Tag: Vinay Prasad
Evidence-based medicine vs. basic science in medical school
Last week Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote a Substack arguing that medical students should learn the principles of evidence-based medicine before basic science.This is a recipe for amplifying the main flaw in EBM that science-based medicine was meant to correct, and Dr. Prasad's arguments would have been right at home on an integrative medicine blog. [Note ADDENDUM.]
The Cochrane mask fiasco: How the evidence-based medicine paradigm can produce misleading results
Last week, the Cochrane Collaborative was forced to walk back the conclusions of a review by Tom Jefferson et al that had been spun in the media as proving that "masks don't work." Tom Jefferson himself has been problematic about vaccines for a long time, but the rot goes deeper. What is it about the evidence-based medicine paradigm that results in misleading...
Are Vaccine-Advocates “Idiots”, Indifferent to the Death of a Mentally Ill Woman and Her Family?
Rather than face the real-world consequences of their anti-vaccine advocacy, it's easier for contrarian doctors to fantasize that COVID's youngest victims were mere figments of our imagination.
COVID-19 is a leading cause of death among children, but that doesn’t stop some of my colleagues from arguing against vaccinating them
Contrary to what the "COVID-19 isn't a threat to children" contingent says, COVID-19 is a leading cause of death among children. Yet "not antivax" doctors continue, either unknowingly or knowingly, recycle old antivax tropes to argue against vaccinating children against this disease.
Medical Conservatives: A High Rate of COVID-Myocarditis is “Good News”, A Low Rate of Vaccine-Myocarditis is “Deeply Concerning”
Doctors who repeatedly and blatantly contradict themselves, convincing parents that rare vaccine side effects are a fate worse than death, don't deserve our trust.
Should We Accept Unvaccinated Children Dying of COVID as a “Matter of Course”?
The same doctors who scold us for potentially minimizing "slightest bit of inflammation in the heart" when the vaccine is to blame, shame us for trying to keep children from dying when the virus is to blame.
Is the Pediatric COVID Vaccine in Competition with Routine Vaccinations?
Of course not. The sad state of Florida shows us why.
The making of COVID-19 “contrarian” doctors
In 2009, I tried to answer the question: How do doctors become quacks and antivaxxers? A Twitter encounter suggested to me that an update to that post is massively overdue.
Dr. Vinay Prasad echoes a common antivax trope that portrays concern about a deadly disease as irrational fear
Before the pandemic, antivaxxers likened concern about childhood diseases to mental illness. In the age of COVID-19, Dr. Vinay Prasad accuses medicine of "legitimizing" irrational anxiety and says we should treat COVID like the flu—with one telling omission. In a recent paid Substack, he doubles down and accuses physicians and scientists of anxiety disorders that "interfere with people's lives".
Is it “Natural and Healthy” When Children Get Sick With COVID?
The notion that society and children benefit when they contract vaccine-preventable diseases used to be relegated to the fringes of the anti-vaccine movement. It is now embraced by doctors at prestigious universities.