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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Movies Popular culture

Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree: Privileged white males harming African-Americans with antivaccine propaganda

There’s always been a major thread of distrust of the medical profession in the African-American community, understandably so given the history of abuses such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, in which the natural progression of untreated syphilis was studied in African-American men for 40 years. It’s not just that experiment that’s responsible, either. During the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

#CDCTruth protest 2016: Harassing CDC employees in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience

I noticed the other day that I haven’t been visiting the merry band of antivaccine activists and bloggers over at their very own wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism, nearly as much as I used to. I have mentioned them in passing a couple of times recently, but nothing caught my attention […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Does the flu vaccine cause miscarriages?

A recent study claims to have found a link between influenza vaccination and miscarriage, and antivaxers are rejoicing. The study itself suffers mightily from post hoc subgroup analyses and small numbers in the subgroup, so much so that even its authors don’t really believe its results.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 20: “There is no safe vaccine” and excusing the murder of autistic children

One of the most insidious and oft-repeated myths of the antivaccine movement is that vaccines cause autism. Certainly, it is true that there was an antivaccine movement long before anyone thought of linking vaccines to autism. For example, in the the 1980s the DPT (diptheria-whole cell pertussis-tetanus) vaccine was linked to encephalitis and neurological damage, […]

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

Trolling the antivaccine trolls

Craig Egan is a man with a mission. He’s trolling the antivaccine trolls to promote science, and he’s been very successful at it.