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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

The 2009 recipient of the Richard Dawkins Award (a.k.a Bill Maher) “doesn’t believe in” vaccines or “Western medicine”

No màs! No màs! I surrender! I give up! I tried. I really, really did try. I tried really, really hard not to look at the flaming idiocy of Bill Maher again, much less comment on it again. Here I am, in Chicago at the American College of Surgeons annual meeting, taking in all sorts […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine war on science: An epidemic of fear

Many have been the times over the last five years that I’ve called out bad journalism about medicine in general and vaccines in particular, especially the coverage of the discredited notion that vaccines or mercury in vaccines somehow was responsible for the “autism epidemic.” That’s why I feel a special responsibility to highlight good reporting […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

Suzanne Somers carpet bombs the media with napalm-grade stupid about cancer

There are two times a year that seem to be a time to beware of a serious assault of pseudoscience and quackery. The first time of year is in April, which is Autism Awareness Month. Over the last few years I can be just as sure as night following day, only to be followed by […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Vaccination for H1N1 “swine” flu: Do The Atlantic, Shannon Brownlee, and Jeanne Lenzer matter?

I had meant to address this topic last week, but the whole Suzanne Somers thing bubbled up and overwhelmed my blogging attention. Regular readers of this blog probably realize that I tend to live and die as a blogger by the maxim that if some is good more must be better. So I clobbered the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Amy Wallace using misogyny

The little matter of finding out that the actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation appears to have anti-vaccine proclivities sidetracked me from something that I had actually wanted to blog about yesterday. Specifically, it’s something that my blog bud Abel Pharmboy has been hitting hard over the last couple of days. […]