Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Closing the year on a great note: The mercury militia’s “experts” slapped down

What better way to finish off 2007 than to look at a most amusing judicial ruling on the admissibility of some of the favorite “expert” witnesses trotted out to try to demonstrate a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. It was issued on December 21 in the case of Blackwell v. Sigma Aldrich, Inc. […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Superstition ain’t the way

An excellent op-ed article by Michael Fitzpatrick characterizes quite well the hysterical fear based on no evidence that Andrew Wakefield and his accomplices started in the U.K. over the MMR vaccine and the unfounded claim that it causes autism and bowel disorders: The rise of a combination of extreme scepticism towards established sources of authority […]

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 […]

Categories
Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Enemies of Reason, part 2: The Irrational Health Service (with a review)

Thanks to Blake, I now have The Enemies of Reason, Part 2: My review of this episode is below the fold. I managed to BitTorrent the episode and watch it on my laptop on my flight back from Chicago last night. If you don’t want to be influenced by my opinion before watching, watch the […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

How low will Wakefield supporters go?

How low will Andrew Wakefield supporters go in protecting the discredited and disgraced doctor whose shoddy and biased research sparked an antivaccination hysteria that led to falling vaccination rates in the U.K. and the subsequent return of measles and mumps? This low. Yes, it’s a Wakefield apologist website. It misrepresents the science; whines about the […]