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

The autism “Holocaust”? Why antivaccine advocates are not autism advocates

A typical response to a charge of being antivaccine coming from someone whose rhetoric is definitely antivaccine is to clutch her pearls mightily and retort, “I’m not ‘anti-vaccine.’ I’m pro-vaccine safety.” Similarly, a common retort of antivaccinationists who believe that vaccines cause autism, particularly those who believe that vaccines caused their children’s autism, is to […]

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

The long, sordid antivaccine history of Donald Trump

Note added 9/17/2015: I knew it. The vaccine issue came up during the second debate and Donald Trump repeated basically the same nonsensical antivaccine tropes that he’s been repeating for at least eight years. It rather puts the lie to his claim that he listens to experts and changes his opinion based on what they […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

An “un-American suppression” of antivaccine views or good reporting?

I’ve been writing a lot of posts on what I like to call the “antivaccine dogwhistle.” In politics, a “dog whistle” refers to rhetoric that sounds to the average person to be reasonable and even admirable but, like the way that a dog whistle can’t be heard by humans because the frequency of its tone […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

How “they” view “us” one more time: Poor, poor, pitiful Dan Olmsted

Just three days ago, I updated my ongoing series How “They” View “Us.” This time around, I used Mike Adams’ likening of various pro-science activists, including Steve Novella and myself, among others, to Nazis and compiling what appeared to be a hit list. In the process, I also discussed the antivaccine movement, in particular Age […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? (RFK, Jr. edition)

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is despicable. I just wanted to get that off my chest. (Do clear Plexiglass boxes full of multicolored blinky multicolored lights even have chests?) The reason for my outburst will become painfully apparent all too soon, but I just had to say that. There’s also one other thing that I just […]