Tonight – April 5, 2017 – follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica. If it’s the only star mnemonic you ever learn, it’s worth it! And it’s especially worth knowing this year, since Jupiter can be found in the vicinity of these stars. Follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica. Scouts learn this phrase. Grandparents teach it to kids. It was one of the first sky tools I learned to use in astronomy. Follow the links below to learn more.
View larger. | Here are the moon, Jupiter and the star Spica in the moon’s glare in mid-March, 2017. The star Arcturus is above left. Shot with a mild 12mm fisheye lens, by Ken Christison in North Carolina.
Follow the arc to Arcturus. Here’s how to locate the star Arcturus, using the Big Dipper as a guide. Find the Big Dipper asterism in the northeastern sky in the evening sky this month, maybe around 9 p.m. It’s very easy to see, a large noticeable dipper-shaped pattern in the northeast in the evening. Once you can see the Big Dipper, notice that it has two parts: a bowl and a handle. Then, with your mind’s eye, draw an imaginary line following the curve in the Dipper’s handle until you come to a bright orange star: follow the arc to Arcturus. Arcturus is the brightest star the constellation Bootes the Herdsman. This star is known in skylore as the Bear Guard.
Arcturus is a giant star with an estimated distance of 37 light-years. It’s special because it’s not moving with the general stream of stars in the flat disk of the Milky Way galaxy. Instead, Arcturus is cutting perpendicularly through the galaxy’s disk at a tremendous rate of speed . . . some 93 miles (150 km) per second.
Millions of years from now this star will be lost from the view of any future inhabitants of Earth, or at least those who are earthbound and looking with the eye alone.
Tom Wildoner caught this shot of bright Jupiter near the star Spica on February 3, 2017. He wrote at his blog, LeisurelyScientist.com: “Jupiter remains in Virgo through much of 2017, crossing into Libra in mid-November.”
Drive a spike to Spica. Once you’ve followed the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle to the star Arcturus, you’re on your way to finding the star Spica. Just extend that same curve on the sky’s dome. Read more about Spica here.
And Jupiter? Well, it’s the brightest object in the evening sky now, so you should have no trouble finding it. Plus it’s just two days away from its opposition on April 7. On that date, Earth will go between the sun and Jupiter. The next day, April 8, Jupiter will be closest to us for this year.
But, in case you’re not sure it’s Jupiter you’ve found, just remember … follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica!
On springtime evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, extend the handle of the Big Dipper to arc to Arcturus, spike Spica and slide into the constellation Corvus the Crow. We sometimes call this extended arc the spring semicircle.
Bottom line: Use the curve in the handle of the Big Dipper to “follow the arc” to the star Arcturus. Then “drive a spike” to the star Spica. The planet Jupiter will be near Spica throughout 2017. Have fun.
Tonight – April 5, 2017 – follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica. If it’s the only star mnemonic you ever learn, it’s worth it! And it’s especially worth knowing this year, since Jupiter can be found in the vicinity of these stars. Follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica. Scouts learn this phrase. Grandparents teach it to kids. It was one of the first sky tools I learned to use in astronomy. Follow the links below to learn more.
View larger. | Here are the moon, Jupiter and the star Spica in the moon’s glare in mid-March, 2017. The star Arcturus is above left. Shot with a mild 12mm fisheye lens, by Ken Christison in North Carolina.
Follow the arc to Arcturus. Here’s how to locate the star Arcturus, using the Big Dipper as a guide. Find the Big Dipper asterism in the northeastern sky in the evening sky this month, maybe around 9 p.m. It’s very easy to see, a large noticeable dipper-shaped pattern in the northeast in the evening. Once you can see the Big Dipper, notice that it has two parts: a bowl and a handle. Then, with your mind’s eye, draw an imaginary line following the curve in the Dipper’s handle until you come to a bright orange star: follow the arc to Arcturus. Arcturus is the brightest star the constellation Bootes the Herdsman. This star is known in skylore as the Bear Guard.
Arcturus is a giant star with an estimated distance of 37 light-years. It’s special because it’s not moving with the general stream of stars in the flat disk of the Milky Way galaxy. Instead, Arcturus is cutting perpendicularly through the galaxy’s disk at a tremendous rate of speed . . . some 93 miles (150 km) per second.
Millions of years from now this star will be lost from the view of any future inhabitants of Earth, or at least those who are earthbound and looking with the eye alone.
Tom Wildoner caught this shot of bright Jupiter near the star Spica on February 3, 2017. He wrote at his blog, LeisurelyScientist.com: “Jupiter remains in Virgo through much of 2017, crossing into Libra in mid-November.”
Drive a spike to Spica. Once you’ve followed the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle to the star Arcturus, you’re on your way to finding the star Spica. Just extend that same curve on the sky’s dome. Read more about Spica here.
And Jupiter? Well, it’s the brightest object in the evening sky now, so you should have no trouble finding it. Plus it’s just two days away from its opposition on April 7. On that date, Earth will go between the sun and Jupiter. The next day, April 8, Jupiter will be closest to us for this year.
But, in case you’re not sure it’s Jupiter you’ve found, just remember … follow the arc to Arcturus and drive a spike to Spica!
On springtime evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, extend the handle of the Big Dipper to arc to Arcturus, spike Spica and slide into the constellation Corvus the Crow. We sometimes call this extended arc the spring semicircle.
Bottom line: Use the curve in the handle of the Big Dipper to “follow the arc” to the star Arcturus. Then “drive a spike” to the star Spica. The planet Jupiter will be near Spica throughout 2017. Have fun.
If there’s one thing about living in Michigan that is truly irritating, it is that the legislature is currently controlled by a bunch of right wing Tea Party-style Republicans, while the governor is Rick Snyder, someone who sold himself as “one tough nerd” and a reasonable centrist businessman but who’s consistently refused to stand up to the worst elements in his party. Oh, and he was also asleep at the switch, contributing to the Flint water crisis. Add to that my state senator, Patrick Colbeck, who not only has antivaccine proclivities, but “questions” evolution and, of course, denies climate science. Politically, it’s a painful place to live right now in a lot of ways.
One area, however, where Michigan has done pretty well thus far is in vaccine policy. In response to increasing nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, as well as pertussis outbreaks, particularly a big one in 2012, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) decided to do something about it. In brief, the state emulated California’s first attempt to combat the rising tide of personal belief exemptions (PBEs). Basically, starting January 1, 2015, the MDCH altered the rules regarding requirements for parents to claim personal belief exemptions to vaccine mandates. Basically, it patterned its policy change on California Bill AB 2109, a bill from a few years ago that sought to tighten up requirements for PBEs in California. AB 2109 required parents seeking PBEs to meet with a physician or other enumerated health care practitioner to receive counseling on the risks of opting their children out of school vaccine requirements. The physician would then have to sign the PBE form to verify that he had counseled the parents. Of course, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak a year ago, California passed a far stronger measure, SB 277, which, beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, eliminates PBEs in California.
Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck: antivaccine-sympathetic.
In contrast, Michigan’s policy requires parents seeking PBEs to visit their local health department office to:
Be educated by a local health worker about vaccines and the diseases they are intended to prevent.
Sign the universal state form that includes a statement of acknowledgement that parents understand they may be putting their own children and others at risk by refusing the shots.
So basically, it’s just like AB 2109, only with more teeth. Not just any doctor or nurse will do. Parents have to visit their local health department for the counseling. It’s a creative modification to a strategy designed to make obtaining a PBE at least as difficult as getting one’s children vaccinated. Indeed, part of the problem in Michigan, as it was in California before AB 2109, is that it’s been easier to obtain a PBE by simply signing a form and sending it to a child’s school than it is to actually get that child vaccinated according to the CDC schedule. Even better, there’s now evidence that this policy works.
Not surprisingly, antivaxers absolutely hate this policy, and unfortunately there are legislators sympathetic to antivaccine views willing to pander to them. We met some of them when I discussed Del Bigtree’s foray into Michigan to visit with state legislators, the better to persuade them that “freedom” demands that parents have the ability to choose to leave their children vulnerable to vaccine-preventative diseases. In late 2015, legislators introduced HB 5126 and HB 5127, which specifically eliminates the authority of the Michigan Department of Community Health to make or enforce a rule that allows a local health official to exclude a child who lacks documentation of immunity from school when a child in that school has a communicable disease and to reverse the rule change by the MDCH that required parents seeking PBEs to undergo counseling at a local state or county health office. Fortunately, neither bill passed.
Yesterday marked the start of National Public Health Week.
This is a blog about some of Michigan’s conservative elected officials who clearly did not get the memo.
Michigan Republicans have decided to throw established science and concerns for public health out the window by introducing bills that are clearly catered to the anti-vaccine crowd — and will ultimately put the public’s health at risk.
According to MLive, “parents seeking an exemption to vaccinations must be educated by a local health worker about vaccines and sign a universal state form, which includes a statement of acknowledgement that parents understand they could be putting children at risk by refusing the shots.”
Under the proposed bills, the rule would be eliminated.
According to health officials, this rule helped drive down vaccine waivers, which led to more kids getting immunized. Data from 2015 showed that Michigan ranked 43rd lowest in the nation for immunizations covering kids from 19 to 35 months. So clearly, we still have some work to do.
But guess what? Since the rule change the state has reported a 35% decrease in the the overall PBE waiver rates. So what do lawmakers want to do? They want to screw it all up and risk backsliding by eliminating that rule, and, unfortunately, it’s a familiar name behind the effort in the state Senate, at least. Yep, it’s Patrick Colbeck:
“The rules enacted by DHHS pertaining to parents who wish to opt out of vaccinations for their children go beyond the intent of the current law, which was to inform parents of potential consequences of their choices, but now seems to have a punitive intent,” Sen. Colbeck said. “Whenever a department promulgates rules that go beyond the intent of the legislation, it is then the role of the Legislature to make sure those rules are reined back in. It was never the intention of the Legislature to see a vaccination opt-out procedure put into place that essentially mandates that parents have to take time off of work to meet with specific people, view videos, or sign inflammatory forms to exert a right they should be able to exercise more simply.
“State legislators are increasingly concerned about departments implementing rules that go beyond legislative intent. There is a strong desire to reform the administrative rule-making process across the board, thereby limiting the need for retroactive correction.”
There are two bills in the Senate (SB 299 and 300), co-sponsored by Colbeck, and a bill in the House, HB 4425, sponsored by Rep. Tom Barrett and a bunch of other Representatives, and HB 4426. Both are designed to strip the MDCH of the authority to make a rule like the one that requires counseling by a public health official before a vaccine waiver is granted. The text of HB 4425 is virtually identical to that of its predecessor (HB 5126) (I can’t find the text of SB 299 or 300 on the Michigan website as of last night):
(2) A child is exempt from this part if a parent, guardian, or person in loco parentis of the child presents a written statement to the administrator of the child’s school or operator of the group program to the effect that the requirements of this part cannot be met because of religious convictions or other objection to immunization.
(3) THE DEPARTMENT’S AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE RULES UNDER SECTION 9227 DOES NOT INCLUDE THE AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE OR ENFORCE A RULE THAT IMPOSES A DIFFERENT OR ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENT FOR A CHILD TO BE EXEMPT FROM THIS PART THAN THOSE DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION OR THAT REQUIRES THE EXEMPTIONS DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION TO BE ON A FORM PRESCRIBED BY THE DEPARTMENT.
(4) IF THE DEPARTMENT PROVIDES INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC ON THE EXEMPTIONS DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, THEN WITH THAT INFORMATION THE DEPARTMENT SHALL INCLUDE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS AND POTENTIAL RISKS OF IMMUNIZATION FOR DISEASES FOR WHICH THE DEPARTMENT REQUIRES IMMUNIZATION UNDER SECTION 9227.
Basically, this law, if passed, would handcuff the MDCH by explicitly forbidding it from making it any harder for parents to claim a PBE than to present a signed written statement to the school administrator saying, in essence, “I don’t wanna.” You can tell the antivaccine influence in this bill by the language about the “potential risks of immunization.”
Like its predecessor, this bill is even worse than that, though. Not content to eliminate a strategy that has worked to drive down the rates of PBEs in Michigan, Colbeck and like-minded legislators in the House want to make it harder to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in schools:
(2) THE DEPARTMENT’S AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE RULES UNDER SECTION 5111 DOES NOT INCLUDE THE AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE OR ENFORCE A RULE ALLOWING A LOCAL HEALTH OFFICER WHO CONFIRMS OR REASONABLY SUSPECTS THAT AN INDIVIDUAL ATTENDING A SCHOOL OR GROUP PROGRAM HAS A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE TO, AS A DISEASE CONTROL MEASURE THAT IS NOT IN THE CASE OF AN EPIDEMIC, EXCLUDE FROM ATTENDANCE AN INDIVIDUAL WHO LACKS DOCUMENTATION OF IMMUNITY OR IS OTHERWISE CONSIDERED SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE COMMUNICABLE DISEASE. AS USED IN THIS SUBSECTION, “GROUP PROGRAM” MEANS THAT TERM AS DESCRIBED IN SECTION 9211.
What this provision would do is to prevent a local health officer from keeping unvaccinated children out of school if a a case (or cases) of a vaccine-preventable disease occurs in that school outside of an actual epidemic. I looked at this provision, looked at it, and then looked at it again, and for the life of me I can’t figure out the rationale for this. Basically, the only purpose this provision serves is to endanger children who are not vaccinated, thanks to PBEs, while at the same time inserting additional susceptible children into an environment where a contagious disease resides, thus making an outbreak more likely. This law, if passed, could easily produce a public health disaster.
The stupid, it burns. It boggles the mind. It’s unbelievable. Except that it’s not. Believe me, our state legislature right here in Michigan really is that dumb and dysfunctional. We really do have a large number of legislators who conflate “freedom” with the freedom to endanger public health and fetishizes “parental rights” without even considering the rights of the child. It’s almost as though they’re trying to turn Michigan into Romania, with its massive ongoing measles outbreak. The sheer scientific ignorance and downright stupidity boggle the mind.
This is a case where you have a handful of conservative elected officials pursuing an agenda to appease a small, ideological segment of their base for the votes, while ignoring scientists and public health experts who have the interest of everyone in mind.
Call your state rep and senator and tell them to oppose House Bills 4425/4426 and Senate Bills 299/300 because they are dangerous, anti-science bills that will only create more health dangers for the public.
And here are some handy instructions to do just that:
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oABt9n
If there’s one thing about living in Michigan that is truly irritating, it is that the legislature is currently controlled by a bunch of right wing Tea Party-style Republicans, while the governor is Rick Snyder, someone who sold himself as “one tough nerd” and a reasonable centrist businessman but who’s consistently refused to stand up to the worst elements in his party. Oh, and he was also asleep at the switch, contributing to the Flint water crisis. Add to that my state senator, Patrick Colbeck, who not only has antivaccine proclivities, but “questions” evolution and, of course, denies climate science. Politically, it’s a painful place to live right now in a lot of ways.
One area, however, where Michigan has done pretty well thus far is in vaccine policy. In response to increasing nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, as well as pertussis outbreaks, particularly a big one in 2012, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) decided to do something about it. In brief, the state emulated California’s first attempt to combat the rising tide of personal belief exemptions (PBEs). Basically, starting January 1, 2015, the MDCH altered the rules regarding requirements for parents to claim personal belief exemptions to vaccine mandates. Basically, it patterned its policy change on California Bill AB 2109, a bill from a few years ago that sought to tighten up requirements for PBEs in California. AB 2109 required parents seeking PBEs to meet with a physician or other enumerated health care practitioner to receive counseling on the risks of opting their children out of school vaccine requirements. The physician would then have to sign the PBE form to verify that he had counseled the parents. Of course, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak a year ago, California passed a far stronger measure, SB 277, which, beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, eliminates PBEs in California.
Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck: antivaccine-sympathetic.
In contrast, Michigan’s policy requires parents seeking PBEs to visit their local health department office to:
Be educated by a local health worker about vaccines and the diseases they are intended to prevent.
Sign the universal state form that includes a statement of acknowledgement that parents understand they may be putting their own children and others at risk by refusing the shots.
So basically, it’s just like AB 2109, only with more teeth. Not just any doctor or nurse will do. Parents have to visit their local health department for the counseling. It’s a creative modification to a strategy designed to make obtaining a PBE at least as difficult as getting one’s children vaccinated. Indeed, part of the problem in Michigan, as it was in California before AB 2109, is that it’s been easier to obtain a PBE by simply signing a form and sending it to a child’s school than it is to actually get that child vaccinated according to the CDC schedule. Even better, there’s now evidence that this policy works.
Not surprisingly, antivaxers absolutely hate this policy, and unfortunately there are legislators sympathetic to antivaccine views willing to pander to them. We met some of them when I discussed Del Bigtree’s foray into Michigan to visit with state legislators, the better to persuade them that “freedom” demands that parents have the ability to choose to leave their children vulnerable to vaccine-preventative diseases. In late 2015, legislators introduced HB 5126 and HB 5127, which specifically eliminates the authority of the Michigan Department of Community Health to make or enforce a rule that allows a local health official to exclude a child who lacks documentation of immunity from school when a child in that school has a communicable disease and to reverse the rule change by the MDCH that required parents seeking PBEs to undergo counseling at a local state or county health office. Fortunately, neither bill passed.
Yesterday marked the start of National Public Health Week.
This is a blog about some of Michigan’s conservative elected officials who clearly did not get the memo.
Michigan Republicans have decided to throw established science and concerns for public health out the window by introducing bills that are clearly catered to the anti-vaccine crowd — and will ultimately put the public’s health at risk.
According to MLive, “parents seeking an exemption to vaccinations must be educated by a local health worker about vaccines and sign a universal state form, which includes a statement of acknowledgement that parents understand they could be putting children at risk by refusing the shots.”
Under the proposed bills, the rule would be eliminated.
According to health officials, this rule helped drive down vaccine waivers, which led to more kids getting immunized. Data from 2015 showed that Michigan ranked 43rd lowest in the nation for immunizations covering kids from 19 to 35 months. So clearly, we still have some work to do.
But guess what? Since the rule change the state has reported a 35% decrease in the the overall PBE waiver rates. So what do lawmakers want to do? They want to screw it all up and risk backsliding by eliminating that rule, and, unfortunately, it’s a familiar name behind the effort in the state Senate, at least. Yep, it’s Patrick Colbeck:
“The rules enacted by DHHS pertaining to parents who wish to opt out of vaccinations for their children go beyond the intent of the current law, which was to inform parents of potential consequences of their choices, but now seems to have a punitive intent,” Sen. Colbeck said. “Whenever a department promulgates rules that go beyond the intent of the legislation, it is then the role of the Legislature to make sure those rules are reined back in. It was never the intention of the Legislature to see a vaccination opt-out procedure put into place that essentially mandates that parents have to take time off of work to meet with specific people, view videos, or sign inflammatory forms to exert a right they should be able to exercise more simply.
“State legislators are increasingly concerned about departments implementing rules that go beyond legislative intent. There is a strong desire to reform the administrative rule-making process across the board, thereby limiting the need for retroactive correction.”
There are two bills in the Senate (SB 299 and 300), co-sponsored by Colbeck, and a bill in the House, HB 4425, sponsored by Rep. Tom Barrett and a bunch of other Representatives, and HB 4426. Both are designed to strip the MDCH of the authority to make a rule like the one that requires counseling by a public health official before a vaccine waiver is granted. The text of HB 4425 is virtually identical to that of its predecessor (HB 5126) (I can’t find the text of SB 299 or 300 on the Michigan website as of last night):
(2) A child is exempt from this part if a parent, guardian, or person in loco parentis of the child presents a written statement to the administrator of the child’s school or operator of the group program to the effect that the requirements of this part cannot be met because of religious convictions or other objection to immunization.
(3) THE DEPARTMENT’S AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE RULES UNDER SECTION 9227 DOES NOT INCLUDE THE AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE OR ENFORCE A RULE THAT IMPOSES A DIFFERENT OR ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENT FOR A CHILD TO BE EXEMPT FROM THIS PART THAN THOSE DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION OR THAT REQUIRES THE EXEMPTIONS DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION TO BE ON A FORM PRESCRIBED BY THE DEPARTMENT.
(4) IF THE DEPARTMENT PROVIDES INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC ON THE EXEMPTIONS DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, THEN WITH THAT INFORMATION THE DEPARTMENT SHALL INCLUDE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS AND POTENTIAL RISKS OF IMMUNIZATION FOR DISEASES FOR WHICH THE DEPARTMENT REQUIRES IMMUNIZATION UNDER SECTION 9227.
Basically, this law, if passed, would handcuff the MDCH by explicitly forbidding it from making it any harder for parents to claim a PBE than to present a signed written statement to the school administrator saying, in essence, “I don’t wanna.” You can tell the antivaccine influence in this bill by the language about the “potential risks of immunization.”
Like its predecessor, this bill is even worse than that, though. Not content to eliminate a strategy that has worked to drive down the rates of PBEs in Michigan, Colbeck and like-minded legislators in the House want to make it harder to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in schools:
(2) THE DEPARTMENT’S AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE RULES UNDER SECTION 5111 DOES NOT INCLUDE THE AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE OR ENFORCE A RULE ALLOWING A LOCAL HEALTH OFFICER WHO CONFIRMS OR REASONABLY SUSPECTS THAT AN INDIVIDUAL ATTENDING A SCHOOL OR GROUP PROGRAM HAS A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE TO, AS A DISEASE CONTROL MEASURE THAT IS NOT IN THE CASE OF AN EPIDEMIC, EXCLUDE FROM ATTENDANCE AN INDIVIDUAL WHO LACKS DOCUMENTATION OF IMMUNITY OR IS OTHERWISE CONSIDERED SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE COMMUNICABLE DISEASE. AS USED IN THIS SUBSECTION, “GROUP PROGRAM” MEANS THAT TERM AS DESCRIBED IN SECTION 9211.
What this provision would do is to prevent a local health officer from keeping unvaccinated children out of school if a a case (or cases) of a vaccine-preventable disease occurs in that school outside of an actual epidemic. I looked at this provision, looked at it, and then looked at it again, and for the life of me I can’t figure out the rationale for this. Basically, the only purpose this provision serves is to endanger children who are not vaccinated, thanks to PBEs, while at the same time inserting additional susceptible children into an environment where a contagious disease resides, thus making an outbreak more likely. This law, if passed, could easily produce a public health disaster.
The stupid, it burns. It boggles the mind. It’s unbelievable. Except that it’s not. Believe me, our state legislature right here in Michigan really is that dumb and dysfunctional. We really do have a large number of legislators who conflate “freedom” with the freedom to endanger public health and fetishizes “parental rights” without even considering the rights of the child. It’s almost as though they’re trying to turn Michigan into Romania, with its massive ongoing measles outbreak. The sheer scientific ignorance and downright stupidity boggle the mind.
This is a case where you have a handful of conservative elected officials pursuing an agenda to appease a small, ideological segment of their base for the votes, while ignoring scientists and public health experts who have the interest of everyone in mind.
Call your state rep and senator and tell them to oppose House Bills 4425/4426 and Senate Bills 299/300 because they are dangerous, anti-science bills that will only create more health dangers for the public.
And here are some handy instructions to do just that:
Last week, the UK Government triggered Article 50, the official commitment to the UK leaving the European Union (EU) following the referendum. This marks the start of the negotiation process between the UK and EU on the terms of withdrawal.
Since the UK public’s vote in favour of leaving the EU in June last year, we’ve been identifying the possible implications and opportunities that a new relationship with the EU could present for medical research and cancer patients.
Below, our chief clinician, Professor Peter Johnson, shares some of the key areas we’ve been highlighting in our meetings with representatives in Westminster and Brussels and in our responses to parliamentary committee inquiries that have opened in recent months. And we’ll continue to focus on these issues now that the formal process to leave the EU has begun.
The right people for the job
Every day I work with talented researchers who are tackling cancer. Researchers working in hospitals and labs across the country are at the heart of the discoveries that will benefit cancer patients in the UK, in Europe and worldwide. It’s the mix of UK, EU and international expertise working together which makes UK science great.
4 in 10 Cancer Research UK fellows are from the EU, as are one third of our PhD students.
Cancer Research UK believes it’s crucial to attract and retain those people no matter where they’re from. This is so that patients can get the best, innovative treatments and benefit from key scientific collaborations at home and internationally.
Supporting the science environment
Cancer Research UK receives no direct government funding for its research. But broader investment in science and research by the UK Government and by the EU provides the backbone of support for our researchers to carry out their life-saving work.
Between 2011 and 2015, Cancer Research UK-funded researchers received more than £45m in further funding from the European Commission following their Cancer Research UK award.
Continued support for science from the UK Government is important to make sure our researchers’ excellent work continues and can grow. And, for patients, that investment is vital as we push to see 3 in 4 people survive cancer by 2034.
That’s why I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to an ambitious Industrial Strategy for the UK, something the Government has called a “critical part” of the plan for post-Brexit Britain. We believe this provides an excellent opportunity to put patient-focused science at the heart of plans for the country’s growth.
In response to the Government’s call for views on its Industrial Strategy Green Paper, we’ll be submitting our ideas as to how best we think we can support the life sciences’ sector in the UK.
One of these suggestions is enhancing government support for charity investment in medical research through an increase in the Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF). This fund supports overhead costs such as general lab maintenance for scientists, which aren’t covered by charities as they fund the research itself through generous donations from supporters. An increase in the fund is needed to provide long-term confidence for universities seeking charity investment.
Looking to Brussels, the UK benefits from EU funding programmes both through the money they provide and – more importantly – through the support they bring for important collaborations between doctors and scientists. And that’s why it’s also vital that everyone sitting around the negotiating table in Brussels considers the value the UK continues to offer to support science in the EU.
Accessing drugs and taking part in trials
There are common EU rules applied in the UK which govern how research is carried out and how drugs are approved. These rules are really important for patient safety and to make sure that people in the UK and the EU can benefit from the latest treatments available. They support a lot of research that is already happening across the EU, providing consistency that isn’t replicated between other countries in the same way around the world.
The UK has played a key role in the new EU Clinical Trials Regulation, which comes into force next year. It’s an important law that will benefit patients, improving how clinical trials are run across the EU with the highest standards of patient safety.
In cancer, cross-border trials are especially important for rare and children’s cancers where the numbers of people affected are small. For progress to continue in these challenging areas, it’s vital that UK patients keep taking part in cross-border research.
1 in 3 Cancer Research UK-supported clinical trials have involvement from countries outside the UK.
To allow me and many other doctors and researchers to continue to collaborate with partners across the EU, the UK Government needs to consider how rules supporting research, like the Clinical Trials Regulation, will be recognised legally by the EU and vice versa when the UK leaves.
The UK Government should also consider how the UK’s rules could inspire further global collaboration, increasing Britain’s appeal as a place to launch innovative treatments for patients. This could be supported by ensuring the NHS is the best place to carry out clinical research.
What happens next?
As the formal negotiation process begins, Cancer Research UK will be continuing its work to ensure patients and research are on the agenda when it comes to the UK’s new relationship with the EU. And we’ll be talking to government, both in Westminster and Brussels, where opportunities arise.
Our priorities on people, investment and regulation are common themes that have been recognised across the science sector. And we’ll be working closely with other partners to make sure our voice is heard on these important issues.
Ultimately, we want to ensure patients get the best deal as we look to establish a new relationship with the EU.
Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician, Cancer Research UK
You can read more about Cancer Research UK’s work on Brexit on our website.
from Cancer Research UK – Science blog http://ift.tt/2o676GY
Last week, the UK Government triggered Article 50, the official commitment to the UK leaving the European Union (EU) following the referendum. This marks the start of the negotiation process between the UK and EU on the terms of withdrawal.
Since the UK public’s vote in favour of leaving the EU in June last year, we’ve been identifying the possible implications and opportunities that a new relationship with the EU could present for medical research and cancer patients.
Below, our chief clinician, Professor Peter Johnson, shares some of the key areas we’ve been highlighting in our meetings with representatives in Westminster and Brussels and in our responses to parliamentary committee inquiries that have opened in recent months. And we’ll continue to focus on these issues now that the formal process to leave the EU has begun.
The right people for the job
Every day I work with talented researchers who are tackling cancer. Researchers working in hospitals and labs across the country are at the heart of the discoveries that will benefit cancer patients in the UK, in Europe and worldwide. It’s the mix of UK, EU and international expertise working together which makes UK science great.
4 in 10 Cancer Research UK fellows are from the EU, as are one third of our PhD students.
Cancer Research UK believes it’s crucial to attract and retain those people no matter where they’re from. This is so that patients can get the best, innovative treatments and benefit from key scientific collaborations at home and internationally.
Supporting the science environment
Cancer Research UK receives no direct government funding for its research. But broader investment in science and research by the UK Government and by the EU provides the backbone of support for our researchers to carry out their life-saving work.
Between 2011 and 2015, Cancer Research UK-funded researchers received more than £45m in further funding from the European Commission following their Cancer Research UK award.
Continued support for science from the UK Government is important to make sure our researchers’ excellent work continues and can grow. And, for patients, that investment is vital as we push to see 3 in 4 people survive cancer by 2034.
That’s why I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to an ambitious Industrial Strategy for the UK, something the Government has called a “critical part” of the plan for post-Brexit Britain. We believe this provides an excellent opportunity to put patient-focused science at the heart of plans for the country’s growth.
In response to the Government’s call for views on its Industrial Strategy Green Paper, we’ll be submitting our ideas as to how best we think we can support the life sciences’ sector in the UK.
One of these suggestions is enhancing government support for charity investment in medical research through an increase in the Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF). This fund supports overhead costs such as general lab maintenance for scientists, which aren’t covered by charities as they fund the research itself through generous donations from supporters. An increase in the fund is needed to provide long-term confidence for universities seeking charity investment.
Looking to Brussels, the UK benefits from EU funding programmes both through the money they provide and – more importantly – through the support they bring for important collaborations between doctors and scientists. And that’s why it’s also vital that everyone sitting around the negotiating table in Brussels considers the value the UK continues to offer to support science in the EU.
Accessing drugs and taking part in trials
There are common EU rules applied in the UK which govern how research is carried out and how drugs are approved. These rules are really important for patient safety and to make sure that people in the UK and the EU can benefit from the latest treatments available. They support a lot of research that is already happening across the EU, providing consistency that isn’t replicated between other countries in the same way around the world.
The UK has played a key role in the new EU Clinical Trials Regulation, which comes into force next year. It’s an important law that will benefit patients, improving how clinical trials are run across the EU with the highest standards of patient safety.
In cancer, cross-border trials are especially important for rare and children’s cancers where the numbers of people affected are small. For progress to continue in these challenging areas, it’s vital that UK patients keep taking part in cross-border research.
1 in 3 Cancer Research UK-supported clinical trials have involvement from countries outside the UK.
To allow me and many other doctors and researchers to continue to collaborate with partners across the EU, the UK Government needs to consider how rules supporting research, like the Clinical Trials Regulation, will be recognised legally by the EU and vice versa when the UK leaves.
The UK Government should also consider how the UK’s rules could inspire further global collaboration, increasing Britain’s appeal as a place to launch innovative treatments for patients. This could be supported by ensuring the NHS is the best place to carry out clinical research.
What happens next?
As the formal negotiation process begins, Cancer Research UK will be continuing its work to ensure patients and research are on the agenda when it comes to the UK’s new relationship with the EU. And we’ll be talking to government, both in Westminster and Brussels, where opportunities arise.
Our priorities on people, investment and regulation are common themes that have been recognised across the science sector. And we’ll be working closely with other partners to make sure our voice is heard on these important issues.
Ultimately, we want to ensure patients get the best deal as we look to establish a new relationship with the EU.
Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician, Cancer Research UK
You can read more about Cancer Research UK’s work on Brexit on our website.
from Cancer Research UK – Science blog http://ift.tt/2o676GY
“Aha! That satellite was scuttled on Enceladus, Saturn’s main dump moon!” -Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
When you think about life beyond Earth, you likely think of it occurring on a somewhat Earth-like planet. A rocky world, with either a past or present liquid ocean atop the surface, seems ideal. But that might not even be where life on Earth originated! Deep beneath the Earth’s surface, geologically active hydrothermal vents currently support diverse colonies of life without any energy from the Sun. Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, has a subsurface ocean unlike any other world we’ve yet discovered.
An image of an eruption on Enceladus’ surface (L) shown alongside a simulation of the curtain-like eruption from Earth-based scientists (R). Image credit: NASA / Cassini-Huygens mission / Imaging Science Subsystem.
The tidal forces of Saturn itself provide the necessary heat, and also create cracks in the Enceladean surface, enabling massive geysers. This subsurface ocean rises hundreds of kilometers high, regularly resurfaces the world with a coat of fresh ice, and even creates the E-ring of Saturn. But most spectacularly, it may house actively living organisms, and could be the next-best world for life, after Earth, in the Solar System today.
Saturn’s E-Ring, as imaged here by Cassini, is created by it’s frozen Moon, Enceladus, ejecting icy material over time. Enceladus is the bright spot at the image’s center. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
“Aha! That satellite was scuttled on Enceladus, Saturn’s main dump moon!” -Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
When you think about life beyond Earth, you likely think of it occurring on a somewhat Earth-like planet. A rocky world, with either a past or present liquid ocean atop the surface, seems ideal. But that might not even be where life on Earth originated! Deep beneath the Earth’s surface, geologically active hydrothermal vents currently support diverse colonies of life without any energy from the Sun. Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, has a subsurface ocean unlike any other world we’ve yet discovered.
An image of an eruption on Enceladus’ surface (L) shown alongside a simulation of the curtain-like eruption from Earth-based scientists (R). Image credit: NASA / Cassini-Huygens mission / Imaging Science Subsystem.
The tidal forces of Saturn itself provide the necessary heat, and also create cracks in the Enceladean surface, enabling massive geysers. This subsurface ocean rises hundreds of kilometers high, regularly resurfaces the world with a coat of fresh ice, and even creates the E-ring of Saturn. But most spectacularly, it may house actively living organisms, and could be the next-best world for life, after Earth, in the Solar System today.
Saturn’s E-Ring, as imaged here by Cassini, is created by it’s frozen Moon, Enceladus, ejecting icy material over time. Enceladus is the bright spot at the image’s center. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
Last week, I took note of something that antivaxers hadn’t done in nine years, specifically a “march on Washington.” Back in 2008, Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey led a rag tag rogues’ gallery of antivaccine activists on a march and rally that they called “Green Our Vaccines.” The name of the rally, of course, derived from a common trope beloved of antivaccine activists that I like to refer to as the “toxin gambit.” It’s basically a Food Babe-like fear of those “evil chemicals” writ large in a claim that vaccines are packed full of horrific chemicals that are Making Our Babies Autistic—and/or making them asthmatic, diabetic, or even dying of sudden infant death syndrome. It’s a profoundly scientifically ignorant gambit in that the dose makes the poison and the amount of the various scary-sounding chemicals to which antivaxers like to point in vaccines is tiny and safe. For instance, antivaxers love to point to formaldehyde as one of those horrific toxins, and it’s true. There are tiny amounts of formaldehyde in some vaccines left over from the process of inactivating the virus. However, the human body makes formaldehyde as a normal byproduct of metabolism in amounts that far surpass that contained in any vaccine.
Nine years later, the rally is called Revolution for Truth, and the “march” and “rally” (if you can call it that) took place on Friday. I thought about ignoring it completely after my one post, but since the antivaccine movement is one of my main topics, I find it hard to let things go without one last post on this rally. Part of the reason is that the rally surprised me. No, it wasn’t the content of the speeches and signs that surprised me. Much of it was very similar to what occurred in 2008, although the cast of characters was largely different, with only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Barbara Loe Fisher having appeared at both events. Also in the post-SB 277 world (SB 277 is the new law in California that banned nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates), there was a lot more talk about “freedom.” Also, in the world of our very own Antivaxer-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, the rhetoric was much darker and more dire. None of this is what surprised me though. What did surprise me is that, if anything, the turnout for the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2017 edition, appeared to be much smaller than the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2008 edition. Don’t get me wrong. The 2008 march attracted at most a few hundred people, but by comparison the photos of the 2017 March made the 2008 march look like the the crowd for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech by comparison. (Antivaxers love to compare themselves to civil rights figures like Nelson Mandela or MLK.) I mean, take a look at the photos in this STAT News story, and you’ll get an idea. Then compare to the photos from nine years ago, and you’ll see what I mean.
Also, take a look at this photo on Twitter:
The anti-vax rally in front of the WH is very small. Chanting: "Awake, united, we're not going away." http://pic.twitter.com/6Q9H0tKqT7
I honestly did not expect that. News coverage described the crowd as in the dozens, not the hundreds. Unfortunately, as I’ve been describing before when I lamented the politicization of vaccine mandates such that antivaxers are increasingly co-opting the rhetoric and messaging of the Tea Party to equate school vaccine mandates as tyranny and “vaccine choice” as “freedom,” thus undermining what has until recently been a broad, bipartisan agreement about public health. For example:
For their lobbying day on Thursday, the activists had agreed to wear shades of the American flag: Red if they’d had a loved one injured by vaccines, and white if they were there in solidarity. (They were supposed to wear blue if a loved one had died from a vaccine injury, but STAT didn’t see anyone in the group wearing that color.)
Dressed in a red sweater and seated in a wheelchair, activist Marcella Piper-Terry teared up as she talked about her own chronic pain condition and her young adult daughter’s seizures and Asperger’s syndrome. She believes those injuries stem from vaccines.
What? They couldn’t find a single antivaxer who thought that vaccines killed their child?
The day of demonstrations followed an intense lobbying push on Thursday. Activists held 80 meetings on Capitol Hill, many of them with staffers for members of Congress, according to Irene Pi, an organizer from Arizona. Among their goals: Push President Trump to establish a vaccine safety committee led by Kennedy.
“We’re being heard, and we’re going to enact change,” activist Jena Dalpez said.
Fortunately, that remains to be seen.
Because of the rain, unlike the rally in 2008, the speeches for Revolution for Truth took place indoors as the Washington Press Club, the very same place where a few weeks ago Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued his ridiculous “thimerosal challenge.” And what a bunch of speeches that this small band of antivaxers and a few reporters sat through, including Rebecca Robbins of STAT News:
Because of the length, I must admit that I didn’t watch all the speeches—or even close. Even a cursory listen told me that it was a lot of the same ol’, same ol’. For instance, Kent Heckenlively’s speech in person was even worse than it was in print in all caps:
Yes, he referred to vaccines (or vaccine scientists; I’m not sure which) as “monstrous” evil and “unbelievable” wickedness. You get the idea. This is what most of the speeches were like.
For instance, here’s Scientology’s the Nation of Islam’s Minister Tony Muhammad:
We’ve met Muhammad before, and his speech here isn’t much different than the speech he gave a year and a half ago at a protest at the CDC. There are a lot of references to “satanic forces” and conspiracies, as you would expect. In fact, as I went back and looked at my old post about that CDC “protest,” it occurred to me that “Revolution for Truth” reminded me, more than anything else, of that CDC protest more than the “Green Our Vaccines” rally.
One thing that I found strange about “Revolution for Truth” is that Andrew Wakefield wasn’t there, even though a lot of people involved in his antivaccine propaganda film VAXXED were there. For instance, here’s one of the parents featured in VAXXED, Sheila Lewis Ealey:
And here’s Brian Hooker, the biochemical engineer turned incompetent epidemiologist and statistician who loves “simplicity” in statistics, with all the screwups that flow from that:
And, of course, here’s the producer of VAXXED, Del Bigtree himself, whom we’ve met many times before:
Bigtree spends some time in the middle of his talk sarcastically beating up on a woman who didn’t buy into the pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy mongering of the rally. Particularly hilarious is the part where he brags about how he doesn’t care if there’s a reporter doing a “hit piece” and that he’ll stand in front of any camera “any day of the week” because “we’re telling the truth.” Um, no, Del. You might think you’re telling the truth, but in reality you’re spewing easily debunked lies, weaving them together into a tapestry of misinformation and pseudoscience that can be hard to penetrate if you don’t—as I and some other skeptics do—have deep background knowledge of the specific threads of misinformation used to weave that tapestry. You are a propagandist, like Leni Reifenstahl, only much less talented. He then plays to the audience by referencing in contrast Paul Offit, who quite understandably got a bit pissed off at a VAXXED “reporter” who was bothering him in a hospital cafeteria while he was eating. It’s a disingenuous comparison, of course. There’s a difference between being a camera-hungry publicity hound of a crank desperate to speak to the press and being a real scientist tired of being hounded by antivaxers wherever he goes. Of course, disingenuous is how Bigtree rolls. It’s how he’s always rolled.
Of course, the main attraction had nothing to do with VAXXED. It was RFK, Jr., the environmentalist turned antivaccine crank since sometime around 2005. Specifically, he’s a member of the mercury militia branch of the antivaccine movement, which is the branch that passionately believes that the mercury in the thimerosal that was used as a preservative in some childhood vaccines was responsible for the “autism epidemic.” Never mind that thimerosal was removed from nearly all childhood vaccines in 2002 and in 2017, 15 years later, autism rates have not plummeted. Here he is again doing what he does best, blustering, deluding himself by claiming he’s “not antivaccine,” and spreading antivaccine pseudoscience hither, thither, and yon:
Notice one thing he didn’t mention? Hopes were high among antivaxers that RFK Jr. would announce the “vaccine safety commission” that Donald Trump asked him to chair. (Or so he claimed; the transition team denied it that he had been offered anything, but that didn’t stop him from running straight to the press to brag about how he would chair a Presidential commission on vaccine safety and/or autism.) One would think that, if it were confirmed that there would be such a commission, this “rally” would have been the perfect place to announce it.
Through it all, various antivaccine activists laid down a barrage of misinformation so thick and convoluted that Duane Gish himself would be proud. Examples were relayed on Twitter, such as:
#Revolution4Truth spkr Toni Bark: Vaccines work “if you don’t mind killing 5 kids for every 1 you save.” Fact check: No basis to those #s.
Sure. You’re not antivaccine. Ri-ight… Whatever you say…
In the end, as surprised as I was that this was the case, I was glad that the 2017 version of the antivaccine “march on Washington” fizzled even worse than the 2008 version. Of course, the 2008 version had actual celebrities. Even though Jenny McCarthy was at best a C-list celebrity then, Jim Carrey was still arguably A-list. They also did their march in June and were fortunate enough to have a beautiful sunny day. Even so, I would have thought that in the world of Donald Trump, antivaxers could have done better. I’m glad they didn’t.
That’s a photo of antivaxers meeting with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whom Del Bigtree lobbied last summer, complete with a copy of VAXXED for him. Whether Chaffetz is just playing the marchers or really is sympathetic to their viewpoint and demands, such as a demand for an “independent” vaccine safety commission, it’s a bit worrisome that antivaxers appear to have such easy access to such a powerful Congressman, particularly in the context of their apparently having the ear of the President.
Stay frosty, my friends. The Revolution for Truth rally might have been an embarrassing bust, but the real threat advocates of science and public health have to look out for exists in photos like this and what they tell us.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2o5o8VB
Last week, I took note of something that antivaxers hadn’t done in nine years, specifically a “march on Washington.” Back in 2008, Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey led a rag tag rogues’ gallery of antivaccine activists on a march and rally that they called “Green Our Vaccines.” The name of the rally, of course, derived from a common trope beloved of antivaccine activists that I like to refer to as the “toxin gambit.” It’s basically a Food Babe-like fear of those “evil chemicals” writ large in a claim that vaccines are packed full of horrific chemicals that are Making Our Babies Autistic—and/or making them asthmatic, diabetic, or even dying of sudden infant death syndrome. It’s a profoundly scientifically ignorant gambit in that the dose makes the poison and the amount of the various scary-sounding chemicals to which antivaxers like to point in vaccines is tiny and safe. For instance, antivaxers love to point to formaldehyde as one of those horrific toxins, and it’s true. There are tiny amounts of formaldehyde in some vaccines left over from the process of inactivating the virus. However, the human body makes formaldehyde as a normal byproduct of metabolism in amounts that far surpass that contained in any vaccine.
Nine years later, the rally is called Revolution for Truth, and the “march” and “rally” (if you can call it that) took place on Friday. I thought about ignoring it completely after my one post, but since the antivaccine movement is one of my main topics, I find it hard to let things go without one last post on this rally. Part of the reason is that the rally surprised me. No, it wasn’t the content of the speeches and signs that surprised me. Much of it was very similar to what occurred in 2008, although the cast of characters was largely different, with only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Barbara Loe Fisher having appeared at both events. Also in the post-SB 277 world (SB 277 is the new law in California that banned nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates), there was a lot more talk about “freedom.” Also, in the world of our very own Antivaxer-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, the rhetoric was much darker and more dire. None of this is what surprised me though. What did surprise me is that, if anything, the turnout for the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2017 edition, appeared to be much smaller than the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2008 edition. Don’t get me wrong. The 2008 march attracted at most a few hundred people, but by comparison the photos of the 2017 March made the 2008 march look like the the crowd for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech by comparison. (Antivaxers love to compare themselves to civil rights figures like Nelson Mandela or MLK.) I mean, take a look at the photos in this STAT News story, and you’ll get an idea. Then compare to the photos from nine years ago, and you’ll see what I mean.
Also, take a look at this photo on Twitter:
The anti-vax rally in front of the WH is very small. Chanting: "Awake, united, we're not going away." http://pic.twitter.com/6Q9H0tKqT7
I honestly did not expect that. News coverage described the crowd as in the dozens, not the hundreds. Unfortunately, as I’ve been describing before when I lamented the politicization of vaccine mandates such that antivaxers are increasingly co-opting the rhetoric and messaging of the Tea Party to equate school vaccine mandates as tyranny and “vaccine choice” as “freedom,” thus undermining what has until recently been a broad, bipartisan agreement about public health. For example:
For their lobbying day on Thursday, the activists had agreed to wear shades of the American flag: Red if they’d had a loved one injured by vaccines, and white if they were there in solidarity. (They were supposed to wear blue if a loved one had died from a vaccine injury, but STAT didn’t see anyone in the group wearing that color.)
Dressed in a red sweater and seated in a wheelchair, activist Marcella Piper-Terry teared up as she talked about her own chronic pain condition and her young adult daughter’s seizures and Asperger’s syndrome. She believes those injuries stem from vaccines.
What? They couldn’t find a single antivaxer who thought that vaccines killed their child?
The day of demonstrations followed an intense lobbying push on Thursday. Activists held 80 meetings on Capitol Hill, many of them with staffers for members of Congress, according to Irene Pi, an organizer from Arizona. Among their goals: Push President Trump to establish a vaccine safety committee led by Kennedy.
“We’re being heard, and we’re going to enact change,” activist Jena Dalpez said.
Fortunately, that remains to be seen.
Because of the rain, unlike the rally in 2008, the speeches for Revolution for Truth took place indoors as the Washington Press Club, the very same place where a few weeks ago Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued his ridiculous “thimerosal challenge.” And what a bunch of speeches that this small band of antivaxers and a few reporters sat through, including Rebecca Robbins of STAT News:
Because of the length, I must admit that I didn’t watch all the speeches—or even close. Even a cursory listen told me that it was a lot of the same ol’, same ol’. For instance, Kent Heckenlively’s speech in person was even worse than it was in print in all caps:
Yes, he referred to vaccines (or vaccine scientists; I’m not sure which) as “monstrous” evil and “unbelievable” wickedness. You get the idea. This is what most of the speeches were like.
For instance, here’s Scientology’s the Nation of Islam’s Minister Tony Muhammad:
We’ve met Muhammad before, and his speech here isn’t much different than the speech he gave a year and a half ago at a protest at the CDC. There are a lot of references to “satanic forces” and conspiracies, as you would expect. In fact, as I went back and looked at my old post about that CDC “protest,” it occurred to me that “Revolution for Truth” reminded me, more than anything else, of that CDC protest more than the “Green Our Vaccines” rally.
One thing that I found strange about “Revolution for Truth” is that Andrew Wakefield wasn’t there, even though a lot of people involved in his antivaccine propaganda film VAXXED were there. For instance, here’s one of the parents featured in VAXXED, Sheila Lewis Ealey:
And here’s Brian Hooker, the biochemical engineer turned incompetent epidemiologist and statistician who loves “simplicity” in statistics, with all the screwups that flow from that:
And, of course, here’s the producer of VAXXED, Del Bigtree himself, whom we’ve met many times before:
Bigtree spends some time in the middle of his talk sarcastically beating up on a woman who didn’t buy into the pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy mongering of the rally. Particularly hilarious is the part where he brags about how he doesn’t care if there’s a reporter doing a “hit piece” and that he’ll stand in front of any camera “any day of the week” because “we’re telling the truth.” Um, no, Del. You might think you’re telling the truth, but in reality you’re spewing easily debunked lies, weaving them together into a tapestry of misinformation and pseudoscience that can be hard to penetrate if you don’t—as I and some other skeptics do—have deep background knowledge of the specific threads of misinformation used to weave that tapestry. You are a propagandist, like Leni Reifenstahl, only much less talented. He then plays to the audience by referencing in contrast Paul Offit, who quite understandably got a bit pissed off at a VAXXED “reporter” who was bothering him in a hospital cafeteria while he was eating. It’s a disingenuous comparison, of course. There’s a difference between being a camera-hungry publicity hound of a crank desperate to speak to the press and being a real scientist tired of being hounded by antivaxers wherever he goes. Of course, disingenuous is how Bigtree rolls. It’s how he’s always rolled.
Of course, the main attraction had nothing to do with VAXXED. It was RFK, Jr., the environmentalist turned antivaccine crank since sometime around 2005. Specifically, he’s a member of the mercury militia branch of the antivaccine movement, which is the branch that passionately believes that the mercury in the thimerosal that was used as a preservative in some childhood vaccines was responsible for the “autism epidemic.” Never mind that thimerosal was removed from nearly all childhood vaccines in 2002 and in 2017, 15 years later, autism rates have not plummeted. Here he is again doing what he does best, blustering, deluding himself by claiming he’s “not antivaccine,” and spreading antivaccine pseudoscience hither, thither, and yon:
Notice one thing he didn’t mention? Hopes were high among antivaxers that RFK Jr. would announce the “vaccine safety commission” that Donald Trump asked him to chair. (Or so he claimed; the transition team denied it that he had been offered anything, but that didn’t stop him from running straight to the press to brag about how he would chair a Presidential commission on vaccine safety and/or autism.) One would think that, if it were confirmed that there would be such a commission, this “rally” would have been the perfect place to announce it.
Through it all, various antivaccine activists laid down a barrage of misinformation so thick and convoluted that Duane Gish himself would be proud. Examples were relayed on Twitter, such as:
#Revolution4Truth spkr Toni Bark: Vaccines work “if you don’t mind killing 5 kids for every 1 you save.” Fact check: No basis to those #s.
Sure. You’re not antivaccine. Ri-ight… Whatever you say…
In the end, as surprised as I was that this was the case, I was glad that the 2017 version of the antivaccine “march on Washington” fizzled even worse than the 2008 version. Of course, the 2008 version had actual celebrities. Even though Jenny McCarthy was at best a C-list celebrity then, Jim Carrey was still arguably A-list. They also did their march in June and were fortunate enough to have a beautiful sunny day. Even so, I would have thought that in the world of Donald Trump, antivaxers could have done better. I’m glad they didn’t.
That’s a photo of antivaxers meeting with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whom Del Bigtree lobbied last summer, complete with a copy of VAXXED for him. Whether Chaffetz is just playing the marchers or really is sympathetic to their viewpoint and demands, such as a demand for an “independent” vaccine safety commission, it’s a bit worrisome that antivaxers appear to have such easy access to such a powerful Congressman, particularly in the context of their apparently having the ear of the President.
Stay frosty, my friends. The Revolution for Truth rally might have been an embarrassing bust, but the real threat advocates of science and public health have to look out for exists in photos like this and what they tell us.
View larger. | Image of asteroid 2017 GM, captured this morning (April 4, 2017), while it was approaching. Taken by Gianluca Masi and Michael Schwartz, as part of a cooperation between Tenagra Observatories, Ltd., in Arizona and the Virtual Telescope Project” target=”_blank”>Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.
The near-Earth asteroid 2017 GM was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on April 3, 2017, and, just a few hours later – midday April 4 in Europe, early in the day April 4 for the Americas – it safely came as close as within 10,000 miles of Eath (16,000 km, about 0.04 lunar distances). Our observations helped in determining its orbit.
We captured 2017 GM while it was safely approaching us. For this, we remotely used a telescope in Arizona, made available to the Virtual Telescope by Tenagra Observatories, Ltd. Above is an image coming from a single 30-seconds exposure, unfiltered, taken with the 16?-f/3.75 Tenagra III (“Pearl”) unit. The robotic mount tracked the fast apparent motion (150?/minute) of the asteroid, so stars are trailing. The asteroid is perfectly tracked: it is the sharp dot in the center, marked by two red lines.
On April 4, 2017, at 10:31 UTC (6:31 ET; translate to your time zone), this ~4 meters large rock reached its minimum distance from us of less than 1/20th of the mean lunar distance.
It is among the 10 known asteroids making the closest approach ever.
The observatory is placed at 4,265 feet (1,300 meters) above the sea level, in the Sonoran desert, providing one of the best skies in the world. This image was taken as part of a cooperation between the Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatories, Ltd., which will be announced soon.
Bottom line: Photo from Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatories of 2017 GM, an asteroid that is sweeping extremely close to Earth on April 4, 2017.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2nFeo1e
View larger. | Image of asteroid 2017 GM, captured this morning (April 4, 2017), while it was approaching. Taken by Gianluca Masi and Michael Schwartz, as part of a cooperation between Tenagra Observatories, Ltd., in Arizona and the Virtual Telescope Project” target=”_blank”>Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.
The near-Earth asteroid 2017 GM was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on April 3, 2017, and, just a few hours later – midday April 4 in Europe, early in the day April 4 for the Americas – it safely came as close as within 10,000 miles of Eath (16,000 km, about 0.04 lunar distances). Our observations helped in determining its orbit.
We captured 2017 GM while it was safely approaching us. For this, we remotely used a telescope in Arizona, made available to the Virtual Telescope by Tenagra Observatories, Ltd. Above is an image coming from a single 30-seconds exposure, unfiltered, taken with the 16?-f/3.75 Tenagra III (“Pearl”) unit. The robotic mount tracked the fast apparent motion (150?/minute) of the asteroid, so stars are trailing. The asteroid is perfectly tracked: it is the sharp dot in the center, marked by two red lines.
On April 4, 2017, at 10:31 UTC (6:31 ET; translate to your time zone), this ~4 meters large rock reached its minimum distance from us of less than 1/20th of the mean lunar distance.
It is among the 10 known asteroids making the closest approach ever.
The observatory is placed at 4,265 feet (1,300 meters) above the sea level, in the Sonoran desert, providing one of the best skies in the world. This image was taken as part of a cooperation between the Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatories, Ltd., which will be announced soon.
Bottom line: Photo from Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatories of 2017 GM, an asteroid that is sweeping extremely close to Earth on April 4, 2017.
Chris Davis in Loretto, Tennessee captured Venus in the east before dawn on April 2, 2017.
Venus is the brightest planet – brighter than any other sky objects except for the sun and moon. So it’s no surprise that people are already finding Venus in the east before dawn now, even though it has only recently shifted over into our predawn sky. This planet is very, very bright, but it’s low in the sky. You’ll need an unobstructed eastern horizon shortly before the sun comes up.
Before the month ends, Venus will have another time of greatest brilliancy. It’s always an eerie sight at such times! Start watching it now.
If you could see Venus through a telescope now, you’d find it in a waxing crescent phase. Because it was so recently between us and the sun, its lighted half – or day side – is still facing mostly away from us. Photo taken Saturday morning, April 1, 2017 by Nick Southall on Mon Louis Island, Alabama.
Bottom line: Photos of Venus in early April, 2017, in the east before dawn.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2oU7u8x
Chris Davis in Loretto, Tennessee captured Venus in the east before dawn on April 2, 2017.
Venus is the brightest planet – brighter than any other sky objects except for the sun and moon. So it’s no surprise that people are already finding Venus in the east before dawn now, even though it has only recently shifted over into our predawn sky. This planet is very, very bright, but it’s low in the sky. You’ll need an unobstructed eastern horizon shortly before the sun comes up.
Before the month ends, Venus will have another time of greatest brilliancy. It’s always an eerie sight at such times! Start watching it now.
If you could see Venus through a telescope now, you’d find it in a waxing crescent phase. Because it was so recently between us and the sun, its lighted half – or day side – is still facing mostly away from us. Photo taken Saturday morning, April 1, 2017 by Nick Southall on Mon Louis Island, Alabama.
Bottom line: Photos of Venus in early April, 2017, in the east before dawn.
