Every so often, something happens that rekindles the need in me to discuss what, exactly, it means to be “antivaccine.” As many of my readers know, if there’s one thing about antivaccinationists, it’s that they assiduously avoid ever admitting that they are antivaccinationists. In order to avoid having to make that admission, they’ll go through […]
Category: Antivaccine nonsense
Back in September, I merrily applied a little not-so-Respectful Insolence to the service of deconstructing the overwhelmingly silly fear mongering by a group known as SANE Vax over the alleged discovery of HPV DNA in the HPV vaccine. SANE Vax, as you may recall, is a group founded by a woman named Norma Erickson dedicated […]
Any regular reader of this blog knows who Andrew Wakefield is. He’s the British gastroenterologist who almost singlehandedly ignited a panic about the MMR vaccine (well, not quite single-handedly; the sensationalistic British press helped a lot) with his shoddy, fraudulent research linking the MMR vaccine to “autistic enterocolitis” and then later to autism itself. Ultimately, […]
If there’s one thing I’ve learned during the last seven years about the antivaccine crowd invested in the idea that vaccines cause autism, it’s that it reacts with extreme hostility to any sort of studies that cast doubt upon their pet idea that vaccines cause autism. That’s somewhat understandable, given how much of their identity […]
Mayim Bialik plays the neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler on the geek comedy The Big Bang Theory. Unfortunately, in real life, Bialik is nothing like her fictional character Amy. In fact, Bialik is heavily into the woo and antivaccine enough to have become a celebrity spokeswoman for the Holistic Moms Network. Say it ain’t so!