Ah--Ah-Chooo! Damn I'm horny!

A scientist from Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, has discovered a link between sexual arousal and sneezing.

Although reports of the condition are extremely rare, its thought that this is due to a crossed wire in part of the old brain (the bit at the back of our head) that controls autonomic functions such as breathing, temperature control, heart rate and so on. Sexual arousal is similarly automatic (even if it requires a stimulus) so the scientist considers this a probable explanation.

A more commonly reported complaint (about 1 in 4 people) sneeze when exposed to sunlight - suggesting a similarly crossed-wire between the optic system and sneeze reflex.

Somewhat bizarrely, the BBC reports, our noses also contain erectile tissue leading to a condition know as honeymoon rhinitis where men and women experience stuffiness during arousal. (The same condition is also a well-known side effect of Viagra.)

I have to ask, albeit rhetorically and with a tongue firmly in cheek, is this where the phrase "fuck nose" descends from?

Fuck knows.

Another Cleveland Police Scapegoat

Suzanne Holdsworth will be celebrating Christmas with her family this year. For the last three years, this mother of two has been banged up after murdering a two-year old toddler by banging his head against a banister in a fit of rage.

She's free because Cleveland Police failed in its duty of care - not just to poor Kyle Fisher, but to all the people it serves.

In spite of the poor child's obviously abnormal skull, indicative of hydrocephalus, and several other brain abnormalities including a drooping right eye, and a hole the size of coin behind it, Cleveland police brought trumped up charges against the only person to be in the room when he fell terminally ill from a fit.

The babysitter.

No one thought to ask anything of the child's mother, a teenager herself at the time - who it is alleged once locked Kyle in a bedroom so she could have a night out.

It must have been the babysitter.

No one thought to question the several day old bruises.

Those must have been down to the babysitter.

No one checked the banister for blood or DNA where the child's head had, allegedly been battered.

Because police knew the babysitter did it.

No one bothered to check the child's health or his tendency to epilepsy.

That would have meant the babysitter was telling the truth and the police knew better. Even though, as the BBC reports:

"The retrial heard evidence that four nights before he died Ms Fisher left Kyle home alone, locked in a bedroom by tying a belt to a broom handle to block the door. Ms Fisher admitted that she had been a negligent mother. The court heard evidence that Ms Holdsworth was, in contrast, a caring mother to her two daughters, Leslie and Jamie-Leigh, who have never questioned her innocence.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Renzo Guerrini, a paediatric neurologist at the University of Florence Children's Hospital, said:

"In my opinion there is compelling evidence he had some head injury before this night. This might have been trivial but sufficient enough to produce bleeding on the brain which triggered the epileptic seizure which because of Kyle's brain condition was possibly prolonged."

Leading the investigation into Kyle's death, was Det. Supt. Tony Hutchinson, the supercop who brought serial liars John and Anne Darwin (the "canoeist" and his wife) to justice. Labels like this may have led to the sort of "never wrong" hubris that cost an innocent woman years of her life and her young children, the loss of their mother for that period.

Science teaches us that we should follow the evidence trail and never make assumptions - even about our own cleverness. Lord Kelvin, the man credited with discovering Absolute Zero, was prone to such mistakes. Just eight years before the Wright brothers made a powered flight, he declared that heavier than air flying machines were impossible; and also famously said that radio had no future. (He also believed in God - which speaks volumes to me but perhaps that's just my internal cynic.)

Cleveland police infamously followed the science (as presented to them) during the 1980s child abuse scandal. Sometimes science gets it wrong - but in that case, it wasn't the science that was wrong, but the person presenting it. Dr Marietta Higgs (who is still allowed to practice with children!) had developed and latched on to a dumb-ass theory called the anal-dilation test. Families were devastated and, by the time the truth came out, Cleveland - and its children - could never recover.

This time they chose to ignore the science and, coupled with an apparently lousy defence, there was a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Many of the professionals involved here are to blame. Some of the doctors involved early on were not specialists; the police failed to be thorough in their investigation - I don't want to suggest they ignored the lack of evidence - I don't know.

Worst of all: what of the defence team? Where they asleep?

Didn't anyone think to question even the most basic assertions that this Kyle, a child the jury were told was a happy, normal and healthy toddler was in fact a very poorly infant. A fact that's mind-buggeringly obvious from a simple photograph.

Perhaps everyone now can take time to heal this most egregious of wounds and poor little Kyle can rest in peace.

Assume nothing: question everything.

Sick of Hannah Montana

Am I the only parent who's sick of seeing that sugar-coated smile and perfect hair that is teen sensation, Miley Cyrus?

Cyrus, precocious daughter of one-hit-wonder Billy Ray, is everywhere. I can't escape from her. Bugger me, please give me a break.

I have a couple of teenage daughters (one of whom is completely taken with the hidden superstar, Hannah Montanna) so entering the living room after school and before bed is a tenuous dance preceded by some careful listening at the door for some tinny American squawks.

Why, you might ask, should I have a problem with the ultimate queen of clean?

It's because she's an actress and like all characters, her lines are written for her. What we (or rather our children) see is not Miley Cyrus, it's a phoney; and the real Miss Cyrus is heading off in a different direction.

It's not the controversial photos taken by Annie Leibovitz that bother me; Cyrus-Disney Inc.'s PR machine covered that to death, it's the other photographs that surface from time to time including one of Cyrus posing seductively on a webcam (she was 15 at the time) and another taken by a Pap showing her licking her teeth at her then boyfriend (she was 16).

Cyrus is a Christian (OOOOH please, get me the sick bucket) just like another MTVeen favourite, Jamie Lynn Spears (younger sister of Britney "no-knickers" Spears) of Zoe 101 fame. When Spears infamously became pregnant at 16, the PR machine denied the story, "She was a good Christian girl, and wouldn't do that sort of thing."

Well she did and she was, subsequently giving birth to daughter, Maddie Briann Aldridge.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that Cyrus is pregnant, just that we only have to look at how child stars invariably descend into drugs and worse when age closes in and fame fades. Examples include the dreadful Macaulay Culkin and Drew Barrymore but history is littered with them.

What I am concerned with is that we're giving vulnerable kids the wrong idea about reality - just like soap operas and daytime bullshit-pedlars like Jeremy Kyle do for adults.

(Good grief, I'm starting to sound like my dad!)

Sorry folks, You Can't Sue God

Poor old God gets a rough ride these days, but at least no one can sue him/her/it.

Everyone's invisible friend is tangible enough to rain down fire, hail and brimstone; powerful enough to command the frogs to fall from the sky, but not it seems real enough to attend court. For that, we have to rely on real people - with jobs. Solicitors in fact and in this case, ambulance chasers.

Blame the blame culture whines Reverend Dr Alistair Stewart-Sykes bemoaning the decision to cancel a performance of Handel's Messiah in a century old building. (I'm paraphrasing here, what he actually said was "While we regret the cancellation we must abide by the law.")

Health and Safety is of paramount importance - I mean, no one wants the place to come down on the assembled throngs. But wait a minute, surely that would be God's fault.

Not a bit of it.

They have to have insurance in case someone stubs a toe in the dark and sues the place for every brass penny it's wheedled out of the parishioners for ten decades past.

I just love the way these people cherry pick what suits them. If the place falls down, it's God's will but the insurance will pay, but if the place falls down and kills a bunch of folk that's still God's will but the insurance won't pay.

I say: put your faith where your mouth is, Reverend. I say you're selling snake oil.

If this loving God of yours is so powerful, the place won't crumble to the ground and no one will get hurt. You have nothing to worry about. Not a jot. Who cares what the law says, God is the ultimate power in the universe - says you.

Funny how faith abandons people when reality strikes.

One day Stephen Green goes on holiday...

One day a Jew, a Hindu, and Stephen 'Bird Shit' Green all arrived at their hotel to find that there had been a mix-up with the bookings, and that there was only one room left for them to share.

The manager explained that this room only had two beds, but that there was a barn at a neighbouring farm which the farmer, an old friend of his, would let one of them sleep in free of charge. They complained a bit, but since there was nowhere else to go, the Jew graciously said he'd sleep in the barn.

The Hindu and Green were just settling down to sleep in their room, when there was a knock on the door. It was the Jew. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but there's a pig in that barn and because I'm Jewish I feel uncomfortable about sharing the barn with it.'

'No problem,' said the Hindu. 'I'll sleep out there instead.' So off he went to the barn, leaving Green and the Jew to share the room. They were just settling down to sleep, when there was a knock on the door. It was the Hindu. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but there's a cow in that barn and because I'm a Hindu I feel uncomfortable about sharing the barn with it.'

Green grudgingly agreed to give up his bed and stomped off to the barn leaving the Jew and the Hindu to share the room. The Jew and the Hindu were just settling down to sleep, when there was a knock on the door.

It was the cow and the pig.

Tony Blair is still confused

In an interview for the BBC, Tony Blair continues to live in denial that his faith actually scares the shit out of a lot of us. The fact that he's now joined the largest Christian cult is nothing surprising, his letterbox-mouthed spouse has been Catholic for years and his family are being raised with invisible friends.

What is amazing (or perhaps it isn't) is that Blair (or B'Liar as many call him) admits in one breath that he feared a palaver if he admitted to being a God-botherer while in office, yet in another he thinks that people: "in one sense, are a little comforted if they think the person leading them has some sense of spiritual value," he said. "Probably we could have been a little more adventurous on this without bringing the house down."

You know, I rather wish he had.

Blair rose to power with a grin. He is, I cannot argue, charismatic but he's about as much use to the world peace his puppeteer, George 'Dubya' Bush.

It's simple. In all likelihood there is no god. We can't prove a negative, so the best we can hope for is to attempt to find evidence of some supernatural force.

There isn't any.

Not a jot. Not a single solitary drop in the ocean (because if there were, I wouldn't write this).

We simply don't know how some things work and how some things came around - the Big Bang event, the origins of life (even though Miller-Ulrey came close) and so on.

Invisible friends and belief in things that contradict what we can prove give me chills. I don't really care if Bob around the corner thinks the world is flat, but if the bloke running my country thinks that, then I've got serious cause for concern.

Either Tony Blair is a liar or he's self-deceived and either way, I'm glad he's not running Britain any more.

Scientist: "Rom Coms Spoil Your Love Life"

Wait whaaaaat?!!

You mean that Sleepless in Seatle wasn't real? Four Weddings and a Funeral wasn't based on a true story.... Oh my world is shattered.

But seriously. According to Dr Bjarne Holmes of the Heriot Wat University in Scotland, Romantic Comedies give us a false sense of what's actually real.

I think Dr Holmes might actually be on to something too. Drippy comedies are one thing, but some forms of TV - Eastenders comes immediately to mind - are supposed to be mirrors of real life. Yet they mirror one of the most miserable, argumentative bunch of people you could ever hope to meet. Fact is, most of us wouldn't want to meet them.

They don't swear a lot - only because the watershed forbids it, but the violence and conflict is portrayed with true relish: and complete disregard to the viewers who perceive it.

Could it be that watching Eastenders or Corrie is actually bad for your metal health? There are certainly some (albeit tenuous) links between CRap music and violence; evidenced again most recently by the arrest of one Dizzie Rascal.

I'm against censorship and pro free speech, but I have to wonder if telly really is partly to blame for the breakdown of society. Perhaps these dramas are so close to real life (as are Rom Coms) yet magnify particular areas: interpersonal conflict, that they actually are colouring people's perception.

Of the people I know, those who don't watch Eastenders (in particular because it's one of the worst offenders at prime-time) are far less likely to be confrontational at work or outside.

Ironically, it may be the programmes that seem the least likely to cause harm that actually cause the worst. Few people try to ape the antics of Arnie and Stalone but how many young adults (not to mention older ones) mirror the disgraceful behaviour of soap characters? Don't dismiss this out of hand - I suspect Doc. Holmes might have opened a big can of worms.

I'm just a miserable git by nature, so I can't count myself.

Update: I just got through an entire episode of Holby City (BBC TV) and not once were the magic paddles used: which makes a change.

Seems like every week these mysterious descendants of Baron Frankenstein's workshop magically bring some poor soul back from the brink. Any doctor will tell you that's a bunch of fetid Dingo's kidney - "defib" machines only work in a small minority of cases and even when they do, patients rarely make a complete recovery.

Lucky for us, Holby City is only a fiction; unlucky for doctors though, people actually think this shit works like it does on the telly box - and therein lies a problem. Us ordinary folk go around believing that if our loved ones should fall into ventricular fibrillation, the magic "zapping" machine will make them all better.

Like I said, perhaps Doctor Holmes has a point.

If it sounds to good to be true...

then, as the saying goes, it probably is.

Of course that didn't stop city superwoman Nichola Horlick bleating "foul" when she got caught up in a "Ponzi" scheme. Like a pyramid scheme, money from new investors is used to pay the existing ones giving the appearance that large sums of money can be made with very little effort.

Like most of these city types (the RBS and HSBC are also implicated), Mrs Horlick is quick to blame everyone else when things turn to shit rather than shouldering some of the blame for being greedy.

Horlick is blaming the regulator (which should have spotted Bernard Madoff's misdeeds much earlier) for losing 9% of Brandean's total fund.

This is true. The regulator should have stopped Madoff years ago, but it didn't.

Nevertheless, fund managers also have to bear a large portion of blame. They take a shitload for making decisions with our money even when those risks don't pay off.

Fuck you superwoman. You took a risk and you got bitten on the arse. It's your fault and the buck stops with you.

Mary Kenny Is a Christian: A Dumb One

Mary Kenny writes in the Irish edition of the Independent that atheists are miserable.

"I've never yet met an atheist with a sense of joie-de-vivre (unless, in the case of one well-known public atheist, a certain drunken cordiality) most of them seem to be miserable blighters."

And you Christian types have it all sewn up, don't you, you smug bastards...

Kenny is dumb. Her argument is fallacy and filled with weasel words and she has the temerity to include the story of Baby 'P' almost as if faith could've fixed it.

Fuck you Mary.

Atheists aren't miserable, we're pissed off at people like you looking down your enormous hooters at us. You think you carry the moral high ground yet you allow no one else to tred that same path if their views differ.

Wrong.

Belief does not lead to morals and more than lack of it does otherwise. That's called CHOICE and it's something you idiots would rather we didn't have.

Bible Shock! You Don't Know Your Facts.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Child Dies From MMR! Oh, wait, No It Didn't

I don't really have the medical know-how to cover this one in the detail that my respected colleague, Ben Goldacre can so I'll let him give you the gory details.

Bad Science

If you don't fancy reading Ben's post (which is detailed and excellent) I'll give you the skinny.

As ever, the usual suspects reported (wrongly) that a child had died after being given MMR as this report in Metro demonstrates.

MMR was safe before Andrew Wankfield suggested otherwise and it is safe now. Get over it.

Karen Matthews Guilty

Karen Matthews has been found guilty of kidnapping her own daughter.

Frankly, what can I say?

Some people should not be allowed to breed.

Not This time, OJ!

OJ Simpson is sorry.

He says he's sorry for bundling into a guy's room along with a couple of his mates, armed with guns and held a couple of dudes up, making off with a bunch of sports memorabilia.

BBC News reports that in sentencing Jones to 15 years, Judge Glass commented:

"You went to the room, you took guns... you used force, you took property... and in this state that amounts to robbery with a deadly weapon."

So OJ is sorry all right. Sorry that he's going to have watch what the fuck he's doing when someone drops the soap. In 1995 I watched in horror as he walked free from court after prosecutors failed to make a case against him for the murder of his former wife and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

OJ was later found guilty in civil court and now, finally, he's going to make some sort of reparation and at 61 years old now, I'd be surprised if he ever gets out again.

Perhaps now Mr Goldman can rest in peace.

Acadamies Failing The Vulnerable

I've never been fond of the City Academy system. Giving control of our children's future to educational trusts form from religious nutters and businessmen leaves a knot in my stomach.

Says the BBC:

"..based on 24 early academies shows that the proportion of pupils entitled to free schools meals is down by seven percentage points to 35%.

This is precisely what all of the naysayers (me included) have been shouting for years: to mainly deaf ears across all three major parties.

City Academies are slowly but surely changing our education landscape: and not for the better.

There's a big difference between a rich family and a poor one - mobility. Pushy parents tend to come from more wealthy families - the sort of people who can afford to move into the catchment areas near to Academies as they appear. Little wonder these people are pushing the deprived kids out - and ironically, those same kids are left to go to the run-down schools whose funding has been spent on the Academy.

Rather than creating opportunity for the deprived, this is actually creating a very real class gap in educational opportunity between the haves and the have nots.

This experiment needs a non-partisan, critical examination now and it needs to be halted before it can't be reversed. I'm not holding my breath though.

Climbing Mount Bullshit

BBC news reports that a Think Tank has come up with the idea that so-called soft "A" levels may be a barrier to entering a decent university.

No shit!

The amazing thing is that it took a think tank to do it: surely that should be patently obvious to anyone with sufficient brain power to gain entry to higher-education.

Jeez Louise, that's what the old 11+ did: it separated the promising kids into the grammar stream and put the rest of us (me included) into Secondary Modern. "A" levels are perceived as the same thing. Three A*s at A level should be enough to get you into a good Uni - but wait.

A levels aren't all the same thing - it isn't a standard test. And just as some mountains are easier to climb than others, some A levels are easier than others.

Science A levels (even, if rumour is to be believed, have been gutted) are always going to be harder to pass than the arts. Not everyone is going to be able to grasp the concepts - my own weakness was mathematics. As hard as I tried, maths was an impassible path for me.

NASUWT's Chris Keates, said: "It is completely demoralising to teachers and young people to be on the receiving end of this complete denigration of the exam system. There are enormous demands placed on teachers and young people following A-level courses. We should be celebrating the standards that are achieved, not constantly seeking to cast doubt on their validity."

Bullshit!

Keates' position is defensive without actually looking at the real problem - standards are falling. This doesn't come from me but from the repeated reports from universities complaining that students are unable to perform basic maths (for example).

This is sort of robust discussion we need to have if future generations are going to be any use in our increasingly technological world.

Daily Mail In Dramatic MMR U-Turn

The Mail's online edition carries news that, "There have been more than 1,000 measles cases so far this year – putting Britain at risk of a deadly epidemic, health officials say."

Well there's a fucking surprise! If you don't give vaccine to your children, there's a bloody good chance they'll become infected and statistically, if MMR uptake drops year-on-year as it did thanks to (among others) The Daily Mail's grossly inaccurate harping, the chances become ever greater.

Of course, this isn't really a U-Turn.

Seems like every time the "MMR Causes Autism" debate crops up, The Mail is there screeching at the middle classes.

Surely The Mail isn't that bad, is it?

Oh yes it is...

This is the "respectable" newspaper that for years carried the "Frankenstein Food Watch" with it's stock picture of a guy in some Hazmat suit and effectively fucked up GM food research for decades. This is the paper that let an idiot journalist write a massive piece about how "Darwin got it wrong". That would be Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution.

GM food has a bit of a scary label largely because the people that fiddle with genes work in white coats in sterile conditions, but there's no evidence at all that it's harmful: and worse than that, what precisely do you think GM does?

Let me tell you this much: it doesn't make living things by grafting dead things together like Victor Frankenstein did. It doesn't hang limp bits of barley from the top of dark castles in the middle of massive thunderstorms in the hope that a passing bolt of lightning will bring it back to life.

What it can do is increase the plant's resistance to disease; or its nutritional value. It can make a plant that can thrive in the harshest of conditions and still crop well.

It could help solve the world's hunger problem.

But the Daily Mail think GM is playing god - so fuck the starving children in Africa, we'll send them money instead which their corrupt government officials will use to line their own nests.

Way to go, Daily Mail.

Dail Mail Wows at Downs Increase: Wrong Again!

Research for the BBC, reports the Mail has resulted in: "An increasing number of women are choosing to bring a Down's syndrome child into the world rather than have an abortion. More babies are being born with the genetic condition than before screening was introduced 20 years ago, figures show. And research reveals that many parents believe the social stigma associated with Down's has been removed and the quality of life for these babies has improved."

But as my fellow blogger, Dr Ben Goldacre (that's a GP type doctor, not a quack) at badscience.net observes, the real factor is obscured but the simple application of a statistic.

Live Down's Syndrome births are up by about 4% so that means, according to the Mail, that more parents (mothers in particular are choosing to keep a child with this moderate genetic disorder). As usual no one bothers to check for other contributing factors and the anti-abortion (anti-choice) leaning Mail is delighted at this news.

And as usual, they are wrong.

The simple fact is because of the changes in modern life, women are choosing to have their children much later in life. In fact, in medicine, a woman is considered to be a geriatric mother if she becomes pregnant at over 30.

Holy crap!

This isn't as staggering as it sounds, we're all living a very long time compared with our recent ancestors largely due to modern medicine and better diet.

As abhorrent as it sounds to us in the modern West, what we rightly regard as children today, would have been parents at the ripe old age of perhaps 11 or 12 only a few thousand years ago. Mind you, they would also have likely been dead before they hit 35 too.

Nature didn't intend for the human animal to live as long as it does; so by choosing to fuck with the natural order, we're playing dice with our offspring. No one is sure what causes Downs syndrome, but what we do know is that the instance rises dramatically with maternal age; paternal age is also though to be a factor although less so.

For a woman usual age, the chance of conceiving a child with Down's is about 1-in-1600 but by 43, the chance of is about 1-in-40. Of those women (of all age groups) who do, about 9 from every 10 actually terminate the pregnancy.

Since more women are selfishly putting their careers first than ever before, there's been a dramatic upsurge in Down's conceptions - NOT a reduction in terminations.

The more you put in, the more you get out - it's so simple even I can understand it, which is probably why the fuckwits at the Mail won't hire me.

Will the Mail be publishing a correction? Fuck no!

Nero Fiddled, Karen Went Shopping

It is often said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, when in fact, history says otherwise. Besides, the bloody cacophonous-racket inducing concoction of wood and string had not even been invented at the time.

But history is replete with examples of people who have failed to care for those in their charge and Karen "I didn't do it" Matthews is a current example.

Despite her little daughter going missing during a trip home, causing a massive man-hunt the like of which had not been seen in years, Karen (the BBC reports) actually went shopping for a Sat Nav. Maybe she needed some help locating little Shannon (who, it was later revealed, was actually drugged and held hostage at her uncle's flat)?

As of this writing, the evidence so far release suggest that Karen (despite her tears on national television) knew precisely what was going on and the whole thing was an ill thought-out scam to extort millions from public good-will.

It's amazing how fast that evaporated when the little child was found alive and reasonably well: physically at any rate.

Nero might have looked on while Rome burnt, but I can imagine a lot of people would like to watch Karen "Whadaya mean, me boyfriend's a pedo?" Matthews suffer a similar fate. As it is, she'll probably end up some bull dyke's bitch in prison.

How can a bitch be someone's bitch anyway?

Bishop Sentamu Talks Bollocks: Politician Counters

Bishop Dr. John Sentamu talks shit a lot of the time (he has an invisible friend after all) but the following quote seems to counter an argument that wasn't made in the first place.

"For any honourable member to suggest that someone who has made out reasonable grounds, and has succeeded in their appeal under the due process of law 'has no right to be in this country' is a worrying development." -- Dr. Sentamu, quoted by BBC News.

Does anyone know when Phil Woolas, MP actually implied this? Best we could find was this:

"You cannot manage a system unless it is efficient. That is fairer for the immigration and asylum seekers who are using the system." -- Philip Woolas, MP. Minister for Immigration

I'm not a labour supporter - the party has fucked up the UK horribly over the last ten years and Blairshite policies have screwed up the education system terribly: particularly in science.

As for the matter in hand, Mr Woolas is clearly a pragmatist (and has a large muslim majority in his own constituency: people who were immigrants just a few generations ago). So he has a pretty good finger on pulse but the fact is that the UK is a tiny island and there's only so much room for everyone. We need to have a robust debate about immigration. The colour of a person's skin or the amount of money they have shouldn't determine if they should (or should not) come here: it's simply a matter of room first and need second.

If people are being persecuted in their own country then they have a human right to get away and the rest of the world has a duty to offered relocation: but that doesn't the UK has to take all comers.

What's wrong with the Eurpoean continent? What about America? Vast tracts of land many times larger than this crowded island.

We need this debate and we need to be able to ask tough questions: people like Sentamu get far too much press because when it comes down to it, this is little more thana PR exercise for them to demonstrate how "nice" they [Christians] are.

The racist would let the white dude stay and send the coloured dude home. It's not racist to decide if a person can stay: it's practical!

I wonder how many Bishop Sentamu would put up in his home, rent free?

Measles Back: Quick, Vaccinate!

Measles in the UK has reached a peak of over 1000 cases in the last 13 years. The problem in Cheshire is so bad that the local health authority has ordered mass vaccination of local children.

While most children recover, about 1 in 10 will require hospital treatment and as I've pointed out in this column previously, some will suffer brain damage or even die.

Are you listening Jenny "I know better" McCarthy? Are you listening Tony "I'm not saying" Blair? How about you, Dr. Andrew "scaremongering" Wakefield?

Will the Daily Mail apologise and admit the years of its spent promoting the insidious, unproven bullshit about MMR where all a mistake?

Will they fuck!

MMR is generally safe: as safe as any other vaccine - and probably safer than many. All vaccines have some risks, but you have to balance that against the very real risk of death from measles or problems mumps and rubella will cause to adults in years to come.

Vaccination saves lives as much as MMR doesn't cause autism (or IBS). It's simple: your children can't make the choice so it's your responsibililty. If they die from measles related disease, their blood is on the hands of those who refused the vaccination and those who promoted the lies against it.

Jenny McCarthy is pretty. Stupid

McCarthy is pretty and full of a sense of her own self-worth - and that's a problem.

Jenny believes in god (oh shit!) and she further believes that autism can be caused by the MMR vaccine (double-shit with ice-cream!) and further to that it can be cured (FUCK NO!)

But only if you make a pact with the almighty, according to Jen!

As a high-functioning Asperger's sufferer who didn't receive an MMR jab (because it wasn't invented then) I can honestly say I'm sick of "famous" people who try to lord it over the rest of us with ideas based on junk science that has been roundly shot down in flames: many, many times.

Yet still papers (read: "rags") like the UK's Daily Mail - one of the most pernicious spreaders of bullshit dressed up as serious journalism - still refuse to admit that Dr. Andrew Wakefield was a twat. His entirely flawed research (on the say-so of a few concerned patients) was motivated by greed and the whole thing is a crock.

Children die of measles every time there is an outbreak, yet more will go blind, deaf and suffer varying degrees of brain damage and mumps is fucking nasty - particularly in adult men; rubella causes serious defects in unborn children.

But Jenny "I Know Better Because I Is Famous" McCarthy won't be dissuaded.

I'm truly sorry to learn that her child is affected; but if he is truly affected by autism there isn't a proper doctor on the planet who can cure it. You can live with high-functioning Aspergers and milder forms of autism because it's a spectrum. It goes all the way from light grey where I exist through to the blackest depth of ... well, whatever it is that goes on inside the minds of those seriously affected. It's a very wide chasm between mild and serious autism; rather like stubbing your toe to having every bone in your body crushed.

Jenny won't accept that - even if some poor (educated) person tries to tell her she won't listen.

www.stopjenny.com

I just wish Andrew Wakefield would grow a pair and admit he fucked up. Maybe then this would show some signs of going away so we can get on with having normal(ish) lives and the parents/carers of sufferers wouldn't have to cling to an artificial hope.

But the damage is already done. Wakefield and those who follow him have blood on their hands; and the "wake" will continue to rattle on through generations as parents refuse a life-saving inoculation and their children suffer as a result.