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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Oprah and Jenny McCarthy: A woo too far

Last week I wrote a bit about what I’ve been tempted to call Oprah’s War on Science but settled for the title of a documentary called The Oprah Effect. The reason, as I have mentioned before, is that arguably there is no single person who does more to promote pseudoscientific and dubious health practices than […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Combatting the Oprah Effect

I don’t much like Oprah Winfrey. I know, I know, it’s a huge surprise to anyone who reads this blog, but there you go. Over the last four years, I’ve had numerous reasons to be unhappy with her, mainly because, as savvy a media celebrity and businesswoman as she is, she has about as close […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

Daniel Hauser, fundraising, and “health freedom”

Today is a very good day indeed. I say that because Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who ran away with his mother to avoid having to undergo chemotherapy ordered by a judge, who had found that his parents were engaging in medical neglect in not getting him effective treatment, and returned on […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics

One more time: Vaccine refusal endangers children

One of the claims of the anti-vaccine movement that most irks me is that their actions do not risk harm to anyone other than their own unvaccinated children. Given that vaccination against many infectious diseases also depends on the concept of herd immunity to provide protection to members of the population who either cannot be […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion Science

Good news for Daniel Hauser!

I’ve been writing a lot about the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who underwent one course of chemotherapy and then decided he wanted to pursue “alternative therapy” based on fear of chemotherapy and the faux Native American religion that his mother had taken up with. Ultimately, after a judge ordered […]