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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

ProtocolKills.com revisited: Misinformed refusal turned up to 11

Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed “misinformed refusal,” a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized “informed consent” by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinating. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

2021: The year the weaponization of VAERS went mainstream

Misuse of the VAERS database to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines has been a favorite technique of antivaxxers for decades. Unfortunately, 2021 was the year when this particular antivax trope was turbocharged. (Note: Orac will be taking a week off after this—see note in post.)

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Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

The DSHEA and supplements made Alex Jones

As the HBO documentary The Truth vs. Alex Jones shows, Alex Jones promoted the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax to sell his supplement line. It’s a model that many Internet conspiracy theorists use, like Mike Adams. Did the DSHEA help create Alex Jones and the modern conspiracy industry?

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. David Brownstein strikes again peddling quackery for COVID-19

Dr. David Brownstein is a “holistic” physician who practices in Orac’s neck of the woods. Unfortunately, he just wrote a book promoting an unproven protocol involving vitamins, nebulized hydrogen peroxide and iodine, and intravenous ozone to treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that his protocol works, other than a very poor quality case series.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bioethics Medicine

To unblind or not to unblind COVID-19 vaccine trials?

Antivaccine alternative health tycoon Joe Mercola claims that the unblinding of participants in the clinical trials of Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines was intended to “blow up the trials” and undermine the science, making it impossible ever to identify long term adverse events. What he’s really doing is deceptively oversimplifying complex ethical and scientific issues surrounding these trials in the middle of a deadly pandemic, all in the service of his grift.