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

Combatting the Oprah Effect

I don’t much like Oprah Winfrey. I know, I know, it’s a huge surprise to anyone who reads this blog, but there you go. Over the last four years, I’ve had numerous reasons to be unhappy with her, mainly because, as savvy a media celebrity and businesswoman as she is, she has about as close […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Computers and social media Entertainment/culture Humor Medicine Quackery Television

A badge of honor

I’m a bit envious of Dawn Crawford. Why am I envious? She has a badge of honor I have yet to obtain. Jenny McCarthy has blocked her on Twitter. Darn. I’m going to have to see if I can get Jenny to block me too.

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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 […]