"A statement of fact cannot be insolent." The miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine, quackery, science, and pseudoscience (and anything else that interests him).

Category: Antivaccine nonsense

The Chicago Tribune’s Julie Deardorff and the mercury militia: Do newspapers have a responsibility for policing their blogs?

Post author By Orac
Post date October 10, 2007
10 Comments on The Chicago Tribune’s Julie Deardorff and the mercury militia: Do newspapers have a responsibility for policing their blogs?

One development that will increasingly pose an interesting and perhaps uncomfortable question for newspapers is the increasing addition of blogs run under the banner of newspapers. I’m not sure if it’s cluelessness about the blogosphere leading newspapers to think that they can have bloggers write whatever they want under the newspaper’s banner and not have […]

Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

The “Satanic sorcery” of vaccines?

Post author By Orac
Post date October 9, 2007
65 Comments on The “Satanic sorcery” of vaccines?

On occasion, I’ve thought of inaugurating awards for the looniest quackery, alternative medicine, or antivaccination craziness of the year. I was thinking of calling them the Woo Awards, but I’ve never actually gotten off my lazy posterior to do the work it would take to set up some sort of voting system, and I’m not […]

Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

A bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to support an association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for the mercury militia. Think about it. They’ve been claiming for the past several years that the mercury in the thimerosal used as a preservative in childhood vaccines is a cause of autism. If you believe Generation Rescue, A-CHAMP, SAFEMINDS, and various other activist groups, vaccines are the root […]