Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby’s back, and this time his anti-vaccine fear mongering induces…ennui

I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine Force, which is, of course, by definition the Dark Side. Whenever I sense such a disturbance, there are a number of possible reactions that it provokes in me. One such reaction is alarm, as when antivaccine activists say something that is just clever enough to sound plausible enough […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Andrew Wakefield wins an award just as he jumps on the anti-psychiatry bandwagon

I certainly don’t even try to keep secret my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the measles back to the UK, thanks to his bad science, for which he was well-paid by trial lawyers and his falsification of data and scientific fraud. Since 1998, when Wakefield first […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The mummer’s farce that was the Congressional autism hearing last week

Last Wednesday, I took note of an “old friend” and (thankfully) soon-to-be ex-Representative from Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, organized quackery’s best friend in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dan Burton. Specifically, I noted that Rep. Burton appeared to be having his one last antivaccine hurrah in the form of a hearing about the “autism epidemic” […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Fundraising for antivaccine research

If there’s one thing that antivaccine cranks tell us that has a grain of truth in it, it’s to be wary of pharmaceutical companies and their influence. Their mission is, of course, to make profits, and sometimes the search for profits can lead them to do things that are less than savory. Of course, antivaccine […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism

Fear and loathing and vaccines

As hard as it is for me to believe when I look back at it, I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement now for more than seven years here on this blog and combatting it online for at least a decade now. I like to think that over the years my response has evolved somewhat. […]