Tag: Rachel Carson

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Holocaust Holocaust denial Medicine

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman win the Nobel Prize, and antivaxxers lose it

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman
Nobel Prize announcement for Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work with pseudouridine, which allowed the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Antivaxxers are losing their minds over it, and I’m here for it.

Categories
Biology Medicine Politics Popular culture

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

Certain people out there have way too much faith in "Spray, baby, spray!"

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 […]

Categories
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!

Aedes aegypti: If Zika virus is the culprit causing microcephaly, then this mosquito is the vector.

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 […]