Hillary Simpson created the Facebook group #crazymothers to co-opt the perception that the science-based world has of her and her fellow antivax mothers. Now, she’s cooked up a hashtag and social media campaign called #DearDoctor to encourage mothers to harass their child’s former pediatricians by writing letters blaming them for vaccinating and supposedly causing their children’s autism. Oh, and she does freestyle rap, too. Badly. Oh, so badly.
I was invited to discuss vaccines with antivaxers for a panel called One Conversation. Recognizing an antivaccine trap, I politely declined. Unfortunately, other legitimate medical authorities did not, thus enabling the illusion of legitimization of antivaccine views.
Riley Hughes died of pertussis, and his father is trying to encourage vaccination against pertussis. The “Drs. Wolfson” object. They’re antivaccine quacks, and they blame the victim.
Dr. Robin Berzin founded a concierge functional medicine practice, Parsley Health. Her practice is growing and has expanded to three major cities thus far, and she’s begun a foray into pediatrics? Are holistic concierge medical practices the future of “integrating” quackery into medicine, be it functional medicine or other models?
A study released yesterday has led to numerous breathless headlines in the media about Russian bots on Twitter sowing discord about vaccines by spreading polarized antivaccine and provaccine messages. The stories imply that this is a huge problem. But is it? There’s no doubt that this study showed some Russian bots Tweeting polarized messages about vaccines, but, contrary to the news stories, it doesn’t support the concept of a widespread Russian effort to stoke conflict about vaccines. It’s unclear whether the Russian effort was opportunistic or experimental, but it wasn’t huge.
