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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

In which Orac sits back and lets someone else take on Jenny McCarthy’s “autism charity” for a change…

Regular readers of this blog know pretty much what I think of Jenny McCarthy. In brief, she’s an opportunistic, scientifically ignorant but media-savvy twit whose hubris leads her to believe that her Google University education, coupled with her personal anecdotal experience, render her proclamations that vaccines cause autism and that “biomedical” quackery can cure it […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

When burning woo produces deceptive testimonials

PZ’s muscling in on my territory. Apparently, ruling the Darwinian, creationist-destroying atheist cephalopod blogging world isn’t enough, and he has to start moving in on medicine. No problem, given that this time around he brought some rather interesting woo to my attention, suggesting it as perhaps a suitable topic for Your Friday Dose of Woo […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Senator Tom Harkin: NCCAM has “fallen short” because it hasn’t validated enough woo

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) owes me a new irony meter. I’ll explain in a minute, but first you have to know why I even give a rodent’s posterior about Harkin. As you may recall, no single legislator in the U.S. has done more to damage the cause of science- and evidence-based medicine than Tom Harkin. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby and Autism Speaks, sittin’ in a tree…

Busted! All right, I give up. Since I’ve been sucked into the whole vaccine thing again after only one day away, I might as well highlight this simultaneously amusing and depressing tidbit. Earlier today, I wrote about a coordinated attack by the antivaccine movement on the Autism Omnibus decision two weeks ago. Given that it […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Moving on to cancer quackery…Zeolite and other oddities

Over the last few days, it seems to me, I’ve been blogging so much about antivaccine lunacy that I was beginning to wonder whether I should rename the blog “Respectfully Insolent Antivaccine Slapdowns.” As good as it’s been to dwell on seeing the antivaccine movement suffer two major setbacks in 2009 even before we’ve reached […]