As a deadly measles outbreak continued to kill children in Samoa, antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote to Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi. His deceptive pseudoscientific talking points became the template for antivaxers seeking to deflect blame from themselves.
Yesterday, antivaxers held a protest event on the Mall in Washington, DC that they called the Vaccine Injury Epidemic (VIE) Event. Misnformation flowed fast and furious.
Orac has been writing about this a long time. Finally, the mainstream media are noticing how antivaxers target minorities with their message.
Ezekiel Stephan was a toddler who died tragically in 2012 because his parents did not treat his bacterial meningitis with medicine, but rather with quackery. His parents were convicted, then acquitted on appeal. A week ago, his father attacked the Canadian Medical Association for reporting on a petition doctors sent to the court urging that courts overturn the acquittal.
Bal Gill saw a hot spot on her breast on a thermal image she had taken at Camera Obscura in Edinburgh. This led her to see her doctor, who diagnosed breast cancer. Although a happy coincidence, this incident does not mean that thermography is an effective modality to detect occult breast cancer.
