Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Too deliciously ironic for words: Gary Null hoist with his own petard

In the wake of FRONTLINE’s The Vaccine War, I was going to have a bit of fun with the reactions of the anti-vaccine fringe. After all, the spokescelebrity of the anti-vaccine movement, Jenny McCarthy, has posted yet another brain dead screed at–where else?–The Huffington Post. So has everybody’s favorite pediatrician to the stars and apologist […]

Categories
Medicine Politics Science

Disingenuous responses to straightforward questions

In yesterday’s post, in which I discussed the President’s Cancer Panel report on environmental toxins and cancer, I criticized one of the reactions to it, specifically that of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), even referencing a truly hilarious Daily Show clip in which Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH didn’t exactly come […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics

A confluence of the anti-vaccine and “health freedom” movements at AutismOne in Chicago

One of the biggest examples of either self-delusion or lying that emanates from the anti-vaccine movement is the oh-so-pious and indignant denials that inevitably follow from its members and leaders whenever someone like me has the temerity to point out that they are, in fact, anti-vaccine. The disingenuously angry denials usually take a form something […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A homeopath unplugged from reality

Yesterday’s post made me sad. It always makes me sad to contemplate a 14 year old boy facing the loss of his father to an aggressive form of leukemia, as Danny Hauser is. The kid just can’t catch a break. First he himself develops Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Because he happens to live in a family that […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The “American Rally for Personal [Antivaccine] Rights” metastasizes

It figures. I’ve written a couple of times about a rally to be held tomorrow in Grant Park that would be hilarious were it not an indication of the threat to public health that the anti-vaccine movement represents. Actually, it is to some extent hilarious, mainly due to the anti-vaccine Poe-worthy “music” that will be […]