Grant Jacobs • Jan 29, 2019 •
For new parents or parents-to-be the wildly different opinions about vaccines must be very confusing. This one’s for you. It’s also for people who pass on vaccine messages to their parent or parent-to-be friends. (If you’re concerned about the apparent length of this article, the main body of the article is short.) Half of all parents with small children … Read More
Alison Campbell • Jan 17, 2019 •
You read that right. Vaccine hesitancy – “the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines” – is viewed by the World Health Organisation as one of the top 10 health threats we face in 2019. And worse, that hesitancy will have an effect on other threats in that top 10 list. Ebola and the potential … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 03, 2018 •
Phoebe Roth, The Conversation This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Children with autism and their younger siblings are less likely to be fully vaccinated than neurotypical children and their siblings, new research from the US has found. Of children aged seven years and older, 94% of neurotypical children had … Read More
Alison Campbell • Mar 13, 2018 •
One of the things that’s become quite obvious, in the various anti-vax comments that I’ve followed and responded to on line, is that people with ‘alt’ views have very firm ideas on what constitutes ‘the truth’. And it’s not something that mainstream organisations, authorities, or scienceA are seen as offering. And so (on a new UNICEF New Zealand post) we see: … Read More
Alison Campbell • Mar 07, 2018 •
Back in mid-February, UNICEF NZ posted a piece on the importance of vaccines. Shortly thereafter, the comments thread had been overrun by anti-vaccination pro-disease activists. (I have to say, I’m really impressed with the person who does UNICEF’s social media. Talk about grace and dignity under fire!) This seems to happen every time a story about vaccine-preventable disease hits the … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Nov 23, 2017 •
It’s time to move regulation of genetic modification forward. The current set-up is temporary and unsound. We use a risk-based approach for almost everything because that’s what makes sense. But New Zealand takes an arbitrary approach to genetic modification. So we ‘ban’ a technique that evidence shows there is no special risk in using. That poor logic plays to a vocal … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Nov 08, 2017 •
Two articles from Stuff have sparked a long-drawn out battle over vaccines. The Facebook pages have drawn an huge number of comments, many posting ill-formed opinions. Yeah, it’s happening again. The Stuff articles themselves are mostly fine. The vaccine battles in the comments… not. Yesterday was the 150th birthday of Nobel laureate Marie Curie.* She once wrote, “Nothing … Read More
Alison Campbell • Nov 08, 2017 •
There’s an oft-repeated claim by the more strident anti-vaxxers that ingesting and injecting are two different things when it comes to substances like aluminium. This betrays a disturbing lack of knowledge of biology and physiology (especially from those who boast of ‘having done their research’), but they repeat it nonetheless. (Red’s self-belief is mildly amusing.) The … Read More
Alison Campbell • Nov 06, 2017 •
Aaron Leaman’s excellent storyA in the Waikato Times and in Stuff used those words, and I’m sticking with them – because those adjectives describe the majority of the comments on the relevant FB page. When Aaron interviewed me for that story, I commented that it’s essential for scientists and doctors to continue to confront the waves of anti-vaccine … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Oct 29, 2017 •
We all need a little good news from time to time. Vaccines have been a remarkably successful medical invention. Over the past year, just 12 cases of polio have been seen worldwide. Truly amazing. Also reported is that measles has fallen below 100,000 cases worldwide for the first time. A few weeks ago New Zealand was formally named as free … Read More