Dr. Jay is back.

You remember Dr. Jay (namely Dr. Jay "I'm not anti-vaccine but I give vaccines only 'reluctantly' and am convinced that they cause autism" Gordon, pediatrician to Evan, Jenny McCarthy's son) and frequent apologist for the antivaccine movement in the media. Specifically, he was most unhappy over my posts about Dr. Bob "too many too soon" Sears and about a child who died of Hib. If you peruse the comments in those two posts, you will see him once again disparaging science, touting his own personal clinical experience over the science failing to find a link between vaccines and autism. You will see him once again incapable of acknowledging that personal clinical experience and anecdotes are exactly what all too often led physicians astray for hundreds of years regarding bloodletting and purging with toxic metals and citing a fallacious "science was wrong before" justification for accepting his views as correct.

As usual, the banter went back and forth without Dr. Jay's being able to produce any scientific evidence to support his (and, apparently, Dr. Sears') belief that vaccines cause autism and that autistic children shouldn't be vaccinated and, alas, my and my commenters' failing to manage to get Dr. Gordon to see why anecdotal evidence can mislead, the latter of which usually leading to Dr. Gordon's contemptuously dismissing those "who've never taken care of a patient" and don't have his years of experience practicing pediatrics. Then Dr. Gordon did something that annoyed me.

He pulled the "pharma shill" gambit out and used it again:

Read the original blog entry...