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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Bioethics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Barbara Loe Fisher: Well baby visits are vaccine battlegrounds!

The grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, is ranting again. This time, she is peddling both misinformed consent about vaccines and likening her struggle to social justice movements of the past as she portrays well baby visits as “vaccine battlegrounds” instigated by the AAP.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Politics Pseudoscience

Brooklyn measles outbreak of 2013: A case study of the cost of antivaccine pseudoscience

Infectious disease outbreaks are costly in human and financial terms. An analysis of the 2013 Brooklyn measles outbreak shows just how costly one outbreak can be and how much it can strain already strained public health resources. This is the cost of antivaccine madness.

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Autism Bad science Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine

Pay-to-play stem cell clinical trials: Abuse of the clinical trial process

Stem cell therapies show great promise, but as yet the vast majority of that promise has not been validated in rigorous clinical trials. Unfortunately, for-profit stem cell clinics are running clinical trials that require patients to pay to be part of them (“pay-to-play”). These trials are not rigorous. Even more unfortunately, it appears that some universities are also running “pay-to-play” clinical trials that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those run by for-profit clinics.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed

Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

Vaccine Choice Empowerment Symposium: To be a mole or not to be a mole…?

The Vaccine Choice Empowerment Symposium is coming, full of antivaccine misinformation and dishonest conflation, and it’s coming to Orac’s neck of the woods. Should Orac attend, given that the misinformation will be black hole density?