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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Arrogance: The mercury militia responds to the NEJM article on thimerosal-containing vaccines

Pity the investigators at the CDC studying whether thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative pilloried by the antivaccination movement as the cause of autism and everything that is evil in medicine. Three months ago, they published a high profile article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Open-minded to the point of brains falling out: Antivaccinationists appointed to federal autism panel

We’ve had one example this week of people with minds so open that their brains fell out at the Oxford Union, which invited Holocaust denier and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to “discuss free speech.” Now, sadly, I see another, this time it’s the United States government, which has invited die-hard antivaccinationists to be […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

A credulous treatment of the mercury militia on PBS

The Skeptical Surfer informs me of a rather disturbing programming decision by PBS: I first caught wind of the autism film “Beautiful Son” through the surfing community. Surf filmmaker Don King has an autistic son. Being a filmmaker, Don always has a video camera at hand and has documented his “journey” of discovering that his […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

A bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to support an association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for the mercury militia. Think about it. They’ve been claiming for the past several years that the mercury in the thimerosal used as a preservative in childhood vaccines is a cause of autism. If you believe Generation Rescue, A-CHAMP, SAFEMINDS, and various other activist groups, vaccines are the root […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine History Hitler Zombie Holocaust Medicine Quackery World War II

The Hitler Zombie smells thimerosal

Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he’s rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on July 6, 2005 and is the very first time ever that the Hitler Zombie appeared […]