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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Religion

Quoth antivaccine “warrior mamma” Brittney Kara: If vaccines are so great, why aren’t they mentioned in the Bible?

Orac has heard some really silly arguments by antivaxers against vaccines in his time blogging. Indeed, he thought he had heard them all. He was wrong. Did you know that the Bible didn’t mention vaccines? And that pharmaceuticals are sorcery? Brittney Kara tells us so!

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Medicine

Senator Patrick Colbeck’s embrace of pseudoscience goes farther than I thought

My state senator, Patrick Colbeck, has repeatedly sided with antivaxers in promoting legislation that would make it easier to get personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Now I find out that he’s an “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” crank as well. And he’s running for governor.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Naturopathy Quackery

Henele E’ale: A new antivaccine naturopathic quack (but I repeat myself)

Antivaccine quacks like to argue that a healthy immune system will protect you from infectious disease, rendering vaccines unnecessary. It’s a ridiculous claim, well-refuted by the history of medicine. A naturopath whom I had somehow never heard of before, Henele E’ale, is now spewing that very same lie.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Contamination requiring ritual purification: Superstitious concepts at the heart of antivaccine beliefs

Much of the belief system that undergirds antivaccine views is rooted in superstition. That’s why it’s not a coincidence that antivaxers frequently speak in terms of contamination due to vaccines as a cause of autism and all the other conditions for which antivaxers blame vaccines and ritual purification in the form of “detoxification” as the treatment. These beliefs very much resemble religious beliefs, and antivaxers project them onto pro-science advocates.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

This could be the most ludicrous version of the “toxins” gambit I’ve ever seen

One of the oldest antivaccine tropes that first encountered is one that I like to call the “toxins gambit.” Basically, this is an antivaccine lie that portrays vaccines as being laden with all manner of “toxins” because they have—gasp!—chemicals with scary sounding names and even some chemicals that are toxic. The lie derives from the […]