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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Surgery

The unbearable lightweightness of being David Kirby

Remember how I speculated that appointing die-hard antivaccinationists to the new federal panel on autism research and policy would be a propaganda boon to the antivaccination movement and the mercury militia? Surprise, surprise! It’s already happening. Even less of a surprise, first off the mark to gloat is everybody’s favorite whore for the mercury militia […]

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Medicine Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Like the Phoenix, Peter Popoff rises from the ashes of his butt-kicking by James Randi

Depressing. One of the fakest faith-healers of all, Peter Popoff, who was so memorably exposed for a fraud by James Randi back in the 1980s when Randi caught him using a small radio receiver to be fed information on people he was “healing” from his wife, who was reading them off of prayer cards, is […]

Categories
Bioethics Medicine Religion

One last comment on the Dennis Lindberg case

I’ve been spending a bit of time discussing the sad case of Dennis Lindberg, a 14-year-old youth with leukemia who died because of his refusal to accept a blood transfusion when his hematocrit fell to life-threateningly low levels apparently during chemotherapy. My position is that, while competent adults have the right to refuse transfusion for […]

Categories
History Holocaust Medicine World War II

Atheists and Jews and eugenics before World War II: Greg’s joking, right?

I’m always loathe to criticize a fellow ScienceBlogger, but, as the resident World War II buff and tireless debunker of Holocaust denial, I couldn’t let this one pass. While perusing the Last 24 Hours feed yesterday, I came across a most curious statement in a slapdown by Greg Laden of an attempt by Bruce Chapman […]

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History Humor Sports

The Chuck Norris of the 1930s?

Apparently Jack Dempsey was his generation’s Chuck Norris, who, as we know, doesn’t read books but stares them down until he gets the information that he wants. Here he is in a 1934 Modern Mechanix article boasting how he can “whip any mechanical robot”: Of course, I still think it would hurt like hell to […]