I Speak of Dreams

Not happy, but grateful: what medical science can do

On October 10, 2012, Orac posted a story about a case of neglected breast cancer.  The first commenter was Terry Given, whose beloved wife Ruth died of breast cancer on September 23, 2012.

Terry gave Grant Jacobs permission to repost the comment as a blog post. It is the story of the three and a half years of love and togetherness they had after her breast cancer diagnosis.  You need to read it.

Terry wrote,

I thought Ruth was pretty amazing, but I’m biased. As a victim of cancer, she is unfortunately one of many – they are all loved, they are all our sisters, our mothers, our children, our brothers. and they are all missed.

I can say that I am grateful for her cancer though – It really brought Ruth’s family together, and allowed the two of us (me in particular) to realise just what we had. Its true that you dont appreciate what you have until you face losing it.

 

How vaccine myths spread, and how amateurs using social media can be effective

In the Netherlands, there was a spate of false beliefs about the HPV vaccine that reduced vaccine uptake.  This is how the Dutch handled the problem:

Non experts ‘debunk’ vaccine myths through social media | Vaccines Today.

Rather than run radio advertisements or asking experts to do TV interviews, the Dutch authorities asked parents and teenagers to torpedo falsehoods circulating online using Facebook, Twitter, blogs and chat fora. 

“We mapped all the influencers and realised that there were basically only eight people in the Netherlands doing all the harm. We monitored messages on social media and asked mothers and girls to react to scare stories in language that our target group understands – the peer-to-peer can be very powerful,” Huibers told a workshop hosted by the ECDC at the European Health Forum in Gastein, Austria.

Christine Mosler, a prolific blogger and mother of four echoed Huibers’ advice. She said parents use social media for advice, support and company as well as for information. Mosler warned against health authorities launching awareness campaigns on social media unless they are prepared to engage.

October 17: Naturalistic Behavioral Strategies for Promoting Language and Social Development -- 2012-2013 Autism Lecture Series, San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay

The 2012-2013 Lecture Series is presented by Wings Learning Center and hosted by Notre Dame De Namur University Education & Leadership Department

To register:

http://wingslearningcenter.org/lectureseriesregister2012.html

• October 17, 2012 Naturalistic Behavioral Strategies for Promoting Language & Social Development Dr. Grace Gengoux, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital

The balance of the series

• November 28, 2012 Research on the Critical Nature of Elementary & Secondary Education for Autism Dr. Peter Mundy, Lisa Capps, Professor of Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Psychiatry & Education, School of Education Director, Educational Research, M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California at Davis
• January 23, 2013 The Important of ASD Research: Kaiser Permanente's Genetic & Environmental Findings Dr. Lisa Croen, Senior Research Scientist and Director of Autism Research Program
• March 6, 2013 Combining the Sense to Make The World Whole: Multi-Sensory Integration Deficits in ASD Dr. Clifford Saron, Researcher, Scientist, UC David Center for Mind & Brain, M.I.N.D. Instituteh
• April 24, 2013 UCSF Research on ASD: Combining Clinical Excellence with Innovative Research Dr. Robert Hendren, D.O. / Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco
• May 15, 2013 Sensory Processing in Autism & Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders: From Scanner to Bedside Dr. Elysa Marco, M.D., Director of Research UCSF, Autism & Neurodevelopmental Programs, Assistant Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry & Pediatrics

You may register for one or more lectures. All lectures are $25 each to attend and occur from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at Wings Learning Center, 411 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA 94063

Contact: Karen Kaplan: email: kaplan@wingslearningcenter.org phone: (650) 365-3250

Registration for lectures: http://wingslearningcenter.org/lectureseriesregister2012.html

Defining the concept of herd immunity

Back in September, Orac wrote a post, A sad, premature death cynically exploited by antivaccinationists, on the unexpected death of Jasmine Renata, an 18-year-old New Zealand resident. Her mother is now claiming that Jasmine was killed by the Gardasil vaccine. In the comments, the conversation turned to the concept of herd immunity. A New Zealand anti-vaccinationist, Ron Law, made some astonishing claims. Several commenters responded:

ChrisP:

The risk of an uninfected person becoming infected is reduced with high levels of herd immunity.

Ron Law:

One thing that puzzles me is that pre vaccine days we are told that 95% of people got infected… so if herd immunity was real then the disease would have burnt itself out, wouldn’t it?

Science Mom:

What a rookie mistake. Basic epidemiology Ron; new susceptibles enter the herd via birth and/or waned immunity. I would imagine that such an enlightened risk analyst such as yourself with so many years of “studying the medical literature” would have devoted at least a modicum of time to understanding some statistics and epidemiology. The numbers of VPD pre and post vaccine are rather self-explanatory.

Ron Law

Herd immunity is a theory… predicated on most people in the herd having been infected naturally…

Krebiozen

[Ron Law wrote] Herd immunity is a theory… predicated on most people in the herd having been infected naturally…

That’s not actually true. The theory was formulated to explain observations made of the natural cycle of contagious diseases and natural immunity, but is not predicated upon that. In non-vaccinated populations an epidemic occurs when each person infected infects more than one other person, causing an exponential growth in the number of infected people, and continues until there are not enough non-immune people left to continue that rate of infection. The disease then becomes endemic, where each infected person only infects (on average) one other person.

As more and more children are born, the proportion of non-immune people rises until there are enough to sustain an epidemic and sooner or later this occurs and the cycle repeats. The periodicity of an epidemic cycle is largely related to how contagious the disease is – the more contagious the disease, the higher R₀ is, the higher the herd immunity threshold and the shorter the period of the cycle.

So herd immunity is really a mathematical model that successfully explains those observations, and observations of vaccinated populations, and allows us to make accurate predictions about the effects of various public health policies. Of course in the real world and on an individual level things are more complicated, as a lot of the assumptions made are not true in every case (random distribution of immune people in the population, the number of people a contagious person comes into contact with etc.). As has been discussed here before, it doesn’t actually matter how immunity is achieved, whether naturally, by vaccinations or by a large enough proportion of the population wearing biohazard suits (not practical, obviously, but it suffices to make the point). The only important factor is that they cannot become vectors for spread of the infection; the rest of the model emerges from that.

So there you have it. Herd immunity is a mathematical model.

A Neurologist on the accuracy of perception

Skepticblog » See What You Feel.

One of the main themes of scientific skepticism, at least one of my favorite themes, is that we cannot take the accuracy of our own perceptions for granted. We cannot trust what we remember about what we think we experienced – a principle I call neuropsychological humility. Human brains process information in a complex way, making assumptions and adjustments that are useful most of the time, but introduce multiple opportunities for misperceptions. This is partly why we need objective evidence as a check on our perceptions.

I would add to this, we cannot take the accuracy of our own memories as fact.

The rest of the post is a description of a fascinating experiment in which what the subject sees can affect physical sensation.

No, you're not entitled to your opinion

I really enjoyed this article, including the rebukes to Meryl Dorey.

No, you're not entitled to your opinion.

So what does it mean to be “entitled” to an opinion? 

If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven. 

But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred.

Dear Anti-Vaxxer: Yes, I do the research « SkewedDistribution

Another great post from Skewed Distribution.  The "do your research!" figure from the anti-vaxers chaps my hide.

Dear Anti-Vaxxer: Yes, I do the research « SkewedDistribution.

One of the most frequently-sighted* comments from the anti-vax crowd to those who understand the safety and benefits of vaccinations is to “do the research”. It is never really clear what they mean by this, because they say it to nurses, MDs, DOs, and others with extensive training in healthcare and public health, such as people with Master’s Degrees in Public Health and PhDs in sciences related to human health. I have addressed the arrogance of this position before in this blog post.

October: Learning Disabilities Awareness Month

From LDOnline (a highly recommended site):

History and Future of LD Awareness Month

October was originally designated in the United States as LD Month in 1985 through a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan. Learning Disabilities Association of Canada has celebrated an LD Month since 1987 and provides a toolkit to help you celebrate. For many years, learning disabilities organizations in the United States used the month to inform the public about learning disabilities through events and proclamations.

Learning Disabilities Awareness Month is a time where people pay particular attention to children and adults with learning disabilities. During this month, LD OnLine asks each of you to teach one person something new about learning disabilities. 

On my Academic Remediation blog, I will be using this month to spread awareness of the reality of LDs and that there are effective methods of remediation and accomodation.