Category: Vaccines
Anti-psychiatry and anti-vaccine activists shamelessly taking advantage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings
Quacks detest science-based medicine (SBM) in general, but there are certain specialties that they detest more than others. For instance, you won’t find too many quacks attacking trauma surgery because even they know that when a person’s body has been on the losing end of a confrontation with a bullet or a car, no amount of laying on of hands, homeopathic nostrums,...
Another blow to the anti-vaccine movement as legislation change forces a name change
Earlier this year, Australia’s anti-vaccine lobby, the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), took the NSW Government to the Supreme Court. In dispute was their license to fundraise which had been revoked and a public warning, issued because they refused to put a Quack Miranda on their website. The public warning was posted after the NSW government investigated their website following two complaints, one...
Oregon Naturopaths v. Evidence-Based Medicine
Like every state, Oregon is struggling with the unsustainable costs of taxpayer-funded health care programs. In an attempt to tame this beast, Oregon recently established a system of coordinated care organizations, or CCOs, to (as the name suggests) coordinate medical, mental health, and dental care for residents enrolled in Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program. The new system requires supervision of...
More Boosting the Immune System
Can you boost your immune system? Sure, with a vaccine. That's about it.
The antivaccine lie that just won’t die: The claim that shaken baby syndrome is really due to “vaccine injury”
One of the vilest ideas that antivaxers promote is the claim that shaken baby syndrome is in reality a "misdiagnosis" for vaccine injury. Come down the rabbit hole with me and see just how low antivaxers will go to promote this idea and use it to try to exonerate child abusers.
The problem of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates
It’s that time of year again, namely flu vaccine time. My very own cancer institute will be offering the flu vaccine for its staff beginning October 1, and I plan on getting mine just as soon as I get back from the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress in Chicago early next week. In the meantime, it’s always great to read Mark...
Protect Yourself
Every year influenza makes the rounds, and every year people refuse to get vaccinated for very bad reasons. Don't be a Dumb Ass - get vaccinated.
The problem of waning pertussis immunity
There’s been a lot of discussion, both in the scientific literature and online, about recent pertussis outbreaks, which are the worst outbreaks in the US in the last 50 years. How could this possibly be, it is asked, when vaccine uptake for the pertussis vaccine remains high? True, there are pockets of vaccine resistance, where uptake of the vaccine is low, but...
Holding the Polio Vaccine Hostage
Since the development of the vaccine, perhaps the most effective public health measure we have yet devised, only one human disease has been completely eradicated from the world – smallpox. The last case was reported in Somalia in 1977. Eradication was the result of a deliberate and intense campaign, requiring almost complete vaccination of the population, especially in certain population dense areas....
Caption this: Dr. Gorski meets Dr. Whitaker
Earlier today, I gave you the blow-by-blow description of a debate that occurred on Thursday between Dr. Steve Novella and Dr. Julian Whitaker. After that debate, I got an opportunity to “discuss” one of Dr. Whitaker’s points, specifically a scientifically illiterate graph that he had constructed. Because Dave Patton was there doing photography of the event for Michael Shermer, I suggested that...