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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

Will 2017 be the antivaccine year?

With the election of one of their own to the White House, antivaxers feel emboldened. They think that Donald Trump is sympathetic to their cause, and they have reasons to belief that. Will 2017 be the “tipping point,” the year the antivaccine movement clearly becomes ascendant?

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Antivaccine nonsense Pseudoscience Quackery

“Vaccine Awareness Week,” misinformed consent, and, of course, Nazis and eugenics

Orac is back, and what does he encounter upon his return? Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the Orwellian-named antivaccine propaganda organization, the National Vaccine Information Center, pontificating about “informed consent” and vaccines. What she really means is misinformed consent to refuse vaccines, as in consent based on misinformation, pseudoscience, and fear mongering about vaccines. Naturally, she can’t resist bringing in Nazis as well.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Donald Trump is not a “slow vaxer.” He is an antivaxer.

If there’s one thing about the reporting of the 2016 election that irritated me, it was the massive underreporting of certain antiscience views held by the man who is now our President-Elect. Sure, there was coverage about his denial of anthropogenic climate change from time to time. Much less reported was his long history of […]

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

In the age of Donald Trump, vaccine policy is becoming politicized, with potentially deadly consequences (revisited)

The usual stereotype of an antivaxer is a hippy dippy left wing granola cruncher. The case of Texas shows that increasingly the antivaccine movement is right wing. Worse, it’s becoming more political and harder for Republican legislators to ignore. I fear vaccine science is becoming as politicized as climate science, with results disastrous for public health.

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

Antivaxers are collecting stories of “vaccine injury” to send to Donald Trump to change federal vaccine policy

\I’ve written quite a bit about how our soon-to-be President Donald Trump has consistently expressed antivaccine views over the years, such as his oft-stated (on Twitter and elsewhere) beliefs that it’s a “monster” shot that causes autism and infants get “too many” vaccines “too soon.” I’ve heard Trump supporters who are pro-vaccine pooh-pooh these statements […]