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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

What was that about not being “antivaccine” again?

I’ve written time and time again about how antivaccinationists go out of their way to try to reassure us that they really, truly are not “antivaccine” or even that they support vaccination. Of course, such disclaimers are often nothing more than a prelude to a tirade of blatantly antivaccination rhetoric and misinformation about “toxins” in […]

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Autism Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why would a woman withhold chemotherapy from her child with lymphoma?

One of the main issues that I’ve written about quite a bit is the issue of what the state should have the power to do when a child has cancer or another life-threatening disease and the parents choose quackery over scientific medicine when the disease is potentially (or even highly) treatable or curable with standard […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Medicine

Recall bias, vaccines, and illness

In the eyes, of anti-vaccine advocates, vaccines bear the brunt of blame for a variety of conditions, including autism, asthma, neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune disorders and a wide variety others. Often this link is based on retrospective data, in which parents or patients recall and self-report how many vaccines they’ve had and which ones. This self-recall […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Paranormal Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Generation woo

I realize that I’ve been mighty hard on Jenny McCarthy these last several months. I’ve made fun of her for her idiocy, her arrogance of ignorance, and her antivaccination lunacy, not to mention her utter ignorance of science, and, yes, I’ve been rather vicious at times. However, she richly deserved it. Indeed, I argue that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“The Autism Myth Lives On”

It’s rare that the mainstream media gets it right about vaccines and autism, and when they do I feel obligated to point it out. Such is the case with Sam Wang’s article The Autism Myth Lives On. It’s well worth reading, even though it’s a couple of months old. (How I missed it when it […]