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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement: Is it too late for scientists to bridge the gap between evidence and fear?

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s paper in Pediatrics showing that vaccine refusal elevates the risk of pertussis in a child by nearly 23-fold, a commentary in PLoS Biology asks what can be done to combat anti-vaccine misinformation. Entitled A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars, it’s an interview with a professor of medical […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics

One more time: Vaccine refusal endangers children

One of the claims of the anti-vaccine movement that most irks me is that their actions do not risk harm to anyone other than their own unvaccinated children. Given that vaccination against many infectious diseases also depends on the concept of herd immunity to provide protection to members of the population who either cannot be […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why not just castrate them? (Part 4): Dan Olmsted has a very short memory

On Thursday and Friday, the Chicago Tribune ran a two part series (part 1 and part 2) about what is arguably one of the worst atrocities (I agree with Steve Novella on this one) committed against autistic children in the name of antivaccine lunacy. Specifically, these articles discussed Mark and David Geier’s Lupron protocol, which […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why not just castrate them? (Part 3): The Eisenstein Homefirst connection

As promised, the Chicago Tribune served up the followup article to its expose of father-and-son autism quacks Mark and David Geier. This time around, the Trib takes on Dr. Mayer Eisenstein of the woo-friendly suburban Chicago medical practice known as Homefirst in two articles, Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism and Dr. Peter […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

I wonder what the “toxins” brigade of anti-vaccine loons will think of this

I know I’ve been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let’s take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of “toxins” in vaccines […]