Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Antivaccinationists denying the cult of Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy

Two of the great “icons”—if you can call them “great” given that they’re icons but hardly “great”—of the antivaccine movement are Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy. Over the last decade, they have arguably been the most influential people in the antivaccine movement. The reasons are simple. Let’s look at Jenny McCarthy first. In 2007, when […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Autism quackery: Try, try, try, and never give up

Antivaccine quackery is arguably one of the worst forms of quackery. First, the pseudoscientific beliefs undergirding such quackery are based on the fear and demonization of one of the greatest medical advances in the history of the human race, the result of which are children left unprotected against preventable diseases that routinely used to populate […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Popular culture Quackery

Medical marijuana for autism and autism biomed quackery: One in the same and on the verge of approval in Michigan

When I first started writing about the claims made for medical marijuana and the cannabis oil derived from it, it didn’t take long for me to characterize medical claims for cannabis as the “new herbalism,” as opposed to pharmacognosy, the branch of pharmacology devoted to the study of natural products. The reason is simple. Although […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Medicine Quackery

Just when I thought I had heard every bone-headed historical analogy by antivaccinationists

Ever since SB 277 became law, I didn’t think I’d be writing about it much anymore. Actually, I probably won’t be writing about it much any more, because it’s now a done deal. It’s the law of the land in California. Beginning in 2016, non-medical exemptions (i.e., religious exemptions and personal belief exemptions) to school […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Twitter as an amplifier of antivaccine messages

Before 2005, I did pay attention to the antivaccine movement, but it wasn’t one of my biggest priorities when it comes to promoting science-based medicine. That all changed when Robert F. Kennedy published his incredibly conspiracy-packed black whole of antivaccine pseudoscience entitled Deadly Immunity. Sadly, almost exactly ten years later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn’t […]