Announcing TAM Australia!
Australian Skeptics are proud and excited to announce TAM! Australia in 2010.
November 26-28, 2010 will be the very first TAM! Australia in Sydney. In the first round of guest announcements made last night at the Brisbane annual convention, are international sceptical singer George Hrab, The team from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, The Amazing Randi, Brian Dunning from Skeptoid, and local acts Dr Krissy Wilson and Dr Karl.
The venue is the Sydney Masonic Centre right in the heart of Sydney.
The latest line-up and ticketing details are now on the Australian Skeptics website and will updated as news comes to hand.
Australian Skeptics announce the Bent Spoon for 2009.
At the Australian Skeptics National Convention dinner last night in Brisbane, the award for the Bent Spoon was announced.
For the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle, the Bent Spoon went to Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN).
I was honored to present the award, and took the opportunity to highlight some of the reasons why the AVN and Meryl were worthy winners. Apart from the obvious fail of spreading misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, there were several foot-in-mouth occasions I wanted to point out.
1) Meryl is also an HIV/AIDS denier, claiming that since (in her opinion) no two images of HIV look the same, therefore it can’t exist. Apply this theory to clouds for example, which are also vastly different shapes (and can even change shapes whilst you gaze at them), therefore clouds also do not exist.
MERYLOGIC: These 2 pictures of clouds look different, therefore clouds do not exist.
2) Meryl responded to the complaint lodged with the HCCC against her and the AVN by stating in the cover letter that she wished her response to remain confidential since the author, Ken McLeod was a threat to the safety of her and her family. Then she published her response and the aforementioned cover letter on her website the following day.
3) Meryl on the subject of conspiracy theories said the following; “We are already seen as rapid idiotic fringe dwellers by so many in the mainstream, it does our argument no good at all to bring in conspiracy theories which though we may prescribe to them are unprovable”. She then posted a complex and convoluted conspiracy theory on her blog “No Compulsory Vaccination” about the derivation of the swine flu epidemic and the plans of the illuminati to implant mind control chips, distributed by chem-trails from planes with the aim of committing mass genocide by vaccination.
4) Meryl appeared on national television telling a reporter that “we didn’t die from (these diseases) thirty years ago and we’re not going to die from them now”, juxtaposted alongside footage of babies gasping for breath as the journalist detailed the story of the death of Dana McCaffery from the vaccine preventable disease, whooping cough.
An dishonourable mention to Pastor Danny Nalliah for blaming the Black Saturday Bushfires on the liberal abortion laws in Victoria. And for saying he had a vision in a dream that the fires were coming but neglected to inform anyone.
Congratulations to Meryl Dorey and the AVN for joining the ranks of Dr Kerryn Phelps, The pharmacists of Australia and Dr. Viera Scheibner. For more previous winners of the Bent Spoon go here.
Cherry picking now extends to photographs too.
(or) this is just too ridiculous.
Regular readers of my blog would know that that the anti-vaxers are prone to a little hysteria and exaggeration from time to time.
Whether this involves large leaps of logic when extrapolating scientific data or claiming that a car crash death following a vaccine was a direct result of the vaccine, nothing is too ridiculous for them.
What appears to be a stock photo (c) Adrian Brooks at Imagewise may not be what it appears..
Whilst I may have made the latter up, I predict it will be so in the near future. The former however, is true and refers to the recently published Wakefield study, which reported impaired neural development in baby macaques (monkeys) following an injection with low concentrations of thimerosal, lower than what is normally found in vaccines. This was all the evidence the anti-vaxers required to prove that thimerosal is the cause of autism. The scientists amongst you would know this is a preposterous leap where the most you could really say about a causal link with autism is that the data is interesting and may warrant further investigation. Howe er you may even hesitate to do this before very closely analysing the study, since Wakefield does not have a good reputation for publishing accurate data.
You may recall that the Lancet publication which started the whole autism/MMR controversy has since been retracted by the journal, and 10 of the 12 authors also stated unequivocally in a publication in 2004 (1);
“(we) wish to make it clear, that in this paper no causal link was established between the MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. However the possibility of such a link was raised and subsequent events have had a major implications for public health. In view of this we consider now is the appropriate time that we together formally retract the interpretation placed upon those findings in the paper, according to precedent”.
It has also since been revealed that the PCR data which reported measles RNA in the gut of the children, and this data was critical for the conclusions of the study, cannot be replicated and is now suspected to be fabricated. Other damning evidence which bring the paper into disrepute is information that Wakefield was paid 400,000 pounds by lawyers looking for a link between autism and MMR and also that he himself was involved with the development of a single measles vaccine.
Now all of this taken together would make any intelligent critical thinking person ever after suspicious of Wakefield’s work.
I review papers as part of the peer review process and had I seen the macaque manuscript, I would have been very careful to thoroughly scrutinize it before approving it for publication (assuming I did), particularly after I read the conflict of interest statement herein;
“Prior to 2005 CS (Carol Stott, third author) and AJW (Wakefield) acted as paid experts in MMR-related litigation on behalf of the court retained by plaintiff lawyers. LH (Laura Hewitson, first author) has a child who is a petitioner in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. For this reason, LH was not involved in any data collection or statistical analyses to preclude the possibility of conflict of interest”.
..it's proof that Tamiflu is really really DANGEROUS
I’m not sure this gets the authors off the hook in my opinion. This is a pretty serious conflict of interest, for all of them. Wakefield runs a woo clinic charging large amounts of money to administer quack, very expensive and dangerous autism treatments. The lead author on the paper is attempting to sue the government for vaccine damage to her daughter and both Wakefield and third author Carol Scott get paid to say MMR is bad. I would have to leave this to the discretion of the editor but this seems like a too serious breach of conflict of interest to me to let it go unquestioned. And perhaps it wasn’t – I am not privvy to the review process on this paper, but I would certainly love to know. (As an aside, I have selected “alternative medicine” as one of my areas of speciality, but as yet I have not received such a manuscript to review).
In any case, it now seems that hysteria, cherry picking and jumping to conclusions is not limited to published data. It now includes photographs.
So behold readers, now the anti-vaxers are claiming that the photo to the right is photographic evidence that the drug used in the treatment of H1N1, Tamiflu is so dangerous that you can only handle it wearing a mask, EVEN WHEN IT IS SEALED!
This is a stock photo, made to look sciencey by the presence of the mask. If Tamiflu were that TOXIC then why would the scientist not be wearing gloves? Or a HAZCHEM suit? I DON’T KNOW BUT I’M NOT HANGING AROUND TO FIND OUT, ARGHHH. TOXIC! WASTE! STUPID! BURNS!
(1) Lancet, 2004 Mar 6;363(9411):750.
Blood sucking parasites and pornography
Today was another interesting day at the International Proteolysis Society meeting.
ARGHHHH! Run for the hills, it's a Helminth!
We had talks about scabies in the Aboriginal population, the mites that spread the disease, and I interviewed Dr Alex Loukas, parasitologist from the Queensland Institute for Medical Research. Dr Loukas has an interest in a member of the Helminth family the hookworm, and is currently working on developing a vaccine against the infection.
Hookworms are no longer a big problem for humans in Australia, but remain a health risk in the developing world. The manifestation of a serious hookworm infection is anaemia from a loss of blood, corresponding with low levels of iron.
Like the malaria parasite I wrote about in my previous post, hookworms consume the haemoglobin component of blood and they do this by latching onto the walls of the intestine and leeching blood into their gut. They then excrete the left overs out through their anus.
Which brings me to the pornography part of Alex’s talk yesterday. He has a video taken during a routine colonoscopy (which failed to work during the presentation and I can’t say that I am really sorry) showing a dog hookworm attached to the inside of a human patient’s intestine. According to Alex, it precisely demonstrates this process.
He refers to it as “pornography for parasitologists”. And people say scientists are weird.
But seriously, the main focus of Alex’s work is to develop a vaccine for hookworm. This might sound a bit strange to you at first, since many of us would know that there is already one available for dogs. Alex told me however that this vaccine, whilst a viable technology to adapt for human use, is far too expensive to use in the developing world. This is because it is an “attenuated vaccine”, meaning the hookworm larvae are irradiated to a senescent or no longer active state, then when the immune system is exposed to them, antibodies are created and immunity developed. This is a very expensive process however, requiring the culturing of hundreds of thousands of hookworm larvae for vaccine manufacture. Cost is a critical factor for the availability and distribution of medical care in the developing world.
Parasitology - it's fun.
To overcome these issues, Alex’s approach is to create an antibody against a protein in the feed cycle of the hookworm. This enzyme is critical for the final stages of the digestion of the haemaoglobin component of the blood. If the enzyme doesn’t work, the hookworm cannot extract nutrients and it effectively starves to death.
The method of delivery of the antibody to the gut of the worm is particularly fascinating. The host, being the human, is exposed to the hookworm gut protein, thereby making antibodies against it, which will enter their blood stream. The hookworm then feeds on the blood, ingests the antibodies which enter its gut and stop the digestive enzymes from working. Alex refers to this as the “Poison Chalice” of vaccines. Elegant and ingenious.
To hear the full interview with Alex Loukas, tune into the Skeptic Zone , episode 56, on November 13, 2009. Find us on iTunes.
See an alternative image of a hookworm eating its prey here.
Locking in on malaria.
On Monday morning I left a cold and rainy Sydney and boarded a plane to head north to the sunny Gold Coast for an international protein conference.
To be more precise, the 6th General Meeting of the International Proteolysis Society held at the Marriot Hotel in Surfers Paradise. As one can expect in Queensland at this time of year, the weather is warm and very humid (read: lovely). We arrived at the end of a weekend of street car racing, so much of the centre of town is still cordoned off with barriers, fences and large signs for beer companies. Evidence of a recent bogan invasion is rife.
Poolside at the Marriot Hotel, Surfers Paradise. The famous natural reef complete with tropical fish.
Many of the conference delegates are clearly excited to be in such a location, one even stating that it is proof that “proteolysis takes you to paradise!” Suffice to say, there is a definite tropical/resort atmosphere and attitude permeating proceedings.
Science is hard (*does a little jig*)
However, we must not forget this is about the science, and in particular, proteases.
What are proteases?
Essentially they are enzymes, (like the ones you may have heard about on television commercials for washing powder), which are responsible for chewing up and recycling proteins.
If you remember back to high school genetics, you would recall that DNA, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of genes, (about twenty three thousand in the case of the human genome) holds the code for all our proteins. Enzymes are a class of these proteins, assigned many and varied tasks, such as protecting our cells from stress, helping to protect our DNA from damage and recycling damaged proteins.
The proteases (which are also enzymes) have varied roles including turning other proteins on and off and helping our cells to reproduce. But, like many functions in the human body such as the immune system, sometimes things can go wrong and instead of being useful, become toxic and cause harm.
Although we need proteases to survive, they can also contribute to illnesses such as cancer. One particular type of protease known as “cathepsin S” on one hand, helps our immune system fight invading pathogens, but on the other, has been shown to assist in the spread of cancer.
And humans are not the only ones who need proteases to survive. Parasites such a malaria and hookworm (a member of the Helmith family) need them to extract energy from their food. And in the case of these critters, human blood is what they love!
What about Malaria?
Malaria remains a huge global health crisis; 1 child dies every 5 seconds, there are 5 million cases every year of which 2 million die and a further 3 billion people are at risk of infection. The majority of these people are in the developing world and many are children less than 5 years old.
Dr McGowan at work.
Dr Sheena McGowan is a structural biologist from Monash University in Melbourne who has been studying the proteases of the malarial parasite in a search for new drugs. Her approach focuses on the feeding cycle of the malarial parasite which involves invading red blood cells and feeding on the haemoglobin by breaking it down into single elements. This “breaking down” process requires a protease, and Sheena has figured out if she can block the function of the protease, she could effectively starve the parasite.
In collaboration with a large group of scientists from all across the world, Dr McGowan has been able to determine the precise structure of the malarial protease, using an approach known as X-ray crystallography (see below). This is a very complex and difficult process, but in principle, by obtaining crystals of the protease and firing X-ray beams at it, scientists can work out the shape and precise structure. This information then allows Sheena and her team to design compounds that will block it from working. A bit like putting a key in to a lock, but coating it with superglue first, so that it sticks really tight and never comes out.
The crystal structure of the malarial digestion enzyme. The drug that may be able to inhibit it ("the key") is shown in magenta.
Dr McGowan’s work will help address the burgeoning problem of malarial infection in the developing world, especially in places where severity of the infection is exacerbated by co-infection with other infectious diseases such as HIV or tuberculosis.
In the meantime there is some good news on the malaria front, with a scheduled roll out of a vaccine across Africa in 2010. But, Dr McGowan is cautious to remind us that this will not be the end of the malaria scourge.
Unfortunately, parasites are clever little buggers, rapidly evolving ways to get around our drugs. This is why work like that of Dr McGowan and her team is so important in tackling new and innovative methods to design new drugs against infectious diseases.
Simon Singh wins right to full appeal.
Recently, Simon Singh was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for an opinion piece he wrote in the Guardian, criticising some claims made by chiropractors.
Things did not go well for Singh initially, when in the preliminary hearing, the Judge determined Singh’s use of the word bogus to mean the BCA were knowingly deceiving the public by using certain techniques. So in effect, Simon would have to prove that the BCA were being knowingly deceitful and not just niaively. This seemed like an impossible task.
But Simon took the risky step of appealing this decision and today he was granted the right to a full appeal to argue his right to publish the article as fair comment. In a hearing that took place in the London Royal Courts of Justice, the judge referred to the intitial judgement as “disproportionate” and erroneous. He then wasted no time in ruling a full appeal to Singh.
This is bloody good news for Simon but also for journalists and other commentators (like myself) who feared their right to critical comment was to be removed. Those of you who have been following this story would know that some chiropractors have not behaved in a particularly upstanding manner. The MCA instructed their members to remove any reference to treating colic from all their material including websites. Australian Skeptics also received a complaint about republishing Simon’s article on their website from a chiropractor.
You can read more about this story here.
How would you respond to a call from a cancer charity asking for donations?
Hopefully not like this. Any guesses who the respondent might be?
This comment was posted to a health discussion group in response to a telemarketer calling to ask for donations for breast cancer awareness month.
“I think they end up being sorry that they ever called me because I don’t just say no, I tell them why 🙂 I say that I work for a children’s charity that is involved in preventing cancer and that in 50 years, the cancer council and other bodies have done nothing. Cancer is more prevalent today then it was when they started to supposedly research and if I am going to be making a donation, I want it to go to a good cause, not just to line the pockets of some researcher who has no interest in actually seeing their research come to fruition rather than just keeping themselves in a job. They don’t know what to say… But hopefully, it makes them think that maybe there is more to this cancer stuff then they were told?”.
(emphasis mine, I’m off to line my pockets with public donations).
Parents refuse chemotherapy for mud treatment.
Another sad story of alternative “medicine” causing harm.
This story was covered on Channel 7s Sunday Night programme, the same one that covered the death of Dana McCaffery and the anti-vaxers back in April. You can read my previous blogs about this here and here.
In this case, a 10 year old girl Tamar, was recently diagnosed with liver cancer which required immediate and aggressive chemotherapy. But her parents have shunned conventional treatment in favour of “mud” therapy. A team of oncologists at Princes Margaret Childrens’ Hospital advised that a seven week course of chemotherapy would give Tamar a 50-60% chance of survival. Despite the treating hospital pleading with the parents to consent to chemotherapy, eventually seeking the involvement of the WA legal system, the parents fled Australia to El Salvador.
Their preferred treatment is tea made from herbs, and red clay gathered from around the hills near their house in El Salvador. Tamar’s mother says that “Clay is basically the right medicine for any kind of illness, (it can cure) anything“. She went on to say, “..it dries up anything that is causing the illness in your system“. Twice a day, every day for a minimum of three hours, the clay is wrapped around the girl’s torso.
Her father says, “I don’t want to do this to my daughter but if it’s God decision then so be it.” He claims his daughter doesn’t want to lose her hair or get sick from the chemotherapy and has seen the research for herself, so she is therefore capable of making a decision to use natural therapies. He also claims she is eating normally and has gained weight. The parents claim the proof for the efficacy of mud therapy therapy is a book “written by a doctor” about the curative effects of herbs.
You can watch the full video here.
Mythbusters team up with Discovery for flu awareness
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage have teamed up with the Discovery Network and the United States Department of Health and Human Services to produce a public service announcement for flu awareness.
In true Mythbusters style, Jamie narrates the best course of action to take if you have flu, over the top of a slow motion clip of Adam sneezing goo everywhere!
Watch the clip here.
Natural News skates on legal thin ice over girl’s death
Last week, 14 year old Natalie Morton died just hours after receiving the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer.
Reports say she felt faint, passed out at school, and was unable to be revived by paramedics. Autopsy results released this week, reveal that she died from a malignant tumour, meaning the cause of death was unrelated to the vaccine.
Never mind that these are the facts being presented to us, the anti-vax lobby have latched onto this death as evidence that the HPV vaccine kills. They have even gone so far as to call the autopsy report fake and the pathologist who conducted the autopsy a liar.
This from NaturalNews dot com.
—
Today, the mainstream media is reporting an obviously-fabricated explanation for her death. A pathologist is declaring that Natalie died from a “malignant chest tumor” that just coincidentally and suddenly killed her within hours after she received the cervical cancer vaccine.
—
The opinion piece, written by Mike Adams, goes onto suggest that the explanation is purely a cover up to protect the billion dollar vaccine industry.
He continues;
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The continuation of global cervical cancer vaccination programs — which generate billions in profits — absolutely required blaming Natalie’s death on something other than the vaccine. Blaming it on cancer is very easy to do, since every person living today has cancerous micro-tumors in their body right now. All the pathologist had to do was locate such a micro-tumor in Natalie’s body, then dismiss the vaccine altogether.
—
As a lawyer friend of mine pointed out, these statements constitute serious defamation against the pathologist, in particular this statement;
“But why would a pathologist cover up the true cause of Natalie Morton’s death?..”.
And then this statement about the executives of the vaccine manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline;
“It takes a real cold-hearted CEO to watch your product potentially kill a 14-year-old girl in mere hours and then continue to recommend that same product to millions more”.
Then, in an even more preposterous link, the author suggests a statement by a GSK spokesperson which says “GSK’s deepest sympathies lie with the parents at this very sad time” is merely a Freudian slip since it contains the word “parents” and “lie”.
Good grief.
The editors of Natural News would be wise to fact check their stories and ensure they are not putting themselves at risk of defamation suits by allowing their contributors to make such accusations. Mind you, they don’t have a reputation for fact checking before publishing stories, as is evidenced by their recent publication about an alleged lawsuit challenging compulsory vaccination in the USA, which turned out to be a hoax. The retraction can be read here or is reproduced below.
“(NaturalNews) Editor’s Note: It has come to our attention that the following article is factually incorrect. It was written by a contributing writer, then approved by an in-house editor who did not catch the significant errors in this article. As a result of these significant errors, and due to our commitment to publishing only true and accurate information to the best of our ability, we have made an editorial decision to reject further articles from this author.
“NaturalNews deeply regrets this unintentional error, and we are brainstorming new ways to put in place tighter fact-checking oversight so that the same mistake does not happen again in the future. We thank all those who have brought this important matter to our attention, and we pledge to increase our efforts to reject stories that contain factual inaccuracies.
“For the record, what was factually incorrect about the story (which we confirmed by phone with a clerk of United States District Court of Trenton, New Jersey) is that no such injunction has been filed. Thus, the entire premise of the story was factually incorrect.
“Here at NaturalNews, we strive to bring you accurate, honest information on these topics, and we deeply regret the unintentional publishing of the inaccurate information that previously appeared in this article space.”
This also resulted in the AVN publishing and distributing an incorrect press release, which was never retracted, despite several people politely suggesting that this would be the right thing to do.
My mate even suggested that if the editors of Natural News have any money they might soon be separated from it.
One would expect, if you are accusing pharmaceutical companies of cover-up and fraud you might wanna check your own facts. Because one thing’s for sure, Big Pharma are certainly not lacking in money, legal muscle or time.
