I have an op-ed essay in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  The title is “Measles not worth the risk. Prevention from diseases outweighs MMR side effects.”
Obviously I’m “outing” myself, but all in a good public health and scientific cause.
Please note that I have never worked with the vaccine industry, nor have I ever received even one cent from any […]

Last week I blogged about the 2007 DeSoto and Hitlan study, Blood levels of mercury are related to diagnosis of autism: a reanalysis of an important data set (Journal of Child Neurology 2007;22:1308-11), in a post entitled Epi Wonk’s Intro to Data Analysis.
Dr. DeSoto has posted a reply at her University of Northern Iowa web […]

Data courtesy of DeSoto and Hitlan (2007)
Since I became involved in the question of vaccines and autism — and more specifically the question of mercury in vaccines and autism — every week I’ve received a few identical e-mails from anti-vaccinationists that consist of a list of references. It’s always the same references and I’ve come […]

Several weeks ago I argued that much of the the observed increase in autistic disorder over time can be explained by three phenomenon: (1) Diagnostic criteria have changed over some part of the period during which increases have been observed. The diagnostic criteria for autistic disorder were broadened over time. (2) The average age of […]

I’ve spent part of the last couple of days reading some of the arguments against the modern U.S. childhood vaccine schedule at places like the National Vaccine Information Center, SafeMinds, and in the medical investigative reporting of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. One of the statements you run across quite often is that today’s children — […]

Get a load of this. David Kirby has rewritten and re-posted his story from Friday (June 20). The new June 21st story is entitled, CDC: Vaccine Study Used Flawed Methods. It starts with the following:
(NOTE: My original post on this topic mischaracterized the 2003 CDC vaccine investigation as an “Ecological Study,” which it was not. […]

“Medical reporter” David Kirby has delivered a potentially explosive report to his unfortunate and misinformed minions at the Huffington Post, in which he shows a startling string of misunderstandings and complete lack of knowledge of basic epidemiologic design and methods. Furthermore, he writes that Dr. Julie Gerberding “admits to a startling string of errors in […]

A recent article by Deirdre Imus on The Huffington Post is long tirade against Alice Park’s Time magazine cover story, How Safe Are Vaccines? It’s been pointed out on other science blogs (and I wholeheartedly agree) that the the Time magazine article is one of the better pieces of medical journalism this year. I really […]

This title isn’t quite correct, but I couldn’t resist, since it sounds so catchy, evoking images of harmonica playing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rock Hill is located in beautiful York County, South Carolina, just off Route I-77, about 30 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina. From my nerdy scientist’s point of view, the people of […]

We believe that the investigator is never justified in interpreting the results of ecological analyses in terms of the individuals who give rise to the data. (”The Ecological Fallacy,” 1988, by Steven Piantadosi, MD, PhD, biostatistician and Director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Baltimore)
It is impossible to study ecologic […]