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Biology Medicine Politics Popular culture

No, DDT won’t save us from the Zika virus

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last decade-plus of blogging about medicine and alternative medicine, it’s that any time there is an outbreak or pandemic of infectious disease, there will inevitably follow major conspiracy theories about it. It happened during the H1N1 pandemic in the 2009-2010 influenza season, the Ebola outbreak in late […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

No, Gardasil does not cause behavioral problems

Believe it or not, I frequently peruse Retraction Watch, the blog that does basically what its title says: It watches for retracted articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and reports on them. Rare is it that a retracted paper gets by the watchful eyes of the bloggers there. So it was that the other day […]

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

Zika virus and microcephaly: Antivaccine warriors say it’s vaccines that did it!

Last week, I wrote about how conspiracy theories have been flowing fast and furious about the Zika virus and microcephaly. Even if you didn’t see that post (perhaps instead having seen this one), you’ve probably seen the news reports describing how last fall the observation of a large number of cases of microcephaly, characterized by […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Zika virus and microcephaly: The conspiracy theories flow fast and furious

It’s an oft-stated cliche that our children our our future. That’s the reason stories involving dire threats to children are considered so terrifying. It’s why, for instance, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End resonated so creepily. After all, as part of the end of civilization, a frightening change came over the children, who became far superior […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Who knew? Tightening up requirements for waivers for school vaccine requirements increases vaccine uptake! (Part two)

Well, it’s finally done. The grants that have been taking up so much of my time are finally with the grants office and, hopefully, won’t have too many errors flagged as they go through the validation process. So it’s time to get back into that blogging thing again, even though I’m admittedly tired. So I’ll […]