Doctors who perform abortions, etc

This article at Salon.com asks many good questions about abortions. For instance, for those of us who are "pro-choice," is it really OK for a woman to have complete discretion to have an abortion? What about after she has 12 abortions? What if she aborts because the child would have been a girl and she wants a boy? What if she aborts because the fetus has a deformed arm? This article also provides some stats about the terms during which abortion doctors are willing to perform abortions:

Of the only 1,787 doctors who perform abortions at all, 67 percent perform procedures only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Another 13 percent perform procedures between 12 and 20 weeks. The remaining 20 percent of doctors report performing some abortions up to 23 weeks, but once you hit that 24-week limit only 8 percent will perform an abortion. And we know there are now only two doctors who will perform abortions after 24 weeks.

Comedian Janeane Garofalo, who sums up religion as the fear of vaginas, offers a new solution to the abortion dispute. It begins at about the 4 minute mark, and she calls it "the buddy system."

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Happy Father’s Day –

- to all the men out there raising honest, compassionate, inquisitive children. - to all the dads who aren't afraid to show their children how much they love them, all the men who model participation and positive values, good health and a passion to learn. - to the fathers who say no when they need to and who teach their children that mistakes are part of the journey; the dads who forgive, who tell stories and know how to laugh at themselves. - to every man who makes sure his children know, without having to ask, that he will be there for them, in form or spirit, whenever he is needed, for the rest of their lives. - and to the other fathers out there, somehow, may they learn how important their presence could be, and find a way to get there.

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No link between the Thimerosal used in vaccines and autism

In 2005, when I read Robert F. Kennedy's Rolling Stone article about the supposed link between autism and Thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative) found in childhood vaccines, I was deeply concerned. I send copies of that persuasive and detailed article to several friends. New evidence strongly there is no link, however. Even more than the epidemiological studies, consider this observations, as reported by Discover Magazine:

[A]lthough thimerosal is no longer present in any recommended childhood vaccines save the inactivated influenza vaccine—and hasn’t been, beyond trace amounts, since 2001—no one is hailing the end of autism. “If you thought thimerosal was related to autism, then the incidence of autism should have gone down,” Harvard’s McCormick explains. “And it hasn’t.”

Given that we haven't been injecting our children full of Thimerosal since 2001, we should be seeing a significant decrease in autism (if the anti-Thimerosal crowed were right). We aren't seeing any decrease in rates of autism, however. This lack of correlation seems compelling to me. As indicated in the Discover article, there are many reasons for getting your young children vaccinated.

The CDC estimates that thanks to vaccines, we have reduced morbidity by 99 percent or more for smallpox, diphtheria, measles, polio, and rubella. Averaged over the course of the 20th century, these five diseases killed nearly 650,000 people annually. They now kill fewer than 100.

There is now one less big reason for refusing to do get your children vaccinated: There is no link between the Thimerosal used in childhood vaccinations and autism. As reported by the Discover article, however, the urban legend prevails that Thimerosal causes autism.

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Backhanded celebration of homeopathy

It's homeopathic awareness week! Neurologica wants to take full advantage:

According to the British Homeopathic Association . . . June 14-21 is Homeopathy Awareness Week. I would like to do my part to increase awareness of homeopathy. . . I am all in favor of homeopathic awareness. The scientific community should use this week to make the public acutely aware of the fact that homeopathy is, put simply, utter rubbish. Neurologica has put together a detailed account of the world's most over-embellished version of the placebo effect. Consider the homeopathic advocates' arguments for why homeopathic drugs can't be tested:

Many homeopaths have argued that homeopathy cannot be subjected to the same type of studies as are conventional drugs. This is because each patient, from a homeopathic perspective, is unique, and cannot be lumped into a single category. Whereas conventional medicine can compare treatments of 1000 diabetics with two different medications, homeopaths cannot produce large numbers of patients with the same totality of illness requiring the exact same treatment. In making this argument, that of untestability, such homeopaths are securing their position in the halls of pseudoscience, for if their is one single quality which separates scientific theories from nonscientific ones, it is falsifiability. If homeopathic remedies cannot be tested, then they can never be grounded in science.

Neurologica's article is well written and well documented. I agree entirely.

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Medicating the kids . . .

As a parent, I have participated in many discussions regarding the medication of kids for a variety of reasons. I have friends who have kids with serious problems for whom medication has been a godsend, allowing them to function with relative normalcy. Kids who were unable to participate in a typical classroom for one behavioral issue or another. We've also had many discussions about the problem of over-medicating children, and how some schools push for difficult children to receive behavioral meds, whether they truly need them or not. How some of those adult medications should perhaps not be so quickly prescribed for children. We've talked about education reform, changes in teaching methods and school culture and administrative philosophies that would allow for wider ranges of learning styles. I've heard parents rant about how unfair it is for their well-behaved child to not receive the same level of attention as the "problem kid" in the class commands, and I've seen them answered by the parents of said problem kids with an invitation to trade shoes, just for a day.

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