Tag: Patrick Colbeck
Make measles great again: A case study of the politicization of school vaccine requirements in Michigan
Protecting our children through school vaccine requirements has long had strong bipartisan support. Unfortunately, the antivaccine movement has had success linking "vaccine choice" with "freedom" and "parental rights", leading to a surge of right wing antivaccine activism that has undermined that bipartisan consensus. Two bills under consideration by the Michigan legislature represent a microcosm of what is going on in much of...
Donald Trump and the dangerous vaccine politics of the 2016 Presidential race
At the second Republican debate of the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump parroted antivaccine pseudoscience, and Ben Carson walked back his previously strong support for vaccine mandates. Earlier in the campaign, Rand Paul blamed vaccines for "neurologic injury," and Chris Christie briefly pandered by questioning vaccine mandates. What's going on here? Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?
Using the fear of Ebola to promote the placebo legislation that is “right to try”
Libertarians and free market fundamentalists generally detest the FDA and want to dramatically decrease its power in the belief that the free market can guarantee the safety of drugs better than a government agency that requires strong scientific evidence of efficacy and safety before approval. Not surprisingly, they're at it again, this time in the service of promoting "right-to-try" laws and using...
Obamacare, the Oregon Experiment, and Medicaid
Tomorrow, as mandated by the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act (PPACA, often called just the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, or “Obamacare”), the government-maintained health insurance exchanges will open for business (that is, assuming the likely government shutdown doesn’t stop them temporarily). We here at SBM have written about the ACA quite a few times, but I would like to...