Tag: vaccines

The price of opposing medical pseudoscience

When quacks can’t answer with science (which is most commonly), they fall back on their favorite ad hominem attack. They call their critics “pharma shills.” Then they try to silence them by almost any means they view as necessary. Those means can include attempts to get critics fired by going to their bosses and falsely accusing them of serious misdeeds. Dr. Gorski...

/ June 28, 2010

Dedicated to Jake Crosby and Age of Autism…

I'm still standing, better than I've ever been.

/ June 27, 2010

In which Dr. Gorski once again finds himself a target of the “pharma shill” gambit

When quacks can't answer with science (which is most commonly), they fall back on their favorite ad hominem attack. They call their critics "pharma shills." Then they try to silence them by almost any means they view as necessary.

/ June 14, 2010

Nine differences between “us and them,” nine straw men burning

I’ll start this post by admitting right up front: I blatantly stole the idea for the title of this post from Mark Crislip’s most excellently infamous post Nine questions, nine answers. Why? Because I really liked that post and felt like it. Also, there seems to be something about the number nine among anti-vaccine zealots: Nine “questions.” Nine circles of hell. Nine...

/ May 31, 2010

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 The MMR/autism interpretation of his 1998 article in The Lancet was retracted by 10 of his 12 co-authors.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...

/ May 28, 2010

Stand up for science-based medicine against anti-vaccine fear mongering in Chicago today

As I’ve pointed out numerous times this week, anti-vaccine loons, led Generation Rescue and a “health freedom” group, have organized an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park in Chicago from 3 PM to 5 PM CDT. Andrew Wakefield himself will be the keynote speaker, and there will even be some very bad music promoting the anti-vaccine message. The rally, with its wonderfully Orwellian...

/ May 26, 2010

Autism One: The yearly antivaccine autism “biomed” quackfest begins

In the world of the anti-vaccine underground, there is one time of the year that looms large. Over the last few years, this time has generally come right around the end of May, usually coinciding with the Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial beginning of the summer vacation season here in the U.S. I’m referring, of course, to Autism One, which blights...

/ May 24, 2010

The story of Andrew Wakefield in pictures

I’ve blogged a lot about anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield over the years. The story has become long and convoluted, and to tell it takes a lot of verbiage, even by my standards (or those of Kimball Atwood). However, I’ve found a good resource that tells the tale of Andrew Wakefield and his misdeeds in a highly accessible form: The question at the...

/ May 22, 2010

Nine Questions, Nine Answers.

This is not an easy blog to write.  Doctors Novella and Gorski want the entries to be formal, academic, referenced, with a minimum of snark. For the most part I comply. But sometimes. Sometimes. It is hard, so hard,  not to spiral into sarcastic diatribes over the writings that pass for information on the interwebs. How should one respond to profound ignorance...

/ May 7, 2010

The Vaccine War

On Tuesday night PBS FRONTLINE aired an episode about the anti-vaccine movement entitled The Vaccine War (which, by the time you read this, should be available for online viewing in case you missed it). When I first heard that this show was going to air, I was a bit concerned. My concern, of course is what I’m always concerned about when journalists...

/ April 29, 2010