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Antivaccine nonsense Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

The Vaccine War: Telling it (mostly) like it is about the anti-vaccine movement

Yesterday, I expressed concern about a FRONTLINE episode that was scheduled to air tonight entitled The Vaccine War (which, by the time you read this, should be available for online viewing in case you missed it). My concern was that there was going to be a heapin’ helpin’ of false balance, based on the promotional […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

The Vaccine War?

I haven’t mentioned this before. The reason is not because I don’t find it interesting or potentially blog-worthy, but rather because it slipped my mind and other things caught my interest last week. Given that the show is going to air beginning tomorrow, I thought that a few thoughts were in order. PBS’s Frontline is […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Dr. Oz: America’s doctor and the abdication of professional responsibility

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t bother me that much. At least, for all his flirting with woo, I never quite thought that he had completely gone over to the Dark Side. Although I probably knew deep down that I was fooling myself. Maybe it was because […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Beware, North Carolina. Beware. Dr. Rashid Buttar is free to practice medicine.

Beware, North Carolina. Beware. Your law has become quack-friendly to the point where doctors can do almost anything. Why, you may reasonably wonder, am I saying this? The answer is what appears to be the end of a long and painful story of cancer quackery and anti-vaccine celebrity that has tainted North Carolina for years […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The intellectual dishonesty of the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit

If there’s one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I’ve learned over the last five or so years, it’s that it’s virtually completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter how much evidence is arrayed against it, it always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent it to combat the evidence. Not that this […]