Tag: mercury

When Doctors Refuse to Believe Evidence

Paul Offit's new book covers the evidence for many surgeries, medications, and screening tests that have been proven ineffective and harmful yet are still being used by doctors who refuse to follow the science.

/ November 17, 2020

Vaccines Still Don’t Cause Autism

Update: The evidence continues to show no link between vaccines and autism.

/ August 22, 2018

Prove the scientific consensus and win a prize: A time-dishonored PR ploy used by cranks, quacks, and pseudoscientists (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. edition)

Last week, antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. teamed up with Robert De Niro to issue a challenge to provide one scientific study that proves thimerosal in vaccines is safe, with a cash prize of $100,000. They thus joined a long line of antivaxers, creationists, and climate science denialists offering money to "prove" the scientific consensus. Science doesn't work that way.

/ February 20, 2017

The Medical Director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute spewed antivaccine misinformation last week. Why is anyone surprised?

A social media firestorm erupted over the weekend after Dr. Daniel Neides, Director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, posted an article full of antivaccine misinformation. The Cleveland Clinic promptly disavowed it, but shouldn't have been surprised that one of its "integrative medicine" leaders is antivaccine. If you "integrate" medicine that teaches that "toxins" cause disease and "detoxification" is the cure, antivaccine...

/ January 9, 2017

Mercury amalgam fillings and you

Note this special guest post submitted by Maddaz A. Hatter, D.D.S. Thanks Dr. Hatter! Also, on an almost-completely-unrelated note, skeptical dentist, haberdasher extraordinaire, and sometime-guest-blogger Grant Ritchey recently moderated debate between SBM regular Clay Jones, and pediatrician-who-has-yet-to-be-coerced-into-blogging-with-us Raymond Cattaneo, about the pros and cons of firing families who refuse to vaccinate according to the recommended schedule. I’m told Clay wins the debate through...

/ January 29, 2016

Dr. David Villarreal’s “Holistic Dentistry:” Full of Holes?

I get a lot of e-mails from publicists offering suggestions for articles and interviews with their clients. I quickly delete most of them, but one recently caught my eye. It said that patients travel from as far as Europe and Africa to have California “holistic dentist” Dr. David Villarreal remove the old silver fillings that are damaging their health. He has removed...

/ April 21, 2015

Prenatal Mercury and Autism

Mercury in unequivocally a neurotoxin. It is especially damaging to the developing brain. But it’s the dose that makes the toxin, and so a low enough exposure even to something known to be potentially harmful may not be. Further, the body has mechanisms for dealing with toxins, and toxins in the body may not be reaching the cells they can potentially damage...

/ July 24, 2013

Steven Fowkes (Part 1 of 2): How to Cure Alzheimer’s and Herpes

A correspondent asked me to review a video presentation by Steven Fowkes, “Nutrients for Better Mental Performance,” one segment of a 9-part series on preventing and curing Alzheimer’s that was mentioned recently by an SBM commenter. Fowkes is an organic chemist without a PhD; he says this means: I am not institutionalized [This begs for a joke, but I will refrain.] and...

/ October 25, 2011

Vaccine Wars: the NCCAM Drops the Ball

If you go to the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), you’ll find that one of its self-identified roles is to “provide information about CAM.” NCCAM Director Josephine Briggs is proud to assert that the website fulfills this expectation. As many readers will recall, three of your bloggers visited the NCCAM last April, after having received an...

/ November 4, 2010

Using attacks on science by the anti-vaccine movement as a “teachable moment”

A new study on the connection between vaccines and autism demonstrates two things: there is no connection, and those who think there is are not interested in science unless it supports what they already believe.

/ September 20, 2010