Results for: autism
“Coronaphobia”: How antivaxxers and pandemic minimizers pathologize fear of disease
Over the weekend, Dr. Lucy McBride, a concierge medicine doctor who has become famous as a pandemic minimizer and one of the drivers of "Urgency of Normal", Tweeted an article that she had written over a year ago about "coronaphobia". Whether she understands it or not, this is a very old antivax trope: To pathologize fear of infectious disease as mental illness.
Scientific review articles as antivaccine disinformation
Antivaxxers have always written dubious scientific review articles to try to make their wild speculations about vaccine science seem credible. Usually such articles wind up in bottom-feeding journals. Unfortunately a recent pseudo-review article was published by an Elsevier journal, making it seem more credible when it isn't.
Why is anyone surprised that there are so many antivax physicians?
A new survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren't paying attention before the pandemic and assured themselves that the problem was just Andrew Wakefield. The question is:...
Facilitated Communication Is Still Pseudoscience
Facilitated communication is a harmful pseudoscientific technique that has managed to survive through rebranding and deception.
Videos Said to be “Proof” that Nonverbal Autistics Can Communicate by Spelling
The father of nonverbal autistic child believes videos constitute proof that other children with autism can communicate by by pointing to letters on a board held by a facilitator to spell out words. He is wrong.
Recycling old antivax tropes as “bioethics”-based arguments against COVID-19 vaccination for children
A recently published article in Bioethics makes ethical arguments against vaccinating children against COVID-19. If you change the word "COVID-19" to measles, chickenpox, or rotavirus (or others), this article could have been published on one of the higher-brow antivax websites in 2010. Antivax arguments never change; they're just continually recycled.
The Stem Cell Ophthalmology Treatment Study (SCOTS): Part 2
Today we continue an analysis of a dubious stem cell clinical trial, with an examination of the clinic and personnel involved.
Old antivax tropes never die: “COVID theater,” “Urgency of Normal,” and the Great Barrington Declaration
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable calling to "end COVID-19 theater" that brought together the Great Barrington Declaration and "Urgency of Normal," a movement to end mask mandates and other COVID-19 mitigations in schools. The arguments used long predate the pandemic and echo a dark side of the history of American medicine.
It rises again! Bleach as an “early treatment” alternative to vaccines and a cure for COVID-19
Bleach...it had to be...bleach. Again. This time around, it's being used to treat COVID-19, because of course it is. MMS is a slasher quackery. No matter how often it appears to have died, it always returns for another installment in its quackery franchise.
Crizanlizumab for Sickle Cell Crisis
Monoclonal antibodies to prevent sickle cell crises represents the promise and difficulties of high tech medical treatment.