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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

This must not come to pass: Quacks winning the Shorty Award for health

Although I have a Twitter account, I really don’t use it all that often, other than having set up an automatic feed to Tweet all my new posts for the blog. True, I do from time to time have flurries of activity (usually when I’m trapped in a particularly boring conference) or am inspired to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics

Anti-vaccine activism, not autism activism

Remember how I said that I was trying to take it easy this week? I still am, but there’s something bugging me enough to draw me out of my grant-induced cocoon for a little while in order to pontificate on it in the not-so-Respectfully Insolent way that I am so often wont to do. True, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

Crank magnetism at a young age: Anti-vaccine “resistance” and 9/11 Truth

If there’s one thing that irritates me about the anti-vaccine movement, it’s the utter disingenuousness of the movement. How often do we hear the claim from anti-vaccine loons that “we’re not ‘anti-vaccine’; we’re ‘pro-safe vaccine’”? I’ve tried to pin such people down time and time again to answer just what it would take in terms […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Arm & Hammer Baking Soda for H1N1 influenza and cancer? Woo at its finest!

There are times when I get really depressed writing this blog. It’s not because I don’t enjoy it, although like any long term hobby my blogging does occasionally feel like more of an obligation than a hobby. That’s only part of the time, though. Most of the time I really do enjoy what I do. […]

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Cancer Medicine

“Obama’s fixin’ death panels for your mama,” the misogyny gambit, and other idiotic responses to the updated USPSTF mammography recommendations

I knew when I first heard about them that the new United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on breast cancer screening would be controversial. I tried to discuss these guidelines and the issues involved in a calm and rational way, relatively devoid of Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, yesterday, pointing out that screening guidelines […]