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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

Representative Dan Burton: Abusing his power to influence the outcome of the Autism Omnibus hearings?

It’s been a while since I mentioned the Autism Omnibus hearings. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of all the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who “feel” that their children’s autism was caused by vaccines. Many, but not all, of the plaintiffs blame the mercury in the […]

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Announcements Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Paranormal Pareidolia Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Christmas is coming, and so is the Skeptics’ Circle

It’s almost here. No, not Christmas, although that’s almost here too. what I’m talking about is the fast-approaching 76th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle, which is due to land at Aardvarchaelogy on Thursday, December 20, right in time for the holidays. (And what better time to indulge in a serious dose of skepticism than in […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

You know the antivaccinationists are going to go nuts over this one

There’s been a bit of bad news on the vaccination front: ATLANTA – More than a million doses of a common vaccine given to babies as young as 2 months were being recalled Wednesday because of contamination risks, but the top U.S. health official said it was not a health threat. The recall is for […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Dr. Rashid Buttar: “The medical board is a ‘rabid dog'”

Dr. Rashid Buttar is a quack. There, I’ve said it. It’s my opinion, and there’s lots of evidence to support that opinion. As you know, I seldom actually invoke the “q-word.” Indeed, for the longest time after I started blogging I tended to go out of my way to avoid using it, even to the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Surgery

An autistic child pays the price for Andrew Wakefield’s antivaccination “research”

Andrew Wakefield is an incompetent “scientist.” Of that, there is no longer any doubt whatsoever, given how poorly he and his collaborators did the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) studies that he did looking for measles RNA sequences in colon biopsy specimens taken from autistic children, studies in which they failed to do even the most […]