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Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

Guilty, guilty, guilty: The mother who relied on prayer instead of medicine for her child

About a year ago in Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl named Madeleine Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis thanks of the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who prayed for her but did not take her to a physician even as Madeleine became weaker and more ill, her deterioration leading to a most unpleasant death. Highly unusual […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why not just castrate them? (Part 3): The Eisenstein Homefirst connection

As promised, the Chicago Tribune served up the followup article to its expose of father-and-son autism quacks Mark and David Geier. This time around, the Trib takes on Dr. Mayer Eisenstein of the woo-friendly suburban Chicago medical practice known as Homefirst in two articles, Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism and Dr. Peter […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why not just castrate them? (Part 2): The mainstream media finally notices the Geiers’ Lupron protocol

I originally joined this wild and woolly collective known as ScienceBlogs back in February 2006. I was not part of the very first wave of bloggers who made up ScienceBlogs when it launched, although I potentially could have, mainly because I had to work out policies about outside employment with my university before I could […]

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Announcements

The 111th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle: You’re gonna love it!

Time flies, and the ShamWow guy shows up… And so does the 111th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle, this time at hosted at Action Skeptics. You’ll never look at the ShamWow guy in the same way again. Next up is Cheshire, who will be hosting two weeks hence on June 4. This blog has never […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

I wonder what the “toxins” brigade of anti-vaccine loons will think of this

I know I’ve been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let’s take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of “toxins” in vaccines […]