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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier hits a new low: Age of Autism rallies to defend him

Remember Luc Montagnier? Sure, you do. He’s the Nobel Laureate whose identification of the virus that causes AIDS garnered him plaudits, laurels, and, of course, the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Unfortunately, since winning the Nobel Prize, from a scientific standpoint, Montagnier’s been on a downward spiral. Sadly, it didn’t take long after his Nobel acceptance […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

What do polio, pesticides, and cell phone radiation have in common?

No matter how you slice it, I’ve been at this blogging thing a long time. it’s been over seven years now. It’s been even longer than that, though, because before that cold gray Saturday afternoon in September when I started farting around with Blogger and ended giving birth to the first iteration of Respectful Insolence, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Humor Medicine

All is as it should be again

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to get my flu shot. So that’s just what I did yesterday. I decided to brave that evil, toxin-laden, mercury-infused nastiness, all in order to protect myself and my patients against influenze. As you might recall, last year, when I was off to get my flu vaccine, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted: Merrily confusing correlation with causation for polio

I’ve been following the anti-vaccine movement for nearly a decade now, first as a regular on the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and then, beginning almost seven years ago, blogging away. Along the way, somehow I stumbled into the role of countering the pseudoscience, misinformation, and nonsense promoted by the anti-vaccine movement. It’s dangerous misinformation, too. For […]

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

Detoxifying fashionably

How many times have I read or heard from believers in “alternative” medicine that some disease or other is caused by “toxins”? I honestly can’t remember, but in alt-world, no matter what the disease or condition under discussion is, there’s a good chance that sooner or later it will be linked to “toxins.” It doesn’t […]