COVID-19 infection during pregnancy is associated with higher rates of autism and neurodevelopmental diagnoses
A recent study found that infection with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of autism and neurodevelopment disorders. This is yet another reason why vaccination during pregnancy is important.
The opposite of “turbo cancer”: COVID-19 vaccines sensitize cancer to immunotherapy
A new preliminary study published in Nature suggests that COVID-19 vaccines might actually boost the immune system to make immunotherapy more effective. If confirmed in followup studies, this result suggests that the vaccines do the opposite of causing "turbo cancer."
Surgeon General nominee Dr. Casey Means and functional medicine: Legitimizing quackery
Surgeon general nominee Dr. Casey Means is an advocate of "functional medicine." She, MAHA, and a new "board certification" will falsely legitimize quackery.
RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines, part 4: Aluminum edition (or: Everything old is new again…again)
Last week, news stories reported that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had convened an "aluminum working group." Among the "scientists" there are antivax scientists about whom I've been writing for over a decade. Everything old antivax is new again.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. weaponizes an old antivax trope in his quest to eliminate vaccines
People who keep whistling past the graveyard (of vaccines) to assure themselves that RFK Jr,. won't take away their vaccines are deluding themselves. One seven-minute video he posted last week shows that, weaponizing an old one deceptive antivax trope claiming that vaccines didn't do that much to improve global health.
Mark Blaxill: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resurrects another washed-up antivax activist
Last week, it was reported that Mark Blaxill had been hired at CDC. It looks like RFK Jr.'s resurrecting every washed up antivax crony he can find to staff HHS.
Here we go again: Another study is being misrepresented as evidence that COVID vaccines cause cancer
An eminent oncologist, cancer researcher, and cancer center director is promoting a study that seems to show—but, when critically examined, doesn't—that COVID vaccines are associated with increased cancer risk.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines, part 3: Antivax rhetoric and incompetence at ACIP
The CDC's newly reconstituted antivax Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met last week. The results weren't as horrific as I'd expected, but not for lack of trying. In this post, I'll focus on one presentation as a lens through which to look at the meeting as a whole.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines, part 2: VAERS, the FDA, and ACIP
The Food and Drug Administration appears to be about to weaponize a classic antivax trope against COVID-19 vaccines, the abuse of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System to falsely portray them as deadly, even as news reports suggest that RFK Jr. will further restrict access to COVID-19 and three childhood vaccines. Here we go again.
Denial of germ theory and the genetic basis of disease: Two pillars of MAHA
To understand MAHA, understand the specific science that it denies.