$315 Million For “Boobs and Woo”?

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

The Huffington Post (HuffPo) was recently acquired by AOL for $315 million, $300 million of it in cash. That’s a lot of money for what’s been called “the Journal of Boobs and Woo.” The boobs are OK, the woo is not. In a recent David Kirby article, The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away, HuffPo keeps up the woo part. The short answer: because opportunists like Kirby have teamed with believers in the cult of pseudoscience to keep this manufactured controversy alive whenever it starts to fade.

In the article, Kirby defends the irresponsible and dishonest Andrew Wakefield.

Andrew Wakefield, in a 1998 paper published in The Lancet, claimed a causal connection between the mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The claims were fraudulent, and Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K., and The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s 1998 paper.

He had since moved to Austin, Texas, to be the founding “scientific director” of a house of autism quackery known as Thoughtful House. After his fraud made headlines, he resigned from was pushed out of his position at Thoughtful House.

Wakefield is also defended by pseudo-celebrities like Jenny McCarthy of the autism advocacy group, Generation Rescue.

The fact that HuffPo would defend such a pariah is the reason I stopped visiting that site. However, Lindsey Lohan has brought me back.

H/T: Respectful Insolence.