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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion Science

Cranks of a feather: The Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology team with antivaccine activists to oppose SB 277

The saga of SB 277 just keeps getting stranger and stranger as its end game comes into view. SB 277 is, of course, a big deal. If it’s passed by the California Assembly and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, it would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, making the largest state in […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

SB 277 clears another major legislative hurdle

I bet antivaccinationists would be annoyed if they knew what I was up to yesterday. This week, our department had a visiting professor for Grand Rounds, and that professor was a Nobel laureate. Of course, it’s not every day that we have a Nobel laureate visiting us (actually, it’s rare). This time around the Nobel […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Twitter as an amplifier of antivaccine messages

Before 2005, I did pay attention to the antivaccine movement, but it wasn’t one of my biggest priorities when it comes to promoting science-based medicine. That all changed when Robert F. Kennedy published his incredibly conspiracy-packed black whole of antivaccine pseudoscience entitled Deadly Immunity. Sadly, almost exactly ten years later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn’t […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which pro-vaccine advocates are inappropriately portrayed as frenzied, self-righteous “zealots”

One of the odd things about having been a blogger as long as I have been is that, occasionally, posts that I wrote years ago rise up to bite me long after I’ve forgotten that I even wrote them. Actually, that’s usually not the right way to put it. Blogging is a very short term […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A victory in the long war against autism quackery

As depressing as the litany of quackery and patient harm that I follow nearly every day can become, occasionally I am heartened to learn of a victory for science-based medicine and, more importantly, for the patients being victimized by pseudoscientific treatments. One of the most simultaneously ridiculous and vile of these treatments is a solution […]