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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Don’t listen to these “medical voices,” or: How did I miss this loony antivaccine site before?

Let’s face it, I’ve been at this “anti-antii-vax” thing for quite a while now. This December, this blog will have been in existence for five years. Even before that cold, gray Saturday afternoon nearly five years ago when, on a whim, I started up a blog on Blogspot that became the first incarnation of Respectful […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Vaccination for H1N1 “swine” flu: Do The Atlantic, Shannon Brownlee, and Jeanne Lenzer matter?

I had meant to address this topic last week, but the whole Suzanne Somers thing bubbled up and overwhelmed my blogging attention. Regular readers of this blog probably realize that I tend to live and die as a blogger by the maxim that if some is good more must be better. So I clobbered the […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Cancer prevention drugs, supplements, and a false dichotomy

The New York Times has been periodically running a series about the “40 years’ war” on cancer, with most articles by Gina Kolata. I’ve touched on this series before, liking some parts of it, while others not so much. In particular, I criticized an article one article that I thought to be so misguided about […]

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Cancer Medicine

“Obama’s fixin’ death panels for your mama,” the misogyny gambit, and other idiotic responses to the updated USPSTF mammography recommendations

I knew when I first heard about them that the new United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on breast cancer screening would be controversial. I tried to discuss these guidelines and the issues involved in a calm and rational way, relatively devoid of Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, yesterday, pointing out that screening guidelines […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Has Dr. Oz finally crossed the Woobicon?

I’ve had it with Dr. Oz. Although I haven’t seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn’t waste it watching Dr. Oz’s show), readers have informed me that yesterday, on March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz threw away whatever shred of […]