Anti-vaccination foolishness in Minnesota

I got a request to spread the word around Minnesota—the anti-vaxers are gearing up again to push a silly bill in the Minnesota congress. I’ve put the letter below. If any of these people are your representatives, contact them and tell them they are being very, very silly.

There’s supposed to be a hearing next week on a bill that would limit the use of vaccines containing thimerosal, because of the belief that they may cause autism. This is the third year that this bill has been presented, and it keeps failing, but they keep bringing it back up, even though it’s clearer now than ever that there is no connection between the two – there’s been no more than trace amounts of thimerosal in childhood vaccines made since 2001, and more autism than ever in kids too young to have been exposed to it. This isn’t just bad science: it’s the Legislature telling parents they can’t trust their pediatricians, and giving credence to the quacks who want to treat autistic kids with chelation, homeopathy, hyperbaric oxygen, high-dose vitamin supplements, and all manner of other dubious remedies.

Perhaps you would be willing to spread the word that the committee members who will be voting on this bill (Senate File 1780) need to hear the scientific viewpoint? Especially the ones who are co-sponsors of the bill – including John Marty, committee chair, who just went down about four hundred notches in my estimation. I’ll append a couple of links for background and the committee list. I imagine you have a lot of MN readers who may be constituents of the committee members.

Thanks!

Lisa Randall

(an amateur immunization advocate who has experienced the lunacy first-hand)

Background and statements by the American Academy of Pediatrics

Bill text

Committee (co-authors’ names are in bold):

Chair: John Marty* (DFL-54)
Roseville
651-296-5645

Vice Chair: Patricia Torres Ray* (DFL-62)
Minneapolis
651-296-4274

Paul E. Koering (R-12)
Fort Ripley
651-296-4875

Linda Berglin (DFL-61)
Minneapolis
651-296-4261

John P. Doll (DFL-40)
Burnsville
651-296-5975

Sharon L. Erickson Ropes* [RN] (DFL-31)
Winona
651-296-5649

Michelle L. Fischbach (R-14)
Paynesville
651-296-2084

David W. Hann (R-42)
Eden Prairie
651-296-1749

Linda Higgins (DFL-58)
Minneapolis
651-296-9246

Debbie J. Johnson (R-49)
Ham Lake
651-296-3219

Tony Lourey* (DFL-08)
Kerrick
651-296-0293

Ann Lynch (DFL-30)
Rochester
651-296-4848

Yvonne Prettner Solon (DFL-07)
Duluth
651-296-4188

Betsy L. Wergin* (R-16)
Princeton
651-296-8075

Now on top of my usual creationists, I can thank Lynn Margulis for drawing in the HIV denialists that plague Tara‘s site, and this for the anti-vaxers from Orac‘s. Obviously, I need to put up something about global warming next. I’m going to call this little game Poketroll — collect them all!

That didn’t take long

The demonization of Pete Stark begins. Wouldn’t you know it would be Michelle Malkin (“imprisonment for being brown is OK!”), and it would be in WorldNutDaily (your daily source of raving right wing lunacy), and she’s appalled that he has called someone a “fruitcake” in the past. Why, that’s a homophobic slur! He’s as bad as Ann Coulter!

She’s really reaching. I’ve never heard “fruitcake” used against gays, although I imagine practically every word has been used as an insult against them—I’ve mainly heard it to express one’s opinion of another’s sanity, as in “nutty as a fruitcake”. It’s too bad no one ever told Stark that the godless are never, ever allowed to get angry.

Alas for Malkin, she has short-circuited any attempt to call shame on someone judging another as crazy by titling her article “Pete Stark: Raving Lunatic”.

Kicking ’em where it hurts

From Orcinus, I’ve learned a useful new term (“spockoed“, referring to using aggressive tactics to shame the right-wing extremists) and that Michael Savage and Ann Coulter are suffering for their calumnies, which is always satisfying. There might be a little too much self-satisfaction, though: I think there’s a large enough culture of right-wing extremism to keep them both profitable for a long time to come, and I suspect that knocking down one or two sleaze-artists just means new ones will rise to take their place.

Report from Planet Righty

Tim Lambert summarizes an informal survey of 59 right-wing bloggers: 100% of them deny the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming, contradicting the scientific evidence. They were also asked about other issues—the majority approve of the “surge” in Iraq, think Bush is doing an acceptable job in foreign policy, and believe Democrats like the idea of losing the war in Iraq, but only on global warming is their unanimity.

It’s too bad the survey didn’t ask about other science issues. I’d like to know if they are similarly wrong about evolution, HIV as the cause of AIDS, and whether the earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa.

in betenden Händen ist die Waffe vor Mißbrauch sicher

Hey, you mean America isn’t the sole refuge of pious war-mongers? I was sent this remarkable quote from Cardinal Meisner of Köln:

Einem Gott lobenden Soldaten kann man guten
Gewissens Verantwortung über Leben und Tod anderer
übertragen, weil sie
bei ihm gleichsam von der Heiligkeit Gottes mitabgesegnet sind … Wem käme es in den Sinn, Soldaten, die auch Beter sind , dann
noch als Mörder zu diskriminieren. Nein, in betenden Händen ist die
Waffe vor
Mißbrauch sicher.

It begins “One can in good conscience give a God-praising soldier responsibility over the life and death of others” and ends with the fine sentiment that “In praying hands weapons are safe from abuse.” My German is rusty enough that I would have great difficulty detecting sarcasm in that language, so someone should tell me if I’m missing some essential subtlety in the translation.

So, I’m wondering … if a soldier faithfully wears a “Gott mit uns” belt buckle, does that suggest that he can do no evil?

Shall we assume that any Muslim who hits the prayer mat four times a day is harmless?

Is Germany planning to disarm any atheists in the ranks, because they can’t be trusted with their weapons?

The manimal will have a British accent

Well, not really—but the UK government will tolerate and support research into human-animal hybrids. No one is interested in raising a half-pig/half-man creature to adulthood, but instead this work is all about understanding basic mechanisms of development and human disease.

Scientists want to create the hybrid embryos to study the subtle molecular glitches that give rise to intractable diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cystic fibrosis. The researchers would take a cell from a patient and insert it into a hollowed out animal egg to make an embryo, which would be 99.9% human and 0.1% animal. Embryonic stem cells extracted from the week-old embryo would then be grown into nerves and other tissues, giving scientists unprecedented insight into how the disease develops in the body. Under existing laws, the embryos must be destroyed no later than 14 days after being created and cannot be implanted.

(I don’t care for how they phrased it: these will be a collection of animal-derived cells that contain human nuclear DNA. They will not be human.)

This is precisely the kind of useful biomedical research our American president called one of the “most egregious abuses of medical research” in his state of the union speech last year. Essentially, the only people who oppose it are confused wackos with delusions about the ‘sanctity’ of human life who think a few cells in a dish should have more rights and privileges than an adult woman—a substantial chunk of the Republican base.

We see once again where the so-far eminently successful American scientific machine is stymied by the religious twits who have looked at the possibilities of 21st century biology, and turned away, allowing other countries the opportunity to pass us by.

I should have included a link to this other article, in which government ministers declare that they will no longer oppose the research.

Inside scoop from Majikthise

It looks like Lindsay Beyerstein dodged a bullet—she was offered the position with the Edwards campaign that Amanda Marcotte accepted, and she turned it down. It’s a smart article—there are some good lessons to be learned about blogs and politics from it.

The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.

Lindsay knew she’d be targeted, just as Amanda was — she’s a godless pro-choicer, too. That’s actually a disturbing problem; why should favoring secularism and a woman’s right to choose be a detriment to someone working for a Democratic candidate?

As long as we’re confessing…

In response to this crazy attempt to smear Mitt Romney with the sins of his fathers literally, a few people are disqualifying themselves from future runs for the presidency with similar confessions. I have to admit there’s a skeleton in my family tree, too: apparently, one of my ancestors was hanged as a witch in 17th century Massachusetts.

No one will be surprised at that, I suppose. Especially since if your family can trace its roots in this country back almost 400 years, you might well be related to her, too.