Southeast Michigan is currently in the midst of a hepatitis A outbreak that started in August 2016. In Algonac, a small town in the Thumb region, the mayor decided to help a restaurant whose business suffered when one of its new staff members under training caught hepatitis A. Unfortunately, the form that help took was to host an antivaccine propaganda meeting.
Orac is back, and what does he encounter upon his return? Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the Orwellian-named antivaccine propaganda organization, the National Vaccine Information Center, pontificating about “informed consent” and vaccines. What she really means is misinformed consent to refuse vaccines, as in consent based on misinformation, pseudoscience, and fear mongering about vaccines. Naturally, she can’t resist bringing in Nazis as well.
Ever since the $200 million gift by Susan and Henry Samueli to UC-Irvine, I’ve been thinking about the “integration” of quackery into medicine through integrative medicine. The way advocates of quackademic medicine are going to make this “integration” really happen is to start with the medical schools.
Epsom salt, like the Earth in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, is mostly harmless; that is, except in the hands of a naturopath.
Rachel Bredow is antivaccine and doesn’t want her children vaccinated. Her ex-husband disagrees. When Ms. Bredow violated a court order to vaccinate her child, she was thrown into jail for contempt of court. Unfortunately, our local media have not exactly covered themselves in glory covering this story.
