Helen Petousis Harris • Sep 15, 2017 •
Vaccine scammers I call them. They prey on people with a sick kid. Perhaps they want to flog dietary supplements or bleach enemas but today I refer to the proponents of a variety of fake syndromes, which they claim have been induced by vaccines and/or vaccine adjuvants*. The most infamous vaccine scammer in this case is Andrew Wakefield, but this … Read More
Alison Campbell • Sep 14, 2017 •
The latest news reports indicate that the mumps outbreak in Auckland is spreading. As you might expect, the very first commenter on the FB page for that story is someone claiming that vaccines don’t cure mumps and offer a significant risk to health. (I wish Moveable Type allowed the Comic Sans font…) The only reason I bother dipping … Read More
Helen Petousis Harris • Sep 06, 2017 •
The inevitable mumps outbreak is upon us. Inescapable because we have a significant proportion of the community who are not immune, dry tinder to a flame. NZ has high immunisation coverage right? So why has this happened? Here is the story. Back in the early 1990’s NZ had a terrible measles epidemic and seven people died. Waking up … Read More
Guest Work • Jun 13, 2017 •
By Rebecca Chisholm, University of Melbourne and Nicholas Geard, University of Melbourne Australia was declared measles-free in 2014. However, the recent importation of a case of measles into Australia from Indonesia illustrates the threat this disease still poses to Australians. It also underscores the importance of maintaining high vaccination rates against rare diseases to … Read More
Guest Work • Apr 14, 2017 •
Allen Cheng, Monash University and Kristine Macartney, University of Sydney As we head towards a southern hemisphere winter, many people are wondering if it’s worth getting the flu vaccine. Generally speaking, if you are vaccinated, you’re less likely to get the flu. But that’s not the whole story. For most healthy people, it’s … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Apr 12, 2017 •
I’m losing far too much of my writing time to people with misbegotten ideas about vaccines.* I know people are very keen to make their own decisions. It’s understandable, but I wish if they insist on making their own decisions that they’d take equally as much care about the information they’re using to make their decisions — and … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Apr 08, 2017 •
Below are a few links to resources that people might find useful to share – or read if you want a quick introduction to vaccines for kids. Short takes For really short takes, these brochures—all in PDF format—might be useful. They make key points in few words: Immunization: Get the facts – a Canadian brochure covering 5 key concerns … Read More
Guest Work • Mar 30, 2017 •
By Dave Hawkes, University of Melbourne The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine was introduced in Australia in 2007 and New Zealand in 2008 to prevent cervical cancer. It was free for women up to age 26 in Australia and to all women under 20 in New Zealand. This is because 99.7% of cervical cancers are associated with the sexually transmissible … Read More
Guest Work • Dec 20, 2016 •
Andrew Maynard, Arizona State University and Dietram A. Scheufele, University of Wisconsin-Madison Truth seems to be an increasingly flexible concept in politics. At least that’s the impression the Oxford English Dictionary gave recently, as it declared “post-truth” the 2016 Word of the Year. What happens when decisions are based on misleading or blatantly wrong information? … Read More
John Kerr • Nov 10, 2016 •
Donald Trump has been elected to the be the next President of the United States. What does this mean for science? Already journalists, academics and pundits are scrambling to analyse the impact his presidency will have on every facet of, well, everything. Here at Sciblogs we’ve rounded up some of the key points on science emerging from the coverage. Scientists respond … Read More