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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Science

The Guatemala syphilis experiment, human subjects research abuses, and CAM

If there’s one thing that burns me about so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) clinical trials, it’s how unethical many of them are. This is particularly true for trials that test modalities that, on the basic science grounds alone, can be dismissed as so highly implausible and with such a low prior probability of success […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Off to get my flu vaccine…

It’s about time. My cancer center is finally offering the flu vaccine for its employees, and I’m off to go and get it. I’ll be sure to ask for extra thimerosal. Even though Jock Doubleday’s challenge seems to have disappeared, I’ll still do it in his honor. This year, I’m particularly proud of my cancer […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Dammit! Where’s my thimerosal?

As I mentioned earlier this morning, I went to get my annual flu vaccine. It’s the least I can do to protect myself and to protect the immunosuppressed patients around me in a major cancer center. I was looking forward to cheekily asking the nurse administering the vaccine to make sure mine had thimerosal, but […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement versus the truth

My alma mater has let me down. As many of you know, I went to the University of Michigan for both my undergraduate degree and for medical school. I still have a fairly strong attachment to the school, which is why I can still be disappointed when its faculty let me down. Unfortunately, it’s happened, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience

Battling misinformed consent: How should we respond to the anti-vaccine movement?

Antivaxers frequently claim that they are champions of “informed consent.” In reality, their version of informed consent is a parody of consent that I like to refer to as “misinformed consent.”