Autism News Beat

Tweet You may know him as TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger, or the star of low-budget shoot-em-ups. Now Chuck Norris is venturing into new territory – self-appointed anti-vaccine spokesperson. Blogging on the right-wing website World Net Daily, Norris takes aim at the CDC, IOM, and the FDA  in an article clumsily titled The Venom in Fed’s [...]

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Tweet On September 25, America’s favorite daytime think tank, Fox and Friends, alleged that vaccines cause autism, and that the US government is covering it up. And because this is Fox News, the story comes packaged in outrage: the US Federal Court of Claims is asking parents for a medical expert’s opinion of how the [...]

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Tweet Larry King Live’s program featuring anti-vaccine activists Jenny McCarthy, Stan Kurtz and J.B. Handley, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed. In the meanwhile, you can let the show’s producers know what questions you would like to hear McCarthy, Handley and Kurtz answer. You can email your questions and comments to:   [email protected] . Here [...]

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Tweet The low point of last week’s Green Our Vaccines rally in Washington, DC, came early in the day, before the 2,000 or so anti-vaccine parents began their one-mile walk down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol grounds. Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey had just spoken with the media, then walked down the line of marchers, [...]

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Tweet Autism and vaccines registered a minor blip on the national news radar screen over the weekend after Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s presumptive nominee for the fall Presidential contest, said that autism might be caused by thimerosal. To those who know better McCain’s comment seems outdated, as if he had warned of a missile [...]

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Tweet Vaccines are arguably the greatest medical achievement of the modern age. Each year they prevent 14 million infections, tens of billions in medical costs, and over 30,000 deaths. But vaccines have been so successful at wiping out scourges such as polio and whooping cough that today’s parents are unfamiliar with the diseases they prevent. [...]

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Tweet “Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream,” sing two disenchanted characters in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. Things are rarely as they seem in the autism wars, where agenda-driven groups with strong, anti-science biases spin unproven claims for credulous ears. Anyone reporting from the front lines needs to be familiar [...]

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Tweet Some journalists have difficulty digesting keynote speeches at autism conferences, especially when Hollywood celebrities are involved. I believe this phenomenon can be explained by the “The Leaky Gut Theory” of autism reporting. It has to do with the way reporters swallow what they hear. Neurotypical reporters have what are called “critical thinking filters” that [...]

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