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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 7 (argumentum ad Nazium edition #2, 2011)

Time and time again, anti-vaccine activists will piously and self-righteously tell those of us who criticize their pseudoscientific fear mongering, “I’m not anti-vaccine,” followed by something like, “I’m pro-vaccine safety,” “I’m a vaccine safety watchdog,” or “I’m pro-safe vaccine.” Nothing puts the lie to these denials better than looking at the sorts of things anti-vaccine […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Pumping autistic children full of an industrial chelator (revisited again)

As much fun as I had at TAM8, there is one consequence of being out of town and not paying attention to the blog or the Internet as much as I usually do. Well, actually, there are multiple consequences. One is a momentary lapse in insanity. In other words, it’s good for the mental health […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking Television

How not to report science and medical news, vaccine edition

I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I’m writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield’s being found to have […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Stupid cubed: David Kirby, RFK, Jr., and Generation Rescue use the Bailey Banks case to tag team the antivaccine counterattack against the MMR

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” At least, that’s what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I’m not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he’s coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Humor Medicine

Andrew Wakefield: Scuzz-wo

I don’t know what “scuzz-wo” means, but I agree that Andrew Wakefield is one. My only nit to pick is that the puppet flirts a little too close to conflating the thimerosal scare with the MMR scare. There never was any thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. But that’s just a nit, and as a blogger […]