HuckleB
HuckleB's JournalStudy Shows Anti-Vaxx Websites Spread Misinformation (Shocking! I know.)
Concerned parents are being duped by deceptive sound bites and junk science
http://time.com/4213054/anti-vaxx-websites/
"...
To understand how concerned parents could be persuaded not to vaccinate their children, a team of researchers at San Diego State University and I conducted a deep dive into 480 anti-vaccine websites to analyze their tactics and assess their methods. The picture that emerged from these sites—from Natural News to Mercola to Think Twice—is at once bracing and informative: Anti-vaccine websites leverage an arsenal of powerful and persuasive tactics to manipulate people into believing vaccines are dangerous.
Predictably, these sites appeal directly to people who are interested in choice, personal freedom and the ability to make their own informed decisions — all valiant ideals. “Natural treatments” and “homeopathic remedies” are held high and offered up as bona fide vaccine alternatives. Yet in the end, these sites betray those who visit them.
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Any sense of measured discourse is nearly impossible to find on anti-vaccine websites, as the volume and vitriol of the most ardent anti-vaxxers consistently drowns out reason—and science. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook post last month—a photo of his two-month-old daughter about to be vaccinated—is a case study in this alter-world.
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So the challenge is this: Health care providers and public health officials need to find ways to break through this fog of misinformation by appealing to the people whose minds can be changed. By taking a page from the anti-vaxxers’ playbook and explaining that smart vaccine decisions are likewise linked to important values — choice, freedom and individuality — we can recast this conversation.
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Yes, I know we all know this, but I like how the research compiled the reality precisely, and offered strategies to combat such misinformation.
These beetles waterski, scientists say. How do they do it?
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0303/These-beetles-waterski-scientists-say.-How-do-they-do-it"If you watch a waterlily leaf beetle hanging out on the surface of a pond, you might see it seemingly disappear and then reappear somewhere else. That may not seem all that strange for a flying insect, but a mysterious line of ripples hints otherwise.
The little beetle isn't flying from place to place precisely as you might think. It's actually moving as if waterskiing, flying straight over the pond with its feet still touching the surface of the water.
Curious about how the waterlily beetles do it, scientists used high speed video cameras to take a closer look. They describe their findings in a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
"It blows your mind away when you look at these things," Manu Prakash, who runs the lab at Stanford University that conducted this study, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.
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Cool video at the link.
Zika Kills Cells Key to Fetal Brain Development, Study Says
Source: New York Times
The Zika virus destroys cells that give rise to the brain cortex in the developing fetus, scientists reported on Friday.
The finding, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, may help explain how the virus might cause microcephaly, or unusually small heads, in infants whose mothers are infected during pregnancy.
“It’s an important advance and a step forward to clearly demonstrate that the virus kills brain cells,” said Dr. Mark R. Schleiss, the director of pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not involved in the study.
But other experts cautioned that it was conducted with cells cultured in a laboratory and may not reflect the virus’s effects in humans.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/health/zika-virus-microcephaly-fetus-birth-defects.html?_r=0
The last part is key, of course. Such results often don't repeat in other environments. Still...
Whole Foods pre-peeled oranges in plastic pulled after social media ridicule
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/peeled-oranges-in-plastic-pulled-by-whole-foods-after-social-media-outrage-a6911611.html"Are you too posh to peel? Or perhaps you just don't like getting your hands dirty?
If so, upmarket supermarket Whole Foods thought it had come up with the perfect solution with its pre-peeled oranges.
However, the internet wasn't so sure.
The pre-peeled oranges inside plastic boxes have caused such outrage on social media that Whole Foods has dropped the idea altogether.
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The fear mongering company never seems to understand its ludicrous hypocrisy.
GMO is not monoculture.
GMO is a term used to describe plants developed using GE technology. Monoculture is a separate issue, and other seed development technologies can be used to develop seeds that are utilized in monoculture farming. In fact, the Cavendish is an example. Convoluting issues to falsely demonize a valuable technology serves no positive end.
How fetal tissue research could help science understand Zika
http://www.statnews.com/2016/03/02/zika-fetal-tissue-hearing/"...
Charo noted that “right now, we are struggling to understand exactly how the Zika virus operates, how it is that it can be transmitted through the placenta to the fetus, how it is that it can affect fetal development at different stages of gestation, and how we can understand what kind of outcomes it will have.”
“We need to actually look at the tissue available after every stage of gestation where there actually has been a termination of pregnancy,” she continued, “whether through miscarriage or through elective abortion.”
Charo said that without such research, “pregnant women will be forced to choose between risking the birth of a child with devastating effects or in fact terminating her pregnancy.”
The irony, she said, was that “the absence of this fetal tissue research might lead to more pregnancy terminations than anybody has every contemplated up until now.”
..."
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Hmm.
Patient Beware: Off-label drug promotion by pharmaceutical companies
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/patient-beware-off-label-drug-promotion-by-pharmaceutical-companies/"Pharmaceutical companies and their sales reps can distribute information, such as medical journal articles, about unapproved (“off-label“) uses of their drugs as long as they adhere to FDA guidelines. However, the FDA takes the position that this information must be distributed separately from information that is “promotional in nature,” i.e., for marketing purposes, a position that is now open to question.
Off-label promotion of a drug for a use that has not been approved by the FDA is, in the FDA’s view, a violation of the federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (FDC Act). It is subject to criminal prosecution, because promoting a drug for new, unapproved uses is evidence of an intent that the drug be used before it has gone through the extensive process of clinical trials and a review of the evidence of safety and efficacy by a panel of experts, as required by law before a drug can be marketed. Thus, off-label promotion is seen as an end-run around the approval process that perverts the purpose of the FDC Act, which is to protect the public from ineffective and unsafe drugs.
Studies show that personal sales visits to physicians by pharmaceutical reps (called “detailing”) drives prescriptions in favor of the drugs being promoted. This is true even though physicians’ view of detailing ranges from neutral to highly negative, a “necessary evil,” and physicians are aware of potential conflicts of interest these visits precipitate.
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In the meantime, patients should be aware that off-label prescribing is not unusual and that it is sometimes based on insufficient evidence, a problem that some experts think could be exacerbated by more liberal sales promotion practices. Patients have every right to ask their physicians the circumstances of his or her prescribing a drug and the evidence for doing so."
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A good read, all the way through.
You know this routine is not true.
You've been shown the reality. So, either you're in denial, or you're not being honest. Which is it?
http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2013/05/superweed/
http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2015/05/what-does-chipotles-switch-to-non-gmo-ingredients-mean-for-pesticide-use/
And why do you want to use more land, when we could use it for things like forests?
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-cost-of-banning-gmos/
And so that changes the research reality?
How?
Prove the research wrong, or admit that GMOs are safe, can be good for the environment, and have been mindlessly demonized by ugly capitalist marketers. You do realize that non-GMO foods tend to rely on far more toxic pesticides, right? Oh, and that more recent GMO foods have nothing to do with pesticides, making the anti-GMO movement's arguments invalid, and yet they keep ranting against all GMOs.
It's like talking to a pre-schooler.
This is only replicating past research:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/13/gm-crops-environment-study
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-18/how-gmo-crops-can-be-good-for-the-environment
http://www.europabio.org/what-effect-do-gm-crops-have-environment
Study: Eliminating GMOs would hurt environment, economy
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/02/study-banning-gmos-would-devastate-earth-despite-green-claims/"The environment would suffer devastating consequences if activists manage to ban genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to a study published Monday by Purdue University.
“This is not an argument to keep or lose GMOs,” Dr. Wallace Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue and the study’s lead author, said in a press release. “It’s just a simple question: What happens if they go away?”
The Purdue study used an economic model to calculate crop yield, as well as economic and environmental effects of GMOs. It found that eliminating all GMOs in the U.S. would cause corn yield to decline by approximately 11.2 percent and cotton yields to decline by 18.6 percent. The study predicted a GMO ban would cause food prices to rise by one to two percent, costing consumers $14 billion to $24 billion annually.
“We know we’ll need to nearly double again the amount of food we produce over the next 50 years,” Greg Conko, executive director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “To stave off ecological disaster, we will have to substantially increase yields again. That won’t all come from GMOs. But much of it will have to. The alternative is to substantially increase our use of agricultural chemicals: fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. Adoption of the GMOs already on the market has been proven to reduce our reliance on agricultural chemicals. So, GMOs are a win-win for the environment.”
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Hmm.
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