Category: Vaccines
Confusing correlation with causation
These two video explains it better than anything I’ve seen in a long time: That’s right. Vaccines educate the immune system. Use them. I got my flu shot on Thursday.
The Huffington Post is at it again
As many of our readers know, there are plenty of websites devoted entirely to fake medicine. Sites such as whale.to and NatrualNews are repositories of paranoid, unscientific thinking and promotion of dangerous health practices. Thankfully, they are rather fringe (but not fringe enough). More mainstream outlets print some pretty bad stuff, but it’s usually just lazy reporting and not a concerted, organized...
The price of anti-vaccine fanaticism: Case histories
One of the major themes of SBM has been to combat one flavor of anti-SBM movement that believes, despite all the evidence otherwise, that vaccines cause autism and that autism can be reversed with all sorts of “biomedical” quackery. Many (but by no means all) of these so-called “biomedical” treatments are based on the false view that vaccines somehow caused autism. I...
Bill Maher endorses cancer quackery
Over the last five years or so, I’ve often asked, “Is Bill Maher really that ignorant?” I’ve come to the conclusion that he is, and a couple of weeks ago laid out the evidence why right here on this very blog. (Lately Maher has been issuing Tweets that call people who get flu shots “idiots.”) Indeed, I even included in the post...
Crank “scientific” conferences: A parody of science-based medicine that can deceive even reputable scientists and institutions
Quacks crave respectability. To try to gain it, they often don the trappings of real medicine, such as holding medical conferences. To the uninitiated, such conferences can even look respectable. They aren't.
The HPV Vaccine (Gardasil) Safety Revisited
Gardasil (qHPV) was licensed in 2006 as a vaccine against four types of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and marketed as, “The first vaccine targeted to prevent cancer.” From its inception it has been one of the more controversial vaccines. Some religious groups feared that the reduced threat of a sexually transmitted disease would lead to increased sexual promiscuity. Other groups were concerned about...
Even with the H1N1 pandemic flu strain going around, you should still be vaccinated against the seasonal flu
Even with the H1N1 pandemic flu going around you should still be vaccinated against the seasonal flu. revere has the details. Read. Enjoy. Be educated. I guess that means Dr. Doug Bremner must think that revere is an idiot. After all, Bremner tells us that the flu vaccine is all a plot for big pharma to make money, don’t you know? Subtlety...
An open letter to Dr. J. Douglas Bremner
Peter Lipson wrote a post last week entitled Before You Trust That Blog…, which was a criticism of Dr. J. Douglas Bremner’s blog Before You Take That Pill. Dr. Bremner was not pleased, and posted a rebuttal entitled Response to Peter Lipson MD of “Science” Based Blogs, My Blog Does Not Suck, Yours Does. Given the kerfuffle and my role as managing...
More Flu Woo For You, Boo Boo
In which we try to be smarter than the average bear. Flu season is upon us (it kind of never left us this year), and there is a new strain of flu, the H1N1, aka Swine flu that adds a wrinkle or two to the usual potential for influenza related morbidity and mortality. And with the new flu is the new woo....