Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is despicable.
I just wanted to get that off my chest. (Do clear Plexiglass boxes full of multicolored blinky multicolored lights even have chests?) The reason for my outburst will become painfully apparent all too soon, but I just had to say that. There’s also one other thing that I just have to say as well, and that’s this. When the managing editor of the antivaccine crank blog to rule all antivaccine crank blogs gives me a blogging topic and practically begs me to blog about it, in general I usually blog about it because, well, how can I resist? Think of it this way. When Dan Olmsted says something like “I’m well aware I’m handing Orac his next feces-flinging column,” I feel as though it would be downright unsporting, unchivalrous, even, not to take him up on his offer. I also feel that I owe Olmsted my sincere thanks. it’s not every day I get such a massive, juicy target so deserving of a heapin’ helpin of the not-so-Respectful Insolence that I’ve become known for over the last eight and a half years.
Of course, I must admit to some mild insult that Olmsted apparently thinks that my carefully crafted not-so-Respectful Insolence directed at cranks, quacks, and loons is akin to the sort of poo-flinging that Age of Autism (AoA) bloggers throw hither, thither, and yon upon anyone with the temerity to suggest to them that maybe, just maybe they’re off base in their fanatical belief that vaccines must cause autism. My criticism, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, consists of precision jabs fired exactly where I want them to land. In comparison, AoA bloggers are about as subtle as a brick to the head and even less fun.
In comparison to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., AoA bloggers are veritable Shakespeares of clear and witty thought.
If you have any doubt of that, just take a look at Dan Olmsted’s latest post over at the wretched hive, RFK Jr., Nazi Death Camps and the Battle For Our Future. Yes, it’s every bit as bad as anything you can imagine, and not only is there no subtlety but there is no creativity. I mean, seriously. Nazis? Comparing your enemies to Nazis? How boring is that, RFK, Jr.? Our good ol’ buddy Dan Olmsted seems blissfully unaware of this as he tries his very hardest to see how far he can stick his head up RFK, Jr.’s nether regions. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty far, far enough to see his tonsils from the other side:
Each of us will have our highlights from last weekend’s extraordinary Autism One gathering in Chicago, but for me it was Bobby Kennedy Jr. saying, “To my mind this is like the Nazi death camps.”
“This” is the imprisonment of so many of our children in the grip of autism. Talk about cutting through the neurodiverse claptrap! When Bobby Kennedy says something, it gives “cover,” in a sense, for others to use the same kind of language and frame the debate in the same kind of way. (Language that reminds me of David Kirby’s phrase, “the shuttered hell” of autism, in Evidence of Harm.)
Those who can advocate for themselves should do so. Move right along, please. Those who cannot have advocates like their parents and RFK Jr. who are sick of mincing words.
That’s funny. When someone makes a truly idiotic and, yes, offensive analogy, the reaction of an intelligent and moral person is to be offended at the pure idiocy and the utter historical ignorance demonstrated by such an analogy. Of course, Dan Olmsted is not an intelligent or moral person. Think of it this way. Olmsted approves of RFK, Jr.’s analogy. He thinks it gives him cover to use similar language. He thinks that such analogies help the antivaccine cause (and, make no mistake, Dan Olmsted is antivaccine to the core). In reality, what they do is to reveal people like Dan Olmsted and RFK, Jr. for the historically ignorant, antiscience cranks that they are. I suppose that in a small way that’s a favor to society, rather like a warning about whom not to take seriously, just as Hilary Butler let society know that she is not one to be taken seriously when she tried to liken non-vaccinators to the “new Jews,” as in the Jews during the reign of the Third Reich.
What is it with antivaccinationists and ridiculous Holocaust analogies, anyway?
Particularly hilariously inept is a statement that Olmsted makes in which he whines to his readers that they should “note that Bobby wasn’t calling those who’ve enabled the autism epidemic Hitlers (just as I was not saying that about the media).” Of course, this is a massive straw man. You don’t have to compare someone to Hitler for it to be an offensive, completely over the top analogy. Let’s go back to what Olmsted actually did say. It’s worth repeating again what Olmsted about the journalists who, to him, didn’t engage in sufficient fear mongering about vaccines and autism:
It’s not going to be very PC to say this, but one of the most vivid images from the end of World War II is the Allies making local villagers walk through a newly liberated concentration camp. The message was — how can you say you did not know?
When the history of the Age of Autism is written, I hope that part of mainstream journalism’s pennance is having to listen to parent after parent, hour after hour, describe just what Jami Nelson did. Healthy kids. Shots. And autism.
So it’s true that Olmsted didn’t compare journalists to Hitler, but he did compare them ot Nazis living near concentration camps who claimed they didn’t know what was going on in the camps, thus implying that they were complicit in something that to him is the equivalent to the Holocaust. Then, after denying that he called journalist Hitlers, he goes right on to say that it wouldn’t matter if he had because the “scale of the catastrophe, the immensity of the denial, the suffering of the victims do justify the language.” In other words, after denying he said it, Olmsted says, in essence, “So what if I did? It was justified!”
Olmstead goes beyond that, though, carrying the analogy beyond that and aiming it squarely at one of the favorite enemies of the antivaccine movement. In his hero worship of RFK, Jr., Olmsted buys into RFK, Jr.’s apparent idea that someone must be a war criminal on par with the guards who rand the Nazi death camps. It’s not too hard to guess who it is. Anyone who follows the antivaccine movement knows who it is. To RFK, Jr., if the “vaccine Holocaust” is as huge as the real Holocaust, then Paul Offit is a war criminal. Don’t believe me? Check out this passage:
The enablers may not belong in Nuremburg, but they do belong in jail, Bobby said. “I would do a lot to see Paul Offit and all these good people behind bars,” he said, after listing Offit’s litany of lies and profit. Just to make sure people got the point, he returned to it in his speech. “Is it hyperbole to say they should be in jail? They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away.”
Yes, RFK, Jr. is such a highly warped individual that he believes that a man who has dedicated his lives to saving children and has actually contributed a life-saving vaccine to the world should be in jail, adding only the offhand disclaimer that he “may not belong in Nuremberg.” For those who might not be familiar with the history, the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial was where the Allies tried many of the Nazi doctors responsible for the atrocities committed in the camps, such as the horrifically unethical medical experimentation. These were doctors who had supervised mass murder, torture, evil abuses of medical experimentation, and forced euthanasia. The only reason, for instance, that Josef Mengele was not in the defendant’s box for the Doctors’ Trial is because he had escaped before the Allies had subdued Nazi Germany. Other doctors who were on trial included, for example, Waldemar Hoven, Chief Doctor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, who was involved in Nazi euthanasia programs and medical experiments involving administration of typhus to prisoners, many of whom were subjected to phenol injections. (Phenol injections were a favorite means of “euthanasia,” a precursor to murder by gas chambers. Then there was Herta Oberheuser, who did gruesome experiments purported to be for the purpose of learning how to regenerate bone and muscle in which she killed healthy children with oil and evipan injections, then removed their limbs and vital organs. She also inflicted wounds on subjects and rubbed dirt, foreign objects, and other items designed to simulate the wounds German soldiers suffered on the battlefield.
These are the sorts of people RFK, Jr. is implicitly comparing Paul Offit to, a comparison that Dan Olmsted totally approves of! Lest you think that Olmsted and RFK, Jr. are an isolated example, right there in the comments is a commenter by the ‘nym Farmer Geddon seriously and without irony says that he thinks that Dr. Offit should be tried for “crimes against humanity.” Meanwhile, another commenter by the ‘nym “no vac” writes:
I totally agree. We must stop using euphemistic language and apologize for offending the vaccine criminals and their enabler politicians. Their place is in prison for life and we should use the strongest condemning language possible! We must organize with global parents many international marches (Monsanto style exactly) to protest against destroying our children and humanity’s future for profits of vaccine- mafia. Enough of suffering and accepting vaccine genocide.
“Vaccine genocide”? Yes, this loon is totally serious. He or she really thinks that what is happening is a genocide. I can’t make up my mind if this is hilarious, sad, outrageous, or so offensive as to be beyond the pale. Maybe it’s a little of each. What I do know is that people who seriously make a comparison like this, between genocide and an imaginary “vaccine-caused autism epidemic” are so divorced from reality that it’s hard to imagine ever bringing them back. We have to try, though, while simultaneously doing what we can to prevent or obviate the harm to public health they cause in the form of resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases.
If there’s one hilarious thing about RFK, Jr., though, it’s his complete lack of self-awareness coupled with a combination of the arrogance of ignorance and an overwhelmingly inflated view of his own importance. Only someone with these “qualities” could have written something so clueless:
Kennedy has put together a book-length treatment on the dangers of ethylmercury, given every year to 84 million children around the world including the United States (in prenatal and infant flu shots). He wants to get meetings with the CDC, AAP, FDA, etc., and get a commitment by the end of this summer to finally remove thimerosal from vaccines in one year. ONE year. If not, he said, he’ll publish the book.
“If they don’t do this,” he said, “this is what I’m going to do with my life.” Since they’re not going to do it, it looks like we’ve got a friend for life.
That’s right. RFK, Jr. is threatening the federal government that he’ll—gasp!—publish a crank book full of autism fear mongering, quackery, and pseudoscience if the government doesn’t do what he demands. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll sit down and hold his breath until he turns blue. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll sit down, stamp his feet against the ground, and cry like a little baby.
Meanwhile, from his vantage point behind RFK, Jr.’s tonsils, Olmsted tries to “out-antivax” even RFK, Jr., which is very, very hard. However, he somehow manages it:
People who think mercury in vaccines is a dead issue need to think again after Autism One. Dan Burton and others on the Congressional panels stressed it; Eric Gladen’s preview of his movie “Trace Amounts” triggered much buzz; Brian Hooker’s session on FOIAs trying to get the CDC to cough up documents on thimerosal and other vaccine horrors; and our own debut of How Mercury Triggered the Age of Autism show that mercury is the defining clue, the core issue, of the autism epidemic.
It’s got nothing to do with vaccines, actually. It’s got to do with harming babies with no offsetting public health imperative except sloth, arrogance and stupidity and, in some cases, neglect and knowledge that constitute evil.
“Vaccine horrors”? How about horrors of abuses of science by ignoramuses like RFK, Jr. and Dan Olmsted? “Sloth, arrogance, and stupidity”? That could apply very well to them, too.
500 replies on “Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? (RFK, Jr. edition)”
Having already mentioned Jenner’s status in the eyes of Rav Lipschutz, I will merely bait the AoA Piranha frenzy by suggesting Olmsted try to get away with this routine in front of, say, Rav Aviner.
I went to a funeral yesterday of a Holocaust survivor. The eulogy was heartbreaking in an almost visceral way.
The appropriation of the word Holocaust by this group of scientific cul-de-sacs is mindblowingly arrogant and very wrong. Yuck.
I read Olmsted’s piece this morning. It was so excruciatingly bad that I felt like asking for my money back.
Do these anti-vaxxers co-ordinate the hate? Or maybe vile is their baseline, because the Australian Vaccination Network has been at it too: https://www.facebook.com/stopavn/posts/10151639393093588
Check out the response by Rabbi Baruch Stone.
And of course what do they do when they dig themselves a hole? They keep digging: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151639589953588&set=a.144130563587.111188.143367983587&type=1:
Since Joe Kennedy was a notorious Nazi sympathiser and enabler, and JFK went through a period of white-supremacy / Hitler admiration from the late 1930s right up to 1945, this seems to be something of a family issue.
but one of the most vivid images from the end of World War II is the Allies making local villagers walk through a newly liberated concentration camp.
When this occurred it was not being staged as a photo opportunity and I don’t think there are photographic or cinematic records. So when Olmsted calls it “one of the most vivid images”, we realise that he makes no distinction between historical events of WWII and his memory of watching “Band of Brothers”.
Actually, you are quite mistaken. It was filmed. Newsreels show civilians from nearby towns and cities being marched through the camps to view the carnage and in essence “rub their noses in it.” I’ve seen these newsreels. Some of them are on YouTube. For instance:
http://youtu.be/bjLIsn0ROSU
Beginning at around the 11:15 mark.
Here we go again.
Does the following quote remind you all of any group in particular?
It’s very AoA, isn’t it? A phrase I’ve seen associated with their “broken children”.
Just one thing though, for the Godwinning, ableist muppets who hang on every
dribble of fetid pukeword that escapes from Olmsted et. al. Just one detail. That loathsome phrase was one of the classifications in the Aktion T4 program. Look it up, science-deniers.Nazis, real Nazis, took your “broken children” and murdered them for believing that they were polluting the gene pool. They rounded up children who had “no light in [their] eyes] and put them down, just like they would a sick dog. They sterilised people who “produced idiots”.
Now tell me again, how ensuring that all children are as protected as they can be from potentially fatal viral illnesses, and celebrating physical and neurological diversity and allowing each child to fulfill their potential, is the same as killing them.
Tell me again how vaccination, therapy, pain medication, and other interventions to improve the lives of people who are physically disabled, chronically ill, mentally ill or non-NT, tell me again how that’s the same as Block Ten.
C’Mon, tell me how men who save lives worldwide are just like Mengele, Bouhler, Brandt, and Brack.
Enlighten me you pustulent chancres, I’m waiting.
Maybe I’m just pessimistic today, but I doubt any of them will answer my questions, stand by what they cheered on like attention-devouring ghouls with martyr complexes.
Actually, you are quite mistaken. It was filmed.
Ah, many thanks. Another mistake to avoid in the future.
@ elburto
Sterilising people who “produced idiots” didn’t start with the Nazis, nor did it end with the end of WWII.
There are some very black pages in the history of Scandinavian countries, dealing with these kind of practices.
I really worry that this kind of overheated rhetoric is going to push some people to violence, as it has in the abortion controversy. My only consolation is that the anti-abortion movement is much larger and arguably even more virulent than the anti-vax movement, and the number of terrorist incidents has been relatively small so far.
No joke today, folks. Sorry.
ONE year. If not, he said, he’ll publish the book.
Oh noes! He’ll publish a book! Please, we’ll do anything you ask, just don’t publish the book!
He can publish the book, but as sure as hell he can’t make us read it.
I will be a conscientious refuser.
Renate – I’m all too sadly aware of the history of the eugenics movement.
I focused on the Third Reich’s version of it because that was the subject of the post.
Pro-SBM people are being branded “Nazis”, and the United States of America vs Karl Brandt et al was being invoked.
I haven’t got the mental energy* to rant about the entire disgusting history of the movement, or to expound on the current face of eugenics rail against those who’re keeping it alive, when it should be dead and buried.
@palindrom – I hear ya. Another set of sick zealots that make me want to vomit blood.
*Relatives targeted during WWII, and there’s a scarily Galtonesque streak running through the current (unelected) govt of my country, who are gleefully reviving the concept of “Lebensunswertes Leben”, as they decide who’s worthy of life and support, and who should be cut off.
Wikipedia helpfully reminds me that most vaccines in the USA and EU no longer contain thimerosal as a preservative. (It lists some influenza, tetanus and diphtheria shots as still using that, and notes that in developing countries, doctors are more worried about vaccines going off due to lack of refrigeration and reliance on multi-dose packaging.)
Which makes RFK’s ‘threat’ all the more silly, since he already has most of what he says he wants. A kid could get a full vaccination schedule without ever encountering thimerosal.
Renate,
The UK and the US too. Eugenics, a word coined by a Brit (Francis Galton, that elburto alluded to), was a popular concept before WW2, supported by well-respected people like Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw. Until very recently old people who had been institutionalized and or/ forcibly sterilized for heinous crimes, such as being disabled, or getting pregnant outside wedlock, were still being found in institutions where they had spent their entire lives. The Scandinavian countries were just slower than some others in abandoning this practice and putting things right.
I think we should remember that this wasn’t just Nazis, that otherwise civilized human beings supported this practice, and that we should be eternally vigilant against its return, in whatever guise.
Dammit. One character out of place and WordPress can’t cope, when other HTMP interpreters can.The only links ion that mess were these: The UK and the US too.
Aargh. HTML – in a rush.
There was a reason for the Usenet convention that the first side in an argument to compare the other side to Nazis were deemed to have lost the argument. Unfortunately, we are not playing by Usenet rules here.
I’m with palindrom in fearing that this kind of rhetoric will lead to violence. There is a lot of demonizing Others these days, certainly in the US and Europe, and in other countries as well. We’re sitting on a powder keg here, and people like Olmsted and RFK Jr. are reacting by shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile.
It’s tempting to compare RFK Jr.’s threat of publishing a book to Biggles et al. threatening their prisoner with the Comfy Chair. But that comparison is unfair to Monty Python, who were only trying to parody some of Europe’s biggest monsters. RFK Jr. is acting as if he wants to become a monster.
They got their analogies wrong. With their “lost children” talk sounding a lot like “lebensunwertes Leben”, I’d see Dan Olmsted as Julius Streicher and AoA as Der Stürmer. Happily calling for the incarceration of his enemies. And RFK jr. science is as solid as eugenics, so that makes him Fritz Lenz?
I am rather less consoled than you are. The antivaccination movement is pretty much fringe and powerless. The anti-abortion movement is not. I would be quite afraid of antivaccine lunatics concluding that They Don’t Have Any Other Option, because they’ve clearly lost the political fight. Anti-abortionists still widely believe that they can win peacefully, so there’s less motivation to depart from the political process.
He has WAYS of making you read it.
In the Comfy Chair.
Reading over the comments, I notice that ‘Justice League’ manages 7 before KS steps in to “close the conversation”- remarkably JL mentions how Offit’s work has benefitted people, Cedillo, California rates of ASDs, rare vaccine “damage”, the diminishing level of Hg, amongst other relevant points.
Why did they let a non-echo through? Perhaps they thought that it was our esteemed and most gracious host ( with the most), Orac, or one of theclever minions who might later boast about AoA’s censorship.
A few days ago I suggested that we could test AoA’s “free speech” policy after Dachel commented here.
I have my own guess about who JL is -btw-.
So take a bow, Mister!
Huh, RFK, Jr. is writing a “book-length” article about thimerosal? Didn’t he already pull that stunt, which ended in failure and embarrassment for him and Salon.com?
http://www.salon.com/2011/01/16/dangerous_immunity/
After a number of comments from “Junior League”…the enforcer, Stagmom, has just shut down Olmsted’s article to further comments. How typical.
Australia’s anti-vaxxers have been under intense pressure recently – from governments, from the media and, of course, from the StopAVN Facebook group.
With new legislation set to pass through one state parliament to restrict access of unvaxxed kids to childcare, Australia’s leading anti-vaxxer, Meryl Dorey, decided anti-vaxxers were the new Jews and this was just like the Holocaust.
^ “Justice League
If they don’t meet his demands, RFK will publish a book? Oh, my! Time to admit I’ve been a pharma shill all along. I can’t let him publish a book for God’s sake. I’ve been willing to harm children worldwide but I can’t let RFK Jr. Publish a book.
/sarcasm
So, RFK Jr. wants to repackage the thimerosal “research” in another form? It may sell better than “Age of Autism” and Callous Disregard combined. Write it under a pseudonym and see if it sells, Bobby.
Well, my dad always said (and by always I mean starting in the mid-seventies) that the further down the line the Kenedys go, the worse they were.
The next generation should be a really sorry lot.
elburto:
This fabulous comment wins the thread, IMHO.
[…] America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® is at it again. [Orac, Respectful Insolence] For good measure, the celebrity environmentalist/wayward scion, speaking in Chicago at a […]
I too believe that the n-zi analogy is becoming stale, worn and threadbare:
might I suggest another, oh bad writers of AoA?
The Sack of Rome.
It is 410 AD, Rome is the zenith of civilisation HOWEVER there are barbarians at the gate!
These wild, brawny savages bear terrifying weapons and feel no remorse at all after raping, pillaging and burning as they demolish the peaceful lives of the innocent and orderly denizens of the provinces… in fact, these beasts find delight in destruction of all that is good and holy.
“I am Alaric and I’ve got vaccines! Deal with it.”
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the trees?
I think it is interesting that Asperger’s work was actually considered to be the exception to most of the Nazi research during the period: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/10/23/national/no-rush-to-judgment/#.UadtMyPn_Gg.
Hey look! We actually got our gifted program at one point!
slowly the crypt door creaked. The scent of decay and evil leaked out. From deep inside, a moaning could be heard. “Brains…..Braaaaains”. The slow thudding of footsteps told of the Hitler Zombie’s approach. “Brains!”
What? RFK Jr. and Olmsted? You woke me for this? I said Brains!
the crypt door slams. Muffled by the door, cursing could be heard. “Olmsted? Really? They woke me for that?”
The comments aren’t closed. I think that the Managing Editor just means that no more JL comments will be allowed. Let’s see.
OT but is serendipitous transcultural nearly synonymous homonymy ever TRULY OT @ RI I ask you?
( wikipedia):
wu- a Chinese word for spirit medium, shaman, shamaness, sorceror, doctor who does divination, prayer, sacrifice, healing for *over 3000 years* in *China* ( yet).
@ Broken Link: Stagmom let one comment through from Justice League and (s)he walloped them with the trend upward for new ASD diagnoses in California…since the removal of Thimerosal from multi-dose vaccines.
So why don’t the AoA “lurkers” come here to discuss Olmsted’s article? I’m getting tired of chasing the bot, Twyla, Schnaut and Crosby off other science blogs.
The antivaccination movement is pretty much fringe and powerless.
Fringe, yes. Powerless, no. They have been able to talk various state legislatures into allowing “philosophical” exemptions to vaccination requirements, and despite several recent and well-publicized outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in Western countries, they have been able to limit state legislative initiatives to end “philosophical” exemptions. Most such exemptions, as regular readers of this blog know, are based on overblown fears of vaccines rather than any sincerely held religious belief. While I disagree with religious exemptions, I can at least understand the point of view–letting imaginary fears of vaccines trump real fears of what diseases can do to kids is something I don’t get.
Anti-vaxers haven’t had the rhetoric dialed up to 11 for as long as the anti-abortion crowd. They also aren’t as numerous, yet. But you don’t need large numbers of people to get violence–witness the “animal rights” fringe. All it takes is one sufficiently deranged anti-vaxer to take the Nazi analogy too seriously, and you’ll end up with either a dead doctor or a would-be assassin who kills himself in the attempt.
I sure wish that useless group of pediatricians called the AAP would summon the testicular fortitude to stick up for Dr. Offit, but alas, they are too busy schmoozing it up in our nation’s capital to actually care. That and they are probably afraid of being sued should they dare open their gob.
It’s clearly someone who likes to use theatricality and deception. I mean, someone who goes by that name *scoffs* clearly has issues.
I am a Jew. I am on the autism spectrum (Aspie). Both are also true of my nephew (PDD_NOS).*
Despite serious challenges, my nephew is a delightful young man. Although now an adult, he’s like a sprite. He had a bar mitzvah, graduated high school, and even went to his senior prom. He works in a business set up to employ autistic people. He skis, does figure skating, and rides horses – he competes as a show jumper and is the top-ranked special rider in our area. He is funny, affectionate, concerned, and caring, within his limits. He enjoys his life. Would we, his family, like him to be more like his more neurotypical cousins? You bet. Would we better off if he had never been born? Never! He will live a life that allows him to develop to his limits, which he has not yet reached.
Me? As I am fond of pointing out, I had a twenty-year career as a physician assistant, some of it working for groundbreaking medical scientists, and even got to make some minor contributions to some of their work. I am married to a wonderful woman. Our daughter just graduated from one of the world’s great universities; our son will do the same next year. We fully expect they will go on to great things. Do I wish I had been born different? Well, I already was born different, wasn’t I? If there were any point to it, I would wish that the services and knowledge available to the young Aspies of today had been in place for me when I was a child in those 1950s “happy days”.
I had polio as an infant, not recognized until much later, and still carry some of the effects
I lost no one in the Holocaust, but I have known many people who survived by widely varied means or strokes of fortune. I have listened to the tales of ghetto fighters, camp survivors, hidden children, refugees, all from their own lips.
If I have a point, it’s just to say that RFK Jr, and the whole AoA and antivax crowd nauseate me, and to name the dogs I have in this fight.
While I’m making wishes, let me add that I wholeheartedly wish I had the means to do more for childhood immunizations, for respect and help for spectrumites, and to instruct the world on what the Holocaust was and who the Nazis were.
Thank you, Orac, for ALL that you do.
* DSM 5, I know. I know.
We have to try, though.
I’m afraid I don’t see the point of bringing them back to our reality. If you wanted to launch them into space, I’d kick a few dollars your way.
Becca: Interesting that you brought up the problems of preservation. That’s one reason the measles epidemic in Pakistan is so bad right now: the vaccines weren’t properly stored and were ineffective. Along with the religious objections to vaccines over there.
Those who can advocate for themselves should do so. Move right along, please. Those who cannot have advocates like their parents and RFK Jr. who are sick of mincing words.
Those who can advocate for themselves…except of course Jake Crosby…and some of the klds of the AoA team and readers….well, basically, those who disagree with us can move along. Don’t ask for our excuse to make sense or to be applied to everyone.
Seriously, why does/did Jake spend so much time with a group that doesn’t accept him as being really autistic? Hell, they gave a T-shirt to a guy who slammed those with Asperger syndrome
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/07/age-of-autism-comment-of-the-week-2.html
@ Dr. Chris: Wouldn’t you think that Jay Gordon, would have changed his website about childhood immunizations….after the last drubbing he received here?
I’ve been *concentrating* on Prevnar vaccine, which Jay had stated was “too new for (him) to recommend”. So what does the brilliant Dr. Jay do…he removes that offensive ignorant statement and now provides links to three websites…one link is to Mercola’s website…one link is to whale.to
http://drjaygordon.com/link-library-2?cat=Prevnar
Jay Gordon, still deviating from the AAP Standards of Care, still relying on “mommy intuition”…and now promoting Mercola and the pig farmer.
So I guess Kennedy’s understanding of medicine is backward and to the left?
But RFK is less like his uncle and quite a lot like Lee Harvey Oswald: an obnoxious loser who doesn’t mind hurting others during his self-absorbed mission to forget that he is a useless idiot.
@ Dr. Chris: The last time Dr. Jay *graced us* with his presence, he and I got into a heated debate. Jay *seemed to recall* that he used the varicella vaccine under a *compassionate use protocol* before it was licensed in the United States, when I posted that my medically fragile child was infected with the virus just before the vaccine was available in the United States.
IIRC, Dr. Jay was *upset* because I was mean to him…and because he couldn’t cough up any proof that the vaccine would have been available to my son.
Jay now has links to four websites; the first two links are to whale.to Cripes, does Jay think the pig farmer is a reliable source for information about the virus and the varicella vaccine?
http://drjaygordon.com/link-library-2?cat=Chicken+Pox
The next time someone asks me why parents of autistic children loathe the anti-vaccine cult, I’ll point them to this post. Thanks, Orac.
basically, those who disagree with us can move along. Don’t ask for our excuse to make sense or to be applied to everyone.
I went to see the posting and the comments over there and they must have been thinking of peoples similar to myself. Excuse me while I take pride in being extremely successful autistic who would pass for neurotypical and who is receiving excellent care and support.
umm….did I piss on them? 😀
Alain
My guess was Todd or Ren however someone commenting there now guesses “Bonnie”!!!!!
We’re all Bonnie, remember? I wonder if they’ll start making foolish bets as to who that commenter, JL (or whatever), is?
Narad @1: Wow. How do you say “fucking brilliant” in Hebrew?
We may in this manner force them into allowing dissent:
if they censor one of our comments, we’ll broadcast it here; they can never be sure if a comment is from a minion or not.
“We’re all Bonnie”?
I thought we were all Brian.
Whale.to, huh?
Talk about jumping the shark.
At long last, Jay, have you no self-respect?
@Denice Walter
Well, the whole reason I started my blog in the first place was to give a home to those comments AoA did not see fit to publish.
And we are all Bonnie and Brian.
In the spirit of Denice Walter’s magnificent analogy involving Alaric, may present two more analogies AoA could use.
First, the Saxon invasions of Britain following the collapse of the Roman empire (us nasty pharma shills), which were for a time held back by King Arthur (the brave mavericks of AoA). That way they get to be a legendary hero!
But ultimately the Saxons won… and that might not be palatable. So they could also use the Viking invasions of England (again, us nasty pharma shills) which were ultimately repelled by King Alfred the Great and his descendants (the brave mavericks of AoA). That way, they get to be historical heroes who won!
More from whale.to, courtesy of Dr. Jay’s blog re: MMR vaccine.
http://drjaygordon.com/link-library-2?cat=MMR
Incidentally, in re-enactor groups it’s not uncommon to call people who take their re-enacting seriously “Nazis”. It’s happened to me twice, both times when someone asked me for an opinion and I disagreed with them. While there are some absolutely nasty people in the re-enactor community who are horrible to people they don’t think are doing it right, in most cases the Nazi card is played by people who can’t be bothered making more of an effort and want to pre-empt getting called out on it.
I think the anti-vaxxers invoke the Nazi comparison not just because they feel persecuted, but because they know its a very hurtful thing to call someone.
The first time I saw whale.to, I honestly thought it was a joke. I didn’t believe anyone could possibly be that crazy and stupid.
@ Christine (tpsChristine): If you think whale.to is a joke, try listening to this “Rabid Radio Host”, who was broadcasting live last week, from the Chicago Quack Fest…truly deranged:
http://radio.naturalnews.com/Archive-LindermanUnleashed.asp
Sorry lilady, I worked out a while ago that stupidity is a major trigger for my fibromyalgia, so I avoid AoA, Natural News and similar places. I am deeply impressed by the fortitude people such as yourself show.
I also avoid the Australian Vaccination Network, but that’s because they banned me.
#51 No, I’m Brian! And so’s my wife.
Our very own “Lawrence” who managed to get a few comments through AoA’s moderation is Brian Deer. It has been noted that some of the cranks on AoA think I am Brian and that Lawrence/lilady are the same people.
I’d much rather be Bonnie…she’s a good looking lady. 🙂
@lilady
I’m regularly accused of being Brian Deer… Don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being Bonnie Offit though.
Ok VCADOD (vaccines causing autism denialism obsessive disorder) group,
I am so pleased to announce some very special news. I can barely contain myself. A few weeks ago one of our very special members, Chemmomo, took a positive step towards dealing with his VCADOD by admitting that it’s possible that vaccines may cause autism, albeit in a significant minority of cases. I quote him, ‘In other words, as an honest and objective person I cannot rule out the possibility of vaccine involvement for every single case of autism that’s ever existed, or will ever exist (the special case of Hannah Poling comes to mind).’….
Now many of you may think this is rather a very small step. Still, the admission was not easy for Chemmomo. As he spoke he swelled with tears and I had to console him. Good for you Chemmomo for taking a positive step in dealing with your disorder! Good for you! Now, who would like to join Chemmomo and tackle their VCADOD? Like Chemmomo you can also go slow and admit that vaccines can cause a tiny, wee autism. You don’t have to admit to it causing countless cases of autism or a specific big monster non-verbal, head banging, poop smearing autism — just a cute little baby quirky Asperger autism. We can go slow then work our way up. So who else would like to admit to this? Lilady, Ren, Narad, and Krebiozen, ‘Rome was not built in a day’ so I won’t pressure you guys too much. Still, Denice Walter, PCG, Chris, and LD would you not like to tackle your VCADOD and admit that vaccines can cause that teeny, winsy, wee autism? Now come forward friends. It will do you good.
Greg,
F.O. and die in a fire.
Greg is odd.
Spoken like a true preacher. “Come on, admit it to yourselves, don’t rely on evidence. Just come clean of your sin of believing in things like odds ratios, relative risks, and confidence intervals, all works of TEH DEVILZ!”
@Ren
Yes, but he left off the fire and brimstone. 6/10 points.
@ Baron Scarpia
You don’t know half of it. Not the first time he is mimicking speeches from Alcoholic Anonymous or other behavioral/supportive groups. For someone who pretends to be a worker in such a group for impaired children, this copycat mockery is in very poor taste. Immediately making clear that, for all his posturing, he doesn’t give a damn about autistic children or any other non-typical person.
Greg reminds me of the somewhat drunk guy in the bar who believes himself funny by telling racist jokes.
The level of contempt this is eliciting…
Actually, looking at it this way, internet could be as disinhibiting as drinking alcohol. A rat could think himself a lion.
Greg:
I fired you. Go away.
Go away Troll. We are having an adults-only discussion….
http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html
@ Rebecca: I’ve been accused of being you…not Bonnie: 🙂
I’d like to find the ADL slapping down the antivaxxers like they did with the Ben Stein antiscience debacle:
http://archive.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm
Interestingly, playing diagnostician by insinuating that a belief that vaccines *don’t* cause autism ( which is -btw- backed up by standard peer reviewed research, scientific consensus and practical studies that observe millions of vaccinated children worldwide over many decades) is denialism- or delusional perhaps- but instead that dreamt up theorising by compromised sources, parental report, fixed data and alt med proselytisation which can only stand up via an intricately erected scaffolding of conspiracy mongering is perfectly acceptable,
is very odd indeed.
May I presume it’s to finally offer the credible scientific evidence indicating a causal link exists between routine childhood immunization and autism spectrum disorders, as you’ve been asked for repeatedly for teh better part of a month?
If not, one has to ask “Did you have a point? Any point? Any at all?”
Meanwhile, at the TMR, we have a post about mommies “bearing witness” to vaccine injuries:
http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/bearing-witness/
*I believe they are incorrectly quoting the Commandment to not lie i.e. “bearing false witness”.
@ Lilady:
I’ve often wondered if the AAP would even have the guts to stand up to a pediatrician who advocated an approach to “the health of all children” by adopting Jonathan Swift’s recommendations put forth in “A Modest Proposal” (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html), which isn’t much worse than what is going to happen (i.e. death from vaccine preventable diseases) to some of our children who go unvaccinated because Gordon and Sears continue to spread their lies, completely unopposed by the AAP.
Greg,
Your lack of reading comprehension goes beyond words.
@ Dr. Chris: One of these days, Dr. Jay’s deliberately unvaccinated patient will be identified as an index patient in a major V-P-D outbreak. It happened to Dr. Bob Sears…and I nailed him on the Ho-Po:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/03/27/dr-bob-sears-vs-seth-mnookin-measles-out/
Dr. Jay and Dr. Bob were in the forefront of anti-vaccine doctors who were against passage of California AB 2109. Jay garnered some cheap publicity by commenting on the bill and by being interviewed on a local radio show.
WARNING: Wait until you are off-duty, at home, imbibing a refreshing drink, before you open Jay’s whale.to Hib link:
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/hib.html
Greg: Chemmomo is a woman. And why do you keep mixing me and JGC up?
@Chemmomo:
The DregTroll does not read to comprehend things. He might be forced to learn something if he did that. Rather, he looks for statements he can mangle until they appear to support his cribbed-straight-from-AoA propaganda screeds.
Chris,
I just realized that the last comment you made was lifted from an article in Natural News, which is just as idiotic as Whale.to, full of mind-numbingly inaccurate nonsense about medical matters. I can’t bring myself to link to it, but I found this statement amusing:
I’m not sure what this even means. Is the author seriously suggesting that because only 1% of the body’s magnesium is in the serum, a serum magnesium test will only pick up 1% of patients with magnesium deficiency? She mentions a study of intracellular magnesium in patients with serious heart problems, who often have low magnesium due to taking diuretics, who are having open-heart surgery, which simply isn’t relevant to normal people and dietary deficiency.
What are you going to do, bite my legs off?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
Quote some more Natural News, or Whale.to? It’ll be Mark “white food is bad for you” Sircus any minute. I’m quaking in my boots.
That’s nonsense. How can an organ not be supplied with enough magnesium by the blood, when the blood contains normal concentrations of magnesium? You have no clue about how human physiology works. The studies you are referring to are about very sick patients who I have repeatedly stated often have magnesium deficiency. They have little or no relevance to normal relatively healthy people.
Remember, this started with your claim that:
Whatever way you spin it, that statement is just wrong.
Sorry, silly mistake, wrong blog. I’ve been entertaining myself on Depleted Cranium with a chap who thinks everyone is magnesium deficient and that baking soda cures cancer.
@ Kreb:
Don’t worry, we probably have a few like that here.
AND remember the lurkers,
One of my favorite bands of the 70s (they sound awful to me now, I think you had to be there). Oh, you mean those lurkers…
Totally off topic (but is acid-base and magnesium woo ever completely off-topic at RI?), I came across an interesting study while nosing about in my magnesium files, a high quality, well designed study that concluded that found that between 133 mg/day and 237 mg/day is an adequate magnesium intake for 95% of people, and that any more than that is simply excreted. That’s considerably lower than the RDA, and suggests that the great majority of people are getting adequate magnesium.
Greg,
you are the mold scrapings at the bottom of the chum bucket, and your rantings are fit only to be printed on toilet paper that is then put to its intended use.
You disgust me.
You are an idiot who does not recognize his own stupidity.
I would tell you more about how you really make me feel, but those emotions weary me almost as much as your addlepated nonsense does.
You are a shitbeard. Go away.
Take this as coming from someone who knows a great deal more about autism and about vaccine-preventable disease than you do. Tell your story walking.
Obviously. In order to obtain an accurate magnesium measure, the patient has to be ground up and ashed before you run his entirety through a flame photometer. There is a slight drawback to this procedure, in that the patient is consequently a heap of ash, but by god you can now be sure of his magnesium level.
[…] some of the anti-vaccine groups’ rhetoric, yes, we are in a state of war. We are either approaching a Nazi-like state, or the Earth is being depopulated via vaccines, or something. Doctor Hooker (PhD in biochemical […]
Thanks to the Media Director at AoA, I’m posting here about the choice of Oprah as a commencement speaker at Harvard.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/31/viewpoint-oprah-as-harvards-commencement-speaker-another-assault-on-science/
I just had the privilege of meeting the great Charlie Haden on this balmy night at the opening of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. He’s one of my musical heroes and one of the greatest bassists of all time. He’s also battling the effects of post polio syndrome which make it very hard for him to swallow and walk but he doesn’t let it stop him. When I walked away from the crowd gathered around his chair, all I could think of was this post, which I read this morning, and how profoundly stupid and evil the antivaccine fearmongers are. What he wouldn’t have given for the polio vaccine when he before he was stricken in his teens. F*ck you RFK, Jr. you should know better.
@ Pareidolius: I was great friends with Arvell Shaw and his wife, who were devoted to their autistic child. Arvell and Madeleine set up jazz concerts to fund raise for the establishment of group homes for autistic adults. They were terrific advocates and extraordinary human beings…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvell_Shaw
@Lilady
“I believe they are incorrectly quoting the Commandment to not lie i.e. “bearing false witness”.”
Yeah Lilady, those TMs are the ultimate fraudsters. Their kids were already nonverbal, and were han d flapping and head banging even before vaccines. The could not wait to vaccinate their kids so that the could blame the vaccines. Heck, I hear parents rushing to vaccinate as soon as their kids start showing any hints of ‘stimming’. The want compensation? Hell — big pharma should be the one suing them for defamation!
Can I say that vaccines make children grow as well? After all, I’ve seen a lot of children who grew to well over 6 feet after vaccination, but never seen a 6 foot tall child before the age of the first recommended vaccination.
@Pareidolius
“I just had the privilege of meeting the great Charlie Haden on this balmy night at the opening of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. He’s one of my musical heroes and one of the greatest bassists of all time. He’s also battling the effects of post polio syndrome which make it very hard for him to swallow and walk but he doesn’t let it stop him. When I walked away from the crowd gathered around his chair, all I could think of was this post, which I read this morning, and how profoundly stupid and evil the antivaccine fearmongers are. What he wouldn’t have given for the polio vaccine when he before he was stricken in his teens. F*ck you RFK, Jr. you should know better.”
Have you also had the privilege of meeting severely autistic kids and other vaccine damaged kids? I am sure you have!
Yeah, group home for autistic kids? Now that should be our focus. Why bother finding a cure for autism when acceptance is better? Heck, maybe we should start rethinking the over one billion already spent on useless genetic research.
@Heliantus
“You don’t know half of it. Not the first time he is mimicking speeches from Alcoholic Anonymous or other behavioral/supportive groups. For someone who pretends to be a worker in such a group for impaired children, this copycat mockery is in very poor taste. Immediately making clear that, for all his posturing, he doesn’t give a damn about autistic children or any other non-typical person.
Greg reminds me of the somewhat drunk guy in the bar who believes himself funny by telling racist jokes.
The level of contempt this is eliciting…
Actually, looking at it this way, internet could be as disinhibiting as drinking alcohol. A rat could think himself a lion.”
It’s ok, Heliantus. Being angry with the person that is intervening and trying to help you with your disorder is a normal defense mechanism. We will give you a little space…(hee,hee, hee…)
@Denice Walter,
“interestingly, playing diagnostician by insinuating that a belief that vaccines *don’t* cause autism ( which is -btw- backed up by standard peer reviewed research, scientific consensus and practical studies that observe millions of vaccinated children worldwide over many decades) is denialism- or delusional perhaps- but instead that dreamt up theorising by compromised sources, parental report, fixed data and alt med proselytisation which can only stand up via an intricately erected scaffolding of conspiracy mongering is perfectly acceptable,
is very odd indeed.”
Just one question Denice: Do you believe vaccines play no role in autism? Remember just a one word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. I am waiting.
The Andromeda Galaxy should be sufficient.
M’OB and TBruce: Just ignore the Troll. He’s posted hundreds of times since he wandered over here from AoA…totally fact-free and just begging for any attention.
Greg:
I refer you to Michelle Cedillo, a petitioner in the Autism Omnibus Proceedings. Video of her before she received the MMR was shown by her parents as part of her case. An expert was able to show that she was already autistic before her jab.
I realise you were being sarcastic, but acceptance is better.
“M’OB and TBruce: Just ignore the Troll. He’s posted hundreds of times since he wandered over here from AoA…totally fact-free and just begging for any attention.”
Actually Lilady, it would be a lot more fun if you guys were to ignore me and have my posts go uncontested. I could just imagine how my posts would be pissing you guys off and you would stress even more by not responding. Priceless!
Ignore Greg until he provides the PubMed indexed study by a qualified researcher that a vaccine on the American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
Anything other than the answer to that question which was asked over a month ago will be considered trolling.
Don’t play word games with me, Greg: you’re not gonna win.
-btw- what are your degree/s in?
@ Pareidolius:
Anti-vaxxers have recently laid into Art Caplan- another SBM supporter they despise- who -btw- also had polio.
@Chris – exactly. Of course, he is always good for a laugh & a psychological study in pathological behaviors…..
I find this whole “cure” thing very interesting. That I know of, you don’t really “cure” developmental delays. They’re just delays, after all. Like a train running late, it either catches up to the schedule or it doesn’t, it doesn’t get cured from the delay. Since I met the “science mob,” I’ve become more and more acquainted with autistic people who are perfectly productive and living what I would have otherwise confused as a normal life. Do they need curing? Do they want to be cured? If so, cured of what?
Of course, there are those whose autistic symptoms are bad enough to interfere with having a “normal” life. (There is no such thing, by the way.) But even they can be assisted into a life that is productive and full of meaning and purpose. This whole obsession with cures just doesn’t fit my worldview, I guess.
Am I wrong?
The countertransference should be hilarious.
@Ren – as much as someone can “cure” a child of Downs Syndrome, I guess.
In other news, Jake Lawrence Crosby is out of Age of Autism. He accuses AoA of taking Orac’s advice:
h_ttp://www.facebook.com/jacob.l.crosby/posts/3448232959614
Jake has me blocked on Facebook (yet he whines like a little boy that Seth Mnookin and others have blocked him on FB and Twitter. Fancy that?) But you can see his post if you log out of FB.
Orac, you have such power. Can you tell AoA to be honest as well?
@Ren – it was only a matter of time. Unfortunate that he has been “chewed up and spit out” by the very organization that made him….I wonder who will be doing the 666 Degrees of Separation hit pieces for AoA from now on.
I guess the real test will be if Jake continues to attack his “former hosts” if they’ll finally put out an official piece on his family’s ties to Monsanto.
@Ren – I notice that Jake only has “8” followers on Facebook….not a very auspicious showing, given his “fame,” right?
His responses to the comments posted on his page are interesting as well…..
@Lawrence
Monsanto? His ties go all over the place. His uncle is a good friend of Rick Perry of Texas, who got a lot of money from Merck and mandated the HPV vaccine for girls. That same uncle is getting a ton of cash from Big Oil. And the kid’s dad helped a friend get a job with GSK, or some other Pharma company (Ren, can you help?). I wonder if Jake isn’t really an agent for Big Pharma that was placed into AoA to destroy them and discredit them from the inside?
What bothers me is how these parents don’t lift a finger to advocate for children and adults diagnosed with ASDs. They are *too busy* posting on AoA and paying for and providing *treatments/cures* such as castration, chelation, bleach enemas and stem cell transplants at offshore, unregulated clinics and other dangerous abusive biomedical interventions.
Meanwhile the majority of parents who have autistic kids are doing the heavy lifting for them, by advocating for funding for increased scientifically-proven therapies such as ABA, Speech/Language, Occupational and Physical therapy, for employment opportunities and, yes, for the establishment of alternative living situations, for those youngsters who are severely impaired.
They are shortsighted, ego-driven nasty parents, who cannot envision that many of their children will require ongoing support, once they “age-out” from the sheltered school programs. Some of their children will require alternative living arrangements funded by tax dollars. There are tens of thousands of young adults who have been on waiting lists for years, awaiting group home placements.
Gawd almighty I do despise those parents, because of their pseudoscience, their hero worship of disgraced and discredited former doctors and their “biomedical medical interventions” that are plain and simple child abuse.
@Ren – in fact, he is far more closely connected to those organizations than anyone he’s done a hit piece on……
Ren, that is very good news indeed!
I notice that AoA is trying to make their new Blaxsted video go “viral”- not the only thing they’ve helped “go viral” if you ask me-
interestingly, that video was made possible by the ‘art’ of Ms Natalie Palumbo, their new bright, rising star- who does what she’s told I suppose- replacing he who has gone supernova and departed the antivax firmament.
Saying that AoA took our gracious and benevolent host’s advice nicely illustrates Jake’s fantasy-based mode. If they took Orac’s advice, they’d stop promoting VPDs by discouraging vaccination, padding AJW’s ALREADY grossly distended ego and disfiguring and mutilating the English language on a near-daily basis..
Lawrence, they have many folk @ AoA to take up the slack -including TMR creatures by may go by other names ( Jameson= Mamacita, Goes= the Rev etc).
Reuben , I think Jake is an agent for Big Cluelessness , not Big Pharma.
I forget the details. If you dig deep enough, it appears that Jake is no more than a few degrees away from the very things he hates.
( recap for newbies:
in summer 2011, I personally advised Jake that joining AoA as a junior partner might destroy his chances for a career in reality-based or SB endeavors. I also questioned his conspiracy theories; Jake answered -paraphrases- “So be it” and ” You don’t understand conspiracies” or suchlike.
You might ask, “Why waste your time?”
Well, I try to help students even if they are unseemly and disconcerting).
Now, it appears that he’s tossed a chance at a career as an SB epi AND an AoA-based stint at woo-wankery nearly synchroniously.
In addition, his disclosure of internal e-mails might make him an unlikely candidate for any business position. He doesn’t seem to know how to get along with people, is not good at speaking publicly or maintaining a public image and can’t write up synopses to save his life.
Does anyone here have any advice for Jake?
Unfortunately I’ve got to get ready to depart…
@Denice,
Hey Denice, I am not playing any games. My degree is in Psychology. Same field as you. Actually, I don’t think much of the field. It is nothing more than the academization of common sense. Actually, some of it is also pretty much bunk such as Freudian theories.
I think we also have tennis in common. It’s my fovourite sport and I have been playing for decades. Who are your favourite men and ladies players on the tour? Who do you think will win the French Open? I hope not Nadal.
Denice, it also struck me when you said you chose not to have kids. I have two kids. Before having them I would have said they are not important. At times they do drive me crazy, but they do add purpose to my life. Denice, this might be a personal question and I am cool if you don’t answer, but do you regret not having kids? Don’t worry! Take as much time to answer.
Denice, now that we are being honest with each other will you also answer my other question. Do you believe vaccines play no causal role in autism? Unfortunately here, I have to stick to my one word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ request. Again, I would say no. So what’s your answer Denice?
@Lilady,
Hey Lilady,
I totally disagree with how you characterize certain parents of autistic children. Is busting their butts day-in and day-out caring for kids with medical, developmental and behavioural challenges not enough for you? Even though I don’t believe in many of the alternative medicine they resort to, I also don’t think its fair to consider such efforts as cruel in intent. These parents love their kids and see how autism is ravaging them and are desperate to try anything. They are acting out of love. Really Lilady, what’s there to despise? Further Lilady, that these parents vent on AoA demonstrate how much they seek justice for their children. If someone were to harm your kids would you not seek the same? I might also add that such actions are not only noble and courageous, but they are also extremely kind and useful. Through their protests they warn other parents about taking measures in preventing their kids from ending up on the autism spectrum.
Still ignoring the attention-seeking, ignorant, uneducated Troll.
@lilady – thanks for pointing out that Time article. I don’t understand how anyone can use “letters to the editor” as proof of their position. (Except anti-science anti-vaccine cranks)
I doubt that it thinks much of you, either.
Orac: Jew
Seth Kalichman: Jew
Paul Offitt: Jew
Is it any surprise that all of a sudden Orac cowers under the same old tired fabrication now that the rug has been pulled out from under him? RFK and Dan Olmsted will be hailed as heroes soon and the rest will be made to pay for their crimes.
I love commenting on RI, but I think, we, at times, are preaching to choir.
Thanks to Dachel’s daily Media Updates, we all have the opportunity to reach an even wider audience through our posts on local and national media blogs and articles.
@ Lawrence: I took care of Josh, by linking to his article on AoA and I just posted over the “pediatrician’s” comment. I thought linking to Bolen’s Jake-inspired screed was a *nice touch*.
Just keep on posting on top of the comments section…it really p!sses off the crank posters. 🙂
“Still ignoring the attention-seeking, ignorant, uneducated Troll.”
If you wanted to truly ignore me, should you have not said anything?
“I think we also have tennis in common. It’s my fovourite sport and I have been playing for decades. Who are your favourite men and ladies players on the tour? Who do you think will win the French Open? I hope not Nadal.”
Gosh! This Greg chap sure seems like a swell guy….
There have been a number of cases of parents who got it into their heads one way or another that their child was demon-possessed, and proceeded to perform violent “exorcism” rituals on the child to try and drive the “demon” out. In a depressing number of these cases, the attempt at “exorcism” killed the child.
According to Greg’s logic, I guess these parents who kill their children are awesome parents, and should be praised for “busting their butts” to try and help their children by beating them to death. Why, as long as you’re really convinced that bludgeoning your kid or suffocating them or drowning them is good for them, you should be recognized as “noble and courageous,” “kind and useful”!
Of course, in the land of reality rather than the land of Greg, these people are child-murderers.
Wow, nice company Greg keeps….he must be proud.
Come on Lawrence, he like TENNIS!
He must be a great guy. (dead kids notwithstanding)
“Still ignoring the attention-seeking, ignorant, uneducated Troll.”
I suggest that posters here, continue to ignore the attention-seeking, ignorant, uneducated Troll.
@TomB – yeah, I play Tennis now, Tennis is cool….(though I always prefer Badminton).
I’m still trying to figure out Ted’s comment above….again, “the company you keep” and all that…..
Awwww….now we have the racists come out to play, too. Can we put Ted and Greg in a room together and let them play with the toys?
From what I remember reading on his Holocaust-denial postings, Orac has said he’s not even Jewish. What’s Ted’s anti-semitic/racist/moronic ranting point? Is he a regular here from the lunatic fringe or a new troll?
@MSII – didn’t expect an anti-Semitic troll, but I again, I guess Greg is in good company……yeah, I don’t believe Orac is Jewish either, still trying to figure out the point there.
I’d still like to see about getting a Happy Hour together with any of the local crew here……my locale is quite hopping.
“I’m still trying to figure out Ted’s comment above….again, “the company you keep” and all that…..”
Garden variety “It’s the JOOOOS!!!” conspiracy claptrap.
Ted:
Please provide the answer that Greg has refused to address for over a month: please post the PubMed indexed study by a qualified researcher that shows a vaccine on the current American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
Or are you going to call me a “Jew” and ignore me? Though I would find it very strange that Jewish parents would name a child “Chris.”
About 15 years ago, I went down to Albertson’s to pick up something, and the checker was an 18-or-so guy, quite obviously Jewish. I say that not just because he looked exactly like a young Jerry Seinfeld, but also because it wasn’t quite sundown on Saturday and he was wearing a yarmulke. His name tag, I swear, read “Christopher”.
And here I was hoping he was a Bohunk.
” His name tag, I swear, read “Christopher”.”
Obviously undercover.
(except for the yarmulke, but then again, they’re crafty like that)
Oh, and Greg—if you’re interested, my answer to your “Yes, we have no bananas” question is: YES!
A lot of the posters here have scientific reputations to protect, professional care to exercise—I have none of those things in this area, so I’ll say what they won’t say: pure unadulterated coincidence accounts for almost all of the so-called “vaccine injury” cases you gomers hyperventilate about.
The ruling principle of the universe is Rosannadanna’s Law: “It’s always something.” IOW, Shıt Happens. When shıt happens, it has to happen sometime. Everything else that happens has to happen sometime.
If you live to be 100, you’ll live 36,500 (or 36,501) days. If you “come down” with some neurological condition one day (impossible), one time in 36,500 it’s going to be the same day you got your first vaccination, or ate your first mushroom, or decided to wear red socks, or….
But you idiots can’t even come up with a coincidence like that. All the proof you can come up with that “vaccines cause autism” are cases like Hannah Poling (not autism) or Michelle Cedillo (obviously autistic beforehand).
Serious “vaccine injuries” are one in a million (which is a euphemism for “consistent with zero”). I believe it’s zero. Most people here won’t come right out and say that, but I will. Shıt happens, and when it happens, it’s going to happen on the same day as something else. That’s the way time works.
I played soccer with a Jewish kid whose name was close to “Jesus” in Spanish. (The J is a hard H.) So we called him that. To this day, I can’t remember his real name. We knew he was Jewish because of the yarmulke.
Le sigh. When I was in sixth through at least tenth grade I had a habit if wishing folks Happy Hanukkah. Both to be more inclusive, and to rebel against the Christmas saturation that occurred in December (especially those years I spent living south of the border, and that means even a few borders south of Mexico, not to mention the chapel in Ft. Amador, Canal Zone had a nativity on one side of the entry walkway and a menorah on the other). I rolled my eyes when I was if I was Jewish, and would ask them think about my name and religion. Blank stares.
I now have learned that even those who celebrate Hanukkah have no clue about what the root “Chris” means in a name. Or Jesús (which is a common given name in Spanish speaking countries, I think I have known few).
*Also to be contrary I used to refer to Christopher Columbus Day as Cristóbal Colón day. It just so happened on the other end of the Canal Zone from where I lived are two towns: Cristóbal and Colón. (hey, I have no idea how to put accent marks in, so I hope the cut and pastes work!)
Does anyone here have any advice for Jake?
Yes: get lost…
Yesterday, I have been “received” by the flatmate of my oldest brother. You see, my brother, when he has a problem (and 95% of the time, an interpersonal problem), he call me and I usually advise him but carefully indicate that he must take a decision by himself. He also indulge in a lot of projection and automatically, in 95% of the case, assume that the other party is out to screw him (abuse him financially or not respecting him).
I get called at least 5 times a day. Thursday last week, I have been called 13 times from 6pm up to 2:30am. The last time, he was arguing with his flatmate who then proceed to throw him out of the appartment for yelling at 2am.
He’d been there for a total of exactly one week, from the 24 up to yesterday where we moved out all his belonging.
Before that, he lived for 5 or 6 weeks here at my place and I lost my temper many times and he decide to move out.
Before that, he lived for about 8 month in an appartment were he kept sending subpoena (is that the correct document?) to his landowner so that he deal with his front door neighbors who lacked respect for him (yes, I also have a short temper with him. Will he send me a subpoena?)
He’s unable to deal with other peoples except by subpoena. As for his capacity to take a decision, his decision cells (or brain) are deader than dead. Even if we inject a new cell lines into his brain to rejuvenate the decision areas, the cell would promptly be killed.
another problem of him, which Greg share, is that, he always get what he want based on “what if” scenarios. I made a conscious decision never ever take a decision based on a what if scenario and we usually clash because I never give in to his decision (and here, I am telling that he takes decision but manage to get his decision taken by other peoples so if his decision is a wrong one, he can blame other for his bad decision).
Now, the inability to take a decision by himself while letting other take the decision in his mind with what if scenario; is that what we call manipulation? Yes indeed.
Couple that with his usual concern that the other peoples are manipulating him and taking advantage of him, you have the recipe for projection.
melt all that with the following autism diagnostic criteria:
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
and you have the recipes for a very serious personality disorder; not autism. Autism affect how we learn, which rate, etc…but we can easily learn the wrong behavior in an abnormal intensity or focus which can be the root of a personality disorder.
Just like Jake Crosby. Or Greg though Greg isn’t autistic, he show a similar pattern to let other take his decision based on elaborate what if scenario.
The common answer to these kind of peoples is: get lost.
Alain
he show a similar pattern to let other take his decision based on elaborate what if scenario.
Btw, isn’t that a defining feature of a crank? (Null, Adam, etc…)
Alain
lilady: What bothers me is how these parents don’t lift a finger to advocate for children and adults diagnosed with ASDs.
Yes! I only had ADD, and my parents were really good advocates. They went to bat against the school administration (I had a hard time figuring out the girl rules, got bullied badly, and teachers/principal did squat), helped me transfer to a private school when the first school didn’t work out, and listened to me every time I said ‘uh, this medicine isn’t working.” As a result, in high school and college, I knew what style of learning worked for me, could navigate student services, and was even able to negotiate with the county when I got selected for jury duty. (I got selected at nineteen, while I was in my last semester of high school.)
It beats me why these parents can’t see that they should show their children that they are firmly in their corner by supporting them any way they can. Or why they wouldn’t want their kids to be as independent as possible. I guess the AOAers and the “thinking moms” just like their fairy stories too much.
On another note, I see the misogyny train has pulled into the station right on schedule.
#141 I would love to be wished Happy Hanukkah! I wish there were more diversity where I live. I’m Christian myself but I love holidays, even when they’re not mine, and people should be able to wish me happy *any* holiday, Jewish or Hindu or Wiccan or Satanist.
Holidays are just nice.
@Lawrence,
“Wow, nice company Greg keeps….he must be proud.”
Please don’t assume for a second that I entertain Ted’s racist, despicable comments that implicates Jews as the purveyors of toxic vaccines. Individuals of all races, including Jews, do see through the vaccination scam and know better than to give vaccine poisons to kids. Perhaps Ted is an extremely frustrated parent of an autistic child and feels the need to vent, but his comments are totally inappropriate and hurtful. Still, I do agree with his assertion that RFK and Olmstead will be vindicated once the vaccination hoax burst.
@Antaeus,
I have made it clear numerous times that I am not inclined to support controversial treatments for autism such as bleach enemas and chelation therapy. Still Antaeus, do you blame parents for feeling desperate when they have autistic children who head bang, scream, bite, kick, spit and show all outward signs that they are in severe pain? They can’t sleep; their stomach hurts; they have seizures; they are food intolerant; they have constipation or diarrhea. Their kids have all these ailments, Antaeus, but the mainstream medical establishment won’t touch them with a 10-foot pole because to do so might incriminate vaccines. Antaeus, what are these parents to do? What do you expect them to turn to?
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
You know Rev, I cannot help but shake my head that you guys are so confident yet show so much hesitation in doing the decisive studies that will put the final nails in the coffin of the anti-vax movement. Yes Rev, you can’t do that vax/unvax study due to ethical concerns, then what about the study of unvaxed populations that will show they also have a 1 in 50 autism rate? What about animal studies, Rev? Let’s pump those monkeys up with vaccines and show that they have the same health outcomes as unvaxed monkeys.
Nice of you also to think of your friends ‘scientific reputations’ and ‘professional care’ that you must speak for them. Can’t help but think though that nothing good will come from an environment where scientists are afraid to answer a simple question of whether they believe vaccines cause autism.
Greg—all these studies you want have been done to death. There is no there there. There is no correlation—never mind causational relationship—between vaccines and autism. Ab-so-fu¢king-lutley NONE!
Ted: “RFK and Dan Olmsted will be hailed as herpes soon.”
Well, that’s the way I read it on my tablet. 🙂
Note to self: Don’t mistype words you’ve bolded.
But seriously: The first time I ever heard about this manufactroversy was when I was flipping around the channels and happened to pass Scarborough, and RFK, Jr. was on there talking about autism and thimerosal in vaccines and it was just a total love-fest—between Joe Scarborough and a Kennedy! (Apparently he’s got an autistic child, too?)
Here’s a general rule: if that poisonous, squint-eyed little troll doll agrees with you, you’re wrong. No takesee-backsees.
^^ And that, my friends is a REAL ad hominem fallacy—unapologetically engaged in.
Khani:
All the more reason for me to perfect the making of potato pancakes. They have a tradition both for Hanukkah, and as Norwegian lefse. Lefse are just flatter latkes, but the latkes taste better! Also I fail at lefse So latkes win. Uff da!
Okay, everyone: Happy Soon to Start Summer!
(and that is better than what see what is celebrated on June 2nd!
Hmmm, did not see any PubMed indexed studies about seizures from vaccines more often than the diseases. I guess Greg is just trolling.
Notice that Greg’s argument hinges wholly on the false premise:
* If nobody can provide you with an answer that you find satisfactory, it’s okay to pull a delusional one out of your ass, and it’s okay to act on it with complete disregard for the actual consequences of your actions.
Now I’m sure Greg will reply with yet MORE words trying to prove the OTHER premise of his argument, i.e. that poop-smearing autism is a hard thing for parents to deal with and it would be great if someone could find a way to stop more parents from having to face it. He keeps thinking we disagree with that premise, or at least that seems to be his justification for hammering at that same point over and over and over.
But it’s still the OTHER premise of Greg’s argument that fails. “Autism is bad” isn’t where people disagree. “Autism is bad, THEREFORE I can swallow without critical thinking a cockamamie self-contradicting conspiracy theory that blames it on vaccines” is where the disagreement comes in. Does Greg think that autism parents are the ONLY ones who really want an answer, an answer that no one has for them? (Actually, given his repeated demonstrations of intellectual myopia, perhaps he actually does.) People suffering Lou Gehrig’s disease certainly must desire the medical establishment to say “Oh, hey, yesterday we didn’t know the answer, but today we do!” Does Greg think they are any less worthy of an answer than autism parents? Does Greg think that they can pick some culprit essentially at random and demand that the medical establishment immediately swear a loyalty oath to their guesswork answer? “I had a soft-serve ice cream the day my first Lou Gehrig symptoms showed! Why does the medical establishment refuse to do the least little thing for me, by which I mean eliminate all soft-serve ice cream which I have decided must be the cause of Lou Gehrig’s?”
#154 But lefse’s great too!
My family is Norwegian and I say “uff da” non-ironically. 🙂
But not when the lutefisk comes around. Then I’m too busy holding my nose and passing it as quickly as possible to say anything whatever.
Hey Ted the Useless Tool, I’ve got a few more for you:
Jonas Salk – Jew
Albert Sabin – Jew
Karl Landsteiner – Jew
Erwin Popper – Jew
Baruch Blumberg – Jew
Irving Millman – Jew
(If you don’t know who these people are and what they did, look them up.)
And another: Old Rockin’ Dave – Jew, and while not to be mentioned in the same breath as these others, damn proud to be kin to these people in even the slightest way, and nauseated to have to share the same planet with a stinking heap of garbage like you. On the other hand, while Orac is not a Jew, I feel it is an honor to have worked in my small way on the same great endeavor of fighting cancer that he has, and I say to him, “Yasher koach”.
If you don’t like the things that Jews have done to promote the health and safety of humanity, you can always turn down the results of their work, and when you get sick, DIE!
Oh, and Greg, for whom I have already demonstrated my love, Jews are not a “race”, any more than are Shriners or bicyclists.
Chris, Khani: While I am not Norwegian in any way, I love lefse. And I live in a state so saturated with Norwegians that it’s sold in the grocery store 😉
Yes Greg, I know severely autistic children, children with Down syndrome and Angelman’s syndrome. Some of them severely disabled. None of them damaged.
And in a grand “Fuck You Post Polio Syndrome” gesture, the great Charlie Haden played a full set of jazz tonight. Two encores. It would be awesome if he lived to see polio eradicated in his lifetime.
[…] would fan the flames of this hatred in his recent speech to anti-vaxxers is irresponsible and despicable, as another science blogger has said. Of course, Kennedy’s history of anti-vaccine advocacy is […]
All of Greg’s posts seem like they were written by Eddie Haskell, especially the super creepy “I like tennis too” one he just posted to Denice. Wait, not just Eddie Haskell, Inspector Clouseau played by Eddie Haskell.
#159
There are places where lefse *isn’t* sold in the grocery store?
*hushed voice* … oh those poor people.
Kennedy’s outrageous statements and high profile appearance at such a notorious anti-vax conference leads me to ask the question:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/06/01/is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-anti-science/
“empty shells of human beings”
Which is exactly what you’re left with after ‘curing’ your child of Autism. Either that, or little Mikey lying in a white coffin.
@ Chris:
re Summer:
according to Frazer, as late as the 1890s, they still were burning bonfires on Midsummer’s in Norway.
Summer is icumen in soon.
For some odd reason, quite a few Norwegian people find yours truly attractive : they are not put off by the whiteness but I look differently enough to be interesting.
A while back I chanced upon a Norwegian folkdance fesitval in the mountains:
it was very hot- in “thin” air- yet the dancers- aged 40-70+?- were extremely lively and seemingly un-exhaustible in their black woolen costumes ( with white shirts, felt hats, boots etc). The musicians, similarly attired, played accordions. I was very impressed by their stamina and height.
Also I stayed at a hotel where a family reunion was being held-t hey also thought I was grand- and made me feel ‘short’- I was offered many very rich treats- small pastries with berries- and coffee- at all hours.
@ Pareidolius:
Greg informs us that he has a degree in psych- which I take to mean a bachelor’s in general. A very different thing.
I suppose he thinks that by mentioning his interest in tennis, he’ll get me to agree with him / confess my deepest, darkest secrets. It doesn’t work like that.
Asking his ritualised question and demanding a one word answer is indeed a word game because there’s no reason to limit the answer to a single word… Orac doesn’t charge us by the word.
On a happier note, I am looking forward to the planned festivities on the solstice. Is it a “wear white” party AGAIN this year? Retro-pagans are a little too traditional for my tastes.
Greg, I don’t think that vaccines cause autism or other neurological conditions, based on DATA, not idle speculation.
Khani:
Actually where I live, at least not in my neighborhood. But there is a store that sells it, and it also sells lutefisk. It is in a neighborhood that has a parade on the 17th of May, and has a Nordic Heritage Museum.
Oddly enough, the city I lived in with lefse in the grocery store did not have a Nordic history museum. We stayed there to be close to relatives (Norwegian ones) when my dad was stationed in Korea. It is where I learned how to make fattiman bakkels and sandbakkel cookies (I have no idea if I spelled that right).
@ Ted:
* Orac: Jew (?)
** lilady: Jew (?)
– I’m pro-vaccine and pro-science and I have great respect for Orac, Dr. Offit and Seth Kalichman.
– I post on many science blogs, where the blogger is a Jew.
– I am quite well-educated in the history of the Holocaust
– I am a registered Independent, but I usually vote Democrat.
– I’ve attended Jewish brises, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals.
– I make wickedly delicious potato latkes, matzoh balls, briskets and charoset and provide them for Jewish holiday tables, when we celebrate Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah and the Passover seder.
– My best friends are Jewish and their disabled son who I visit each week and who I have substitute guardianship for, is Jewish. (Cannot break him of his love for all-year-round Christmas music, though).
* Orac was raised as a Roman Catholic
** I am a Christian
Oh, and Ted…gay k’ken in yam.
–
Khani: Well, according to my data, lefse is rare in Wisconsin, and non-existent in Califiornia and Nebraska. I know, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it.. This was especially glaring in college, where I ended up having to explain lefse to some international students. (At least I didn’t have to explain lutefisk.)
I don’t think there is much explanation for lutefisk. At holidays I just try to pass it on as quickly as possible, and not breathe too much while it’s within ten feet.
@Lilady – still having a bit of fun over at the Time Article……it does get old fast though…refuting the same old lies, over and over again.
Latke please.
Given Greggie’s ongoing babbling about desired “studies” (coupled with a total inability to answer simple questions about them), perhaps he’d be interested in signing up for this kewl offering.
Khani:
Well, if it is prepared well it is more like fish jello, without much taste. I guess it helps if you can taste the lye if it not completely rinsed out. Perhaps that is why I can’t stand cilantro, my genetics make me sensitive to alkaloids as a way to survive where they preserve fish with lye.
I wonder what the percentage of Scandinavians are supertasters like me. Though at the presentation on the subject the statistics were about a quarter of all are supertasters. Then the little papers were passed , and I believe I was the only one who reacted so much to the horrible taste. I spent the rest of the presentation trying to rinse my mouth out with water.
@ Lawrence: I just returned from visiting my “other son” and I’ve been at the Time blog. I see you keep posting on top…good job!
@ Keith Kloor: I’ll be paying a visit later tonight to that blog. Some of the AoA groupies are posting there.
@ Khani: I usually have the lutefisk discussion with Chris, late at night around Christmastime, when old blinky box is in sleep mode…(half Scandinavian, you know). Uff da.
Khani: Oops “Twas the Night Before Christmas….
http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/lutefisk.htm
I will point out again that vaccination is a positive mitzvah. Where one finds unvaccinated pockets is generally among the Haredim, who (among having other practical problems) are known for shunning secular education.
@ lilady:
You are a topic of discussion between AoA and “LInda” @ AoA Facebook ( below photo of Oprah in Crimson)… and given a new ‘nym.
-btw- how can we discuss Jewish cuisine without salmon?
My own shiksa goddess version, salmon with burnt skin ( don’t laugh- it’s good!), pales in comparison to authentic smoked salmon.
I create my magic with either Norwegian or Alaskan salmon.
@lilady: I too find the parents at AoA and (non)TMR quite contemptible as well, with their shrill screaming and pursuing dangerous “cures.” I’m much more in awe of parents like Austimum and Agashem, who strike me as way better parents and advocates. I wish they’d post more frequently about autism, but I suspect they’re busy actually caring for their kids. PGP, your parents sound like they belong in this group, as do I suspect Julian Frost’s.
Another name I’d like to add to the Awesome Parents of Autistic Children group: Australian Judy Sharp, whose profoundly autistic son created Laserbeak Man, a superhero advocate for autism.
Guys other than the entertainment value of knowing that I am pissing you off, I sometimes wonder what value is there in our exchanges. Your VCADOD (vaccines causing autism denialism obsessive disorder) is so severe that I am starting to think that you are beyond hope . Anyway, maybe you guys can still be useful: On an unrelated matter, my three year old daughter has an issue with breathing through her mouth and always keeping it open. She also snores excessively during the nights, and even in the days we can hear her laboured breathing. She was scheduled to have an operation to have her tonsils and adenoids removed but I cancelled it. I made this decision after considering that kids tonsils do shrink over time. As you can also guess, I am from the school that believes medical intervention is often overrated and is rarely useful outside of fixing problems when things really goes awry. For instance, operating for advanced cancers is an example where interventionist medicine is useful. I firmly believe that medical intervention is almost always futile, if not harmful, when it seeks to improve the health situation of an already healthy individual. Vaccination serves as a good case in point. Anyway guys, I still question some of my decisions – –definitely not the belief though that vaccines cause autism! No change of mind there! Anyway, what do you guys think? Is a tonsillectomy beneficial even in cases where the problem is not one of the tonsils causing infections?
Greg, please provide the PubMed indexed study from a qualified researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
Even though you have not answered that for over a month I will give you one bit of advice: Do not ask strangers on the internet about personal medical advice. Go to a real doctor.
FTFY. The ship has long sailed on your embarrassing yourself having any noteworthy engagement value.
Oh, and…
Sounds like there may be a strong genetic factor in play.
Greg, tomorrow morning call a real doctor.
Also, stop trolling.
See if I can get this straight:
Greg who casts aspersion on the minions’ judgment concerning vaccines is now asking for “medical” advice about his daughter’s condition? Over the internet.
Will wonders ever cease?
Still ignoring desperate for attention, ignorant Troll.
@Denice Walter: Do you mean this exchange on AoA Facebook?
“Age of Autism: Lilady is active on Skepticologist hubs. Not sure if she’s a paid marketer or one of their fanatical freebies but she seems to have unlimited free time to haunt the comments sections of any publication mentioning vaccines. It’s fun to simply bring up Skeptic icon Sam Harris’s Islamophobia and calls for torture and genocide every time she posts a Skeptic-related link. Or the fact that Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer is a member of outed multi-industry front group ACSH. She tries to change the subject frantically. There’s a sense that the people who administrate comments on some mainstream sites are part of the same network. The Skeptics have been pretty much exposed as the stealth marketing arm for Big Ag, Big Pharma, biotech, banks and the chemical industry. She’s a former nurse who worked in public health or something, administered lots of vaccines and argues everything by pulling the “medical authority” card or quoting Skeptic bloggers. It’s also funny seeing her run up against actual medical personnel with a different view because it robs her of her only strategy. That is if cooperative administrators don’t simply censor anyone who counters her spiel. Inevitably the real identities of these people come out. The threat of legislation against anonymous viral marketing is what they’re afraid of. ~A
Yesterday at 2:27pm
Linda Hubbeling Lange Wattonville Thanks for the info. Seems her username is missing an “e” (lielady).
Yesterday at 3:27pm ”
Dammit, they’re on to me. I’ll be missing my paycheck from *Big Vaccine* and *Big Pharma*. //sarcasm.
As a side note, I wonder if the troll’s clearly defective “theory of mind” is an indicator that it is indeed he who contributed the genetic factors to his children’s ASDs.
I remember that a while back, there was an intriguing finding that was still being debated whether the results were reproducible. The experiment involved showing toddlers something being moved from one container to another, when a particular person was out of the room, and then asking the toddlers where that person would look first for the item, when they returned to the room. The toddlers with ASDs persisted in answering that the person returning to the room would look first in the new container at much later ages than neurotypical toddlers. This was hypothesized to mean that autism delayed the toddlers’ development of a “theory of mind,” an understanding that another person can have a different set of memories than oneself, as well as differing beliefs, differing perceptions, etc.
I think we see the troll unwittingly displaying just how defective his theory of mind in a lot of his comments. Every time he says “I’m going to ask a question about what you believe, and the people who agree with me are telling the truth, and the people who disgree are lying, because I *know* they must actually believe as I do,” it raises a red flag: defective theory of mind. And here he is again, casually admitting that he’s trying to annoy us for his own entertainment, and in the same message asking us for medical advice. It would be a mistake, with someone as clearly dishonest as the troll, to assume that asking for medical advice means he’s actually expecting medical advice, and to assess his theory of mind based on that. But what he has given away, without realizing it, is that he can’t understand that we now have no reason to interact with him at all. He has essentially admitted that he has absolutely no intent of participating here in good faith, and that he only posts here as a hostile act. And yet he assumes that this state will continue. I believe that once again, we may be seeing the effects of his ASD on display.
It’s sort of disquieting and sad, really; he seems to think that he comes across as a completely normal person with a fully realized mental capacity. In his eyes, I’m sure he even sees himself as clever, and believes that we must walk away from our encounters with him stung by his wit. He doesn’t realize that when others look at him, they see an individual severely limited not only in conscience but in key intellectual faculties.
Well.
Actually, lutefisk is Biblical in nature, so I can’t expect you unbelievers and non-Scandinavians to believe.
It’s the piece of cod which passeth understanding.
@ Antaeus Feldspar: The Troll has been playing mind games with us all along.
He first came here and posted some not-witty nonsense about spotting pro vaccine people. (Just after posting that same crap at AoA.
He then made some outrageous statements about people with ASDs…trying to evoke responses from us. Then he lied about about his education and lied that he work with autistic people as a “behavioral therapist”.
Now he *claims* to have a young child with some medical problem…a pathetic bid to have us respond.
Troll is desperate for attention and engagement of any sort…good, bad or indifferent…it makes no difference to the Troll. So reminiscent, IMO, of Thingy. Best to just ignore the Troll and it will go away.
I always found it fascinating to play peek-a-boo with my daughter and other infants, to observe how infants develops thinking processes…
http://www.parentingcounts.org/information/timeline/peek-a-boo/
@ Khani:
Well “I’m a believer”. Does it make any difference if a person is only half Scandinavian? 🙂
Dunno about anyone else, but I don’t even read G’s comments anymore. I have a note from my doctor telling me to avoid stupidity as it exacerbates my fibromyalgia.
Greg, if you are uncomfortable with the options already suggested to you by your daughter’s pediatrician, get a second opinion from another pediatrician (i.e., licensed specialist MD).
For your daughter’s sake, don’t let it go while hoping for the best.
Small children snoring is not normal.
I have two boys on the ASD spectrum. There is nothing damaged about them. They are amazing and I love them exactly the way they are. Too bad that is not the AoA philosophy.
Maybe it’s just my browser, but it looks like AoA has deleted the entire post, along with all the the comments.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/05/rfk-jr-nazi-death-camps-and-the-battle-for-our-future.html
@Chemomo,
“Greg, if you are uncomfortable with the options already suggested to you by your daughter’s pediatrician, get a second opinion from another pediatrician (i.e., licensed specialist MD).
For your daughter’s sake, don’t let it go while hoping for the best.
Small children snoring is not normal.”
Thx, so much for the advice. I have an appointment already booked to get a second opinion. I just wanted to see what you guys think about the matter. Also, I am surprised that no one took me up on my remark that interventionist medicine for healthy individuals –ie vaccines!–is usually useless.
@Anteus,
I think you are over-analyzing me a little with the ‘defective theory’ of mind stuff. I really do think you guys are full of SH!T, and find at times that humour is the best way to deal with your insincerity. Also, my kids don’t have ASD. My daughter just has enlarged tonsils. I defend autistic families here out of sincere sympathy for their plights, and knowing that you guys are dealing them the cruelest cards. I am also starting to think that Chemomo may be the sincerest amongst you. Perhaps she will be the first to overcome her VCADOD.
@Lilady,
Have you been doing all that really nasty stuff that you are accused of??!! Really Lilady?? You are absolutely incorrigible!!
Thx, for the advice
Delete ‘Thx, for the advice’ last stuff…
@Anteus,
I also don’t believe that the theory that autistics suffer from a ‘theory of mind’ deficit is correct. Working with autistics, I see how at times they do make a concerted effort to get a reaction out of me, and which leads me to think that they are able to think from my perspective. I think what really is at play is not a ‘theory of mind’ deficit but more likely egocentricism thinking going haywire. I really do believe that autism in most cases represents a damaged, immature brain that reasons in childlike ways.
GreG:
We have taken you up on it repatedly already, and you haven’t listened. We’re smart enough to know when we’re flogging a dead horse.
Says the guy who’s posted obnoxious analyses of us, accusing us of denialism (VCADOD).
Oh we’re perfectly sincere. We genuinely believe what we say about vaccines. And your “humour” is anything but.
@BL – nope, it isn’t your browser….looks like AoA got the heads-up that comparing the vaccine program to the Holocaust was maybe a “bad idea” and left them open to legitimate criticism…lol
I was engaging with Twyla over the weekend at the Time Magazine article on Oprah & she tried to take the stance that she & AoA aren’t “anti-vaccine” – yet she was unable to point to a single article at AoA that could be said to be positive about vaccine, nor would she publicly state what vaccines she was in favor of…..in my book, that makes you anti-vaccine.
Greg:
So you think autistic people are all self-centered jerks, basically? It’s unfortunate you’ve had such a miserable set of autistics to meet, then, since I can’t imagine any other reason you would have reached that conclusion.
As far as “theory of mind” goes, I do agree that many autistics do understand that other people are other people. However, they do tend to have demonstrable deficits in interpreting that. I doubt it’s anything monolithic like “well, they have no theory of mind” or even “their theory of mind is bad” — my opinion is that autism is a constellation of deficits which, when arrayed together, produce the condition we recognize. This would explain the fact that it is heritable yet has few clearly defined genetic links — it isn’t just one gene or even one trait, and deficits in some areas but not others mean the person doesn’t have autism yet may contribute genetically to passing it on, if the right other genes are also not passed on. The mind is intensely interrelated, after all.
Pareidolius @89
The Northern California RI regulars should have a meetup some time, maybe when Das BlinkenLights gets to San Francisco? (I was going to do HJF, but family life intervened).
Khani @190
I am now laughing out loud.
Christine @193
Agree, only it’s not stupidity, it is willful, boneheaded ignorance.
Well, Greg’s education in psychology obviously didn’t progress as far as research about the development of theory of mind.( -btw- Antaeus gives a good intro).
Greg apparently thinks that he and I have an educational background and sporting interests in common, thus illustrating his striking lack of insight into yours truly and others who support vaccines.
There are many reasons why these abilities( and others like self-criticism) do not develop equally in all adults- although there may be biological influences it can be strongly affected by envrionmental helps and hindrances.
Reading woo is amongst the hindrances.
I just posted at the Time blog about the expunging of the Holocaust RFK Jr. video, editorial content and the comments. I also linked to the Discovery blog, which analyzed Kennedy’s presentation and AoA’s commentary and vile comments:
http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/31/viewpoint-oprah-as-harvards-commencement-speaker-another-assault-on-science/
Liz Ditz,
Why is it that some people, Greg is a good example, parade their ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills as if they are something to be proud of? I don’t get it.
@ Krebiozen:
They don’t know enough to understand that they know very little:
thus every snippet that tickles their fancies is regarded as being insurmountabley significant and every self-aggrandising pronouncement by dithering attention wh@res is thought of as revelation from above.
“Why is it that some people, Greg is a good example, parade their ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills as if they are something to be proud of? I don’t get it.”
You know what they say? You keep a too open mind and someone will fill it with BS!
@Lawrence,
“..yet she was unable to point to a single article at AoA that could be said to be positive about vaccine, nor would she publicly state what vaccines she was in favor of…..in my book, that makes you anti-vaccine.”
Good point, Lawrence. Maybe pro-vaxers and anti-vaxers should look past their differences and find something positive to say to one another for a change. Let me start:
….(Holding Lawrence’s hand in a spirit of goodwill) I would like to thank pro-vaxers for giving us vaccines that over the years have save countless lives from the scourge of infectious diseases….
…(Releasing Lawrence’s hand slightly) I thank them even though many infectious diseases were well on their way out even before vaccines due to improved diet, sanitation and cleanliness. And, with adapted and life-long immunity these diseases might have been eradicated completely.
…..(Releasing Lawrence’s hand completely) Yes Lawrence, instead what we have now are vaccines that have upset the immunity balance and as a result these diseases will likely be with us forever. Further, we also have to deal with vaccine complications such as an autism epidemic and other neurological impairments, surging cases of diabetes and cancers, and as well as exploding amounts of degenerative diseases.
…Thank you pro-vaxers and Lawrence for giving us vaccines!
Now its your turn, Lawrence!
That’s been done (and much better), Greggie.
It’s the piece of cod which passeth understanding.
There is a time and a plaice for that kind of humour.
@Calli
“I doubt it’s anything monolithic like “well, they have no theory of mind” or even “their theory of mind is bad” — my opinion is that autism is a constellation of deficits which, when arrayed together, produce the condition we recognize.”
I think you made a good point, Cali. Explaining autism under some broad psychological concept is quite problematic. This is why it’s all the more important to find real physical bio-markers for autism. Previously, I asked Kerbiozen about testing autistics for their cytokines. We got into lumbar testing and how invasive these tests are. As well, they carry troubling side effects. I am encouraged by this article that I am passing on from AoA which discusses the commencement of blood-testing sites for autism. Kerbiozen do you foresee these tests being used to determine if there are noticeable medical changes in kids after vaccines? I am hoping Kerbiozen will answer me because he was one of you that signed up to ignore me. Guys, I am starting to get real confused about who is ignoring me, who is quasi-ignoring me such as Lilady and Chris who respond to my posts by saying they are ignoring me, and who is not ignoring. Could you help me by stating whether you are ignoring me, quasi-ignoring me, or not ignoring me? Anyway Kerbiozen, I would like your reaction to this article. Can you come out and play? Do you guys remember the 70s New York gangs movie ‘The Warriors’? Do you remember when the rival gang member started taunting The Warriors in that menacing voice? ‘Warriors, come out and play!” “Warriors, come out and play!” “Kerbiozen, come out and play!”
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/a-healthy-conversation/2013/05/emory-site-of-largest-autism-clinical.html
Um, Greg, I don’t really see how my point relates at all to what you said next, about coming up with biomarkers. If it’s a broad constellation of deficits which together produce the condition, how would testing of cytokines be helpful? You’re still looking for a monolithic cause; just a different one.
Sure. Do you remember the conclusion of the film?
(I would apologize for failing to demand a one-word “yes or no” answer, but this colossal failure should be good for a laugh either way.)
I need more popcorn 🙂
Alain
Alain, if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s rightly popular, but perhaps mostly among a certain age group.
I’m 36 and 3/4, do I qualify?
Alain
Didn’t knew we could rent movies on youtube but I found it for 3.99$ canucks money. I might rent it “tomorrow” (really today) evening.
Alain
Greg: Maybe pro-vaxers and anti-vaxers should look past their differences and find something positive to say to one another for a change.
Pssssh. I don’t have enough middle fingers to say what I think of that statement. Look, as long as your side refers to everyone with Aspergers, autism, ADD/ADHD and allergies as ‘vaccine-damaged’ and insists that they’re just fine with their kids becoming blind/deaf/dead because of measles, mumps or whooping cough..they’re wrong.
Your side doesn’t see anything wrong with dead kids. In fact, they go out of their way to harrass the parents of kids that died from v.p.d.s.
The other side..yeah, they’re against that. Some of them are of an age where they survived those diseases. Others, despite being adults, could DIE of those diseases. I’m neither, though I had a friend who caught whooping cough in adulthood, and I work several positions where I could, possibly, spread those diseases to very vulnerable people. I get my vaccines and boosters because 1) I don’t want to be the index case in an epidemic, and 2) I can’t afford to be laid up for several weeks.
You, on the other hand would cheerfully spread whatever disease you caught, gleeful at the cleansing. Also, you probably wouldn’t miss your eyesight, as you clearly don’t read at all. By the way, my sympathies to your kids; I hope they survive to adulthood and that they take after someone more intelligent than their parents.
The takeaway is that common ground doesn’t exist here, unless it’s an ice floe that we can push your lot out to sea on.
I’m not quasi-ignoring the Troll. I haven’t engaged Troll for weeks.
Meanwhile, back at AoA there is no statement about why the editors removed the latest offensive Holocaust blog. Perhaps at the request of Robert Kennedy Jr. whose own references to nazis and such, have further damaged his pathetic reputation?
Have you seen the latest update on the Quackfest that features the Congressional Panel (Burton, Issa, Weldon and Posey)? The background story there is that they were able to snag Issa at the last moment to add to the 3 Stooges panel and were in thrall about their catch.
Now they are (rightfully) concerned about Issa’s commitment to their cause. Right about now, I imagine that Issa has grave misgivings about AoA and Safe Minds. Issa took a drubbing from most of the science bloggers for that sham autism hearing in Congress…and he’s getting whupped again for showing up at the Quack Fest.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/06/with-all-due-respect-mr-congressman.html
BTW, Jake closed down his AoA Twitter Account and now tweets here…
https://twitter.com/JakeLCrosby
#203 Can’t really take credit for that one, as my dad thought of it first. 🙂
#211 Ahahaha!
@lilady – I noticed that too. I guess they are seeing “politics” in action and don’t seem to like it very much.
If you’re not 100% behind the AoA agenda, you must be in the pay of Big Pharma…..of course, Congressmen don’t respond well to AoA attack-style tactics.
@lilady – I wonder how Twyla can still consider AoA “not anti-vaccine” when comments like “sponsor the Ban Vaccines 2013 Bill” are published there…..that’s a whole lot of crazy going on…..
@Cali
“Um, Greg, I don’t really see how my point relates at all to what you said next, about coming up with biomarkers. If it’s a broad constellation of deficits which together produce the condition, how would testing of cytokines be helpful? You’re still looking for a monolithic cause; just a different one.”
Cali, while autism may appear outwardly as ‘a broad constellation of deficits’ I am not sure if we can jump to the conclusion that there is not a main biological underpinning that is accounting for these deficits. If for instance all autistics have unusual cytokines readings regardless of whether they flap their hands, head bang, have stomach issues, or show a ‘theory of mind’ deficit, then cytokines levels are a useful tool for explaining and diagnosing the condition. Perhaps the same may be said about autistics’ blood-work. Though it may suit vested interest to explain autism in terms of its outward manifestations, and thereby mask it’s causal underpinning(s), truly not much can be learned about autism from this practice.
I think it was Nietzsche who said he didn’t hate is fellow man, but he just held them in contempt. He explained that hate involves the person arousing a strong emotion in you and through such an impact it puts you on equal footing with the person. There is a certain degree of respect with hate. Contempt, however, is different in that you can’t be bothered with the person and you will always see them as your inferior. Guys, with all your obsessions about AoA going-ons this leads me to believe that despite your dislike there are certain amounts of fear and respect there. On the other hand, the vast majority of AoA members truly care less about your existence. They definitely hold you guys in contempt.
“Look, as long as your side refers to everyone with Aspergers, autism, ADD/ADHD and allergies as ‘vaccine-damaged’ and insists that they’re just fine with their kids becoming blind/deaf/dead because of measles, mumps or whooping cough..they’re wrong.”
PCG, indeed some are fine with taking their chances with the measles over autism. I am one of them. Still, you missed the main point of the debate. It’s about informed consent. Tell the person that its his choice whether his kid gets autism or the measles. Don’t tell him crap such as his kid won’t get autism because pharma funded studies say so.
Greg:
Respect? Excuse me while I die laughing.
Fear? Definitely. The AoA mob has engaged in fear-mongering and threats for years. While unlikely, there’s always a possibility that somebody there could go postal and do something terrible.
“Didn’t knew we could rent movies on youtube but I found it for 3.99$ canucks money. I might rent it “tomorrow” (really today) evening.”
See Alain, don’t you feel bad now for constantly telling me to FOADIAF? I introduced you to an epic movie that won an Oscar in it’s time. Just kidding! The movie is quite cheesy but watching it as a teenaged boy I thought it was super cool. I blush now even thinking about it.
‘didn’t hate ‘his’ fellow man….’
See Alain, don’t you feel bad now for constantly telling me to FOADIAF?
Me? Feeling bad?
Ha
HaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
Okay, you’re funny….you make a nice distraction after a night of work.
now you can go FOADIAF but thanks for the laught 🙂
Alain
@Greg
Then you, sir, are an idiot.
So you want us to lie? The choice is measles or no measles. Of course, you could convince us otherwise by providing evidence that the choice actually is autism or measles.
Greg: Hah-hah,hah. Nietzche hasn’t been a credible resource since the end of 1945, bub. I don’t respect your crowd, and I don’t fear them. They’re just so fun to mess with that I can’t leave ’em alone. As for measles, I hope you’re still fine with ‘taking your chances’ if an epidemic breaks out at a school near you.
Considering that both rubeola and rubella can cause neurological disabilities similar or even worse than autism, Greg is not just a troll but a very stupid troll.
Greg,
No, you clearly think we can jump to the conclusion that there *is*. How is that better? And what makes cytokines plausible? Explain that to me. Because just fishing for signals in the bloodwork of a group of autistics is not likely to yield the results you want. You would be at great risk of “finding” an association that doesn’t exist.
I realize it is very time consuming to go at this in a scientific manner. But in science, haste very much makes waste — I think what you propose would set us back, by wasting effort on various dead ends before making real progress.
Having proudly likened yourself to the most loathsome, cringing character in the film, I should imagine so.
And speaking of ‘warriors’, I think our two young guns, PGP and Alain, make a grand showing of their mad skillz above. (applause). Take a bow, kids.
Continuing on:
when I first read AJW’s work, I found it perplexing because it did not sit well with what I had studied in developmental neurophysiology. I forgot about it for a while. Then in 2001, my own cousin expressed a fear of vaccines for his newborn son. I told him that I wasn’t worried: now why would I be so cavalier to someone who is very important to me and who had waited so long for a child?
Because the data shows that ASDs have a genetic aspect and may be associated with insults in the first trimester as well as peri-natally. AJW’s work did not ‘fit’ the data in general: reading Deer years later made absolute sense. There was not replication of AJW’s work in the literature *except* by his own crew. Another red flag.
Later on, psychologists have shown very early indicators of autism regarding patterns of gaze – much earlier than the MMR; there have been genetic studies, various brain studies and imaginh, comparisons of physiognomy ( head size, facial proportions) all of which show up prior to age 12 months. More studies are on the way.
We all know about the unreliability of parental report as well as eyewitness report. I am only skimming the many data-based reasons why I doubt the autism-vaccine link.
AJW took advantage of parents’ fears of vaccines based on a prior incident in the news and was linked to parents’ groups via LAWYERS who provided subjects. He had financial interests in developing his own vaccine and in testing materials. His legal, subject selection and financial skulduggery should be enough impropriety to dismiss consideration of his results even if he didn’t fix data. Which he did.
People who do not study physiology, memory or developmental psychology do not have the particular insights that I had in 2000.-btw- the child in question was vaccinated and is now 11 years old: he is a terrific student, plays musical instruments and sports and has no signs of ASD- despite the fact that his parents have careers in fields that may be associated more frequently than usual ( actuary/ mathematics and engineering- his father creates ‘movie magic’ electronically).
I have appointments now.
So Cali,
Given the link that I sent you earlier, what are they really testing for with autistics’ blood-work and how will this not help us understand autism better? Kerbiozen, I would like your position also. (menacing voice) Kerbiozen, come out and play! Chemmomo, I am also finding you interesting. I can detect a certain honesty about you. What do you have to offer about testing autistics for their blood-work?
“The AoA mob has engaged in fear-mongering and threats for years. While unlikely, there’s always a possibility that somebody there could go postal and do something terrible.”
Actually Julian, you brought up something that might be a real possibility. I think lots of parents of vaccine damaged kids do want blood and I don’t know if I can blame them. You have such parents who witnessed how vaccines destroyed their normally developing kids. They are frustrated and approaching their breaking points caring for their sick kids. Then when they go to AoA to vent about the injustice that was committed you get the likes of Lilady calling them bad and disgusting parents. Lilady, for your safety I suggest that you don’t get within 1km of the next AutismOne fest. They will definitely have a special place for you at their barbecue luncheon!
And speaking of ‘warriors’, I think our two young guns, PGP and Alain, make a grand showing of their mad skillz above. (applause). Take a bow, kids.
Thanks you very much 🙂
Alain
Non serviam.
And the evidence that what those parents witnessied were children who were actually damaged by vaccines?
Oh, that’s right. You don’t have any.
Still ignoring the pathetic, lying, desperate-for-attention, ignorant Troll.
DW: *blushes* Thanks.
@ Krebiozen:
“Kerbiozen (sic), I would like your position also. (menacing voice) Kerbiozen (sic), come out and play!
Or…
Stercore plenum troglodytam
This is, of course, a straw man. There is absolutely no conflict between looking at autism in terms of the characteristic symptoms it produces and looking for whatever the causes of the disorder may be.
If we started discussing the developmental delays and cognitive challenges that are typical of Down’s Syndrome, who on Earth would come along and interject “Oh, if you’re talking about the symptoms of Down’s Syndrome, that means you’re ignoring the possibility of it having biological underpinnings”? Who would come up with such a non-sequitur? Likely, only someone who has already convinced themselves of a pet hypothesis about what the “biological underpinnings” are, and has had that personal conviction distort their perceptions. Such people are, ironically, generally poor at science: instead of seeing whether the data actually conforms to their hypothesis, they inevitably twist the data to fit their presuppositions.
Again, who is claiming that studying the outward manifestations of autism would somehow “mask its causal underpinnings”? What is the proposed mechanism by which understanding better what autism does would somehow conceal how it came about? The suggestion makes no sense; neither does the suggestion that “truly not much can be learned about autism” by studying its symptoms. The only person one could imagine making such an argument is, again, the wanna-be pundit with a pet theory, who will dismiss every avenue of investigation that does not lead to his personal belief as being clearly misguided.
Less than a year ago, we all saw on our televisions the massive devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. Many of us were moved to very strong emotion witnessing the needless suffering wrought on innocent lives by Sandy. Yet, did the presence of such strong emotion mean that we felt respect for Sandy as a person? Clearly that would be ridiculous, as Sandy wasn’t a person.
The idea that feeling strong emotion towards a source of needless suffering, whether that source is a force of nature or simply a willfully ignorant schmuck, means you possess “respect” for that source, is utterly false for almost every possible value of the word “respect.” It can only be held true, I think, if we interpret “respect” in an extremely narrow fashion, to denote solely “recognize the capacity to do harm” and connote nothing about any other capacities the object of such “respect” might be claimed to possess. Under this definition, for instance, one could “respect” a flaming bag of feces left on someone’s front step for its ability to make the world a worse place. This is the only definition of “respect” under which it would be sound to say we respect the typical AOAer.
I think it was Nietzsche who said he didn’t hate is fellow man, but he just held them in contempt
If only there were some sort of distributed information source, with a “search engine” which one could use to see if Nietzsche ever made some purported comment.
I wonder what Greg would say to my cousin. 2 of her three children have gangliosidosis. And both have the late infant/early childhood version. So they were normal babies. Normal toddlers. Then slowly, insidiously, they began to regress. Fortunately, my cousin has brains and logic, and didn’t blame vaccines, but had her children tested and found out the cause. (I won’t say luckily because unlike most parents of autistic children, my cousin lives with the heartache that most likely 2 of her children will die before they are out of their teens). But I can well imagine that an ignorant person might have blamed vaccines for the regression. My cousin isn’t ignorant. Unlike some people who blame vaccines for autism.
I have no particular opinion about Nietzche, but I find Gerg’s [sic] prefacing the remark as though he were having trouble sorting through his vast mental store of philiosophers and then immediately launching into an explanation of “exactly” what this putatively hazy recollection “means” to be hilariously funny.
@Antaeus Feldspar
Keep telling yourself we can best understand and treat autism by studying its outward symptoms and ignoring its underlying bio-markers. You can run but it’s starting to get a lot harder to hide. Also, who constantly monitors and provides incessant updates on the ‘bag of feces’ left on someone’s front step? Quite a strange perversion don’t you think? Hee, hee, hee!
Let’s just suppose that anti-vaxxers are correct and that vaccines cause autism**. Now how would that work?
Imagine that we have a child who has no problems and then, after being given the MMR *** he becomes autistic, the “light goes out of his eyes”, ” he is destroyed” or suchlike.
How would that come about? Do the evil toxins/ metals/ viruses move from the injection site into the brain to devastate its celluar architecture, kill neurons, re-route its interconnections, poison cells or possibly stimulate cell growth in the PFC?
What are the underlying mechanisms? How does a brain change from average to “autistic” In a few hours/ days/ weeks ( varying with report) ?
Why does this seem unlikely to happen?
-btw- Steve Novella discussed the DSM and biological / other indices at the other place last week.
** in a hypothetical dreamworld.
*** after an average of 6 days, was it?- via AJW.
Ok VCADOD Group,
Chores call so I must depart again. I will be back but in the meantime I want you to make a secret list of the ways in which your VCADOD is impacting your life in a negative way. At a later time I will take the list up.
Cheers, Greg
as though he were having trouble sorting through his vast mental store of philiosophers
Making up spurious quotations in the hope of spurring corrections seems to be part of the trolling SOP. The troll gets the keenly-desired attention, and the person providing the correction gets to feel superior, so it’s win-win.
Ummm…..on the one hand, we have a hypothesis:
Let’s just suppose that anti-vaxxers are correct and that vaccines cause autism**. Now how would that work?
Hours, days, weeks:
What are the underlying mechanisms? How does a brain change from average to “autistic” In a few hours/ days/ weeks ( varying with report) ?
I want to know that too.
How would that come about? Do the evil toxins/ metals/ viruses move from the injection site into the brain to devastate its celluar architecture, kill neurons, re-route its interconnections, poison cells or possibly stimulate cell growth in the PFC?
Who did I ask again, I recall asking a MIT computer scientist PhD who was featured in one of Orac’s post; Even asking her if she’d volunteer to write an article on my blog (didn’t hear about her lately) on the hypothesis of vaccines reducing the size of minicolumns in the brain. She must be busy trying to find a p0.95 (not a p0.05…) possible causal link but I still haven’t of her.
And now Bingo !!!!
Chores call so I must depart again. I will be back but in the meantime I want you to make a secret list of the ways in which your VCADOD is impacting your life in a negative way. At a later time I will take the list up.
Greg run for cover :D:D:D
Nice job Denice, you made Greg run for cover 🙂
Alain
Oh…..and Greg, why does every professional who support the hypothesis of vaccine injury causing autism run for cover when I offer them an article on my blog? Sincere question.
Alain
I know antivaxers are facts-averse, and probably therefore even more arithmetic-averse, but honestly, Greg (and any lurkers reading his drivel), it’s not complicated.
Autism tends to become obvious even to the untrained observer about six months of age. Coincidentally, the first round of childhood vaccinations are scheduled at six months.
Even allowing a month either side of the mean for both, and signs of autism appearing within six days (qua Wakefield) being sufficient indication of “causality”, the “onset” of autism is going to follow vaccination by that (made-up, and in fact fraudulently “cooked”) interval one out of ten times!
And yet, when offered the chance to “prove” their pet theory, the best—the absolute best—case the antivaxers could come up with was Michelle Cedillo, who was obviously autistic to the trained eye long before vaccination.
So Greg, these are the facts. Autism grossly presenting within six days after vaccination 10% of the time. Even so, not one single case of correlation, never mind causation, to show for it.
When you get through with your “chores”, deal with these facts, or shut the hell up!
“And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, ‘Kid, whad’ya get?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.'”
Once again, we see someone who cannot refute their opponent’s position choosing to dishonestly misrepresent it instead. It would be extremely easy to look through every single comment I’ve made on this post, and anyone who did so looking for any place where I suggested we should “ignore [autism’s] underlying bio-markers” would quickly realize that no such suggestion was ever made.
I think it goes without saying that an anti-vaxxer who thought his position was more reasonable than mainstream medicine’s pro-vaccine position would feel no need to lie about the pro-vaccine position. The only people who feel the need to resort to straw men are the ones who, at best, have never found the courage to really examine their position and see if it truly holds up.
Gosh, a simple search for “Autism research Australia” turned up over 4,000,000 hits. I’ve no doubt many of those are bogus and a few are for “treating the symptoms” but I know of a few being carried out by research institutes in Australia are looking for the cause of autism. And that’s just one country.
Greg — I read the link you posted. It has *absolutely nothing to do* with cytokines. It’s a genetic test. In other words, they’re looking for something completely different than what you’re talking about, and in fact contradictory to your position that vaccines cause autism. Do you even read things before citing them?
Calli
Do anti-vaxers ever read things before they cite them?
And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things
I am quite confident that the attribution to Schopenhauer is wrong. Einstein neither.
Gotta be Hobbes. Or maybe Calvin.
No, I know! It’s not Woody, it’s Woody’s son.
Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog just posted a long piece about RFK Jr.’s antivax tendencies: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/05/robert_f_kennedy_jr_advocate_for_antiscience_and_antivaccination.html
Haven’t seen the AoA bots show up in the comments yet, but I’m sure they will, as the article criticizes St. Andy Fakefield and AutismOne too. Lilady and Lawrence, heads up…
From Jake Crosby’s new Twitter account…a link to his FB page.
Now he’s b!tching that Dan has refused to publish his latest 6-60-600 degrees of separation slime against a science blogger/author. Momma Nicole has chimed in defending Sonny Boy.
https://www.facebook.com/jacob.l.crosby/posts/3448232959614
Google has apparently stop making its cache available, but Bing has a cached copy of the article here:
http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=rfk-jr-nazi-death-camps-and-the-battle-for-our-future&d=27023356884156931&mkt=en-CA&setlang=en-CA&w=Sr_pD_5PIcRmRuOI8TFtCfqSSMoZAAdj
Thanks Edith. That Slate article was written by Phil Plait and it’s a goodie. My post just went up and I think you will enjoy it.
Broken Link, rest assured that I mentioned Orac’s blog and the *disappearing* AoA article. Kennedy will not be pleased.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/05/robert_f_kennedy_jr_advocate_for_antiscience_and_antivaccination.html
*** after an average of 6 days, was it?- via AJW.
I just had a father tell me his child became autistic the same day as his jab. And that isn’t the first time I’ve seen that alleged.
I’d love to know how they think that works.
@ TomB:
Right?
I guess they think that the dirty metals/viruses/toxins/monkey cells in the vaccine go into the vein in the arm to the neck that connects directly to the brain and there these contaminants go on to clog up the inter-tubes, making them all sticky and narrowed, glommed together…. thereby causing autism.
This theory is similar to the one that describes how food additives and aspertame cause cancer- except that this one is clogging on a micro- level within not between cells.
If we work backwards like this we can re-construct the naive theories of physiology that lie behind their speculation.
@ lilady:
That is hilarious!
I wonder if I would get sued if I assiduoulsy compiled all of the various back-and-forths betwixt and between the principals over the past few months and we minions read it aloud for an SB audience as a radio play?
I’m JOKING.
@ Denice Walter: I was awake until the wee hours this AM…just reading Orac’s blogs and our comments about Jake going rogue and Olmsted’s feeble attempts to keep the lid on the *situation*.
BTW, what was the topic of Jake’s thesis?
@ TomB: The *classic* for me was Michele Bachmann’s statement…
“I just spoke to a mother whose child had the HPV vaccine and thereafter became mentally retarded”.
[…] Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? (RFK, Jr. edition) (scienceblogs.com) […]
lilady: Do not get me started on that embarrassment to our gender. She’s finally retiring, thank god! I suppose the GOP *could*replace her with someone worse, but that would take some digging.
@ pgp: hubby’s pal sent an internet screed that bachmann is retiring to run for president in 2016. she’ll get the nomination right after the cardinals in rome elect me as pope lilady I.
But then you would have to be addressed as “Holy Mother,” which would be amusing but might lead to confusion.
@ shay: I was thinking in terms of “Her Holiness”. 🙂
lilady: I’m pretty sure she’d get the nom; the GOP isn’t coming back to reality anytime soon.
pgp: bachmann hasn’t got a chance…if she did…I’d be the first to donate to get her the nomination…a sure shoo-in for the Dem. nominee.
[…] Death Camps and the Battle For Our Future.” Here is the cached version of the post. Here is Orac’s take on that post. Basically, RFK Jr. equated children with autism to the Holocaust. I’m not […]
That the comments got around to Jews brought an association to mind is not surprising.
On the Jewish feast of Purim, the story of Esther is read in the shul. The congregation is usually well-supplied with noisemakers to drown out the name of the villain of the piece, Haman. The most traditional of these noisemakers is a wooden rattle known as a “gregger”.
And here we have our own “Greg-er”, a wooden-headed noisemaker that tries to drown out rational discussion.
Different design from the moktak, but largely the same concept.
Old Rockin’ Dave: I hereby award one internetz to you.
I just returned from Paul Offit’s excellent lecture at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. His newest book “Do you Believe in Magic” was the subject of his lecture. And no, his personal stalker Jake Crosby did not show up to harass Dr. Offit.
Dr. Offit mentioned that The Guardian has already published his article about mega vitamins and that there will be a Book Review published tomorrow:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/07/vitamins-stop-taking-the-pills
Dr. Offit has an Op-Ed piece about supplements, scheduled to be published in tomorrow’s NY Times.
(I’m thrilled that I actually had the opportunity to meet him…he’s one of my heroes).
@Lilady – you might want to take a look at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/meningitis-vaccine-bill-gates_n_3398557.html
Some of our AoA regulars have posted already….
@ Lawrence: I’ve already posted at Stone and Jen/Jened (some comments are still in moderation). 🙂
@ Lawrence:
@ lilady:
Although I am presently recovering**, a few notes:
-odd how the anti-vax contingent is unable to comprehend the meaning of the title of the HP article!
– I am a supporter of Gates AND his products
– Dr Toni Bark (ing?) was a recent guest of the Nullmacher with legal reps Holland and Krakow ( see this past week’s GN show/ progressive commentary hour at shows/ progressiveradionnetwork.com); she has a website- Disease-reversal.com
– good work L&l at huff-n-stuff
** arrived home from a quick trip to the Land of Humidity to visit friends for a birthday ( my hair has gone as dread as it wants to be- given its ethnic heritage; sinuses worse) but there was waterside dining, hilarious deadpan commentrary on the state of the world, etc.
The great magic of nearsightedness led me to read this as “waterslide dining” twice.
@ Narad: Somehow I don’t picture Denice as a person who would dine on the cuisine available at a water park.
There’s a lively discussion taking place at LB/RB. Jake Crosby (not representing AoA), has deigned to post a whiny comment and “Chris” posted back at him:
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2013/06/09/wakefield-dodges-debate-again/
@ Narad:
@ lilady:
While my friends are indeed hilarious, they’re not waterslide-type hilarious.
On a more serious note- re the Guardian article/ Offit-
I’ve been following this general theme since the 1990s ( beta carotene) and more recent results about one of the B complex, E, high doses of Ca; obviously various herbs are a concern as well.
So suppose one of us ( ahem!) were to commence writing that creatures who hawk supplements, herbs et al, were (( shudder)) Merchants of Death!!! Who PROFIT whilst increasing the liklihood of ((tremble)) cancer or heart disease for their blindly obeisant clients.
I can see it now:
“They don’t care if you die as long as they get your money first” “Is MIke Adams in league with Big Funeral?” ” Dead or Alive- supplements may provide either outcome” “Mega dose or Mega disaster” ” Are supplements also a ‘dangerous additive’?” ” You may ‘live’ longer with nutritional supplements but so do vampires”, etc.
( I think, just joking, I make more sense than the usual suspects- must be that old “2 sd” thing at work)
Offit, who has been labelled as pharma-compromised, is now showing that he can criticise pharma- since they profit from sales of supplements.
@ lilady:
Aha! Jake is back. He is truly a man without a venue:
altho’ he studied epi he’s not SB-which epi is
he’s anti-vax but has f@cked his benefactors ( but not in a good way)
AoA is a major purveyor of woo-centric vaccine mis-information
AoA principals are inter-twined with other anti-vax venues
AoA has many “writers’ and”investigators” *and* a young gun ( who can do videos) ready, willing and able to replace him – sans the dramatics.
TMR is primarily about parental martyrdom and sacraments.
He’s sidled up with a “journalist” who functions out of a rented mail drop in So Cal.
His twitter and facebook results are abysmal.
Maybe he’ll bother SB guys like Matt who won’t censor like AoA et al.
You know what they say about ” a prophet in his own country”.
Here’s the latest report from ABC TV News, about the stabbing death of Alex Spourdalakis, whose story was serialized at AoA. He was found dead in his own bed in his mother’s apartment.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9133211
I recall several comments that I posted on RI that questioned the veracity of the AoA’s blogs and comments about Alex’s care and his mother’s appeals for assistance (based on the comments of one poster who got through moderation at AoA) and my own instinct:
AoA has posted another article about Alex’s stabbing death. Read how the usual suspects are posting comments.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/06/14-year-old-with-autism-alex-spourdalakis-found-stabbed-to-death.html
I imagine it would help to distract from the earlier efforts.
“I am grateful for Age of Autism, its editors and especially Lisa Joyce Goes. I am also grateful to Autism is Medical (AIM) especially Jill Rubolino and Jeanna Reed and Dawn. None of this would have been possible without them.“
As a European and descendant of two sets of grandparents decorated for their resistance work in WWII, I would just like to add:
RFK, Dorey: DIAFF. For crying out loud, you miserable ghouls.
Lisa Goes is still posting on Alex’s mother’s fund raising Facebook page…
https://www.facebook.com/HelpAlexAndDorothy
Maybe, this would not have happened without the interference of Goes and her cronies at AoA.
May I have an autistic cookie please?
Thanks
Alain
They might want to scrub this one.
Alex Spourdalakis: First, destroyed by vaccines. Second, destroyed by the medical establishment. Sad,sad,sad!
Excerpts taken from an AoA thread…..
“Greg, I quit going on RI- too much group think and they will never concede on any points (Calli A has a couple times) even where common sense would require it. The abuse and stalking-type behaviour- like ‘lilady’ tracking what courses X takes, wondering what his thesis is, etc. etc. , what so and so’s staff are doing, the poll crashing- it’s all just too weird for me. I think a lot of them are not even parents and interested in only the blandest, most abstract of ways.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/03/01/the-value-of-science-blogs/”
So, is RI the greatest echo chamber, even greater than AoA?
RI an echo chamber? Oh, that is so hilarious. What happens to people who go over to AoA and strenuously object to the hive mind’s position on vaccines? They disappear or ultimately are banned as “trolls,” no matter how polite they are. What happens to people who try to object to something I say here? They get to post, only getting banned if they flood the comments with dozens upon dozens of repetitive and obnoxious posts (like Didymus), become abusive and insulting over a fairly long period of time, or rejoice over the death of my dog.
Very well then Orac and other vaccine pushers, for the next section in our little exercise I would like to put some typical pro-vaxxers sentiments to you and see how much dissenting views there are.
Is RI the greatest echo chamber?
We believe the studies finding no link between vaccines and autism are robust and exhaustive. We take issues with the argument that the are largely incomplete, having only looked in thimerosal, MMR, and only one study on antigens. Further, we have no issue with the apparent conflict of interest quagmire with pharma money being tied to these studies.
I don’t know if one can ever truly declare that scientific studies on any point are “exhaustive”; the door is always open for new evidence, if it should turn up. Right now we’re pretty convinced that “antigravity,” that favorite of science fiction, cannot exist. But show us enough evidence, solid enough evidence, that antigravity exists or just that gravity doesn’t work the way we thought it did, and it will prove that the previous studies weren’t “exhaustive.”
However, the studies have certainly been robust and exhaustive enough to settle any reasonable doubt over whether vaccines cause autism. The studies trying to find any correlation between vaccination and autism have been done over and over, at very large sizes, and have failed to discover such a correlation. Now, even if a correlation were to be discovered, it would not by itself prove causation. But when you don’t have correlation, that by itself pretty much torpedoes causation.
The only way one could plausibly argue that vaccines cause autism without evidence of correlation is if one had a solid mechanism to establish causation in one or more individual cases. But for all their arguing that such cases are to be found everywhere (which isn’t true, since such correlations would have been detected) every individual case where it has been suggested that causation is there to see turns out to be nothing of the sort. The Autism Omnibus is where the best cases, those with the clearest causation, were to be examined. Instead, the cases went the way of Michelle Cedillo’s, where the evidence clearly demonstrated that her autism was already developing prior to her vaccinations.
All reasonable doubt that vaccines do not cause autism has been settled. That is not to say that there will never be reasonable doubt at any time in the future, but until actual evidence to cause such doubt shows up, the burden of proof is on those who think vaccines cause autism to prove their case, not on anyone else to prove the evidence is not just overwhelming but “exhaustive.”
I also find it amusing that the person complaining about RI being “an echo chamber” is Jen. I have lost count of the number of times she has come here, made some utterly incorrect statement about some aspect of autism or vaccines, been patiently corrected with plenty of evidence to demonstrate she has made an error, disappears for a few weeks, then comes back making the exact same untrue statement. She appears to have absolutely no ability to learn or assess information.
Regarding Greg’s “little exercise”, he should try it with other well-supported scientific theories, like evolution, germ theory, the earth revolving around the sun – even denizens of AoA surely accept these. Sometimes a consensus view on something just means it is right.
Firstly Greg, you’ve been allowed to post your drivel here and haven’t been banned yet despite repeatedly posting comments that are offensive to autistics. That alone refutes your comments about RI being an echo chamber.
Secondly, I’m getting really tired of your passive-aggressive commentary. Somebody please refute his garbage. I don’t have the time.
Greg shouldn’t be shy. Here’s the AoA thread he and Jen posted on:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/06/dachel-media-update-growth-of-awareness.html?cid=6a00d8357f3f2969e201901d142793970b
Have I ever posted a comment on AoA?
Has Jen and her sock puppets “Sick Sauce” and “Dr. Dent” come here to post her inanities at me, in particular?
When I replied to her on RI, she called me a stalker.
Still ignoring desperate attention-seeking, ignorant Troll.
Greg:
Hey, you’re back! Good, now you can answer those questions. We’re waiting.
Boy, are we waiting.
Robust? Yes. Exhaustive? Not completely so, but sufficiently so for now. At this point, the burden of proof regarding any causal connection between vaccines and autism is on those who wish to establish it. Their repeated failure to produce credible, verifiable evidence for such a connection is telling.
Various components of vaccines have been alleged by the opponents of vaccination to be causal factors in autism. Sensibly designed studies have failed to affirm any of these claims. At this point, the burden of identifying the causal agent or combination of agents is on those who wish to establish a causal link between vaccines and autism.
It’s not clear that the current programme of mass vaccinations actually puts more money in the pharmaceutical industry’s shareholders’ pockets than letting the diseases thus prevented happen and treating them would (even after accounting for the sizeable fines that might well follow any well-substantiated evidence that those vaccines cause a previously-denied harm on a large scale).
On this basis, the conflict of interest is less apparent to me than it seems to be to you.
Here’s a question for you, Greg: Why don’t you go away, and maybe come back when you have some evidence that doesn’t have more holes in it than a newly-minted goth’s T-shirt?
I’ve conceded a few times? *chuckles* Greg only sees it that way because of his gift in reading what he wants to rather than what is present.
AoA is such a heavily-moderated place that it is NEWS when a dissenting voice- esp one of us- gets through.
Lawrence may have been allowed because they thought he was Brian Deer;
Alain, possibly, because he said he had AS .
Ren, because he was stealthly and quick about it ( more than once)
another accomplished guy, I forget his ‘nym.
Now the most recent : PGP was allowed in to comment about a crappy congress woman to John.
They allow so little dissent through that Todd started a blog to allow their censored comments to see the light of day- or is it the ‘light of electrons’?
It is the order of the day when dissent transpires @ RI- we even argue amongst ourselves.,
I have work. I’ll be back.
Is RI the greatest echo chamber? Again, please provide your dissenting views. Note also that failure to do so will be deemed as accepting of the sentiment.
“We reject the numerous claims by parents that their children were dramatically injured by vaccines. We consider that they are mistaken in believing that vaccines played a causual role, or they were misled in their haste to find something to blame. We consider autism after vaccination as sheerly coincidental.”
Greg is very silly. Just thought I’d point that out between OR cases. Back to work for me…ta.
A question for you all – do you think the DregTroll understands the meaning of echo chamber, given that it’s been allowed to post here freely for the better part of a month and even though it is by far the most obnoxious, inane antivaxxer to infest RI’s comment threads since the Thing?
Failure to respond is encouraged and will be deemed as accepting of the DregTroll’s utter irrelevance.
@Edith Prickly
I find this video apropos to describe Greg.
I have to say, the other trolls were much more interesting. They at least made an attempt at argumentation. Greg simply plays word games to bait the locals.
@Denice
Indeed you are right. It is indeed noteworthy when AoA allows dissenters to comment, though never a surprise when they ultimately ban those individuals. Their application of their commenting policy is, shall we say, somewhat variable, depending on which side of the party line a commenter falls. Politely worded comments pointing out errors?
Censor– er, “editorialize”. Calling people scum, pharma whores, Gestapo/Nazis, baby-eaters? A-okay.Greg:
If you’ll actually read the posts above your request for dissenting views, you’ll see quite a few have already been posted. Failure to respond to this comment will be deemed as sticking your fingers in your ears and singing “LALALALALALA-I-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU!”
Orac almost never censors posts. You yourself are evidence that dissenting views are permitted here. Can you find similar evidence on Age of Autism?
And speaking of RFK, he gets a polite but thorough smackdown on Slate again this week.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/06/robert_f_kennedy_jr_vaccine_conspiracy_theory_scientists_and_journalists.2.html
(someday I will learn how to shorten URLs).
Greg, the only “echo chamber” around here is the one between your ears.
Answers or GTFO.
In other news, Lisa Goes is in full-blown denial mode.
@Shay – this bit jumped out at me:
Verrrry interesting – I wonder why no one wanted to give it to her? IIRC someone posted a link last week to an archived copy of the Wretched Hive’s post about RFK’s speech with the video – lilady. was that you? Someone should send it to Slate.
Found it! it was Broken Link at 267 further up the thread. The post is cached but no video – my mistake.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/05/30/can-antivaccinationists-knock-it-off-with-the-autism-holocaust-analogies/#comment-262417
HJe also demonstrates his economy with the truth.
@Narad:
What is the history of AoA’s involvement with that family? I vaguely remember the boy’s hospitalization being discussed a few months back, but I haven’t been able to find anything in the archives here.
@TBruce – interesting that RFK Jr. goes “full-blown” conspiracy on this…..perhaps he’s not as “clean and sober” as he tries to appear to be?
Greg: Somehow, I don’t think the ‘medical establishment’ was responsible for A.S’s untimely death. He was stabbed, yes?
DW: Given the immense amount of time it took my last comment to go through (only my second) I expect to be banned very shortly. I only commented because anyone citing Bachmann as a reliable source needs to be hit hard with the hammer of logic. I’m familiar with her pre-congress career- the HPV thing was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her. As I said there, if she said the sky was blue, I’d have to triple-check to make sure it wasn’t red.
As advertising tools, basically. It’s only become clear to me recently that the medical mistreatment that was being spun was the hospital’s failure to provide a panoply of biomedical nonsense. The Wakefield involvment I found to be, as I stated a few weeks ago, nauseating. Moreover, I’ve yet to find any sort of story about what caused his dire warning of 72 hours to incarceration in a “psychiatric facility” (a generous construal of this remark would be as hyperbole; a more accurate one would be as a bald-faced lie) to go poof.
Note also that failure to do so will be deemed as accepting of the sentiment.
The troll’s neediness for attention — “Respond to me NOW or I’ll read a negative construction into the absence of responses! So there!” — is becoming downright creepy.
Here’s the AoA thread he and Jen posted on:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/06/dachel-media-update-growth-of-awareness.html?cid=6a00d8357f3f2969e201901d142793970b
Do you think anyone there realises they’re being trolled, with counter-productive advice on how to appear more hysterical and self-parodic?
Sometimes no response means no response.
@ Shay: Thanks, I’m already on the Slate Part II blog.
@ herr doktor bimler…See my post at # 308. 🙂
Polly Tommy checks in, with a story that casts the previous narrative in an even poorer light and also doesn’t jibe with the fact that the address hadn’t changed since November.
@lilady thanks for the link over here. I didn’t know you guys were discussing the murder of this poor child over here. Well, AOA just posted that his mother and whoever the hell the other person is (godmother, caregiver, grandmother) have now been charged with first degree murder. This is the most sickening thing AOA has done. And who is this LJGoes (I don’t know a lot about the players at AOA except for Kim)? The amount of involvement by AOA and this LJGoes is astounding and they should be sued by the remainder of the family. They took this too far. The question is–was this child delivered back to his mother due to their involvement and protests? This should be thoroughly investigated.
^ “Tommey”
Another side effect of alt med:
when a person in dire need of assistance ( from doctors, psychologists, nurses, medical facilities) has learned to regard both them and their expertise with derision, hatred and even fear, she certainly won’t trust them and turn to them when circumstances exceed her own capacities.
She is thus, alone and desperate.
Obviously, the tragedy will be blamed on the establishment by alt med prevaricators as another feather in their cap against the evil of the medical powers-that-be
.
Casting aspersion on others shifts the attention from being centred squarely upon them.
It’s incredible that you guys are giving me so much flack for entertaining Jen’s perspective that RI is one big, empty, hollow, echo chamber (hee, hee, hee). Let’s recap: I asked you guys if you believe vaccines play no role in autism and only a few of you responded and it was all affirmative. Most of you didn’t even bother to give an answer leading to my suspicion that you are too scared to say anything that may interpreted as breaking ranks. I asked you if you would abort a Down’s child, and again only a few of you responded. Surprisingly you all said you wouldn’t, which flies in the face of the stat that says 90% of the population would. And, today again, I put a pro-vaxxed sentiment to you, and again, only a few responded. Need I say that I am not surprised that you pretty much agreed with the sentiment? Guys, I realize how important to your fragile little egos that you see yourselves as superior to the uneducated, unenlightened rabble who epitomizes sheepish thinking. Still, if reality indicates that you are no different then that’s just the way it is.
@Denice
“Another side effect of alt med:
when a person in dire need of assistance ( from doctors, psychologists, nurses, medical facilities) has learned to regard both them and their expertise with derision, hatred and even fear, she certainly won’t trust them and turn to them when circumstances exceed her own capacities.
She is thus, alone and desperate.
Obviously, the tragedy will be blamed on the establishment by alt med prevaricators as another feather in their cap against the evil of the medical powers-that-be
.
Casting aspersion on others shifts the attention from being centred squarely upon them.”
Hey Denice,
How about it being as simple as vaccines seriously screwing up the kid and leaving him in a state that it was next to impossible for anyone to care for or treat him, including doctors, nurses, psychologists, parents, caregivers, and all?
@Calli Arcale
“I’ve conceded a few times? *chuckles* Greg only sees it that way because of his gift in reading what he wants to rather than what is present.”
Don’t be so scared and defensive. I will be right beside you when they try you for treason. Actually, given my anti-vaxed stance, maybe I am the last person you would want beside you.
@Greg
Show us the evidence, mate.
Greg:
Prior to the present day vaccine schedule which is supposedly causing a high rate of autism ( 2%) and mental illness- 20% now, I’m told- there were huge institutional complexes for patients suffering serious mental illness, developmental and other disabilities. ALL OVER THE INDRUSTRIALISED WEST. Most have closed their doors. Didn’t you study this for your degree?
Ever hear of Bedlam, Creedmoor, Willowbrook?
Serious mental illness and disability are facts of life that existed long before vaccines ever did.
Even this desperate ploy isn’t going to get Goes and the rest of the vampire nest off the moral hook.
Hee. Hee. Hee.
Lest that final line be construed in any other way, I should clarify that it is meant as a purely personal insult.
Guys, I am quite honoured that you allow me to post here. Still, I don’t accept this gesture as evidence that you are welcoming of dissenting views. I find even though you don’t ban anti-vaxers’ comments, we are, nevertheless, treated with a vitriol of hate and derision. Your venom is so toxic that most anti-vaxers who venture on here quickly leave. I stick around because despite your abuse, I sense it’s merely your VCADOD (vaccines causing autism denialism obsessive disorder) talking, and you are just really crying out for help.
Perhaps you should confine your “analysis” to a self–case report. Certainly, you haven’t merited a bot, so it’s hardly the top rung of the derision rung.
^ ‘ladder’, dagnabit.
Greg:
It has been over a month, I am sure by now you have found the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher showing that a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease. Can you please post that PMID?
Well, seeing as you are sticking around because you want to help, how about answering those questions?
So basically Greg’s claim that RI is “an echo chamber” has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the term.
The purpose of any discussion of serious policy matters among serious, responsible adults should be to determine the truth, weed out the bullsh!t, and assess what the rational courses of action are based on the foregoing determination of facts. What Greg objects to about RI is that we do weed out the bullsh!t, because bullsh!t is all he can personally bring to the table.
It is indeed noteworthy when AoA allows dissenters to comment, though never a surprise when they ultimately ban those individuals.
Just thought I’d point out that I emailed Anne Dachel about reopening a thread where I’ve been commenting to the regular and she never bothered to answer my email or reopen the thread.
Alain
Umm….I’d be inclined to test AoA’s tendency to ban dissenters and close threwad rapidly; how about a few commenters hovering over AoA and discuss politely about the same topic question all over the threads running on AoA: i.e. as soon as the thread is closed, we goes to another thread.
the key point here is to discuss politely and mostly on the same topic so that comments passes the initial check.
Any bets on 2 days of comments, max? I’ll be returning to Sherbrooke tomorrow (really, today at this time) evening so we could start on Thursday?
Alain
@Antaeus,
No Antaeus, it is not about RI being an echo chamber because it doesn’t tolerate BS. I am sticking to the traditional meaning of the term where we see a lot of blanket, sheep thinking among RIers with next to nothing in the way of divergent views, no matter how credible those views are. It’s quite transparent that RI primary goal is to defend vaccines, with no one stepping out of line and entertaining any objections whatsoever. BTW, I give myself as a contrast: I am a staunch anti-vaxers but I do not accept all the traditional anti-vaxers sentiments. For instance, I believe there is more to vaccines causing the autism epidemic than thimerosal or MMR solely in themselves. I also don’t see autism as something that can be recovered from, and especially not by treatments/therapies such as chelation or bleach enemas.
As I stated earlier, I know how important it is to your fragile little egos that you see yourselves as bastions of enlightened, and free thought. That your little RI outfit is any but is something else.
First off, Greg, dissent is shut down in an echo chamber, and yet you’ve been allowed to post repeatedly.
Oh, you’re allowed to entertain objections here, you’re just not allowed to get away with spouting unverified hogwash without being challenged.
Greg seems to think that freedom of speech implies freedom from criticism for his speech.
Let me be the first to express my deepest sorrow for the suspected tragic murder of AS. In his short life, it’s a terrible shame that AS had to suffer so much and not experience the gift of a happy, healthy youth-hood. Let me also offer my sympathies to the mother and god parent who are charged with the boys murder. In no way do I defend their actions, but I, nevertheless, see them as victims of a terrible, hellish fate that was unjustly forced upon them. As I keep saying, autism in the vast majority of cases is not pretty and no amount of accepting and celebrating it will make it so. We should be moving mountains to ensure that not one more child ends up on the spectrum. The collateral damage acceptance mentality should have long been shown the door.
Julian, read @343,
Allowing dissenting posts is one thinking. Viciously attacking and deriding posters are another. A few weeks ago I remember a poster passionately pleading with you guys to pursue the vaccines studies that will ultimately show if vaccines have anything to do with autism. She even complimented you guys, essentially calling you ‘the smartest of the bunch’ that are fit to carry out such work. What were your reactions? She was cruelly rebuffed with your typical mean-spirited slurs that she quickly left.
Antaeus,
The undeniable fact that he, Jen and any other AoA regulars can post their views here, while very few of us manage to get anything posted at AoA, suggests he and Jen don’t understand the meaning of the term. I guess they have seen it used here, and have picked it up unthinkingly to hurl back at us, assuming it is an insult, not simply an accurate description of AoA.
I wouldn’t say dissenting views are exactly welcome here, but we have had many long threads of debate with antivaxxers, acupuncturists, homeopaths, herbalists, therapeutic touchers, a radiation hormesis proponent and even a natural hygiene proponent (remember PegEmily?). All that is asked is that they bring evidence to support their views to the table. Almost always the discussion continues until the evidence they have provided has been shown to be unreliable (or doesn’t say what they claimed it did) and/or other evidence that refutes it is provided. They then either resort to insults, employ the pharma shill gambit, or claim victory and run away.
That does get a bit irritating after a while, so it is understandable when someone drops in here accusing us all of being idiots and then comes out with the same old nonsense that has been debunked over and over, some of us have been known to get a bit tetchy.
Greg, please post the link to the thread where this person asked us to consider doing the vaxxed-unvaxxed studies.
In addition, we’ve already pointed out on other threads that such a study would be so unethical it wouldn’t pass the first IRB.
You know, guys, I think Greg is on to something. You see, he poses questions to us. If we don’t answer, then it is clearly because we are secret, closet anti-vaxxers. Well, then. By his own logic, since he has not yet answered our questions (i.e., asking him for evidence of any connection at all), then he must, in reality, be a die-hard vaccine supporter.
It’s all so clear now.
@Alain
Actually, that would be grounds for action at AoA. Their commenting policy includes a bit about staying on-topic. So I think going over there, being polite, staying on-topic to the original post(s) would work as an experiment. But we don’t actually need to do that, since we already have numerous examples of the banhammer coming down on dissenters, no matter how polite, while party-liners, no matter how rude, get to keep on commenting.
@Julian Frost
Unless, of course, it were stacked with anti-vaccine sorts who don’t care a jot about research ethics. You know, like the Geiers did to get their studies “approved”.
Is RI one big, hollow, empty, echo chamber?
Please provide your dissenting views, if any, to the sentiment below:
“We do not believe that autism over the ages has increased significantly. The apparent increase that we are seeing is vastly due to better diagnosis and diagnostic substitution. If there is any real increase, it’s quite insignificant.”
And once again, Greg, you show that you don’t understand what an echo chamber is.
@Julian – I’ll refer back to a quote from one of my favorite films….
“Greetings Professional Falken.”
“Hello Joshua.”
“Strange Game……the only winning move, is not to play.”
“How about a nice game of chess?”
I believe that sums up my attitude – no reason whatsoever to play Greg’s semantic word games.
Dr Terry Brugha, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Leicester, led the research into adult autism in the UK that found an adult autism prevalence of about 1%. I don’t remember it being mentioned here, but he has recently published another paper (PDF) that found a surprisingly large number of adults with learning disabilities are also autistic, and would have been missed by his previous study. Some of the key findings:
That is almost exactly the same as current estimates of the prevalence of autism in children in the US. This strongly suggests that the prevalence of autism is not increasing.
@ Lawrence
Long time I’ve seen that movie.
In The Netherlands we currently have a raise of measles cases in the so-called bible-belt area, where people don’t vaccinate, because they think it’s against the will of god.
Greg,
Your reply to me proves my point. You see whatever you want to see at any given moment when you read stuff. This is why you post studies that have no relevance to your claims, and in some cases, which even contradict your claims. You seem to be defining “echo chamber” as “place which doesn’t laud everything Greg says” which does a pretty good job of demonstrating your egocentric view of the universe. You’ve described autistic people as egocentrists, but I have to wonder how much of this is projection, judging by your behavior in this thread, and your repeated demands for attention. If you do not get direct replies from everyone in the thread, you call that an echo chamber? I do not think you comprehend the depth of the irony you are displaying in your posts. I’m not sure you will ever comprehend it, and I find that rather sad.
Re: Your oft-voiced sentiments regarding autistic children on a number of threads, will you offer any evidence that your grief is in any way sincere? If you fail to answer, by your logic I may assume that you aren’t saddened by the death of a child; not one bit.
I may be a bit dense, and somewhat poorly educated- But isn’t accusing two people of murder a strange way of offering your sympathies? I always thought “charged with” was not the same as “evidence of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, resulting in conviction.” Ah, it’s that word again: Evidence. Oh, and your implication that said alleged murder was justified is duly noted.
Greg, are you going to answer the questions you’ve been asked? I mean the growing backlog; it’s been quite some time. We await your answers- Have they been gobbled by a passing canine?
And see, that’s still the problem. The only one who thinks you brought credible views here for discussion is you. What you think are “credible views” are, nearly without exception, long-ago exploded myths such as “the increase in autism corresponds exactly with the increase in the vaccine schedule” and “diseases were going away on their own before vaccines due to improved sanitation and nutrition.”
The only exceptions are the myths you seem to have come up with on your own, such as the one about how “with adapted and life-long immunity these diseases might have been eradicated completely”. Got to admit, I haven’t seen anyone trotting that one out before. Of course, it’s still BS. The only way in which letting a disease have its way and infecting anyone it can (which is what anti-vaxxers think “adapted and life-long immunity” comes from) could possibly lead to its eradication would be for it to exhaust the pool of vulnerable individuals so completely in one wave of infection that it leaves itself no new individuals to spread to in future waves. On a global basis, mind you; anything less means just a temporary lull while new births replenish that pool of vulnerable individuals. Oh, and did I mention that this phenomenon of a disease wiping itself out by globally infecting everyone all at once, which we have no reason to believe has ever happened (after all, it didn’t happen with the very contagious smallpox in over 2,000 years) could never work with any disease that has non-human reservoirs, which happens to be a lot of them?
So, basically, anyone approaching it without the distorting glasses of an anti-vax attitude can see that RI rejects the views that anti-vaxxers generally bring here, not because we’re an echo chamber that rejects dissenting views without thought, but because those views, when subjected to critical thought, turn out to be BS.
Even those who come here with dissenting views will often get a very civil, respectful response from us, as long as they are civil and respectful themselves. But there again, Greg, that’s something you wouldn’t know, because from the very beginning you’ve been hostile and passive-aggressive. The very first comment from you on this blog shows you already in full sarcastic swing, making such straw men claims as that pro-vaccine evidence is derived from “a parallel universe with a twin planet earth” and that the mainstream scientific view is that autism is caused by “abused mothers, old mothers, fat mothers, stressed mothers, old fathers, old grandfathers, fathers in their 40s marry women in their 20s, engineer and tech parents, having siblings too close together, women not taking folic acid during pregnancy or having a fever or flu during pregnancy, lack of vitamin D, c-section deliveries, low birth weight, living too close to a highway, lots of rainfall, air pollution. Everything causes autism except vaccines!” I’m actually choosing some of the less hostile attacks you unleashed in that very first post; I’ll leave to anyone who’s curious to read the post and discover all the many ways you directly accused vaccine proponents of “stonewalling, evasions, obfuscations, deceptions, and outright lies”. Again, anyone who is not looking at it through the distorting glasses of the anti-vaccine fanatic sees that any less-than-welcoming reception you got is more than adequately explained by you choosing from the very first to act like a jackass.
Again, your claims that RI is an “echo chamber” derive solely from the fact that when dissenting views are aired here, people are generally not convinced by them. That’s not what an echo chamber is, any more than a “kangaroo court” is any court where the person who is describing the court didn’t get their desired result. If you want a real echo chamber, you look at someplace like AoA. I myself have been censored from AoA. What were the circumstances, you ask? I’m so glad you asked.
What happened was that AoA published a post containing a significant error of fact; namely, the claim that Brian Deer was the complainant in the GMC case against Andrew Wakefield. I left a polite comment explaining why, although one might come to such a misunderstanding, it was nevertheless untrue: in the UK “complainant” is a specific legal role, akin to “plaintiff”, and the GMC had confirmed that Brian Deer was not the one in that role. Making a complaint does not make one “the complainant”, any more than publicly defending Wakefield would make one his “public defender.”
Now tell me, Greg, if you can do it with a straight face, why AoA, which silently removed that polite comment because it contained verifiable, true information that didn’t fit the AoA conspiracy theories, is not an echo chamber, but RI is an echo chamber because a fool like you comes in sneering “all you vaccine proponents are lying through your teeth! the truth is that diseases would go away if we just let people get them, but you’re ruining the chances of that and for that you should be scorned!” and gets treated with all the respect that’s due to such a fool’s sound and fury.
Greg, Greg, Greg… When will you stop with lies and admit what everyone here already knows? We have already figured you out – you yourself are vaccinated and so are your children. You well know that vaccines do not cause autism. You are just afraid to admit that.
No reason to be afraid Greg, you can tell us the truth, we won’t judge you, so drop the charade and fess up already.
Still ignoring the pathetic, begging for attention, ignorant, lying Troll.
@ AoA=So Disturbing: The “story” about Alex and his mother Dorothy, didn’t pass my * smell test* from the first day it appeared on AoA.
I *sensed* that Dorothy had put her child through multiple, not-medically-indicated invasive bowel procedures…and possibly the CPS case against her, opened in January, 2013 (determined to be “unfounded”, April, 2013), was instituted by a doctor, nurse, social worker, or a “concerned party”, who had valid concerns about using the system and/or alternative DAN! doctors to medically abuse her child. Can you say Munnchausen-By-Proxy?
I was disgusted that pictures of Alex totally unclad except for an adult diaper and in “restraints” were shown on AoA. Gawd almighty, how could Dorothy, Lisa Goes and the editors of AoA do that to Alex?
Hospitalized patients are never exposed in that manner and are never in restraints 24/7…there a regulations enacted and every hospital has extensive policies and procedures manuals to prevent abuse of patients.
Still waiting for you guys to offer your dissenting views on the three pro-vaxers sentiments that I posed to you at #304, #313, and #360….
Inspired by Clint Eastwood guys, again I challenge you to go ahead and make my day! Prove to me that RI is not one big, empty, hallow, echo chamber.
Still ignoring the pathetic, begging for attention, ignorant, lying Troll.
Still not playing Greg’s game…..I mean, why?
@lilady
Careful with armchair diagnosing. While possible, it’s probably best not to engage in it.
More appalling to me than the pics posted at AoA are the comments. If the mother and/or godmother are found to be the ones that stabbed Alex to death, excusing that because “oh, autism is so hard”? I’m sorry, but nothing excuses murdering someone in cold blood, especially when that person is unable to defend themselves. Our very own Greg has shown before that he is ethically challenged, so it’s no surprise he defends the potential motive.
And your evidence that Alex was in fact ‘destroyed by vaccines’, Greg?
Oh–that’s right. You don’t have any.
In Illinois, one can be: 405 ILCS 5/1-125. (Of course, Lisa Goes alleged that the means were chains.) In any event, he plainly wasn’t, as Goes’ photo-op illustrates. The main claim is that he was restrained for 14 days while occupying an ER slot at Gottleib and, apparently, for 6 at Loyola (whether these were consecutive or not is unclear). This makes Wakefraud’s late video attempt to get in on the action all the more curious.
@Antaeus,
Whew! Your post#357 was quite a long read. Let’s just cut to the chase: Do you believe vaccines play no role in autism? Remember — one word –‘yes’ or ‘no’?
Greg, I’m still waiting for you to admit you are really a provaxxer and just been lying to us all this time.
@Antaeus – stop making sense, using logic and big words, it is making Greg’s brain hurt!
Greg:
Why? You wrote those words, and they are silly. And very wrong. They are so full of straw you should stay away from open flames.
And still, why are you demanding answers when you refuse to answer questions posed to you over a month ago? Here, try again:
Please present the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher showing that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
Latest news article on Alex Spourdalakis. According to the article, Alex’s mom and godmother planned for a week to kill him. They also killed the cat because they “didn’t want the pet going to a shelter”.
Absolutely reprehensible. The incident with the cat (above and beyond everything already known) points to mental illness, which should be considered in the case, but still does not excuse anything these women are charged with doing. Ugh!
Unfortunately, Todd, I am not signing up to another website to read the whole article. I did find this. The last sentences says: “A DCFS spokesperson says that Dorothy Spourdalakis was offered services, but she refused.”
It should be an interesting murder trial. The hospital will no longer be bound by HIPAA, and there may be documentation of the services the family refused.
@Todd W.
Wow, that is seriously disturbing.
Weird. It was free in its entirety earlier.
Most of those supporting Alex’s mother and godmother claim that “all” that was offered was institutionalization and nothing more than psychotropic meds. I’ve yet to see any precise statement of what treatments she wanted for Alex, other than vague appeals to treat his GI issues. Hints at unnecessary colonoscopies and quack biomed treatments, but nothing I’ve seen that confirms any details.
And what incentive do we have for jumping through your useless hoops, Greg? Would you start participating in this discussion as an adult, granting that people can sincerely believe things that you do not? Would you start answering any of the many simple questions posed to you which you have so far ignored, such as “what do you consider the most convincing piece of evidence indicating that vaccines do cause autism?”? Pfffft.
Despite addressing you, I wasn’t posting for your benefit; I just wanted to show that your complaints about RI being an “echo chamber” stem entirely from your unreasonable and egocentric demands, not from any deficiency in RI. And how do you respond? By ignoring and disparaging the response you got, and making more unreasonable and egocentric demands. Thanks for proving my point for me.
BTW, if anyone needs it after reading more about Alex Spourdalakis, a coworker offered me this to help lift my spirits.
Yah, so could I. Pardon my copyright infringement:
“Alex Spourdalakis’ mother and caretaker planned for a week to kill him and then themselves, Cook County prosecutors said Wednesday.
“The women allegedly carried out the weekend slaying because they were upset about what they believed was a lack of proper medical care received by the autistic River Grove teen, prosecutors said.
“The mother, Dorothy Spourdalakis, is accused of stabbing her son repeatedly, while another caregiver, Jolanta Skrodzka, allegedly killed the family cat, then washed the knife and put it back in a butcher’s block.
“Both women were ordered held without bail Wednesday.
“The women locked themselves in the bedroom with the slain teen after they took overdoses of several prescription medications in an attempt to kill themselves, authoirites said. The attempt failed. The cat was slain because the women didn’t want the pet going to a shelter, authorities said.
“The women left a letter explaining why they killed Alex and also later gave statements to police admitting their involvement in his death, authorities said.
“The women allegedly overdosed the teen last Friday night with his sleeping medications, then waited several hours for him to die.
“His mother later allegedly stabbed the sleeping boy four times in the chest, then cut one of his wrists so deeply his hand was nearly severed, authorities said.
“They were discovered Sunday by Alex’s father and another relative. Neither woman spoke during the brief bond hearing.”
@Todd W, thanks for the link at #385; I did need it after reading more about Alex Spourdalakis.
All the catastrophizing by the anti-vaxxers could not have helped in Alex’s situation, it would only contribute to a feeling of hopelessness. It is hearbreaking.
Oh J-sus, Narad!
Returning to other matters @ RI…
If I were to say what I actually thought, I might be perceived as being mean, so I’ll tip toe around..
Surveying alt med and anti-vax sites, I see that people get into areas above and beyond their own capacities to understand and then rattle around and shriek at those who know better.
For example, today Ms Conrick ( @ AoA) pokes around physio as she is wont to do more frequently than is healthy for her own psychological – and others’ physical- well being.
@ TMR, Ms Mama Mac ( Alison MacNeil) talks about “Clout” how she and other TMs have earned their right to rankle on and on about medical issues.
Because they have thus-and-so ( un-realted) degree or have worked at this-and-that ( un-related) career or went whitewater rafting ( I’m not joking about that last one).” I am important and you must listen to me!”**
And they do get people to listen to them and follow their advice- worthless as it is.
Well, they haven’t any right to be taken seriously on medical or psychological issues- and neither have RFK or Mikey or Gary. People who do spend their lives studying and working can spot a poseurs like them a mile off.
They don’t know what the h3ll they’re talking about and yet they don’t stop.
Part of their method includes disparaging experts and relying upon conspiracy mongering to explain why experts shouldn’t be trusted. Experts can -btw- explain their lacks to others.
Anybody can say that experts are wrong- anybody can say ANYTHING- it doesn’t make it meaningful or worthy of anyone else’s attention.
** needing to increase their own self-esteem.
(continued)
@Anne
Yes, seconded. Nothing I could add to that.
I can read the Sun Times article; it’s probably one of those things where the website lets you read for free for a while and then makes you pay, so if you often go to the Chicago Sun Times, you may find you need to pay now. I know the Minneapolis Star Tribune is like that; they let you have something like 30 articles a month per IP address and then you gotta pony up for more.
What a horrible story, from start to finish. I find it interesting they were upset with the hospital for restraining him, but were apparently okay with killing him. So did he deserve to be free or not? They don’t seem to have been able to make up their minds.
Given their direct involvement, at this point I’m strongly inclined to consider them as directly blameworthy. What happened to the “undisclosed” “out-of-state” location, again? What happened to “psychiatric facility” in “72 hours”? Why did Tommey sit on her ass when told that “this was the end for Alex”?
The only good thing that could come from this would be to have some of these exploitative predators find themselves in a deposition.
“Putting him in a psych facility [sic] and chasing him around the room with syringes, uh, that’s not the answer.”
@Narad – why wasn’t there room at Wakefield’s 1.45mil dollar estate in Texas?
@Narad
On the Help Support Alex Spourdalakis FB page, LJ Goes was soliciting people to contact her to let her know everything they’ve done to help (e.g., if they’ve written to the hospital(s), etc.) to compile documentation. That comment is no longer on the page. Wondering what, if any, legal responsibility she and others may play in the whole affair.
I’ve refrained from raising this in the past, as it’s thoroughly unclear the extent to which what was going on in terms of reliance on benefits provided by the state (e.g., Medicaid) or Cook County. There appears to be little doubt that Alex himself was eligible for some measure of Social Security disability benefits and Medicare, which do travel.
They were upset with the hospital for restraining him
If the whole point of the campaign was to get the patient out of hospital care and back in the custody of his family so they could kill him, any claims about the nature of that hospital care are propaganda, and need independent verification before they can be believed.
Probably none. There could be some rather telling conversations on the record if the father pursues a civil action, though.
Ye gods, if the Tribune is to be believed (and make no mistake, there have been conflicting news reports), it gets worse than the Sun-Times story.
Good lord. That’s appalling, Narad. I wonder why the mother and godmother didn’t consider getting the custody arrangements changed so the dad would have to live with the son instead. Or why they declined the offer of assistance. Considering that they killed the cat rather than find it another home, I have to wonder if they’re of the mindset that if *they* can’t properly care for someone, clearly nobody can.
Calli Arcale:
I suspect it is a regional thing. It may be because I live too far away.
That new article does make the situation sounds much, much worse.
Oh crap, I hope I didn’t italicize the Internet.
Sorry I’m late, I just read this and I have to say: how much clearer could these people make it that they really hate people with autism? It’s a sick joke that these anti-vaccination cranks masquerade as “autism advocacy” organizations. Not only do they not include anyone who actually has autism in leadership positions (apparently not getting the irony of an organization called “Autism Speaks” which doesn’t include–or even listen to!–people with autism), but their language makes it very clear. Mocking the neurodiversity movement? Olmstead’s obvious irritation (and dismissiveness) towards autistic individuals who dare to speak for themselves–and *gasp!* don’t agree with him! Sick.
Yeah, their anti-vaccination views piss me off, but it’s their obvious hatred of people with autism and the eliminationist rhetoric that pushes me over the edge of Rage Mountain.
EEB – that has been obvious for a while now. In any situation, they embrace the worst quacks and apologists as long as they can promote the anti-vaccine narrative.
Found that FB post from Ms. Goes that I referenced earlier. It can be found here. In case she memory holes it, here’s the text:
One commenter recommends that no one provide any details of what they did on a public forum.
I was just about to link to the Chicago Trib’s updated article, Narad.
I don’t know if Alex was receiving SSI…a developmentally child living at home may be eligible if parental income is low. Alex would not be on Medicare until he reached age 18, the only exception being if he was end stage renal failure or had been diagnosed with ALS:
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10026.pdf
Alex’s parents were “separated” and he did not live in the apartment with Alex, mother Dorothy and the caregiver/godmother…so his financial resources would be evaluated for eligibility for SSI for Alex. Mother Dorothy could have been eligible for Medicare payments, if she had a ten year employment record.
Leslie Manookian, producer of “The Greater Good Movie” weighed in promoting the AIM (Autism Is Medical) parents (who have “cured their children who had iatrogenic autism”).
http://www.greatergoodmovie.org/news-views/patient-safety-awareness-week-would-this-happen-to-a-child-without-autism/
@ EEB:
This fits in wtth alt med theories that bad outcomes are the result of external interference**- autism from vaccines and SMI from meds ( fancy that!), cancer from adulterated foods.
Illness comes from doctors iatrogenically.
It is a denial of the reality that death and illness may come from ‘within’ – i.e. physiological processes, genes- and ASDs from genetic and other internal processes.
Modernity – and its advocates- doctors and scientists- are the causation of all ills humankind is subject to-
prior to their control , people lived to be 140, there was no cancer, autism, mental illness. It was eden before the fall.
One may recapture that paradise lost by avoiding doctors, meds, processed food, GMOs, tainted water etc.
The faithful, who religiously hang upon AoA’s or Natural News’ words, seem to think like primitives who feared evil spells and poisons that would sap their life energies.
** primitive people attributed death to witchcraft
Could EVERYONE who acted on behalf of Alex please PM what you did and when?
What she means, I suspect, is “Everyone who *thought* they were acting on behalf of Alex when they weighed in to support a psychotic mother, accused of abuse, in her custody battle to take her son out of care and kill him at home.”
The list of those who *actually* acted on behalf of Alex would be considerably shorter.
Just an awful thought:
it seems that the two women insured peaceful, painless deaths for themselves ( overdose of meds? which failed) but didn’t give much thought to what Alex and the cat might have felt in their last moments.
They were in divorce proceedings. Next court date was June 20.
Mocking the neurodiversity movement? Olmstead’s obvious irritation (and dismissiveness) towards autistic individuals who dare to speak for themselves
What EEM said. Olmsted will grudgingly concede the right of some autists to speak for themselves as long as they shut up afterwards and don’t presume to speak for the condition in general, that being his job.
^ Actually, I should’ve just said “court date” and dropped the “next.”
@Denice Walter,
If the story is to be believed, they did try to overdose Alex with sleeping pills first and resorted to knives when it took too long (perhaps an insufficient dose). There’s no indication they took any particular care for the cat, however.
Why didn’t Dorothy take her child out of the hospital…if she *believed* that Alex didn’t received good care and was medically neglected?
Why didn’t Dorothy take her child to Wakefield’s colleague Dr. Krigsman, for bowel scoping? He’s been known to diagnose autistic kids as having autistic enterocolitis after a “telephone consult” and has professional practices in New York and in Austin, Texas.
Wanna bet, that Alex had rectal digital exams, abdominal palpations and X-Rays to rule out serious pathological processes?
Alex was in restraints 24/7? I don’t think so:
http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/tired-moms-unseen-worlds-and-revolutionary-acts-my-time-with-dorothy-spourdalakis/
“…“Don’t spit, Alex! Don’t hit, Alex!” Were the first words spoken to Alex by the hospital’s care team during my visit with him. Appalled at the complete lack of the staff’s understanding of how to handle an aggressive child with autism, an audible gasp escaped my lips. Alex, who had not yet noticed me (my friend and I came into the room while he slept), turned and darted toward me. He sprawled out on the bed in front of me and grabbed a spoon off the table beside my head. Dorothy gently removed it from his hands and redirected his attention to his iPad. Alex glanced at it, returned to his bed, curled into a ball and looked directly into my eyes…”
@Antaeus,
Very well then Antaeus, again I put three typical provaxx sentiments to RI folks at #304, #313, and #360 asking for their dissenting views, and to date, Antaeus, there has been none. None! Yes, indeed at times I have engaged in a fair amount of mocking and teasing, because, to be honest, I find I get more out of you by pushing your buttons. Still, other times I have been serious and sought honest feedback to various queries. And, again Antaeus, RIers show a consistent pattern of not being forthcoming when they are pressured to concede anything negative about vaccines. I challenge you to review the last few threads and point to me where there has been a sustained divergence of opinions amongst posters. Antaeus, I am not talking about the usual shots taken at those deemed to be ‘cranks’ or ‘quacks’, nor am I talking about the odd corrections here and there. Show me instead where posters are expressing significant disagreements in viewpoints. You won’t find any such disagreements, Antaeus. None! If this doesn’t constitute proof that RI is an echo chamber bent on pushing a pro-vaccine agenda then I don’t know what does.
Greg, please post the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
You’ve had more than a month to come up with the PMID.
I think the A.S. situation is what Todd was talking about upthread when he mentioned worries that the anti-vax movement might turn violent. Sure, they’re all crying crocodile tears now, but they won’t acknowledge that the spaces they created enabled parents to dehumanize their children. Also, I second the unease about the selection of photos, they were very clearly chosen to objectify Alex, and move the discussion from what would be best for him to what would be best for his mother. It probably would’ve been better if AOA hadn’t stuck their oar in, who can say?
Greg: see the thing about crocodile tears? That’s you, go cry them someplace else. And let me ask you something..do you believe in tables? Or wind? I’ll give you a while to think about it, because, frankly, you don’t seem all that bright.
It’s so easy to heap all the blame on the parent, Dorothy. The truth is those likely shots that AS received as a child also played a significant part in the tragedy. Hey, but at least he also took them for the herd!
Greg, please post the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
You’ve had more than a month to come up with the PMID
@PGP,
No crocodile tears here PGP. Just a little heart-to-heart with Antaeus. I do have a sensitive side, you know? Also, re not being too bright — I think that is a subjective assessment. I will say though that I have done reasonably ok in life, so I don’t suspect any possible shortcomings in intelligence have hindered me too much. Hee, hee, hee!
Greg, please post the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
You’ve had more than a month to come up with that PMID
#417 There’s a lot of disagreement here. Check out any thread about religion, for a bevy of examples.
Or do what you usually do, which is to ignore information that disproves your half-baked notions when it’s given to you, insult everyone and spout your apparent belief that autistic people are subhumans who should be eliminated.
@PGP,
So anti-vaxxers dehumanize autistic kids and some parents will take the next step and kill these kids? Sorry PGP, I find it easier to connect the dots at vaccines screwing up everything.
Greg, again, please post the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
You’ve had more than a month to come up with that PMID
Greg: “Sorry PGP, I find it easier to connect the dots at vaccines screwing up everything.”
Prove it. Answer my question.
@Khani,
C’mon Khani, who doesn’t disagree about religion? Bring up religion and verbal diarrhea is soon to follow. Let’s instead entertain the contentious topic of whether autism is truly increasing over the ages. Disagreeing about religion! Please!
Greg, prove your beliefs, please post the PubMed indexed study by a competent researcher that shows a vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
You’ve had more than a month to come up with that PMID
You know what, asshοle? Nobody here is doing that. The only people with a motivation to do so are the principals that oozed themselves into the situation for their own benefit and fυcked up very seriously.
Here, Greg, I’ll throw you a softball. You like those one-word-answer questions, right? Have one on the house: Do you think a failure by Polly Tommey to contact the authorities in response to being told “this was the end for Alex” could have played a part in what transpired?
If your answer is no, then you have just done what you were piteously whining about.
Remember, one word.
Greg: So anti-vaxxers dehumanize autistic kids and some parents will take the next step and kill these kids?
This is psych 101, bub. Anytime you can’t see somone else as human, it becomes easier to degrade them, or in this case to talk themselves into killing them. Parents can easily fall into the trap of thinking that no one else will properly care for their kids, and therefore, it’s better that the kids not be alive. Heck, it happens to full-grown adults; if they happen to fall outside what their society thinks of as normal or belong to the wrong ethnic group, their life expectancy goes down. What happened in Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, came about precisely because the populace had talked themselves out of seeing anyone from the other group as human. What sorry diploma mill did you graduate from?
And I note you didn’t answer my question about tables or wind. My point, probably circling above your head, was that one doesn’t believe in things they know. Therefore asking if someone believes that vaccines work or cause autism is equally nonsensical. I don’t have to believe that vaccines work; I know they do. I know vaccines don’t cause autism, and belief doesn’t enter into the discussion at all.
@pgp: Don’t waste you time on the Troll.
Here, Lisa Goes’ dreadful series of articles about Alex at AoA:
http://www.ageofautism.com/lj-goes/
BTW, my spastic-quadriplegic son required a special custom-built and custom-fitted wheelchair for mobility and was placed…2 hours in the chair…2 hours on his play mat during his waking hours. He too, had episodes of constipation, but we wee able to avoid enemas by keeping him well hydrated with jello whipped with yoghurt, thickened fluids and breakfast stewed/pureed prunes.
He was also *restrained* in a large hospital crib, because I refused to have him in a regular hospital bed with side rails up; he was able to side-sit and it was too risky to have him topple over the side rails on to floor. The Intermdiate Care Facility were he resided, was audited by the Medicare/Medicaid audit team and was cited each year for his crib and the crib that “my other son” slept in.
The Medicaid Audit Team put the word out to look for a safe bed alternative throughout NY State, and both sets of parents drove several hundred miles to see a custom built bed, that met their needs. We immediately contacted the designer/builder who met us at our sons’ residence, where, we all participated in taking measurements. I located a custom -designed mattress manufacturer who constructed twin size mattresses for the boys, covered in thick waterproofed soft material…plastic covered hospital mattresses are uncomfortable and encourage the formation of decubiti on tender skin (the boys were repositioned every 2 hours during hours of sleep).
So no. That bullsh!t about Alex’s hospital neglectful hospital care didn’t pass my “smell test” when he was alive…and still doesn’t pass my “smell test”, since he was brutally murdered by his mother and the caregiver.
People with autism are egocentric?
That would be news to the family of the teenager at the severe end of the spectrum who lived on our street 45 years ago.
He barely knew what was going on as he endlessly rocked back and forth. Of course, that was his ego-maniacal plan. Gobshite.
@PGP,
“Do you think a failure by Polly Tommey to contact the authorities in response to being told “this was the end for Alex” could have played a part in what transpired?”
Actually, that is indeed a leading question Narad that does not lend for a one word response. Asking whether you believe vaccines play no role in autism is not. Anyway, I know you will protest so for the sake of avoiding your wranglings I will lift my condition of requesting only a one word response. So Narad, do you believe that vaccines play no role in autism? The floor is yours, use as much words as you desire.
@Narad, not @ PGP….
@PGP
Spare me your psychology babble crap about autistic kids being dehumanized and so it’s easier to kill them. Christ, I would expect such drivel from Denice Walter. Is the simple truth kryptonite to your species? Vaccines most likely screwed up the kid, leaving him with a host of medical and behavioural issues. The mother and godmother struggled caring for the kid as best they could with minimal help from the medical establishment. This drove them to the breaking point where they snapped and killed the boy.
BTW also PGP, I received my education from a reputable university. Still, even if I were a high school drop-out, I don’t think that in itself would preclude me from seeing through RIers nonsense.
Greg complaining about loaded questions not lending themselves to one word answers?! What next? Bible Belt fundies complaining about too much class prayers and overly religious curriculum in schools? Young Earth Creationists whining about how 6K years old Earth is absurd? Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
But hey, I guess he is blind to hypocrisy of that. But notice how he never denied either my waaay old constatation that he is a shapeshifting, baby devouring lizard. Neither he denied when I unmasked his filthy lies about being antivaxx.
Also, he never clarified (with one word, as he is wont to demand) wheather he stopped beating his wife. All in all Greg does not deliver.
And you don’t know what does, Greg. Your argument is in the form:
1) An echo chamber causes people to conform to common opinions without dissent.
2) Regulars at RI seem to share common opinions and my loaded questions have produced no one dissenting from them in the direction of my beliefs.
3) Therefore RI is an echo chamber.
This is an argument in the exact same form:
1) If the umpire is hideously biased against my team, he’s going to make calls that go against my team.
2) The umpire is making some calls, as umpires do, and they’re going against my team.
3) Therefore, that makes the umpire biased, or I don’t know what does.
You’ve told us all what a genius you think Einstein is, even though you’ve proven yourself utterly ignorant of how Einstein actually came to his conclusions, discounting the role that paying attention to evidence that didn’t conform to his hypotheses played in him reaching solid conclusions. Tell us, Greg, if I waltzed onto a forum of physicists and students of physics and barked “Tell me where you have significant dissent with Einstein! Tell me where you think Einstein is badly wrong!” and people shrugged and said “first, I’d have to find some point on which the evidence actually suggests he’s wrong” would you jump to the conclusion that the forum was an “echo chamber”?
What is your test for distinguishing between a place where people share common opinions because an echo chamber has inculcated them and a place where people share common opinions because those are the opinions that match the evidence? My bet is that your test is “do they match my opinions?” Still egocentric.
@al kimeea
In response to Antaues suggesting that autistics suffer from a ‘theory of mind’ deficit I countered that some of my autistic clients do seem able to see things from my perspective. I then briefly speculated that their problems may extend from self-centred thinking in which although being able to see things from another person’s perspective they choose not to at times. The truth, al kimeea, is that we don’t know how vaccines precisely screw up the autistic brain and accounting for its symptoms. That is why I would love to see us move away from defining autism in terms of its symptoms and instead finding the real underlying bio-markers for the condition.
Greg:
Really? So you don’t think that labelling autistics as “damaged”, “stolen” or a “burden” is dehumanising?
Those poor people.
@Antaeus,
“What is your test for distinguishing between a place where people share common opinions because an echo chamber has inculcated them and a place where people share common opinions because those are the opinions that match the evidence?”
Actually Antaeus, I put the test to them at #304, #313, and #360 asking for their dissenting views to typical pro-vaxers sentiments that are, nevertheless, contentious. Even other notable pro-vaxxers do not support some of these assertions. For the most part, Antaeus, RIers refused to take me up on my challenge and leading me to suspect that they are too scared to be seen as stepping out of line. Maybe, Antaeus, you can help me with my test by encouraging them to respond and thereby proving one way or another whether RI is indeed an echo chamber.
“Because it serves my purposes” is not an adequate answer to “why are you choosing to be an utter asswipe?”
Oh, really. I wonder when you thought you were doing that. When you barked “The studies showing that vaccines don’t cause autism are exhaustive, yes or no! One word only!” and ignored the responses you got that explained why your word choice “exhaustive” complicated the question beyond the point where any one-word answer could be accurate, did you delude yourself that that was “seeking honest feedback”? When you asked “Tell me what choice you would make, if deciding whether or not to abort a baby with Down’s, and by the way, I’ll just call you a liar if your answer doesn’t match what I think you must think,” did you pretend to yourself that that was “seeking honest feedback”?
Just as you keep proving that you don’t understand the “echo chamber” accusation you keep hurling, I seriously don’t think you understand what it would actually mean for you to participate in discussion honestly. You’re not asking what anyone thinks because you actually want to understand what they think. You’re asking only so you can plan your next barrage of insults and accusations.
Here we see the (not so) elusive Greg engaging in its stereotypic behavior. Notice how it makes its oft-repeated claim that vaccines are to blame, yet provides no evidence that such is in actuality the case. In more than a month of observation we have seen this behavior repeated regularly, almost ritualistically. One must wonder if, much like Skinner’s circling pigeons, the Greg continues to make evidence-free, anti-reality statements in the hopes that a crumb of approbation will slide down to sate its appetite for praise and good conduct. Does it realize, is it capable of understanding, that its posturing is merely an amusement, and that no satiation will be forthcoming unless it provides support for its mindlessly parroted claims?
@Todd W. #444
Greg is simply like an evil and not as intelligent version of Adam Savage – he rejects the reality that rest of humanity shares and substitutes his own. And in that reality of his, that mind you he is only inhabitant, we all agree with him, vaccines cause autism and kids that do not conform to Greg’s standards of neurotypicality are not human beings, but changelings dropped by Fair Folk, thus perfectly OK to kill.
And who determined that those points were “contentious,” so contentious that agreement upon them could not come from any reasonable source except an echo chamber? Would that be you, the person who’s demonstrated repeatedly that he doesn’t understand what an echo chamber is, making that assessment?
The only respect in which a person without AVM (Anti-Vax Myopia) glasses would consider the propositions on which you demanded to see quarrels and dissent actually contentious is solely in the extreme phrasing you chose for them.
Here’s an idea: you could quit wasting time, energy and money on the “vaccines cause autism” craziness and direct it to finding those bio-markers.
How are those answers coming along, hmm?
@Antaeus – once again, Greg proves that he’s on the side of the Catholic Church in the Galileo Argument….all belief, no evidence…..
In the eyes of Greg – what is an Echo Chamber and what is not:
* IF everyone agrees THAT vaccines cause autism =/= Echo Chamber.
* IF no one agrees with every single thing Greg said = Echo Chamber.
Surprise, surprise, the braying jackass collapses into a puddle of goo when presented with an isomorphism of its own favored drooling point.
@Antaeus Feldspar,
I respect Edith Prickly and Lilady in a certain way. Acting out of self-interest they can lie and move on without skipping a beat. They are easy to deal with because they are so honest in their dishonesty. Then there are the likes of character train-wrecks like you and Denice Walter, Antaeus. You choose an unconscionable position, also out of self-interest, but you have trouble living with the sin. Attempting to reaffirm your ‘upstanding reputations’ to yourselves you will engage in all the tricks in the book. Keep coming with your long-winded verbiage, Antaeus. You and I know who you are.
@Narad,
Very well then, Narad, please provide your response to the question of whether you ‘personally’ believe that vaccines play no role in autism. Again, use as much words as you desire. Please also try to refrain from the usual track that ‘studies find no link so I will have to accept those studies.’ Let’s have a good heart-to-heart, and tell me what you really think. Let’s rap!
@452
I know that Morton’s Demon blinds you to anything that does not conform to your preconception, but multiple people already answered that question. I know that this will break your little hear, but solipsism is wrong and the fact that YOU do not acknowledge existance of something, does not make that thing nonexistant.
By the way, you are fully aware that you virtually admitted my former accusations? I mean that you are a vile lizard, who does not work with autistic people but eats them?
Greg’s “baseless & evidence-less” screeds do quite well at the Holy Church of AoA, but really don’t fly when you bring evidence, facts, and science into the mix…..I continue to find his floundering to be humorous to watch.
Thank you for confirming what we all knew already, Greg, that you were never participating in discussion here honestly. You were never seeking honest feedback, trying to find out what our beliefs were and why, you were feverishly hunting for grist for your confirmation bias mill.
You claim that you “know who I am.” You obviously don’t; if you did, you’d know that at no point in my life has so much as a single penny gone into my pocket because of vaccines. You like to think you’re a crusader after truth, Greg, too bad that everyone else can see what you really are, a crank and a conspiracy theorist who resists the truth with all his strength.
Ok Guys,
I am start to really appreciate Jen’s perspective on RI being an echo chamber. Indeed, I am also starting to get bored. I want to attend to some other business. Maybe I will be back in a week or so.
Greg, what in the f@ck are you talking about: “living with the sin”? What? Supporting scientific consensus? This makes Antaeus and I war criminals or suchlike?
I’m not a medical doctor, nurse or epi, I have nothing to do with vaccinating children or instructing parents. I work- and have worked exclusively- with young adults and adults with diverse problems.
Your position illustrates that you have little background in the relevant subject material and thus, like many others- including RFK, Jake, TMR and AoA- have no issue with AJW’s so-called research.
To accept AJW’s research, you need to NOT be familiar with physiology and development: here’s why-
he presents a scenario wherein “normal” children “regress” after MMR after an average of 6 days!
What would have to happen physiologically in order for this major transformation to occur? In six days, no less.
Parents recount that children lose communication skills, language, interpersonal reactions, the proverbial “light goes out of their eyes” – they behave differently as well.
How would this occur? What would be the mechanism of action?
When people lose skills and abilities in other situations, within a short period of time- hours, days, months- we can trace those losses to something happening in the brain- and SEE the damage via imaging! Head injury, stroke ( 2 types- btw-), tumour growth, AD, atherioschlerosis… even the underlying changes associated with schizophrenia strikingly display their origins (e.g. LONI @ UCLA imaging studies).
How come no one can show this metamorphosis via sophisticated imaging? Because it never happened.
We can study brain development and differences in autistic people via these same techniques. Autistics’ development is different and can be shown visually., their brains vary in predictable ways- there are even pre-natal differences.
To buy that g-d forsaken theory, you would need to accept that microscopic amounts of “toxins” or viruses somehow travelled from the injection site, entered the brains and did massive damage or re-routing/ re-arrangement and possibly encouraged growth of particular areas in which some autistic people have more cells than is average.
In six days. Without any trace that can be shown. If AJW were correct, he’s had 15 years to produce studies- including imaging- to show the entire process,
He hasn’t- he just sues people.
@DW
You are wasting your time. Greg already told us that autistic individuals are brain damamged. That the alledged damage is invisible? Well, so is the Invisible Pink Unicorn and that is not a reason not to belive it exists.
I find watching you squirm to be far more entertaining.
Kindly impale yourself on a rusty chainsaw, you mendacious little twerp. And in case there’s any question about whether I “honestly” want you to do that, the answer is yes.
I had been ignoring Greg as a simple (double-entendre intended) time-waster, but he has aroused my curiosity.
Does he really believe that it is “a simple truth” that vaccines cause autism? That the scientific consensus, that vaccines are certainly not an important cause of autism, and very probably not a cause at all, is “contentious”?
Or is he just repeating assertions that he knows are untrue and in many cases offensive, just to get a reaction?
The fact that he appears to have completely ignored the well-reasoned explanations for most rational people’s rejection of the “vaccines cause autism” hypothesis suggests the latter. I can understand how someone who has only been exposed to the misinformation provided by, for example, AoA might still believe that vaccines cause autism, but I honestly don’t see how anyone could look at all the available evidence, much of which has been pointed out to him here, and still cling to that belief. It boggles belief.
The only piece of evidence he appears to take seriously is that from the “tens of thousands” who “report their child dramatically regressed into autism following vaccination”. As we have seen, in several cases in which parents have claimed this has happened, video evidence of the child before vaccination showed signs of autism, meaning that vaccines cannot possibly have been to blame, and that the parents were mistaken.
It seems likely, given the other evidence that supports the idea that autism starts much earlier, probably in the womb, that most or, more probably, all the parents who have reported this phenomenon are similarly mistaken.
The North East London study of 567 autistic children I cited earlier found that in only 12 (2.1%) of cases did parents blame vaccination for their children’s autism, and in 8 cases they blamed MMR, which has been thoroughly exonerated as a possible cause of autism, as even Greg admits, only 2 of these blamed MMR before the publicity surrounding Wakefield’s 1998 paper, and several parents revised their accounts of when their child regressed, all but one of them to make it sooner after MMR, strongly suggesting that recall bias played a large part in their mistaken recollections. That leaves 4 cases out of 567, or 0.7% who blamed other vaccines, which I think we can safely dismiss as being due to either recall bias or to sheer coincidence. That doesn’t fit at all with the picture Greg paints.
I also wonder how many autistic people actually suffer from incontinence of the kind Greg describes. Some quick research suggests it is a tiny minority, mostly in those who have other disabilities, so I have to wonder if even severe autism ever causes lifelong double incontinence, as Greg claims. There is no mention of incontinence in this study of bowel problems in autistic children by the authors of the study I cite above. Toilet training may take longer in children with severe autism, but permanently in diapers? Even among the severely disabled people I did voluntary work with 30 years ago, only a small minority required diapers. I don’t buy it.
Greg, do you really believe what you claim to? If so, what do you make of the evidence I and other have provided that firmly contradicts your beliefs? Why do you apparently simply dismiss it without any reason?
Also, please identify any examples of either Edith Prickly and Lilady lying about anything at all ever. I have only ever known them to be scrupulously honest. They may not suffer fools as gladly as some of us, but lies? That’s BS, and you owe them both an apology.
@ The Smith of Lie:
But you see, I do it for the lurkers.
And I share Narad’s sentiments.
Like the octopus that comes out of hiding, we see here the Greg displaying its true colors. Notice how it freely defames others, stating as a fact about others that they lie and are dishonest, despite having no evidence that such is the case. The Greg is a truly remarkable creature that, like black mold, is difficult to eradicate.
Ooops! Pardon my edit phail @ 456.
Thank you for that, Krebiozen. I am not expecting that puerile shmegege to comply with your request of course, but I appreciate the support.
The actual truth, greg, is that there’s no evidence that vaccines screw up brains to produce the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.
Certainly you haven’t offered any, despite being asked to do so more times than I care to recall.
Greg: Spare me your psychology babble crap about autistic kids being dehumanized and so it’s easier to kill them.
As I pointed out, this ain’t just psychology. It’s literally history. Perfectly normal people can turn against their neighbors if they hear, again and again, that those people don’t count as human. That’s what makes your movement so dangerous, Greg.
I imagine that until modern times, very few autistic (and other disabled) children made it out of infancy alive. You know why? Because the parents didn’t believe their children were human, and attempted all sorts of extreme cures to rid themselves of the ‘changeling.’ Or else, they neglected or abandoned the children in favor of raising their NT siblings. Do you want to go back to those days?
Lilady: I know, I know, but he’s so much fun.
@ JGC:
You know, we do know that specific substances can alter foetal brains if used by the mother early in pregnancy. These changes have been documented.
If vaccines altered children’s brains, it would be easy to show. Imaging is a spectacular resource.
PGP,
I think what you write is very true. I remember reading about a damaged individual, a man who had been abused as a child, and who had spent his life involved in often-violent crime, never showing any remorse for the pain and injuries he had caused to others – a battle-scarred hard-man who saw any sign of emotion as weakness. I’m sure you are familiar with the type.
One of his therapists was talking to him and realized that he literally thought of other people as flat cartoon-like figures, not as 3-dimensional living, feeling people like himself i.e. a complete lack of empathy. Once the therapist pointed this out, and invited him to look back at his life seeing the people he had hurt as real people like himself, he broke down in tears and sobbed like a baby, appalled at what he had done. He went on to become a counselor and therapist himself.
That tale, though I can’t vouch for its veracity, rings true with me.
Considering some of Greg’s previous statements and his reactions to the recent tragedy of Alex Spourdalakis it wouldn’t be a surprise if it turned to be true. He’s just despicable like that.
There’s also research along these lines.
I recall something from the Harvard Symposium on Agrresssion and Conflict.
Again, pardon the errata- on my way out the door.
My 471 is in reference to PGP and Kreb. I should have the book around somewhere.
Cripes almighty, I’m beginning to miss Thingy and the trolls we used to have…this Troll is so utterly boring and repetitive.
Hey Edith, it’s a badge of honor for me that when I ignore Troll, he’s still trying to get my attention.
I suggest we treat Troll as we did Thingy…ignore, ignore, ignore.
I’m still trying to ignore Greg, who is one of the most anoying trolls I’ve seen here. I suppose in his heart he knows we are right and he is wrong, but he is just still in denial. That’s why he accuses us of being lying if we don’t agree with him.
And still he keeps coming back, accusing us of being lying if we state there is no reason to believe there is no relation between vaccines and autism.
Yes, he reminds me of that annoying kid who sat in the back of the class and constantly made armpit fart noises to interrupt the teacher, even though people stopped laughing after the first time he did it.
@Renate –
The DregTroll admitted further up the thread that he mostly does it just to provoke a reaction. Obviously his mommy didn’t pay enough attention to him when he was a kid, so he’s still acting out that petty psychodrama as an adult.
One Dreg ignoring cookie please 🙂
Alain
@ Edith Prickly:
I have observed that amongst particular people, there is profound disrespect for experts of any sort: there is a tendency to discount the fruits of study, research and experience and offer up alternatives ( ahem!) to SB research and experience. This takes place on a grand scale with alt med / CAM or on an individual level by disparaging experts like Orac or Dr Offit. I survey the grand masters at their trade.
The chief practitioners of this art form are disgruntled folk who perhaps had dreams about a career in science and were refused entry at the hallowed gates of the ivory towers. They didn’t measure up; they weren’t accepted at elite universities or to revered programmes; they never got past a general degree or perhaps an even lesser achievement ( mail order) so they despise anyone who DID achieve and thus, seek to ameliorate the value of their hard work- making it seem worthless or even criminal.
Jake Crosby talks to Drs DG or Offit as though he himself were the expert and they were lazy students trying to get away with shoddy work, one step away from being tossed out the door of their university experience. LIsten to the tone. Listen to Mikey and Gary excoriate doctors or psychologists: amidst the spittle and hatred you can hear the seething anger and envy because their targets have arrived where they themselves are forever *personae non grata* ( sp?).
You can hear similar diatribes at AoA and TMR- there is an added poignancy to their derision in that the target of their spleen – usually a doctor- is also the bearer of bad tidings who dashed their hopes for a child prodigy by diagnosing an ASD. Read Mama Mac’s’ Dr Asshat’ again or yesterday’s similarly resonating epistle- the anger isn’t really about her child’s condition, it’s all about her.
On that note, I posted a third comment at AOA, and I suspect I got hit with the banhammer.
In my experience, they don’t even have the nerve to wield a banhammer and say so. Some comments will be disappeared, others might still get through. Engineering of the narrative, if you will.
Uh, oh…The two bloggers on Slate are in deep doodoo now. Dachel and her little posters are mad that they can’t get respect when they post comments. One of the cranks has written a letter to the Slate publisher.
What’s next…another lame petition on change.org ?
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/06/dachel-news-update-slatecom-accuses-rfk-jr-of-being.html
Ah, but it’s better, as the Gerggie trope appears courtesy of “Show Me Your Child’s Vax Records.” Has this bit of idiocy actually been in circulation for a while?
Funny, a search of reuters.com doesn’t actually turn up that Girard item in the comments, and there are exactly three hits (one being AoA) for a text extract. Anybody have Lexis/Nexis access?
@lilady
Well, you know what they say…. respect has to be earned, and the anti-vax trolls certainly haven’t earned an iota of respect.
They have, however, earned all of the crap and scorn heaped upon them and deservedly so.
How about this link Narad?
http://www.rolandsimion.org/spip.php?page=forum&id_article=14&lang=fr
Open up that link to see two separate links on the top of that article; the medscape link is a dead end, but when you open the second link it leads to…ta-da…a JPAND article. 🙂
@ novalox: Does Parker actually believe that you are Venna/Lara Lohne?
BTW, I am still unable to post on the SOP blog. Christine has tried to unblock my comments, to no avail….sigh.
@lilady
Short answer: yes, and she still persists in that accusation, despite Christine saying that it was not so.
Excellently spotted and described, Denice. And although you didn’t spell it out, we see it of course in our latest least troll who spun a whole narrative of how Einstein arrived at his answers by some sort of super-intuition rather than rigorous attention to the evidence – the implication being that we should be ultra-impressed by a hypothesis he came at through ‘super-intuition’ untainted by consistency with the evidence.
There’s an additional layer in this facade:
sometimes people do get a decent degree and training but don’t become over-night legends so they take the contrarian route and can rant and rail against the establishment which hasn’t rewarded them in a manner in which they thought apropriate ( Barrett notes that medical personnel in auxilliary positions may do so to overcome the stigma suffered from taking orders from on high -Quackwatch).
Both rebellious doctors and poseurs get adulation from those who don’t know enough to see through their criticisms’ motivation and research goals ( AJW) or are desperate enough to try their miraculous cures ( Dr B) or seeking to ride the wave of paradigm shift alongside them ( Adams, Null, Mercola).
People who actually have a meaingful backgrounds can spot the holes in their holism: these groundbreaking theories usually have gaps in them through which you can drive a large van. In the old days, when folks didn’t know what existed beyond certain a point on their maps, wrote in “here be monsters” – usually artfully illustrated.
Hey Denice,
So sorry that I must return to address your point of dismissing the whole autism debate as envy of the successfuls. There again you display perfectly the dishonesty that I am talking about. Now, I supposed it suits your ego and ‘insecurties’ fine to consider that the ‘lowly’ parents are just jealous of you intellectual elites with advanced degrees and respectable jobs. Still Denice, in my honest observations, I find the ‘lowly’ bus drivers, plumbers, domestic servants, construction workers’ parents don’t really give squat about your existence. What they truly care about Denice is not having sick autistic kids. Had they have healthy kids, Denice, they would have been perfectly contented revelling in their ‘insignificance’ and leaving you guys alone. I am off again.
Which argues that they should be vaccinating their kids, as vaccination has been shown to greatly reduce the risk of contracting infectious diseases (such as polio, mumps, measles, pertussis, etc.), in the total absence of any evidence a causal association between vaccination and the development of autism specturm disorders exists.
Right, greg?
Again, Greg misses the point: I’m writing primarily about practitioners. Followers are another issue.
Dreg’s sole modus operandi appears to be missing the point.
Denice, it’s still ditto to my last post. I know how you like to flatter yourself by believing everyone is so envious of you guys for being so ‘smart’ and ‘successful’, but even practicioners are sincerely pissed at the crimes committed against kids in the name of vaccination.
Greg – you said
Please name three. Or as many as you can. Thanks.
Greg starts from the false premise that there is an autism debate. In the way he means it, no, no there isn’t an autism debate; there’s just the conclusion that’s supported by all the evidence and then a fringe faction that stays in denial. The existence of a fringe faction which rejects the truth does not alter the truth.
There is no “9/11 debate” about whether planes were flown into skyscrapers on 9/11/2001; the fact is that it happened. There is no “moon landing” debate about whether mankind really went to the moon; we did. There is no “autism debate” anymore because what was once a legitimate hypothesis, that vaccines might cause autism, has failed every evidentiary test it has been put to.
There are some people for whom it doesn’t require sophisticated psychological explanations to explain why they would cling to some false notion or other. For instance, I’ll talk about an imaginary parent we’ll call Aaron, a composite of some of the parents who have come here over the years. Aaron’s a nice guy, and he’s definitely smart, smart enough to run his own business quite successfully for many years. Aaron’s son is autistic, and Aaron has become convinced that it must have been the vaccination that his son got the week before he started showing symptoms that did it. Does believing this mean Aaron must be a profoundly disturbed individual, a megalomaniac for daring to have an opinion that contradicts the experts’ opinion?
No, not at all. But at the same time, Aaron’s opinion does come from him not knowing things that the experts do. Probability, for instance. Aaron doesn’t need an intimate knowledge of probability to run his business, so he’s never developed a rigorous grasp of the subject. When he says “It cannot be a coincidence that my son got his vaccinations and then developed autism! It just can’t!” he’s being 100% sincere about believing that, but he’s still wrong. That’s what coincidence is: things happening together that may appear to have causal relation but don’t.
Aaron also believes what the average person believes about human memory: that it’s basically trustworthy and if someone feels very confident in their memory of things happening in a certain order, that means that memory is reliable. Aaron would be shocked if he looked at his son’s medical records and realized that he and his wife were taking his son to the doctor, concerned about behaviors they now consider manifestations of his autism, months before the vaccination they think caused it. They just don’t realize what people who really study human memory know about human memory: it’s not like pulling records out of storage, where it may have some smears and smudges and faded ink but if you can read something on there, what you read must be the contemporary recording of what occurred. “Remembering” is much more a process of reconstruction than the average person realizes, and that reconstruction is guided by assumptions about “what must have happened”; when Aaron and his wife try to remember those appointments with the pediatrician, the ones where he got his shots and the ones where they discussed his failure to meet milestones, and their existing belief that the shots must have been the cause of the developmental problems tells them “those appointments must have been before the others!” Except, of course, the actual records don’t match the way they remember things.
It doesn’t take complicated psychological analysis to explain Aaron and other parents like him. But it’s a different story when we talk about “Blake”. Blake is a young gentleman who, even before he had finished an undergraduate degree, had decided that he knew The Truth about vaccines and autism. He has never wavered an inch in his fervent insistence that he has The Truth. He claims that science is on the side of his The Truth, but has preemptively announced that if he ever sees science and The Truth pointing in two different directions, it’s science that will get kicked to the curb: he has stated flat-out that no matter what evidence is ever presented that contradicts The Truth, it will not change his mind in the least. Blake has initiated confrontations with people who have been studying and working with vaccines for decades, whose study of the subject including the peer-reviewed research papers they’ve published differs from Blake’s “The Truth.” When they meet, does Blake entertain for one moment the possibility “Gee, he’s been studying this subject longer than I have been alive; maybe he actually knows something I don’t?” No, Blake jumps to the conclusion that since he doesn’t agree with Blake’s The Truth, then he must be part of a big Big Pharma conspiracy.
Now, I’m sure Greg is shrugging his shoulders, saying “So? That sounds like perfectly normal behavior to me.” That’s the point. That’s what the 9/11 “truthers” think, too, and the moon landing conspiracists, that the tenacity with which they cling to a hypothesis that just does not match the real world is perfectly normal. They think that refusing to bow to anyone else’s expertise is actually laudable integrity, even though it isn’t: “Okay, I never formally studied structural engineering, and you’ve literally written textbooks on the subject, but still, when I tell you that jet fuel couldn’t have melted those girders and you say it did, I must be right and you must be wrong!” Despite what these people think about themselves, they are obviously not rational thinkers. The question is a legitimate one: why do they cling so stubbornly to these narratives, when it’s clearly not because the narratives make sense?
Antaeus,
That question fascinates me, and I think the answer is that they have an emotional investment in those narratives. How often do antivaxxers claim that we vaccine proponents are emotionally unable to even consider the possibility that vaccines are unsafe? An antivaxxer on the HuffPo meningitis vaccine thread I just gave both barrels wrote, “Like birthers, vaccine apologist must believe that vaccines are safe because it insults their sensibilities to think other wise. There is something in their consciousness that will not go there.” That’s projection, pure and simple.
All too often we come to a conclusion emotionally, and rationalize it afterwards. It’s a natural human tendency we all have to try to be aware of, as it is extremely difficult to see it in ourselves.
At the top of Helmuth’s Slate blog, I commented directly at Bobby Kennedy to produce the video of his keynote speech at the Gen Rescue/Autism One conference…or have Olmsted produce it. I also urged him to publish the vaccine book he commissioned (according to ***Jake Crosby, Kennedy hired experts to do the research for the cost of $ 100,000 + another $ 100,000 for editing and publishing costs), to give us the opportunity to analyze the book for factual accuracy.
He stated he is not anti-vaccine and I asked him which vaccines he has provided to his children…and which vaccines he has not provided…based on his *expertise*.
***Jake Crosby thinks there are political forces behind Kennedy’s decision to not publish…I’m with Jake on this one.
Sure, emotional investment may load the dice. Self-protection and self- esteem building are important.
People who create/ support pseudoscience while simultaneously scoffing at experts have another plank in their eyes because we’re talking about ideas, theories, learning, self-evaluation – all insubstantial, abstract products of mindstuff.
I think it’s easier for most people to accept the *physical* prowess of experts: you can see Mr Bell’s fingers fly on the violin or Ms Williams clock an incredibly fast serve. Tyros can be directly measured against the professionals. The video camera and the speed meter don’t lie.
However, woo-meisters do lie and probably fool themselves as well. When we read alt med theories- if we know our stuff- we can re-construct the level of learning the pseudo-scientist had acquired to create his or her theory:
above, I talk about what you had to MISunderstand in order to accept that vaccines cause autism.
Orac discusses cancer pseudo-science and its floundering premises – e.g. ANPs, zappers, fungi and acids.
So Mike and Gary can spin fantastical cures and conspiracies in order to sell their products AND themselves as brilliant innovators and rebel genii but it is all the stuff of which dreams are made …limitless and creatively burgeoning…fuelling their fantasies.
HOWEVER- it really isn’t because ideas can be tested.
Here’s a very esoteric concept – ” people’s deepest motives will consistently reveal themselves and show a nostalgia and longing for the past- a return to simpler times”.
Of course, not everyone will agree but MOST will endorse this-
so , an accomplished politician creates his entire agenda to cater to this deep underlying motivation:
his speeches and plans for the future all reflect this underlying theme; he selects like-minded advisors and pollsters- everything looks great-
but he loses to a younger upstart because his people mis-evaluate how the upstarts will vote-
they predict that the conservatives will turn out at a higher rate- until the last hour they cling to their cherished beliefs.
However this theory worked for other conservatives. As we know all too well.
When anti-vaxxers call for particular studies to test their theories or natural health advocates speculate about orthomolecular cures, although they rant and rail, they’ll be disappointed because – for the most part- science has moved on and what they shriek about usually has already been done and rejected decades ago.
For whatever it is worth, Brian Hooker claims in his court papers for his FOIA case (which he lost) that RFK Jr.’s book is slated to come out next year. And it will include information that Hooker found in his FOIA searches.
“I have worked with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to incorporate
information I have obtained via the FOIA on the data CDC has hidden regarding vaccine adverse events including autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders into his new book (Untitled at this point) on thimerosal in vaccines that will be released in 2014. ”
Either the information he gave to RFK Jr is different than that he submitted to the FOIA case, or this is going to be one dull book.