Never Mind

Erin Brokovich found her fame and fortune by suing PG&E for dumping hexavalent chromium in the water supply for Hinkley, California. The chemical is considered a probable carcinogen, so if it were a health hazard for the town's residents, cancer death rates should be greater than normal.

Fortunately for Hinkley's residents, although not for Brokovich's reputation, a study published in the Los Angeles Times indicates that the town had less cancer than would be expected for its demographic characteristics.

Junk Science

A British medical regulator revoked the doctor's license of Andrew Wakefield, the man who claimed in 1998 that there was a link between children taking the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

The regulator not only found that Wakefield had accepted payments from a lawyer representing parents who believed the MMR vaccine caused autism, but that he had engaged in unethical behavior in conducting his research - such as taking blood samples from children without appropriate approvals.

Perhaps this case of the junk science surrounding the alleged vaccine-autism link will finally convince all parents of the critical need to get vaccines for their children. Enough kids and parents have suffered from believing otherwise.

Autism Explained?

There have been may explanations offered for why autism is diagnosed much more frequently today than in the past. No doubt that as awareness of the condition has increased, parents, educators, and doctors are more alert to identifying certain challenges as autistic.

But many other reasons are offered, including the view that vaccines laced with thimerosal are a cause. This theory has been debunked as junk science, as the recent scandal involving the Lancet medical journal illustrates.

But the Wall Street Journal reports on a study that offers real evidence as to why autism is increasing. The study shows that the likelihood of autism increases significantly with the age of the mother, and to a lesser extent the age of the father, at the child's birth. And since maternal and paternal age has been increasing the past couple decades, we now have a plausible reason why the incidence of autism has risen during this time period.

It would be interesting if researchers could study the change in the incidence of autism over the past couple decades holding constant maternal age. Then we could see if there remained an increase in autism due to reasons other than maternal age.

Junk Science

The vaccine scaremongers have suffered another defeat. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the the British medical journal Lancet finally issued a full retraction of research it published in 1998 that claimed to find a link between vaccinations and autism.

That claim has been debunked by many scientific studies since, and it is long overdue for Lancet to face up to the lies perpetrated by researchers including Andrew Wakefield.

But if there is a link to something of interest, note the one between the vaccine-autism scandal and the global warming charade, where emails and subsequent revelations have shown that researchers manipulated date and the scientific process to get to a desire political outcome.