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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The martyrdom of St. Andy, part 2: David Kirby rides to the rescue (sort of)

If I am wrong I will be a bad person because I will have raised this spectre. Andrew Wakefield, March 3, 1998. Interview in The Independent. The martyrdom of brave maverick Saint Andy continues apace, it would appear. As you recall, last week, after an interminable proceeding that stretched out over two and a half […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The worst pseudoscience of the decade?

It’s the end, the end of the ’70s It’s the end, the end of the century. Joey Ramone, 1979 As amazing as it is to me, the first decade of the 21st century is fast approaching its end. It seems like only yesterday that my wife and I were waiting for the dawn of the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Amy Wallace using misogyny

The little matter of finding out that the actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation appears to have anti-vaccine proclivities sidetracked me from something that I had actually wanted to blog about yesterday. Specifically, it’s something that my blog bud Abel Pharmboy has been hitting hard over the last couple of days. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine war on science: An epidemic of fear

Many have been the times over the last five years that I’ve called out bad journalism about medicine in general and vaccines in particular, especially the coverage of the discredited notion that vaccines or mercury in vaccines somehow was responsible for the “autism epidemic.” That’s why I feel a special responsibility to highlight good reporting […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A crazy mixed up kid comes up with a crazy mixed up conspiracy theory about a crazy mixed up blog collective

That Jake Crosby, he’s a crazy mixed-up kid, but I kind of like him. He seems like a nice enough and smart enough kid, but, sadly, he’s fallen in with a bad crowd over at the anti-vaccine crank propaganda blog, Age of Autism, so much so that he’s even blogging there, helping, whether he realizes […]