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Antivaccine nonsense Quackery

Antivaxxers launch a frontal assault on the Killer Rabbit of plasmids

Ever since recombinant DNA has been used to develop and manufacture vaccines, antivaxxers have portrayed it as evil. This weekend, an antivaxxer decided that fear mongering about SV40 in COVID-19 vaccines wasn’t enough. Here we go again…

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science

Prions. Why did it have to be prions?

Prions. Why did it have to be prions? (Again.) The antivax trope that vaccines cause prion disease is an old one, and antivaxxers are trying desperately to resurrect it to apply to COVID-19 vaccines.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

“Adulteration”: The latest iteration of the antivax “toxins gambit” applied to COVID-19 vaccines

The latest antivax line is that trace amounts of residual plasmid DNA fragments constitutes “adulteration.” It’s just the “toxins gambit” twisted into a bad legal argument.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

VAERS and plasmid DNA “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines: The nonsense continues

This week, a new preprint made the social media rounds falsely claiming a correlation between “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines with plasmid DNA and VAERS reports of adverse events. How does its methodology stink? Let me count the ways.

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine

An antivaxxer interviews a respected oncologist about “turbo cancer”

Once again, Orac is depressed to discover that an oncologist and scientist whom he admired 30 years ago is now giving credence to the antivax myth that COVID-19 vaccines are causing an epidemic of “turbo cancer.”