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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Personal

Requiem for a friend I’ve never met

I didn’t feel much like blogging last night, but I felt as though I had to, even if it’s brief. Yesterday was one of those crappy days where there were a lot of problems that didn’t relent, so much so that I was completely occupied and didn’t check my e-mail until the evening. It was […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Mark Hyman: Mangling cancer research and systems biology in the service of woo

It occurs to me that I ought to thank Mark Hyman, “pioneer of functional medicine,” and creator of “Ultrawellness,” particularly since he started blogging for that wretched hive of scum and quackery (WHSQ), The Huffington Post. He may not post all that often, but when he does I can be assured that the woo will […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Integrating patient experience into research and clinical medicine: Will this lead to true “personalized medicine”?

I advocate science-based medicine (SBM) on this blog. However, from time to time, consider it necessary to point out that SBM is not the same thing as turning medicine into a science. Rather, I argue that what we do as clinicians should be based in science. Contrary to what some might claim, this is not […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Yet more evidence that Andrew Wakefield is anti-vaccine

As a final post on Vaccine Awareness Week, after having asked what it means to be anti-vaccine, before moving onI thought I’d post this video, a link to which Andrew Wakefield himself tweeted: Who says Andrew Wakefield is not anti-vaccine? If he does, he’s lying. But, then, Andrew Wakefield does lie a lot.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience

Battling misinformed consent: How should we respond to the anti-vaccine movement?

Antivaxers frequently claim that they are champions of “informed consent.” In reality, their version of informed consent is a parody of consent that I like to refer to as “misinformed consent.”