I was out late last night for a function related to my work. As a result, by the time I got home I was too tired to blog. (I know, I know, how can a Tarial-cell powered megacomputer ever get tired?) However, I did have enough time this morning before work to act on a tip I got from some of my readers, not having perused one of the wretchedest of the wretched hives of scum and quackery in a couple of days. It turns out that the chief propagandist at the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism has unleashed the cranks on a bunch of high school students who made what sounds like an excellent broadcast about vaccine exemptions, parental fears of vaccines, and the antivaccine movement, described at NCTimes.com in an article entitled CARLSBAD: Award-winning broadcast class tackles documentary on vaccines:
For the award-winning Carlsbad High School broadcast class, summer break this year meant another documentary.
The 16-student crew tackled the issue of immunizations in North County, an area with the second lowest compliance rate for vaccinations in the state of California.
“We are looking at why,” said Camille Posard, who graduated in June from Carlsbad High and helped produce the documentary.
To understand the science behind vaccines —- and why some parents shun them —- the film crew interviewed professionals in the field of immunization including Dr. Mark Sawyer of Rady Children’s Hospital and Dr. Eric Couchesne, director of UCSD’s Autistic Center of Excellence.
“They are concerned that there is a perception that vaccinations cause autism when science has proved that it does not,” said Doug Green, who teaches the class.
Anne Dachel, in her usual inimitable deceptive manner, characterizes it this way:
I was hopeful that a class in broadcast journalism might actually tackle this issue an ethical and balanced manner. Sadly, it was clear from what I read that these students were being taught to report on questions of vaccine safety in the same one-sided manner the mainstream media has for years. This class assignment was a HOW-TO GUIDE on how to deceive the public by covering up relevant facts about a major issue.
She then did what antivaccine cranks always do: Try to flood the comments with antivaccine propaganda:
Actually, Green’s wrong. This documentary won’t change anyone’s thinking on this issue. What was produced here was propaganda. People everywhere (especially parents) will recognize the bias. They’ve heard it all before. There is too much information available on the Internet to challenge what was said by the vaccine promoters interviewed for this film.
Anne’s so good at destroying irony meters, isn’t she? The master propagandist accusing a bunch of talented high school kids making a documentary that comes to a conclusion she didn’t like? I had a major chuckle when I read that. Then she includes a whole bunch of links to antivaccine posts about things that I rebutted. For instance, she makes the risible claim that the antivaccine propaganda piece The Greater Good “tells both sides.” Yeah, kind of like its producer Leslie Manookian moderating a pseudodebate between the antivaccine crank Dr. Julian Whitaker and my good bud Steve Novella and making it very clear where she stands. I also reviewed her antivaccine propaganda movie here. “Telling both sides” apparently means framing things in a way that makes it sound as though vaccines are making children autistic and even killing them.
I’ll certainly keep an eye out for this documentary, so that I can watch it when it’s completed. Hopefully, these kids will “get it” and realize that there aren’t always two sides to every story, at least not two sides of anywhere near equal validity, and that it’s the job of a journalist not just to “present both sides” but to evaluate both sides and assign appropriate weight to them.
I also note that this group has also done a documentary on one of my other interests:
The Carlsbad High School broadcast class is perhaps best known for its Holocaust documentary “We Must Remember,” produced in 2009, which has won statewide and national accolades.
It sounds like an excellent program, and these kids appear to be getting great training.
In any case, if you’re so inclined, please head on over and lend some tactical air support to the journalism students at the article where the antivaccine contingent is frolicking. Then think about heading on over to CHSTV and encouraging the next generation of journalists.
89 replies on “Journalists of the future make a vaccine documentary”
You know, it’s not fairly telling both sides if you provide enough information for the listener/reader/viewer to figure out which side is right.
“Tell both sides!”
There are not two sides. There used to be, and then we did some science and one side turned out to be the wrong side. It’s happened before, with the spherical nature of the Earth and the age thereof, and it will happen again.
Glad to see the future generations are doing actual journalism instead of trying to find monsters under their bed.
If nothing else, it will give these future scribes a taste of headlong insanity coming at them (and the truth) at full steam.. The may learn to successfully sidestep this crap at an early age.
Brian Deer should be contacted to do a class day. That should give them the proper attitude.
Jezz Orac…I got in big time trouble with dear hubby, for posting back at Anne Dachel and her gang through the night, until 6 AM.
I suppose I’ll have to be especially nice to him, but he knows it was you Orac, who first got me interested in science blogs. 🙂
Age of Autism is jealous of reality: and these students are attempting to portray the real world, not misguided pseudo-science and sickening hero worship. More power to them!
Incidentally, AoA has its own not-so-young gun ( as we know all too well) and his successor, Natalie Palumbo ( now age 18) who is an artist, in secondary school, who probably believes that she has ‘hitched her wagon to a star’ by writing about her older brother ( who has autism) on this site : although she has written about some serious issues ( “aging-out”), she also tells us about her own website ( art ) and future career plans.
The others I survey would fervently desire a young audience and to intrude into schools with their health revelations: one offers a donation ( 1000 USD) to schools who talk up his ideas and the other seeks to implement his bizarre dietary rituals in schools and church organisations. The former also invites young people to make videos- he does hip hop on his own; the latter tries to get school-based and university-sponsored television channels to broadcast his docu-dramas for the edification of students. TMR invites “thinking kids” aboard.These people will do anything to ‘inspire youth’.. with stupid ideas.
-btw- Ren, I like that “monsters under the bed”-idea… seems I just read that but I forget where.
OMFnon-existentG!
I took a look at the comments ( Carlsbad article) and my impression is that- in mimicry of SBM, where data and references are provided- Ann &Co refer to an entire netherworld of information that relies upon alternative media and ‘research’. John Stone does it as well ( @ AoA, today/ see my comment @ “Fear and Loathing”).
This is what I have slowly been watching accumulate over the past decade plus- alt meddlers are assembling their own pastiche leviathan of journals, media, blogs, articles, research, experts and documentaries which they present to the public as a body of evidence contra SBM. And it’s gussied up in all the trappings, cargo cult fashion.
Nice to see comments from our own side of the fence: what are we this week- Illuminati, elitists, pharma shills, paid-for minions?
I do wonder how we can combat the impression of (false) equality though…they work very hard at making their nonsense appear as legit to the un-instructed.
@DW
I read it somewhere too. I forget where, though… :-p
Quite the studio those kids have. Anyway, it seems as though Dachel might have made a tactical error here, given that seems a bit proud of this: “Twenty comments were posted on this story. (Seven of them were mine.)” Well, now there are over 60, and she’s stuck with Twyla Ramos trying to play rear guard.
One thing that none of them seems to have picked up on yet is that “the San Diego Rotary Club, one of the class’ main financial sponsors, originally presented the class with the topic of vaccinations.” There are few things I would savor as much as AoA declaring war on the Rotarians. (After all, they are connected to the Nazis.) I dunno, I’ve only been to one Rotary meeting, but it didn’t scream “global elites” to me, particularly the quiz portion with a basket on the end of a long pole.
Dagnabit. At least the link works.
“When a child complains about a monster in the cupboard or under the bed, most parents would go to great lengths to carefully explain to the child that there is no monster. Susan, on the other hand, simply hands the child a suitable weapon with which to assault the monster, or, in the event of an actual monster, assaults it herself. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sto_Helit
Whoa!
amdachel is looking OCD there with her multiple comments/spams in about fifteen minutes.
It’s her stock in trade. Only rarely does she actually return with non-canned replies.
@Anj and Narad
Yep. Her standard tactic (which she must have an alert and/or program set up for) is to spam a bunch of anti-vaccine posts within minutes (or even seconds) of a news story about vaccines going live on the web. Once she takes a dump on the comments, she leaves, never to return or answer any criticism or pointed questions directed at her.
Ren…”under someone’s bed”…how intriguing.
Ren & Denice: Try this for monsters under your bed…
http://thepoxesblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/there-are-monsters-under-your-bed-in.html
I’m heading over to catch the Dachel bot show. I’m hoping she posted back at me, after all the comments I made about her behaviors. (Must try harder, must try harder, must try harder).
It’s over at the NYT today.
Yeah, I waded in to the blog…now up to 81 comments. CIA Parker, believe it or not, is posting under her original ‘nym and not using her numerous sockies to post.
I dropped a note in there taking my lead your comment in Orac’s previous post (before this post was written). Not sure if I can find time to respond to the reply I got. Can’t help noting Dachel seems to have left the scene.
Grant…as Narad has notified us upthread the Dachel bot and her crowd on posting on the NY Times, now. I just registered (no Facebook registration required). My comment is in moderation. I haven’t “named names” but refer to flooding/deluge of internet articles by “the Media Director of a notorious anti-vaccine website”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/health/washington-state-makes-it-harder-to-forgo-immunizations.html#postcomment
Come and join me there.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
commenters at Dachel’s AoA post believe that the students’ work in journalism reflects the ‘fact’ that both the mainstream media and education are servants of the corporate world.. so this is to be expected.
Terri Lewis opines that the “old media” is propaganda..”the new media is US”. Others believe that we should “ignore the mainstream media”, that homeschooling is super and that the internet provides a “new balance’. Schools are “50%- 100% brainwashing”: a student at Darmouth’s education is ridiculed and the schools teach “like medical school” ( not a good thing in their book). Perhaps one student might become the “next Anderson Cooper” ( also not a good thing).
Oh where, oh where have I heard this before?
Natural News and PRN. Those who disparage ‘formal elitist education’ often were not deemed worthy enough to attend those dens of iniquity populated by jackbooted enforcers of reasonable grammar and spelling.
One of the idiots I survey maintains that a modern university education ( or graduate school) only supplies the corporate world and government with lackey-servants. How very fortunate that they rejected him! One achieves there by echoing back the corrupted science that is deemed ‘official,’ not the Truth.” I was often thrown out of dietetics (sic) class for arguing with the professsor who was WRONG”, he brags. Obviously.
Similarly, Dachel’s supporters place their own judgments about vaccines et al beyond criticism by experts and consensus. There’s a name for this: grandiosity enabled by an inability to judge one’s own performance *vis a vis* others, an aspect of executive functioning that people usually start developing around adolescence but not all achieve. Other problems might also interfere with its development: it is not something that all adults do well in.
Oh well, perhaps I am just echoing the propaganda I absorbed at all those elitist institutions of literary hegemony and mathematical dogma which I attended. At least my degrees did not arrive by postal service.
There’s two sides. the science-based reality side, and the fantasy “we want it to be true so it is” side. How so many people can be so wrong about a simple injection is beyond me. Oh… reminds me. I need a flu shot next month.
How about dachelbot et al wouldn’t know how to deal with data if it barked at them. Seriously, the last time I got spanked was when they posted a case of brain inflammation outside the perceptual areas of the brain explaining the result that I’seen on fmri where the autistic outperform the control on the RSPM when matched on the wechsler IQ test. Their post was about 3 cases of inflammation on the brain and to my knowledge, has not been replicated.
Alain
They’ve rolled it to the health section.
Oh, and Sid chimes in with this gem: “Not vaccinating endangers no one.” I don’t think I’ve heard him put it in such Th1Th2ish terms previously.
@ DLC:
I just got mine and -btw- my arm really hurts. Why?
My schedule today:
flu shot, mixed doubles tennis, work ( here), work (elsewhere), watched guys play rugby in rain ( don’t ask why), ate Chinese food.
could it be all that MSG?
My comment finally appeared just under Dachel’s two latest posts. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/health/washington-state-makes-it-harder-to-forgo-immunizations.html
Please guys, go and post. I have to go offline for now.
Hi lillady –
I would but for a few things. Personally I suspect if I’m going to pitch time on anti-vax right now it’d be better dealing with the Jasmine Renata inquest.
Besides that I have a mountain of reading to cover the background a couple of prospective contracts (I often feel the research groups, etc., I work for fail to understand just how much time is involved in preparation, etc…) never mind doing some coding of my own or scouting the idea of constructing my own large-RAM machine (partly for the challenge) and somewhere in there I should find Friday’s article for the blog (goodness knows what that’ll be) – while the Renata inquest is currently a small thing in little ol’ NZ but if it’s something SANE Vax is trying to leverage for wider aims it’d be better headed off at the pass, IMHO.
How’s that for a terrifying run-on sentence. (Deliberately!)
@ Grant:
That sentence illustrates spectacularly adroit manoeuvring: well done!
My Irish friend is mystified by commas and is in awe of my … uh, ‘creative punctuation’..
At any rate, you’re doing a great job but I have only one question:
why are you purple? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Actually, it’s quite attractive.
I’ve never thought I looked purple. Ha. I imagine it’s a mix of a lot of things including the original being posterised, a touch of sunburn and that the image has not been colour-balanced for tungsten lighting. (Looking at it, the background colours look ‘true’, but the foreground is too red.) It makes me think I need to update my #scio13 image too :-/ Sigh. I just haven’t time to fiddle and it’ll have to wait until I get a photo using the new digital camera. (A Fujifilm X10 in case there are any fans…)
Grant, I knew a cam fanatic and she was making fantastic pictures; so do I using my phone but I never got into photography as a hobby.
Alain
@Narad
Looks like JC hit upon the Rotary connection. In a comment at AoA:
ZOMG! An organization that supports vaccinations because it’s a public health triumph giving money to an organization the supports vaccination because it’s a public health triumph! Oh the humanity!
I wonder if Jake will be foolish enough to write a hit piece on Rotary International.
I don’t imagine I’ll be getting a thank-you note.
why are you purple?
Blueberries?
Alain, I’m an ex-film camera type – used to use a Leica M3.
Alison – Ha. Almost shades of that fruit and veges post 🙂
I’ve been getting comments through on both blogs. The Dachel bot and her motley crew are getting walloped.
Grant…you did a great job of detailing Dachel’s AoA post that slammed the teens for being *influenced* by politicians.
BTW Grant…Your run-on sentence is a thing of beauty…I must warn you that you face stiff competition from me. I am the undisputed queen of run-on-and-on-and-on sentences.
My impression of your hunky photo is that you are somewhat bluish. Are you certain that you’re not secretly slugging down a colloidal silver brew? 🙂
I find it amusing or at least curious that, before the comments were closed on the NYT piece, Dachel fired off a response seemingly referring out of nowhere back to the Carlsbad kids:
In the Times today: a gaggle of confused Oracians saved from humiliation by one papers clumsy moderation policy.
I’m not sure what happened over at the ncnews site. I tried to post a comment but it disappeared. Nothing saying it’s gone into moderation or anything so not sure if I should re-comment or not. Either way, I can’t wait to see their documentary. It is encouraging to know that kids who will be going on a few years down the road, to start their own families are learning now the science behind vaccines. Hopefully it will be enough to allay any doubts or fears they might have about them, and heaven forbid any of them have a child with autism, they will know nothing, including vaccines, is to blame, and they can love their child with everything in them, because that is the best thing anyone can do for any child, regardless of ability.
Just checked. My comments got through. The were pieces of Heyward Merton everywhere. : (
I got mine (Fluzone intradermal) yesterday and it hurts like hell. It’s supposed to contain less antigen when given intradermally therefore supposed to provide just as much protection with a way smaller needle in the pre-loaded syringe.
Well I have a large (6 cm) patch of reddened hot-to-the touch slightly swollen area on my upper arm. Next year I going to request the high dose (4 X the amount of each flu strain) Fluzone, given IM in the deltoid with a 1 inch needle.
There were. I blame the iPad.
Offal your comments were every bit as cogent and informative, as your comments here.
You could never resist an affable, talking hedgehog, lilady. Hope you feel better soon.
That explains why I eviscerated the pro-vaxxers there as I do on a regular basis here.
How do you figure, Bob? For G-d’s sake, you couldn’t even figure out how to use quotation marks in this exercise, on top of blowing the attempted emoticon.
“Tell both sides!”
Gee.
The Antivax side: “Any illness in the world at any point in time must be the fault of the vaccines; whether it’s the vaccines the child was given, or the vaccines the mother received either during pregnancy or her childhood vaccines, or it was the vaccines the grandparents received!”
The Provax side: See, here we have a number of epidemiological studies which suggest there is no correlation between vaccination and the following disorders:
Autism, aspergers, asthma, autoimmune disorder, eczema, ……….and the list goes on.
One ‘side’ has science, the other, supposition.
Eviscerated Offal? Hardly. Did you post your comments on your I-Pad? That’s your excuse. That explains it, then.
I can see it just fine. They have a five-minute quarantine.
Lara Lohne,
NCS seemed to have a five-minute stand-down for comments before they appeared. I presume it’s to give people enough time to delete silly knee-jerk verbal sprays 🙂
Anj, I’ll love you forever fo the Quote from Pratchett 😀
I read some comments. Are those anti vaxx as stupid as they seems? O.o
Oh! There it is, ok. Thought my computer was acting up again. My script blocker plays tricks on me sometimes. Well, it’s very late (early really) here so I’m off to bed. Night all!
I notice that the anti-vaccine cranks are forced to push the same tired story, over and over again, same links, same flawed and debunked science, while we can constantly point to fresh and updated information that refutes their every claim….doesn’t take the average person much time to realize the anti-vaccine cranks are still talking 10 years ago & haven’t a clue what science has done in the meantime…..
Nice work on the NYT post all!
I have a -probably stupid- question: even if there was HPV DNA in the vaccine, why would it be such a problem?
[…] and antivaccine quackery of which she is the Media Director, Age of Autism, have moved on from the news story I mentioned yesterday and have swarmed over to the New York Times to infest the comments of a different news story […]
@T.
It wouldn’t.
Do you know how much bacterial and dog DNA you’d get inside you (e.g. “in the bloodstream”) if you got bit by a dog?
You wouldn’t mutate. You wouldn’t grow a cancer. You might want to wash it and talk to a doctor about rabies prophylaxis and wound care, but that’s about it. HPV DNA in a vaccine? No biggie.
@ Grant:
Don’t change it! It’s quite intriguing as it is.
Twyla’s still going strong over on the article about the young journalists. Wouldn’t mind some backup to hit points I may have missed.
It would seem the same site (NC Times) has also just posted an awfully credulous article titled “The vaccination myth continues”, published on Sunday, with plug for NVIC and other usual tropes, and followed by a load of dachelbot comments. Strange editorial policy.
Todd, will try get back there later in the weekend.
@ Todd W. I don’t think you missed any of the points. Just in case…I just posted again…still in moderation.
I located Twyla Ramos’ post on her son Malcolm’s prior diagnosis of Williams disease…before her child received a diagnosis of autism at nine years of age…
http://www.foothillautism.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=32
“Secretary Twyla Ramos’ son, Malcolm, was diagnosed with Williams Syndrome at the age of 19 months and with autism at the age of 9 years. Malcolm always displayed a lot of self-stimming behavior but was so affectionate that his parents did not believe he was autistic. After he was diagnosed with autism, Twyla and her husband Manuel were surprised to learn that autism and Williams Syndrome share a lot of gastro-intestinal and food-related issues. Since beginning the gluten & casein free diet, digestive enzymes and probiotics, Malcolm’s chronic diarrhea and enuresis have been cured, enabling him to be toilet trained (at last!). Twyla and Manuel also have two daughters. Twyla works in the Human Resources department of a bank. She has a B.A. in English from Pomona College. Twyla grew up near Boston, MA, but has lived in the L.A. area for many years.”
My post at Twyla, asking her about a *pre-existing* genetic disorder for her child…got through moderation and Twyla Ramos admits that her child was diagnosed with William’s Syndrome, seven years before he received a hepatitis B vaccine at nine years of age…which she *claims* caused his autism:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/carlsbad/carlsbad-award-winning-broadcast-class-tackles-documentary-on-vaccines/article_fea569b4-4093-51e8-ab19-45abe06add48.html?mode=comments
Oh, wow! That is on par with the notion that vaccines cause Down’s Syndrome.
I guess the next time we see Twyla show up, and she is quite tireless on posting anti-vax comments, we’ll just have to ask how a vaccine causes twenty six gene deletions in one chromosome.
I couldn’t help myself, had to wade in with my own potted ‘the truth about anti-vaxxers’ tirade. Really quite sick and disgusted with the lot of them now.
Old story from wartime UK – Mosley’s fascists (the blackshirts) had a parade in London. It’s widely recognised that one of the reasons they rose no further in power was because the rest of London LAUGHED at them en masse (and then beat them up for good measure).
Anti-vaxxers are long past the point of ridicule and contempt, that’s all they’ll get from me from now on.
(Sid, you’re a gem. Are we tekkin’ yehr jerb too?)
@ Mark McAndrew:
You should be congratulated for your remarks there: I’m sure that you will be called names and accused of all manner of malfeasance- welcome to the club!
While I have personally gone through great and serious efforts to apply my studies and experience in the arcane art of psychology in order to attempt to UNDERSTAND their worldview, manner of behaving and deeply emotional underpinnings, still..
most of the time, I do wind up making fun of them. I know it’s neither nice nor professional but often it is actually the most appropriate way of responding to their material.
Straight up – I did wonder about vaccines and autism when Wakefield first touted it. And the mercury thing sounded pretty bad too, not to mention the disgusting antics of Big Pharma re. covering up bad studies, etc.
But I kept reading, and talking with (real!) doctors, one of whom is family. Found this blog too. You should always look for the opposing argument – and check your sources, that’s the trick.
And the thing that bugs me more than anything about these clowns is that they utterly refuse to be objective. When they put forward (insert standard anti-vax argument), and it gets totally rebutted, they just keep their fingers in their ears and shout ‘la-la-la’.
So yes, they’re ridiculous. Well-meaning on occasion, but absolute, pig-headed, ranting-and-frothing idiots. If they haven’t the humility or intelligence to admit when they’re wrong, then sod ’em. Pearls before swine, and all that.
I’ll save my civility for those who are new to the subject, as I once was, but the arrogant FUD-spreading morons at AoA can go play in the traffic. They are, quite literally, responsible for preventable childhood deaths.
@ Mark McAndrew: Cripes, Twyla Ramos now has caved. Am I the b*tch, in this dogfight?
BTW Mark, nice *touch* by your mention of the Boy Wonder Ace Reporter. 🙂
Bitch? Hardly! You’re a tireless campaigner for child health and an experienced, genuine medical professional who actually knows what they’re talking about. Good for you.
Every time you (and Orac, and anyone else) catches their lies, or exposes their nonsense, someone notices. And every time they repeat those lies, and continue with the same tired nonsense yet again, someone notices that too.
You can’t change the minds of the idiots. But you CAN expose them for what they really are, for everyone else to see.
That’s what matters.
… how much wine is equivalent to old fashioned sore throat syrup with alcohol and codeine?
Oh my. Sorry I can’t join you. I have been holed up in my cave with a PC without wifi watching DVDs and reading books (a chapter of Heart 411, then a chapter of a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book). I am avoiding breathing in the general area of any of my hubby and college age kids living at home (don’t judge them, we live ten blocks from the university that one attends, the other is disabled).
I fear Ms. Twyla is also ill, but not with one of the more than two hundred viruses that cause colds like I have. I have phlegm, minor muscle aches, headache, a low grade fever and absolutely no desire to think… yet I feel I can do more of the latter independently that her. Ms. Walter is more familiar with that disease, even if it does puzzle her.
I am always amused when the amount of money Big Pharma makes when vaccines are discussed. Because it is my experience that hospitals cost lots more than any vaccine. And yes, even the deductible I paid for a kid’s trip to the ER for a now vaccine preventable disease would have paid for several vaccines for several children.
I have tried to get them to answer how much Big Pharma gets from vaccines by asking some for the number to the left of the word “Vaccines” on the table of page 30 of this document. One responded that vaccines were the top twenty money makers for Big Pharma. The table on page 30 only has twenty rows.
Have fun. I am going back to bed. This is the first time I have been ill in over three years. Somehow after living for more than half a century an novel common cold found its way into my system.
Added one reply at the NCT page. Not if it’s showing up, but at least I tried.
@ Mark McAndrew: I’ve tangled with “Twyla” before on Respectful Insolence and on other science blogs. I’ve been *known* to post on the Huffington Post, as well…where *Twyla* and the Dachel bot posts their lies.
@ Grant: Go back to the NCT page to see that Twyla has posted about Gardisal vaccine and the reported *adverse reactions* to the vaccine. Scroll down to post a new comment, so that Twyla’s post is not on top.
@ Twyla Ramos…we know you are *lurking* here.
My reply doesn’t seem to want to go through. No links in it.
@lillady: Haven’t time to do more that counter her reply to me at the moment, bit frustrating that the comment hasn’t made it through.
@Qangali I just went and read that article and wow, ridiculous is the best word for it without just busting up and rolling on the floor. And of course Dashel has been spamming the comments. I left my own comment of course, if anyone else cares to contribute, here is the article:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/the-vaccination-myth-continues/article_804326dd-5eb8-5b1b-abcc-7d99209fa8fa.html
Would you know, this Murray Galbraith guy is a chiropractor. What are the odds of that?
@ Lara Lohne: I got through…and I took a few swipes at the Dachel bot, her gang and the chiropractor who blogged about the plaintiffs’ decision in Remini Italy:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/the-vaccination-myth-continues/article_804326dd-5eb8-5b1b-abcc-7d99209fa8fa.html
Nice one, lilady! *high 5*
Offal, you couldn’t eviscerate a fish with a chainsaw. Dream on.
<i.Old story from wartime UK – Mosley’s fascists (the blackshirts) had a parade in London. It’s widely recognised that one of the reasons they rose no further in power was because the rest of London LAUGHED at them en masse
As a Wodehouse reader from way back, I think you mean the Blackshorts.
Buggrit. Blackshorts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Spode
“You Put What In My Mouth?”
Here is another vaccine documentary in the making, they, one of them being Boyd Haley, are looking for donors to help them complete it. Time is a wastin’ though: “This project will only be funded if at least $60,000 is pledged by Friday Oct 12”.
There’s an extra special incentive for those of you that have an extra $2500 sitting around that you’d like to donate, “your very own piece of personal protection equipment in the form of a mercury vapor mask”. Better hurry!
That’s impressive. The indie time-travel movie Primer was reportedly made for $7000, and the production values aren’t bad.
Take a look at this message board…the “What” are amalgam fillings. All the self-chelators are contributing for production costs
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/frequent-dose-chelation/message/93606
“self-chelators”
Closes eyes. *I did not read that*
(A new brand of woo I’ve never heard of. As if I needed to know. They do know that most chelators will go an ligate other cations, right? Esp. dependent on concentration. *Sigh*)
Over on the comments, Twyla has asked us to prove that we provide links to scientific evidence showing the causes of autism are not vaccination based. She has put forth a challenge: She claims that we talk all the time about anti-vaccine people not understanding science, but we don’t ever provide any science ourselves. I countered stating we actually provide links all the time to science relating to the causes of autism etc, but we have no control if she clicks on the links and actually reads the information. So, how about we show her just how much scientific evidence there is out there showing causes linked to autism and show her that they aren’t vaccine related. She also wants data regarding vaccinated versus unvaccinated and rates of autism. The gauntlet has been thrown down! Into the BREACH!
@ Lara: Sorry I was busy posting on SBM. You did a commendable job posting a few of the many studies that link autism to causes “other than vaccines”.
I ripped off some commentary and studies from Science Mom…and credited her as well…that disprove the vaccine-autism link. My post is up now.
I think if she comes back at me…I’ll ask her why she didn’t stick the flounce (“It’s senseless for me to argue with you, lilady”) 🙂
@lilady, I read your comment and to be perfectly honest, I’m curious to see what action she will take next. She placed the challenge, I think it’s safe to say we’ve proved her wrong, now the ball is in her court, will she read the evidence provided and learn from it or continue on (like a certain father of an autistic boy on SOP when we provide studies showing he is wrong) and use the, ‘you guys will just never understand’ card?
@ Lara: I’ve been emailing the SOP blogger, who has been quite responsive to remove the trolls and their sockies.
Oh boy. Twyla’s at it again, bringing up the Italian court case where a family was awarded damages for MMR causing autism. *sigh* And she says she’s not anti-vaccine and it’s not her job to advocate for or against them, but she’s doing a really good job of playing one on TV, no? I’m gonna need some help on this one. But can’t do anything until after I sleep first. Night everyone.
Delving further into the obscure, AoA is today flogging a piece that claims to “provide[] compelling evidence that supports the nasal flu vaccination as a cause of optic neuritis.” Something tells me that they didn’t look all that closely at the journal at hand. (Watzlawick on the masthead is a nice touch, though.)
Oh, dear, it gets better:
Yes, this makes absolutely perfect sense to include in the front matter of a scientific journal.