Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

This should be good: Penn and Teller on the anti-vaccine movement

It’s finally here! The long expected episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, in which the boys take on the anti-vaccine movement in their usual inimitable fashion, will premiere tonight on Showtime at 10 PM. It’s even the eighth season finale, which is appropriate. If there’s a form of “bullshit” other than the irrationality that is […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Quoth Mark Blaxill: “Science is funny” when it comes to mercury in vaccines and autism

I must admit that, after having taken it easy over the last few days, when the time came to sit down and get back into the swing of things, I had a bit of a hard time. No, it’s not just blogging. That’s actually a rather minor component of the whole malaise that descended upon […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The big pharma conspiracy once again crushes the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE Location: Central New Jersey, deep within the brick and steel of a secret pharma base. Year: 1999. A shadowy figure dressed in gray, bald, and stroking a white cat enters a nondescript room in the middle of which sits a massive conference table. More than a dozen men and women leap […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism History Medicine

The mercury militia parties like it’s 2005

Way, way back in the deepest darkest depths of history, before I entered the Knowledge Room and sold my soul to big pharma to become a pharma blogger (in other words, way back in 2005), my inauguration as a skeptical blogger taking on anti-vaccine misinformation, pseudoscience, and lies occurred in a big way when I […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

How not to achieve respectability

Sometimes I can’t figure anti-vaccine loons out. No, I’m not talking about the pure pseudoscience they lay down on a daily basis. I can sort of get how some of them might cling against all scientific evidence to the idea that somehow vaccines “damaged” their child, along with the blandishments of the army of quacks […]