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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Vaccination for H1N1 “swine” flu: Do The Atlantic, Shannon Brownlee, and Jeanne Lenzer matter?

I had meant to address this topic last week, but the whole Suzanne Somers thing bubbled up and overwhelmed my blogging attention. Regular readers of this blog probably realize that I tend to live and die as a blogger by the maxim that if some is good more must be better. So I clobbered the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

A tale of two news stories: The HPV and flu vaccines and why it’s so easy to confuse correlation with causation

And so it begins. Well, it hasn’t really just begun. In fact, it’s been going on a long time. I’m talking about confusing correlation with causation when it comes to vaccines. For example, the “vaccines cause autism” variety of the anti-vaccine movement blatantly confuses the correlation with the beginning of the increase in autism diagnoses […]

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Cancer Entertainment/culture Medicine Movies Popular culture Television

R.I.P. Patrick Swayze

I just learned that earlier today Patrick Swayze finally died of his pancreatic cancer after having survived far longer (20 months) than the average patient diagnosed with stage IV disease (less than 6 months). All I can say is: Rest in peace, Patrick. Not only did Swayze deal with his terminal illness with courage, humor, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Music News of the Weird Quackery

An antivaccine rap by a rapping “Health Ranger”? The pain, the pain…

We all know that Mike Adams, a.k.a. the “Health Ranger,” is anti-vaccine to the core. He’s known for NaturalNews.com, a repository of quackery, anti-vaccine craziness, and conspiracy theories that rivals Whale.to but in a much slicker fashion. Now, unfortunately, I learn that he’s going multimedia. Worse, Mike Rangers, who is about as white bread and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Ron Paul: Quackery enabler, part II

While I’ve let myself get sucked into commenting on health care politics (well, not exactly “sucked in”; I was pissed off enough at the “Obama = Hitler” analogies that I enjoyed skewering some of the idiots making them), there’s another issue that’s popped up that I can’t resist commenting on in my usual inimitable fashion. […]