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

The long, sordid antivaccine history of Donald Trump

Note added 9/17/2015: I knew it. The vaccine issue came up during the second debate and Donald Trump repeated basically the same nonsensical antivaccine tropes that he’s been repeating for at least eight years. It rather puts the lie to his claim that he listens to experts and changes his opinion based on what they […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

12 lies about “12 mainstream vaccine lies” refuted

Listicles. I hate Listicles. I don’t do them. Yet, as much as I hate them, I can’t deny that in this brave new world of click bait, listicles bring the clicks, which is why so many blogs and websites post them. Indeed, there’s a website, Thrillist, that is dedicated to pretty much nothing but listicles. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The return of the revenge of the “CDC whistleblower”

A couple of weeks ago, I first took note of a new conspiracy theory that’s been brewing in the antivaccine crankosphere, namely the claim that big pharma has been systematically murdering alternative medical doctors, starting with autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, who committed suicide the day after the FDA raided his office. Of course, it didn’t […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 18: Dr. Bob goes full Godwin over SB 277

Antivaccinationists like Holocaust analogies. I’ve described this particularly loathsome phenomenon more times than I can remember, most recently when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. compared the “vaccine-induced autism epidemic” (vaccine-induced only in RFK, Jr.’s imagination and that of antivaccinationists) to the Holocaust. True, even he was forced to apologize, although it was a classic “notpology”: “I […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A victory in the long war against autism quackery

As depressing as the litany of quackery and patient harm that I follow nearly every day can become, occasionally I am heartened to learn of a victory for science-based medicine and, more importantly, for the patients being victimized by pseudoscientific treatments. One of the most simultaneously ridiculous and vile of these treatments is a solution […]