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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

A “holistic” doctor throws a hilariously disingenuous tantrum over board recertification

In the early days of 2016, my attention was drawn to a local antivaccine doctor of whom I’d heard before but never really paid much attention to. What caught my eye was a blog exchange between this “holistic” family practitioner and former Scienceblogs blogger, friend, and local internist Peter Lipson over this physician’s blog posts […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Doctors are "pushing vaccines"? Gee, you say that as though that were a bad thing!

I frequently point out how antivaccine activists really, really don’t want to admit that they are, in fact, antivaccine, so frequently, in fact, that I have a series that I call The annals of “I’m not antivaccine.” It’s already up to part 21. It could easily be up to part 51, or 101, or even […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

How should we deal with vaccine hesitancy, refusal, and antivaccine beliefs

As hard as it might be to believe, almost as long as there have been vaccinations, there has been an antivaccine movement, and as long as there has been an antivaccine movement, there have been parents who refuse to vaccinate. Indeed, in the 1800s, there were even groups with names like the Anti-Vaccination Society of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 21: Oh, wait, maybe I am antivaccine after all

This is yet another in the continuing saga of “I’m not antivaccine,” a continuing series of posts demonstrating how the oh-so-loud and vigorous denials of antivaccine activists that they are antivaccine are in reality either a lie or self-delusion. There have been so many previous installments, twenty, to be precise. There could easily have been […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

Why does Dr. Mercola sell supplements? Cognitive dissonance at its finest

A characteristic of real doctors and real health care providers is that they usually don’t sell the drugs and remedies that they recommend. Indeed, physicians are generally not allowed to in most states, as it’s considered a conflict of interest. Also, the Stark Law forbids physician self-referral, which is the referral of a patient to […]