Diseases (other than AIDS and cancer) Archives

Cal. study gets vaccines off hook again for autism

By Michael Fumento

Grant the anti-childhood vaccine fanatics this; they are dogged. As I write in The American Spectator Online, "Absolutely no amount of data and no number of studies from any array of sources will sway them from their beliefs - or claimed beliefs - that thimerosal, a mercury-containing vaccine preservative once used in many such injections, is causing the so-called "autism epidemic."

Therefore a California Department of Public Health study in the current Archives of General Psychiatry hasn't either. It shows absolutely no decrease in the rate of increased autism diagnoses, notwithstanding that thimerosal was discontinued in childhood vaccines in 2001. (I include a graph that makes the point abundantly clear.) Yet not only did the nut cases claim the California data would eventually prove their case, they even claimed it already had.

For the rest of us there are two valuable lessons. First, the lack of a thimerosal connection to the developmental disorder has once again been reaffirmed. And second, those fanatics really and truly are fanatical - as a British Medical Journal book reviewer put it, an "angry and paranoid universe."

I've already gotten a barge-load of nasty e-mail from this paranoid universe. See what's made them so incredibly angry.

I'm on ADHD medicine and it's great!

By Michael Fumento

A medical write wrote to me:

Hi Michael,

A little belatedly, I ran across your excellent article on the "hoax that is ADHD." :-)

I can't thank you enough for the excellent dissection. Five years ago, when I discovered that my scientist husband has ADHD and we both went through hell trying to coax decent care out of our very broken mental health care system - and some truly ignorant psychiatrists - I swore that others would benefit from my hard-won experience.

So, I've been volunteering almost full time - essentially a Peace Corps at Home stint - helping other people to understand this ridiculously common condition, especially in adults. At this point, after finishing a book so I can try easing out of doing so much volunteer work, I'm pretty much exhausted. But I've made my dent.

[Two paragraphs omitted.]

The idea that nutballs like Fred Baughman and overreaching egotists like Lawrence Diller (who has absolutely no clue about what happens when these children who are not treated grow up and leave the structure of "helicopter" parents) are the most prominent influences on the internet is appalling. So I really appreciate it when thinkers and writers like you put their focus on this subject.

Thank you,

I responded:

You're welcome. I started taking ADHD drugs a few months ago and it''s been wonderful. I've long known I have the problem, but I found lots of ways to cope. But it got to a point where I was simply blanking out and missing freeway ramps and stuff. That's not just frustrating; it's dangerous. And it's so nice not to be constantly mislaying things. Meanwhile my creativity hasn't been touched in the least bit. In other words, no, I am not a zombie thank you very much.

All the best,
Mike

Hysteria, not illness or death, drives gov't disease spending

By Michael Fumento

You've heard that the highly-drug resistant germ MRSA causes 94,000 U.S. invasive infections each year, with about 19,000 deaths. Here's what you haven't heard. As I write in the New York Sun, the government is doing practically nothing about it.

Meanwhile it's working mightily and spending the bank on three diseases that have yet to kill a single American and probably never will: Ebola virus, SARS, and avian flu. Federally-funded Ebola and SARS vaccines are in human trials and the government is already stockpiling FDA-approved avian flu vaccine. Yet government-funded MRSA vaccine research is still in mice.

One spending comparison: Congress has specifically earmarked $5.8 billion for avian flu, the threat of which continually recedes. Yet, although the CDC lists in addition to MRSA 8 important diseases connected to antibiotic resistance, the total annual budget for these is merely $221 million.

I conclude: "We need a government that pays more attention to medical statistics than to headlines. The one we have now is killing us."

Skeptical question of the day (seasonal flu deaths)

By Michael Fumento

Dave wrote:

Today's paper again mentioned the 36,000 deaths per year from flu...........and I believe I've heard / read that the only way that kind of figure will hold up to scrutiny is if 1918-1919 is included!...........what is your take on this statistic?

How many people died of flu in 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.............?

Thanks in advance,
Dave

Dave,

This is seasonal flu, having nothing to do with even the last pandemic of 1968 (the Hong Kong flu). The CDC uses the number of 24,000 - 36,000, which the media naturally convert to solely the top end. I'll bet 24,000 is more like it.

Further, there's a lot of what's called the "harvesting effect." Flu causes few deaths outside the elderly population and probably kills those elderly not too long before something else does.

That said, I get my annual flu shot because I cannot afford any down time that I might otherwise have prevented. Plus, it adds to herd immunity so that it protects those who might get more seriously ill than I am but either didn't get the vaccine or are insufficiently protected.

In fact I've even had the pneumonia vaccine, which can prevent secondary bacterial infections from attacking immune systems under assault from the flu virus. Unfortunately, while it protects against 23 different bacterial strains, it does not protect against the worst of them - staphylococcus.

Another blow against anti-vaccine hysteria -- or is it?

By Michael Fumento

The vaccine preservative thimerosal has jumped the safety hurdle. Again. So indicates the Sept. 27, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. But as I write in my TCS Daily piece, "again" is the problem. One huge study after another has cleared thimerosal as a cause of child developmental disorders, but there is a powerful lobby that couldn't care less.

You can see why Jenny McCarthy is treated as an expert on childhood vaccines and autism.

There are over 150 anti-vaccine web sites. None will disappear as a result of the new findings. After all, who cares what a multitude of huge epidemiological studies from all over the world say when former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy, with her 38 C IQ, claims on Oprah and in the new book she's hawking that her son got autism from a vaccine?

The major problem with this hysteria? It scares parents away from vaccination programs, even mandatory ones. And only mandatory programs can confer "herd immunity," meaning that immunization rates in the wider population are high enough (for example, 85 percent for diphtheria) to protect those not immunized.

Those who encourage parents to avoid vaccinating their kids are telling them to become free riders, relying on those parents who do vaccinate. But if enough people try to free ride, then herd immunity is lost and what follows is the return of childhood diseases we hardly think about anymore. Diseases like pertussis have made comebacks in countries as diverse as Australia, Japan, and Sweden after anti-vaccinationist scares.

Better known as "whooping cough," pertussis is a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes uncontrollable, violent coughing. Pertussis cases went from fewer than 8,000 in the U.S. in 2001 to over 25,000 in 2005.

Reaching parents who have already been practically brain-washed is hard, but for the sake of our children we must do so.

Agent Orange and New Zealanders who fought in 'Nam

By Michael Fumento

In an e-mail from New Zealand with the subject line: "At last," Rex Barron wrote:

It's nice to see and hear commonsense at last. I'm referring to your AO [Agent Orange] articles, of course. I'm a New Zealand soldier (infantry) who served in Vietnam 68-69. It may interest you to know that the NZ soldiers and families are a close knit family and therefore we know exactly how many went and how many have died since. I have been banging my head against a brick wall trying to convince my fellow veterans that they are not about to keel over with some dreaded lurgy brought on by TCDD. [TCDD is the trace dioxin that's present in AO as part of the manufacturing process. "Lurgy" or "lurgi" is British English slang for an unspecified or mythical disease.]

By using the population mortality graphs I have proved, successfully, that of the 3300 who went the 575 dead of various causes is quite normal.

At first glance it seems high but the percentage of Maori [The tribe native to New Zealand] soldiers serving was 20% higher than than the general population and tragically Maori die two and a half times faster than Caucasian. So unlike the scaremongers I used both population tables. Both Australia and the US used conscription and consequently have found it hard to come up with measurable numbers. In our case we were all volunteers and coming from a small country everybody is accounted for.

We were attached to the Australians so where they went we went.

There are too many fingers in the pie dish now with all the money that has been thrown around. It was your Mark Twain who said, "A man will not understand if his salary depends on him not understanding."

Cordially yours,
Rex Barron

Dear Rex,

Thanks for the info and thanks for having fought alongside our troops in a nasty war.

BTW, in future writings to people you suspect get a lot of e-mail you need to have a more detailed subject line. Something like "at last" sounds like it's for "At last, there's a penile enlargement pill that really works!"

All the best,
Mike

BBC Newsflash! "Evil" avian flu seeks "world domination!"

By Michael Fumento

Somehow I missed it, but a BBC video from June of this year, now available on YouTube, is the most alarmist thing I have seen or read on pandemic avian flu.

"If you were a terrorist wanting to design a biologic weapon, you couldn't do better than designing a virus like this," claims Dr. Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic within the first few seconds. "This is really nature's bio-terrorism." Later he informs us that, "The best scientific evidence is that one or two mutations will be enough to allow this virus to attach easily to human cells and thereby spread from one human to another."

We know now, from the research of David Finkelstein and his colleagues, it would actually take 11 or 12 mutations. Perhaps news of this research hadn't reached Poland in time, but his "best scientific evidence" is a pure fabrication.

Poland also informs us that what "really sent chills through the spines of virologists and vaccinologists, was the recognition that this virus [avian flu H5N1] had now jumped species from birds into mammals." Doubtful. Birds and non-human mammals (particularly swine, apparently) appear to play a vital role in each year's seasonal influenza. A team of researchers led by St. Jude's Robert Webster wrote in the journal Virology that, "most of the influenza virus genes that have appeared in mammalian gene pools over the past 30 years have been shown ultimately to have an avian origin."

Yes, some people will do or say anything to appear on the "telly."

Repeatedly the fear-umentary makes bizarre personifications of the virus, with the narrator more than once insisting the virus seeks "world domination." A Scots doctor tells us, "The human population has never been faced by a virus like this before. This is an utterly evil virus." Do these tiny pieces of protein come complete with Adolf Hitler mustaches?

The narrator also claims, "The virus has started to jump from birds to humans." Actually, the first reported bird-to-human cases were in 1997. It's said that Europeans have a longer view than Americans, but I suspect even Britons wouldn't consider events of a decade ago to be "just."

The only "just" aspect of this video is that it's just plain awful.

One Flew Over the Bird Flu's Nest

By Michael Fumento

New scientific discoveries keep eating away at the prophecy that "bird flu," avian influenza type H5N1, will become readily transmissible from human to human and unleash a disastrous pandemic. This leaves little but rhetoric and those big, terrifying, huge, terrifying (Did I already say that?) numbers that panic purveyors throw around based on nothing more than extrapolations from baselines of their own choosing. Read about it in my new American Spectator piece.

Avian flu wipes out Sydney, Australia!

By Michael Fumento

Okay, not exactly.

Last December one blogger whose website was devoted entirely to avian flu predicted a 50-50 chance of a pandemic within the next year. I offered the blogger and any other taker not 2 to 1 odds but rather 10 to 1 odds that it wouldn't happen.

Curiously, each entity I specifically challenged chickened out. They couldn't get permission from their mothers, stuff like that. One of the chickens was a crank named Crawford Kilian who authors the - or shall we say the, H5N1 Blog. He pretends to be the ultimate resource on avian flu developments but refuses to link to anything I write. On the other hand, he has now seen fit to link to an online novel in which pandemic flu kills the entire population of Sydney, Australia (4.3 million) save for 300 souls. After all, in tackling such an important issue you have to have priorities.

Canada's wonderful robo-surgeon. But can they afford it?

By Michael Fumento

The neuroArm, as I write in TCS Daily, is a wonderful Canadian invention that goes beyond robotic surgery, the main advantage of which is no shaky scalpels. It also allows neurological operations inside an MRI machine, sending the surgeon a continuous stream of 3-D images as well as video. This could revolutionize brain surgery. I'm certainly going to hold off on getting a brain tumor until they're commercialized. Unfortunately, it may be almost entirely an export item. You see, one thing Michael Moore didn't mention in his schlockumentary "Sicko" is that Canada's vaunted socialized medical system isn't keen on expensive medical equipment. In fact, Canada ranks thirteenth among 20 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries with only 4.6 MRI scanners per million people, while Japan and the United States had the highest number with 35.3 and 19.5 per million respectively. Without MRIs, neuroArm is just another robo-surgeon. But the issue will be moot if the nation's health administrators decide they can't afford the neuroArm either. Socialized health care sucks.

Update on the Avian Flu Pandemic Panic

By Michael Fumento

As the months go by the chances of an avian flu pandemic diminish, as does the potential severity if there is such a pandemic. Among recent developments:

1. The FDA has approved the Sanofi-Aventis H5N1 avian flu vaccine. It is not as effective as seasonal flu vaccines; moreover, two injections are required with about a month in-between. Nevertheless, this is an obvious milestone. The U.S. has stockpiled enough for 6.5 million people, namely first responders, but could order more if need be. Meanwhile the U.S. government is funding six different companies to come up with superior vaccines while in all at least 12 companies and 17 governments are developing H5N1 influenza vaccines in 28 different clinical trials. Incidentally, this is notwithstanding Mark Helprin's rebuttal to my response to his utterly ignorant pandemic panic piece in the Spring issue of The Claremont Review of Books. In the current issue he states: "It is possible that continuing research will extend the hopeful progress to date, and that the newly emerging pathogens will be (almost) neutralized by antiviral vaccines. But these vaccines are not available now." I recently read his novel "A Soldier of the Great War" and thoroughly enjoyed it. But he needs to stick to what he knows, rather than stringing together headlines from the MSM.

2. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, shown effective against H5N1, has announced it has filled all orders from all countries. It is now in position to quickly fill any new orders if the need arises.

3. Meanwhile, new WHO data show an incredibly low resistance rate of around 0.3 percent to Tamiflu.

4. Researchers have just discovered they can successfully inoculate mice with antibodies from persons exposed to H5N1. In other words, those exposed to the disease are living vaccine machines. This is not a surprise insofar as such inoculations were used way back during the 1918-1919 pandemic.

5. WHO figures through May 30 show that after three years of increases, cases of H5N1 are coming in at a slightly slower pace than last year. Since cases don't distribute themselves evenly through the year and the first four months of the year are especially large contributors, this figure is even better than it looks. Many of the pandemic panic purveyors last year, including Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital specifically cited the annual increases in H5N1 cases as cause for alarm. What's a decrease cause for? Yup, they'll find a way for that to be alarming as well.

Future weapons against malaria - and the one we have now

By Michael Fumento

O death, where is thy sting? Far too often it comes at the end of a mosquito's proboscis. The worst mosquito-borne disease, malaria, infects about 400 million people worldwide each year (90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa) and kills about 1.3 million of them. Compare that to the histrionics we've suffered over avian flu, which as of 2 April had infected 25 people and killed 12 this year. Or SARS, which killed 774 people worldwide before petering out.

As I write in TCS Daily, biotechnology may eventually come to the rescue. Scientists have announced they've built a better mosquito, one that doesn't become infected with the parasite that causes malaria. Ultimately, it's hoped, these mosquitoes will outbreed natural ones. A biotech malaria vaccine is also in the works. Aye, but there's the rub. A malaria vaccine has been in the works for decades. For now what we need is something that's tried and true and readily available. Yes, that means insecticides and yes that means DDT. Fortunately, pro-DDT activists are finally starting to gain the upper hand over spoiled brat environmentalists who think the deaths of black- and brown-skinned people don't count and know nothing more about DDT than that Rachel Carson made all sorts of horrible claims about it of which none have proved true.

Perform Miracles with Your PC

By Michael Fumento

"Distributed computing" could theoretically lead to such massive supercomputers as to cure every disease known to man. It works by tapping into the unused portion of your PC's CPU. One percent of all CPUs so linked would absolutely blow away the most powerful stand-alone supercomputers in existence. Read more about how this works and why you need to become a part of it in my new TCS.daily article, "An Idle Computer Is the Lord's Workshop."

Human avian flu cases at lowest level since outbreak began

By Michael Fumento

Yes, I'm the guy who has written that it's not so much the number of humans infected by birds that counts in determining the likelihood of a human avian flu pandemic but rather whether the disease changes so as to become more transmissible between humans. As I observed in my December 15 Weekly Standard article, "The Chicken Littles Were Wrong:"

The latest "scary news," promulgated in the November 23 [2006] issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by uber-alarmist Robert Webster of St. Jude Memorial Children's Hospital, is that human cases of H5N1 contracted from birds are continuing to increase. Indeed, confirmed cases for 2006 are running ahead of those for last year. But the difference is slight; 97 worldwide for all of last year versus 111 through the end of November 2006. This difference could be entirely explained by better surveillance. Moreover, the real concern is not sporadic bird-to-human transmission, but human-to-human transmission.

The Chicken Littles, conversely, have cited bird-to-human cases for no other reason than that those cases have been rising yearly since the latest outbreak began in 2003 and that generally speaking there's really nothing new with which to spook people. To that, I've pointed out the rise has actually been slowing. But now, while it's a bit early to say, it looks like they're now actually falling. Specifically, human avian cases flu spikes at around this time each year as this bar graph shows clearly. Cases for the last season were 12 in November, six in December, and 25 in January 2006. For this season it's 2, 5, and 7 respectively.

Mind you, in 2004 the peak month wasn't until March so we won't know until the WHO releases its March data to see how mild the season may turn out. But at this point, the lack of cases is looking to be quite tragic for the doomsayers. Stay tuned.

What's ailing Castro?

By Michael Fumento

According to new reports Fidel Castro may be dying from the same disease that almost killed me in April, 2005 in Fallujah. Called diverticulitis, it occurs when pouches (diverticula) in the large intestine (which in and of themselves are relatively common in adults) become perforated and flood the peritoneal cavity with germs. Prior to any such perforation, areas of colon with such pouches can be cut out and the colon reattached. But if perforated, this technique virtually guarantees continued infection and so standard procedure is to run the colon out the side through a colostomy. (Temporary in my case.) Castro's Spanish doctor assuredly knew this but was probably ordered by El Jefe to skip the colostomy. For his troubles, he ended up with one anyway. Between the disease and the surgery all of this is horribly painful - which is why I'm glad Fidel has it, notwithstanding that it gives us something in common besides smoking cigars and having ugly beards.

FluWiki editor displays dishonest of his site and himself

By Michael Fumento

FluWiki pretends to be an encyclopedia of that which we should know about avian flu and the possibility of it becoming a human pandemic. It is not. It is a propaganda site, dedicated to spreading alarmism. I pointed out in a previous blog that it even
carries advertising. To this, the editor responded:

Apparently, you are going around the internets [sic] spreading false information about Flu Wiki. On your blog, you state:

DemFromCT
Editor

My response:

You can stop squawking. I didn't say you blatantly posted ads. But you have them nonetheless. Under "Authoritative sources of background information" there is:

"Bird Flu is a Real Pandemic Threat to Humans," described as "An essay by Leonard Crane, author of Ninth day of Creation (2006)" It's hardly relevant to avian flu that he wrote this novel about biological terrorism (published in 2000, by the way) but it is relevant that you see fit to plug it. More importantly, in clicking on the link you provide we find it's nothing more than an advertisement for a book called "How To Protect Yourself And Your Loved Ones from BIRD FLU." In it we're warned in super-sized type: Right Now, Bird Flu Is Killing Entire Families in Indonesia -- Infecting a 2 Year Old Girl in Djibouti Africa and Forcing Quarantines in Romania!"

Authoritative, huh? No. The question is, why run something this insipid if it doesn't pay a kickback?

Under "Other sources of background information," you have "Joel Fuhrman M.D.'s Six Steps to Protect Your Family from Avian Flu." But click on the link and the reader finds it's actually an advertisement for his line of vitamins disguised as a blog.

Yet somehow you have no room to mention sources of background information such as my two articles that bird flu is not a real pandemic threat to humans and your family doesn't need protection from avian flu.

At the same time FluWiki disguises ads for nutty books and vitamins under legitimate-looking links, it censors articles that inform readers that avian flu H5N1 was actually discovered way back in 1959 and therefore has had far more time to become pandemic than most people believe, that recent CDC tests on ferrets show that fears of H5N1 reassorting with human flu are probably grossly overblown, or that your "expert" Laurie Garrett rose to fame and fortune by prediction a pandemic of Ebola - one of the hardest human viruses to transmit.

You're a dishonest person who runs a dishonest site. And by the way, my offer of 10 to one odds of no human pandemic in the next ten years is also open to you.

His incredible response:

Spam is spam. When you run a wiki, anyone can post links. There are literally thousands of pages and tens of thousands of links there. If you see any other commercial links, feel free to write and I'll remove them. These were commercial sites and they have been removed.

Flu Wiki is, was and will be a non-commercial site. It is a resource anyone can use. No kickbacks, no moneys accepted, no charge. When we have information to share, we give it away.

I will accept readership by public health departments around the world, visits by NIH and CDC on a daily basis, and positive reviews in Harvard Business Review and Science magazine, to name two, in lieu of your approval. I think it's a fair exchange.

I don't bet on natural disasters. I prepare for them and hope they never happen.

Cheers and good luck

My response:

How stupid do you think I am? You posted those links. [Or, I should have added, allowed them to stay up. Certainly when I posted a link to one of my avian flu articles he pulled it down.] YOU. Spam is unsolicited bulk email. As I said, you are a dishonest person with a dishonest website. And your refusal to take me up on my bet also shows you don't have the courage of your convictions. You know as well as I do there's no H5N1 pandemic coming, but you've got a business to run.

Everybody chickened out of my avian flu challenge

By Michael Fumento

Troll Lambert waving what he thinks is the Australian flag

It's now been a week since I threw down the gauntlet on my blog site and at Right Wing News to five avian flu alarmist bloggers who had attacked my Weekly Standard article, "The Chicken Littles Were Wrong: The Bird Flu Threat Flew the Coop." Since one had predicted a "50%/50%" [sic] chance of a bird flu pandemic among humans within the next year I gave him 10 to 1 odds there wouldn't be, noting that 2 to 1 odds would be even so that anything above that should be tempting. I then offered the same odds to the other four. As I expected, none of them took me up on it. Daily Kos simply ignored it; but after all they're Daily Kos so they can do whatever they like, right? A blogger who goes by "Revere" and posted "Fumento's Bird Flu Follies" at Effect Measure also ignored it. But then, his blog actually had little to do with avian flu; rather it was mostly one long ad hominem attack on me. He even referred to my article as "sleaze," a rather strange term to describe a science article. Three bloggers outright refused the bet.

One was Mr. "50%/50%," an anonymous fellow who runs "Avian Flu Diary." Obviously if your blog is about nothing but avian flu, you have an interest in promoting panic. (There are actually a number of such dedicated sites, primarily FluWiki, which refuses to post my material but has no problem posting opinion pieces like A Severe Pandemic Is Likely and running ads from pharmaceutical companies that make flu drugs.) But our diarist friend had no interest in the bet. "Possible Interstate [sic] gambling law violations aside, this is far too serious a subject to debase by making side bets on whether millions of people will die," he whimpered. Personal bets violate no gambling laws, nor do serious subjects prevent bets. Translation: "Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!" He does not have the courage of his convictions, beyond the conviction to keep his blog alive.

Another was "Mad Mike the Biologist," who posts over at "Science Blogs." From other posters and posts I've seen there it should be called "Superstition Blogs." In the event, despite the written record on his own blog site he denied having even challenged the basis of my article. Never mind that the blog post in question, which in the title called me a "disingenuous ideologue," began: "Revere, over at Effect Measure, has a solid critique of Michael Fumento's opinion piece about avian flu. What the piece shows is just how ignorant of public health Fumento really is." That's not a challenge? Translation: "Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!"

Finally we have Tim Lambert, whose original post criticizing my article is here. Lambert is one of the most obnoxious trolls on the Internet. He produces nothing; he exists to tear down other people to make up for some perceived deficiency on his part. Perhaps it's a deficiency that can be measured with a three-inch ruler; I don't know. Some people buy a flashy sports car in his case, but Troll Lambert uses all his spare time to write fraudulent Wikipedia biographies about people who get more attention than he does (approximately 6.3 billion) and to try to poke fun of them on his blog. In his desperation he often makes an utter fool of himself and this was no exception. Aside from refusing the bet, Troll Lambert claimed that my giving 10 to 1 odds meant I believed there was a ten percent chance of pandemic flu over the next ten years. Right, Troll. And my saying "The sky is sunny" means that I believe Al Qaeda will set off a dirty bomb in Wichita, Kansas. I picked the 10 to 1 figure for the rather obvious reason that people like round numbers and we have a base 10 system. Now, Lambert is an Aussie and maybe Australia doesn't use the decimal system - but I'm pretty sure it does. I know they have chickens over there; Troll Lambert is proof.

And they're we have it; five flu alarmists offered the chance to make a chunk of change and all five refused it. What does this tell us? They'll spew and spew and spew, but they know that what they say just isn't true.

Bloomberg News's Attempted Backlash on Avian Flu

By Michael Fumento

"Bird flu infected fewer humans in the second half of the year, prompting experts to point to a new enemy in the fight against a possible pandemic: complacency." So begins an end-of-year Bloomberg News article by By Jason Gale and John Lauerman. But most of the article shows why there is, indeed, no great cause for worry. ["Complacency," of course, has a negative connotation suggesting there is a real threat.] Indeed, the very next line explains, "The lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza was reported in people every two days in the first half [of the year]. Since July, the number of cases has slowed to about one a week and scientists say the virus hasn't yet found a way to easily infect humans."

Actually, I have never read an article or quote by anyone saying this is a reason to worry less. Indeed, the article provides a good quote from my December 25 Weekly Standard piece about the lack of mutation being a good sign and it provides another good quote from Peter Palese, chair of Mount Sinai School of Medicine's department of microbiology in New York. "The virus hasn't really gone in a major way into humans. That is a very important fact, which makes it doubtful that H5N1 is really the next pandemic strain," he states.

I specifically wrote that the number of infected humans has gone up slightly from 2005 to 2006, but that's probably the result of better surveillance and in any case irrelevant. What really matters is whether it becomes readily transmissible between humans, not how many humans catch it from birds.

Indeed, it's that very increase (both cases and deaths) that pandemic panic-mongering websites have used against me, indicating that they didn't actually read the article, didn't have the intelligence to understand the article, or didn't have the honesty to relay to readers what was in the article. For example, Daily Kos reprinted a World Health Organization (WHO) graph showing human avian flu cases by month since 2003 shown on both a cumulative line chart and a bar graph with each bar representing one month. All the bars show is that avian flu cases, like human flu cases, are seasonal. But the line graph may look scary because it shows more human cases this past year than the previous year and the previous year before that. In fact, as I pointed out, it's only a slight increase from last year to this and - once again - it's not bird-to-human cases that we should worry about.

But if you are worried about them, here are some interesting statistics from the WHO year-end statistics. Cases from 2003 to 2004 increased about 1100 percent; from 2004 to 2005 they increased about 100 percent; but from 2005 to 2006 they increased less than 18 percent. In other words, by the alarmists' own fake standards the increase in cases among humans would appear to be reassuring based on the limited number of years of data available. Further, as I pointed out in my article, "Far more people die of tuberculosis in an hour than all those known to have died from H5N1."

Ultimately, no matter how you look at it, the pandemic panic-mongers don't have a chicken leg to stand on.

My avian flu challenge to the leftist bird-brained squawkers

By Michael Fumento

This month, the Weekly Standard published my article "The Chicken Littles Were Wrong: The Bird Flu Threat Flew the Coop." It was a follow-up to my cover piece from the year before, "Fuss and Feathers: Pandemic Panic over the Avian Flu."

After the blogger at Avian Flu Diary, whose expertise in the disease stems from being a former paramedic, declared me a fool on his website for writing that second article, he later made the mistake of making a prediction. Specifically, he said there was a "50%/50%" chance of such a pandemic in the next year. He didn't realize that one of the most important rules of alarmism is to never allow yourself to be pinned down by actual dates. You just say we're all doomed and leave the time frame open, allowing yourself a permanent escape hatch. In any case, I took advantage of Mr. Paramedic's oversight to bet him 10-1, with him picking the dollar amount, that there would be no such pandemic in the next 365 days. Odds of 2-1 would be even, so this is an offer you'd think he'd snap up. So far no reply. Now I'm extending the challenge to all bloggers who've ignored my flawless track record on disease scares dating back 20 years and who have said in no uncertain terms that I've been grossly irresponsible and a total idiot on the subject of pandemic flu. That includes Daily Kos, "Revere" at Effect Measure, ("I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and say something about this sleaze." Science as sleaze?) and Mike the Mad Biologist at Science Blogs ("What the piece shows is just how ignorant of public health Fumento really is.") Naturally it also includes Mr. Troll himself Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

Okay guys, put your bucks where your blogs are! Ten to one odds for each of you; each gets to pick the amount in question. I say the year 2008 will roll around and there will be plenty of terrible problems in the world, but pandemic avian flu won't be among them. Naturally some of these anti-scientists have insinuated that somebody must be paying me to say pandemic avian flu is a bunch of bird droppings -- that's also how the alarmist game is played; if you can't counter the facts, attack the messenger. Well this time I am going to make some money! Or at least try. If the year-long period sounds a bit short, keep in mind that it's our paramedic friend who suggested it and that I've been writing about pandemic avian flu alarmism since my "Chicken Little Gets the Flu" article in the Wall Street Journal in January of 1998 -- yes, nine years now. They've had their time. I'll let you know at my website if anybody has the courage of their alleged conviction to take me up on my generous offer. Of course, maybe they'll think this is "sleaze" too, since naturally I along with everybody else will have chirped my last chirp by then anyway.

Erin Brockovich is again full of . . . um . . . it

By Michael Fumento

Erin Brockovich hasn't had much to laugh about this year

This hasn't been a good year for "America's Sweetheart." In one recent setback, in which she acted as plaintiff, she sued 31 hospitals she claimed were making unfair claims against Medicare. Her payoff would have been tremendous. But two separate judges tossed out all 31 cases, asserting that among other things Brockovich has no standing since she has no involvement in any way with Medicare nor was ever even treated by the hospitals in question. Any first-year law student could have told her that.

Far worse for Brockovich was the November 22 Los Angeles County Superior Court decision to reject the first 12 cases in litigation her firm of Masry & Vititoe began in 2003 against the city of Beverly Hills, the school district, and a slew of oil companies. The suit claims an oil rig on the campus of Beverly Hills High School caused extraordinary high rates of several types of cancer among the approximately 11,000 alumni who attended between 1975 and 1997. Yet the firm never proffered the least evidence that, while some alumni certainly have suffered from cancer, the rig had or even was capable of causing the diseases in question.

Now Brockovich is on the warpath against a proposed composting facility near the town that made her rich, Hinkley. She sides with those who insist that the material collected from municipal sewage systems would send harmful bacteria, viruses, or at the least nasty smells and flies towards the tiny California town. She's done radio shows on the subject, as always has gotten tons of media attention, and she even paid to bring in a bus load of activists.

But again, Brockovich is on the wrong side of reality.

The compost company, Nursery Products of Apple Valley, California, only takes in biomass from area sewage systems that has already gone through a four-step clean-up process. After it arrives at the composting facility, the biomass is mixed with wood fiber and heated to 131 degrees as mandated by the EPA to kill bacteria.

"The site without a doubt carries zero risk to public health and the environment," Alan Rubin, chief author of the EPA's regulation-setting standards on using and composting biosolids, told me. He's now a consultant to Nursery Products but worked at the EPA for 28 years. "There will be no impact to groundwater, no impact on surface water, and windblown pathogens wouldn't survive more than a few seconds" he said.

As to smells and flies, the closest edge of Hinkley to the facility would be eight miles away - plenty of space for odors and insects to dissipate. On the other hand, the town has a dairy farm right next to its school. Thus on a daily basis the dairy exposes kids to raw manure with accompanying bacteria, smells, and flies. Ah! But that's homegrown manure, bacteria, smells, and flies. Still, anything that embarrasses Brockovich and further reveals her as all breasts and no brains can't be all bad.

The NY Post informs me I have a terrible illness.

By Michael Fumento

In its effort to push "World Trade Center Syndrome," though it never actually uses that term, the New York Post tells us of an allegedly dying nun who attended to victims of the 9/11 attacks and "now suffers from asthma, reactive airways dysfunction syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and gastroesophageal reflux disease -- all severe illnesses that have plagued WTC workers." Gee, I had no idea that my heartburn -- clinically known as gastroesophageal reflux disease -- that I readily treat with one over-the-counter pill daily was a "severe illness." There is also little evidence that "reactive airways dysfunction syndrome" is a real disorder. Asthma when treated properly isn't fatal. All that leaves is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Meanwhile, asthma and hearburn can be caused by or certainly aggravated by obesity. COPD can be aggravated by obesity because of all the bulk on the lungs and diaphragm. Take a look at the picture of the nun. If she doesn't want to die, she should consider losing about half her weight.

Another strike against an avian flu pandemic

By Michael Fumento

Worries that avian flu would combine with human flu to become a pandemic human strain have been knocked down more than a notch by the failure of scientists to succeed in doing so intentionally, much less through the happenstance that occurs in the wild. According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientists made two hybrid viruses and infected ferrets with them. No uninfected ferrets caught the disease. Moreover, the hybrids "were also not as able to cause severe disease as the original H5N1 virus," according to one of the researchers, Jackie Katz. The most important lesson, she said, is "the knowledge that this process isn't simple, the procedure for the virus to acquire the properties of transmissibility."

As you might guess, CDC Director and avian flu alarmist Julie Geberding was miffed. So we're not all going to die after all. Can't win 'em all, Julie!

"Pacemakers" for the brain

By Michael Fumento

People think that since I've written a whole book on biotechnology that I'm less keen on other areas of life sciences. By no means. I haven't gotten around to writing on nanotechnology, but bionics is fascinating -- and the subject of my latest piece in TechCentralStation.

Another "non-discriminatory" disease

By Michael Fumento

I was flacked today by a PR agency declaring in the subject line, "Breast Cancer Doesn't Discriminate" and then stating in the body, "Statistics show that although African American women have a lower rate of breast cancer compared with white counterparts, their mortality rates are at least 9 percent higher."

In other words, in two very important ways breast cancer DOES discriminate. Is nothing so important that it's safe from political correctness?

13-year-old newsflash! Cell phones are safe!

By Michael Fumento

It was 13 years ago, writing in Investor's Business Daily, that I became the first reporter in the country to present evidence that cell phones have no link to brain cancer. Now the biggest study ever on the issue has been released and it finds . . . cell phones have no link to brain cancer. Was I a genius? No, everybody else involved was just plain dumb. And this makes an especially good example of the incredible poverty of health and science reporting in the country, then and now.

It started when Larry King invited a man onto his show who claimed that since his wife developed a fatal brain tumor three months after she began using a cell phone and the tumor began on the same side of the head as she held it, the cancer simply must have resulted from phone emissions.

Yes, it really was that insipid. And it set off a panic. I had to point out that, believe it or not, people were getting brain tumors before cell phones were ever invented. I further noted that the American Cancer Society says 17,500 brain cancers are diagnosed each year, of which about two thirds are fatal, and already at that time about 4% of the population was using the type of cell phone that had an antenna attached to it (as opposed the older types with antennas on the car). That meant simple chance dictated 180 cell phone users would die of brain tumors. Larry King left unaccounted for 179.

Further, I had to point out that brain tumors simply don't manifest in three months. In fact, the average time from what's called the "insult" to diagnosis is nine years. Averages are just that, but three months? What an utterly bizarre claim. Yet no other reporter in the country bothered to look for these numbers, either because they didn't have the brains or they didn't have the integrity to dig up the evidence they knew would kill their own stories. Either way, trust me, nothing has changed with them.

So much for that "50%" avian flu fatality rate

By Michael Fumento

In my Weekly Standard "Fuss and Feathers" piece of 21 November 2005, I ripped the "50% death rate" experts claimed avian flu victims suffered.

"First, all avian flu deaths so far have occurred in countries with medical systems that are dismal compared with ours. Would you choose a Cambodian hospital to treat your flu? Second, that more or less 50 percent death rate comes from those ill enough to require medical attention--the sickest of the sick. Our experience with normal influenza is that many who become infected have no symptoms at all, nary a sniffle. So we know the numerator, but without the denominator it's useless."

Almost two months later, researchers reporting in the Archives of Internal Medicine found "Our epidemiological data are consistent with transmission of mild, highly pathogenic avian influenza to humans and suggest that transmission could be more common than anticipated, though close contact seems required." If I knew that, why didn't top health officials and pseudo-expert Laurie Garrett? Either they did and decided not to let us in on the secret or they didn't. Neither answer is reassuring.

Chuck Colson and Scottish Chickens

By Michael Fumento

In a column today kindly discussing my Weekly Standard article, "Fuss and Feathers," Chuck Colson notes, "What's more, there is no evidence as yet that H5N1 has mutated into a form that can be transmitted from person to person. It's not for lack of time: Contrary to what you might have been led to believe, H5N1 has been around since at least 1997 and possibly as far back as 1992."

Actually, I wrote (based on a discovery that floored me when I made it) that it was first recognized in Scottish chickens in 1959! So here's a virus that's been mutating and making contact with humans for at least 46 years and in all that time hasn't yet become transmissible between humans. That's not to say it won't ever; but if it hasn't in the last half century there's no good reason to think it will in the next half century, much less the few years needed to stockpile mountains of antiviral drugs and develop an effective vaccine. Never has a Scottish chicken been so important; why do our health officials refuse to mention them?

Medical Journals Join Criticism over Herceptin "Cure"

By Michael Fumento

In the wake of three studies published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, news outlets around the world pronounced the highly-expensive drug Herceptin to be literally a "cure" for breast cancer. As I pointed out in my column last week, for about three-fourths of women it's utterly useless. It only helps if the tumor emits a certain protein that most do not. Yet even for such women, on whom the studies were conducted, the studies were far too short and the data far too unconvincing to possibly justify such hype. Now Britain's Number One medical journal, The Lancet, and America's Number Two medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), have weighed in. Conclusion. We're looking at Herceptin Horse Hockey.

"The available evidence is insufficient to make reliable judgments," The Lancet stated in an online editorial. "It is profoundly misleading to suggest, even rhetorically, that the published data may be indicative of a cure for breast cancer." The editor told reporters, "Study results are preliminary, inconsistent and raise extremely serious concerns about safety."

JAMA, meanwhile, ran a letter critiquing the policy of cutting drug trials short simply because it looked like the group receiving the medicine was doing better than that which wasn't. The Herceptin trials (which were originally announced last May) were examples. The idea of "breaking the code" and giving everybody the drug is that it's the ethical thing to do; but in reality you lose a tremendous opportunity to distinguish the value -- and potential harm -- of a drug over a longer period of time. In some cases a drug that in the short run appears effective in a slightly long trial loses its effectiveness.

Now I'm getting letters from women with breast cancer (or who have friends with it) blasting me for NOT lying to them. Go figure; they can't tell the difference between a responsible science writer and a politician.

Update on Avian Flu piece in Weekly Standard

By Michael Fumento

"Fuss and Feathers: Pandemic Panic over the Avian Flu Threat" will be the cover of the Weekly Standard on November 14. When I found that out last week I wrote to my editor and asked him, "If it turns out I'm wrong and we all die of flu before the piece comes out do I still get a kill fee?"

You dirty rotten non-liar!

By Michael Fumento

It's not too often readers accuse me of not lying, but one has regarding my "Breast Cancer Herceptin Hype" piece.

Dear Michael.

Please tell me what good came out of your column this morning. All you did was take away any hope women had of recovery. Did you give them an alternative to Herceptin?

Will it help them to know they may die? You certainly didn't do anything for their quality of life. All you did was try and be the big shot on the block with news that kills the hope of dying women. You are a grand stander---no one cares that you disclosed information that may or may bit be true. Right now you don't have anything better to offer. Obviously you have never been faced with a life threatening disease yourself, or you would know that hope is sometimes all anyone has. I'm sick for anyone reading your column today. I happen to have a good friend on that new medicine and it has given her hope. Thanks for nothing.

Sandy

Leominster, Massachusetts

Who leaked my upcoming Weekly Standard "bird flu" piece?

By Michael Fumento

From a blogsite posting of November 2:

The Truth About Avian Flu
Michael Fumento has written an excellent article about the 'avian flu':

Actually, this is about my 1998 piece for the Wall Street Journal, as the blogger points out at the end. I guess panics are like fashions; wait long enough and everything comes back in vogue.

Mosquitoes, DDT, and repellent bloggers

By Michael Fumento

Deltoid's Tim Lambert, a blogger whose ranking has been dropping dramatically over the last year, has a vendetta against me because I've repeatedly made him look like a fool. That's so unfair; after all, making him look like a fool is like shooting blue whales in a coffee cup. His latest attack goes back to my piece at the beginning of year regarding the awful South Asian tsunami in which I noted the possibility of pestilence and said that, using the section Lambert lambastes, "The best answer would be spraying with DDT. Unfortunately, environmentalists have demonized DDT based essentially on unfounded accusations in a 1962 book, Silent Spring. DDT should be sprayed on water pools, tents, and on people themselves -- as indeed was once common in Sri Lanka and throughout most of the world."

Lambert quotes from a WHO report that, "Endemic sporadic malaria close to the affected areas transmitted by [the mosquito] An.culicifacies, which has been considered DDT-resistant for many years, but is still sensitive to organophosphates, such as malathion, and pyrethroids." Comments Tiny Tim, "Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn't work any more."

Being a little insect himself, you'd think he'd know a bit more about this. Resistance doesn't mean "immunity." Often it simply means using more insecticide in the spray than you would otherwise. It's the same with antibiotic resistance. Further, because resistance is a drain on an insect's physiology, after a time that resistance begins to fade. It has certainly been long enough since mosquitoes in those areas were sprayed with DDT that many will have lost resistance. But there's more yet.

Mosquitos "are almost certainly not going to become immune to DDT's most valuable attribute: its repellency," writes DDT expert Paul Driessen. Even in tiny quantities "DDT keeps up to 90% of the mosquitoes from even entering a home. It irritates those that do come in, so they don't bite; and it kills any that land on the walls, before they can infect another person. No other insecticide, at any price, can do that or do it for six months or more with a single application."

He knows whereof he speaks: The Journal of Vector Borne Diseases last June concluded: "The overall results of the study revealed that DDT is still a viable insecticide in indoor residual spraying owing to its effectivity in well supervised spray operation and high excito-repellency factor."

Now, you'd think that if there were one thing Lambert would know about it would be repellency.

"Epidemic" has now officially lost all meaning

By Michael Fumento

"Indonesia on brink of bird flu epidemic," blares the headline in the online version of the Courier-Mail, one of Australia's largest-circulation newspapers. Total deaths? Uh, one possible but none confirmed. Okay, total infected? Uh, seven possible but none confirmed. Total population of Indonesia? 220 million. Still, it's never too soon to panic, eh mates!