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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The resurrection of David Kirby as an anti-vaccine propagandist

Four days later, I still can’t figure it out. I really can’t. Remember the other day when I said I was debating whether or not to respond to the latest excretion from one of the first hangers-on of the anti-vaccine movement I ever encountered after I started blogging. I’m referring, of course, to freelance journalist […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A commenter takes me to task for being mean to Andrew Wakefield

It’s been pointed out to me that our old pal David Kirby, perhaps the cleverest antivaccine propagandist out there, is back at (where else?) The Huffington Post (a.k.a. HuffPo) asking why The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away (short answer: because opportunists like Kirby have teamed with believers in pseudoscience to keep fanning the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A proposal: An anti-Schopenhauer response to anti-vaccine cranks

There’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. I hate this quote with a bloody passion. Actually, that’s not quite true. Rather, I find it rather amusing […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Bill Gates steps in it in a good way, declares vaccine-autism link an “absolute lie”

I never thought I’d be praising Bill Gates, being a Mac person and all and not being at all fond of Microsoft, but it’s impossible for me not to in the wake of a recent interview Gates did with CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. As you probably know, since retiring from Microsoft, Bill […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

“We shall overcome,” sings the anti-vaccine movement

Yesterday, in the course of applying a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a particularly brain dead exercise by the anti-vaccine movement, in which the International Medical Council on Vaccination (the most deceptively named anti-vaccine organization this side of the National Vaccine Information Center) gathered 80 signatures of “health care professionals” who warn about the […]