Another One Bites the Dust

Malaria has a vaccine which is reported to drop malaria infection rates by around 50%, which is cause for immense celebration.

The malaria vaccine is the first vaccine produced against a parasite rather than a pathogen and if the efficiency rate is to hold this would result in a massive drop in cases and in mortality. Roughly 800,000 people a year die from Malaria per year and a 50% infection drop would halve that.

This is without the countless man hours and pain caused by this disease, remembering that there are roughly 225 million cases of malaria per year and that malaria is a serious disease. The sheer amount of money saved in medication and treatment will be astounding particularly since the people this will benefit the most will be the poorest nations of the world who normally don't have access to the best medication.

It will be a few more years before the vaccine is released but clinical trials are promising. This is 30 years of hard work that have come to fruition even if the immunity doesn't last long. 

They are at it again!

Ah the usual quacks at Natural News are upto their old denials again.

See the problem is Natural News is a relatively large site so it gets hits quite easily from scared parents who want to find out more about this whole "vaccine bruhaha" so they find the site and quickly are scared into not vaccinating their child.

Vaccine Times: What's in that vaccine?

To go along with Avicenna's post the other day, I think this one should compliment it.  The three most important parts of that post are:

• The CDC Pink Book
• The Pink Book Appendix
• Vaccine Safety Inserts

Again, The Vaccine Times has these as well for you.

One of the things that worries parents more than anything else about vaccines is what exactly is in the vaccine. Generally speaking a vaccine contains the antigen, the part of the virus or bacteria that is meant to induce the immune response, a solution in which it is suspended, generally a saline solution, and “other stuff”. The antigen could be a dead germ, part of a germ, a protein from the germ etc. The other stuff is generally what the “green our vaccines” crowd worry about.

READ THE REST OF THE POST HERE.

Everything you need to know about Immunity but were too afraid to ask!

But not Donkeys!

One of the major problems with the whole vaccination movement is that most people cannot understand how vaccines are meant to work. Many anti-vaccine advocates simply think that injecting someone with a disease is a good way to make someone sick rather than someone immune to a disease.

With that in mind, I have produced this primer on immunity and how vaccination works. There are pretty pictures and analogies. 

An immune system in a human being is a series of defences designed to deal with an infection by a foreign organism. It is a multi layered defence system which reduces infection as well as actively combats germs and parasites. Like onions, ogres and parfait. 

It's both a physical and a biological entity and it's responsible for a lot of medicine, from vaccinations to blood transfusions and organ transplantation. It's also involved in diseases such as auto immune disorders which are increasingly common.

Basically, immunity is this amazing system that keeps most of us healthy. It can be summarised as

Parts of the Immune System 


Innate - 

This is the cell's innate ability to detect foreign material and eliminate them without the bodies own specific response. It is a generic quick response to disease causing organisms  (Pathogens) which invade our body to either prevent an infection or slow it doen sufficiently for the slower but more effective and selective Adaptive Immune system to activate. It consists of


Anatomical barriers -
These consist of physical barriers. The skin itself is impermeable to pathogens providing defences like a solid wall. Our nasal passage is lined with mucous that is constantly moved into the stomach catching pathogens and killing them. Our eyes are covered in caustic tears and our mouths in saliva which contains a variety of enzymes. all these ensure that the vast majority of pathogens are killed before they can even enter an area where they can cause harm.

Inflammation -
This is not a bad thing but the symptoms we associate with inflammation are due to the localised response to the presence of a foreign body or pathogen. It's main purpose is to provide a physical barrier to control the spread of infection and to heal damaged tissue in the region.

Damaged cells give out a bunch of chemical factors which cause pain and blood vessels to become more permeable. This attracts phagocytes and alerts you to the injury allowing you to cover it to prevent further infections. Phagocytes are "cells that eat", they recognise foreign or dead tissue and physically consume it and digest it.

The inflammation is simply noted by the moniker of rubor, calor, tumor et dolor (red, hot, swollen and painful). Normally inflammation is a good thing (it's what makes insect bites itch) but its bad in auto immune diseases such as arthritis.

Complement System -
This is a biochemical cascade that once activated causes the influx of phagocytic cells from blood into the tissue. The thing to remember is that our blood vessels are actually permeable and the phagocytes can actively squeeze through to get into the tissue area.

It is via this system foreign cells are recognised and either "eaten and digested" by the White Blood Cells or are lysed by general antibodies. The complement pathway has a long evolutionary history with parts of it even seen in plants.

Cells Involved -
The white blood cells (WBC) involved are

Mast Cells - A cell associated with allergy and anaphylaxis. A mediator of inflammation response.

Mast cells, the pink dots
are histamine which causes hayfever.

Phagocytes -  Large cells that move like amoeba. They "eat" other cells by surrounding them with their plasma membranes producing "bubbles" in which they can release enzymes safely without damaging other cells. They have a role in normal development as our normal cells do "commit suicide" in specific ways to produce our shape. These help with clean up. 

Macrophages - Large Phagocytic cells that efficiently consume multiple pathogens. Heavily motile and actively cross from the blood stream into tissue to hunt down pathogens. They kill by the use of free radical oxygen. 

Macrophage "om nom noming"
on pathogens

Neutr/Eosin/Basophils -  A series of similar cells that target a variety of different pathogens non specifically. Have "granules" similar to ground coffee that have specific actions. 

The big pink cell with all the weird
purple nucleus is a eosinophil

Natural Killer Cells - These are interesting, they don't target pathogens but cells infected by viruses or cancerous cells. They recognise these and induce controlled cell death halting the spread of cancerous tissue or viruses. 

Dendritic Cells and Gamma/Delta T Cells - These are the bridge between the innate and adaptive systems and their main role is antigen presentation. They harvest proteins from damaged pathogens and present them to T-Cells. 

Adaptive -


The dendritic cells activate our adaptive immune system. It's a series of specialised cells that produce antibodies which "mark" out pathogens for destruction with greater specificity. It basically any cell marked with an antibody gets destroyed. Evolutionarily speaking it's quite elegant utilising mutations (somatic hypermutation) to produce endless varieties of "antigen receptors". When an antigen matches a receptor, antibodies are produced specific to that antigen.

The antibodies are the main weapon of our body to fight disease. It is a larger response than innate immunity and once sensitised the adaptive immune system often fights of diseases even before we can manifest the signs of disease.

Cells involved -
These are called Lymphocytes mainly as they are found circulating in lymph more than in blood, their role is determined by the cell itself.

T - Lymphocytes - The main role of the cell is to recognise cells infected by viruses and trigger the apoptotic pathway destroying the cell and its viral load. Since viruses only replicate inside cells this kills them enmasse as phagocytes consume the destroyed cell debris and digest the contents. The antigen of the viral cell is recognised by surface antibodies on the T-Lymphocyte. There are also helper T-Lymphocytes whose role is control and organisation of the response.

B - Lymphocytes - The main role of these is to produce humoral (free floating) antibodies that recognise pathogens and mark them for destruction by activating the complement system and by causing the pathogen to become "sticky" but only with other pathogens. This causes them to clump together and make them easier to kill.  

Memory Cells - After the infection has passed, most of these cells die. However a few are maintained in circulation as "memory cells". In future infections these are rapidly activated to produce a humoral response which quickly destroys any new infections even before they produce any symptoms. 

In Infants, there is a version of this system called passive immunity. Certain classes of antibodies can cross the placental barrier and can be absorbed through milk particularly the colostrum (first milk). These give the new born baby the same range of protection as the mother.

This is how our natural system works. It doesn't recognise our own cells as self recognising antibodies are actively destroyed. However in cases of organ transplant, blood donation or foetal blood incompatibility the body can target itself. In autoimmune diseases we can see a pathological breakdown of this system targeting the self rather than pathogens.

Hacking the System -


All of this sounds pretty damn awesome, but it's not infallible. Remember the pathogens themselves have their own tricks to avoid being caught and killed while remaining long enough to survive and spread. The range of tricks is colossal from lysogeny (the ability of a virus to integrate it's DNA into ours. Herpes does this! The common cold sore is a form of this ability.) to shuffling antigens (the common cold does this.)

So what we need is a way of beating diseases at their own game. A way of acquiring immunity to diseases without the disease itself.

That way is vaccination. The idea is simple, you take known antigens and inject them into the body. The body's cells recognise these "bits and pieces" and produce an immune response as if there were a real threat maintaining a population of "memory cells" to deal with subsequent infections. Every infection you stop actually increases your immune response. So there are a variety of different responses. The response to just an antigen mix is less than a dead/killed cell which is less than a severely weakened cell. However as long as we are under a vaccinated period we should be able to fight off an infection. It isn't 100% fool proof but it means that the vast majority of people are immune to a particular disease preventing it's spread in general.

Vaccination is merely a trick, to trick our bodies into thinking that it has fought of a disease when in reality it has not. At worst you save time and money that would have been wasted in treating the sick and at best you save lives out of it.

A Photon in the Darkness: Dr. “Know-it-all”*

I have often said that the most powerful words in the English language are "I don't know."  They are hard to say, and infuriating to admit to, but they are more often than not, true compared to the stuff that comes out of most people's mouths.  As human beings, we don't like not knowing something, and that's where the practitioners of woo step in.  The unethical approach is that instead of saying "I don't know.", they will just make stuff up and give people a false sense of having gotten an "answer".  Even if the answer is wrong.  As people have often said, "Reality and science is hindered by the fact that they simply cannot just make stuff up."  So, when Prometheus posted this story, was reminded of that saying.  As well as reminding me that folks need to check out What's The Harm to see the effects of many of these ill founded and unethicaly promoted ideas.

Dr. “Know-it-all”*

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with the mother of an autistic child that highlighted both the appeal and the danger of ”alternative” autism therapy. This mother, who is a bright and well-read person, is not medically or scientifically sophisticated, like most of the population, including most parents of autistic children.

During our conversation, this woman mentioned that she was having concerns about her child’s “DAN! doctor” (her term), specifically the expensive medications and “supplements” he was prescribing. In addition, although this practitioner described himself as a “holistic” physician, treating the “whole patient”, he refused to treat the boy’s seizure disorder or his asthma. Apparently, “holistic” doesn’t include the brain or lungs.

What struck me, however, was her comparison between their “DAN! doctor” and the neurologist who is treating their son’s seizures. She felt an uncomfortable lack of confidence in the neurologist because she stated, in the first visit, that she didn’t know what was causing the boy’s seizures and needed to do some tests. In fact, this neurologist went so far as to admit that they might never discover a cause for the seizures, even after extensive testing. In contrast, their “DAN! doctor” always has an answer and uses tests to merely confirm his “clinical impression”.

Therein lies the appeal and the danger of “alternative” practitioners.


To recap - the neurologist admitted to this parent that she - the neurologist - couldn’t tell what was causing the seizures and needed to do further testing. The “DAN! doctor”, on the other hand, could tell that her son was suffering from “mercury toxicity” on the first visit and only did the $1400 worth of blood, urine and stool testing in order to confirm his diagnosis.

At this point, I asked my friend if she would look at the situation from a slightly different angle. Instead of seeing the neurologist’s lack of certainty as a flaw, maybe it was simply honesty. After all, how could anyone be sure what was causing the seizures without some testing? For that matter, how could her “DAN! doctor” be so certain that her son had “mercury toxicity” before any of the tests were done? And why - if the diagnosis was so obvious - did he need to do $1400 in tests (all done at expensive mail-order labs)?

Another curious point is that this “DAN! doctor”, while he has never wavered in his assessment of “mercury toxicity”, has been all over the map in terms of therapies. He started out with chelation, which he assured my friend would “recover” her son “in a matter of months”. When the boy’s behavior worsened, the doctor said it was “the toxins being mobilised” and when she commented after a year of chelation that her son seemed no better, the doctor said “It’s because you are too close - I see tremendous improvement!”. Funny thing, the boy’s teachers, who had no knowledge of the chelation, didn’t see much improvement, either.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ENTRY!

Viera Scheibner's Quick Points - A Rebuttal

Viera Schiebner at her non-muggle job.

I find this woman odious, a genuine harpy. Twisting the misery and suffering of countless children across the world to fit her world view of anti-vaccination and anti-medicine. Her work has recently begun to resurface courtesy of outbreaks of measles across Europe. It's not sufficient that she misrepresents her "speciality" as a micro-paleontologist and uses her doctrate to make people assume that she is a medical doctor. Her work has routinely been called to question and is responsible for the idea that the whooping cough vaccine is responsible for SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). She has also linked Shaken Baby Syndrome to vaccination and claimed that childhood diseases such as mumps, measles, whooping cough and german measles are vital for development and only cause fatalities under medical mismanagement. Her work forms the foundation of all sorts of moronic anti-vaccine ideology based out of Australia. In response to the previous Measles outbreak in the UK immediately post Andrew Wakefield's shoddy research she produced her own Quick Points about the Measles Outbreak.

The Rise of the Citizen Doctor

Welcome to a new age of amateur scientists and quack healers. Thanks media!
By Shannon Rupp, 5 Oct 2009, TheTyee.ca

While mass media are filled with discussions of the powers and perils of "Citizen Journalists," little is written about a much more valuable trend: the rise of the Citizen Doctor.

Vaccination-denier Jenny McCarthy fits the bill. She's the former Playboy Playmate who built a new career, on CNN's Larry King and elsewhere, claiming her son's autism is the result of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella). She's busy insisting that your child could be next despite the fact that the cause of autism is unknown and other parents of autistic children consider her to be a nutty loose cannon.

Oprah fits the bill. She provides cheerleading and a platform for the likes of McCarthy and enthusiastic cougar Suzanne Somers, whose stay-young-forever campaign features hormone therapies linked to cancer. Newsweek went to town on Lady O in the spring with "Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You."

Sniffles? Bend over please
The Huffington Post, which runs the words of the ambitious willing to work for free, is like the bible for Citizen Doctors. A (very cranky) Rahul K. Parikh offers an M.D.'s view on this in his Salon piece discussing how the Huffpo advocates practices like giving enemas to prevent flu. (Suddenly vaccines look attractive.)

Closer to home, Citizen Doctors can get training in the magical thinking of their choice at public institutions. The Vancouver School Board, for example, has offered courses in "aura reading" and "face reflexology" which can be cobbled into a certificate and gives Citizen Doctors a kind of authority.

Credentials are important to non-celeb Citizen Doctors, I've noticed. So supplying the amateurs with pseudo-academic cred has become big business for continuing education departments in universities and colleges, as well as in the private degree mills.

Bringing down public health costs
In B.C., the Health Professionals Act covers many of the Citizen Doctor groups, all of whom seem to be lobbying to expand their "scope of practice." In April, B.C. was the first province to grant naturopaths -- who practice, among other things, a form of magic known as homeopathy -- the right to prescribe those science-based drugs they used to despise.

It's genius! Naturopaths charge users about $100 a visit. In effect, people who were clogging up the public medical system are being directed into a user-pay system -- and with the enthusiastic support of some of the public, no less. (I bet the move even earned the Liberals a few votes in the last election.)

Kudos to the government strategists on this one. And with that in mind, I say we include all the Citizen Doctors under the umbrella of this act. Just think of the benefits to provincial coffers if we embrace those privately funded "wellness" experts currently on the fringes, like colonic-cleansers and shamans (shamen? shapersons?).

Survival of the fittest
Although I wonder whether chiropractors should remain in that pool, given that they may actually be costing the healthcare system money. Last year an Alberta woman with post-neck-cracking paralysis launched a half-million dollar class action suit against chiropractors and the province. Her claim is based on a decade of research connecting chiropractic neck adjustments to strokes.

In July, the Alberta court decided the provincial government can't be added to the suit -- and personally, I hope the courts kick this whiner to the curb. Since the hazards of the subluxation crowd are well-publicized, she shouldn't be surprised at the "treatment" she received when she opted for spinal manipulations in service of "wellness".

Friends and colleagues consider my enthusiasm for quack therapy a betrayal of my expensive, publicly-subsidized education, but really it's the result thereof. Embracing Citizen Doctors makes sense in terms of both economics and evolutionary biology.

Consider the sort of people inclined to use "complementary medicine". Exactly. Not only does encouraging them to go for bone breathing shorten the medical queues for the rest of us, but it will also ultimately improve the gene pool.

"You little eugenicist you!" my friends snap. (They're exaggerating: I prefer the term logician.)
Think about it: Citizen Doctors are a clever solution to everything from surgery waiting lists to over-population. Not to mention reducing the pressure those greying Boomers are about to put on pension plans.

Band-aid and comfort
I'll accept that the rise of Citizen Doctors is creating a kind of two-tier medical system -- one I can celebrate because its participants are self-selecting.

Of course taxpayers should demand that public healthcare dollars be restricted to funding therapies that work -- for one thing, they tend to cost less than quackery. But if consumers like myth-and-magic, why shouldn't they have easy access to merchants who sell nonsense? No one prevents diet companies from seducing the public. Or cosmetics companies. They trade in fraud too. Or perhaps "hope" is better word? But it amounts to the same thing.

We all know the facts. Doctors brandish overwhelming evidence that avoiding smoking, booze and other drugs, getting proper nutrition along with adequate exercise, being vigilant about preventative health care such as vaccines and check-ups for fatal-but-treatable diseases will give most of us a healthy 75 years. (No one said anything about happy, people, just disease-free.)
Which is what I reminded an acquaintance who ventured that my "opinion" about her quack therapy of choice (reiki) was wrong. (I have no more of an opinion about reiki than I have about the flatness of the earth. I've never done experiments to confirm whether the earth is round, but I trust the evidence of people whose life's work it is to have done the research.)

"I feel reiki is important to my wellness," she said.

I'm sure she does. But I asked her why, if she's concerned about her health, she doesn't lose 30 pounds and stop guzzling wine like it's water -- there's hard evidence both practices would improve her so-called state of wellness.

I didn't get an answer.

Road to wellness too steep?
On the bright side, maybe time spent getting reiki distracts her from drinking? And that's just the kind of benefit I feel quack therapy can offer. Without alternative medicine to support her ostrich-like stance, she would be in her GP's office regularly, demanding meaningless MRIs, whining about feeling lousy, yada yada yada. Costly. And pointless. She doesn't want to do the hard work necessary for good health. But she is willing to pay for the illusion she's doing something productive. So why shouldn't we empower the sellers of such socially-useful deceptions?

Hail Oprah and bring on the bone breathers, I say. Not only will Citizen Doctors improve our fitness as a species, they'll save us a few bucks while doing it.

Today (16 Jun 09)

Today was a good day overall for the skeptical movement. So instead of covering the same three topics that I type up on most days, I am going to repost a blog entry from Dr. Phil Plait (the guy that inspired this web page and who is also the president of the JREF). Enjoy the good news, and remember that it takes a concerted effort to actually put down woo. While they have no standards of evidence, and pretty much just make stuff up on the fly, we are bound by science and our conscience to present information that we can actually back up.

Well, antiscience is taking major body blows the past week or so, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to see. It started with Newsweek taking down the quackery promoted by Oprah Winfrey, and has taken off from there:

1) Reader’s Digest jumped on the anti-Oprah ride… and when the milquetoast middle-of-the-road offend no one RD takes you on, it’s time to rethink your very existence.

2) Deepak Chopra — who couldn’t find reality with both hands, a compass and, evidently, the aid of centuries of scientific advancement — ran to Oprah’s defense, and, as usual, mangled more logic in one essay than can be humanly possible without the aid of quantum healing. Massimo Pigliucci magnificently takes him down, as did JREF’s Jeff Wagg at the Swift blog.

3) The Australian government has ruled that Arnica Montana, a homeopathy company, falsely advertised the efficacy of its product — which, in the case of homeopathy is everything they advertise — and they had to post a humiliating retraction. I weep non-diluted tears for them. Dr. Rachie has more info. Also, Steve Novella has written a lengthy and complete destruction of homeopathy on his NeuroLogica blog. If you are a homeopathic believer and feel you must spout your undiluted nonsense in the comments below, read his essay first, because if you make any of the claims he debunks I will allow everyone free reign to mock you. Because that’s better than allowing babies to die due to homeopathy.

4) Simon Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association because he wrote about their "bogus" claims. BCA vice-president Richard Brown then posted a flailing essay titled In Defence of Chiropractic in New Scientist magazine, a piece laden to the hilt with astonishingly poorly thought-out logic. Apgaylard thoroughy dismantles the claims from Brown, leaving the emperor looking a little naked out there.

This kind of antiscience antireality antihealth garbage will always be with us, but I can hope to help amplify the chorus of voices being raised against them. It’s important, as I have been hammering home for months. They will never rest as long as people credulously accept their claims, so we need to make sure as many people as possible examine their claims as critically as possible.