Virology podcast feed
Stay tuned for the first episode of my new podcast, ‘This Week in Virology’ – I’ll post the information here within the next few days.
Why kids get bored with science
Clive Thompson (Wired article here) gets it right on why kids generally enjoy learning science: “One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present it as a fusty collection of facts for memorization. This is precisely wrong. Science isn’t about facts. It’s about the quest for facts – the …
Measles vaccine: No association with autism
A new article in the journal PLoS One (link) clearly shows that there is no association between measles virus vaccine and autism. The growing public concern over vaccination stems in part from the belief that the measles virus vaccine, given together with vaccines for mumps and rubella (MMR vaccine), causes autism. In the late 1990s …
More on vaccines
I met with my textbook-writing colleagues at Princeton this past Friday, and of course the topic of the Times article on HPV vaccines came up. See my previous post for details. Three issues came up in our discussion which are worth noting. First, articles such as this contribute to the parental fervor against vaccines. This …
More vaccine bashing
Today the New York Times is complaining about two vaccines against human papillomaviruses, Gardasil from Merck and Cevarix from GlaxoSmithKline. These vaccines were introduced two years ago to prevent infections that are associated with cervical cancer. The article complains that ‘cervical cancer has gone from obscure killer confined mostly to poor nations to the West’s …
Federal Control of Science
Earlier today I was reading President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which he warns against control of government by the military-industrial complex. It’s chilling to read, especially in view of its absolute control over the policies of President Bush. In the same speech, Eisenhower warned about the control of science by the government. Here are his words: …