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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Here we go again: The vile tactic of blaming shaken baby syndrome on vaccines, part 3

I was a bit angry yesterday. I’m never happy when I see the overarching narrative that prescientific and pseudoscientific beliefs are equivalent and worth doing clinical trials on them. But the irritation I feel when I see examples of journalists credulously swallowing that narrative whole and regurgitating it in mainstream publications like the Wall Street […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

How is it that I hadn’t heard of this antivaccine “warrior” before?

One of the depressing things about having dedicated over a decade of one’s life to combatting pseudoscience and quackery is that, no matter how much I think I’ve come to be familiar with all the woo that can be out there and all the players promoting that woo, there are always new people popping up. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials

Yet more evidence that vaccines are safe and do not cause autism

Can we just say that vaccines are safe, already? Can we just say that, of all the medical interventions ever conceived by the minds of humans, vaccines have almost certainly saved more lives and prevented more illness? Can we finally say that vaccines do not cause autism? Of course not, unfortunately. I ask the same […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery

Katie Couric on the HPV vaccine: Antivaccine or irresponsible journalist? You be the judge!

I’m not really happy to have to write this post, but a blogger’s got to do what a blogger’s got to do. The reason is that Katie Couric has done something requires—nay, demands—a heapin’ helpin’ of Orac’s characteristic Respectful Insolence. Why should I give the proverbial rodent’s posterior about who gets the Insolence today? The […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The Katie Couric “apology” about her segment on HPV and HPV vaccines

Vaccines against the human papilloma virus (HPV), such as Gardasil and Cervarix, seem to have a strange power over people who are otherwise reasonable about science and vaccines. For some reason, HPV vaccines seem to have an uncanny ability to turn such people into raging antivaccinationists almost as loony as the merry band of antivaccine […]