antivaccine
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for antivaccine
Andrew Wakefield wins an award just as he jumps on the anti-psychiatry bandwagon
Posted by Orac on December 24, 2012 I certainly don’t even try to keep secret my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the measles back to the UK, thanks to his bad science, for which he was well-paid by trial lawyers and his falsification of data and scientific fraud. Since 1998, when Wakefield first…
Antivaccine quackery: You be Orac today!
Posted by Orac on December 20, 2012 Some antivaccine (and quack, but I repeat myself) tropes come up time and time again, and I’ve blogged about them time and time again. Obviously, at times this can get a bit repetitive, particularly when I’ve been blogging nearly every day for eight years. On the other hand, even after eight years, I still regularly…
Should thimerosal-containing vaccines be banned worldwide?
Posted by Orac on December 19, 2012 One of the oldest topics I’ve dealt with on this blog, a topic that I’ve been writing about on and off (unfortunately, mostly on) about the antivaccine movement. Ever since I first discovered about a decade ago that, yes, there are people ignorant enough about science and medicine that they actually think that vaccines are…
A simultaneously sympathetic and unsympathetic commentary on an antivaccine screed
Posted by Orac on December 7, 2012 The false idea that vaccines somehow cause or contribute to autism has been a common theme on this blog, and I’ve spent considerable verbiage discussing why anyone would think that vaccines are in any way associated with autism when the science is quite clear that they are not. If there’s one thing I’ve been consistent…
H1N1 vaccine and miscarriages: More dumpster diving in the VAERS database
Posted by Orac on November 28, 2012 Antivaccinationists just love the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database. As in love it to death. As in “can’t get enough of it.” The reason, of course, is that VAERS is a lot like an unmoderated discussion forum or, at best, a minimally moderated forum. Anyone can say anything they like. The reason is that…
Representative Dan Burton’s last antivaccine hurrah is scheduled for November 29
Posted by Orac on November 23, 2012 Whenever I blog about atrocities against science like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I’m frequently asked how just such an edifice designed to promote pseudoscience could have come to be as a full-fledged center in the National Institutes of Health. The answer is simple and boils down to woo-loving legislators. In…
Stephanie Seneff: Following the Geiers dumpster-diving in the VAERS database
Posted by Orac on November 20, 2012 As I looked over the ol’ blog last night, I was shocked to realize that I haven’t blogged about the antivaccine movement and its offenses against science in nearly three weeks. That’s right! The last time I did a vaccine post was when I examined a particularly egregiously bad paper from a couple of scientists…
And now death by Gardasil? Again, not so fast…
Posted by Orac on October 31, 2012 I guess this is in effect part two of yesterday’s post. Regular daily readers (and you are a regular daily reader, aren’t you?) will remember that yesterday I commented on the recent uptick in anti-Gardasil vaccine rhetoric coming from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and other sources, in the process deconstructing speculation masquerading…
The “toxin gambit,” resurrected
Posted by Orac on October 26, 2012 Well, I’m here. That’s right. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m at CSICon. As is the case when I’m at conferences, be they skeptical conferences or professional conferences, it’s hard to predict the blogging time available. It could be a lot; it could be a little. Or it could be none. (Well, obviously it’s not none,…
The “no debate” debate, briefly revisited
Posted by Orac on October 23, 2012 Just yesterday, I commented on a typical whine from the antivaccine crew at the crank blog Age of Autism in which Dan Olmsted became indignant over being reminded that science does not support his belief that vaccines cause autism, that they don’t work, and that they are dangerous. Olmsted, clueless as ever about science, viewed…
The “no debate” debate
Posted by Orac on October 22, 2012 I like the word “manufactroversy.” It’s a lovely made up word that combines the two words “manufactured controversy” and is, to boil it down, defined as the art of creating a controversy where none really exists. In the case of science, it’s the concerted effort to make it seem as though there is a legitimate…
Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser
Posted by Orac on October 5, 2012 Remember Alan Yurko? To remind those of you not familiar with this particularly odious excuse for a human being, I’ll briefly relate who he is and why he’s so vile. Alan Yurko is a baby killer, pure and simple. He shook his 10-week-old son to death. Normally, such a pitiful excuse for a human being…
Time to rally the troops against the antivaccine movement again
Posted by Orac on October 5, 2012 Here we go again. A week ago, I tried to exercise my blogging powers (such as they are) for some good by rallying my readers to appear at rallies organized by the antivaccine movement against California Bill AB 2109. Fortunately, ultimately Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill, although he did try to insert weasel words…
Science is quite safe from your pitiful little band…
Posted by Orac on October 4, 2012 I’m having a hard time keeping myself from laughing uproariously. I’m talking gut-wrenching belly laughs, the kind that are so intense that you have trouble catching your breath between paroxysms of laughter, the kind that threaten to force the contents of your stomach to go the wrong way, up and out. What, you may ask,…
Rob Schneider: Auditioning for Jenny McCarthy’s job as world’s most famous celebrity antivaccinationist?
Posted by Orac on October 2, 2012 I suppose it’s possible that there might be doubt that Rob Schneider has become a complete and total antivaccine wingnut. Possible, but not reasonable. After all, he’s shown his cards and risen to prominence with his attacks on vaccine science made as part of his effort to oppose the passage of California Bill AB 2109,…
Governor Jerry Brown signs California Bill AB 2109, but tries to water it down in a sop to religion
Posted by Orac on October 1, 2012 I’ve been blogging a lot about California Bill AB 2109. Basically, it’s a bill that was proposed as a means of addressing the increasing problem of non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates because religious and philosophical exemptions are too easy to obtain. Boiled down to its essence, AB 2109 would require parents to see a…
“Forced” to be an antivaccinationist?
Posted by Orac on September 25, 2012 Every so often there are articles or posts about which I want to blog that, for whatever reason, I don’t get around to. I’ve alluded before to my observation that blogging tends to be a “feast or famine” sort of activity. Sometimes, there isn’t a lot going on, and, if there’s one thing I’ve failed…
The problem of nonmedical exemptions from school vaccine mandates is getting worse
Posted by Orac on September 21, 2012 It’s feast or famine in the ol’ blogging world, and right now it’s such a feast that I can’t decide what to blog about. For instance, there are at least two studies and a letter that I wouldn’t mind blogging about just in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine alone. Then…
Journalists of the future make a vaccine documentary
Posted by Orac on September 20, 2012 I was out late last night for a function related to my work. As a result, by the time I got home I was too tired to blog. (I know, I know, how can a Tarial-cell powered megacomputer ever get tired?) However, I did have enough time this morning before work to act on a…
Fear and loathing and vaccines
Posted by Orac on September 19, 2012 As hard as it is for me to believe when I look back at it, I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement now for more than seven years here on this blog and combatting it online for at least a decade now. I like to think that over the years my response has evolved somewhat.…
Respecting parental concerns versus pandering to antivaccine fears
Posted by Orac on September 13, 2012 In common colloquial usage, there is a term known as “gaydar.” Basically, it’s the ability some people claim to have that allows them to identify people who are gay. Whether gaydar actually exists or not, I don’t know, but I claim to have an ability that’s similar. That ability is the ability to sniff out…
Andrew Wakefield appeals?
Posted by Orac on September 7, 2012 On the antivaccine front, this year began with antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield filing suit against investigative reporter Brian Deer, the BMJ, and Fiona Godlee (the editor of BMJ) for libel based on a series that Deer published in the BMJ outlining the evidence for Wakefield’s scientific fraud in his (in)famous 1998 Lancet case series. This…
Does all this blogging about quackery really accomplish anything?
Posted by Orac on September 7, 2012 Believe it or not, after nearly eight years blogging and around five years before that cutting my skeptical teeth on that vast and wild (and now mostly deserted and fallow) wilderness that was Usenet, I have occasionally wondered whether what I’m doing is worthwhile. Sometime around 1998, after I first discovered Holocaust denial on Usenet,…
If only… (Or, no science for you!)
Posted by Orac on September 6, 2012 I must admit, there are times when I see something that someone else has written and, in a fit of intense envy, wish very much that I had written it. This is just such a time, and Tony Ballantyne has written just such a piece. Even better, his piece, entitled If only…, was published in…
Pertussis outbreaks and vaccine effectiveness
Posted by Orac on September 5, 2012 About a month ago, I deconstructed a typically dishonest and deceitful attempt by that Overlord of Quackery on the Internet (in my opinion, of course), Joe Mercola, to claim that the acellular pertussis vaccine doesn’t work. It was a typical Mercola bit of prestidigitation that, as so much antivaccine propaganda does, took a grain of…