Harriet Hall is a former Air Force flight surgeon and retired family physician who is known as The SkepDoc. She and her colleagues at Science-Based Medicine have been debunking medical nonsense (e.g. homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc.) for years and have compiled some of their best columns into a series of e-books that sell for about five bucks apiece.
I ran into Harriet at James Randi’s Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and invited her to join me on America Weekend, which she did this morning. The first thing I asked her about was a recent report from the CDC that the use of the anti-HPV vaccine has stalled, and only half of the women and girls who should be vaccinated have been. She countered some of the objections to the vaccine and explained why it’s important that we get those numbers up to protect more people (boys should be vaccinated, too). We also discussed a recent book by a home-birth proponent that is nothing more than old-fashioned doctor-bashing, and an odd story Harriet found about acupuncture and turtles (!).
Listen to our conversation here.