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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

Now Steve Kirsch wants to “collaborate” with provaccine scientists?

Steve Kirsch is known for his ludicrous challenges issued to vaccine advocates to “debate” vaccines. Now he wants to “collaborate” with provaccine scientists to test whether vaccines cause autism. His proposal is equally ludicrous.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Undermining the childhood vaccine schedule with EBM fundamentalism

“Not antivax” COVID contrarian Dr. Vinay Prasad demonstrates why skepticism is necessary and how evidence-based medicine (EBM) fundamentalism harms childhood health by inadvertently (I hope) echoing a very old antivax trope about randomized clinical trials for the childhood vaccine schedule, you know, to “rebuild confidence.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Return of the revenge of “no saline placebo RCTs” for childhood vaccines

Thanks to RFK Jr. the deceptive claim that the childhood vaccine schedule has never been tested in a randomized controlled trial with a saline placebo control is making the rounds again.This is an old and deceptive antivax half-truth that ignores both what constitutes a scientifically valid placebo and the ethical requirement that RCTs have clinical equipoise.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

Dr. Rashid Buttar had been sick for a long time before he “died suddenly”

Last month, Dr. Rashid Buttar, a prominent antivax “integrative medicine” practitioner, died suddenly. Because he hadn’t been vaccinated, antivaxxers struggled mightily to reconcile his death with their conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. It turns out, however, that that Dr. Buttar had not been a well man since 2016 and was as much a victim of quackery as his patients had been.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

RFK Jr. is hosting a veritable antivax Quackapalooza

RFK Jr. will hold a “healthcare policy roundtable” next week. One look at its list of “experts” shows that it will be a Quackapalooza of antivax misinformation. Unfortunately, RFK Jr.’s candidacy is normalizing old long debunked antivax tropes.