Quackery at the Highest Levels

Steven Salzburg at Genomics, Medicine and Pseudoscience:

I was in my car yesterday listening to C-SPAN (yes, I do that sometimes), when to my stunned surprise I heard Congressman Dan Burton launch into a diatribe on how mercury in vaccines causes autism. No, this was not a replay of a recording from a decade ago. The hearing was held just a few days ago by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Congressman Burton used this hearing to rehash a series of some of the most thoroughly discredited anti-vaccine positions of the past decade.[...]

In a classic political move, the committee called on scientists Alan Guttmacher from the NIH and Colleen Boyle from the CDC to testify, but in fact the committee just wanted to bully the scientists. Committee members lectured the scientists, throwing out bad science claims, often disguised as questions, thick and fast. Alas, Guttmacher and Boyle weren’t prepared for this kind of rapid-fire assault by pseudoscience.

If you're ever called to testify before congress, prepare as if you're going before the Supreme Council of Elders on the Planet of the Apes.

HT Dr. Bliss

Comments

[Noni Mausa]

Hah, mercury is nothing. Didn't they say anything about the invasion of the lizard-people infiltrating our government and business elites? No, of course they wouldn't.

Great big sigh.