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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Antivaccinationists against the HPV vaccine, Round 5,000

Whenever I take a day off from blogging, as I did yesterday because I was too busy going out with my wife on Wednesday night to celebrate my birthday, I not infrequently find an embarrassment of riches to blog about the next day. Sometimes it’s downright difficult to decide what to write about. So it […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Even when it’s not all about vaccines, it’s all about vaccines

As supporters of science-based medicine know, in the woo-sphere, there is only One True Cause of Autism, and that is vaccines. At least, so it would seem. The idea that vaccines cause autism is based largely on anecdotes tinged with confirmation bias and selective memory mixed with a massive confusing of correlation with causation whereby […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The “fundamentals” of voltage quackery

In medical school, or so we’re told, aspiring young doctors are taught the fundamentals of medicine. What we science-based physicians usually mean by “fundamentals” includes the basic science necessary to understand human health and disease, the mechanism by which human disease develops, and the basics of how to treat it. We also learn a way […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Antivaccine legislators are at it again

Here we go again. The “Holy Grail” (well, a “holy grail”) of the antivaccine movement is to have a “vaccinated versus unvaccinated” study performed, or, as it’s frequently abbreviated a “vaxed verus unvaxed” study. They believe that such a study will confirm their fixed belief that vaccines are the root of nearly all health issues […]

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Autism Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials EneMan

Yes, Virginia, unlike CAM, science-based medicine does change based on science

“Alternative medicine,” so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or, as it’s become fashionable to call it, “integrative medicine” is a set of medical practices that are far more based on belief than science. As my good bud and collaborator Mark Crislip so pointedly reminded us last week, CAM is far more akin to religion than […]