Tag: autism
A Not-So-Split Decision
For those who battle tirelessly against the never ending onslaught of anti-vaccine propaganda, misinformation, and fear, there was great news the other day from Merck. The pharmaceutical company, and maker of the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella, has decided not to resume production of the individual, or “split”, components of the vaccine. A Merck representative made the announcement during a...
David & Goliath: A Dramatic Role Reversal Spurred On By The Media
The Internet is teeming with false health claims and a long line of celebrities willing to throw their media weight behind every new flavor of snake oil. The irony is that alternative medicine proponents see themselves as a persecuted minority – the victims of some nebulous health industry conspiracy. But in reality, they have ingratiated themselves with the media to such an...
Monkey business in autism research, part II
Over the last couple of months, I’ve noticed something about the anti-vaccine movement. Specifically, I’ve noticed that the mavens of pseudoscience that make up the movement seem to have turned their sights with a vengeance on the Hepatitis B vaccine. The reason for this new tactic, I believe, is fairly obvious. The fact that the Hep B vaccine is administered shortly after...
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...
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.
Book Review: Don’t Be Such A Scientist
Preamble I’ll never forget the day when I argued for protecting parents against misleading and false information about the treatment of autism. I was working at a large consumer health organization whose mission was to “empower patients with accurate information” so that they could take control of their health. My opposition was himself a physician who requested that our organization publish an...
Vaccines and the Media: No Room for Balance
© 2009 msnbc.com Matt Lauer and NBC have continued the ignominious media tradition of feigning to bring “balance” to the issue of vaccine safety. In the Dateline episode A Dose of Controversy, which aired on Sunday night, Matt Lauer interviewed Andrew Wakefield, the originator of the MMR-causes-autism myth, and highlighted his work at Thoughtful House, the autism treatment center he created in Texas after...
Vaccines and Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy
I was recently asked to write about vaccines and autism for Skeptic magazine. I approached the project with trepidation. So much has been written, from Paul Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets to a veritable flood of blogorrhea on the Internet. I didn’t have anything new to add, and I couldn’t hope to cover all aspects of the subject. After some thought, I...
Will The Real, Silent Majority Please Stand Up – To Oprah and Jenny McCarthy?
Much to my surprise and delight, my recent blog post about Jenny McCarthy’s “educational” video was picked up by several other blogs and websites, resulting in a small flood of emails applauding my efforts to expose dangerous pseudoscience. I had braced myself for what I assumed would be an onslaught of hate mail (what else would irrational folks do about a sensible...
Hostility Towards Scientists And Jenny McCarthy’s Latest Video
I’ve been fairly quiet about Jenny McCarthy’s campaign against childhood vaccinations, partly because Dr. David Gorski has covered the issue so thoroughly already, and partly because of my “do not engage” policy relating to the deeply irrational (i.e. there’s no winning an argument with “crazy.”) But this week I was filled with a renewed sense of urgency regarding the anti-vaccinationist movement for...