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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism and ASD: A failed hypothesis

Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I […]

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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Bishop Richard Williamson, Holocaust denial, and the problem of “recantation” by cranks

Because of the fallout from the revelation by Brian Deer that very likely Andrew Wakefield, hero of the antivaccine movement but, alas for his worshipers, one of the most dishonest and incompetent scientists who ever lived, had almost certainly falsified data for his infamous 1998 Lancet paper that launched a decade-long anti-MMR hysteria that shows […]

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Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics Religion

Better late than never? The Vatican demands that a Holocaust denier recant

I guess even the Vatican responds to public pressure, if it’s intense enough. Last week, I noted an extremely disturbing story, a story that outraged me, a story that I would have found even more disturbing were I still a practicing Catholic but that I found disturbing enough even though I no longer am one. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

David Kirby’s “logic”: The hepatitis B vaccine may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis, so it’s obvious that vaccines cause autism

It’s really hard to take David Kirby seriously any more. Well, actually, it’s been hard to take him seriously for at nearly four years now, ever since he wrote his paean to antivaccinationists, Evidence of Harm, in which no conspiracy-mongering related to mercury as an alleged cause of autism was too out there, too ridiculous, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

And I thought I was exaggerating when I discussed “battlefield” acupuncture

Ten months ago, I thought I was joking. I really did. Regular readers may (or may not) remember back in March, when, in one of my usual flights of fancy, I decided that I could write a short fictional interlude, a combat scene. True, I didn’t do it because I wanted actually to write a […]