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Cancer Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The “Cancer Truther” movement

Denial of the benefits of chemotherapy is very prevalent in “natural health” movements. This denial is based on fear mongering, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories and thus shares many similarities with the antivaccine movement. How can the “chemo truth” spread by “cancer truthers”?

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience

Blaming the flu vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak: The latest antivaccine misinformation

Antivaccine activists are blaming the coronavirus outbreak in China on—what else?—the flu vaccine, because of course they are. All they have to do is to deceptively invoke “virus interference.” So science-y!

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Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine

Harassment: The price of defending science-based medicine

Harassment by cranks and antivaxxers is all too often the price of defending science-based medicine. Is it worth it? How can we stop it?

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Antivaccine nonsense Holocaust Medicine

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 29: “Vacciphilia” and child grooming

Kim Rossi of the antivaccine blog Age of Autism compares vaccination to child grooming by pedophiles. But don’t call her “antivaccine.”

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Clinical trials Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture

Crowdfunding to pay to be a research subject in a clinical trial: The case of Lily Wythe [UPDATED 1/23/2020—see addendum]

Lily Wythe is a teenaged girl with a deadly brainstem cancer whose case has made international news because of her family’s crowdfunding to get her into a clinical trial. Should investigators be allowed to fund trials this way?