Happy Orange Gnome

I was watching Oprah today (a momentary lapse in judgement) and Jenny McCarthy was on talking about her son’s autism.

“Coming up next: Jenny tells us what she thinks caused her son’s autism…”

If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.

If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.

If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.

And then I was very upset.

She blamed the MMR (measle, mumps & rubella) vaccine and the use of thimerosal, which contains a tiny amount of mercury, for her child’s autism.

Her evidence? Her child became autistic some unspecified amount of time after the MMR inoculation.

The problems with her evidence?

1. Thimerosal is no longer used in the U.S. and Canada in any childhood vaccines, except in some flu vaccines, yet autism rates are supposed to be rising. (In fact, it probably wasn’t used in her son’s MMR vaccination.)
2. If small amounts of mercury cause autism, how come nobody ever blames fish?
3. There are children that get the MMR vaccination after they have become autistic and people that are autistic that have never had any inoculations. What caused it for them?
4. There have never been any credible studies that have found a link between vaccines and autism.

And now there are people that have watched Oprah that will not have their children vaccinated, because of Jenny’s socially irresponsible, anecdotal, bullshit “evidence” about autism.

I hate to think about children that could possibly contract a horrible disease and die because of this stupid stupid show. It might be none. It might be one.

One is way too many.

And to all people that still believe that vaccines will give your child autism, I offer to you my own personal belief:

It is better to live with autism than it is to die from measles.

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Every year, for about the last five years, people in the media have been predicting that, come flu season, there’s going to be a bird flu pandemic and it’s going to infect 99% of the world’s population and 50 billion lives will be lost.

And every year, more people die from getting hit in the head with a coconut than from the bird flu.

My ultimate summation? THE BIRD FLU PANDEMIC ISN’T COMING!

But, Laurel, the last flu pandemic was the Spanish Flu in 1918. Aren’t we long overdue for another one?

Hey, I haven’t seen any bubonic plague pandemics around here in a while, either. Isn’t it about time for another one?

Pandemics don’t run on a schedule. Life is far too dynamic for that. The next pandemic could be a 1000 years from now. It’s really hard to tell how and when a virus is going to mutate.

Also, wasn’t there some sort of really big war going on, when the Spanish Flu happened, that might have had a lot of countries’ governments a little too busy to deal with the flu?

I heard that in humans the bird flu has a 70% mortality rate. Doesn’t that worry you!?

First of all, yes, about 70% of the known cases of people with bird flu have died, but I suspect that the vast majority of actual cases is unknown and most of the people that have died from bird flu are from developing nations, where just about any disease is likely to kill you.

Also, in most of these cases, the disease was discovered postmortem. Most people that were infected with the bird flu, probably survived and just thought it was the regular flu (the symptoms are practically the same), so they weren’t put in the statistics.

So what is the actual mortality rate? I don’t know, but it ain’t no 70%. I suspect that it’s actually pretty close to that of the regular flu.

It’s the morbidity rate that you have to be worried about and right now, it’s at about 0.000000001%.

If there isn’t really anything to be worried about, at the moment, what is all this fuss about?

1. It makes good television.
2. People stocking up on Tamiflu and shotgun shells boosts the economy.
3. Deep down, everyone wishes that everyone else was dead. We want the pandemic to happen.

And, yes, I am a doctor, so I do know about these things.

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So this guy comes knocking at our door (during dinner) and he asks us if we’re the ones that are stealing his wireless internet. We tell him that we aren’t and he grumbles off.

I did some sleuthing (I clicked the scan button on my wireless network dealy) and I’m pretty sure that the guy didn’t even bother configuring his network at all (unless he thought that naming it “linksys” and having no password was a good idea).

PROTIP: It’s easier to set a password than it is to track the people stealing your wireless signal down.

• Theft is a Justifiable Means of Acquiring Sustenance (0)

I had this dream once where I was the beef patty in a hamburger and along came the Hamburglar to try and steal me. I called out to Ronald McDonald for help, but when he turned around to look at me, he had no face. The Hamburglar ended up stealing me, but instead of eating me, he threw me in the air and I flew up and up and up, until I hit the moon.

ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE

• Hi, are you stealing my interwebs of the air? (4)

We took my grandmother to the dentist and there was a fish tank in the waiting room.

There was this scary looking lady standing with her noise pressed up against the glass of the tank and she was saying things like: “These fish can’t possibly be happy!” “How would you like it if you were locked up all your life!?” “How can the people that run this place be so monumentally evil!?”

She had a horrible flaky bald patch on the side of her head, smelled of doodie and thought that the best way to prepare for a dentist’s appointment was to chew thousands of mints (the kind that are almost entirely sugar) with her mouth gaping open.

I think she’s right. We should let the fish go free and put her in a tank.

• Quadroon!? (0)

“Is this girl a quadroon!?” shrieked my grandmother at the television.

You know grandma, I’m trying really hard to feel sorry for you, what with you dying and all, but when you start screaming out racial slurs from the 1800’s, I find it extremely hard.

Some things like racism should have died out long, long ago. Maybe the people that believe in them should die out too?

It’s a horrible thought.

• Fish Are People Too! (0)

My mother and I were having a conversation about what technology would be like in the future.

I said that I hoped that soon they could put my brain in a tank so that I could destroy my enemies.

My mom said, “No, your brain is too cute to be put in a tank.”

It’s true; my brain is pretty damned cute.

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Seriously, it dunna taste like the real sugar eh!?

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