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The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 11: Vaccination portrayed as rape

One of the things you can say to someone who is antivaccine that will really tick them off is to “call it like you see it” and call them antivaccine. Sure, there are a few antivaccine activists who are unashamed of being antivaccine, but most antivaccinationists, sensing that society in general quite correctly takes a dim view of people who threaten to allow the return of dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out many times before, that’s why antivaccine activists try to hide behind claims that they are “vaccine safety advocates,” often signified by saying, “I’m not ‘antivaccine’; I’m pro-safe vaccine.” Sometimes, these attempts to deny being antivaccine take ridiculous extremes, such as this post by Julie Obradovic on the horribly misnamed Thinking Moms’ Revolution entitled Exactly Who Is “Anti-Vaccine”?, where she writes things like:

If you want safe, non-neurotoxic vaccines for everyone, given in an independently tested and verified schedule and combination, you are “anti-vaccine.”

If you want transparency, accountability, and ethical science when it comes to vaccines, you are “anti-vaccine.”

If you believe those who profit from vaccines should not be in charge of vaccine policy or research, you are “anti-vaccine.”

If you believe you should have the right to informed consent, and that not all vaccines are created or needed equally, you are “anti-vaccine.”


You get the idea. Antivaccine activists like Obradovic love to wrap their pseudoscience in lofty sounding beliefs about “accountability,” “ethical science,” and “informed consent.” Of course, the antivaccine version of “informed consent” is in reality “misinformed consent,” and the sorts of science antivaccinationists want is profoundly unethical, but antivaccinationists see themselves as warriors for good fighting the evil forces of big pharma, the government, and defenders of science like Paul Offit and, yes, yours truly, among others. They compare vaccines to the Holocaust, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Titanic.

They also compare vaccination to rape. I’m not kidding. Don’t believe me? Check out this incredible piece by someone named Marcella Piper-Terry (Facebook page here) on an antivaccine blog known as VaxTruth entitled Coerced Vaccination and the Medical Rapist:

I have been thinking this morning about the parallels between vaccine-injury and sexual assault. I happened to hear a news story today about the incidence of rape on college campuses, and as I was listening, I could envision several commonalities.

In the story, a young woman was interviewed about her experience. She described a situation in which she had accompanied a young man to his dorm room and they had engaged in sex – both agreed and it was an interaction to which both gave informed consent. They both knew they were going to have sex before entering the dorm room and there was no force or coercion involved. There was an element of trust and equality in the decision-making process.

She said that afterward, she was ready to leave and when she got up to get dressed, the young man pushed her down onto the bed, and held her down while he turned up the stereo so her cries for help could not be overheard by neighboring students.

After the assault, the young woman reported the rape to campus police. The investigation was dropped and the rapist was not prosecuted. She sees him on campus and has classes with him, which she reported is extremely difficult and re-traumatizing for her.

Vaccination of our children is in many ways similar to medical rape.

This analogy doesn’t even make any sense. I think I see where Piper-Terry is going with this in that she’s likening the pediatrician to a rapist who was initially trusted and to whom consent might even have been given who then goes one further and violates the woman. She then mixes her metaphors a bit and seems to move on to what sounds more like an analogy to an abusive relationship in which the battered woman keeps returning to her batterer:

Afterward, the perpetrators, pat us on the thigh or shoulder while looking us straight in the eyes and saying, “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” They straighten their white coats, instruct us to get our things together, as they turn their backs and stride out of the room in search of their next victim. We may be left feeling afraid, and numb, not knowing how that happened and praying that it’s over. Praying they won’t come back and do it again, and praying there won’t be any lasting harm from what just happened.

In many cases, as we leave those rooms, feeling sick to our stomachs… dirty… with lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes, we force ourselves to take deep breaths and resolve to be stronger next time; more prepared to say NO and mean it.

For many of us, we ARE more prepared and we ARE able to say NO the next time. Others of us are not so strong.

Some of us resolve to change our lives and we seek new relationships, which are good for us and in which our decisions and our choices – our right to say NO is respected.

And at least one of Piper-Terry’s supporters is totally down with this analogy:

And elsewhere on her Facebook page, in the comments after this post, there is a lot of support:

One comment in particular by someone named Brande Frame Keith:

It’s a little crazy that over the past week or two I have been using the term “medical rape” to describe vaccination of children and then you put it in a well spoken article very clearly. I have had women (non-vaxxers and vaxxers alike) more or less yell at me because I used the term rape. That it is insensitive and offensive. I, personally, am a victim of rape and I still do not find the term medical rape offensive. It is exactly WHY I drew the parallel in the first place. We are holding our child down, in the midst of their crying and screaming and adamant “No! No! No!”, while they try to scramble away from the hands they have trusted the most. They are being forced into something they don’t want, having people take risks with THEIR OWN bodies that they did not ask for, and THEY are the ones that suffer when it’s all said and done. Not the hands that held them down. (Jesus forgive me for doing this to my child *tears*). Whether it is a penis or a needle, it is no less violating.

So, according to Piper-Terry and her supportive commenters, a medical procedure designed to protect children against diseases that cause significant mortality and morbidity is a violation, an assault akin to sexual assault, and the relationship between parents and pediatricians is an abusive relationship. My first thought was, “She can’t be serious, right?” My second thought was then, “Yes, unfortunately, she is serious.” She really does mean it, so much so that she carries the analogy even further, talking about how the “rapist”-pediatrician will say “It was consensual. After-all, you came here asking for it. What did you expect?” and how the parent, like a rape victim, is retraumatized every time she encounters the rapist in public.

It’s a despicable and inaccurate analogy, but Piper-Terry really believes it. Indeed, take a look at her notpology posted last night on Facebook:

In particular, look at these three comments, among other supportive comments. First, there is a comment from a woman who has suffered rape:

I am a multiple rape survivor. I’ve also had pieces of my child ripped from me by an overzealous pediatrician who used scare tactics and bullying to coerce me into vaccine submission. Guess which keeps me up at night. I’m not downplaying the trauma of the rape I endured. It was horrendous. I am damaged. I always will be. But I would endure it 100X over to spare my child the pain of vaccine reaction. My rapist violated me in a single horrible act between two people… Vaccine damage is worse experience (for me) because I stood there and allowed it to happen to my child. I held her still and I facilitated the damage, pain, and PTSD that she endures. I helped them rip away pieces of her future. Her body was violated with toxic poison by a GROUP of people who should have been there to nurture, heal, and care for her. I hope a lot of people get pissed off. Maybe they will start paying attention and allowing the pharma gangs to rape our children.

Here’s another comment from another woman that reveals how antivaccinationists think about vaccination:

The comparison is right on target! A child held down while being repeatedly stabbed with needles full of vile poison that will change their entire life forever, possibly even steal their life is no different than a person held down and forcibly violated sexually, how you could come under fire for this very viable comparison tells me people aren’t thinking clearly!

And:

Marcella Piper-Terry, I’m sorry you received strong criticism for the truths you continue to say, your story of rape is not a thought I myself haven’t thought, I over and over have played in my head the scenario, I’ve asked friends, if your daughter/son was raped and the rapist walked the streets immune to any prosecution, how would you feel? That’s our story, our rapists continue on raping without any fear of justice, it’s legalized victimization of the most innocent and helpless of our society, our children.

Given how many other horrible things antivaccinationists compare vaccinations to, I’d be willing to bet that this likening of pediatricians giving vaccines to rapists and the process of vaccination to rape resonates among more than a few antivaccinationists. In fact, seeing Piper-Terry’s post reminded me that this is not the first time I’ve heard this analogy. Three years ago, Meryl Dorey, the president of the Australian antivaccine group the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), which was recently ordered to change its name by the New South Wales’ Office of Fair Trading and now apparently calls itself the Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network. Three years ago, in response to a court case in which a child’s divorced mother was ordered as a result of legal action by the father to have her child vaccinated, Dorey wrote on the AVN Facebook page:

Court orders rape of a child. Think this is an exaggeration? Think again. This is assault without consent and with full penetration too. If we as a society allow this crime to take place, we are every bit as guilty as the judge who made the order and the doctor who carries it out.

This analogy was a bit too much even for some of Dorey’s supporters, who objected, leading to a classic notpology:

To anyone who was insulted or hurt by my comparing the forced vaccination of a child against the custodial parent’s wishes with rape, I do apologise wholeheartedly and without reservation.

I looked up the definition of rape prior to posting … that comparison and in the dictionary sense of the word, it is accurate. But I do understand that this is avexed issue and for those like the two who are close to me who have been victims of rape, the last thing I would want to do is cause them more pain.

Perhaps the term violation would have been better, and in future, I will use that word. Because this mother and her child are being violated in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start.

Marcella Piper-Terry and Meryl Dorey aren’t the only ones using rape analogies to describe vaccination. For instance, a chiropractor in Australia named Paul Lawrence once was caught saying on his Facebook page:

Someone removes your freedom of choice. You are forced, against your will to have their fluids injected into your body. How is this different from rape?

Apparently, this chiropractor is too stupid to understand the difference. Of course, if he were smart enough to understand such a basic difference, maybe he wouldn’t be a chiropractor. Yes, this is the sort of analogy that appeals to antivaccinationists, who then deny they are antivaccine after using such analogies or trying to deny that they are antivaccine.

Longtime readers might remember that that our old buddy J.B. Handley was not above using rape analogies, although he didn’t use the analogy to describe vaccination itself. Rather, after journalist Amy Wallace wrote an article critical of the antivaccine movement, JB was not pleased. No, not pleased at all. So, as Wallace described, he wrote an article that he entitled “Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine” in which he said that “The roofie cocktails at Paul Offit’s house must be damn good.” Given that a roofie is a date rape drug, the clear implication is that the only reason Wallace would have written a pro-vaccine article is because she had been date raped by Paul Offit, metaphorically speaking. He later changed that to Wired Magazine and Amy Wallace Drink Paul Offit’s Kool-Aid and changed the references to roofies to “drinking the Kool Aid.” As Abel Pharmboy put it at the time, When critics disagree with me, I’m a Pharma Shill. When critics disagree with a woman, it gets sexual.

To antivaccinationists, vaccination is the Holocaust. It’s the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s Auschwitz (complete with Dr. Josef Mengele’s horrific experiments), before which antivaccinationists view themselves as much victims as Jews in Germany during the Nazi regime. It’s Stalin. It’s the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. It’s a tsunami washing away everything before it.

And it’s child rape, too.

There’s a disturbing amount of rape imagery, both subtle and not-so-subtle, in the language used by antivaccinationists to describe vaccination. I’d be more likely to see a glimmer of a beginning of a reason to believe the protestations by antivaccinationists that they are “not antivaccine” but rather “pro-safe vaccine” if not for all the apocalyptic rhetoric and rape analogies. Rare is the case when I see anyone on the “antivaccine” side publicly call out such rhetoric, even when antivaccinationists liken vaccines to the Holocaust or sexual assault. The reason, I suspect, is because most antivaccinationists are at least sympathetic to such analogies but don’t use them publicly because they know how inflammatory and despicably ridiculous those not steeped in the false victimhood of the antivaccine movement find them.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

105 replies on “The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 11: Vaccination portrayed as rape”

This is assault without consent and with full penetration too.

If her article was about awareness of the harm of sexual assault, it would be very powerful. I know I will have troubles simply talking to women for the next days.

As a description of vaccination… It’s so disturbing on many levels. For one, victims of sexual assault may feel their experience lessened and trivialized by the comparison.
Needles as phallic representation. It explains so much about fears of vaccines. Freud must be capering and revolving in his tomb right now.

If there is anything I have learned during my few short years of posting comments on science blogs…and lurking at crank anti-vaccine blogs, it is that there are a small number of utterly deranged bloggers (and their loyal posters), who post ugly, vicious statements about vaccines using very worst analogies to describe what they consider to be the catalyst for their child’s “vaccines-associated autism”.

Vaccine are compared to the holocaust visited upon their children by evil doctors?

The groups of children who have ASDs diagnosis and may require services and support systems in place into adulthood are a tsunami?

Moms who brought their children to a trusted pediatrician for immunizations, handed their innocent babies over to rapists?

Then we have the curious case of J.B. Handley, perhaps the most vile man within the anti-vaccine movement, who is coarse and vulgar and inspires his loyal following because he provided much funding to Generation Rescue, AoA and other crank organizations. The man is a sexist lowlife who gets his jollies by talking scat.

It appears that “marcella” realizes she went too far after several commenters questioned her sanity and her motivations for post that nasty irrational post. Here’s her nonpology and her feeble attempt to mitigate the damages she has done to own reputation. (Her readership is not too receptive):

“Note: I have received some very strong reactions to this post. I understand the upset and expected it. I am not comparing all situations of vaccination to all situations of rape. As the post states, my feelings and thoughts about this are based on the situation described. It is most certainly not my intent to insult or emotionally harm anyone who has survived sexual assault. However, with increasing numbers of families being threatened if they do not vaccinate, there is a very strong element of coercion involved in what is still an optional medical procedure. That is where the parallel is drawn. When parents are coerced and threatened if they do not comply, and their children are harmed as a result, with no acknowledgment of the harm and no consequences for the one who administered the vaccine, the trauma is similar to what is felt in other types of assault and the damaging effects are just as deep and last just as long.”

Yeah, I make it a policy to call out the lying liars for the anti-vaccine they are, when I encounter them on science blogs and on mainstream media blogs. That’s the least I can do as a child advocate for the damage they do to their own non vaccinated children and putting other vulnerable populations at risk.

Again, anti-vaxxers making comparisons that trivialize actual serious crimes (like rape)….and they wonder why they are considered cranks, kooks, and complete nutjobs.

Sorry, but no. The ‘trauma’ from a needlestick is nothing compared to the trauma of sexual assault and battery at the hands of another person.

It’s not even in the same goddamned zip code.

Marcella is firmly enmeshed with that lovely man Tim Bolen.

Here’s a little facebook reaction to Marcella:

Lori Mitchell Lee says: I am a multiple rape survivor. I’ve also had pieces of my child ripped from me by an overzealous pediatrician who used scare tactics and bullying to coerce me into vaccine submission. Guess which keeps me up at night. I’m not downplaying the trauma of the rape I endured. It was horrendous. I am damaged. I always will be. But I would endure it 100X over to spare my child the pain of vaccine reaction. My rapist violated me in a single horrible act between two people… Vaccine damage is worse experience (for me) because I stood there and allowed it to happen to my child. I held her still and I facilitated the damage, pain, and PTSD that she endures. I helped them rip away pieces of her future. Her body was violated with toxic poison by a GROUP of people who should have been there to nurture, heal, and care for her. I hope a lot of people get pissed off. Maybe they will start paying attention and allowing the pharma gangs to rape our children.
6 hrs · Like · 16

Yeah, I saw that comment just this morning before I went to work and added it to the post. Words fail me.

I also added a few more comments from people who sent them to me or Tweeted them at me overnight. Wow.

I have not had a vaccine-refusing parent (yet) tell me to my face that I’m a bully, butcher, shill or rapist. Should that ever happen the parent/famiily will be asked to immediately leave my office and not return. I would also wonder why they even bothered to seek the care of a pediatrician for their child when they perceive pediatricians are such horrible people. I would feel awful for the child as they have no say in this, but such open and irrational misperception in the role of the pediatrician by a parent would never allow for a working patient-doctor relationship.

Antivaxxers like to emphasize that children cry and scream and resist being vaccinated, as if that meant they shouldn’t have been. But parents do all sorts of things to crying screaming resisting children (I’m told — I’ve never cared for a child) like changing their diapers, giving them baths, putting them to bed, catching them before they run out into traffic … Just because the child doesn’t like it is no evidence that it is bad or harmful and the child’s consent is basically irrelevant.

Children, even more so small children, cry for the strangest stuff. There is a whole blog about it, reasons that go from “I closed the door as she asked me” to “the sky was blue” to “I didn’t allow her to play with fire”.

That a child cry for a vaccination is not a reason enough not to vaccine him or her… and it is not the same as everybody, adult or child, being raped.

Disgusting.

Next time they will compare all pediatrician to that child oncologist who raped his patients.

LW @9 — Having had the experience of wheeling a 2-year-old kid around the grocery store when she’s screaming at the top of her lungs (best comment from a passing woman — “Been there, done that!”), I can attest to the fact that a child crying about something is not evidence that the thing is actually bad. Sometimes kids cry for no discernible reason except fatigue and overall frustration.

Also, people who seem to think that parents have access to a magic button that will quiet a kid are, well, misinformed.

“Afterward, the perpetrators, pat us on the thigh or shoulder while looking us straight in the eyes and saying, “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” They straighten their white coats, instruct us to get our things together, as they turn their backs and stride out of the room in search of their next victim.”

Did Marcella have a traumatic experience as a child getting her shots, so now she projects it as rape?

I hope her primary care physicians get consents in triplicate and have an armada of witnesses in the room when she needs a complete physical exam. If vaccination is rape, there are components of the exam she’d probably compare to the Holocaust.

Well there was that idea about post factum withdrawal of consent retroactively turning intercourse into rape (not sure how seriously it was supported or if it was just one of those things ascribed to radical feminists to poison the well for the whole movement….), so sure, why not decide that retroactively withdrawing consent for vaccination should have consequences…

What makes me wonder are the supposed supportive comments of rape victims. I am not a rape victim so I can’t know, but I was always led to believe that it is a very traumatic event, that can cause lasting psychological damage. I can hardly imagine how a rape victim feels, but I have had some traumatic experiences (if not on the same scale) that I’d feel pretty offended if they were used a simile for someone’s paranoia.

Those who write on anti-vax sites understand that most of their readers are women and they’ll do anything to acquire additional converts, readers or friends. They’re trying to get the audience to associate vaccination with rape and thus, to re-imagine it as something harmful, dangerous and unlawful: a crime.

Also these advocates compete with each other in an all-out war of Bad Metaphors. And why is the doctor/ rapist always portrayed as male when in the western world today many physicians are female?
Oh, I guess they’re not as good at rape as men.

At any rate, I’ve noticed that alt med advocates similarly tailor their messages to women- who probably comprise the majority of their audiences:
it’s interesting to hear an accomplished woo-meister court women by telling them how SBM violates their rights, dis-respects them and talks down to them as he attempts to sell them products that rejuvenate their skin, “reverse menopause”, control ltheir weight or protect them from the ravages of breast cancer and surgeons who blithely mutilate for profit.

In order to manipulate emotions, photos of extremely cute babies are shown either:
– next to menacing hypodermics ( as shown above), or
– as revelling in their glorious adorableness, entirely free of dangerous doctors’ advances and declaring,”No vaccines for me!” or suchlike ( see the Vaccine Machine facebook esp).

There has to be something wrong with people who use images of babies to entice readers into agreement.

Disgusting doesn’t even cover it. Way to both completely ignore and downplay sexual abuse *and* the inherent health issues of autists and those who contract diseases.

@reasonablehank
Do I see your hand in providing a tip for these antics? There’s a lot of Aussie stuff there… Anyhow, whilst I remember, great job on keeping abreast of AVN. Whenever I want to be updated on them I lurk on your site.

@LW and T

Ah but you see, the difference is that the kid innately knows that vaccines are bad and the screams are their way of warning the parent. Quite clearly you need to know the difference between a warning scream and a “I donwanna” scream.

Off topic… Has anyone heard of fossil shell flour? Stumbled upon it via google but was too scared to look.

What makes me wonder are the supposed supportive comments of rape victims. I am not a rape victim so I can’t know, but I was always led to believe that it is a very traumatic event, that can cause lasting psychological damage.

I was wondering the same thing myself. The supportive comment from the self-described rape victim only makes sense if she were also paranoid about vaccines, and even then it’s going to extremes–if it were really that traumatic, why would she not be flashing back to her own vaccinations? The whole thing is sickening, and the mind that came up with it is, as Douglas Adams put it, “not merely twisted, but actually sprained.”

Well there was that idea about post factum withdrawal of consent retroactively turning intercourse into rape (not sure how seriously it was supported or if it was just one of those things ascribed to radical feminists to poison the well for the whole movement….)

I can’t say whether it’s widely enough held to attribute it at all broadly, but some people do indeed mean it seriously. I know one woman who not only holds that position, she also advocates that all men should be killed as soon as medical science has reached the point that reproduction can take place without them.

She does this in the high school civics classes she teaches, without any reprimand despite numerous complaints, too…

“What makes me wonder are the supposed supportive comments of rape victims. I am not a rape victim so I can’t know, but I was always led to believe that it is a very traumatic event, that can cause lasting psychological damage. I can hardly imagine how a rape victim feels, but I have had some traumatic experiences (if not on the same scale) that I’d feel pretty offended if they were used a simile for someone’s paranoia.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my own experiences with the subject took therapy and time to ‘dull’ the edge – but I still have some lingering quirks to my behavior.

I won’t sit anywhere where I can’t see the exit(s), or where I can’t sit against a wall or have something solid at my back. I park my car under a streetlight, even if it means a longer walk to/from my destination, etc.

@ Flip:

Sure, it’s diatomaceous earth . Supposedly alties use it in many creative ways for filtration, to repel insects, add to animal feed and ingested, as a way to grow stronger, healthier fingernails ( it’s silica).

I think there is a similarity here to Muchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy. The parent puts all of their fears of vaccines onto the child, imagines damage and attempts to “fix” it for years by listening to all of the other cult members and following “advice” given on those blogs and pages. It’s a self-perpetuating system, infecting others.

palindrom: “(best comment from a passing woman — “Been there, done that!”),”

I say that, and then add: “then they become teenagers!”

Flip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

It is not just for alties, I bought a bag at the hardware store to deter bugs from plants. I also sprinkled it around where I’ve seen silverfish.

Chris Hickie: I have not had a vaccine-refusing parent (yet) tell me to my face that I’m a bully, butcher, shill or rapist. Should that ever happen the parent/famiily will be asked to immediately leave my office and not return. I would also wonder why they even bothered to seek the care of a pediatrician for their child when they perceive pediatricians are such horrible people.

Have you considered sending out a mass email that you will no longer accept patients with parents that don’t vaccinate. Might be an easy way out of dealing with these dangerous, lawsuit happy and hairtrigger temper people. I’d be worried about my safety especially in a gunhappy place like your home state. And yeah, I’ve always wondered why they don’t learn to set bones and basic wound care if they hate peds that much.

Darwy: I’m sorry that happened to you. I’ve never been assualted, but it’s one of my biggest fears. (To the point I avoid talking to men whenever I have the option, and can’t fathom the idea of a relationship.)
God, every time I think they can’t sink lower.

When one commenter questioned Julie O. about that outrageous hypothetical situation of dropping a vial of Thimerosal-containing-vaccine and the need to close down an office to call a hazmat team to clean up, Professor TMR replied

” ProfessorTMR says:
September 29, 2014 at 12:01 am

Um, actually, no Peter. The fact that the statements are not linked to sources does not in any way mean that they are “moot.” It only means that they are not substantiated within this post. You can find the substantiation in plenty of places, should you attempt to do so. What she and the rest of us ask others to do is their own research. She has done hers. Have you done yours?”

I’m calling bullsh!t on Julie O and bullsh!t on TMR Professor. The source for that statement is Robert Kennedy Jr., stated by him when he was promoting his anti-vaccine book. The dullards, who have never given a vaccination…or dropped a Thimerosal-containing-vaccine on the floor…don’t realize that the proper disposal in such a situation is to dispose of the vial in the red sharps container.

@#24 lillady:

It seems they’re trying to make a comparison to that of breaking a CFL bulb and some of the caution that should be taken during the clean-up. Pretty silly.

Chadwick Jones, it is not a silly reply. That’s the way these Thinking Moms operate. They spread out the manure and when called upon to back up their statements, they reply:

Do your own research!

Well I, for one, have felt very, very *violated* by vaccination.

Both times under cohersion.

(1.) must have some emergency *measles*(??) as a requirement to remain in university (tuition paid was not refundable). Stood in line all day, losing my drivers’ liscense in the process so that I went the next year without a parking permit, got shot up by a dude in military fatigues just after the chick in the military fatigues asked me if i was “allergic to eggs”. I should have said “yes”. It was the sickest I’d ever been in my life about 5 days later.

(2.) A badly busted forearm with the hand hanging down halfway to my elbow and they would not treat me until I accepted a *tetanus shot* which I’d tried to explain to them I don’t want, need, and that I’d had a mild case of something that resembled tetanus the last time I got one — That one left me with some kind of inner ear malady that induces vertigo from time to time.

^^ That’s ok though, They were Hill-Burton so that I elected not to pay them or the specialist for the services rendered and that shot was why.

Anyways, a distinction must be made between *rape* and *legitimate rape*

Legitimate rape {Sexually Liberated Uterine Tendancies}

Darwy, I am so sorry that you underwent that awful experience; you are entitled to have some “quirks”, by being super cautious when you are alone during evening hours.

Tim, fsck off back to whatever sick-minded angry-white-boy-infested hate-hole you crawled from.

Have you considered sending out a mass email that you will no longer accept patients with parents that don’t vaccinate.

And some parents don’t acquiesce and don’t come back. What has this done? Isolated parent and child from simple future diagnosis and access to prescription legal keys to healing so that an infected toe may lead to death. Let alone, the missed diagnosis of a serious contagious disease that may indeed call for prudent isolation.

This would seem to have an artificially imposed *Darwin effect*, would it not?? At any rate, it is a kind of eugenics in which a populace which is not tolerant to {ideological} or can not tolerate {biological} vaccines is weeded out.

The parents who refuse the standard of care (vaccinations) are also those who refuse antibiotics, preferring to ‘cure’ said infected to with essential oils, honey, colloidal silver and breastmilk.

Those parents are choosing to put their children at risk – the pediatrician is just ensuring that they don’t risk other children.

orac, can you do a later post about male baby circumcision? I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

It was done to me when I was 8 days old (born into a Jewish family), but I understand a lot of parents and doctors see it as a just a routine thing to do, probably due to the general Judeo-Christian backdrop in North America.

In this aspect I see a big difference between circumcision and vaccination. The vaccinations I received as a baby were to protect me, but there was no compelling reason for my body to be mutilated when I was a helpless infant.

Darwy: You tell him. But, really, I’m worried that the parents may become a risk to the pediatrician.

But *why* must this acceptance by all be done?

In my world view, it is so that those *elite* (shadow gov; whatever), the obscenities born out of intentional inbreeding and the (then novel, and misunderstood/mis-applied) *science* of eugenics — the combinations of Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Royalty, and fruit flies — that, indeed, render those particular abominations vulnerable to bug-catching off the *herd* due to their unintentional consequence of no immune system of their own. Meanwhile, the *herd* stays sick and allergic all the time due to prohibition of cannabis which can mediate an immune response (give the system time to think about it before going balls-out on every pollen grain and peanut) and the overdrive of the immune system for things that are rarely, if ever, encountered.

There is not one shot to fit them all. Nor is there 37 of them. Unless, the endgame is to have a homogenious population that actually respond as predicted to homogenious dosing strategies — A situation that seems desirable to bean counters and those otherwise devoid of insight and intuition in the field of medicine otherwise.

NPR’s Morning Edition today, 30 September, had a story about vaccination in which the author mentioned Science Based Medicine’s saying that if you mix facts with nonsense, you still have nonsense.
a

The dullards, who have never given a vaccination…or dropped a Thimerosal-containing-vaccine on the floor…don’t realize that the proper disposal in such a situation is to dispose of the vial in the red sharps container.

Shall we look at the FluLaval safety data sheet (PDF)? That seems to be popular.

“Small Spills: Wipe up with absorbent material (e.g. cloth, fleece). Clean surface thoroughly to remove residual contamination.”

Shall we look at the FluLaval safety data sheet (PDF)? That seems to be popular.

“Small Spills: Wipe up with absorbent material (e.g. cloth, fleece). Clean surface thoroughly to remove residual contamination.”

Safe as milk.

Safe as milk.

In all honesty, I’d rather spill a vaccine. Somehow, the stench of spilled milk really seems to linger.

Anon: “orac, can you do a later post about male baby circumcision? I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it”

Perhaps instead of requesting specific topics from our kind host, you should go and check Science Based Medicine for articles on subjects that interest you. It is bad form to tell a blogger what to write about, especially when its their hobby.

“It’s a little crazy that over the past week or two I have been using the term “medical rape” to describe vaccination of children”

They could have stopped there.

“It’s not even in the same goddamned zip code.”

It’s not in the same goddam solar system.

The dullards, who have never given a vaccination…or dropped a Thimerosal-containing-vaccine on the floor…don’t realize that the proper disposal in such a situation is to dispose of the vial in the red sharps container.

Seems the container (now in the form of broken glass) is more dangerous than the content…

In all honesty, I’d rather spill a vaccine. Somehow, the stench of spilled milk really seems to linger.

Milk is a mix of fat-soluble and water-soluble substances, so I guess that, no matter which surface milk is spilled on, there is always a part which will stick to it and stay behind as a smelly souvenir.

Speaking of stench, Tim’s postings on this thread (27, 39) are starting to develop a bad one.
Cannabis doesn’t seem to help with empathy, but it does lower one’s social inhibitions.

Marcella Piper-Terry certainly gets around. She made her debut as a guest blogger, providing her expert analysis of the Brian Hooker paper, on the TMR blog one month ago:

http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/category/featured-guest-blog/marcella-piper-terry/

JOHANNA MEADE…DO NOT OPEN THIS LINK IF YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE IS ELEVATED:

Here, bio-meddler Marcello Piper-Terry substitutes for Lisa Goes, describing her career trajectory as a counselor, researcher, bio-medical therapist…and her daughter’s multiple vaccine injuries (which started in utero with a Rhogam shot):

Roadstergal @48 – Let’s go all out. It’s not even within the same event horizon!

Or at least, hasn’t been since the pre-inflation era.

Seriously the Thinking Moms drive me insane. Yes, your baby cries when they get a vaccine. My son cried more from the being held down part, he didn’t seem to mind the actual shot all that much. And to whoever said it up thread (to lazy to look) I wish they did make a magic button to quiet your screaming child. Mine (almost 3) screams about just about everything not going his way. That’s why I think all parents should be issues a tranquilizer gun and a certain amount of ammunition per month. One shot guaranteed to knock their lights out for 3-4 hours. I think the ammunition ration should be doubled when they turn 13. I can handle the screaming, the eye rolling, sighing, martyr complex really gets on my nerves. Rape is possibly the worst trauma a woman can endure. To compare it to a needle prick is beyond the pale. I am not clicking on the link lilady provided because I want to go home and enjoy the rest of my evening and I won’t if I’m fuming about that.

I’ve been following TMR since its inception and yes, it’s a miserable job but someone has to do it. Why not me?

Fortunately, I am quite immune to their brand of lunacy- I even find it entertaining: I try to predict what their next half-arsed altie theory or subject of protest will be.

Because, Rebecca Fisher, my google is somehow disabling adblock on all tabs so that I’m vulnerable to actual shit without the innoculation of worthless active malwarevirus scanners worthless active malwarevirus scanners now that I’m clicking on unknown links — I’m waiting for someone to point out that I misspelled ‘Homogeneous’ repeatedly because I usually use google as a spell-checker {out of spite}… You’re feeling up to confirming the correction; Aren’t you, Rebecca? *grins*

Thanks Denice and Chris. I mostly saw results for ingestion from woo-ish sites which is what made me worried.

Diatomaceous earth has SB applications ( see Chris’ comments) but woo can claim quite a few :
( see belmontnaturalalternatives.com, amongst others)
they use it as a means of building hair, nails and teeth as well as a de-toxifier, weight control aid, for skin care, GI ‘cleanse’,anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-parasite formula-
it seems that the tiny points of the fossilised shells impale those nasty germs and ‘chop up” larger parasites.
Your pets or farm animals may benefit from its usage as well.
Who knew?

@Denice

Want to bet these are the same people who complain about ingredients in other things, like food and vaccines?

@PGP #23: My practice in Tucson has already set a vaccinate-or-go-elsewhere policy, so the most obnoxious AVers already stay away. But before I did that, I would get all sorts of silly stupid arguments from AVers that made no sense. If a math teacher had a student who kept repeating that 2+2=5, eventually that teacher would ask the student to leave the room. Kicking out the AVers is effectively the same type of no-duh response to protect my vaccinating families and rid my practice of these loons.

Kicking out the AVers is effectively the same type of no-duh response to protect my vaccinating families

I get a disconnect here. That is to say, “I don’t understand.” Are the vaccinated tikes somehow immunochallenged so that unvaxed kids with otherwise stronger immune systems may have a cold virus but be asymptomatic yet contagious or something? What a world it would be if the only illness out there were diptet and measles huu?? Oh, but I guess the vaxed ones’ systems must still be somewhat in tatters — depending on where they’re at in the *schedule* or something?? Or is there just some kind of monetary incentive here — like a ‘shedding quota’ to meet or something?

Never attribute to…. Ahh. One would have to look up the rarely used code for ‘decided not to take that one’ and the PDA is bricked again because letting it autoupdate is mandatory for some inexplicable reason.

@ Chris Hickie:

Out of curiosity, how often did you (if you feel free enough to give me a rough estimate) have to deal with
-parents who refused vaccines
-parents who questioned you about vaccines
-parents who blamed a child’s ASD or health problems on vaccines
-related anti-vax lunacy ?

She must have dealt with many tiny penises in her lifetime. 😉
In all seriousness though, this is EXTREMELY misogynist to compare vaccines to rape (due to the fact women are far more likely to get raped). It reminds me of the vegans who compare dairy farming to rape.

I always find it weird how nobody talks about the physical effects of rape, only the lasting psychological effects. Many people get STDs and genital tissue trauma from being raped.

</killfile>

(1.) must have some emergency *measles*(??) as a requirement to remain in university (tuition paid was not refundable). Stood in line all day, losing my drivers’ liscense in the process

So, basically, you were too fυcking stoned stupid to renew your license until the last minute, and you blame the measles vaccine?

(2.) A badly busted forearm with the hand hanging down halfway to my elbow and they would not treat me until I accepted a *tetanus shot*

Horseshіt.

Tim, why don’t you fυck off a bit quicker than that?

Because, Rebecca Fisher, my google is somehow disabling adblock on all tabs so that I’m vulnerable to actual shіt without the innoculation of worthless active malwarevirus scanners worthless active malwarevirus scanners now that I’m clicking on unknown links

Is there some reason you struck that out only to repeat it, O technologically incompetent one? Is this steaming pool of verbal diarrhea what passes for a coherent response in what’s left of the deliquescing contents of your braincase?

@Chris. I don’t think that person is telling Orac what to blog about, just making a suggestion. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, as long as its done respectfully. Sometimes you just like someone’s writing voice and want to hear it from them. It’s a lot different than a quack having a temper tantrum and telling Orac what he writes about is not important.

Someone really needs to collect all of this pseudo-intellectual bullshit Tim spews and show it to him on one of the few occasions he’s not stoned out of his gourd, and tell him “Yes, when you toke up, THIS is what you mistake for insightful, meaningful contribution. No one else thinks you’re witty. No one else thinks you’re perceptive. Once the meager novelty of your word salad wears off, you’re just another stoner with delusions of knowing all the answers.”

@Narad

I think he meant that he lost the card while in line. Then again, I could be wrong. I’m having trouble deciphering that particular dialect of crazy.

I do not find it weird that many people aren’t talking about STDs and genital tissue trauma.

CH: Good, but I’m not sure it goes far enough. Or are the parents just not that dangerous?

I think he meant that he lost the card while in line.

In some strange circumstance in which it was necessary to be administered an “emergency” vaccine by people wearing military fatigues as a prerequisite to visiting the window where they only issue parking permits one day per year? I’m sorry, but there really seem to be some, ah, characteristic time-management issues going on here no matter how I look at it.

TL’sB: that questionn is a bit creepy, but here goes: If you intend to compare a needle stick to the physical trauma of rape, well, the lack of comparability is obvious. But even so, physical trauma and STD’s can be healed relatively quickly. Psychic trauma can take much longer, and may never entirely heal. That’s what makes it such a big deal, and why the comparison is so offensive — as I think you appreciate.

@Dim Tim:

Are the vaccinated tikes somehow immunochallenged so that unvaxed kids with otherwise stronger immune systems may have a cold virus but be asymptomatic yet contagious or something?

No, you blockhead. What happens is an unvaccinated child gets an infection, then when symptoms start to show, is brought into the paediatrician’s offices, where there are other children, including children too young to be vaccinated who are then at risk of being infected by the deliberately unvaccinated child. Understand?

John Stone has elected to incoherently characterize nobody giving a rat’s ass about Thompson as “genocide.”

Perhaps Mr Stone can provide us with an update of the case fatality rates for autism, and how they have dramatically increased to “genocidal levels” in recent years?

Perhaps these TMR wingnuts could try saying the following when they next encounter a rape victim, and see if they would emerge with a GCS in double figures:

Gosh, how awful for you! That must have been just like having a vaccination”

@PGP #71–I’ve only felt threatened by 1 parent (but it wasn’t over vaccine issues). I did have him leave and did call the police out of fear he might come back in armed.

@ Tim #62 –Julian Frost (#74) is exactly correct. Besides infants too young to be vaccinated being at risk from the unvaccinated child coming into my waiting room with chickenpox or pertussis or (and I hope never) measles, I have other children who are immune-suppressed (such as being on chemotherapy, or having an organ transplant) and either cannot be vaccinated or have lost their vaccine immunity from medical treatments. I REFUSE to let my waiting room be where they catch a VPD from some ignorant parent’s unvaccinated child. .

@ Denice #63–I felt that (before the ban hammer fell) there were several percent unvaccinated children (electively unvaccinated) in my practice, but even before I expelled the non-vaccinators, word was out on social medial that I was not “vax-friendly” (a misnomer, as to me pro-vax is vax friendly and what AVers call “vax-friendly” is really anti-vax), so I wasn’t getting too many new non-vaxxers. As to questions on vaccines, parents have them, but the ones about SIDS and autism were declining as well, as was the lunacy type of germ-theory-denier parent. But you bring up a good point in that I don’t know what big reasons are driving the current crop of vaccine-refusing parents and worry that the answer is just they see so much anti-vaccine stuff on social media (without rebuttals from the CDC, AAP, etc) that they can’t help but be scared into it just because if they hear it so much “then it must somehow be true”.

Christopher Hickie,

I have other children who are immune-suppressed… and either cannot be vaccinated or have lost their vaccine immunity from medical treatments.

Sounds plausible. I guess, you can’t just ask them to wait in the car, after all.

But are any *really* too young??

“We need your consent to administer Hep-B…” — Day 1, Hour 2 ….
—————————-

I guess, tetanus is super-contagious to the young’uns — I know, I know; It’s so the hospital can cover its’ ass should I come down with tetanus there. But I *thought* I’d already had signed (or had signed with myself as witness giving verbal confirmation) some kind of waiver already.

——————————-
I lost the damn thing standing in line. I hate standing in yet another type line waiting for some officious fat bitch to shed her fat, dumb, officious-inducing virii all over my eyes only to be told I didn’t sign my name right so that it was two or three years before I was forced to pick up a new one.

@ Chris Hickie:

I imagine that our ancestors aeons ago, sitting around the communal fire in deepest, darkest, star-flecked night, on the savannah, elaborating their daily experiences and concocting tales of supernatural events personally witnessed, find their descendants on twitter and facebook.

Except that today many of them wouldn’t be eating tasty roasted gazelle because they’re vegans and raw food advocates.

I guess, tetanus is super-contagious to the young’uns

I suppose that it is quite possible they had reason to believe I was a biter.

dingo 199 posed the question….

“Perhaps Mr Stone can provide us with an update of the case fatality rates for autism, and how they have dramatically increased to “genocidal levels” in recent years?”

For Alex Spourdalakis, the 14 year old autistic child who was brutally murdered by his mother and his caregiver, the case fatality rate was 100 %…after the interventions of Andrew Wakefield and the “Autism is Medical” bio meddling mommies.

Wait a minute . . . so in addition to the usual litany of supposed vaccine reactions, she says her child has PTSD from being vaccinated? Um, does she actually know what PTSD *is*?

Many people who helped recover the wounded and dead on 9/11 got cancer as a result of breathing in all the stuff in the air. Many also got PTSD. But the PTSD was caused by the trauma of seeing so many dead and wounded and witnessing the collapsing towers and all that — not by the cancer, but by the experience that gave them cancer. Likewise, if a child gets PTSD from a vaccine, it isn’t because of the vaccine’s contents. It’s because of being unnecessarily cruel to the child. I’ve helped hold my kids down for various procedures that had to be done, not just vaccines but also stitches and things like that. It’s not fun, and they don’t enjoy it, but none of them were traumatized by it. So either she was really nasty to her kid during this process or (much more likely) she is seriously blowing the whole thing way out of proportion.

I mean . . . PTSD? From a vaccine?

As an cemetery historian, I can’t significantly contribute to the scientific debate on the antivaxxers; however, I wish that some of them could read some of the old burial registers from the 1850’s that I look after; page- after page- after page of child/infant deaths due to scarlet fever, “scarletina”, whooping cough, not to mention, mumps, diphtheria, measles, and so forth. For example, in the month of January 1874, 18 burials were registered; 7 were for children under the age of 5 who died of whooping cough. In February 1876, 20 burials were registered; 12 were for children under the age of 10 who died of diphtheria. These diseases KILL. Why would you NOT vaccinate?

And don’t get me started on the rape analogy. That is just wrong on so many levels, I cannot begin to articulate my distaste…

CH: Only one? I guess anti-vaxx and wingnuttery don’t overlap very often (except in Tim’s case.) Not many crunchy people carry guns.

Tim: First of all MMR is a live vaccine(active viral strain), so giving it to newborns isn’t optimal. HepB is, I believe a killed vaccine. Secondly, tetanus isn’t all that contagious (why do you go around biting kids?) but it is super-difficult to treat. If you *want* your jaw locked and to spend the rest of your shortened life dying at home, go ahead and step on that rusty nail, but you’re not going to do it on the hospital’s dime. Personally, I think you’re a rather unpleasant person, but I wouldn’t wish tetanus on you. Leprosy, maybe.

@Selena Wolf

Believe it or not, I did a short stint as a gravedigger in an historic graveyard where equipment was not allowed. That first day, that first grave and ~ 4.5 -5 ft. down is when black earth began spilling out of the side and into the rest of the hole. Hard digging — Impossible crusty, compacted clay. I’d arrived to help out a friend in a pinch with it (couldn’t quite explain it to him or he couldn’t handle knowing) and so when I pointed it out to the groundskeeper he said, “Yea, we marked that one off a little too far right.”

I don’t remember the exact date but it was late 1800’s — early 1900’s. It was a child’s grave. And there were many of them. Being a germophobe, I had more on my mind than my impromteau yet necessary abstinence from my lunch and dinner of life-giving Milwakee’s Best on a humid, ninety-five degree day.

Incidentally, I also went along for the ride (paid, though) with a surveyor friend. You guessed it — Historic graveyard. My duties included sitting in a courthouse watching him read old (whatever you call the old documents of easements, inhabitants, and the like — actuaries??), holding the ‘story pole’, and measuring the diameter of trees down to the micrometer only to paint ‘A,B,C,or D’ on the tree symbols for later writeup. Not alot of kids in that one though — They were probably Mennonites.

“Looks like this one’s toes are sticking about 4 inches over the easement”, said surveyor dude.

———————————-
PGP,

Part of my job description involves getting routinely pissed off at prickly fences covered in coyote and cow hair. But, as a hobby, every now and again, I come home in the wee hours of the morning inexplicably shredded after a night of traipsing around dew covered fields of an unknown owner only to occasionally egress with some panicked haste… I think my first previous childhood series of five or ten tetanus shots must have took hold.

Are you really suggesting that a doctor’s office ask an immunocompromised child and their parent/guardian to “wait in the car” for their appointments? And then presumably they teleport directly from their cars into the examination room, without walking past the unvaccinated sick child who might otherwise infect them with pertussis?

Vicki: Yes, I think it is.

Tim: It’s amazing that you did all that and never learned a thing.

Dim Tim is dim, sure, but he did not suggest anyone should wait in the car.

He said Dr. Hickie’s explaination was plausible. Tim expanded by saying that sick kids and the parents couldn’t wait in the car.

Tim says a lot of stupid stuff, but not this time.

Johnny,

I’m most certainly did imply that the ‘non vaxed’ have the option to wait in the car whilst some underling goes out and gives an initial assessment, perhaps followed by the attending physician, perhaps followed by a back door into *that* part of the practice.

Otherwise, in these ‘ultimatum’ circumstances, the alternative is bladder wart and prayer.

Well, golly.

Tim isn’t as dumb as I imagined, he’s dumber than I can imagine.

He also can’t write clearly. I’ve gone back and re-read his statement, and I still come down on the side that he didn’t mean to say that non-vaxed should wait in the car, but that is clearly what he intended to say.

It’s not the stupidest thing he’s said, but it has to be in the top 10.

Tim: Hey, dimbulb, I’m not the one who traipsed around old cemeteries and failed to learn a dang thing, I’m not the person who can’t seem to make up his mind whether he’s a pothead or a wingnut, and btw, I could write better and clearer than you with one hand behind my back and drunk. So think twice before you start calling other people stupid, mmkay?

Perhaps instead of making bad metaphors, they would like to raise money to buy one of these for every boy with ASD???

TellMe
TellMe was designed to treat Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) symptoms in boys by encouraging them to speak out and express themselves while playing with and enjoying the clothing. A child wearing the garment can naturally learn and practice how to express his feelings, emotions and opinions.

TechRepublic/Teena Hammond

http://tr1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2014/09/23/c7b37776-eeeb-45a8-927b-abaed7177260/img2967.jpg

No evidence that it works, but it’s got to be better than chemical castration or an accidental death from chelation.

@palindrom #51

It’s not even within the same event horizon!
Or at least, hasn’t been since the pre-inflation era

^^ I’m pretty sure this doesn’t work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29#Overview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_horizon#Cosmological_horizon

^^ Does that fix it?? Idk. Cosmology is not really my forte. However, ‘event horizon’ implies ‘events’ which, naturally, imply time and inhomogeneity — Is that well-defined pre-inflation? I get the idea it’s messy and depends on unknowns like the type of space and the phase of that space at the, umm, time.

^^ unbold since and still… Oh, never mind. I guess yours works just as well as any other botched esoteric pigeonholeing of scales of apartness.

Speaking of vaccine-preventable diseases and rape, who is even more vulnerable to rape, someone paralyzed by polio or someone who isn’t paralyzed?

@Leslie, I thought that was an excellent question so I went to Google Scholar and searched.
Because of their vulnerability, disabled people are far more likely to be the victims of sexual assault.

I’ve tried to write a comment about this several times and have deleted it each time. I think I’ll just say being vaccinated directly after being assaulted isn’t nearly as traumatizing as what happened before that.

“This is assault without consent”
For vaccinations performed without consent, this is legally entirely correct.

” and with full penetration too.”
However, this is just point-scoring by giving the topic a sexual spin.

aairfccha @102:

Point-scoring, and dishonest: the anti-vaxxers don’t like the oral polio vaccine, or flu vaccine as a nasal spray, either..

Anyone who defends that disgusting excuse for a sapient being and her callous disregard for survivors of sexual assault needs to be horsewhipped. There is absolutely NO comparison between vaccination and sexual assault. None.

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