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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

More antivaccination nonsense…but not from Bill Maher this time

Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he’s rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on December 21, 2005 Enjoy! When you blog about a certain topic long enough and post […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Bill Maher: Antivaccination wingnut

Vacation time! While Orac is off to London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he’s rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on December 19, 2005. I don’t know if Bill Maher is still an antivax […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

The soft eugenics of MAHA: Measles and RFK Jr.

I’ve long said that the antivax movement is borderline eugenicist (or at least social Darwinist) in nature. Given the ongoing measles outbreak, with two children dead so far, it’s time for me to take a look at the “soft eugenics” of the antivax movement and, more generally, the MAHA movement.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Has RFK Jr. betrayed the antivax movement?

Yesterday, I woke up to see an amazing op-ed in which longtime antivaxxer and now HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a call to action that included the MMR vaccine. Has he gone pro-vax? Not exactly, but it’s amusing to watch his fans howl.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science

Prions. Why did it have to be prions?

Prions. Why did it have to be prions? (Again.) The antivax trope that vaccines cause prion disease is an old one, and antivaxxers are trying desperately to resurrect it to apply to COVID-19 vaccines.