The MMR vaccine/autism story, told in comic form

By now, all current students in BIO230 are likely aware of my stance towards vaccination. During the class discussion on safety issues with vaccines in general, I alluded to the story of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his flawed report on a link between the Measles/Mumps/Rubella vaccine series and potential link to autism and inflammatory bowel disease. I first came across this link  from artist Darryl Cunningham via my favorite Facebook group, I F***ing Love Science (and who doesn’t?). Mr. Cunningham has summarized the story of Andrew Wakefield in a lengthy comic strip, which he has published on his Live Journal page and I urge everyone to click through and read–it isn’t long, and it really nicely illustrates the incredible damage that is currently being done to public health measures due to individual greed.

Science and politics

I’ve come across two essays out on the Internet over the past few days that have caused me to think a bit about the public perception of science in the United States. I don’t speak of politics particularly much in BIO230, although I did put up a rant during the Republican primary season last year, and if asked I’ll be happy to talk about public policy with anyone. The first essay was from The Atlantic titled “The Danger of Making Science Political.” In this essay, it is noted that public polls leading up to the Presidential election suggest that only 6% of professional scientists identify themselves as Republicans. This disconnect was certainly made more public during the election season by several high profile candidates in state and national elections, with their comments on female reproductive biology, as well as my example above of a Presidential candidate’s opposition to the Human Papillomavirus vaccine.

The second was from Scientific American entitled “The Liberal’s War on Science” and makes to some extent a counterpoint arguing that the political left can be just a guilty of “bad science” political discourse, and cites groups opposed to GMO foods, vaccination, and nuclear power as examples. While the example of vaccination is valid (and one of my personal ragestroke triggers), it is important to note that opposition to vaccination is not particularly restricted to one political leaning or the other. With the other two examples (opposition to GMO foods and nuclear power), the opposition does not stem so much from a denial of the existence of nuclear reactions, but rather an opposition to the potential economic benefits to the technology.

I think that both of these essay omit one important point. Although science is properly conducted without preconception or bias, the science that does get conducted in the United States does not happen in a vacuum. Although scientists would strongly advocate that scientific inquiry ought to best be accomplished in a sort of search for pure truth, in fact since the public in the end pays for academic research, the public gets a voice in what research gets accomplished. The funding of science does then become politicized.

I think that what continues to be necessary is for scientists to continue to be advocates for their work, and it is further the responsibility of all Americans to work to be scientifically literate, so that we all can participate in the conversation.

Several hours of my life I will never regain

For those of you who play video games, here is Prof. Singleton’s review of Star Wars: The Old Republic; for those of you who do not, these aren’t the droids you are looking for, move along, move along. I am putting this up on the blog even though it is not microbiology relevant, as I became pretty damn annoyed in the process and needed a place to vent. However, to appease the pedantic, and to make it microbiology relevant: midi-chlorians.  ’Nuff said.

I’ve been a fan of all things Star Wars since Episode 1: No Subtitle (Note: in my world, there was no so-called “Prequel” trilogy) came out during the summer of 1977. I’ve played a number of Star Wars-related video games through the years, including  Dark Forces, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Star Wars Battlefront, Republic Commando, Force Unleashed, and both of the Bioware Studios developed Knights of the Old Republic games. My choice of games has run the gamut from first person shooters, RPG’s, to tactical turn-based strategy games, but in each case the story is paramount. I have listed those games so that I can beef up my cred for commenting today.

Proper reading of cultures: still important

As I cannot stay away from the Micro lab, even on the weekend, I made my Saturday morning pilgrimage to make sure nothing was amiss. I did find two things of note: first, even though there was a practical question dealing with the proper discarding of cultures that essentially everyone got correct, in practice people seem to miss what the proper procedure is. All to-be-discarded culture tube need to go in the appropriate rack, with all tape removed prior to discard. Second, I found about a dozen cultures in the incubator. Those of you who left cultures in the incubator for the weekend will need to run them again. I do feel somewhat like a broken record in this regard, as I did specifically state it to everyone repeatedly on Wednesday and Thursday, and wrote about it here previously, but perhaps it is time to reemphasize things that are important for success in a lab.

Names blurred, since this is on teh interwebs! One culture appears to belong to Lord Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named!

All of our cultures need to be run, incubated, and interpreted according to specific guidelines, or else the interpretation of the culture is completely invalid. The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute is a national organization that establishes guidelines for the proper way to set up and read clinical assays in laboratories. If a test is run for too short of an interval, there is a significant possibility of obtaining a false negative result, and if a test is run for too long of an interval, there is a possibility of obtaining a false positive result. Either case represents the possibility of a poor patient outcome: for the false negative, they might not receive notice that they have a given infection, and for the false positive, they might be started on an inappropriate treatment regimen.

Avian influenza and bioterrorism

At the tail end of the Fall 2011 semester, a fascinating report popped up in the medical literature that was picked up and widely reported in the popular press. Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reported their findings about the relative virulence of avian influenza (H5N1).  The research, funded by the US National Institutes of Health, was to be published in the journals Science and Nature, however a national advisory panel (the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity) has asked the journals to withhold key details of the reports.

What the researchers did was not particularly novel. They utilized a virulent isolate of influenza virus which is poorly transmittable to humans. However, when humans acquire the virus from birds, the disease has an approximately 50% mortality rate which is several orders of magnitude higher than that observed for the 1918 worldwide pandemic influenza outbreak. So far, approximately 600 people have contracted this isolate of influenza since it was first identified in 1997. That low incidence figure drives home the point that this is not currently a significant pathogen of humans, however the great fear is that it could develop through random mutation the ability to more easily infect and be transmitted between humans. The high mortality rate then would be a calamity.

How to smell BS

Students in the 5 PM BIO230 section had a special treat this week, which was watching me having a rage stroke before their eyes. I think my performance was pretty well received, but it is now a few days later, and my blood pressure still hasn’t gotten back to normal. The other lecture sections and my Facebook friends are probably curious as to what it was that set me off, so I thought that I might take the opportunity to try and present a reasoned, logical argument that hopefully might be instructive. Fair warning though, that the language after the break might be kind of salty in places, so if you are easily offended, you might not want to click “Read the rest of this entry!”