antivaccine
oracknows | February 26, 2009"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."
At least, that's what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I'm not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he's coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to get away from blogging about the nigh infinite level of stupidity and pseudoscience that emanates from the disease promotion movement (i.e., the antivaccine movement), it seems as though they somehow find a way to pull me back in. Of course, I'd rather like to think of myself as the reluctant gunslinger pulled out of retirement…
oracknows | February 24, 2009Alright, I know that, after yesterday's epic post (which was long even by Orac-ian standards), I said that I was going to try to get away from vaccine blogging for a while. I lied. Well, not really. At that time I really did mean it. But then I came across something that I just couldn't leave alone.
Regular readers of this blog know my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, namely that he is a fraud, a quack, a charlatan, and a danger to the health of autistic children and public health in general. There is, as documented in my post and elsewhere, abundant evidence to support my opinion. But apparently…
oracknows | February 21, 2009I don't know what "scuzz-wo" means, but I agree that Andrew Wakefield is one. My only nit to pick is that the puppet flirts a little too close to conflating the thimerosal scare with the MMR scare. There never was any thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. But that's just a nit, and as a blogger it's my job to pick it.
First Stephen Colbert takes on Jenny McCarthy. Now, a puppet eviscerates Andrew Wakefield. He is nothing but a joke now.
You know, though, the puppet Stephen Colbert's description of Jenny McCarthy reminds me of her son's doctor, if you know what I mean:
"Now sure, she's not the kind…
oracknows | February 10, 2009Poor Jeni Barnett.
You remember Jeni Barnett, don't you? She's the U.K. radio host whose ill-informed rants against vaccines Ben Goldacre exposed so gloriously last week. Unfortunately, the price Ben paid consisted of threats of legal action for "copyright infringement" in the form of his having posted audio of the relevant segment of Barnett's show. Yes, LBC, the radio station on which Barnett's show runs, threatened to sue, forcing Ben to take down the audio. However, as almost always happens when a blogger is threatened in such a manner, the specter of legal action led to the audio files…