Category: Public Health
The CDC is lying to you about vaccines and autism
The CDC webpage about vaccines and autism now misrepresents the science and lies to the public about vaccines and autism. It's just part of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s continuing war on vaccines.
“MAHA has fallen”? Antivaxxers are getting very impatient with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Recently, antivaxxers have been expressing their impatience with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s progress eliminating vaccines. It was inevitable. Has MAHA fallen?
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.
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.
The Cholesterol Wars Continue
As a first approximation it seems that the purpose of social media is to misrepresent medical information and to promote wellness gurus who basically have no idea what they are talking about. Part of the problem is that medical science is often complex, and the short attention-span format of social media often favors simple clean narratives. So “wellness influencers” dominate while genuine...
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.
Unintended Side Effects HPV and Shingles Vaccines—Reason for Concern
While vaccine debate rages in social media and on Capitol Hill, examination of massive data sets reveals unanticipated effects of the human papilloma virus (HPV) and varicella-zoster (Shingles) vaccines.
That Trump, RFK, Oz Presser
Yes, we have to talk about that press conference with Trump, RFK Jr and Dr. Oz., which some are characterizing as the absolutely worst firehose of medical misinformation coming from the White House in American history. I think that is fair. This was the presser we knew was coming, and many of us were dreading. It was worse than I anticipated. I wrote a...