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Antivaccine nonsense Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Television

Antivaccination propaganda about the Poling case: A Saturday morning link roundup

Yesterday was annoying. It started out hearing about the vaccine injury case conceded by the government in a story on NPR on during my drive into work. As I walked through the clinic waiting area on the way to my lab, the TVs in the waiting rooms were all on CNN, where–you guessed it!–there was […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The American Academy of Pediatrics versus antivaccinationist hypocrisy

Three weeks ago, I wrote about some truly irresponsible antivaccination propaganda masquerading as entertainment that aired in the form of a television show called Eli Stone. This show, which portrayed its hero taking on the case of an autistic boy whose mother blamed his autism on thimerosal (going under the fictional name “mercuritol”) in vaccines […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

More on the antivaccination propaganda in “Eli Stone”

Last week, I did one of my inimitable rants about an ABC television show set to air on Thursday called Eli Stone, in which a lawyer sues a pharmaceutical company for “mercuritol” (an obvious allusion to thimerosal) in vaccines and how it supposedly caused a child’s autism. Basically, I called it an irresponsible bit of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Don Imus: He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism

I’ll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He’s predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides to rant about her belief in the undead myth that mercury in vaccines was a […]

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History Medicine News of the Weird Popular culture

Victorian post-mortem photography

Via a fascinating blog that was pointed out to me (Morbid Anatomy), I came across a story from last winter about how a Colorado nonprofit organization is reviving a Victorian custom about which I had been largely ignorant, namely the custom of taking photographs of recently deceased loved ones as mementos. Indeed, the photographs were […]