Just a Plane Ride Away

He boarded the plane, heading from India back to his home in North Carolina. Around his late twenties or early thirties, he settled in for the long, trans-oceanic flight toward the end of March. He wasn't traveling alone; he had company with him, though he didn't know it at the time. In fact, he was carrying stowaways he'd picked up during his visit, and now they were replicating inside him. It was a long flight. He relaxed and waited while his fellow passengers worked feverishly.

The plane touched down. He collected his bags and started off to his home in Stokes County. Perhaps he was tired from the flight. A few days passed, and his head grew warm to the touch. Runny nose, a bit of a cough. If it weren't for the fever, it could have just been allergies. Probably just a cold picked up on the plane or during his trip. Nothing to worry about.

Also around the end of March, another individual, a Hasidic Jew from New York is flying home from London. He or she lives in a highly religious, insular community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Just as with the visitor to India, a hitchhiker accompanied them on the flight home. And just as with the fellow further south, several days after returning home, the signs of a cold begin.

I Need Some Serenity

After yesterday's post, I thought the blog could use something a bit lighter. With that in mind, I present to you, LEGO Serenity:

Isn't she shiny?

This was a gift I received recently, combining two things I love, LEGO and Firefly. This is a lovely little model created by Ichiban Toys, who have a number of other amazing custom mini-models.

Of course, what I really want is this:

Struggling to Understand the Murder of Alex Spourdalakis

Ever since I heard the news early last week that a 14-year-old autistic boy was found dead, I've been struggling to put into words how I feel and my thoughts on the issue. I got the news in rapid succession: he was found dead, he was stabbed multiple times, his mother and godmother were found in the same room, unconscious. More digging through the news: he was stabbed four times in the chest (twice of those in the heart) and his wrist was slashed nearly to the point of taking off his hand. His mother and grandmother were under the influence of sleeping pills, having taken a non-lethal overdose. They left a three-page letter explaining that they had planned over a week to kill the boy. More news reports revealed they first tried to kill him with sleeping pills, but then went for the knife when the pills didn't appear to work. The godmother also killed the cat "for fear he would be sent to a shelter". Then they wiped the knife clean, put it back in the kitchen and took sleeping pills for themselves. The two women reportedly confessed to police that they had murdered the boy, and they have been charged with first degree murder. It also came to light that the boy's mother had filed for divorce from his father in February, with a court date set for this coming Thursday, June 20. It was the father and uncle who caused the boy to be found, after failed attempts to reach the mother and son for a well checkup.

In the months leading up to the murder, the mother, Dorothy Spourdalakis, with help from Age of Autism's Lisa J. Goes, appealed to others for help for her son, Alex. Per Goes' writings (and others), Alex had been taken to the hospital for severe gastrointestinal symptoms (constipation, diarrhea, pain) and had been held in restraints, naked. If their reports are to be believe, he was kept in the ER, strapped down, for 19 days straight. As others have pointed out, the narrative sounds like some key information is either misrepresented or missing. For example, it is highly unusual for a patient to be kept in the ER for an extended period of time. They would either be treated and discharged or they would be admitted to inpatient care. Further, use of restraints on patients is highly regulated. If Dorothy and Lisa's accounts are correct, not one, but two hospitals inappropriately used restrains (three hospitals, if you include Alex's second, more recent admission). Part of Dorothy's petition for help was to get the hospitals to provide gastrointestinal treatment, which included a colonoscopy, which was deemed unnecessary by an attending gastroenterologist that examined Alex. There is some suspicion that the procedures Alex's mother wanted for him included dubious biomed treatments. Some also suspect that she may have subjected Alex to MMS (bleach) enemas in an attempt to cure him of his autism. News outlets report that Dorothy was offered services for her son, which she rejected. Supporters claim the services would only have been admittance to a psychiatric facility and drugging Alex to keep him docile. Others think that it would more likely have been day or residential care.

Unfortunately, due to HIPAA privacy regulations, we only have one side of the story, told by Dorothy and her supporters. The hospitals cannot comment on any aspect of Alex's care without violating patient confidentiality laws, though the pending trial may reveal more information. We can't know for certain what treatment he received in hospital, nor the exact nature of the services that were offered. I'm not going to speculate on what treatment he did or did not receive, either at the hands of his mother or at the various hospitals to which he was taken. Rather, I want to focus on the murder itself and how people have reacted to it, including myself.

Academic Earth Takes On an Anti-vaccine Myth

Images can often speak more to us than simple words on a page (or monitor). While words do carry subtext, we frequently need to use many more words, and take up more space, to get even basic ideas across. Yet images alone have their own limitations. Bringing images and words together can help solidify an idea and make it more accessible to people. The folks over at Academic Earth have done just that. In addition to hosting open course videos and lectures from Harvard, MIT, Stanford and other universities, they have put together Video Electives, short (less than 5 minute) videos and animations that cover a variety of topics.

A reader sent me a link to one of these electives, titled "Too Many, Too Soon: The Anti-Vaccine Fallacy". The video is embedded after the break below, and I think it does a good job of illustrating why the anti-vaccine argument of "too many, too soon" as it relates to supposedly overwhelming the immune system is flawed. The focus is on the antigen exposure aspect of vaccines and diseases, so I'm sure those opposed to vaccines will still cry, "but what about the other ingredients!?" It's a start, though, and is another arrow in the quiver.

Wisconsin Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt Befriends the Flu

One of the greatest refuges of those opposed to sound science and science-based policy is the legislature. After all, if you have no scientific basis to your position, change the laws to support your arguments instead. That's what opponents of vaccines generally like to do. They launch PR campaigns and wine and dine Congresscritters to try to get their way, rather than conducting actual quality scientific research and publishing the results. They really don't like it when public laws that aim to protect the public health are based on science and work quite hard to get those laws quashed.

The latest effort to undermine public health comes from Wisconsin Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt. Rep. Thiesfeldt is in the process of drafting and proposing a law that would ban public health employers from requiring their employees to receive the seasonal flu vaccine as a condition of employment. The fledgling bill comes after Rep. Thiesfeldt apparently received complaints from health care workers complained that they were forced to be immunized against the flu or lose their jobs. The accompanying memo is couched in "health freedom" style language and pits individual rights against employers' (and the public's) rights.

Mark Geier: Not a Leg to Stand On

Poor, poor Mark Geier. For those who don't know, Dr. Mark Geier is half of the father-son team that developed the "Lupron Protocol" for treating autism. Put simply, Geier and his son came up with the scientifically unsupported idea that testosterone and mercury bind together in humans, allegedly causing autism. His treatment for this involves dosing children with leuprolide, followed by chelation. Leuprolide (also known by the brand name Lupron) is legitimately used for treatment of precocious puberty and as part of IVF treatment. It is also used off-label to chemically castrate sex offenders.

Dr. Geier, through his Institute of Chronic Illness and Genetic Centers of America, misdiagnosed autistic children with precocious puberty so he could claim that he was using Lupron on label, rather than for an unapproved, experimental indication (i.e., autism). This also allowed him to bill insurance companies for the lupron. His actions got him into hot water with various state medical boards, starting with his medical license in Maryland being suspended on April 27, 2011. Since then, one by one, 11 of his 12 medical licenses were suspended, an application for a thirteenth license in Ohio was denied, and some of those suspensions became complete revocations. The last actions I wrote about were the revocation of his license in Missouri and suspension of his Illinois license. At the time, the only state left in which Dr. Geier could practice was Hawaii.

As of April 11, 2013, that is no longer the case.

4th Grade Creationist Science Quiz

A recent post by Phil Plait reminded my of something I came across a while back. I had intended to blog about it earlier, but I needed to make sure I could verify it before I posted it. When I first saw it, I couldn't believe that it was true. So, I did a bit of digging. No mere search on the interwebz turned up the evidence I needed. I had to trek incredible distances and delve into long-forgotten cafés and cobweb bedecked back rooms. Shady characters named "Barry" become well-known to me in my quest. In the end, I discovered that what you are about to see is totally, completely as real as Miracle Max.

Brace yourselves.

Sylvia Browne is a Ghoul

On November 17, 2004, an episode of the Montel Williams Show aired, featuring self-proclaimed "psychic" Sylvia Browne and Louwana Miller, who came on the show desperate for information on her daughter, who had been missing since April 21, 2003, a day before her 17th birthday. With no good leads from police or FBI and having spent considerable effort putting up fliers and talking to people, Miller finally contacted the Montel Show after seeing Browne on an episode.

According to transcripts of the episode (e.g., at StopSylvia.com, posted in 2007), Sylvia Browne told the worried mother the worst possible news: "She's not alive, honey." She described the supposed abductor as "Cuban-looking, short kind of stocky build, heavyset" and put his age at around 21 or 22. Browne also asserted that it was only one person, despite witnesses saying they saw Berry get into a car with three men. In an interview with WKYC's Bill Safos, Browne is quoted as saying:

“I think he really had a crush on her,” she said. “And I think she rebuffed him. I think she thought he was harmless enough to maybe drive her home.”

A year and a half later, in early 2006, Louwana Miller died of heart failure. She died with the belief that her daughter was dead.

MIND Institute: No Difference in Immunization Rates

There are a lot of studies on vaccines and autism. The majority (read: the ones that are well-designed to minimize the influence of biases and confounders) show that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. Or, rather, I suppose I should use a more scientific turn of phrase: they have failed to find any causal connection between the two. There are some rather bad studies (small sample sizes, methodological flaws, etc.) that anti-vaccine activists like to crow about, like a horribly flawed macaque study that should never have been approved by an IACUC (IACUCs are institutional ethics boards that review studies using animals) in which there were not enough controls, missing conflict of interest statements, missing authors, and so on. In short, it put a bunch of macaques through needless procedures and death for no reason.

Of course, the anti-vaccine folk invariably pooh-pooh the rigorous studies, saying that they are horribly tainted and unreliable, the authors in thrall to Big Pharma^TM. As they rationalize away any study that doesn't agree with their near-religious adherence to their preconceived notion that vaccines are the most evilest of all evilosity, they call for "independent" research looking at vaccines and autism. However, finding what they consider to be independent researchers is a bit dicey. Funded by NIH or equivalent governmental agencies? Nope. After all, government is in league with Big Pharma^TM, dontcha know. Universities? Doubtful, since a lot of universities receive grants from corporate foundations. It doesn't matter that the researchers don't actually see any of that money, of course. The merest hint of a whiff of a connection is enough for them to dismiss anything that doesn't agree with their ideology. Is there any organization that they'll trust that actually has qualified researchers who don't stand to gain from finding a vaccine-autism connection?

Well, they might be okay with the University of California-Davis MIND Institute.

The NECSS of Thought and Reality - Year 3 (Part 2)

This past Monday, I shared my recap and some thoughts on day 1 (April 6) of the 2013 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, or NECSS, held each year in New York City. NECSS is a joint effort by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society. The conference is an opportunity for those interested in, well, science and skepticism to gather together for two days of talks, panels and performances that challenge you to examine what you think you know. This was the fifth year of the conference and my third year attending.

The first day opened with a look at how our minds can influence how we behave and how we perceive the world around us. From there, the program drifted into the realm of philosophy. How do skeptics determine what is right and wrong, what is ethical and moral? This included a discussion between Massimo Pigliucci and Michael Shermer, before breaking for lunch. The afternoon kicked off with a live show of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, then a panel discussion on storytelling. Simon Singh closed out the main program with an overview of the Big Bang. But the day wasn't over with that. A fundraising reception allowed attendees to mingle with the speakers, and then it was off to Drinking Skeptically or a private show of the SGU.

It was a full first day, and day two was no less engaging.