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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The CDC “whistleblower” manufactroversy: Twitter parties and another “bombshell” e-mail

Remember yesterday how, I referenced the ever-awesome bit about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and how after pulling the pin you must count to three, no more, no less, before lobbing the grenade at thine enemies? The implication was, of course, that I was on my third […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The road to alternative medicine apostasy

I’ve been blogging for over a decade now, a fact that I find really hard to believe looking back on it right now. I’ve told the story before, but it’s worth briefly recounting again because doing so will explain why the story I’m about to discuss caught my attention. My “gateway drug,” if you will, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Politics Religion

No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

There are some antivaccine lies that just never die. Well, actually, most of them are very much like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger in that, just when you think you’ve killed them at the end of the latest confrontation, they always come back. Always. As an example of this, let’s go back four […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

An antivaccine “Thinker” calls for a boycott

There is a perception that strikes me as common enough to be considered “common wisdom” that antivaccine views are much more common on the “left” of the political spectrum than they are on the “right.” I’ve discussed on multiple occasions how this perceived common wisdom is almost certainly wrong, or at least so incomplete as […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Twitter as an amplifier of antivaccine messages

Before 2005, I did pay attention to the antivaccine movement, but it wasn’t one of my biggest priorities when it comes to promoting science-based medicine. That all changed when Robert F. Kennedy published his incredibly conspiracy-packed black whole of antivaccine pseudoscience entitled Deadly Immunity. Sadly, almost exactly ten years later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn’t […]