Today in the News (30 May 09)

Vaccines:
Straight from Dr. Plait's blog: The CDC gets it. They put out a really well-done video for parents with questions about vaccines that specifically deals with the misinformation put out by the antivax mob.

Nice. Informative, calm, and speaks directly to concerned parents. Spread the word.
And stay through to the video’s end. Cuteness!

Since the Swine Flu is google spamming everything, I did find a nice article where people are debunking myths. It is sad that people get so panicky and ill informed about things. And then once the bad information gets a hold of people, nothing can seem to shake their adherence to the myth... I guess that's why we are here.

Another case of "I told you so": Measel cases in Howe and Brighton are on the rise. Straight from the article: "One in every 15 children with measles will develop serious complications, which can include diarrhoea, ear and chest infections, fits and brain damage. In rare instances, measles can kill."

Autism:
Generally I don't go to The Daily KOS for news or anything, but I figured that this article was just appropriate in general. Especially since it correctly labels the thought that vaccines cause autism as a delusion.

And how about earlier diagnosis of the possibility of autism by examining the placenta? Of course, this would lend even more weight to the idea that autism is genetic and has nothing to do with vaccines. Of course, this is a very new approach, and it is still in the investigative phase. However, the anti-vax pro-disease crowd probably won't be happy with this sort of news.

Evolution:
Here is an article where the evolution of relative brain size is discussed. Now, the thinking impaired will probably say that this is another example where science went wrong and can't be trusted. Although, if you read the article, you can see that the initial conclusion was based on a small dataset. Upon attempting to confirm or falsify the conclusion, a better dataset was used, and now we have to think of something else. That's the beauty of science and its self correcting mechanism.

Another genome has been mapped, that of the mouse. Although this seems to be an improvement from something initially published back in 2002. Yes, even in just a few years, we are able to improve on so much of our understanding. By the way, did you catch that humans and mice have 80% of our genes in common? Interesting!