows that infants do not comprehend separation from their mother; they feel abandoned when they aren't with her. Has it really come to the point where CPS can justify the emotional trauma to the children simply because parents don't choose to follow every recommendation of the medical associations?
In President Obama's immigration speech last week, he asked, "Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together?"
Yet it is this very nation whose Child Protection Service agencies have ripped tiny babies from their parents' arms simply for the crime of disagreeing with a medical decision. If this could happen to a family who has only sought the most natural of care, then whose children are safe from CPS? Should this type of medical tyranny be tolerated?
Erica May and Cleave Rengo face a court date on December 2. They don't know what they will face then. Supporters are hoping that their story will be shared far and wide, and their children can be returned home quickly.
The Governor of Washington is Jay Inslee. His office number is 360-902-4111. You can email him from here.
Read the full article and comment at MedicalKidnap.com.
See Also:


text:
Coastal HVAC Corrosion Protection Coating
Coil corrosion is a major problem in the HVAC industry, and it is one that can require some expensive repairs. Coil corrosion can lead to decreased efficiency and eventual equipment failure, which may warrant an entire system replacement. Corrosion could occur within weeks of installing your new HVAC system or it may take several years to present itself, but the right corrosion protection coating can prevent the problem.
What Causes Corrosion?
Many coastal residents do not realize that their HVAC systems are at risk of corrosion. Unfortunately, ocean salt and other pollutants can wear down the coils of a unit. There are two main types of corrosion that may pose a problem:
- Pitting. Corrosion caused by the exposure of coil to chloride or fluoride. This type tends to move quickly and will create holes that lead to refrigerant leaks from the coils.
- Formicary corrosion. Corrosion caused by exposure to acids, such as those found in cleaning solvents, adhesives, paint, insulation, and other materials. This type of corrosion is more subtle and will take longer before discovery.
How Can You Protect Your System?
To combat and prevent the problem of corrosion, protective coatings can be applied to HVAC coils. There are many coating options available, although two of the most popular are epoxy phenolics and modified phenolics. To effectively protect HVAC coils from salt and other corrosive elements, coatings should be applied at a thickness of no more than 0.003 inches. When applied at a greater thickness, the rate of heat transfer could be impacted.
Infinigard is one of the most trusted names in HVAC corrosion protection. This two-part hybrid corrosion inhibitor is designed to increase liquid and gaseous flow rates while decreasing kilowatt hours. In addition to protecting the coils from corrosion, Infinigard can reduce air conditioning energy costs by up to 15%. Your HVAC system will be properly protected while improving both efficiency and indoor air quality.


text:
Some of the biggest ski resorts anywhere lie in U.S. Rep. Jared Polis' Colorado district, dotting the peaks of Summit and Eagle counties, about a hundred miles west of Denver. The area has a high rate of uninsured people and also, it turns out, health plans that are much more expensive than similar plans in surrounding regions. So expensive that Polis, a Democrat, has asked the federal government to exempt some of his constituents from the requirement to buy health insurance.
"The way the pricing came in under the Affordable Care Act ... was anything but affordable in Summit and Eagle counties," Polis says. "Upwards of $500 to $600 a month, minimum. Whereas in other parts of my district — like Fort Collins and the Boulder area — the pricing is really good. You [can] get a very strong, good insurance program for $300 to $350 a month."
Colorado's insurance commissioner, Marguerite Salazar, disputes the congressman's assessment of his district.
"I've been very pleasantly surprised to see that in some cases they're able to get a lower-cost plan than people with the same demographic information in Denver," she says.
The health plan prices Salazar is talking about include subsidies that can lower costs for people making below a certain income. Couples, for instance, can get a subsidy if they make less than about $62,000 a year. But Salazar's argument didn't impress people at a recent public meeting she held in Summit County.
"You try living in this county for two adults on $62,000 a year," one angry constituent said. "You can't do it."
The median rent in Summit County is 24 percent higher than in Denver. Gas and groceries are more expensive in Summit, and so is health care. Commissioner Salazar says that's why she approved higher insurance rates here.
"So what you're saying is we're screwed, and there's nothing you can or will do to prevent that," a woman said to Salazar at the public meeting.
"That's not what I'm saying," Salazar replied.
"Well, that's what we're hearing," responded another attendee.
People in the mountain communities are upset because insurance rates across the county line are dramatically lower. They want to be added into a so-called rating area with the regions paying lower rates.
Ben Price, with the Colorado Association of Health Plans, says insurers have to be able to charge people who live in different regions different prices.
If they can't, he says, "you're asking that [lower cost] county to subsidize all the folks that live in the county that was more expensive."
Price says insurers pay up to 45 percent more per person for medical care in the mountains versus in Denver. To give people in high-cost counties a discount, insurers would have to make up their loss by charging people in low-cost counties more, which wouldn't be fair.
"This isn't driven by the insurance industry," Price says. "These [different rates] are driven by factual numbers about the cost of health care."
Insurance companies have long charged people living in different places different prices for similar policies. And there have been pretty dramatic differences in what people pay from one side of any given state to another, says Timothy McBride, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.
Before the Affordable Care Act, McBride says, insurers were allowed to vary their prices according to a long list of criteria — including an applicant's overall health, for example, or whether the person had a pre-existing condition. Now, they can only vary what they charge according to a person's age, whether they smoke and where they live.
Now, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, McBride says, "in most parts of the country, that variation across geographic area is probably better."
But not in Colorado. Arguably, price variation across the state hasn't gotten worse under Obamacare. But more people are noticing price differences now, since the law requires them to buy a minimum level of health coverage, and old, low-cost, bare-bones plans are no longer allowed.
Rep. Polis is working with Commissioner Salazar to bring down the high insurance rates in the mountains. They're optimistic it will happen next year. But people in the industry say they expect rates to be volatile for at least a couple of years — until insurance companies get a handle on exactly how the Affordable Care Act is changing their business.
This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR and Kaiser Health News.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.