About a week and a half ago, I took note of a rather unhinged rant by comedian Rob Schneider about vaccines in which he trotted out an antivaccine movement’s greatest hits compendium of pseudoscience, misinformation, and logical fallacies, all in the service of opposing California Bill AB 2109. Antivaccine activists hate this piece of legislation in particular, the reason being that it would make it just a little more difficult for parents to obtain philosophical exemptions from school mandates. Right now in California, parents basically just have to sign a form, no questions asked, no other requirements made. AB 2109 would require parents to consult with a health care professional to obtain a waiver. The purpose of this consultation is to make sure that parents understand the consequences of what they are doing, the concern being that, currently, obtaining a philosophical exemption is just so easy that some parents who aren’t really antivaccine just sign the exemption form because it’s easier than taking their children to the pediatrician to make sure they’re up to date on their vaccines. In other words, AB 2109 mandates something very simple and responsible: Informed consent. Compare that to the misinformed consent that is preferred by antivaccinationists. No wonder “Dr. Bob” Sears hates it so much. Rob Schneider is just the most recent (and stupid) of the parade of antivaccinationists expressing opposition to the bill.
Now, there are lots of issues one can discuss about this bill. It’s by no means perfect. For instance, the last version I read allows parents to have naturopaths sign their waivers, which to me is a serious flaw given how antivaccine most naturopaths are. This was apparently introduced to mollify the crunchy contingent who take their children only to “alternative” practitioners. Why anyone would want to mollify parents who take their children to quacks in preference to real doctors, I don’t know, but that’s politics. Not surprisingly, antivaccinationists are not mollified because, as Rob Schneider so Godwinly put it, AB 2109 sponsors are a bunch of “Nazis.”
Still, even a week and a half later, I still wonder where Schneider came up with one particularly ignorant thing that he said. I’m referring, of course, to his statement that AB 2109 is “against the Nuremberg Laws.” My initial take, probably due to not hearing the relevant passage of the video that well and not going back to listen to it a couple of times to make sure I heard it right, was that he was comparing AB 2109 to the Nuremberg Laws. As you may recall, the Nuremberg Laws were passed by the Nazis in 1935, stripping Jews of their German citizenship and forbidding them from marrying (or even having sexual intercourse with) non-Jews, under pain of imprisonment with hard labor. These laws are widely viewed historically as one of the major steps towards the Holocaust because, two and a half years after Hitler had taken power, they virtually eliminated the few remaining existing legal protections for Jews. This impression was cemented in my mind by Schneider’s followup remarks in which he compared AB 2109 to eugenics laws in the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century.
It turns out that I was wrong; I misheard. What Schneider was actually probably meant was that he thought AB 2109 was against the Nuremberg Code, not the Nuremberg Laws. The Nuremberg Code was delivered in 1947 as part of the verdict against Nazi doctors who had conducted horrific medical experiments on Jews and other prisoners and remains one of the foundations of medical ethics with respect to human subjects research. Some of the ten points of the code include the requirement for informed consent, the requirement that there be strong preclinical data (in vitro and animal experiments) to support the hypothesis being tested, that physical and mental suffering must be avoided or minimized, and several other principles that we accept today.
But where did this talking point come from? I hadn’t heard this one before, at least not as far as I could remember. I don’t know who originated it, but I came across another use of it just yesterday. What happened was that I was perusing my Google Alerts, one of which is for (of course!) vaccines, and I came across a post by Scott Lazarowitz attacking Drew Johnson on the Radly Balko blog for attacking Jenny McCarthy for her promotion of antivaccine views. He was apparently unhappy because the number of links in his comments held his comment up for moderation and he was unhappy that it took a day for his comment to be approved. (Hint: Whining in the comments about its taking too long for your post to be approved by a moderator is just plain lame. Writing a blog post whining about its taking too long for your post to be approved by a moderator is beyond lame.) A couple of the links were antivaccine misinformation about Andrew Wakefield and how he’s being “persecuted.” Then I came across in the list of links, however, is on Food Freedom News and entitled Unspeakable Outrages Across the Country. It’s by a guy named Brian Gaston, and he is very upset about Vermont’s attempt to tighten up its philosophical exemptions, which is why he was gloating shamelessly in his post about the failure of the Vermont legislature to get the law passed.
Then later, he cites a passage from an article entitled Have Rabbis Forgotten The Experiments on Jewish Women at Auschwitz?:
Needless to say, giving untested, unknown vaccines is a “medical experiment” and violates the core principles of the Nuremberg – informed and unambiguous consent. Forcing people to take vaccines, whether by a proclaimed “emergency,” by a “public health” order from the WHO, or by threat of loss of rights over one’s children or of imprisonment, removes consent, as does giving vaccines to those unable by age or mental status to legally consent. “Informed,” as well, is hollowed of all meaning when people are tricked into taking vaccines by the use of false or frightening “information.”
This particular article is full of crazy, and conflates Nazi experiments designed to sterilize Jews and other “undesirables” surreptitiously with today’s vaccination program.
Rabbis are aware of Mengele’s experiments on twins, perhaps of other hideous experiments done to Auschwitz prisoners, but seem unaware of or to have forgotten one specific type of medical experiment – the sterilization experiments done with untested, unknown vaccines, on Jewish women who could not say no.
This was the first I had heard of vaccines being used in Nazi sterilization experiments. It’s true that Nazis tried a lot of methods to sterilize Jews and other people whom they considered “inferior” and therefore not worthy of reproducing or enemies of the state whom they wanted to eliminate after the then current generation. The way that Nazis did this first consisted of injecting prisoners with various nasty chemicals that were toxic to the reproductive system. However, the Nazis soon found that radiating genitals and female reproductive organs was the most effective method of sterilization, and that became the favored method, and the Germans learned how to administer the radiation without the victims knowing that they had been subjected to high dose X-rays. Many suffered radiation burns, and women in particular suffered because the radiation was directed into their pelvises, where there was a lot of collateral damage due to the X-rays hitting bowel, bladder, and other organs.
It is true that the Nazis did do other horrific experiments in which they tried to develop vaccines and antisera for various diseases plaguing their troops, such as malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. They would develop the vaccine, inject prisoners with it, and then expose the control and treated groups to the infectious agent being vaccinated against. Perhaps the worst experiments described are Dr. Josef Mengele’s twin experiments, which apparently at times involved vaccines.
But back to Gaston’s article, which is even fuller of crazy than the article I just cited. What does he base his linking of Nazi experiments designed to rapidly and secretly sterilize Jews and other racial “undesirables”? This:
Parents not only have the right to philosophical objection to any or all vaccines, but most certainly have the right to informed consent. All of the mandated vaccines for their children must include information that polysorbate 80 is a sterilizing agent and one that is “preferred” as such in a pharmaceutical industry patent, and therefore deemed effective.
Parents in all states have the right to protect their children from being compulsorily sterilized in this deceptive manner. This is a criminal assault on their children’s bodies. In truth, parents should give this attack an even more seriously criminal label, because “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” meets the UN”s definition of genocide.
I’ve written about polysorbate-80 on several occasions. It can cause infertility in rats, but the doses required are so far above the content in vaccines that the claim that its presence in vaccines is a danger to fertility is pure idiocy.
Yes, because Gaston thinks that vaccines sterilize children, he equates them to Nazi experiments designed to sterilize Jews rapidly without surgery and other horrific Nazi medical experiments. And, to him, that means that vaccination and vaccine mandates are the equivalent of Nazi experiments, which makes them against the Nuremberg Code. It goes even beyond that, though. No, the crazy does not stop there. According to Gaston, not only is vaccination a crime against humanity on the order of Nazi sterilization experiments, but it’s a way for big pharma to cement its hold on humanity:
The Nuremberg Code was written to protect the world from the gruesome experiments performed on concentration camp prisoners by the pharmaceutical industry. They industry sought a means to covertly sterilize those they wished to use merely as workers or slaves, and to take over control of the world. The same industry is still covertly sterilizing. And just as Monsanto is attempting to “own” food through patented intellectual property claims and is abetted by spread of its GMOs through contamination by pollen, vaccine-enforced DNA contamination through injecting patented GMOs into children’s DNA provides a means to take control of human DNA. Here the companies are abetted in this human-DNA contamination not by pollen but by corrupt state legislators.
Those legislators are abetting both the covert compulsory sterilization of America’s children (genocide), and the deceptive take over by multinational corporations of the ownership of American children’s human DNA (biopiracy). Vermont stood firm that parents decide. But there must be “informed” consent and information on what is really happening with the vaccines has been missing since it is unlikely that parents in the US would allow their child to be vaccinated with vaccines that increase their risk of disease, sterilize them, and steal their legal rights to their own DNA.
That’s right. Big agricultural companies own the patents on DNA sequences in their genetically modified organisms. Pharmaceutical companies own the patents on their own vaccines, many of which these days are produced using recombinant DNA technology. To Gaston this means:
Those being vaccinated with the new DNA vaccines are automatically turning their “intellectual property” over their own DNA over to the vaccine manufacturers by allowing that DNA to be contaminated. The vaccines replicate how seeds are genetically engineered (patented GMOs are shot into the DNA), permanently corrupting it. But putting aside the damage to DNA, there is a undeniable commercial issue here. NONE of the legal issues of intellectual property rights over the DNA have been mentioned much less settled. What claims might the vaccine companies (or government which shares patents with it) make over the child’s “patent-tagged” blood, organs, etc. since patented DNA would be in all of it? Given the aggressive actions of Monsanto, a biotech company, against farmers whose fields were contaminated – involuntarily – by Monsanto’s patented intellectual property via pollen drift, and Monsanto’s refusal to say they will not sue those who were unwillingly contaminated, there is no reason to believe that the vaccine industry, biotech companies, will behave any differently. In fact, there is already action in Colorado to show how the drug companies may behave around control over what is in someone’s body.
Help! Help! My precious bodily fluids have been contaminated by evil big pharma vaccines! Well, actually, it’s my DNA. The entire paragraph above is silly beyond belief. For one thing, most vaccines, except for live attenuated virus vaccines, don’t have appreciable DNA left. There might be tiny traces that require highly sophisticated PCR techniques to detect, but that is not enough to do much of anything. However, like homeopathy, Gaston seems to think that such tiny amounts of DNA can somehow integrate with and contaminate a child’s genome, while the polysorbate-80 in them render children infertile. To him they’re nothing more than a tool for big pharma to use to assert patent rights over the child’s very DNA. Of course, I could never figure out why big pharma would want to sterilize everyone this way. Wouldn’t that be rather self-defeating, given that, according the the conspiracy theories of people like Gaston, big pharma requires new generations of people to become dependent upon its products. Be that as it may, if I were to try to make up a parody of the most extreme antivaccine propaganda, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something this risible. In fact, I don’t think I could. It just goes to show that, whenever I thought I’ve seen the craziest thing ever in the antivaccine crankosphere, I find out that I’m wrong.
It’s easy to laugh at this stuff, some of which is so extreme that some of the less radical antivaccinationists would probably be embarrassed and want to hold this at arm’s length, but in many ways Gaston is emblematic of the sorts of beliefs that drive antivaccinationism. He just isn’t very good at disguising them or doesn’t even want to try to do so. He lets his antivaccine freak flag fly proudly, trumpeting his belief that school vaccine mandates are the equivalent of a mass involuntary sterilization program of the sort developed by the Nazis, as well as a ticket to altering children’s DNA. These extreme views inform and influence the views of more “moderate” antivaccinationists (i.e., those who don’t think that vaccines are a plot by lizard men to take over the world by altering humanity’s DNA). All that’s left are talking points, such as that school vaccine mandates are somehow “against the Nuremberg Code,” talking points that mindless drones like Rob Schneider parrot as though they were fact, not understanding where such claims come from and that the Nuremberg Code has nothing to do with school vaccine mandates because they are not human experiments.
144 replies on “School vaccine mandates are against the Nuremberg Code?”
“Needless to say, giving untested, unknown vaccines is a “medical experiment” and violates the core principles of the Nuremberg”
Well I guess we’re in the clear then, since no one is being given untested, unknown vaccines. When I got my DTP booster last year, its not like the nurse spun a wheel of fortune style wheel and to pick some random vaccine to inject me with…
Mr. Gaston needs to do a quick survey in the local maternity ward and find out how many of the new mothers were fully vaccinated. That should show him the effectiveness of polysorbate as a sterilization agent. Maybe repeat the survey once a week for a year to convert anecdote into data…
Be that as it may, if I were to try to make up a parody of the most extreme antivaccine propaganda, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something this risible. In fact, I don’t think I could.
Poe’s Law is strictly enforced.
Gaston’s essay is a word salad of biological gobbledygook, in addition to being not even wrong.
Rob Schneider was reading from a script…no doubt prepared for him by the Canary Party (the political arm of AoA).
http://www.canaryparty.org/index.php/the-news/109-top-10-reasons-to-oppose-california-ab2109
“1. Violates a parent’s and patient’s rights under the Nuremberg Code, the First Amendment, and the Constitution, and it threatens, and in some cases denies, the right to receive an education.”
Isn’t it about time that Jewish groups speak out about the Canary Party and its *affiliates* (every anti-vaccine group out there…led by AoA) use of the Nuremberg Code in their unrelenting campaign against immunizations?
Amongst those I survey, comparing SBM and the government to N-zis has become so common that I barely flutter an eyelash when I encounter it : this is unfortunate because we become inured to hyperbole that minimises true horror and human suffering. Concepts like genocide, colonialism, Apartheid and institutionalised racism are tossed about like confetti and self-comparisons are made to Mssrs Ghandi, Mandela and King as though the struggles of alt med advocates were somehow on the same level. I’m surprised they left out J-sus.
So who says this stuff? Of course, Adams and Null spread this message *uber alles* and supporters of AJW talk about persecution that was so fierce that he needed to leave his country. The aforementioned idiots speak of the ‘Police State’ they live in and how their rights are being trampled upon by the pharma-fuelled corporatocracy, enabled by the totalitarian government and its servile media.
Basically, we have a bunch of middle-aged ( and plus ) white guys with money carping about why they do not have more and that the SB consensus calls their ideas crap. When they are crap. Cry me a river. All of them live/ lived in reasonably civilised places where there are no wars, no civil strife, no censorship ( of their despicable and dangerous ideas) and hardly any riots ( those following sporting events don’t count). And we learn of their miseries via the internet. Similarly, the anti-vaxxers call oppression as well: whenever I visit their haunts ( AoA, TMR), I’ll notice a new permutation on the theme.
And yes, I’m white and come from a somewhat privileged background and have only lived in safe countries but I have worked with those who have had less opportunity and more entrenched societal problems and visited other areas whose inhabitants were not as lucky. My own ‘problems’ are minuscule in comparison.
We really need the Zombie Furher to get back to chomping the brains of people making bad Nazi comparisons. Our civilization is full of idiots who really seem to have forgotten what exactly made the Nazis bad, and only use the comparison because the term is convenient shorthand for “bad people” and they’re socially rewarded for their hyperbole.
I recall visiting the grounds of Dachau concentration camp while on vacation in Germany.
Given that, whenever I see some spoiled brat of an anti-vaccine crank compare vaccine policy to Nazi tyranny, I find their trivialization of the real deal, when combined with the dishonesty of their analogy, entirely infuriating.
I don’t understand people like this. Their brains obviously work differently to mine.
If the hypothesis is that vaccines contain a sterilisation agent, and the vast majority of people have been getting vaccinated for a variety of things over a number of decades, and yet we have no matching (massive) rise in infertility* in the same time frame, surely the hypothesis can’t stand?
Or the others that say vaccines (or fluoride, or chemtrails or whatever) are killing or making ill vast numbers of people… where are these people that have been harmed?
I just don’t get it.
(*I understand there are rising fertility problems in some places, AFAIK they aren’t on the scale of 80+ % of the population)
Have I missed something? I admit I only skimmed over the crazy and relied mainly on Orac’s commentary, but I didn’t see any explanation as to why Big Pharma would want to sterilise the Western World.
Wouldn’t wiping out swathes of potential ‘lab rats’ be self defeating?
I’m with Composer99. Dachau was a horrific reminder of death suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The comparison between doctors, researchers and pharma companies spending many millions of dollars and many years looking for relief from disease to sociopaths in Europe after WW1 is disgusting.
“They would develop the vaccine, inject prisoners with it, and then expose the control and treated groups to the infectious agent being vaccinated against.”
Isn’t that the vaxxed vs unvaxxed experiment antivaxxers keep carping on about? That doctors and Big Pharma won’t perform due to ethical concerns? Hmmm.
I believe that sterilizing the world comes from the “New World Order” theory where they want to eradicate 80+% of the population, leaving only the amount required to serve the evil Overlords and the Overlords themselves.
With that constantly in the back of their “alternative” mindset, reading “polysorbate 80” and “made rats sterile in experiments” leads the more easily led to interesting conclusions.
I’m not really clear about the timeline. It appears that Rima Laibow intoroduced the term “The Great Culling,” which would thus postdate 2003. The Georgia Guidestones date to 1979 and are doubtlessly in the mix, but the far-far-far-right Catholic tetanus-hCG claims startiing in the mid-90s may represent an independent line of development.
If we’ve all been sterilized by the vaccines we received in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, why is the population of the United States still growing (adding 50 million more people in the last 2 decades)? It’s not all immigration.
hCG is used to induce ovulation, so instead of sterilizing a single dose should lead to MORE pregnancies.
Sorry to interrupt this lively discussion…I need to send a test post.
Not if you’re vaccinating against it. A one-time intervention that provides lasting but not permanent infertility is pretty threatening in certain parts.
Have you noted that a certain Ms. Gd Contrast has concluded that you’re Orac, lilady?
I though lilady was Bonnie Offit. I guess She could be both.
No, I’m Bonnie Offit.
In other anti-vaccine news:
Today AoA, TMR and the Canaries ( see websites if you adore traipsing through mud and slime, relishing bad writing) all trumpet their meticulously co-ordinated protest of the IACC meeting; Blaxill has even made demands ( so what else is new?) AND
there is news about Bonnie…
who I am not.
Hmm. Fascists usually like it when people die of preventible disease. My copy of Paul Preston’s Franco is at home so I can’t look it up, but one of Franco’s buddies exulted over the epidemics which followed in the wake of the Spanish Civil War (and which were almost medieval in scope) because they would get rid of Republicanos and other unfit sorts. Therefore it would be anti-Fascist to vaccinate the population. But blue shirts (and black shirts, and green shirts, for that matter) have never been as popular a topic as brown shirts on the Web. That’s a rant for another day.
A one-time intervention that provides lasting but not permanent infertility is pretty threatening in certain parts.
And pretty welcoming in others!
@ Narad:
“Have you noted that a certain Ms. Gd Contrast has concluded that you’re Orac, lilady?”
“You’re Orac aren’t you? Why so many different internet names are you ashamed of what you are?”
I didn’t even respond to that twit poster at the Ho-Po, but someone else did…
“You should have this one bronzed, Sharon.”
I *might* be Bonnie Offit…
– Have you ever noticed how many times I post about Jake Crosby and his stalking of Dr. Paul Offit?
-Have you ever noticed how I refer to Boob Schecter as “Offal”?
I think we’ve already established beyond any doubt that Orac is Bonnie Offit.
Unles lilady is really Orac and… my mind is blown!
What contains polysorbate-80? Just looked in my pantry, and I can’t find any food items that list it as an ingredient. Too be fair, I have a lot of cheap EU made food, cheap canned goods (like tuna and frijoles), stuff from Trader Joe’s, and essentials (like Jays potato chips and El Milagro tortilla chips).
Well, whichever of you IS Bonnie, would you please ship us some of that delicious frozen yoghurt you have been creating in your new company, *Bonnie’s Toppings*? ( from Philly.com via AoA)
I just took a look at the article Gaston quoted from – “Have Rabbis Forgotten The Experiments on Jewish Women at Auschwitz?” I thought the title was pretty crazy – why pick on rabbis when you’re writing about vaccines? What do they have to do with it? The final paragraph, which addresses several rabbis by name, is particularly odd. I then looked at the website – salem-news.com, which publishes lots of other really odd articles, including some that are openly antisemitic, for example those written by Gilad Atzmon and Alison Weir.
Let’s get this straight (you’ll need a scorecard).
I am lilady, Orac, Bonnie Offit and Sullivan at Left Brain/Right Brain. Have you ever seen a photograph of any two, any three, or all four of us, together?
@ bad poet…Try Wikipedia for foods that contain Polysorbate-80:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysorbate_80
I am Agador Spartacus!
Wait, what…?
I haven’t read the item in question, but I imagine it’s because they’re implicitly poskim and overwhelmingly endorse vaccination as a duty. (Chabad certainly is.)
But wait, I am obviously Brian “Lawrence” Deer!!!!
^ Sorry, I half-revised that on the fly. To clarify, the last time I checked with the Chabad mothership (on a slightly more technical question), they were pro-vaccine.
I wonder if one of the long-time commenters or the good Dr Orac could give me a link to one of the Orac posts that takes up and demolishes the various anti-vax arguments. I am invited to write a rebuttal to somebody else’s anti-vax rant on one of our local sites, and I would like to be able to supply a link to an exhaustive treatment.
Thanks for any help you can give me.
@ Lawrence: Your posts at AoA were hilarious
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/12/paul-offit-lies-about-jake-crosby-tara-palmore-throws-him-out-nih-covers-it-up.html
Did you happen to save the one about Snooki of Jersey City?
@lilady – I’m disappointed…it’s just a surfactant. Does this mean the A0A/antivax/autism crazies are soap/detergent refusers, too?
Even the nastiest things – Nature Valley granola bars and Progresso soup – I have in my pantry don’t list anything closer than an emulsifier: soy lecithin, which IIRC was a waste product of soy-based printers ink.
@ Bob G:
Why don’t you provide a synopsis of the rant, I’m sure that Brian Lawrence or any of the other paid minions- including yours truly- might tailor the response to fit your requirements. We aims to please.
@ Sauceress:
Now I understand why Bonnie went into the frozen yoghurt biz.
Brian Gaston should be directing his rant at ice-cream manufacturers.
Wiki
Don’t these evil ice-cream fiends know that if they keep it up they won’t have any more customers!
@Mephistopheles – beat me to it, dammit.
@Queen Khentkawes – which is more to the point, it would seem that allowing the disease to wipe out people would be more effective than the vaccines, let alone quicker (as peebs and nastylittlehorse have alluded). And nastier. I mean, these are nasty bigevilpharma plots, right? gotta have the evil in there somewhere. . .
You know, if they could just come up with ONE argument. But having vaccines cause autism, sterilisation, and so on, are contradictory and make the anti-vaxxers appear more and more like they’re just randomly picking at things the blame on vaccines rather than actually .. .
Oh wait, I’m trying to apply logic and reason. Sorry.
Gatson
Ya think I should send this quote off to a few of those Big-Ice Cream peddling manufacturers with a stern expression of my outrage?
@lilady (10:51)
ACK! So the Canary party are AoA quacks?? I should have known, and I’m not sure why I’d be surprised, but there are some Canaries on BCO too, with their rally cries for health freedom. Say it ain’t so!!! Is politics the root of all quackery?
@Sauceress
I’m going to complain to Lindt, Valhrona, Caillebaut, et al – all of which use soya lecithin in their 71% and higher cacao chocolate bars. Big Choco* has a lot they’re not telling us about their evil products, don’t you think?
*Hershey (Godiva, Ghirardelli, et al), Cadbury, and other Halloween candy is excluded. Yuk.
Wait, I thought I was Bonnie Offit? I am not, nor have I ever been, Sullivan.
And I’m all confused. Is the argument that Dr. Mrs.Dr. Offit has ceased “poisoning” children with vaccines and has moved on to frozen yogurt?
bad poet
Indeed.
I was thinking of starting with Dairy Queen. I’ll demand to know if they use polysorbate 80 in their process and, without waiting for an answer, I’ll then go off on to my rants, quotes and demands. Problem is today I’m a little rusty on the typical rhetoric and feel I need to visit AoA for a refresher…I’ll need some more coffee first.
Sauceress, great idea. I’m also going to go after all the evil eye drop manufacturers like Allergan and Rohto for their polysorbate 80-containing products. A couple of free trips to Japan and a lifetime supply of drops would be real eye-openers.
A demand that each individual ice-cream cone be labelled with a large clear warning as to the polysorbate 80-sterilization link is a given.
Oh dear…free products? I didn’t think of that! If Big Ice-Cream start offering me freebies…oh dear..
@ Liz Ditz:
Yes, it is. Dr Bonnie started with a shop near their summer place and has added two more; she had worked part time as a physician since having children but now has left the profession entirely, at age 50. I got the …uh,,, SCOOP, at AoA, which linked to Philly.com
I hate to think aloud -and possibly give unscrupulous anti-vaxxers ideas- but I hope that they leave her and her business and children alone.. Unfortunately, somebody we know likes to harass her spouse. I wouldn’t put much past these people.
@Denice Walter
@Liz Ditz
OK Liz now you’ve done it! Give them a nanometre…
;0
The Gadolinium Queen thought I was ORAC, which I took as a compliment. If I had my choice I would rather Aragorn son of Arathorn, but hey, Kelly will do.
I haven’t been accused of being anyone, but I was banned from AofA for only one post (and it only asked questions there was nothing mean or accusatory in it). I was rather shocked.
I think I’m too simple to be accused of being anyone educated like you guys.
@Sauceress 8:42
Why not free products? Maybe there’s some way to freely feed an unsuspecting person ice cream or give them eye drops along with a little polysorbate-80 laden vaccine?
You can’t lead a horse to water, but I’d bet you can get most kids – even ones in California – to eat lots of free ice cream of their own free will.
Well, I may not be Bonnie Offit but I surely ain’t Jake Crosby 🙂
A.L.
@ newme: Recognize any of these names; (hint) Chairman and Executive Director 🙂
http://www.canaryparty.org/index.php/who-we-are
Another day, another nut.
Mandating vaccines against things that won’t actually kill you if you catch them is really dumb. Mandating vaccines against things that can kill you if you catch them helps protect the minority that *can’t* use vaccines for medical reasons. None of this has a thing to do with Hitler or Nuremburg.
lilady @July 10, 10:45 pm
Dang! I looked at the website. It’s not easy on my eyes. Even the Tour de France doesn’t use that much yellow.
Where yellow is the type of journalism
Some of the posters over at the Hive use the Canary Party symbol to post.
I always try to link them with their mother ship…AoA, and with other “notorious anti-vaccine groups”.
@meg
Indeed; if the evil pharmaceutical companies wanted to reduce the population, then allowing people to simply die naturally of diseases would be the way to go. All they’d need to do is manufacture a whole lot of counterfeit medicine, that is purported to be highly effective, but turns out to contain nothing more than water. This way, millions of people would end up dying of preventable diseases, yet there would be no outcry, because people would think that they’re getting medicine for them, when they are in fact not. Plus, this would greatly increase the profit margins of the pharmaceutical companies, because it is far cheaper to acquire water than it is to manufacture drugs.
And when the conspiracy is uncovered, they could invent a whole load of ‘scientific’ sounding reasons for why water not containing any therapeutic agents is nonetheless effective at treating disease, so as to keep the population indoctrinated and perfectly happy to not actually receive any medical treatment for their ailments.
@lilady – oh, I had forgotten about the “Snooki” line. I need to go back to my screen shots & see if I still have it around here somewhere.
I haven’t forgotten your Snooki Jersey City Shore line…it was a classic.
I thought we established this perfectly well last time around. I am Bonnie Offit!
And yes, ploysorbate-80 does sterilize little ice-cream eating kids. That’s why they don’t have babies. Duh!
Oh, and Bob G., some of the more common antivax myths are addressed at antiantivax.flurf.net. Science-Based Medicine also has an extensive list of resources on the vaccine-autism topic.
Okay, Todd W…you can be Bonnie Offit…for today only 🙂
Meanwhile, back at the Hive, the Rob Schneider blog is still quite active (more than 4,000 posts). The same loony poster has again asked me if I am Orac. Another poster, in reply to the loon, stated he is Orac and that “lilady” works for him.
We are all Orac….we are all Bonnie Offit…….especially if it means we get free yogurt!!!!!
Who is responsible for upholding the N Code? Is there an international court or something?
I realize it is lunacy but it would be funny if someone were to get a statement from whomever is in charge that says, “no, vaccines are not against the code.”. Store it at Todd’s website and point to it when needed.
I’m never a fan of giving these loony claims any legitimacy but hey, this is testimony in the government record so deserves to be smacked.
@Marry Me, Mindy
The Nuremberg Code, itself, is not a binding document, but it does inform and shape a lot of the actual laws and regulations involved in human subjects research. In the U.S., the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Human Research Protections is in charge of human subjects research ethics and regulations, particularly 45 CFR 46. Another important document in the U.S. is the Belmont Report.
Lilady, you’re me too!
You’re also PZ Myers (great fake beard!) and Phil Plait.
I also don’t seem to recall seeing you in comments before Dennis Markuze was arrested, so he may just be one of your sock puppets.
Good work!
Why would it be really dumb, Ken? Do you believe that any medical intervention for something that won’t actually kill you (e.g., surgery to repair a torn ACL ) is really dumb?
@Arcanyn – so the best possible thing Evil Pharma could do would be to adopt homeopathy (if they wanted to decrease the surplus population)?
To Todd W. — thanks.
You’ll take my ice cream and chocolate from my cold, dead hands.
Narad – the Lubavitch mothership may beam a pro-vax signal out, but the rest of them are incredibly lax.
There are frequent disease outbreaks in chassidish and chareidi enclaves in the US and Israel. (MO/Chardal seem to have better compliance, but that’s probably due to their higher integration)
It seems like there’s some correlation between observance and vaccine uptake. I suppose it’s fairly difficult to keep up with which kid needs which jab at which time when you’re trying to wrangle up to twenty kids.
Apply that to an entire community (some places have a population where the average age is four!) and you’ve got a disaster waiting to happen, especially in a major urban centre like NY or J’lem.
So, if anything, their should be a pro-vax psak campaign from every rabbi in every community, rather than what the anti-vax insanitrolls are asking.
JGC — also, I’m not aware of any mandated vaccine for something that doesn’t have the potential to kill you. Chickenpox kills. Mumps kills. Rubella kills. It’s not a definite death sentence — you have a good chance of parole (though in some cases that parole might require a few weeks in the hospital and the wonderful joy of intubation).
Although, my thought about polysorbate-80 was that if this were true, then the anti-vaccine movement might really be a plot by gynecologists and urologists, who see their profitable business in sterilization surgery threatened! 😀
A little OT. I think I have found either the most deluded poster ever, or the greatest Poe. From the Rob Schneider thread at the Hive…..
“I agree with Marsha and these trutholders that these sheeple who are not worthy to be called sheeple because sheep are smart enough to not make vaccines need to wake up from their shleep and listen to the music of Mercola that is music to their ears who are willing to hear as ears are supposed to when they do not refuse to hear.
This is what happens to a country when it counts all of its eggs in one basket before they hatch while the fox is in the hen house. And Wakefield is in the farm house with his axe to the grindstone because that’s the way he likes it uh huh.
Simply put, the pattern is in the pudding. This MERCK lawsuit is guaranteed without a snowflake’s doubt to win and I will laugh my way to the snowbanke at those who were so cold, chilling, and frigid.
This is SERIOUS PROFOUND AND DEEP. This is the last needle that poked the camel’s back and that says it all.
Marty “
@ Kelly M. Bray: My money is on delusions for Marty. I responded to him, as did another poster.
Lilady, It’s so bad it’s brilliant.
I’m glad someone is finally talking about the infamous polysorbate 80 experiments in Nazi Germany, where ice cream was fed to people to sterilize them – instead, they just wound up fatter.
You sheeple just don’t get it, do you? Just today I saw someone online blaming increased lawlessness in the 1960s on lack of adherence to Biblical principles, when we all know it was due to the expanded vaccine schedule.
Lilady, is Grandma Marsha really Lurky?
@lilady,
So it seems that if one buys into any of the quack orgs, they get an automatic inclusion in all the others? Cancer quackery, AoA, Canary Party, LEF, NaturalNews, Mercola, Nullbrain, etc?
It just turns into one big promote-each-other fest, I guess. Kinda like sockpuppets, but for whole organizations instead of individuals? Ack.
I dunno, Kelly. She’s p*ssed at me, because I found her websites and linked to them here on RI:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marsha-mcclelland/14/b27/b8a
This seems to be a *new* schtick for Marsha:
https://twitter.com/mofmars333
@ newme: They are a sorry bunch of incestuous creeps. They all *interview* each other, sit on *governing boards* for each other and shill for each other.
As with any inbred species, they *suffer* from mental and intellectual problems.
Oh, I know, you can lead frumkeit to water, but you can’t make it wash its armpits. (And let’s not forget this.) Still, I think Rachel Goldstein’s plain out of luck on this one. I do wonder about her actual affiliation, though; in my mercifully brief experience with an Oregon rent-a-minyan and entourage, the women were crunchy as all get-out, although the men played it straight.
@lilady,
Reminds me of a story about a tiger chasing a kid around and around a tree until they both turned into butter (or something like that!). Maybe the ducks will spin their quacky network into oblivion too.
I want to believe there’s a limit to how far they can expand their circle of influence. I know, I know….
Marty’s comment must have taken lots of effort. To mangle so many proverbs in one post. Unbelievable.
@Rose – I dunno…. he mentioned patterns in the pudding. I have a habit of making flower-petal patterns in mine with my spoon as I savor the double-fudge pudding. Does that make me a duck too?
child: Mom can I have an ice cream?
mom: No child you can’t have any ice cream. Ice cream haz nasty chemicals in it same as the ones in those nasty devil vaccines an’ it’ll damage your innards.
child: But pleeeease mom…
mom: Tell you what, how about a nice bleach enema instead?
@ Narad: All the **davening the good rabbis did, did not prevent the outbreak and deaths attributed to the H1N1 flu virus epidemic in Israel. This study is all over the internet…
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1216475
** Davening: What my son’s Jewish “roomie”/my “other son” does, (rocking), when he wants to be pushed in his wheelchair:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_prayer
“Daven is the originally exclusively Eastern Yiddish verb meaning “pray”; it is widely used by Ashkenazic Orthodox Jews. In Yinglish, this has become the Anglicised davening. The origin of the word is obscure, but is thought by some to have come from Middle French divin (short for office divin, Divine service) and by others to be derived from a Slavic word meaning “to give” (давать, davat’) . Others claim that it originates from an Aramaic word, “de’avoohon” or “d’avinun”, meaning “of their/our forefathers”, as the three prayers are said to have been invented by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Thenewme
You my friend could not quack if you tried.
@newme: I had one of these books, when I was (a lot) younger:
http://www.amazon.com/LITTLE-BLACK-SAMBO-Little-Golden/dp/B000KK69LY
Hard to believe that I was able to remember this from early childhood… and retrieve it from my immense cache of utterly useless trivia and minutiae.
(looks at the comment from Marty Kelly posted)
(shakes head)
That’s not just mixed metaphors, that’s a metaphor blender.
How crazy do you have to be to come up with word salad like that?
Awww..I have Little Black Sambo in my “My Book House” books.
lilady: I always knew you were talented, but somehow I missed you were Sullivan, too. (Although I knew Sullivan was Bonnie Offit). I’m sad that I can’t comment from work any more – they have comments blocked though I can read them – or I would have been Bonnie Offit again too. I used to make awesome ice cream.
As for lilady being Orac – nope. I’ve met Orac in the flesh (Plastic? Whatever?) and he’s a Michigander. lilady doesn’t talk like a Michigander, no matter how she tries to pass. And Orac isn’t lilady, either.
@ MI Dawn: See, being *identified* as an older poster here, does have its perks:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/05/28/the-refusers-attack-oracs-readers/
“MI Dawn
May 28, 7:57 am
@Orac – I do believe that one of your older posters did say he/she had a sister die from measles. I want to say it was lilady, since the age range would be right, but I’m not positive (and it may not have been on RI I read the comment). And there was a comment of an immuno-compromised child; again, I’m not sure it was on RI (I read a lot of medical/autism blogs).”
I *owes ya* for that comment MI Dawn 🙂
I had to *defend* my senior status here…
“lilady
May 28, 11:22 am
I’m in Umbria Italy now and posting from a friend’s computer. I’ve only posted in the past about a cousin who was left with permanent neurological sequelae from measles encephalitis. I lost my childhood chum to polio, in the early 1950s.
My son was immune compromised with a bleeding disorder (leukopenia and thrombocytopenia) with a platelet aggregation and adhesion problem, but he was fully immunized…including Heptavax vaccine, prior to his entry into a group home. (There were chronic Hepatitis B carriers in his group home)
Hello to you all from Italy…”
It’s hard to believe that (so many) years ago, when I was growing up in Brooklyn, in an ultra liberal family, that my Little Golden Book was one of the many books in my collection.
You can only confiscate the icky kiddy chocolate. I’m picky and pretty much a purist. You can take the Hersheys, Godiva, Halloween candy, etc. I’ll eat certain Fannie May items, Bacci, and Blommer Chocolate Co with pecans, but mostly dark chocolate, preferably Valrhona, Caillebaut, or Lindt 71% cacao or higher.
That Little Golden Book was in many home libraries in the fifties but I was not aware that it was still being sold.
@lilady – YES!! That’s the one!!!
@Rose – The copyright is 1948 – I can’t imagine when/how it showed up at my house, since it was decades old by then!
Wish I had it now – the Amazon link showed it at $70! OMG!
Can’t you just picture the woomeisters all joined together spinning around a giant tree, faster and faster, til they just turned into butter? Rancid, probably. Blech.
Sorry, can’t resist….
ZOMG! Little Black Sambo was one of the several dozen Viewmaster “story disks” passed down to me circa 1972.
The Viewmaster was black, all metal (probably bought when my father and aunt were little in the 1950’s) and the disks were stored in a custom marbled Bakelite box. Spent hours with that thing.
“You sheeple just don’t get it, do you? Just today I saw someone online blaming increased lawlessness in the 1960s on lack of adherence to Biblical principles, when we all know it was due to the expanded vaccine schedule.”
Heh. I know where you’ve been reading.
@Infuriatingly Moderate – I have a bakelite ViewMaster with disks of national landmarks and national parks. The copyright on the disks are late 40s.
I had my own ViewMaster as a child – it was plastic, red, I think, and I had a huge collection of Walt Disney disks for it. I think I had more fun pretending they were binoculars and I was an explorer, though…
I had a red plastic Viewmaster also.
Don wrote
No it isn’t. The issue isn’t just death from a given disease, but suffering. Let’s take rubella: almost always a mild infection in childhood, but devastating to a fetus in the 1st trimester if the mother is exposed. Let’s take mumps: much more high risk if contracted in adolescence. Take rotavirus: well, if you have ever had rota, or cared for someone afflicted with it, you’d understand why a vaccine was developed. Think requiring adult incontinence garments because you can’t get to the toilet fast enough. Intense cramping. Then think about how an infant would suffer.
Enough said.
I believe rota was sometimes fatal to infants – it was described one place I read it as “the scourge of pediatrics.”
Oh! Little Black Sambo and the rest of the Little Golden Books hit parade. The one time I was glad that my mother had a bit of a hoarding problem was when I married a man with very young sons and not very much of an early-childhood library. Mom had kept all of our Golden books, including Little Black Sambo. (And by the way, the dog of my childhood was named Pokey.)
The Little Black Sambo that you can read online for free at antiquebooks is illustrated by Bonnie and Bill Rutherford, and Sambo is depicted as some kind of generic Indian child, with a turban and pointy shoes. I think the copyright is 1961. The Golden Books first edition was published in 1948, which is the edition I think I had. I don’t know who the illustrator was.
I went looking to see if I could find the images I remember. I searched for “tiger butter” and mostly came up with recipes for a candy, white chocolate striped with peanut butter.
Mrs. Woo, you are correct, rotavirus was (is) sometimes fatal, even in the US. Paul Offit was inspired to begin work on a vaccine after caring for a toddler who died of rotavirus. A virus causing similar symptoms is norovirus, which can be fatal in the frail elderly.
I had the regular and the talking one.
A talking ViewMaster?? I’m so envious!
There seems to be a trend here! Maybe ViewMasters are the root of all logic and reason? The cause of skepticism?
@thenewme: Nope. It was more a full set of “I Want to Know About…..” books. No idea where they are now.
That and not assuming “because I said so” was a final answer. Unless dessert depended on it.
Ken,
“Mandating vaccines against things that won’t actually kill you if you catch them is really dumb.”
Which “things” do you mean? Just what diseases that we vaccinate against won’t kill someone? Which of these diseases is so lacking in nasty effects that we shouldn’t bother to vaccinate against it?
Measles, mumps, pertussis, polio, rubella, varicella, all can kill. For patients they don’t kill, horrific effects can occur. Polio I’m sure you know about. Measles can lead in later life to a brain-destroying autoimmune disease. Do you know what happens when a pregnant woman catches rubella, and did you realize that a mother is a setup to catch it from her other children? Having had varicella is the reason people get shingles. Mumps can leave a male sterile. The purpose of Gardasil is to reduce the risk of cervical cancer, and if given to boys should reduce the risk of penile cancer.
So which vaccines would you toss out?
I had a bad case of norovirus a few years ago. About twelve hours in I was wishing it would just kill me…
Ken: My youngest brother was born before the measles vaccine was available. We both caught it (all of us caught it, actually, along with all the other currently vaccine-preventable childhood diseases) As a result, he’s deaf as a post.
But hey, he’s allive and that’s the important thing! I guess.
Fun fact: Polysorbate 80 is Zippy the Pinhead’s favorite food!
JGC — I had a mild case of norovirus once. It included two of the worst days of my life. (And I spent two weeks in the hospital with meningitis. That wasn’t so bad, because I wasn’t really aware of much of it.) I never had to resort to diapers, but only by maintaining a strict radius from the bathroom, where I was spending most of my time debating which end to put over the toilet and praying I got it right. Yeah, in the west, where we’re all well fed, it’s mostly just a nuisance. But it’s torture, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Except maybe Osama bin Laden, and he’s dead.
It seems so Victorian, this anti-vax insistence that getting sick is so much better for children than getting a vaccination to keep from getting sick. It’s as though measles, mumps, etc are some kind of necessary purifying ritual, on the lines of “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
I just realized my post above was unclear. I did not have norovirus and meningitis at the same time, thank god. I was just comparing the awfulness of each.
I had shigellosis. While on a trip. While staying in a hotel.
I left housekeeping a $100 tip.
I had one of those Viewmasters too. It was a bright blue. I think I only had story discs though.
@Narad & Newme – what Newme said, I think. All the cool toys came out after I was too old to play with them!
@Dedicated lurker – I think that is how mine would have been described, at least some of them. Things like scenes from Walt Disney movies and short cartoons with captions beneath to tell you about them.
I really kind of haven’t had anything really terrible. Got food poisoning at Thanksgiving one year and couldn’t quit vomiting without medical intervention, but I think that is a weird thing with me; I also had hyperemesis for my entire pregnancy with my son and struggle with sea sickness (motion sickness in general, but sometimes cars are fine – I can never handle a boat on blue water).
Though my pediatrician recommended against the chicken pox vaccine because the complications were so rare (it wasn’t that she felt that it was dangerous as much as the fact it did have some risk of vaccine complication that was equal to the regular disease in her opinion and research hadn’t demonstrated how long the vaccine’s immunity would last), I ended up having to get it for my son when he hadn’t gotten chicken pox by the time he entered school. She actually recommended finding a kid with chicken pox and letting them play with each other if I ever got the opportunity. Not sure now, since it’s been so long, if she would have the same recommendation or not.
One of the things that always baffles me on the “vaccines cause autism” argument – if they were so good at causing autism how do you account for all the normal kids? Then of course, they throw in every other thing that kids can end up developing (i.e., allergies, ADHD, etc.) and assure you that they just got a different reaction to the “poison.”
I worked with adults in group home settings in the mid-80s. I know that autism in various levels existed back then, too. However, until working there it was rare that I saw people with developmental disabilities all that regularly and I probably would have believed that the disabilities were quite rare. When AofA and others insinuate that it was impossible to find people with autism before the 1980s I can’t help but laugh – many of my patients were in their 40s or older.
So…they’re against this law requiring parents to be informed before declining, because it goes against “informed consent.” Anybody else see this?
Oh goody. It’s not enough that we had a whooping cough outbreak in McHenry County. Now we may have the first case of measles in Illinois in 18 years in Winnebago County: http://vaccinenewsdaily.com/news/319324-possible-measles-case-reported-in-illinois/
@ Queen Khentkawes:
For some reason, I could not open that link. Try this one…
http://www.wchd.org/userfiles/file/2012%20Winnebago%20County%20Health%20Department%20Reports%20a%20Probable%20Case%20of%20Measles.pdf
It appears that the child was seen by a doctor at the end of June, yet no alerts have gone out, for possible exposures to the child in public places.
@Queenie
And didja hear about the mumps outbreak in Livingston County? And I used to think Midwesterners were such sober, level-headed people.
@ lilady: I always keep the radio on the news station (the Great Royal Budgerigar likes it), and they didn’t mention it until yesterday! That was the first link I found.
@ Shay: I didn’t know about that. Unfortunately we have our share of nuts. That explains how some of our local pols get elected.
Speaking of nuts, I recently found out that Jenny McCarthy is from my old neighborhood! Of course, I’m older, and exist on a completely different level.
I thought we were too, Shay.
Chiming in with the norovirus hate. I caught it while staying with a friend.
She shook hers off quite well, but I was puking up anti-emetics (quite a talent!). The doctor came out, shot me up with Stemetil (compazine in US) to stop it. It worked amazingly well for a few hours, then the puking started again. This time it was so ferocious that I blacked out.
The friend I was staying with called my closest friend, and together they hauled me off to hospital. It took three litres of IV fluids to stabilise me.
If I try to imagine being a baby who’s going through something like that, well I just want to cry.
World’s Greatest Newpaper? Largest Store? Best Battery Maker?
@ Narad: Best Battery Maker. They also have When Radio Was.
@elburto – they gave me compazine for hyperemesis and I’m apparently very sensitive to it – I wanted to rip IVs out and run screaming from the ER. It took multiple doses of benadryl to end the reaction.
I ended up being told to use OTC sleeping pills to help with my nausea so I wouldn’t end up dehydrated during my pregnancy. I worried a great deal about how it would affect my child (though they assured me that the opposite choice was losing the pregnancy) and still wonder if it might have had any long-term effects.
Weird. I also had a red viewmaster and several assorted reels. I loved Pokey the puppy, too, and now I’m hoping all of those are still available
I’ve had most of the vaccines. Skipped chicken pox and gardasil- I got the one naturally, and am too old for the other.
Never had norovirus or any other of the horrors, but had a few awful bouts of food poisoning. One of which was so bad I burst a blood vessel.
If I remember correctly, rotavirus and diptheria cause dehydration in infants, since they lose so much water due to dihirhea (well, you know what I mean.) and vomiting. Anyone who thinks mumps, measles etc. are harmless should read Alcott’s Eight Cousins and Little Women (mumps and scarlet fever) Little House on the Prairie (Anyone remember WHY Mary was blind?) and Agatha Christie’s the Mirror Crack’d. (Rubella is a huge plot point.)
The grandkids have he Pokey Little Puppy. I would love to find The Color Kittens and not have to pay an arm and a leg for it.
@Rose: It took time, but I got a BEAUTIFUL ex-library copy of Mud, Mud, Mud for about $10 and I’d been looking for years.
If you aren’t a member of Paperbackswap.com, become one. THere are TONS of copies of The Color Kittens posted. Or, I’d be glad to snag a copy for you and send it. Drop me a line at: triskele the cat at gmail dot com (get rid of ALL spaces)
and I’ll get one for you!
Thank you Mi Dawn. I will look into Paperbackswap.com. I have BOOKS no more like BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKS. My godmother sends me books, sometimes a box at a time. It is clearing out her clutter and adding to mine. I could swap a lot.
So, if you are for informed consent, what’s the problem? Manipulating people into accepting unnecessary medical treatments for the sake of “the greater good” is CLEARLY unethical. Any reading of either the Nuremberg Code or the Geneva Convention should make that clear to you. Requiring the signature of a doctor in order to exercise my right to protect my child’s bodily integrity is offensive. The purpose is clearly not to “inform” anyone. Every parent has already read the handouts they give you at the pediatricians. The point is to manipulate you, just like when they try to get more “informed” consent to abortion by manipulating the woman with gory pictures and waiting periods. Shame on you.
@molly
[citation needed], brain-dead necromancer.
Molly, did you ever stop to think that informed consent protects the doctor? Let’s say you turn down the measles vaccine for your child and she dies of measles pneumonitis. Would it then be fair to turn around and sue because “the doctor never told us this could happen” when he did? Or even, “the doctor never offered us the vaccine” when she did? Your word against the doctor, and as the medical truism goes, if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen. And without your signature: “It’s a lie. He added that after we left”. Don’t think this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen. Where do you think that informed consent for procedures other than for studies comes from? It puts the responsibility for refusal squarely where it belongs: on the refuser.
Wow, Molly, you do like your Gish gallop, don’t you? When a disease stops circulating in the population, then it becomes unnecessary, not before – and given the growing interconnectedness of the world, “it’s only circulating in other countries, not here” doesn’t qualify.
So, tell us when you got your Ph.D. in ethics. I mean, the rest of us thought that “how do you balance the needs of the many against the desires of one” was a complicated question that ethicists have been debating for centuries and will continue to debate for centuries … but here you tell us the answer’s already known! Well, how about that?? So you must be the world’s foremost ethicist, because of course it couldn’t be the case that you’re talking about things you don’t know.
And turning to your expertise in international law, Professor Molly, please do explain how a code that governs experimental research ethics applies to treatments that are not experimental?
So is the government requiring you to take a driving test proving that you know how to drive before giving you a driver’s license. Suck it up. Your decisions will affect the lives of other people around you and their well-being outweighs any supposed right you have to not be “offended.”
The point is that if a parent thinks they should leave their child unprotected against diseases that can kill and maim them and the people around them, simply because it’s more convenient to get an exemption than get the shots, the parent is either badly misinformed (like you) or simply an arrogant moron (like, well, you.) There’s always going to be arrogant morons but hopefully we can reach some of those who have been badly misinformed by the arrogant morons.
Dear Molly @ July 22 2:19 am
If you really want to “to exercise my right to protect my child’s bodily integrity,” pack your kid in a bubble.
Why do you think your “right” to take advantage of the reduced risks of infectious disease thanks to everyone else’s immunity is more important that my children’s right to attend school where vaccine preventable disease aren’t spreading?
You seem to fail to grasp that you don’t have a right to a “personal belief exemption” for public-school attendance in the first place.
“Zombie” is a bit strong – it is from this month, at least…
I am sorry, Ms Molly, that you feel it is wrong to have to listen to a doctor so you can really understand that some of these diseases used to kill and that people in younger generations have never even seen them or heard of the worse effects that they could cause.
Diptheria used to be a common killer of teenagers. A more recent vaccine, against meningitis, has a lot of parental support – there are parents who assumed their child’s fever and headache (first signs) were probably just a flu bug. By the time the neck pain, etc., started and they rushed the child to the ER, things progressed too far and their teenager died.
With today’s medicine.
Yes, your child is gonna get pricked by a needle (the one used on my son’s girlfriend for her DPT booster the other day was barely bigger than a hair, for pity’s sake – 24 gauge!) to be given a better immunity against a disease that might maim or kill them. Strangely, I bet you’ll let that same child get a piercing if they chose to at a reasonable age? That affects their “bodily integrity” too…
[…] I might as well lay it on the line right at the beginning. It’s not as though it will surprise my regular readers given what I’ve been writing here, most recently about when Rob Schneider played the Nazi card to express his opposition to California Bill AB2109. It’s a bill that does something very simple and very necessary; basically it requires that parents seeking a nonmedical exemption from school vaccine mandates actually visit a health care professional to provide informed consent before an exemption is granted. Yet, even suggesting that maybe—just maybe—nonmedical exemptions are too easy for parents to get and that maybe—just maybe—the easy availability of nonmedical exemptions endangers public health by allowing vaccine uptake rates to fall below what is necessary to maintain herd immunity is not a good idea is the equivalent to Nazi medical experimentation to the antivaccine set. […]
[…] Good going, Washington! It’s about time. Over the last several years, Washington has become known as a state with such low vaccine uptake rates that it was fast on its way to becoming the capital of vaccine-preventable diseases; that is, if it could beat California, which is currently considering its own similar bill (AB 2109) that would require a doctor’s signature on vaccine exemptions certifying that the parents have been counseled and given true informed consent about the risks of not vaccinating. (This is, of course, in contrast to the misinformed consent, in which vaccines are blamed for autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases, sudden infant death syndrome, and more by antivaccinationists in order to provide a false picture of the balance of risks and benefits of vaccines that make vaccines look like the riskiest thing you can do to your child. Such are the lies of the antivaccine movement.) Indeed, Rob Schneider, of all people, has arisen as a new celebrity leader of the antivaccine resistance to AB 2109 on par with the idiocy of Jenny McCarthy on vaccines, even going so far as to claim vaccines are a violation of the Nuremberg Code. […]
[…] Good going, Washington! It’s about time. Over the last several years, Washington has become known as a state with such low vaccine uptake rates that it was fast on its way to becoming the capital of vaccine-preventable diseases; that is, if it could beat California, which is currently considering its own similar bill (AB 2109) that would require a doctor’s signature on vaccine exemptions certifying that the parents have been counseled and given true informed consent about the risks of not vaccinating. (This is, of course, in contrast to the misinformed consent, in which vaccines are blamed for autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases, sudden infant death syndrome, and more by antivaccinationists in order to provide a false picture of the balance of risks and benefits of vaccines that make vaccines look like the riskiest thing you can do to your child. Such are the lies of the antivaccine movement.) Indeed, Rob Schneider, of all people, has arisen as a new celebrity leader of the antivaccine resistance to AB 2109 on par with the idiocy of Jenny McCarthy on vaccines, even going so far as to claim vaccines are a violation of the Nuremberg Code. […]
[…] language from, of all people, Rob Schneider, who has compared AB 2109 to Nazi-ism and labeled it a violation of the Nuremberg Code. In any case, the bill passed both chambers of the California legislature and has been sitting on […]
[…] went full Godwin comparing the sponsors of the bill to Nazis, and even made the idiotic case that vaccine mandates are against the Nuremberg Code. ¡Rob!, you are making Jenny so proud. Next thing you know, you’ll be posting over at […]
[…] is not limited to claims that school vaccine mandates are simultaneously both Nazi persecution and violations of the Nuremberg Code. Peppered in there is the usual idiocy, such as claims that “doctors won’t tell you […]