Physician here. Obviously, cannot comment directly on what this person was told, but equally obviously, no, spider bites do not cause breast cancer, or any other cancer. On the topic of MRSA, though. In my area, 60-80% of skin infections are MRSA. These are sometimes caused by bug bites of whatever sort that get scratched open and infected. There is no way to tell what bit them. And, quite often, folks have already decided it was spiders, and yes, brown recluse gets blamed a lot. Earlier in my career i did spend time trying to educate my patients about that, but it never worked and eventually i gave up on it. Apparently, Virginia is infested with man-eating spiders. Who knew? Anyway, in my experience, âit was a spider biteâ is not generally wgat the patient was told, but it is certainly what they believe and might even hear. Itâs a common enough trope that the there might be some docs who even believe it, but most are probably just exhausted from swimming against the tide.
âIf it fits in their mouth, it will go in their mouthâ is a standard line at well checks many times a day in my life. Along with âthey are always looking for new and interesting ways to kill themselves.â And we keep giving them new and interesting ways. Parenting is not easy, man, but it is not optional either. (At least once the kid arrives! Prior to that, yeah, optional)
Only one quarter of sunscreens on store shelves are safe and effective, new report says
The âreportâ that CNNâs piece is about:
The PSA part of this is that the AMA (not always my favorite organization) has made an effort to step into this void on a Youtube channel that is worth keeping up wtih
A bit out of my usual sandbox, but I am getting to the age where every memory lapse has me questioning âIs that the first signâŚâ Having a not-autopsy diagnostic tool should be a godsend for us. Weâll see how it pans out. False positives, false negatives and viable treatment options are still pending, but itâs a first step.
The report also calls for new studies on childhood vaccines, which dozens of high-quality studies have found to be safe and effective.
Although the report states that vaccines protect children from infectious diseases, it also claims parents are concerned about their âappropriate useâ and their âpossible roleâ in chronic diseases among children.
âDespite the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule, there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease, the impacts of vaccine injury, and conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule. These areas warrant future inquiry,â the report states.
Dozens of studies have failed to find a link between an increased number of vaccines and more chronic disease among children.
While I find some of the goals of this statement laudatory, I do not believe for a moment any of them mean anything. The only one he and his goons actually can do anything about is decreasing trust in and access to vaccines.
I just donât get how people settled on the whole idea that vaccines, which OBJECTIVELY SAVE LIVES, are a massive danger to human health? Like⌠fuckinâ WHY?!? What is the underlying goal at hand? Is it just to make the woo-woo wellness industry even more profitable? Is it a eugenics thing? Both? Neither? A belief in some weird conspiracy theory?
I donât fucking get itâŚ
Donât know how it originated, I suspect it was multifactorial in the beginning, but at this point it is almost like a religion that is utterly resistant to facts and logic. Consider the mom in TX who had just lost her child to measles telling people not to get the shot because it was worse than the illness. Lady, your child died! How much worse can it be? But I cannot ask that. Itâs a âsincerely held beliefâ and therefore beyond questioning. Am I bitter? You bet your ass. The conversation here has become even more defined. We (providers) made it through covid, we cannot do another one already. If it hits here, we will lose folks. In my >30 year career, I have had 2 babies die of vaccine-preventable diseases. (Pertussis) I cannot start seeing more tiny body bags. And this one is aimed directly at my patients, which was never the case with covid. I do not know, man. It could be very, very bad.
Iâm recommending this to as many people as possible:
He makes great points and delivers them in an approachable way for people who are listening to fear-mongering instead of scientists, healthcare providers, and other experts.
Very trueâŚ
I sometimes hate waiting for someone to do a comprehensive history of stuff like that⌠I know someone will one day, but itâll be in like 30 years, cause this is still playing out now.
@PsiPhiGrrrl - I love Josh JohnsonâŚ
Her child could have survived but caught the autism? Clearly a fate worse than death.
As far as I understand it, all of the above.
Vaccine reluctance was there from the very beginning, of course, with protests against the first smallpox innoculations (which were done by giving people the milder cowpox instead, which is why a vaccine is called a vaccine, from Latin vacca = âcowâ). But then, there were protests against water safety and germ theory too.
Every new vaccination campaign had its share of âWhat is this? I donât understand the reason for it, therefore itâs an evil plot!â because there are always those people. Normally theyâre shouted down by science (eventually), but then⌠but thenâŚ
But then Andrew fucking Wakefield was hired by a group of these gibbering morons to prove them right, and he participated partly because they paid him to, but mainly, as far as we can see, so that he could undermine the safe existing vaccination regime and replace it with the patented regime heâd come up with.
Other antivax campaigns were more explicitly eugenicist, of course. The search for an AIDS vaccine was definitely slowed down by people wanting Those People to just die, for example.
So: Why? Novophobic paranoia, and âwellnessâ nonsense, and the grift, all coming together in a perfect storm in the late 90s, and Andrew Wakefield can be held almost (but not entirely) uniquely responsible for millions of preventable deaths. Others helped, but he was, I think, the catalyst for the cookersâ power now.
Lovely. Gotta love that shit. RFK jr will get right on that updated vaccine, right?
So many places this could go. Chose this, but Goddam Trump Admin would work as well.
The poisonings were first revealed in cases in Hickory, North Carolina, where officials relied on help from the CDC to track down the source. The CDCâs investigation subsequently identified 566 lead-poisoned children across 44 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, and helped get the tainted applesauce off shelves, Stat noted.
If the poisonings had happened now, âwe wouldnât have been able to do the broad outreach to tell all the state lead programs to look out for this, and we wouldnât have been able to measure the impact because CDC is the one that does that across state lines,â one laid-off CDC worker told the outlet.
But, hey, the parents should do their own research and choose better options, right!?!?
The battle cry of the genocidal dipshit.
Sleep apnea pill shows striking success in large clinical trial
Drug combination targeting lax airways is nearing an FDA submission
https://www.science.org/content/article/sleep-apnea-pill-shows-striking-success-large-clinical-trial
One Type of Mammogram Proves Better for Women With Dense Breasts
Contrast-enhanced mammography identified three times as many tumors as ultrasound scans. But it is not widely used for screening in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/health/dense-breasts-cancer-mammograms.html