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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture

The Canary Party and Rob Schneider versus the Vaccine Court: Guess who wins?

My goodness, when it rains, it pours, to use a cliche. (And I’m not about anything if not throwing in the odd cliche in my writing from time to time.) Just yesterday, I discussed the resurrection of an antivaccine zombie meme, namely the claim that Maurice Hilleman admitted that the polio vaccine that was contaminated […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The antivaccine movement buys Representative Darrell Issa for $40,000

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about antivaccinationists, it’s that they’re all about the double standards. For instance, to them if Paul Offit makes money off of his rotavirus vaccine, he’s a pharma shill, a hopelessly compromised “biostitute” (as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called him) or “Dr. Proffit“, and therefore to be dismissed on that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Antivaccinationists will be holding a Congressional briefing to attack the Vaccine Court tomorrow

People who follow the antivaccine movement might remember that around this time last year, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), a particularly antiscience legislator who appears to be trying to take up the antivaccine mantle left behind when Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) retired at the end of the last session of Congress. Given that he now chairs […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement (2014 edition)

With very few exceptions, antivaccinationists labor under the delusion that they are not antivaccine. The reason is simple. Deep down, at some level, even the most dedicated antivaccine advocate knows that society quite rightly views it as a bad thing to be against a preventative intervention that has arguably saved more lives than any other […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

Chili’s gets burned by an antivaccine group posing as an “autism advocacy” group

Here I am, sitting on the balcony of my hotel room in sunny San Diego, as I get ready to head over to the 2014 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). The sun is rising over the mountains, and the only sound I hear is that of running water in the swimming […]