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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Corrected by Dr. Paul Offit

About a month ago I wrote about how the grande dame of the anti-vaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, is using the legal system to try to silence and intimidate Dr. Paul Offit. In it, I described an earlier lawsuit in which Dear Leader J.B. Handley sued Dr. Offit, and Dr. Offit ended up settling. Unfortunately, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Pertussis outbreaks and vaccine effectiveness

About a month ago, I deconstructed a typically dishonest and deceitful attempt by that Overlord of Quackery on the Internet (in my opinion, of course), Joe Mercola, to claim that the acellular pertussis vaccine doesn’t work. It was a typical Mercola bit of prestidigitation that, as so much antivaccine propaganda does, took a grain of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The problem of nonmedical exemptions from school vaccine mandates is getting worse

It’s feast or famine in the ol’ blogging world, and right now it’s such a feast that I can’t decide what to blog about. For instance, there are at least two studies and a letter that I wouldn’t mind blogging about just in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine alone. Then […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Motivated reasoning and the anti-vaccine movement

One theme that I keep revisiting again and again is not so much a question of the science behind medical therapies (although certainly I do discuss that issue arguably more than any other) but rather a question of why. Why is it that so many people cling so tenaciously to pseudoscience, quackery, and, frequently, conspiracy […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Vaccines and infant mortality rates

The anti-vaccine movement is a frequent topic on this blog, sometimes to the point where it seems to take over the blog for days (or even weeks) at a time and I cry for respite. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which being that the anti-vaccine movement is one […]