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Medicine

Gordie Howe: How not to report about dubious stem cell therapies

And now for something completely different… (Yes, there’s been enough vaccine blogging for the moment.) The date of the Kinsman Sports Celebrity Dinner in Saskatoon is fast approaching on February 6. It reminded me of my discussion of how Gordie Howe was flown to Tijuana to undertake a dubious stem cell therapy for his serious […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture

Chris Christie and Rand Paul’s pandering to antivaccinationists: Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?

“I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice as well. So that’s a balance the government has to decide.” — NJ Governor Chris Christie, February 2, 2015 “The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.” — Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), February 2, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Antivaccine cardiologist Jack Wolfson and the resurrection of false balance about vaccines…again!

I swear, I had wanted to write about something else today. I really had. The reason is that we’re in one of those stretches of time where things seem to be happening fast and furious that have led most of my posts over the last couple of weeks to be about the Disneyland measles outbreak, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

Antivaccine cardiologist Jack Wolfson and the resurrection of false balance about vaccines

Yesterday, I wrote about false balance in reporting on vaccines in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. For those who’ve never encountered this blog, what I mean by false balance is when journalists, in a misguided belief that there are “two sides” (i.e., an actual scientific controversy) about the safety of childhood vaccines and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Television

False balance about vaccines rises from the grave…again

Imagine, if you will, a time machine capsule going all the way back to the earliest days of this blog, back in 2005 and 2006. Now consider the antivaccine movement, which somehow I became very interested in very early, an interest that continues to this day. Do you remember one theme that I kept hitting […]