I Speak of Dreams

I Should Have Studied Latin

I don't like to swear on the internets.  But sometimes, you need to express yourself forcefully.

Now, thanks to Julian Frost leading me to Dr. Weevil, I have phrases to use!

 

...stercus, which is barnyard language but not obscene: 'dung' or 'manure'. ...For the verb, I gave him a choice of fit or accidit, leaning towards the latter....stercus fit would mean something more like "Shit exists, there is shit in the world", while stercus accidit could be loosely paraphrased "Into every life some shit must fall". (The basic meaning of accidit is "fall on" and therefore "befall, happen to" or just "occur".)....

Dr Weevil went on to write

....Stercus is neuter, so [holy shit] would be stercus sanctum....Stercus is third declension, so [shit head] would be caput stercoris....Romans tended to use adjectives rather than genitives with stercus, so B.S. would be stercus taurinum.

And that lead me to this handy page, Latin Swearing. Quando podeces te regi eorum fecerunt? has a nice ring to it.

Do your research: anti-vaccine activists' inaccuracy, #563,901: Rubella edition

This person, who is a home-birth advocate and midwife in Texas, wrote:

This is slighly off-topic, but I am collecting as many of the old JAMA and other medical journals I can get my hands on. Not perfect condition, collectors issues, ones I can actually use. I am going back to find the early articles, when many of the vaccines first came out and what was printed about them. Also JAMA is filled of warnings, and dangers of vaccines that the general public doesn't usually see. If you know of a good source, please share!

(Here is one such article detailing the invention of the Rubella vaccine and how a live aborted baby was dissected for this vaccine creating the WI-38 cell line. This was the 38th baby aborted for this vaccine. As you read you will also find many other un-ethical practices.)"

"collecting as many of the old JAMA and other medical journals" is an odd way to do research, given that almost all the articles are not that difficult to get access to, especially if you live near a teaching hospital, as the midwife does. Wouldn't it be easier to use PubMed?

Also JAMA is filled of warnings, and dangers of vaccines that the general public doesn't usually see

Golly, the story of the vaccine development era (circa 1945-1972) is riveting. For example, the measles virus wasn't even isolated until 1954! The first measles vaccine (developed in 1958 by Katz and others), had unacceptably high adverse side effects. By 1962, two vaccines had been tried. One, a killed-virus vaccine, had few side effects but also, no positive effect. The other, a live-virus attenuated vaccine (Rubeovax) was effective but had to be given with a dose of gamma globulin antibodies to reduce reactions. By 1968, Maurice Hilleman had developed a more refined measles vaccine, eliminating the need for the gamma globulin injection.

So if you read the medical literature from, say, 1958 to 1968, you will read of "vaccine warnings and dangers". But are those "warnings and dangers" relevant to the vaccines that children receive now, 60 years of research on?

The writer clutches her pearls over the rubella (German measles) vaccine. Why was one needed? Well, in 1963-64 there was a massive, world-wide epidemic of rubella. Many women of child-bearing age were not immune to rubella.  The History of Vaccines wrote,

....infection with rubella during the first trimester of a pregnancy resulted in a greater than 2 in 3 chance of a baby afflicted with congenital rubella syndrome. Of the syndrome’s various symptoms and complications, ranging from blindness to heart disease to neurological abnormalities, deafness was the most common.

In the United States,

nearly 50,000 women in vulnerable stages of their pregnancies were infected with rubella during the outbreak, leading to thousands of miscarriages and even more children being born with severe damage. At least 8,000 were born deaf, 3,500 deaf and blind; the total number of congenital rubella syndrome cases reached 20,000. Over the course of the outbreak the country tallied approximately 12.5 million cases of rubella and more than 2,000 deaths. Resulting medical costs reached the billions.

The midwife writes

....Rubella vaccine and how a live aborted baby was dissected for this vaccine creating the WI-38 cell line. This was the 38th baby aborted for this vaccine. As you read you will also find many other un-ethical practices.

What a muddle of partial truths, distortions and outright fabrications.

The WI-38 cell line is not a vaccine; it is a cell line still in use for a variety of medical needs, including being the medium on which modified viruses are grown to produce vaccines.

In the first half of the 20th century, vaccines were produced using animals, either live animals or animal cell cultures.  There were various problems with using animals, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Wistar Institute had a massive program to develop viable human cell lines for research, vaccine development, and other medical needs.  

WI-38 was developed at the Wistar Institute, by Leonard Hayflick using lung cells from a female fetus aborted in Sweden at 3 months' gestation.  Why Sweden? Sven Gard of the Karolinska Institute Medical School in Stockholm spent a sabbatical year at Wistar in 1959.  Following his return to  Sweden, Gard would share fetal tissue from legal, elective, Swedish abortions with colleagues at Wistar.   

The midwife wrote,

a live aborted baby 

No. A fetus of 12 weeks gestation has zero chance of survival outside the uterus. The chart below (click to embiggen) shows current viability estimates.

As of 2001, almost 50 years after the Swedish abortion from which WI-38 was developed, fetal viability at 25 weeks' gestation is <50%.

The midwife wrote,

This was the 38th baby aborted for this vaccine. 

This is false statement on three counts.  

I've mentioned previously that WI-38 is not a vaccine, but a cell line with broad medical uses.  Second, the designation WI-38 doesn't refer to the number of abortions, but the number of cell lines developed. In the 1961 paper, “The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains,” Leonard Hayflick described the first 25 human celllines developed at Wistar, and in th 1986 paper, “History of Cell Substrates Used for Human Biologicals,” Leonard Hayflick described the development of an additional 25 cell lines, including WI-38.

Finally, the midwife is conflating the development of the Wistar cell lines and the development of the rubella vaccine.  

Recall that 60% of fetuses exposed to the rubella virus in the first trimester of pregnancy would develop Congenital Rubella Syndrome. During the 1963–1965  rubella epidemic, some women exposed to rubella elected to terminate their pregnancies.  Stanley Plotkin, working at the Wistar institute, was given kidney tissue from one such therapeutic abortion, from which he developed an attenuated live vaccine, RA 27/3, using WI-38 as a growth medium.  The vaccine was licensed in Europe in 1970.  RA 27/3 was added to the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1979.

As you read you will also find many other un-ethical practices.

The paper the midwife is referring to is a report from Plotkin's group on preliminary clinical trials of an earlier version of the rubella vaccine, at some time prior to October 1965 (the date of publication). The vaccine preparation was tested for safety on animals before being given to a population of 31 orphans. Consent to participate in the test came from the orphans' parents or guardians.

It is important to realize that concern for human subject research has evolved over time. As Mike Stobbe wrote for the Associated Press, 

Attitudes about medical research were different then [1940s-1970s]. Infectious diseases killed many more people years ago, and doctors worked urgently to invent and test cures. Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society... 

ToddW at Harpocrates Speaks has an excellent short discussion of the development of protections for participants in human subject medical research, which I urge you to read.

In other words, the midwife's criticisms of Plotkin's conduct in the 1960s are improper.

Selected Sources:

• L. Hayflick and P. S. Moorhead, “The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains,” Experimental Cell Research 25.3 (December 1961): 618.
• L. Hayflick, “History of Cell Substrates Used for Human Biologicals,” Developments in Biological Standardization 70 (1989): 11–26.
• S. Plotkin et al.,Studies of Immunization With Living Rubella Virus
  Trials in Children With a Strain Cultured From an Aborted Fetus, Am J Dis Child. 1965 Oct;110(4):381-9, http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=501537
• S. Plotkin, "The History of Rubella and Rubella Vaccination Leading to Elimination "Clin Infect Dis. (2006) 43 (Supplement 3): S164-S168. doi: 10.1086/505950, http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/Supplement_3/S164.full
• R. Leiva, A Brief History of Human Diploid Cell Strains, National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 6.3 (Autumn 2006): 443–451, http://www.wellnesscenter.net/resources/articles/History_of_Cell_Lines_NCBC_credit_line-1.pdf
• M. Stobbe, Ugly past of U.S. human experiments uncovered:Tests included exposing mental patients, prisoners to infectious diseases Feb. 27, 2011 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41811750/ns/health-health_care/#.UUYrPFtARF8
• National Network for Immunization Information, Human Fetal Links with Some Vaccines http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/vaccine-components/human-fetal-links-some-vaccines
• History of Vaccines, Human Cell Strains in Vaccine Development  http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/human-cell-strains-vaccine-development
• Fetal viability chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Prenatal_development_table.svg

Today would have been his 92nd birthday

Here's his obituary. I still miss him. I wish he had lived long enough to see at least some of his grandchildren stip onto life's stage. I know he would have taken intense delight.

Autistic People Are

Last Saturday's autism flashblogging, Autistic People Should,  WORKED!

Huge cudos to Alyssa of Yes, That Too, who was the driving force.

I don't have much to add to the idea of "Autistic People Are", other than autistic people are as diverse and varied and loveable and interesting and ....

as any other flavor of people.  

Check out the postroll to find out for yourself.

Check out Alyssa's post at Yes, That Too to see what Google auto-suggests for the string, autistic people are

A New, Powerful Resource for Teachers: School of Doubt

Hello and welcome to School of Doubt, the newest sister site in the Skepchick network!

....School of Doubt is dedicated to the discussion of skepticism and critical thinking in education. We believe that the development of strong critical thinking skills should be central to an individual’s education and that all young (and older!) people should be given the tools to view the world around them rationally and skeptically. Our contributors bring with them experience from a wide range of educational systems and stages, from the early years of school to the world of postgraduate study.

As skeptics, many of us are familiar with reading about, discussing, and perhaps even confronting viewpoints that are wildly different to our own. So many of the topics that people in the skeptical community discuss, from religion to alternative medicine to conspiracy theories, share the same simple feature: they are easily countered by a healthy dose of rational thinking. At School of Doubt we passionately believe that one of our core roles as educators is to provide our students, no matter their ages, with the skills that will allow them to cut through the nonsense, pseudoscience and confusion that they’ll face as they move into adult life.

You can learn about the experienced team of educators behind School of Doubt here