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Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

“Whole body scans”: Back from the grave and ready to party

Two decades ago, I cut my skeptical teeth countering advertising for whole body scans by companies making extravagant promises for their products. This particular medical fad faded for a while, but now it’s back with a vengeance…with AI! Looking at these products, what I see is basically the quackery that is functional medicine on steroids and powered by AI.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

Dr. Rashid Buttar had been sick for a long time before he “died suddenly”

Last month, Dr. Rashid Buttar, a prominent antivax “integrative medicine” practitioner, died suddenly. Because he hadn’t been vaccinated, antivaxxers struggled mightily to reconcile his death with their conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. It turns out, however, that that Dr. Buttar had not been a well man since 2016 and was as much a victim of quackery as his patients had been.

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Antivaccine nonsense Biology Cancer Medicine Science

Return of the revenge of “vaccines permanently alter your DNA”

In a new twist on the “vaccines permanently alter your DNA” trope that antivaxxers love, a microbiologist named Kevin McKernan is falsely claiming that contaminating plasmid DNA from COVID-19 vaccines can get into the nucleus during cell division and “permanently alter your DNA” to horrible effect.

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Antivaccine nonsense Biology Medicine Science

Toxins and and monkey DNA and SV40, oh my! COVID-19 vaccines vs. a zombie meme

Quack tycoon Joe Mercola resurrects an antivax trope about SV40 to repurpose it to attack COVID-19 vaccines.

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

Antivax physician Dr. Rashid Buttar “died suddenly” and antivaxxers are contorting reality to blame vaccines

Dr. Rashid Buttar, one of the first quacks I ever wrote about, died suddenly last week. Antivaxxers are contorting reality to blame vaccines.