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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Antivaxxer Steve Kirsch threatens to release private health information

Tech bro turned antivaxxer Steve Kirsch emailed the director of Te Whatu Ora a threat to release names from a stolen New Zealand Ministry of Health database. It did not go well

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Steve Kirsch’s New Zealand “mother of all revelations” about COVID-19 vaccines fizzles

Steve Kirsch recently gave a talk about “record-level data” from New Zealand that supposedly demonstrates that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more than 10 million people worldwide. His “analysis” of illegally obtained data from a “whistleblower” was so ridden with false assumptions and rookie errors that even some antivaxxers couldn’t accept it.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Come on, Jeffrey Tucker and Great Barrington Declaration, just admit you were wrong

In response to an article praising Taylor Swift, Jeffrey Tucker demands that Peggy Noonan “admit she was wrong” about COVID-19. Hilarity ensues.

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Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Aromatase inhibitors and acupuncture in breast cancer

Four years ago, I wrote about an essentially negative study looking at whether acupuncture could alleviate joint pain caused by aromatase inhibitors, a common treatment for estrogen-sensitive breast cancer. The study’s back, and it doesn’t look any more positive.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

The accelerating war on science-based medical regulation

Last week, it was reported how increasingly there is a war on the science-based regulation of medicine and physicians. It’s an old story, but unfortunately the forces arrayed against science-based policy have been emboldened by the pandemic and an stronger alliance with political groups that are against government regulation in general.