Dr. Andrew Zimmerman issued a press release claiming he had been misrepresented in a news report by antivaxer Sharyl Attkisson. He wasn’t. Rather, he’s been a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement.
Dr. Andrew Zimmerman issued a press release claiming he had been misrepresented in a news report by antivaxer Sharyl Attkisson. He wasn’t. Rather, he’s been a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement.
New York State Senator José Peralta died after a brief illness in November, and antivaxers blamed the flu vaccine. Later, it was learned that Sen. Peralta died of sepsis, leading to claims that the flu vaccine predisposed him to sepsis. Now the autopsy report is out, and we know why Sen Peralta was prone to sepsis or a sepsis-like syndrome. Hint: It had nothing to do with the flu vaccine.
As a reporter with a decade-long history of credulously reporting antivaccine conspiracy theories and pseudoscience as news, Sharyl Attkisson is an old “friend” of the blog. This time, she’s reporting a new-old conspiracy theory about the Autism Omnibus proceedings. I say “new-old” because she tries to mightily to produce a new version of the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement.
Over the holidays, on the day after Christmas, Merck and Sanofi announced FDA approval of Vaxelis, a new hexavalent vaccine. It’s great news for children. Unsurprisingly, antivaxers hate it.
Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.