Recently, Sen. Jim Abeler of Minnesota created the MN Autism Council, an advisory panel tasked with advising the legislature on autism policy. A closer look at the story reveals that Sen. Abeler is a chiropractor, two of the members are antivaxers, and one of them was a founding member tasked with forming the council. This is how antivaccine activism is disguised as autism advocacy.
Category: Autism

Antivaccine legislator Sen. Paul Boyer is doing his best to make measles great again in Arizona
Arizona state Senator Paul Boyer introduced a bill that would "make measles great again" under the guise of "informed consent." It is in reality "misinformed consent." Isn't it great to have antivaxers trying to inflict disease on children?

James Lyon-Weiler and IPAK are running a dubious “vaxxed versus unvaxxed” study
An antivaccine group in Washington is raising money for a dubious "vaxxed/unvaxxed" study for IPAK, James Lyons-Weiler, a bioinformatics scientist turned antivaxer, who plans on analyzing data from a large practice.

Dr. David Brownstein versus the New York Times on vaccines
Dr. David Brownstein is a local "holistic medicine" doctor. Unhappy at a pro-vaccine New York Times editorial, he tried to refute it. It didn't go well—for Dr. Brownstein. His self-own was epic.

Dr. Andrew Zimmerman: A useful idiot for the antivaccine movement
Dr. Andrew Zimmerman issued a press release claiming he had been misrepresented in a news report by antivaxer Sharyl Attkisson. He wasn't. Rather, he's been a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement.

Vaxelis: The first hexavalent vaccine is approved in the US, and antivaxers don’t like it
Over the holidays, on the day after Christmas, Merck and Sanofi announced FDA approval of Vaxelis, a new hexavalent vaccine. It's great news for children. Unsurprisingly, antivaxers hate it.

Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed
Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.

Did the pneumococcal vaccine lay Lou Ferrigno low?
Lou Ferrigno, who played the Incredible Hulk in the late 1970s, recently Tweeted that he had been hospitalized for "fluid in his bicep" after a "pneumonia vaccine," and antivaxers went wild trying to tie it to their bogus concept of "vaccine injury." What really happened?

Rep.-Elect Mark Green: A new antivaccine crank goes to Congress
Here we go again. Meet Rep-Elect Mark Green. He's following in the footsteps of Reps. Dan Burton and Bill Posey in bringing the antivaccine crazy to Congress, only this time for the people of Tennessee.

Brian Hooker’s antivaccine pseudoscience has risen from the dead to threaten children again
Remember Brian Hooker's pseudoscience-laden "study" linking the MMR vaccine with autism in African-American boys? It's back from the dead! Even more hilariously, it' was published in that rag of a "journal" for all things right wing conspiracy pseudoscience, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.