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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The cult of the antivaccine

After a brief foray yesterday into discussing atheism, tone deafness, and the Holocaust (how’s that for an odd combination?), I’m ready to get back to more—shall we say?—conventional topics. One topic that’s been popping up at that other wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (one of the ones other than Age of Autism) reveals […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery Religion

Alternative medicine as religion, one more time

A couple of days ago, I did one of my usual bits of pontification about alternative medicine, this time around pointing out how religion facilitates the magical thinking that undergirds so much pseudoscientific medicine and how the belief systems that underlie so so much of alternative medicine resembel the belief systems that underlie religion. However, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Yet another antivaccine meme rises from the grave again: No, Diane Harper doesn't hate Gardasil

Yet another zombie antivaccine meme rises from the grave to join its fellows Oh, no, not again! It was just two days ago that I decided to take on a zombie antivaccine meme that just keeps rising from the dead over and over and over again. I’m referring to the claim that Andrew Wakefield has […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The price of antivaccine fanaticism, 2013 edition

That the myth that vaccines cause autism is indeed nothing more than a myth, a phantom, a delusion unsupported by science is no longer in doubt. In fact, it’s been many years now since it was last taken seriously by real scientists and physicians, as opposed to crank scientists and physicians, who are still selling […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Sometimes antivaccinationists reveal more than they intend about why they blame vaccines for autism

I had a long day in the operating room yesterday; so I was tired last night. As a consequence, I thought that today might end up being one of those rare weekdays free of new Insolence. Then, in the morning as I was doing my usual brief perusal of e-mail and blogs before heading to […]