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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Vaxelis: The first hexavalent vaccine is approved in the US, and antivaxers don’t like it

Over the holidays, on the day after Christmas, Merck and Sanofi announced FDA approval of Vaxelis, a new hexavalent vaccine. It’s great news for children. Unsurprisingly, antivaxers hate it.

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Bad science Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Quoth chiropractor William Cole: “Have your doctor run a bunch of useless functional medicine tests”

“Functional medicine” preaches the “biochemical individuality” of each patient, which is why one of its key features is that its practitioners order reams of useless lab tests and then try to correct every abnormal level without considering (or even knowing) what these abnormalities mean, if anything. So they make up fake diagnoses and profit.

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Announcements Blog housekeeping

Happy Holidays from Orac! See you next year!

Happy holidays, all! As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m taking a brief blog break for the holidays. I hope that, wherever you are, whatever faith you hold (or don’t hold), your holidays are filled with cheer. I’ll return either Monday or January 2, depending upon how energetic I’m feeling and what is or isn’t going on in the world regarding topics that concern me.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed

Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Vaccine advocate Blima Marcus learns the hard way just how low antivaxers will go

An advanced practice nurse gave an antivaccine rant posted to Facebook. Or did she? All is not as an antivaxer wants you to believe it is. At least so it appears.