Category: Politics and Regulation

vaping e-cigarettes

Vitamins are not for vaping

Vaping vitamins is a bad idea.

/ February 3, 2022
Brownstone Institute

The “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration” promotes antivaccine misinformation

The signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration and its "spiritual child" the Brownstone Institute, swear up and down that they are not anttivaccine. If that's so, why are Brownstone-affiliated academics spreading antivaccine misinformation in Uganda?

/ January 24, 2022
Rubber Duck quack

Why are physicians threatened by efforts to report doctors to their state medical board for COVID-19 misinformation?

It's not "cancel culture" to delicense physicians promoting dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. It's quality control. Why do so many physicians think it is?

/ January 17, 2022

Florida Surgeon General declares single positive COVID test proves immunity forever

Florida's Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, continues to defy scientific consensus with new rules declaring a single positive COVID test proves one has "natural immunity" forever. This is but one example of recently enacted laws and similar efforts gutting public health protections in Florida, thanks to Ladapo and his boss, Gov. Ron DeSantis.

/ December 30, 2021

Tennessee hamstrings medical board fight against COVID misinformation and unproven treatments

A new Tennessee law hampers the state medical board's efforts to rein in COVID misinformation and will make disciplining physicians prescribing unproven COVID treatments impossible until the board goes through cumbersome rule-making procedures, an effort that could outlast the pandemic.

/ December 16, 2021
Carl Sagan

John Ioannidis and the Carl Sagan effect in science communication about COVID-19

We have been critical about John Ioannidis over a number of his statements about the COVID-19 pandemic. Now he's done it again, producing a poor-quality paper whose unwritten assumptions suggest that the Carl Sagan effect, in which scientists are penalized professionally by their peers for becoming popular science communicators, still holds considerable sway in science and medicine.

/ December 13, 2021

Quack Protection Acts advance in state legislatures

Proposed laws in Wisconsin and Massachusetts would protect quacks who defraud patients with useless, and sometimes dangerous, nostrums, by essentially allowing them to practice medicine without a license. These Quack Protection Acts should not pass.

/ December 2, 2021
How RFK Jr. sees the members of ACIP and VRBPAC

Are the FDA’s VRBPAC and the CDC’s ACIP hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest over COVID-19 vaccines?

The FDA's VRBPAC and the CDC's ACIP are the two main committees that approve vaccines to be sold in the US and issue recommendations regarding who should receive them and when. In the wake of the recent recommendation that children 5-11 receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is now portraying committee members as thralls of big pharma. But are...

/ November 29, 2021
Harry Potter vs. Lord Voldemort

COVID-19 vaccines versus “purity of essence,” revisited

Antivaxxers frequently make the false claim that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines "permanently alter your DNA". These claims are really a concern about "impurifying" their "purity of essence" and have now gone into some truly disturbing territory, such as antivaxxers calling themselves "purebloods".

/ November 22, 2021

The “Natural Immunity is Real Act”: Real or an act?

Republican legislators have proposed a law requiring federal agencies to acknowledge, accept, truthfully present and incorporate "consideration of natural immunity" in their COVID regulations. It's just political theatrics based on a flawed understanding of infection-induced "natural" immunity.

/ November 18, 2021