Biology Digest

 Growing up as a 6-year-old kid in Utah, I frequently practiced basketball in my driveway, trying to do all of the dribble moves and shots I saw my hero, John Stockton, do on TV, including a simple crossover. It was hard. The ball was too big for my little hands to control. But everything changed in one day — my seventh birthday. My mom got me a vanilla cake with Stockton somehow made in imaged icing on the top, a thrill just to look at, let alone eat. I devoured too much of it, got home from my birthday party (at the Fun Dome, maybe?), and took out a basketball. Now, I could do it. I could do a crossover. Like it was nothing, in fact. (Basically, it is nothing, but don’t tell young Andy that.) I, somehow, had ingested Stockton’s soul, and his skills were now mine. It was magic. I relate this story to you now because Stockton is involved with an anti-vaccine video project based here in Utah — spreading theories that have about as much scientific validity as my “I ate cake-icing Stockto

  South Carolina State Representative Bill Chumley was feeling vindicated. His many suspicions about COVID-19 vaccines, he told VICE News, appeared to have been justified.  “I called my doctor early this morning,” Chumley said, after the news broke that the FDA has paused use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine over reports of six patients developing rare and serious blood clots two weeks after getting the vaccine. “His comment was that he’s more convinced than ever.” So is Chumley. That’s why, on March 2, he was one of the sponsors of South Carolina’s “Vaccine Bill of Rights,” a resolution stuffed with misinformation and conspiratorial language based on model legislation from a medical fringe group that’s become notorious in recent months.  Legislators in at least five states, VICE News has found, have introduced a so-called “Vaccine Bill of Rights.” The text of these bills is strikingly similar for a reason: They’re all based on a document released in January by a group called America

  As 2021 dawned, my first post of the year was about how many of my fellow physicians   behaved very badly   last year with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals bravely risked their lives to care for COVID-19 patients (and some even died of COVID-19), a small but disturbing and impossible-to-ignore number of doctors denied or   minimized   the pandemic,   sold unproven   or   even   quack “ cures ,” and helped   spread conspiracy theories   designed to spark resistance to public health interventions, like masking, social distancing, and closures of businesses that involve large numbers of people gathering. Some have even engaged in   germ theory denial   by claiming that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that has been shown to cause COVID-19, either doesn’t exist (it’s an exosome!) or doesn’t cause COVID-19. As these examples led me to think about how such people could get through medical school (just as Andrew Wakefield always

  In a recent case of a batch of spoiled vaccines at a Wisconsin hospital that lead to an ex pharmacist being detained, this lead to a spark  within the Pro-Vax Side conspiracy over anti-vaxxer politics. (Full Disclosure I am a Pro-Vaxxer and I sided with Richard Pan over Vaccine Laws SB276 and SB277 here in California). On our side we had tweets from scientists and physicians fighting to stop the pandemic with vaccine research having fears that the rogue person in question was an alleged anti-vaxxer hijacking the health care system for political reasons to prove that the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna and Pfizer  is unsafe. As of this posting lets just hope nobody in Wisconsin died from the tainted vaccines. However this is not the first time that anti-vaxxers came into the health care system because of political reasons such as "Medical Freedom" reasons. Two recent cases of anti-vaxxers abusing their powers within their medical license are Dr. Paul Thomas has his medical lic