antivaccine
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for antivaccine
Perhaps this line of work is not for you…
Posted by Orac on September 4, 2012 Over the long weekend, I came across a bunch of things that in normal times I would have blogged about, but because I was trying to chill, work a little on the yard, and also work a bit on grants, I intentionally took Monday off of blogging. As I get back into the swing of…
They say that about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as though it were a bad thing
Posted by Orac on September 4, 2012 Why is it after a three day weekend, it always feels as though I have to “catch up”? After all, it’s only one day more than the average weekend, and I didn’t really do anything that different. A little yard work, out to dinner, a bit of grant writing, a bit of chilling, that’s it.…
Antivaccine fear mongering? What antivaccine fear mongering? I don’t see any antivaccine fear mongering.
Posted by Orac on August 31, 2012 Here we go again. Every so often, criticism of the antivaccine movement builds to the point where it extends beyond the blogosphere to enter the national zeitgeist in a way in which people other than blogging geeks like myself start to take notice. It happened a few years ago, when washed up actress Jenny McCarthy…
Wielding religion as a weapon against vaccines
Posted by Orac on August 28, 2012 I might as well lay it on the line right at the beginning. It’s not as though it will surprise my regular readers given what I’ve been writing here, most recently about when Rob Schneider played the Nazi card to express his opposition to California Bill AB2109. It’s a bill that does something very simple…
Despicable: A parents’ guide to blaming the death of their child on vaccines
Posted by Orac on August 24, 2012 When I first started this blog, I had little idea of what I was in for. I thought I had some idea from having read a bunch of blogs and found role models whose blogging style I tried to emulate back in those early days, long before I developed the persona and writing style that…
Alternative medicine as religion, one more time
Posted by Orac on August 17, 2012 A couple of days ago, I did one of my usual bits of pontification about alternative medicine, this time around pointing out how religion facilitates the magical thinking that undergirds so much pseudoscientific medicine and how the belief systems that underlie so so much of alternative medicine resembel the belief systems that underlie religion. However,…
Jamy Ian Swiss on science-based skepticism
Posted by Orac on August 10, 2012 As the last full weekday of my vacation passes, I thought about whether I’d bother to post anything or not, given that I happen to be traveling. After yesterday’s post, the subject of which was profoundly depressing to me because I hate it when quacks take cynical advantage of a grieving family to promote their…
Andrew Wakefield’s libel suit against Brian Deer: Dismissed!
Posted by Orac on August 4, 2012 I tell ya, sometimes I think you guys think I’m a journalist or a 24 hour news source. I’m not, of course. I’m just a humble blogger, and I do what I can within the constraints of my every day “real life.” What? I have a real life? You mean I’m not really a supercomputer…
Joe Mercola: 15 years of promoting quackery
Posted by Orac on August 3, 2012 Let’s travel back in time fifteen years. It’s a time that, for me, at times seems as though it were just yesterday while at other times it seems like truly ancient history. Back then, certainly, I wasn’t the blogging powerhouse that I am today. I didn’t even know what blogging was because it was so…
Depopulation by vaccines?
Posted by Orac on July 23, 2012 After all the years that I’ve been writing about vaccines, the science behind vaccines, and how antivaccinationists twist that science to turn what are arguably the greatest medical achievement of medicine and have saved arguably more lives than any other medical intervention devised by human minds into toxic cesspits of horrific chemical corruption that cause…
Battling antivaccinationists at FreedomFest, part 2 (Dr. Whitaker responds)
Posted by Orac on July 19, 2012 During this year’s TAM, I had the distinct pleasure of accompanying Steve Novella and Michael Shermer to debate an antivaccinationist at FreedomFest, a conservative/libertarian confab that was going on in Las Vegas at the same time as TAM. That antivaccinationist turned out to be Dr. Julian Whitaker, a man who champions Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and…
Rob Schneider on California Bill AB 2109: The latest celebrity antivaccinationist to make a fool of himself
Posted by Orac on June 29, 2012 
Remember California Bill AB 2109? I’ve written about it at least a couple of times before. In fact, for some reason, the comment section of this post on AB 2109 suddenly come alive again a couple of days ago, with antivaccinationists infiltrating it, much to the annoyance of my regular commenters. It turns out that…
The Texas Republican Party platform: Creationism, denialism, “health freedom,” and “vaccine choice” all rolled up into one big antiscience ball
Posted by Orac on June 28, 2012 And now for something completely different. Except that it isn’t really. I say that it isn’t really different because, although this post will seem to be about politics, in reality it will be about a common topic on this blog: Anti-science. And where is this anti-science? Sadly, it’s in the platform of a major party…
Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier hits a new low: Age of Autism rallies to defend him
Posted by Orac on June 27, 2012 Remember Luc Montagnier? Sure, you do. He’s the Nobel Laureate whose identification of the virus that causes AIDS garnered him plaudits, laurels, and, of course, the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Unfortunately, since winning the Nobel Prize, from a scientific standpoint, Montagnier’s been on a downward spiral. Sadly, it didn’t take long after his Nobel acceptance…
The Antivaccine Ten Commandments
Posted by Orac on June 13, 2012 Although I’m interested in skepticism in general, I have a tendency to gravitate towards one particular form of pseudoscience (alternative medicine) and, in particular, a certain kind of that particular form of pseudoscience, namely antivaccine quackery. However, as much as I keep returning to the antivaccine movement, I keep noticing just how much it shares…
Mothering: A bastion of woo targeted at young mothers
Posted by Orac on January 21, 2011 Over the last three weeks, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been publishing a multipart expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis…
The anti-vaccine movement versus the truth
Posted by Orac on October 21, 2010 My alma mater has let me down. As many of you know, I went to the University of Michigan for both my undergraduate degree and for medical school. I still have a fairly strong attachment to the school, which is why I can still be disappointed when its faculty let me down. Unfortunately, it’s happened,…
Too much vaccine/autism monkey business for me to be involved in–but apparently not Laura Hewitson
Posted by Orac on July 16, 2010 Ever since I somehow stumbled into a niche in the blogosphere where I seem to be one of a handful of go-to bloggers for issues having to do with vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement, like Spider-Man I realize that with great power comes great responsibility. Wait a minute. That beginning was too pompous and pretentious…
More legal thuggery against a defender of science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on June 30, 2010 ORAC SAYS: Please note my disclaimer. After the events of last week, I’m a bit sensitive when it comes to matters like the one I’m about to discuss. Having the anti-vaccine cranks over at the Age of Autism weblog trying to get me fired over my blogging has a tendency to do that to me.…
The intellectual dishonesty of the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit
Posted by Orac on March 29, 2010 If there’s one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I’ve learned over the last five or so years, it’s that it’s virtually completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter how much evidence is arrayed against it, it always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent it to combat the evidence. Not that this…
The martyrdom of St. Andy, part 2: David Kirby rides to the rescue (sort of)
Posted by Orac on February 3, 2010 If I am wrong I will be a bad person because I will have raised this spectre. Andrew Wakefield, March 3, 1998. Interview in The Independent. The martyrdom of brave maverick Saint Andy continues apace, it would appear. As you recall, last week, after an interminable proceeding that stretched out over two and a half…
Here’s another slam on Andrew Wakefield…
Posted by Orac on February 1, 2010 …from, of all places, a Daily Kos diary. Although the post itself is quite good, some of the comments make baby Jesus cry. There’s even one repeating the old myth about H. pylori and how Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were supposedly “ostracized” for their “heresy” back in the 1980s. Still, it’s good to see…
The martyrdom of St. Andy
Posted by Orac on February 1, 2010 Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue. Well, not really. Maybe it looks more like I picked the wrong NIH grant cycle to be submitting an R01. After all, the deadline for my getting my grant to my university’s grant’s office coincided very closely with the announcement of the General…
Thermonuclear stupid about vaccines from someone other than Jenny McCarthy
Posted by Orac on July 22, 2009 This may be the burningest stupid I’ve ever seen about vaccines. Maybe. It’s so hard to tell given how much idiocy I’ve seen about vaccines. I know, it’s really, really hard to believe me when I say that what follows deserves to leap right up to the top ranks of brain-melting moronicity. After all, over…
If you hand me some stupid, yes, in fact I am going to hit you over the head with it. Because you absolutely deserve it.
Posted by Orac on March 20, 2009 Oh, goody! Vox Day wants to play. You remember Vox “Hey, it worked for Hitler” Day,” don’t you? It’s been a long time. In fact, I had to do a search to find the last time I had a run-in with him, and it appears that it’s been about a year since I last noted…