Come on! Whay to be irresponsible W.H.O.

So I just came accross some reports about the W.H.O. supposedly being tied to companies that made money off the N1H1 vaccines...  I can barely contain my anger and frustration at reading this.  Not because it's particualrly surprising, or that it's an incredibly irresponsible thing to do.  But because it is just more ammo for the deluded liars who will point to this as some sort of vindicating fact that nothing about vaccines can be trusted.  They will totally ignore the FACT that ZERO cases of autism have been linked to vaccines.  Or that vaccines are STILL safer than the disease they protect against.

This is an ethical failing.  It is not in any way  a medical failing.  Science is still being vindicated day in and day out about the safety and efficiency of vaccines.  Sadly, beurocratic douchebags will do their best to besmirch that reputation, and lying, deceitful loonies will take advantage of it, and build giant 100 foot strawmen out of this.

In 2005, pertussis killed eight California infants.

The actual title for this article is below, but I titled it from one small sentence out of the article.  It's not so much that the disease is on the rise that is so horrible, but that people are DYING from it.  The disease is easy to prevent.  Simple vaccinations that impart herd immunity.  We can stop it.

Sadly, it seems modern medicine didn't take into account our own stupidity and incredulity.  That people are getting whooping cough is not good, and it's sad, but the DEATHS of people (infants in particular) that are totally preventable are why I started this site.  Those names should be at the Jenny McCarthy Bodycount site as well.

Whooping cough cases soar in Marin and state

Marin County health officials say the number of whooping cough cases reported so far this year is already three times greater than the number of cases reported during all of 2009.

Dr. Anju Goel, Marin deputy public health officer, said 58 cases of whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory tract infection also known as pertussis, were reported in Marin from Jan. 1 to May 17, compared with just 19 during 2009.

The higher Marin numbers reflect a statewide phenomenon. According to the California Department of Public Health, 346 pertussis cases were reported in California from Jan. 1 to April 30, up from 129 cases during the same period last year.

Statewide, four newborns have died from whooping cough – two in Los Angeles County and two in the Central Valley. State health officials say pertussis cases tend to be cyclical, with a rise in the number of cases every two to five years followed by a decline.

“The last big outbreak of pertussis cases was in 2005,” said Ken August, a state Department of Public Health spokesman. “So we’re concerned we could be in for another tough year.”

In 2005, pertussis killed eight California infants.

Infants, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half of infants less than 1 year old who get the disease must be hospitalized. About one in 10 children with pertussis get pneumonia, and about one in 250 people who become infected develop a brain disorder called encephalopathy. The disease causes an estimated 10 to 20 deaths each year in the United States.

In Marin, the Ross Valley School District’s five campuses in San Anselmo and Fairfax are being hit the hardest.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT CONTRACOSTATIMES

We all love Dr. nancy Snyderman

I didn't know about this post over at the JREF Forums for a while, but it recently got bumped up so I got a chance to read it.  Seems Dr. Snyderman has some great things to say, and some good ole fashioned smack down on idiots.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman is NBC's chief medical editor. This morning she did a profile of Dr. Paul Offit, author of the new book Autism's False Prophets.

The profile was pretty good, not great, it missed a few points. But check out what happened during the "outro" after the report. Dr. Snyderman had mentioned that she personally had been "physically ambushed" by anti-vaccine people, and then she totally got into Matt Lauer's face about referring to the vacccines/autism thing as "controversial."

It was a sight to behold:

Dr. Nancy Snyderman: Its time for everyone to redirect the questions toward finding the cause of autism. It is NOT, however, vaccinations.

Matt Lauer: Controversial subject, Nancy.

Snyderman: NOT controversial subject!

Lauer: Well but controversial for parents who still believe.

Snyderman: It is not controversial, Matt! It's time for kids to get their vaccines.

Lauer: If it weren't controversial you wouldn't be ambushed.

Snyderman: No! It's not controversial. I really mean that. The science is the science. We are going to start to see outbreaks of polio and measles in this country if we don't start talking about the real problem. It's NOT controversial.

Lauer: We will talk about it more here, Nancy, thanks.

Snyderman: You bet, Matt.

Lauer: We're back right after this.

Kudos, Dr. Snyderman, kudos.

There is a complete video online as well.  The good part where she smacks down Lauer at the end starts around 5:00  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/27453507#27453507  (Flash & Javascript required, of course, as for most web videos.)

If you click on the title of this blog, then you can go to the thread where this discussion is going on at the JREF.  There are a few more posts about Dr. Snyderman as well as a few more NBC spots and the Nightline show.  There is also the cranks that still think that vaccines are poison and such.  Their posts are almost funny if it wasn't for the public danger they represent.

Skeptics PWN Anti-Vax Scumbag Wakefield at His Own Rally

There is really nothing much I can add to this, so I will just paste it, and leave it be:

Skeptics PWN Anti-Vax Scumbag Wakefield at His Own Rally

Posted by mattusmaximus on May 27, 2010

**Update: Check out my follow-up post for more news, photos, and video of this event.
============
Well, congratulate me folks – I’m now officially part of a squad of skeptical ninjas
Today, there was an anti-vaccination rally in Chicago, and the king of anti-vax woo & nonsense – Andrew Wakefield himself – showed up. I suppose he decided to hang with his anti-vax homies here in the U.S. seeing as how he’s essentially lost his license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom because of his fraudulent work there.
Anyway, the new skeptical group I’m part of, the Women Thinking Free Foundation (WTFF), caught wind of this wave of woo headed our way (we’re based in Chicago) and we decided, with two days notice, to mobilize and counter protest… and we did! I did not personally attend the counter protest, as I had to teach today, but I and many others were working behind the scenes to help organize it.
The word went out like wildfire across the Internet – via email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and message boards – and we were able to gather a group of about 10 people there. In addition, our WTFF ninjas were able to hand out plenty of pro-vaccine literature to passers-by who might have otherwise thought that Wakefield and his ilk weren’t batcrap crazy. Here are some examples of our handouts we whipped up as part of WTFF’s new “Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated!” campaign…

It went really well. Apparently, a whopping 50-100 anti-vaxxers showed up; ironically, with just a couple of more days of prep & organization, we might have been able to have almost as many pro-science people there. In addition to handing out literature, our skeptical ninjas also took some photos & video, which I will share with you after it is all processed. Until then, I leave you with this little gem…

That’s Wakefield in the middle, unwittingly posing with two of our skeptical ninjas who infiltrated his rally. In fact, the girl is wearing a Surlyramics necklace that says “Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated!” and moments before this snapshot was taken she handed him a note. It said how much of a horrible person he is for spreading anti-vax nonsense and scaring people out of vaccinating their children. She told me that he didn’t look at it & just put it in his pocket, thinking that he got the phone number from some hot young lady. Here is the text of what she wrote:

Dear Andrew Wakefield,
I know that you truly believe that what you are doing is helping people and that the ends justify the means, but I just want you to know that the things you are doing – the actions you have taken in the past have hurt people – killed people. Your work has scared and manipulated parents into not vaccinating their children, putting them and their entire community at risk, all in the name of safety. Children have died because of you. I just want to make sure that you fully understand that.
Sincerely,
**********

Message to Wakefield and the anti-vax woosters:

Btw, we also got some press from a Chicago news outlet

I’m reasonably sure there will be more photos & video to follow. Watch this space for updates.

This whole affair was, in my humble opinion, an outstanding success. In this “Hug Me!” event, we have officially put Wakefield and his ilk on notice that anywhere they go, they’re likely to be confronted by skeptics who are willing to stand up to their nonsense & fear-mongering woo. We at WTFF hope that this event will serve as a template for other skeptical & pro-science groups to follow in monitoring & holding pseudoscientific folk like Wakefield accountable in the court of public opinion.

A bit of Wakefield Research

So over at the James Randi Educational Foundation, one of the users did a bit of research and dug up this interesting bit of information:

I just realized Brian Deer has posted page images of the entirety of Wakefield's original 1997 patent application for the so-called "measles vaccine" he was planning on making his fortune from, once he's discredited MMR. The final 1998 version is also there.

http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
http://briandeer.com/mmr/1998-vaccine-patent.pdf

It will make hilarious reading for all the biomedical scientists here. It's the whole goat colostrum transfer factor thing, which is utter woo from start to finish. It's dressed up as science, but he's really just dreamed up the whole thing on the back of the theorizing of a quack called Fudenberg.

This makes it quite clear that the project to market his product was well advanced before the controversial paper was even published. The money he was getting for investigating these children and supporting their legal actions was only the start of it, and frankly small beer to what he seems to have been expecting to make if the MMR had been withdrawn and his goat colostrum nostrum adopted instead.

So far as I know, no safety or efficacy testing was ever done on this snake-oil.

I also sort of wonder how many mice he envisaged using in the first stage of the manufacture, and then how many pregnant goats would have been needed to provide enough of this product for widespread use? What about the kids they produced, which would be surplus to requirements once born, and also vulnerable liabilities when deprived of their mothers' colostrum which the kids need to provide their own passive immunity. I presume they'd just be killed when they were born?

The mind boggles, frankly. I wonder what the animal rights people would make of it? Gadzillions of mice injected with measles and then killed, with their tissues then injected into huge herds of pregnant goats spread out all over the countryside, with their kids being killed at birth so that the mothers' colostrum can be harvested.

Wow.

And as I said, if anyone thinks that even taking colostrum by mouth is "safe and natural", google "bovine neonatal pancytopenia". Oh, but Wakefield wanted to inject the colostrum-derived product right into the children's bodies, just like a vaccine.

You know, maybe more details of what he was planning (and is actually doing on a small scale, I understand) need to be highlighted.

Rolfe.

If anyone had any doubt as to how much of a slimeball this Wakefield ass is, they really can't... And reading the rest of the thread is interesting as well (just click on the title of this post).

Vaccine preventable death – Matthew Meyers

And two more frightening and heart-wrenching stories from Vaccine Central blog... I really think that I need to figure out a direct feed from that blog to here since what we care about are the same things. Not only is this another murder by negligence induced by the paranoia and lies of the anti-vax pro-disease nutters, but there is also yet more outbreaks of preventable diseases... And if you have a baby, I hope you don't live anywhere near Rockford, Ill. Otherwise your baby may end up dead like Callie Grace Van Tornhout or Dana McCaffery (and possibly many more like them).

Add one more child to the list that these despicable liars need to explain why they approve of their death...

Vaccine preventable death – Matthew Meyers

Age at death – 14 years

Cause of death – Meningococcal meningitis

Vaccination status – Unknown, possibly unvaccinated. “She didn’t know he was at-risk,” said a family member referring to Matthews mother.

Synopsis - Meyers came home from a track and field meet complaining his ribs hurt. His mom, Renee Gardner, of Lake George, thought it might be the flu, and the 14-year-old went to bed and slept through most of the day Saturday.

“On Sunday morning, she heard him moaning and groaning and called her son, Bill Meyers, who lives on the other side of the lake, to come and help,” Dufore said.

Matthew Meyers fell out of bed and was unresponsive. The family called 911, and he was taken to Clare Medical Center, where tests determined he had meningococcal meningitis. Meyers was airlifted to Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw.

After a week-long battle, Mathew succumbed to the disease shortly after 5 AM on Friday, 05/28/2010. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family. We are very sorry for your loss.

A fundraiser bake sale will be held Sunday at the Swiss Inn located at 105 W. Park St.

A benefit dinner will be held June 5 at 2 p.m. at the Clare Eagle’s Club, where some of the local donations collected will be presented to Matthew’s mother.

Cash support may be sent to the Matthew R. Meyers Fund, c/o Community Alliance Credit Union, 37401 Plymouth Road, Livonia, MI 48150.

Sources

Facebook Page

Mlive.com

Morning Sun

WNEM.com

The Clare County Review

ABC Local Report

Winnebago County reports a whooping cough outbreak

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

ROCKFORD, Ill.

Winnebago County health authorities are investigating an outbreak of whooping cough.

So far 33 cases have been reported this month. That compares with only one case on average earlier this year.

Half are in 11- and 12-year-olds. Children that age should get booster shots because immunity from early childhood pertussis vaccines can wane. Sue Fuller of the county health department says adults should be sure to have booster shots too.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Whooping Cough Cases Up 4x in Fresno County
• Can I NOT get a Whoop Whoop?

Vaccine Preventalbe Death – Callie Grace Van Tornhout

This blog entry makes me sad and disgusted at the anti-vax pro-disease nutters! I guess you can now add Callie Grace Van Tornout to Dana McCaffery's as children who should have their names seared into your memory. Every single anit-vax pro-disease nutter should also be forced to carry pictures of these children with them, and have to explain to everyone that they helped cause the death of these babies. Yes, I am angry!

Age at death – 5 weeks

Cause of death – Pertussis (whooping cough)

Vaccination status – Had not received first pertussis shot, because she was too young

Synopsis - Callie Grace was born on Christmas Eve 2009. By the last week of of January 2010 she developed a dry cough which got worse as time went by. When she stopped breathing at the pediatrician’s office she was taken to the hospital. While under observation at the pediatrics ICU, at 1:12am on January 30, 2010 she perished due to respiratory failure. When the tests came back, they were positive for pertussis, or more commonly known as whooping cough. Unfortunately, Callie was too young to receive the vaccine, the first dose of which is given at 2 months. She lacked immunity and was unable to fight off the disease. Our hearts go out to Callie’s parents. We are very sorry for your loss.

CNN iReport

CNN Article

And if that wasn't bad enough, I predict there will be more. As this article shows:

Cases of whooping cough more than double in California

THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE LATIMES

To protect babies too young for vaccination, health officials suggest vaccinating anyone who will come into contact with newborns.

California health authorities say that cases of whooping cough reported to the state have more than doubled so far this year — 346 cases from Jan. 1 to April 30, up from 129 cases during the same period last year.

Four newborns have died from the disease — two in Los Angeles County and two in the Central Valley. Amid concern that this may be the worst year for whooping cough since a 2005 outbreak killed eight infants in California, health officials are recommending a new strategy to protect babies too young for vaccination.

The strategy is called “cocooning” — vaccinating mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings and anyone else who will be in contact with newborns. It’s a relatively new concept because a vaccine for whooping cough, also known as pertussis, first became available for adults and adolescents in 2005.

“If you can’t vaccinate the baby, you vaccinate everyone who comes into contact with them,” said John Talarico, chief of the immunization branch at the California Department of Public Health.

Babies are vulnerable in their first year of life because they cannot get their first pertussis vaccination until they are at least 6 weeks old. Even then, infants are still at risk because they need several more boosters, said Dr. C. Mary Healy, an expert on pediatric infectious diseases at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Studies show it is family members, particularly mothers, who infect infants with whooping cough, which was a significant killer of infants in the United States until widespread inoculations began in the 1940s.

Though many people were inoculated as children, immunity begins to fade after five years.

One problem in managing this extremely infectious disease is that the telltale “whooping” sound made after a coughing fit does not occur initially. Sometimes, infants with pertussis never make the “whooping” sound.

In infants, “diagnosis of pertussis is often delayed or missed because of a deceivingly mild onset of runny nose,” with an undetectable or mild cough, the state said in a recent bulletin to physicians.

Even worse, infants infected with pertussis usually do not have fever, which could leave parents and doctors with a false sense of security that the illness is not severe, said Dr. James D. Cherry, a UCLA pediatrics professor and an expert on pertussis.

The illness in newborns younger than 3 months old can quickly escalate.

“The babies will cough all their air out, the oxygen in the blood will decrease, then they may pass out and they may have seizures, convulsions,” Cherry said.

The bacteria can also cause pneumonia and death.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE LATIMES

The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield

I have been seeing this "comic" around the internet lately, and wanted to reproduce it here as well. It pretty much sums it up very well. As others have said, this needs to be printed out and placed in every pediatrician's waiting room throughout the world.

The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield
A fifteen page story about the MMR vaccination controversy. As ever, I'm sure a few spelling errors have slipped past me. Feel free to point any out so I can correct them.

The reference links for the strip are in the next blog entry.

Now! Let's have a heated debate!

Web Page Migration (Part 2)

For those that may have noticed a formating problem with the web pages this past week, I have managed to solve the problem. Sadly, it means that if you had links or bookmarks for the page, they all end in PHP instead of HTML now. Please update your links and bookmarks. Thank you.

Today in the News (17 May 10)

And a few more news articles for today. And snarky comments because I am in a snarky mood.

(Can't be stopping 500,000 deaths with an evil vaccine, can we?)

Rotavirus Vaccine Greatly Reduces Hospitalizations for Acute Gastroenteritis in Children. Study Finds

ScienceDaily (May 14, 2010) — Vaccinating infants against rotavirus, a leading cause of severe diarrhea and dehydration among babies and young children, was associated with a dramatic decline in U.S. hospitalization rates for acute gastroenteritis. The findings appear in a study, now available online, published in the June 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Worldwide, rotavirus infection is estimated to cause more than 500,000 deaths each year. Before a vaccine was introduced, the virus led to an estimated 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. annually. A vaccine, RotaTeq, was licensed for use in the U.S. and recommended for routine use in infants in 2006.

In this study, Aaron T. Curns, MPH, and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality examined hospitalization rates for acute gastroenteritis during the typical rotavirus season among U.S. children under 5 years of age. They compared these rates over two periods: from 2000 to 2006, before the rotavirus vaccine was introduced; and after, from 2007 to 2008.

Using hospital discharge data from 18 states accounting for almost 50 percent of the U.S. population, researchers compared the median hospitalization rate for gastroenteritis from all causes during the two time periods. Researchers considered the months January through June to be the rotavirus season.

Hospitalization rates for gastroenteritis were 16 percent lower in 2007 and 45 percent lower in 2008 compared with rates before the vaccine was introduced. During 2008, infants aged 0-2 months had a 28 percent reduction, while those 6-23 months of age had a 50 percent reduction. Rates among children aged 3-5 months and 24-59 months declined between 42 percent and 45 percent. The researchers estimated that approximately 55,000 acute gastroenteritis hospitalizations were prevented during the 2008 rotavirus season because of vaccination. Hospitalization rates during this season were substantially diminished with rates one-half to two-thirds lower at peak activity compared to previous seasons.

The researchers noted that the observed declines in hospitalizations exceeded their estimates and also occurred among age groups that were too young or too old to receive the vaccine, suggesting that these children may have been protected by the "herd immunity" caused by their peers being vaccinated.

In an accompanying editorial, Geoffrey A. Weinberg, MD, and Peter G. Szilagyi, MD, MPH, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry in New York, highlighted the importance of such vaccine effectiveness studies, which provide a real-world view that can improve the planning of public health initiatives. An advantage of the study design is its analysis of how well vaccination works within a population, they wrote.

"These encouraging findings are important for emphasizing the benefits and increasing the acceptance of rotavirus vaccination in the United States and will also help other countries assess the value of rotavirus vaccines for their children," the researchers said. In light of the study's results, "it remains essential to continue monitoring acute gastroenteritis hospitalization rates during subsequent rotavirus seasons to fully understand and document the impact of vaccination as the program matures in this country."

Fast Facts:

1. Rotavirus infection leads to more than 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. Before a vaccine was introduced in 2006, rotavirus resulted in an estimated 55,000 to 75,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. annually.
2. Hospitalization rates for acute gastroenteritis among children were 16 percent lower during the 2007 rotavirus season and 45 percent lower in 2008, compared with rates before rotavirus vaccine was introduced.
3. An estimated 55,000 acute gastroenteritis hospitalizations were prevented during the 2008 rotavirus season in the U.S. Reductions also occurred in other age groups that did not receive the vaccine, probably due to "herd immunity."

(Oh, but we all know the Amish don't have these diseases, right?)

Rare Disease in Amish Children Sheds Light on Common Neurological Disorders

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — So often the rare informs the common. Penn researchers investigating a regulatory protein involved in a rare genetic disease have shown that it may be related to epileptic and autistic symptoms in other more common neurological disorders.

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, led by Peter B. Crino, MD, PhD, associate professor of Neurology and director of the Penn Epilepsy Center, demonstrate how mutations in the STRAD-alpha gene can cause a disease called PMSE (polyhydramnios, megalencephaly, and symptomatic epilepsy) syndrome, found in a handful of Amish children. PMSE is characterized by an abnormally large brain, cognitive disability, and severe, treatment-resistant epilepsy.

Specifically, in an animal model, they found that the lack of the STRAD-alpha protein due to genetic mutations causes activation of the signaling pathway involving another protein called mTOR. In humans, this in turn may promote abnormal cell growth and cognitive problems in the developing brains of children. STRAD-alpha and mTOR proteins are part of a complex molecular network implicated in other, more common neurological disorders, many of which have autism-like symptoms as a component.

"The identification of a new gene that regulates mTOR provides fascinating insights into how mTOR pathway dysfunction may be associated with neurological disorders," says Crino. "Each new mTOR regulatory protein that is identified provides a new possible therapeutic target for drug development and treatment."

The research on PMSE -- published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation -- reveals clues about more common neurological disorders characterized by benign tumors and malformations of the brain, the most common of which is tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC). The root cause of TSC also lies in mutations in proteins along the mTOR pathway, however a different protein is affected compared to PMSE.

"It is quite compelling that TSC, a relatively common disorder, and PMSE, a rare disorder, are linked by a common cellular pathway, and exhibit similar severe neurological features," notes Crino. "In our study, we found that we could reverse some of the cellular features that result from STRAD-alpha deficiency in cell culture models of PMSE. This provides important conceptual support for more widespread treatment approaches that modify mTOR signaling in neurological disorders associated with epilepsy, autism, and cognitive disability."

Current estimates place tuberous sclerosis complex-affected births at one in 6,000. Nearly 1 million people worldwide are known to have TSC, with approximately 50,000 in the United States.

PMSE, on the other had, has only been described in 25 people in Lancaster County, PA. It's incidence among other Amish populations, let alone the rest of the country, is unknown. PMSE is also known as pretzel syndrome in the Amish community, because the lax joints of patients fold over easily. PMSE was identified in an Amish, or Old Order Mennonite pediatric population in 2007 by researchers from Penn and the Clinic for Special Children in Lancaster, PA, a genetic clinic devoted to the needs of the Amish.

The mTOR pathway normally controls cell growth, but in PMSE uncontrolled mTOR signaling leads to increases in brain size and areas in which the cerebral cortex is malformed. To prove this, the researchers knocked down the activity of the STRAD-alpha protein in a mouse model and caused malformations of the developing brain. The structure of these malformations was similar to what is seen in human PMSE and TSC and supports the conclusion that normal brain development in part depends on normal STRAD-alpha function. Localized brain malformations are among the most common causes of epilepsy and neurological disability in children.

This research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke.

Ksenia Orlova, PhD, a graduate student in the Crino lab and Kevin Strauss, MD, Medical Director at the Clinic for Special Children, were also co-authors on the JCI paper.

(That pesky science, always refining our understanding!)

New Insights Into Genomics of Speciation

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — A new study by a team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame biologist Jeffrey Feder could herald an important shift in thinking about the genomics of speciation.

The paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The prevailing assumption among scientists about how the genomes of newly forming species should differ during the earliest stages of divergence with gene flow speciation is that it will be characterized by a few regions of strong differentiation, amidst a remainder of the genome that remains unaffected by natural selection and thus relatively undifferentiated. This analogy of "genomic islands of speciation" has come to dominate the evolutionary genetics community.

"The island concept has crystallized around an attractive hypothesis termed 'divergence hitchhiking,' in which selection on one or a few genomic regions drives speciation," Feder said.

In the new paper, Feder and his colleagues report experimental and genomic evidence that contrary to the prevailing assumption, speciation in the classic apple maggot fly system Rhagoletis pomonella involves genome-wide differentiation driven by natural selection.

"Our result in Rhagoletis conflicts with the current thinking about how the genomes of newly forming species could differ during the earliest stages of divergence-with-gene-flow speciation," Feder said. "Rather than finding just isolated 'genomic islands' of genetic divergence, we instead discovered 'continents' of divergence encompassing large swaths of the genome."

He points out that past work on the genomics of speciation lacked experimental data and thus may have been unable to detect genomic regions under weaker natural selection, establishing a view of speciation involving genetic divergence in just a few, isolated genomic islands.

Rhagoeitis pomonella fruit flies originally attacked the fruit of hawthorn trees. But about 150 years ago, a portion of the hawthorn fly population shifted and began to feed on apples. In ecologically adapting to apples as a new host plant, apple flies are becoming genetically distinct and reproductively isolated from hawthorn flies. Apple and hawthorn flies are therefore considered to represent "host races" in the early stages of actively diverging into species. As such, the apple and hawthorn races of Rhagoeitis pomonella provided Feder and his fellow researchers a unique opportunity to conduct a direct experimental test of the island versus continents hypotheses.

"This type of comprehensive data, particularly the experimental results, are missing from the bevy of genome scan studies performed in the last few years lending support to the island hypothesis," Feder said. "Without experimental data on responses to selection, these genome scan studies alone can be biased toward identifying isolated outer loci, supporting the island hypothesis.

"We foresee that as mass genotyping techniques continue to advance, it will be these types of inquires and questions that come to dominate the emerging field of population genomics and speciation. We hope our study offers a glimpse of what the future may look like."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture.