Categories
Autism Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Kev takes ’em on twice while Orac sits back and enjoys

Tara’s post yesterday about Mercury and Mythology about how mercury in vaccines does not cause autism and about a recent story demonstrating tht mercury as used in dental amalgams is safe, coupled with Phil Plait’s discussion of an article in TIME about autism that seemed a bit too credulous about facilitated communication reminded me that […]

Categories
Autism Medicine Quackery

Vox responds

A few days ago, I fisked the antivaccination posturings of a certain “Libertarian Christian commenator” regarding the Geiers’ claim that mercury in the thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is a major cause of autism. Many of the comments predicted that Vox wouldn’t respond. (Personally, I was hoping that he would but, based on […]

Categories
Autism

Kristjan Wager returns to discuss the Danish autism studies

Excellent. Having had to work on a talk last night, I didn’t have any time to write anything substantive. Horrified at the thought of this blog going silent on a weekday (going silent on the weekend doesn’t concern me much, given that my traffic almost always falls by around 50% regardless of whether I post […]

Categories
Autism

Evidence against an “autism epidemic”

One of the key arguments by advocates claiming a link between mercury in childhood vaccines is that there is an “epidemic” of autism. They’ll claim that autism was unknown before the 1930’s, when thimerosal was first introduced into vaccines. (Never mind that there are plenty of descriptions of autism-like conditions dating from as far back […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine EneMan Evolution Medicine Science

Orac has a change of heart

You know, after all these years as a scientist, physician, and skeptic, I’ve been wondering. Perhaps it’s time to undergo a reassessment of my and philosophy. I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon, and it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere. My words appear to have no impact on the credulous. For example, perhaps I’ve […]