Results for: Andrew Wakefield

Vaccination as “rape”: Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network

The Australian anti-Vaccination Network (AVN) in Australia has not been having a good time of late. First, they were smacked down by the Health Care Complaints Commission. Following a 12 month investigation into the information provided on the AVN’s website, the HCCC issued a public warning stating the AVN “pose(s) a risk to public health and safety”. The AVN was then investigated...

/ February 19, 2011

Dr. Paul Offit appears on The Colbert Report

For a touch of the lighter side, here’s Dr. Paul Offit appearing on The Colbert Report to discuss his new book: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Paul Offit www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive Looks like a win to me. I particularly like how Dr. Offit says that the question of whether...

/ February 1, 2011

Mothering magazine: Peddling dangerous health misinformation to new mothers

Last week, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis of his now infamous 1998 Lancet article suggesting a link between the MMR...

/ January 10, 2011

Deadly Choices about vaccination

The year 2011 is starting out rather promisingly, at least from the point of view of science-based medicine. Its beginning coincides with the release of two — count ’em, two! — books taking a skeptical, science-based look at vaccines and, in particular, the anti-vaccine movement. First off the mark is a new book by a man whom the anti-vaccine movement views as...

/ January 3, 2011

Journal Club Debunks Anti-Vaccine Myths

American Family Physician, the journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians, has a feature called AFP Journal Club, where physicians analyze a journal article that either involves a hot topic affecting family physicians or busts a commonly held medical myth. In the September 15, 2010 issue they discussed “Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses,” by Gerber and Offit, published...

/ November 2, 2010

Lies, damned lies, and…science-based medicine?

I realize that in the question-and-answer session after my talk at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium a week ago I suggested in response to a man named Leon Maliniak, who monopolized the first part of what was already a too-brief Q&A session by expounding on the supposed genius of Royal Rife, that I would be doing a post about the Rife...

/ October 25, 2010

The Guatemala syphilis experiment and medical ethics in science-based medicine

Several of the bloggers here at SBM have repeatedly criticized various clinical trials for so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” interventions for various conditions and diseases (or should I say dis-eases?) for being completely unethical. Examples include the misbegotten clinical trial for the Gonzalez protocol for pancreatic cancer, which — surprise, surprise! — ended up showing that patients undergoing Dr. Gonzalez’s combination of...

/ October 4, 2010

The final nail in the mercury-autism hypothesis?

Another study. Another failure to link thimerosal to a higher risk of autism. Can we just bury the claim that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, already?

/ September 13, 2010

The Texas Medical Board acts in the case of the Winkler County whistle blowing nurses

I can’t speak for anyone else who blogs here at Science-Based Medicine, but there’s one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that we exist only to “bash ‘alternative’ medicine.” We don’t. We exist to champion medicine based on science against all manner of dubious practices. Part of that mandate involves understanding and accepting that science-based medicine is not perfect....

/ July 19, 2010

Medical Voices: Always in Error, Never in Doubt

I have discussed two articles from the web site Medical Voices, one with 9 questions, the other on mumps. There are, I think, 18 web pages of articles about vaccines on that web site. I am uncertain as to the true number of pages of information as the navigation buttons at the bottom of the pages do not always seem to function...

/ June 18, 2010