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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Vaccine fearmongers versus Steve Novella

I’m envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he’s somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props. You may have wondered why I […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Why the whole “mitochondrial disease plus vaccines = autism” argument is nonsense

Since vaccines seem to be back in the news again, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a fantastic post that I saw the other day over at A Photon in the Darkness. Read it. Read it now. I’ve done fairly long posts about how pseudoscientists and antivaccine advocates are capitalizing on the case […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

Barack Obama: A pro-vaccine pharma shill who doesn’t care about autistic children?

Well, here’s a rare bit of good news in the endless tedium that has become the U.S. election. It appears that Barack Obama has ticked off the antivaccine contingent. I know, I know, I said I would try to lay off this topic for a few days, but this is just too amusing. Apparently, he’s […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Autism’s False Prophets: Finally, science pushes back against antivaccine lunacy

NOTE: This review of Dr. Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to archive it as one of my own posts. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby admits that mercury in vaccines is no longer “the smoking gun”

Longtime readers of this blog know that my original exposure to antivaccination conspiracy theories first occurred in the context of the now pseudoscientific and discredited hypothesis that somehow the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be used in vaccines was the cause of autism. Despite the backpedaling among antivaccination zealots such as J. […]