Tag: Jenny McCarthy
RFK Jr. and his “I’m not anti-vaccine” rejoinder to being confronted with his past antivax statements: A primer
On Friday, CNN host Kasie Hunt interviewed antivax presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Although she did better than most journalists confronting him for his past antivax statements in that she played a clip of one of his antivax statements, she clearly hadn't anticipated his response, which should have been very predictable given that he's been using it for at least 15...
In 2017, are antivaxers winning?
The election of Donald Trump as President has emboldened antivaxers, because they quite rightly sense that he is one of them. His inauguration as President, combined with other trends, have led observers to ask the question: Are antivaxers winning, or will 2017 be the year of the antivaxer?
The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, part 2
California has passed SB 277 into law. Beginning in the 2016-2017 school year, SB 277 will eliminate personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements. This will benefit the health of California schoolchildren, but the law is not perfect and already antivaxers are looking for loopholes.
Bill Maher: Still an antivaccine crank after all these years
Bill Maher likes to represent himself as the epitome of rationality, primarily on the basis of his rejection of religion. However, rejection of religion does not necessarily make one a skeptic. Maher has demonstrated this over the last decade based on his embrace of antivaccine pseudoscience and other unscientific views. This time around, he fawned over antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On the “right” to challenge a medical or scientific consensus
While everyone has the "right" to challenge a scientific consensus, overthrowing a scientific consensus takes data. Lots and lots of data. Few people realize how difficult it is.
“Motivated reasoning,” alternative medicine, and the anti-vaccine movement
One theme that we at Science-Based Medicine keep revisiting again and again is not so much a question of the science behind medical therapies (although we do discuss that issue arguably more than any other) but rather a question of why. Why is it that so many people cling so tenaciously to pseudoscience, quackery, and, frequently, conspiracy theories used by believers to...
Vaccine Wars: the NCCAM Drops the Ball
If you go to the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), you’ll find that one of its self-identified roles is to “provide information about CAM.” NCCAM Director Josephine Briggs is proud to assert that the website fulfills this expectation. As many readers will recall, three of your bloggers visited the NCCAM last April, after having received an...
Andrew Wakefield Fights Back
Dr. Andrew Wakefield was almost single-handedly responsible for frightening the public about a possible association between autism and the MMR vaccine. His alarmist recommendations directly led to lower vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles to endemic levels in the UK. The MMR/autism interpretation of his 1998 article in The Lancet was retracted by 10 of his 12 co-authors. The article itself...
Dr. Jay Gordon: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Dr. Jay Gordon is dissatisfied with how a PBS documentary handled the vaccines-autism controversy. Despite a lengthy effort at rebuttal, none of his points reflect what is known scientifically about vaccines and autism. Instead he relies on unjustified claims, appeals to emotion, and tacit assertions that his clinical judgment is equal, or superior, to the scientific evidence to date.