Orac has heard some really silly arguments by antivaxers against vaccines in his time blogging. Indeed, he thought he had heard them all. He was wrong. Did you know that the Bible didn’t mention vaccines? And that pharmaceuticals are sorcery? Brittney Kara tells us so!
Autism Awareness Month is nearly upon us again. Unfortunately, the antivaccine movement has found a new way to ruin it by hijacking autism awareness to promote their antivaccine pseudoscience and quackery, along with contempt for autistic people. Behold #SaidNoMother and #SaidNoFather.
One of the central myths of the antivaccine movement is that vaccines cause autism. Consequently, researchers looked at vaccination rates in children with autism spectrum disorder and their younger siblings and found both groups were significantly less likely to be fully vaccinated. Thanks, antivaxers.
My state senator, Patrick Colbeck, has repeatedly sided with antivaxers in promoting legislation that would make it easier to get personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Now I find out that he’s an “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” crank as well. And he’s running for governor.
Recently, Dr. Peter Hotez characterized antivaccine groups as “hate groups,” and antivaxer Barbara Loe Fisher took great umbrage, accusing Dr. Hotez and the public health community of “bullying” parents of “vaccine-injured” children. Did Dr. Hotez go too far? And what about Fisher’s hypocrisy, given that Dr. Hotez has received death threats credible enough to warrant police protection and Fisher herself has sued her critics, in effect trying to bully them into silence?
