If there’s one good thing about the ongoing Disneyland measles outbreak that is continuing to spread, if there can be a “good thing” about an outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease that didn’t have to happen, it’s that it’s put the antivaccine movement on the defensive. They are definitely feeling the heat. Their reaction to that heat can range from ever more vigorously proclaiming that they are “not antivaccine” in a desperate bid to convince the unwary and those not familiar with the antivaccine movement that they are not antivaccine, all the while softening their antivaccine tropes without actually renouncing them. Bill “I don’t believe in vaccination” Maher, for instance, has been doing that for at least a decade and most recently repeated it (unconvincingly) last Friday. Alternatively, they wrap their antivaccine views in a cloak of “freedom,” creating a dog whistle such that normal people don’t know really saying but antivaccinationists do, as Dr. Bob Sears did recently. A third tactic is to double down on the claim that measles is no big deal, as multiple antivaccine advocates have been doing lately.
Another thing they can do is to double down on the crazy. Certainly we saw this in a certain “paleocardiologist” named Jack Wolfson. Unfortunately for him, he was so vile and despicable that even most antivaccinationists cringed at what he said and probably wanted him to shut up.
One thing I realized with all this blogging about the measles outbreak and then about Brian Clement and The Food Babe, that I hadn’t really paid much attention to my usual antivaccine go-to sites. You might remember that in the recent past I noted that everybody’s favorite antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism had become stale and boring lately, posting mostly dull stuff that didn’t say much, possibly in an attempt to seem more “reasonable.” Unfortunately, the measles outbreak appears to have reinvigorated AoA, and it’s really bringing home the crazy now. Oh, sure, I know you’ve heard analogies that liken vaccination to rape, the Holocaust (particularly Dr. Josef Mengele and Auschwitz), to brainwashing, to the Titanic and the Oklahoma City bombing, and many other very bad things.
But did you know that vaccination is now like human trafficking? I kid you not. Laura Hayes tells us so:
Most of you have heard of “Human Trafficking*”. Today, I want to warn you about “Vaccine Trafficking”, which is equally hellacious, and which needs to be dealt with just as swiftly as is happening with Human Trafficking. Immediate help and compassion for the victims of Vaccine Trafficking, and for their families, are also needed. Here is a comparison of the two. Please note their frightening similarities.
Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery where people profit from the control and exploitation of others.
Hayes took her definition from the definition of human trafficking on the Polaris Project website. My first thought upon reading this post was that Hayes is making a particularly despicable comparison, just as bad as the comparisons between vaccination and rape. After all, one of the most common forms of human trafficking is for the purpose of forcing women into prostitution for profit. It’s all about exploitation, in which sex is sold for cash. Of course, it’s more than just about sex. There are other forms of trafficking in which people are forced to work in highly exploitative situations, but when most people hear “human trafficking,” they tend to think of sex trafficking first before they think of other forms of exploitation, if they even think of those other forms of human trafficking at all.
My second thought was that Hayes clearly thinks she’s being clever, but, like all cranks, she’s just too obvious to be clever, hitting her readers over the head with her analogy over and over and over again, until they are either bludgeoned into submission or have to go away because it feels so good when the bludgeoning with idiotic analogies stops. You’ll see what I mean when you read her elaborating on the analogy:
Vaccine trafficking is a form of modern forced medical experimentation where people profit from the control and exploitation of others.
Although forced medical experimentation is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, dealt with and eliminated by The Nuremberg Code after WWII, vaccine trafficking still exists today throughout the United States and globally when traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control other people for the purpose of increasing international vaccine sales by forcing them to be injected with scores of dangerous, ineffective, “unavoidably unsafe”, potentially-fatal vaccines against their will. Traffickers use mandates, threats of school expulsion and job loss, threats of being being denied medical services and of being reported to CPS, deception, coercion, withholding of facts, covering-up of fraud, harassment, fear-mongering, bald-faced lying, and other manipulative tactics to trap victims in horrific vaccination situations every day in America. All vaccine trafficking victims share three essential experiences – the loss of freedom, the lack of informed consent, and the ruination of health – and sometimes of development, and life, too.
In the United States, vaccine trafficking commonly occurs in pediatricians’ offices, at hospitals, at drugstores, at school sites, even in grocery stores. Vaccine trafficking has been found to emanate from pharmaceutical companies; from there it spreads to governmental regulatory agencies, to trade industry groups and their members, to mainstream media outlets, to prospective and current elected officials, and to uninformed citizens.
Now this is one strained analogy. Again, no doubt Hayes thought she was being clever when she came up with it, but it’s so strained that the tension between the two concepts threatens to stretch whatever connection that can be constructed to the point that it becomes one dimensional and then snaps. Even if vaccination were “forced medical experimentation” (it is not, obviously), this is not the same thing as human trafficking. Hayes would have done better to fall back on the hoary old antivaccine chestnut that vaccination is forced medical experimentation like the kind that Josef Mengele did at Auschwitz and many other Nazi doctors did in the camps on undesirables. As despicable as that analogy is, it makes more sense than Hayes’ analogy. But, then, Hayes would have just been treading a path that many antivaccinationists have trod before, and where’s the fun in that? So she strains to make the analogy ever more explicit, aping the language on the Polaris Project website:
There are two primary factors driving the spread of vaccine trafficking: high profits and low risk. Actually, since 1986, it’s no risk, with a captive and guaranteed market, mostly paid for by taxpayer dollars and cash-strapped parents. Like other prescription-drug trafficking, vaccine trafficking is a pharma-driven criminal industry that is based on the principle of “poison to profit”, with the goal being to ensure that every American is somewhere between sick and dead, for as long as possible. Every year, vaccine traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people around the world, including here in the United States.
She’s obviously referring to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. I wonder if she knows that the woman who is now the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, was intimately involved in helping draft that legislation, which created the Vaccine Court and was actually meant to make it much easier for parents of children who suffered adverse reactions to vaccines to be compensated relatively quickly. The legislation was drafted in response to the DPT scare in the 1980s, in which the DPT vaccine was blamed (incorrectly, as it later turned out) for permanent neurologic injuries suffered by children because it caused a higher incidence of febrile seizures, even though we now know that the DPT vaccine was not associated with long term neurologic complications. At the time, a flood of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers was so bad that the government was concerned about the very real possibility that vaccine manufacturers would stop serving the US market. As I’ve described many times before, in the Vaccine Court the evidentiary stanards are actually relaxed, unlike the situation in normal courts parents can make pretty much whatever claim of causation they want, and they can expect reimbursement for legal fees. (The latter characteristic of the Vaccine Court has made it more than a bit of a gravy train for certain antivaccine lawyers.) The problem, as anyone who’s studied the antivaccine movement knows, is that there is no scientific evidence that the “injuries” to their children claimed by women like Hayes have anything to do with vaccines. So claims of vaccine-induced autism end up being rejected, and parents convinced that vaccines caused their children’s autism end up viewing the court like Hayes, as a mechanism to “protect” big pharma and has entered antivaccine cannon as a key conspiracy theory ever since.
It’s actually a sad conspiracy theory, because there’s little doubt that if parents of children with suspected vaccine injury had to enter the court system they’d do much more poorly than they do now, given how much more difficult it is to obtain a favorable judgment there than it is in the Vaccine Court. However, because our courts often don’t do too well adjudicating science, however, it is possible (albeit not very likely anymore) that one or two families might win a large judgment for “vaccine-induced autism” while all the rest go down in flames. It’s not surprising that in The Greater Good, an antivaccine movie, we see lawyers as a major force complaining about the Vaccine Court and how difficult they perceive it to be to win a judgment, complete with the same sort of conspiracy-laden nonsense like the kind Hayes used.
After seeing the “vaccine = human trafficking” post, I wondered what could be next. Then I found it, courtesy of Kim Stagliano:
I made a short video of her watching her favorite song, Sing, from Sesame Street.
This particular version is from the anniversary special titled, Sesame Street, Twenty Years and Counting. Just like my daughter, twenty years old and still counting 1….2…3. You’ll see a familiar person introducing the song, the show host.
Take it away Bill Cosby – “America’s Dad!”
Oh wait a minute… Bill Cos……..
Sometimes – sometimes – things you trust, things that are part of the fabric of America – they betray you in the cruelest fashion. They harm. They wound. They change lives. And then lies follow. Covers ups. IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.Sometimes – sometimes – things you trust, things that are part of the fabric of America – they betray you in the cruelest fashion. They harm. They wound. They change lives. And then lies follow. Covers ups. IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.Sometimes – sometimes – things you trust, things that are part of the fabric of America – they betray you in the cruelest fashion. They harm. They wound. They change lives. And then lies follow. Covers ups. IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.Sometimes – sometimes – things you trust, things that are part of the fabric of America – they betray you in the cruelest fashion. They harm. They wound. They change lives. And then lies follow. Covers ups. IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.IT CAN NOT BE TRUE.
That’s right. Stagliano’s comparing pro-science vaccine defenders to apologists defending Bill Cosby against the numerous rape allegations that have surfaced recently. This isn’t the first time she’s made this analogy, either. Here she is in the comments of AoA four weeks ago:
Of course most of us who have seen our kids fall into the pits of hell thanks to vaccination will never touch one again – but we are in the boiling water – as frogs – those outside our community can not FATHOM the danger and like a religion – like the Cosby apologists, “injury” simply can NOT be true. So we must spoon feed. use a Trojan horse, educate one by one with a gentle hand. Not bend them over sans lube.
Nice analogy. Antivaccinationists are just so full of nice analogies. Vaccination is a Holocaust. It’s the Titanic. And, as I just saw yesterday, it’s still rape:
This is a meme Tweeted by a particularly nasty antivaccine loon. His account, fortunately, has been suspended because I and several others complained when he aimed this at the Twitter account for Voices for Vaccines.
I shudder to think what other analogies antivaccinationists will come up with now, given that they are on the defensive because of the ongoing measles outbreak.
175 replies on “The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 14: Vaccine “Trafficking” and beyond”
Kind of OT but isn’t Kim Stagliano the one who has three daughters with autism the last of which being completely unvaccinated? And doesn’t the unvaccinated daughter have the most severe case of autism out of all three? I always wondered how she explained that.
@annie – when in doubt, blame the vaccines that her mother got.
@Lawrence- oh geez. Is that what she really blames it on?
Just further evidence that the “vaccinated vs unvaccinated” study they all claim to want would be a huge waste of time/resources since they would just dismiss the results as not being accurate because the parents were vaccinated.
That anti-vaccinationists have the incoherency of cortex to put forth these “analogies” is disturbing enough. I worry more at the mindset of anyone who would believe them.
Would this type of anti-vaccine speech be prohibited in Australia?
The anti-vax crowd keep sending me back to Douglas Adams: It was the work of a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
Really, I can’t envision what is wrong with people that would make them compare vaccination, a routine medical procedure, to rape and human trafficking, which are correctly viewed as horrific crimes. There are some forms of woo that at least have an internal self-consistency. What Hayes and Stagliano are pushing doesn’t even come close to that.
Another post AoA today ( I’m not sure who is responsible for it- altho’ part of it has a name with which I’m not familiar tacked on to it) speaks of how anti-vaxxers are de-humanised comparing them to victims of the Holocaust as well as to how WWII propaganda depicted the Japanese people.
-btw- KIm Stagliano is despicable, isn’t she? Her own histrionic tales about her daughters manage them as a stage setting for her own martyr/ super heroine role-playing. She has kept a revealing video up @ AoA which explicitly illustrates this characteristic.
AND she’s not the only one @ AoA or TMR.
TMR features a post asking if vaccines caused a particular child’s cancer- which pictures the child during treatment.
As mentioned previously…
how about a well-known altie/ anti-vaxxer claiming that his recent vaccine ‘journalism’ was so damaging to the establishment ( pardon me, I mean the *Establishment*) that his internet radio network has been HACKED and is not functioning at all for several days now. He announced this on a terrestrial station fundraising effort. PRN is down.
Alright guys, which one of you did that?
It is quite excellent.: you should be congratulated.
.
Stay classy, Age of Autism. Stay classy.
Orac writes,
“I shudder to think what other analogies antivaccinationists will come up with now, given that they are on the defensive because of the ongoing measles outbreak”
MjD says,
A doctor/nurse putting a Band-Aid®, having a natural rubber latex warning, over the site where the child just received the MMR vaccine.
http://latexallergyresources.org/consumer-products?term_node_tid_depth=26
Natural rubber latex exposure during vaccinations continues to be a viable etiology for Autism Spectrum Disorders (e.g., allergy-induced regressive autism).
@Orac,
Do you still use natural rubber latex gloves during surgery? Note: I’ll keep asking this question until you answer it.
I mean, really, even the Auschwitz analogy doesn’t make any sense. After seeing a particularly hyperbolic anti-vaccine meme on Twitter which proclaimed that “Taking your children to a vaccine clinic is literally like taking them to Auschwitz,” and showing it to the other people in the Slavic computer lab to enjoy their gaping, slack-jawed reactions, I got to thinking: even if they anti-vaxxers were right about the dangers of vaccines, the Auschwitz analogy still wouldn’t hold water. I mean, Zyklon B didn’t give people autism, it did something rather worse.
Oh, but wait, it’s actually autism that’s worse than death in the minds of these people… who have autistic children… isn’t it? Good Lord.
The contempt with which Kim Stagliano writes about her twenty-year-old daughter is despicable:
Yeah, so what? Kim, you’re writing about your own daughter, and that’s who she is – can’t you possibly find it in you to love her for who she is? I mean, rather than talking about her as some sort of worthless piece of human jetsam?
And that list image in this post: NOPE. Nopenopenopenopenopenope. Gaaaaaah.
Last image, of course.
The trivialization of real abuse, mental or physical, is indeed disturbing enough.
I could understand people going overboard with hyperbole during a self-pitying description of their miseries. This level is still too much. We are leaving theatrics (something we all do, especially we people of Mediterranean stock) to go into histrionics.
But, am I the only one finding it disturbing at a deeper level?
Some of these guys seem a bit too gleeful in the description of their analogies. OK, it’s for the shock value, but… I’m not sure I would trust my sister in the care of the one who posted the rape picture on the Voices4vaccines tweet.
@annie – so yes, they blame the vaccines given to the mother (and in some cases, vaccines given to previous generations as well); sometimes they just suspect that the child was vaccinated (i.e. I think my baby got the HepB vaccine without my permission – but never confirmed it); followed by blaming mercury in amalgams from dental procedures, etc, etc, etc.
So you’re right – since they blame vaccines in the way that they do, how would they possibly build a vax vs. unvax study that would be acceptable to even themselves?
It doesn’t seem possible, given the torturous lengths they go to, to find any way to blame vaccines.
@ Dochniak
It’s all you have to say? On this thread?
At long last, do you have no sense of decency?
I feel like I’m missing some kind of background story here.
Why does MjD seem to have such an obsession with latex gloves?
Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick Mr. Dochniak is annoying. Here, I’ll make him happy and answer:
Yes, I do use latex gloves if that’s what’s being used by the rest of the OR team. I do not use latex gloves if the patient being operated on or one of the personnel in the room has a latex allergy. In this I practice like pretty much every other surgeon in my hospital who doesn’t have a latex allergy himself.
Now go away, Mr. Dochniak. You annoy me.
@annie – here is all you need to know about MjD:
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/07/628-michael-j-dochniak-denise-h-dunn.html
@Lawrence- thanks.
That’s even nuttier than I thought.
Is it some kind of lack of empathy issue? Since I can’t empathize with the problems of others, for example those who can’t empathize at all with a parent of a kid who died from measles, how bad do I have to make my situation before I will believe people will empathize with me.
Well if I’m worse off than a concentration camp survivor who was trafficked and sold into sex slavery and raped repeatedly while being brainwashed, tortured, and every other bad thing every day over and over….well maybe then, maybe then, one person in all the world might feel as sorry for me as only me can.
I dunno authentic stories about how tough it is tend to be much more effective for me than trying to prove you have it worse than everyone else in all of human history combined.
I am really confused here. Where has anyone shown that an allergic reaction can lead to neurogenesis? I would like to see some evidence for this idea.
slightly off topic but just saw it and find it very interesting…
http://www.horsecollaborative.com/newborn-foal-syndrome-linked-autism/
Loosely related to the comments by Jane and Denise about marketing:
The issue of image and marketing is something the legions of woo understanding extremely well. Food Babe, Jenny McCarthy, Jessica Ainscough do well on camera. Oz and Mercola live the lifestyle of the rich and famous, with TV shows and/or lucrative book deals. The vaccine refusers as a group even trend toward an image that is desirable and marketable – they “care a little more” and “research” a little harder for their precious children. They are yoga-mat buying, SUV driving, Whole Foods shoppers with disposable income and privately schooled kids. It’s not embarrassing to be a science-ignorant AoA reader, it’s (tragically) fashionable. My social media feeds are rivers of Mercola and Tenpenny reposts from acquaintances I would never suspect as falling for that stuff. And I now suspect these posts become as much of a claim of social status as sincere “advocacy.”
Consider tobacco. In the mid-twentieth century smoking was not only widely accepted, but even associated with the glamor of Hollywood – think Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn movies. In the decades since, we have shifted toward a perception of it as a behavior that is more associated with being poor and sick, even weak – people huddled outside the back door of the office building in the cold, getting their fix because they have to. The image of the contemporary smoker is essentially the exact opposite of the paleo diet, Orange county, vaccine-refusing soccer mom. The shifted perception of smoking came about partly, but certainly not entirely, from educating the public about cancer and heart disease. It was also a deliberate PR campaign that included things like putting people with gross teeth and neck holes on TV.
I don’t know what it would take to inspire such a shift in the perception of the snake oil industry, the anti-vaccine movement, or science denialism and illiteracy in general. For all the suggestions of the anti-vax crew being on their heels recently, I’d argue their PR machines are mostly handling damage control pretty well. If there has been any recent glimmer of hope, in my opinion, it is that the backlash toward any anti-vaccine sentiment by major political contenders has been swift and severe.
Re: 21 The comments by Jane and Denise that I reference were on yesterday’s blog, but my rambling fits just as well here I guess. My apologies; the hazards of tabbed browsing.
I think it’s partially an echo chamber issue. People get into a game of “can you top this” in order to fit in. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo.
Chris H., wrote “I worry more at the mindset of anyone who would believe them.” Yeah, me too, but that’s why I don’t find the AoA posts that worrying. That gang appears to be heading out farther into the fringe at warp 10.
Essentially (for now anyway) they’re just giving up on influencing the public discourse on vaccine policy. If you want to maintain a public voice after taking a hit like they have with the the measles outbreak, it’s basic boxing/battle analogy strategy: you backpedal, dress your wounds, protect your vulnerabilities, and look for a different line of attack where you won’t get slaughtered. You don’t triple down, and launch an even more brazen frontal assault against superior force.
But this is physical combat, of course, which makes this move even dumber (or dumberer for a Jim Carrey reference). Over the past few days in the comment threads we’ve been discussing the non-vaxing fence-sitters who have just-enough doubts to keep them from acting. They’re basically sane and moral people who are concerned about their kids, like the idea of vaccination, aren’t that deep into either science or politics, and just have been sniffing too much of “the tainted wind”* of vaccine-danger-rumor that floats through their interpersonal spheres to have confidence in taking the kid to the pedi to get stuck with this particular needle.
I would INVITE any such folks to go read this stuff on AoA, or cull highlights as Orac has done and republish it somewhere where those ‘regular folks’ could see it, for the same reason I think Tram Mai is an unsung pro-vax hero for digging up Jack Wolfson and putting him on TV: this stuff is so bat-sh!t only the already full-gone loonies are going to have any truck with it and everyone else is going to run away.
In the case of anyone we might imagine might EVER vaccinate their kids, the worst that running could be is sideways, but it’s more likely to be toward the peditricians office.
I’m not just saying AoA is shooting itself in the foot here. I’m saying it’s firing a half-dozen bazookas into its feet. Let’s see. Expose weakness: take serious wound; become MORE aggressive and MORE exposed… How’s that gonna work?
Maybe like this: http://tinyurl.com/oj74mmk
That anti-vax meme was beyond disgusting.
Normally I would not tell you how to run your blog, Orac, but I’d seriously put a trigger warning or something above that. That’s just sick.
Reading Hayes’ piece, what kept coming to my mind was that she was making fun of real human trafficking, simply because her parody was so over the top and absurd. Very insensitive. I know that was not her goal, but she really is belittling the real horrors that victims of human trafficking go through.
As for that last image, absolutely disgusting. The product of a sick, sick mind. And I would echo DarkScholar82, that it would be good to have a trigger warning before that picture.
Yeah, I gather Orac can be prickly when it comes to “suggestions,” but I didn’t really need to see that this morning.
CTGeneGuy:
You’ll feel better if you reality check the contradictions in your post viz a viz the OP.
Warrior momism as fashionable? BINGO!
“they “care a little more” and “research” a little harder, an image that is desirable…” Oh yes, they do want to look good!
Now do you see anything desirable, attractive, in that rape photo, or Stigliano’s Bill Cosby refernce, or Laura Hayes talking about human trafficking? Or are they volunteering to put their gross teeth and neck holes on display?
Michael, untuil you can provide actual evidence demonstrating the existence of a causal association between exposure to latex allergens and the development of autism spectrum disorders, your entire argument takes not form other than “Latex–scary stuff!”.
And as such may be appropriately dropped in the same “circular file cabinet” which holds “Mercury–scary stuff!”, “Aluminum–scary stuff!”, “Formaldehyde–scary stuff!”, etc.
There’s still some room, even after tossing in FoodBabe’s “Chemicals–scary stuff!”
A little OT but seems we are having a small outbreak of measles in London. Not a Londoner so can’t vouch for the usual quality of journalism but I though this was an outstanding example of how such an outbreak should be reported.
No false balance, not even a hint of why folk may not be vaccinated, just a simple This is what’s happened and this is how it should be dealt with”:
http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/health/school-outbreak-measles-could-spread-8641897
There are some people you don’t even have to look up on the Encyclopedia of American Loons. It’s evident from their posts that they have their own entry.
Under the category of “good news,” the MMR vaccination rates in the county in which I reside are at just over 98%, according to this morning’s paper.
@sadmar 24 & 28.
I agree entirely with the OP and in particular with your point in #24. The contradiction, I contend, is not in my post but in the fact the insane stuff in the OP coexists within the same general anti-science movement as the segment that I still contend is an image being marketed quite effectively. The problem is getting the public to make the connection between the extreme crazy and the much more palatable “mainstream” crew that I reference. See, it’s not Mike Adams and rape photos that are making robust rounds on social media (not in my corner of the world anyway), it’s Food Babe and Mercola. And they have much more polished PR machines that have mostly maintained a distance from such antics. So while I agree that the above represents serious foot shooting, I don’t think the heavy hitters – who are far more effective at winning on-the-fence parents – are taking any bullets to the foot here. Making the connection between the two groups will require sustained effort, and for your tinyurl, I salute you.
Todd: Exactly! How could a decent human being react otherwise? Hey, speaking of triggers, you and I are lucky in that we can read Hayes disregard for real human trafficking as so absurd it has to be parody. But just as there are sexual assault victims out in webland, there are people who have had forced juvenile prostitution touch their lives, perhaps even lost a child to these crimes. WHERE’S AoA’S TRIGGER WARNING! Oh right. They’d have to give a sh!t about other women.
The thing about the Mengele references is that except for Jews who still feel the Holocaust very personally, the Nazis are pop mythology, symbols of pure evil who function cognitively but longer bite the heart. That’s why it’s so easy to Godwin a thread, or laugh at the YouTube genre of re-subbing the bunker scene from Inglorious Basterds. But human trafficking? That is too happening-right-now-and-in-our-cities to be symbolic. To try to use it as metaphor for anything is beyond heartless and disgusting.
There’s a superb, truly provocative fiction film about human trafficking: Lilya 4-ever. It’s on Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/m5clgdt. There’s a bit of graphic imagery, but not that much — and even so watching it is a tough a sled-ride as any movie I know. I think I’d strongly recommend women or anyone particularly sensitive abuse issues to STAY AWAY (JP that means you!), but if any men here really want to know how far over the line Hayes has gone here, watch it. Just don’t make any plans requiring you to be happy for the next week.
Re: what antivaxers blame for autism in unvaccinated kids, I recently read someone claim that their unvaccinated child developed autism due to exposure to a recently-vaccinated schoolmate “shedding” measles virus (unfortunately I don’t remember where.) “Vaccines are bad” is simply an unfalsifiable belief for some of these people.
I third the request for being spared that hideous Jay Vincent image. Yikes.
@Chris #4: re this kind of BS being allowed in Australia. The answer is “probably.” I have an Aussie friend who is constantly complaining about the anti-vax nuts in her state, who have been allowed to set up their own church so they can claim religious exemptions.
@ Michael #8: Please explain how someone can have”regressive autism.” I know of no such diagnosis. In addition, please explain at the cellular level, the pathophysiology of a latex allergy causing autism.
Orac isn’t dignifying such a stupid question with a response.
You do know, I hope, that more and more hospitals are switching to nitrile gloves for all patients? That the reason for this is because of increasing numbers of people with genuine latex allergies? You are aware, I hope, that surgical gloves made of nitrile are easily sterilized. They are available not only for general medical use as a separate product, but are increasingly supplied in sterile kits for inserting foley catheters, or other sterile invasive procedures.
They’ve been commonly available for years.
I should note re: that final image that I don’t think Orac should remove it, since it is important to show just what kinds of things these people post, but there should be some warning, or perhaps a way to show it only if you mouse-over the image.
Helianthus (#13) says,
“It’s all you have to say? On this thread?”
MjD response,
Well, it appears that some who may be considered “anti-vaccine” express their views provocatively.
The provocative analogies presented in Orac’s article are, in my opinion, a desperate attempt to inject fear into a sensitive vaccine issue, i.e., freedom of choice.
I fear that Orac’s teachings on the validity of non-medical exemptions for vaccine avoidance is, in my opinion, provoking a relatively untapped catharsis for the ant-vaccine movement based on freedom-of-choice.
In simpler terms, Orac continues to pour gasoline on the “anti-vaccine” fire.
CTGeneGuy #32
Dead on and well stated. Did you see my posts on Food Babe yesterday? The gist boiled down to:
• her whole act is pure PR gold
• more dangerous than we imagine if we look at the comical-bad-science
• the ‘science’ is just a prop anyway, a hand-waving distraction
• it’s all about interwoven narratives of social power and body tranformation
• dumping good science on the bad won’t affect her one tiny bit
• the only way to combat her is to expose the lies at the heart of her appeal, which have a little to do with science, but not much.
To riff off of the Science Babe, the Food Babe is sprinting up the ladder of the Anorexia-Bulimia-Media-Industrial complex, and looks to me to have enough game to get to the top. She’s the opposite of AoA. No open ugly at all….
My sense is that the Hayes, Stiglianos of the antivax movement are in panic mode re: losing their jobs. Mercola, for example, will do fine as he has a “broad spectrum” message. Name a part of the body and he has the answer. While Hayes and her peers are primarily single issue activists, essentially. Narcissists to the core, their relevancy and $$$ source is in jeopardy, and that is understandably terrifying.
Perhaps this is obvious to any of the readers here and I apologize, if so.
Sadmar # 39. Excellent points and well stated. Thanks. I’d not read your post when I posted mine(#40)
Good. The sooner that madhouse burns to the ground, the better. And the smoke will serve as a warning to others.
“The provocative analogies presented in Orac’s article are, in my opinion, a desperate attempt to inject fear into a sensitive vaccine issue, i.e., freedom of choice.”
Interesting choice of words coming from a position that historically has thrived by creating unreasoning panicked fear based on no good evidence.
“freedom of choice”
The Supreme blew ‘the right to spread disease’ out of the water a long time ago.
— https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/197/11/case.html
Agree w. Todd #37. Too bad Science Blogs is such a bare bones platform. I know there are several technologies that exist to hide/reveal. In their absence, the default choices might be a text hyperlink to an off RI host, or a warning at the top of the post. I’ll add another: a generic ‘warning’ graphic that by virtue of size and difference from a mere text link indicates the importance of the potentially disturbing image.
Imho, the question then becomes whether the SciBlogs.platform where Orac creates the post allows for either a Javascript pop-up window, or the HTML to at least open the link in a new window instead of leaving the page. Alas, if getting to the image is too much bother, people who need to see it (and can take it) won’t.
Just for sake of argument, if the only choices were text warning at the top of the OP and leaving the page, I’d go with the text warning. The problem, obviously, is you still want everybody to read the whole OP, and even if the problematic image is at the bottom of the post, it’s not like people can scroll past it without seeing it…
Fwiw, we go through this argument in the world of documentary film all the time. At different points the decisions have fallen in different directions, and as time goes on we can see what happens. The conclusion: never sweet the dirt under the rug. Don’t hype it, exploit it, turn it into spectacle. Just put it out. With a warning if it’s warranted. But don’t hide it. Our culture hides way too. It’s a bit like the MMR. You have to consider the broader good. Some individuals may have temporary bad reactions. But the overall effect on public discourse from repressing it is worse. I cant imagine how awful victims and their families or communities must have felt when the Abu Grahib photos were published, but Ameirca needed to see them.
Hopefully, there’s a good tech option available here, and this remains just an abstract discussion.
_____
A historical illustration. This is a photo of what U. S. tax dollars were paying for in 1978. It’s graphic. Be advised.
tinyurl.com/n8fod9q
Photographer Susan Meiselas wrote:
Actually, it worked for me. Changed my reality. Opened my eyes…
Patrick Arambula (#43) says,
… words coming from a position that historically has thrived by creating unreasoning panicked fear based on no good evidence.
MjD says,
The FDA continues to give warnings, my position, on the hazards of natural rubber latex (NRL) in vaccines and the NRL-gloves used on Orac’s hands during surgery.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM342872.pdf
Here’s a correction to post #38:
Orac defiantly wears natural-rubber-latex gloves as he pours gasoline on the “anti-vaccine” fire.
I must admit, Mr. Dochniak made me laugh hilariously with this one, so ridiculous is his comment.
He certainly goes out of his way to retain his “American Loon” title now, doesn’t he?
Seriously, are latex gloves the only thing he talks about?
Twice I’ve managed to drive Dochniak from the boards by posting a very good review of the very bad science Dochniak is pushing that was done by previous minion Prometheus, on his blog, A Photon in the Darkness. It is available on the Wayback Machine at –
https://web.archive.org/web/20111228055016/http://photoninthedarkness.com/
You can hear Dochniak’s crazy direct from the man himself at
Caution, this video has Dochniak’s poetry in it, which has been linked to a desperate desire to consume large quantities of alcohol in an effort to kill the brain cells storing the memory of said poems.
If posting these links work to keep Dochniak away, I’ll carry on reposting them when Dochniak reappears until our host tells me to stop.
@Annie – it is “latex-everything.” He truly believes that latex usage causes widespread latex allergies (which has never been proven or any evidence provided that they exist outside of the very small number of people with legitimate latex allergies) and also autism.
The latex used in vaccine packaging is his go-to, really….the gloves this is just to try to put Orac on the spot.
Well that’s a new one for me, I’ll give him that.
I thought I’d heard every vaccine ingredient autism connection out there. Apparently not…
I suppose I could consider banning Mr. Dochniak, but I must confess that he’s just so off the deep end that he fascinates me sometimes. It’s like watching the proverbial train wreck happen.
@Orac
The really fascinating thing is that no matter how many times he’s shown to be wrong, no matter how many times he utterly fails to provide even the hint of a whiff of scientific evidence to support his claims, he keeps popping back now and again, singing the same tune every time. He has but one atonal song in his repertoire.
Sadmar @33:
Thanks so much for assuring me that any pain my family feels at casual references to Nazis and the Holocaust is irrelevant, whether because we’re Jewish or because there are so many people who try to ignore that Nazis, unlike Sauron or Darth Vader, were and are real. Also, Jews were not the only group targeted by the Nazis, and anti-Roma prejudice is still common.
Re: #46.
Orac, latex gloves are inappropriate protection while pouring gasoline. Nitriles are recommended for this use. Please consult your EHS department for more information.
Did I miss something or did we start forcing vaccinations on people? (Snark, snark)
Mr. Dochniak’s obsession always puts me in mind of the Plastic Mac Man character from “The Bedsitting Room”.
“They should never have invented rubber … rubber… stretching its sinful way round the world… those black rubber transparent women’s macs… rubber girdles and douches… rubber waterproof sheets encouraging children to wet the beds when there’s pots in the room…”
I can’t believe I missed this Far Side cartoon:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/planetarion/media/crap/farside/VaccinationManLarsonsc.jpg.html
Chris Hickie definitely should get a framed print for his office.
The dude is obsessed with latex. My sister (a veterinarian) is wildly allergic to latex. I mention this as it has caused office managers at two different vet practices fits because they had to special order sterile nitrile gloves especially for her. According to her they are considerably more expensive and she is the only one to use them. But she has to have them because even a few moments of contact with her skin and latex causes her an extreme rash. Its wildly uncomfortable if you have an allergy but I really don’t see how putting a bandaid on a child is going to cause them to be autistic. BTW you do know that some fascinating brain imaging work being done shows that you can predict autism from scans of infants brains as young as 6 months old? You’re born with autism genius. Some mythical link to latex allergy doesn’t cause autism.
Ya, do not wear latex gloves with gasoline. My stepfather was allergic to wasp stings, and one late summer day I was throwing small cups of gasoline to kill the nests that were ever present in the small crocks of the roof. Except the one at the very top of the house, too far for my throw. So I got my favorite watergun, filled it with gasoline, raised it high, took careful aim, squeezed the triggers.
And had a face full of dissolved plastic and gasoline.
@Johnny
Watched the video. Laughed. Then felt guilty about laughing at someone who is clearly delusional. I blame you.
Off topic:
Can anyone point me to a source for the prevalence and duration of immunity from surviving wild-type diphtheria disease? (It may be unknown, but perhaps there were studies from the Independent States epidemic?).
CTGeneGuy #32:
Making the connection can be done very successfully – check out the SAVN campaign in Australia. A grassroots group used Facebook to co-ordinate complaints to regulatory bodies and contact with the media to Stop the Australian Vaccination Network. As well as adverse findings and legislative change, they presented a poster at a recent conference demonstrating the change in media coverage of vaccination. And it’s been confirmed by the recent thrashing of Tenpenny and cancellation of her tour – both mainstream media and general conversation took the position that you’d have to be crazy to listen to these people.
Reasonable Hank, advodiaboli @ Lucky Losing and Dr Rachie have all blogged about it, as well as the Facebook page itself.
@ Pragmatist ( #40)
You’re right:
I sense a great deal of desperation across quite a few websites/ broadcasts. AoA has been churning outrageous material at a frantic pace, Adams has been crying, “Police state! Forced vaccination!” and Null claims that his anti-vax exposes ( esp a 5 hour woo-fest last Tuesday) have led to a black ops-style hacking of his website, PRN, in order to keep his earth-shattering findings away from the public. Audio betrays their deep-seated fear ( said vaccine shows involved several anti-vax stars) whilst hyperbolic godwinning highlights the desperation through written material.( e.g. TMR; Do vaccines cause childhood cancer?)
Anti-vax thought leaders should be rather upset because they often fasten the trappings of their personal identity upon this calling but some of general woo-meisters, like the aforementioned, have a lot riding on their anti-vax stance as well: they use it to show how dangerous SBM is, how governments demonstrate untrustworthiness and how the media is controlled by corporate greed. These two, who have been spouting rebellion for the past several years, have much to lose if it appears that governmental guidelines about vaccination appear to be necessary cautions rather than merely to dampen down citizens’ personal liberty and harass them obtrusively. They can’t have SBM and government looking either helpful or reasonable..
JP:Yeah, so what? Kim, you’re writing about your own daughter, and that’s who she is – can’t you possibly find it in you to love her for who she is? I mean, rather than talking about her as some sort of worthless piece of human jetsam?
If she hasn’t learned in twenty years, she’ll NEVER learn. Really, her husband must be the apex doormat; he should’ve split and taken the girls far far away as soon as they got their diagnosis. I’m surprised the girls are still alive.
Is it any wonder I hate and despise these people as much as I do?
On that note, this is the last post I’ll be putting up for a while. See you on the 22nd.
@PGP:
Good luck with your endeavors between now and the 22nd. I hope they are pleasant, or whatever they are meant to be!
Not so hot (see Table 5 and related text).
^ Dittmann borked the title of Ref. 56; the Pubmed entry is here.
@ Vicki #55
I certianly would apologize for offending you if:
1) I had said anything remotely like ‘the pain felt at casual references to Nazis and the Holocaust by families of victim is irrelevant’.
2) I had not, in fact, said the opposite.
3) my own cultural identity was not ‘most goy but enough Jewish’ that I find anti-Semitism wounding, personally.
I do happen to know many groups were targeted for the death camps. As listing them all would have made for a rather lengthy post, I figured ‘Jews’ would serve as synecdoche.
In fact, you may take my point as an observational validation of any revulsion you feel at the use of references to Nazism in contemporary culture. Because it was an observation. Goys do indeed drop Mengele and Auschwitz smack at the drop of a hat on just about anything, because to the ‘typical American’ these things are no longer real. They’re as movie-fantasy (Boys from Barzil, Captain America) as The Emporer or The Umbrella Corporation. It is simply a fact that few people find these references disturbing these days. One could certainly argue that this is a sign of a kind of disturbing exercise of privilege: these things can be reduced to comic-book clcihes because they happened to The Other, and trafficking is now a stronger taboo because it hits closer. But that’s too OT to go into into further.
If you want my personal opinion: the only reason the Mike Adams poster Orac posted on Tuesday didn’t send me into a screaming rage is because I’m used to that sh!t now. Believe me, I have screamed my fair share of screams on that stuff. Fwiw: Nuit at Brouillard was a required screening in one of the clasess I taught every year:
http://tinyurl.com/l3jhuhb
I would consider Michael Dochniak’s fascination with latex products disturbing, but considering his CV I’m pretty sure he’s just fear-mongering for the cash.
@Denice #65.
They can’t have SBM and government looking either helpful or reasonable..
Indeed.
You made a great point about their identities being so linked with this movement. Being shown to be the frauds that they are publicly and humiliatingly, has to weigh heavily on them beyond the money. It’s a fascinating human phenomenon that is unfolding. If it didn’t involve jeopardizing children’s lives I’d be more inclined to sit back and watch….
like the aforementioned, have a lot riding on their anti-vax stance as well: they use it to show how dangerous SBM is, how governments demonstrate untrustworthiness and how the media is controlled by corporate greed.
Do you think they actually believe this?
^^ But see this EID; Oxford has the Frost, paywalled. I’m not finding the issue at archive-dot-org.
The Vaccine War, according to Celia Farber, is “how we hate women now”. Farber got this idea from, and is promoting,this article: http://birthanarchy.com/pro-choice-movement-deployed-paternalism-vaccine-war/
Talk about reaching. I had no idea that I hated all women because some chose to not vaccinate their child. By the same reasoning, I could say parents (not just mothers) who do not vaccinate their child must hate their child. It is just ridiculous and illogical.
Yeah, it’s as viable as the frozen shrimp in my fridge.
It’s quite a way from D’Ohlmsted’s ungrammatical reassurance that “we are winning” (Weekly Fishwrap, January 31), John “I Hear a Ripsody” Stone’s deranged, ahistorical invocation of the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact to proclaim that Disneyland spelled certain doom for MMR (February 3), and B.J. Handley’s keen insight that “the Disneyland measles outbreak benefits our community, movement, and kids” (January 30) to the Dachelbot’s Godwinning up the joint (and apparently claiming that the unvaccinated are “disabled”) on February 13.
Oh, geez. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to go read that.
Pragmatist asked whether new-agey profiteers like Mikey actually believe SBM is dangerous, governments are untrustworthy, the media is controlled by corporate greed.
[OK, joke must be made.] No, they don’t believe those things, which is too bad because sbm IS dangerous (anesthesia), governments ARE untrustworthy (Iraq), and the media IS controlled by corporate greed (Kim Kardashian is TV a lot).
So, any setback the broad-spectrum woo-meisters will suffer from the (hoped) death of ant-vax will be minimal and fleeting. Mercy, pages are constantly down the URL re-direct drain at NN, Oceania has always been at war EastAsia, and as Marx put it, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” (Not Karl, Groucho).
Skeptics seem to have a problem understanding the ability of people to compartmentalize, and hold different and apparently contradictory views of similar things at the same time. For one thing, categorical judgements just don’t make sense. Mike Adams probably buys Band-Aids and anti-biotic ointment at CVS like everybody else; trusts public librarians, park rangers, and especially his postal carrier, and has no problem with how Breaking Bad was funded. But beyond the obviously benign, any conspiracy theorist is likely to have any number of things NOT troubling them in any of those categories that are actually are MORE worrisome than the things they obsess about. Bread and Circuses. As old as the hills.
As Marianne Williamson was fumbling to say on Maher:
1) some degree of corruption penetrates everything
2) large institutions, therefore, deserve a measure of mistrust
3) however corruption is almost always limited
4) things we should and must trust about some things will come from institutions we may not trust about other things
5) the trick is figuring out which is which, and that requires work, intelligence and discrimination.
Enough people will always have enough trouble sorting that out that con-men will always be able to haul up some cock-and-bull that affirms and parallels their central woo. What every con-artist knows, and most skeptics fail to understand, is that the way the human species is hardwired, you CAN as Lincoln observed, always fool some of the people all of the time. Because some emotions trump every form of rationality from advanced science to simple common sense no matter what. If anti-vaxers were capable of ANY form of reality processing, they wouldn’t be anti-vaxers in the first place. But whether it actually happened to them, or they’re just projecting, the sound of physician uttering the word “autism” blew their circuits.
Since the minions don’t like (or read) longer posts, I’ll discuss dealing with blown circuits in a separate comment later…
Talking about vaccines and our hosts line of experience, there is a Dutch website which connects vaccines with breastcancer. I don’t know if this idiot idea also can be found in the US, but it might be some interesting topic for our highly regarded host
I enjoyed reading the Prometheus blog that someone provided a link to above. Does anyone know why he/she no longer blogs?
@Ren #75
You forget – that shrimp in your freezer probably has PCB’s, Mercury, Lead, Arsenic, Aluminum, Fetal Tissue, etc….
Or at least that’s what the anti-vaccine loonies like MjD would say.
Interesting when one has a perseveration on something like latex. I think it is important to recognize that there is desperation to find the cause of autism. I also think it important to do a review on the peer reviewed scientific literature of various claims so we can all be up to date on research including reading the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, for example. Allergies to any of the ingredients in the vaccine makes it contraindicated medically and one wouldn’t use latex gloves in the event of a latex allergy. There are also latex-free syringes available for those with allergies to latex.
Still Shaking Mama: “Does anyone know why he/she no longer blogs?”
Like many others who used to blog: got too busy as life got in the way.
@Johnny #50
Is Dochniak a Vogon?
@ Pragmatist:
I speculate purely about the more entrenched, involved and VOCAL members of anti-vax society:
these are people who have been dealt a harsh blow – a diagnosis of severe autism may have wrecked their dreams for their child. Many people would adapt to the situation and try to make the best of it- adapting to the vicissitudes of reality- they don’t.
For whatever reason- perhaps due to emotional, historical, personality issues- these FEW ( and I do believe that they are a very small number) chose to incorporate the face-saving, self-esteem salvaging mechanism of attributing their child’s ASD
to external causes ( vaccines, antibiotics, toxins, SBM) rather than to heredity or merely, luck of the draw. This way they have someone to blame who can be the recipient of their ire- which is certainly better than directing it at the child: dealing with a severely disabled person can be frustrating to even the most loving of parents,
Perhaps they discovered that their lives rapidly became focused upon the child’s needs and increased, protracted problems- they envision a bleak future as lifelong carers.. They became isolated from friends and family members because their friends’ children most likely are not special needs ( by probability) and some families are not as tolerant of serious issues as the parents. Thus, they may have lost these traditional sources of support. Professional counsellors would discourage their ideas and are avoided.
Parents like these found like-minded cohorts via the internet ( TMR started via facebook) and through celebrity books; a few parents ( mostly mothers) found that writing about their lives brought them friends and a measure of fame. They became celebrities in a fashion: big fish in a very small pool. Amongst this group, stories are traded and unrealistic ideas are reinforced – I call it group therapy gone wrong- .they compete amongst themselves to earn the title of most devoted mother or greatest martyr or bad@ss revolutionary.
Freud spoke of secondary gain- when a person loses an ability or source of esteem , they may compensate by deriving advantage through illness or their problems. They use it to solve other problems- inefficiently, of course. A person who becomes physically incapacitated may seek out sympathy, love and care from others that they wouldn’t get otherwise if ablebodied.
Thus rather than conceptualise themselves as merely care-takers – in compensation, they identify with warriors, rebels, martyrs, saints and other quasi-mythic personae. They know better than doctors and scientists. They triumphantly uncover the sordid truth behind governmental and industrial lies. They write what reporters dare not. They create books and appear on television as well as maintaining an internet presence to feed their growing mythos.
Would any of these people we read at AoA or TMR be known if not for their woo? Would any of them write books without a like-minded group buying them and a cohort who owns a publishing company? I doubt it.
So obviously they are distraught that there is now widespread challenge to the source of their bliss. What made them famous and admired- albeit by a restricted group- now brings them scorn. A few years ago, when Andy was struck off- they suffered a similar assault on their future roles in the anti-vax pantheo-, somehow they recovered. Now they are more DIIRECTLY implicated as sources of VPDs spreading. It’s not just Andy at fault.
A recent study suggests that parents with Tattoos are more likely to have children with autism
Geez, guess I better not have any kids, then. (Well, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt entirely sure that I should inflict myself and my genes on children, anyway.)
Oh, wait a second. Have a link? Citation? I can’t find anythign anywhere.
I thoroughly enjoyed rereading Promethius A Photon in the Darkness blog…especially the three part book review.
There was another post on that blog which discussed medical insurance coverages for developmentally disabled/autistic children which “Chris” and I participated in…along with “MJ”.
“MJ” was the blogger from “Autism Jabberwocky”, who, at first, defended the use of MMS on autistic children as “harmless”, covered here by Orac:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/06/21/mms-a-k-a-bleach-for-autism-just-when-i-think-im-out/
So, thanks Johnny, for providing the link to A Photon in the Darknees and for jolting my memory about “MJ”/Autism Jabberwocky who has closed down his blog as of four weeks ago. (One less unscientific blogger who tries to cure his three autistic children):
I hate the MMS cult. They often harass the APBA support groups.
Colonel Tom
A moment, please.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2015/02/06/will-the-disneyland-measles-outbreak-lead-to-the-end-of-non-medical-exemptions-to-school-vaccine-mandates-it-should/#comment-385667
DJEB @ 62
I’ve been laughing at Dochniak from the moment he showed up here at RI, and am well on the way to Hell. However, there is plenty of room in this hand basket, and you are welcome to ride along.
DrB @ 84
No, I do not think Dochniak is a Vogon. HHGG tells us
I believe that in a future update of the guide, the Vogons will be moved to number 4, and Dochniak’s poetry would take over the number 2 spot.
Also, Vogons do not have much capacity in the way of creativity, and Dochniak’s ideas, not being based on anything found in nature, are clearly his own creation, and exist only in his own mind. This is clearly not Vogon-like behavior.
Saw this, and knew I had to post it.
“The Sacramento office of state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez received an interesting call Wednesday from comedian and actor Rob Schneider.
“He left a very disturbing message with one of my staff people, saying he was going to spend money against me in my next election,” said Gonzalez, who is co-sponsoring a bill that will eliminate the personal belief exemption.”
Full article here. http://www.10news.com/news/local-politician-goes-toe-to-toe-with-deuce-bigalow-actor-over-proposed-changes-to-vaccination-law
“A recent study suggests that parents with Tattoos are more likely to have children with autism”
A subsequent study showed that, while true, the tattoos were acquired after the autism diagnosis. That and minivans.
Panacea (#36) writes,
Please explain how someone can have”regressive autism.” I know of no such diagnosis. In addition, please explain at the cellular level, the pathophysiology of a latex allergy causing autism.
MjD says,
Here’s a regressive-autism discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_autism
Furthermore, this is an article that describes a possible mechanism for natural rubber latex induced autism:
http://www.intechopen.com/books/mutations-in-human-genetic-disease/clinical-and-genetic-heterogeneity-of-autism
Thanks for your patronage!
I guess I am quite unnerved now that someone like MjD is responsible for a child, having seen how delusional he is…..
Prometheus, come back: we miss you.
I do not know why he/she stopped blogging, or let the newer (paid) version of the blog go dark.
Speaking of being missed, does anybody here happen to correspond with Mrs. Woo? I was thinking about her and her chickens the other day – she hasn’t posted here in a while now.
@Johnny Generally, if anyone talks at great length about their culture/religion to the internet, they are fake injuns. There are lots of fakes on the internet, they steal that which is sacred, they profane that which is cherished. They are about as bad as people that make medical diagnosis based upon news media reports.
In what appears to be a move of extremely dubious legality, the Seattle Times reports that around 18 students have been ordered quarantined in Clallam County.
^ That was a terribly constructed sentence, sorry.
Narad, the reason for quarantining non vaccinated close contacts of a measles case, seem to be justified here,
http://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/5100/420-063-Guideline-Measles.pdf
I’m old enough to remember when the only people I saw with with tattoos were sailors, soldiers, ex-cons and members of alternative subcultures. If that study looked at autism and tattoos over a few decades the correlation would be unavoidable, given increased diagnosis of autism and the enormous increase in the popularity of tattoos over the same period.
“There was no school exposure.”
The relevant statute is here; a unilateral quarantine order cannot exceed 10 days, whereas this one is reported to extend to the 27th.
Furthermore, this is an article that describes a possible mechanism for natural rubber latex induced autism:
ht_tp://www.intechopen.com/books/mutations-in-human-genetic-disease/clinical-and-genetic-heterogeneity-of-autism
All that is relevant in the link (to a 2012 book chapter) is an attempt by one of its authors, in the antepenultimate paragraph, to pimp his 2011 paper.* Prometheus comprehensively dissected that paper over three years ago.
* “Our study has suggested that a close contact with natural rubber latex (NRL) could trigger an immunoreaction to Hevea brasiliensis (Hev-b) proteins in NRL and resulted in autism [109].”
Liz Ditz (#95) says,
Prometheus, come back: we miss you. I do not know why he/she stopped blogging, or let the newer (paid) version of the blog go dark.
MjD says,
In my opinion, disappearance is inevitable when insolent intellectual’s like Prometheus come to the realization that presented arguments against vaccine-induced-autism weaken and falter (e.g., natural-rubber-latex exposure and regressive autism).
Athough, I wasn’t a big fan of Prometheus she/he was a master of respectful insolence.
MERCK DAYCARE PROVIDER ACCOMMODATES NON-VACCINATING PARENTS
That’s a clickbait-verion headline I just composed, but it’s based on actual news.
Apparently, “Big Daycare” is A Thing, has indeed been accommodating non-vaxing parents in at least some locations, and its PR folks are now attempting to spin their position, or lack thereof.
Wired recently ran a story “The Sickeningly Low Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Day Cares”.
http://tinyurl.com/p9fsma9
It’s based on the CA Dept. of Public Health database, and the author admits some of those low reported rates may be ‘bad data’ for variety of reasons, but this part of the article caught my eye:
What the story does not say: Though Blum, as a Cisco employee, lives and works in Silicon Valley, Kane is at Bright Horizons corporate HQ in Massachusetts, where she holds the title of Communications Manager. Bright Horizons is the largest supplier of employer supported daycare in the U.S., highly profitable, and listed on the NYSE. It has an enterprise value of $2.49 billion, and 80% of its stock is held by Bain Capital. (Hi, Mitt!) It’s website is spectacularly uninformative about its business relationships, and I could not find a complete client list anywhere. It’s probably too long to list. I also could not discover at what level corporations hold contracts with Blue Horizons — globally, nationally, regionally, or locally. However, it seems to hold a virtual monopoly on the business in the U.S., being over 5 times larger than any of it’s few competitors. It’s might be easier to list big employer brands that do NOT have a contract with Bright Horizeos than those that do. They’re not just the supplier for tech firms in Silicon Valley, but universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies — you name it — all over the country.
Bright Horizons is indeed the daycare provider for Cisco, but yup, its the daycare provider for a number of Merck locations, including the former corporate HQ in Whitehouse Station, NJ, and the facility in West Point PA. where Maurice Hilleman developed the MMR.
In fact, Cisco does not seem to be one of Bright Horizons larger or more prestigious accounts, which adds to the curious coincidence that the PR contact for the whole international enterprise in MA has the same sketchy excuse for low vax rates at-the-ready as the Cisco PR manager in Santa Clara county when Wired contacted them on the same day..
It’s not clear how many Bright Horizons facilities are devoted exclusively to single employers, like the ones they operate for Cisco and Merck, and how many are shared by a number of employers in the area. The single-employer arrangement seems fairly common, but since these facilities don’t bear “Bright Horizons” in their names, it’s difficult to find all the Bright Horizons daycares in the CA database.
The few that are indexed under the Bright Horizons name are all in either the Bay or LA/SD metro areas. The vax rates more or less what you’d expect from the kindergarten data of the general neighborhoods, but with a few odd exceptions: one of the Bright Horizons locations with the highes vax rates is right in the middle of Marin County. I might guess that reflects the cultures of the particular firms that contract with that facility more than the general population of the area, but I really don’t know. I have no clue what vax rates may be at Bright-Horizons-run daycare centers in other states.
However, the admittedly vague pattern in California suggests the largest daycare provider in the U.S. has chosen not to get pushy with parents who haven’t vaccinated their children. And the responses from the PR departments amount to, “Who? Not us!”
Narad, your first comment on the quarantining of children stated there was an exposure.
I provided the Washington State’s Department of Health measles case surveillance and containment directive, dated August, 2014 which is quite similar to the CDC Case Surveillance Manual-Measles Chapter.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt07-measles.html
“Day care centers, schools and other educational institutions”
“Measles cases in schools, colleges, and other institutions, such as day care centers where close contact may exist, require rapid public health investigation for response and for evaluation of risk of further transmission. In educational institutions where there are high rates of vaccine exemptors, the potential risk of spread of the disease is high. Control measures include:
Exclusion and isolation of cases (they can return on the fifth day after rash onset if not immunocompromised);
Offering vaccine for those who are not up-to-date with age-appropriate vaccination (first dose to unvaccinated, second dose to those with one documented dose can be given at least 28 days after the first dose);
IG if immunocompromised (please refer the following section: Vaccination and use of immunoglobulin in exposed persons)
Persons who continue to be exempted from or who refuse measles vaccination should be excluded from the school, child care, or other institutions until 21 days after rash onset in the last case of measles.[20, 25]
All students and all school personnel born in or after 1957 who cannot provide adequate presumptive evidence of immunity should be vaccinated. Persons receiving their second dose and previously unvaccinated persons receiving their first dose as part of the outbreak control program may be immediately readmitted to school. However these individuals should be monitored for signs and symptoms of measles.”
RE MJD #46
The document you cite seems to be seeking consistency and accuracy in labeling of non-latex items (like gloves) so that if someone wanted to use latex-free equipment, they could do so with more certainty. It has little to do with the 99+% of the time when regular latex gloves are the preferred choice. Perhaps a real doctor could explain why they are generally preferred and what is lost when they are not used. Even a small cost might really add up over millions of routine uses. Also is there any recognized figure for the incidence of latex allergy/intolerance? Would you be opposed to vaccines even if there were absolutely ZERO latex involved? Say a latex-free vaccine program for those worried about such a thing.
What does school exclusion have to do with quarantine?
Narad, “self quarantine” is the expression used when school children are excluded from school by the County health department, during a measles outbreak.
In the absence of a school building nurse or day care center nurse, the administrator of the program must have a list available for the health department, of children who are not vaccinated (for any exemption).
http://www.schoolhealthservicesny.com/faq.cfm?subpage=41
That’s not the case here, at least as reported. In fact, Locke seems to have been quarantining people willy-nilly. A quick read of the law strongly suggests that this requires a court order.
@Johnny #90
On sober reflection, I think I was being unfair to imply that Dochniak’s poetry was as bad as Vogons’ efforts. I hereby apologise to any Vogon who was offended by my suggestion.
Narad, I and other public nurses excluded non vaccinated children from day care and school every time a measles case was diagnosed….without a court order. Adults who were exposed to a measles case were told to self-quarantine themselves…unless they had written proof of vaccination. I don’t know why the blood tests to prove immunity were delayed for those adults who were exposed to a measles case and had no proof of vaccination against measles.
I don’t ever recall the need for a court order to quarantine a person with measles and only several court orders directing the police department to pick up and deliver people to the County hospital where they were guarded around-the-clock, who refused treatment for sputum + Multi drug resistant TB.
Chris Hickie, Australia hasn’t banned anti-vaccine speech. We just make sure the speech has consequences.
Recently Sherri Tenpenny had her plans for a speaking tour scuppered by public pressure on the venues; they all cancelled her bookings (oh, and several claimed they’d been lied to regarding the content of the talks; they’d been told it was a SIDS awareness group). No government involvement whatsoever.
And last year the former Australian Vaccines Network was forced to change its name to something that better reflected its stance as an anti-vaccine group. The relevant government authority stripped them of their charitable tax-free status, when an audit showed a number of irregularities in their books. And the Health Department issued a public warning that they spout utter crap, and that no one should listen to a word they say. They didn’t have to change any of the content of their website.
In short, we have no objection to anti-vaxxers selling bullshit…as long as they clearly label it as bullshit.
Lee (#107) asks,
Would you be opposed to vaccines even if there were absolutely ZERO latex involved? Say a latex-free vaccine program for those worried about such a thing.
MjD says,
Vaccines not made with natural rubber latex (NRL) are an important safety initiative for everyone.
It is well understood that increased exposure to NRL affects in incidence of atopy (i.e., many allergies) .
To help reduce the incidence of allergy-induced regressive-autism it has been suggested that every autistic child’s immune-profile be evaluated before vaccinations.
If the child has an atypical immune profile (e.g., elevated white blood cell count, neuron growth factor over-expression, allergy to vaccine components) the child should not be vaccinated.
In my opinion, evaluating the immune profile of non-autistic children before vaccinations would be a progressive vaccine-safety initiative in that everyone’s immune profile is adaptive.
Herr Doktor: That’s the only study on an advanced search I could find on latex/autism. People opposed to vaccinations are going to glomb onto anything they think supports their cause or obsession. I’m pleased to see it was addressed previously on this site. It is essential that members on this site are one step ahead of the antivaccination crowd by being aware of what they are using as ammo.
MjD; Allergy- induced regressive autism? I’m not finding that in the DSM . Who has suggested every autistic child’s immune-profile be evaluated before vaccinations and what are their credentials and evidenced-based justification? There is no data that I am aware of that indicates the prevalence of allergies in the autistic population is any different than in the general population.
“Chris Hickie, Australia hasn’t banned anti-vaccine speech. We just make sure the speech has consequences.”
Apparently those consequences could include sanctions against news media that interview the (former) AVN:
“THE controversial Australian Vaccination Network is now effectively blacklisted as a media source after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) reprimanded a regional broadcaster for using statements from AVN founder Meryl Dorey.”
“In an August 2012 report about a measles outbreak in Sydney, WIN News Illawarra included the following statement by Ms Dorey: “All vaccinations, in the medical literature, have been linked with the possibility of causing autism…”
“According to ACMA, using the statement conveyed a “higher level of controversy and uncertainty about immunisation than was justified by the facts”. WIN was found to have breached two provisions of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.”
http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/media-authority-blow-for-avn/1903650/
In the U.S. we’re much less inclined to shut down free speech by anyone, even dangerous morons.
“Really, I can’t envision what is wrong with people that would make them compare vaccination, a routine medical procedure, to rape and human trafficking, which are correctly viewed as horrific crimes.” Eric
Well it depends on your perspective of truth really. Having a cocktail of crap injected into you without being able to make an informed decision, most parents just get the letter to attend with no contraindications, discussion of any type and believe the hype.
So what I, and many others don’t get here is when exactly does herd immunity kick in with measles vaccine. I mean Disneyland isn’t a fixed city for Christ’s sake, why has it become a hotbed of measles?
““According to ACMA, using the statement conveyed a “higher level of controversy and uncertainty about immunisation than was justified by the facts”. WIN was found to have breached two provisions of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.” Joker
What is this crap, since when did national media have a code of practice for reporting news. In the last flu pandemic scam the highest levels of provaccine bullshit were pumped out. Even months after we were told it had ended and the public money had been spent on futile ‘treatments’ that were like pissing in the ocean.
There were no facts with the cardboard swine flu pandemic.
Are you taking the piss about double standards or is this just usual provax rhetoric?
“People opposed to vaccinations are going to glomb onto anything they think supports their cause or obsession.” Lori
Yes and by the same yardstick people who think vaccines are a medical orgasm are going to make any effort they can to debunk anything that shows vaccination to be bollocks.
Where does it get us, it is no difference than football nutters or religious fuck wits. Do you wonder why so many people think doctors are well educated idiots on this subject?
It creates a smokescreen and prevents any progress.
“The California department of public health said on 7 January that officials believe a person infected with measles was staying in the Disneyland theme park in December. That unknown patient then infected others at the park. ” Guardian
Are you taking the piss, officials believe! an unknown woman! stayed at the park……………..
That’s one fucked up belief system ya got there…….
More like the vaccine fucking failed………………………………..
According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6879000, having only 90% of the population immune in insufficient to order to prevent epidemics among the susceptible population. The rate needed is higher; I’ve seen 95% quoted.
The fact that there hasn’t been an epidemic this year, just an outbreak, shows what herd immunity does.
As to “Disneyland isn’t a fixed city for Christ’s sake, why has it become a hotbed of measles?”
It’s not. Per the timeline at http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-Disneyland-Measles-Outbreak-289520681.html, only 7 people caught measles after being exposed at Disneyland. The remaining cases are part of a chain of exposure.
Well, I’m not really sure what a “perspective of truth” even is, but I’m going to have to disagree with you and say that no, it in fact depends on whether you have any sort of empathy, ethics or moral fiber at all.
Disneyland isn’t a fixed city
It is in fact mounted on caterpillar tracks so it can move from place to place and n-one knows where it will strike next.
Colonel Tom
I’d like to keep the discussion in the original thread, so, if you please –
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2015/02/06/will-the-disneyland-measles-outbreak-lead-to-the-end-of-non-medical-exemptions-to-school-vaccine-mandates-it-should/#comment-385904
@ Denice
From my experience, you are spot on. Though I think you overlook the admittedly contradictory thinking that blames themselves for dental amalgams, rhogam, and the like. They are often willing to blame themselves. The point is they were being dutiful and just following orders, before they were enlightened.
Or perhaps it is moved on rails which are set up by the Track Guild, who also recover them from behind the city’s path, as they attempt to maintain position with the ever moving Optimum.
I see we have similar tastes in fine literature.
Mr. Dochniak:
Thanks for the definition. Now explain why we should stop using latex in the adult population. Answer: you’re conflating patient groups to lend support to an idea with no evidential support.
As for your citation: wow. One tiny little phrase from one tiny little article that is nothing more than hypothesis . . . and the author SAYS it is only a hypothesis.
So I did a PubMed search. I found exactly 1 article that hypothesize that latex allergies may be a factor in vaccine safety, and one of them actually claims it: and was written by you! It’s long on claims and short on evidence.
So what is your evidence again?
“The California department of public health said on 7 January that officials believe a person infected with measles was staying in the Disneyland theme park in December. That unknown patient then infected others at the park. ”
LOL. there is your evidence. an unknown person the CDC believe stayed at Disneyland! Are you taking the piss this is another case of vaccine failure being hidden behind a CDC anecdote what kind of news is this? Vaccine success fallacy
Well, that’s not what we’re talking about once again, but I see that I screwed up the link to the relevant section of the Administrative Code before; it’s here.
[…] I’ve asked time and time again for evidence from the anti-vaccine crowd that a pro-vaccine person or a public health worker has ever bullied, threatened, or spread lies about them in any medium. They are yet to respond. The closest they have come to saying that they’re being “abused” online is to say that the public health requirement that their children be vaccinated for school is “discrimination” or “persecution” for their personal beliefs. They also say that “forced” vaccination is just as bad as sexual assault or rape, and that the people who support mandatory vaccination of children in order for those children to participate in publicly funded programs is just like human trafficking. […]
Denise #85. Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful post. It resonates as very true to me.
They became isolated from friends and family members because their friends’ children most likely are not special needs ( by probability) and some families are not as tolerant of serious issues as the parents. Thus, they may have lost these traditional sources of support.
This is huge. Our society in general, as you know, doesn’t know how to deal with, interact, care about developmentally disabled people–no matter the cause. Even when the cause is very obvious. My late husband had a brain tumor—-as his cognitive abilities declined, I witnessed one of his siblings and his mom being embarrassed in public. It’s not like he did or said anything offensive. Just “off” sometimes. Today, at the drug store a developmentally disabled adult was trying to purchase a few items and the cashier was impatient with this young man and then complained about him to me—I was immediately behind him. My response? Ya, but, they are my heroes because no matter how they are treated, no matter that they see peers living “normal,” lives they wake up each day and get on with life and what they are capable of doing. Wounded by the repeated and daily in “cuts?” Yes.
It’s actually quite painful for these parents—-and yet, as you said, got caught up in the “group therapy gone wrong.”
My hope is that they recover, eventually.
I apologize for some misplaced commas and other grammar errors.
Philip Hills, please inform everyone about the MMWR description of the first reported case.
Or bugger off like a good tosspot and cowardly fraud.
@ Pragmatist:
Well, thanks. I try.
I do actually read anti-vax/ alt med blogs/ websites religiously and attempt to apply my studies and experience.
OBVIOUSLY we can call these groups ‘cults’ or ‘subcultures’ but it really doesn’t matter. They influence naïve, frightened parents and lure them into the fold-
I wonder how much of their articles are realistic and how much tarted up hyperbole meant to attract readers.
WE should differentiate anti-vax autism blogs ( AoA, TMR) which is aimed primarily at parents of children with ASDs from more purely anti-vax sites ( the Vaccine Machine Facebook, perhaps NVIC) which attract ANY parents or future parents in order to discourage vaccination.
A subsequent study showed that, while true, the tattoos were acquired after the autism diagnosis. That and minivans.
I can attest to that:
http://www.securivm.ca/2013/12/a-work-of-art.html
The minivan might have to wait because, I’m looking at that:
http://www.drivesrt.com/2015/challenger-srt-hellcat/
or this (If my investments pan out):
http://www.johnscotti.com/fr/occasion/lamborghini-gallardo-spyder-2006/5917246/
🙂
Alain
“According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6879000, having only 90% of the population immune in insufficient to order to prevent epidemics among the susceptible population. The rate needed is higher; I’ve seen 95% quoted.” Mystery
Well that’s more vaccine mythology – the chances of getting 95% compliance with even tax returns is just never going to happen is it. So where is the science that has proved when we have 95% it works?
Remember the CDC fantasy factory told us that “it believed that an unknown mystery woman stayed in Disneyland, or was it an unknown mystery frog princess? nothing to do with vaccine failure just a belief that no vaccine fails. Maybe it was the poisonous apple or the FDC genie? Or maybe the evil Mr Offit and his minions?
“OBVIOUSLY we can call these groups ‘cults’ or ‘subcultures’ but it really doesn’t matter. They influence naïve, frightened parents and lure them into the fold-
I wonder how much of their articles are realistic and how much tarted up hyperbole meant to attract readers.” Denice the menace.
I know, the provaxx medical fantasy unit is notorious for appeals to emotion, straw mystery women and extraordinary claims and something should be done about it.
“MMWR description of the first reported case.” Naroo
Well let’s hear all about it, I have a nice hot cup of cocoa and the fire is crackling in anticipation.
Narad, let’s take it that you can’t find the WI description of how the measles fairy story began……. Once upon a time……there was a nasty witch…………..
I have no idea who Mr Hills is, perhaps you would like to tell us how your obsession here started? Was it Jack and Jill went up the hill? You do seem rather keen on fairy stories.
Vaccination has the marketing covered. They need 95% compliance to not fail and reach the mythical herd immunity. When it does fail, as it does so often there are lots of weasel publications to publish excuses in.
On the other hand, if a mystery women caused the outbreak, what is happening to measles. it used to be an childhood condition, rarely affecting adults. Does that mean because of vaccination we now have a larger demographic.
Perhaps we are all going to need ‘boosters’ forever, what a good idea. Now a group that never got it has to depend on voodoo science to stay alive, if we are to believe the minions of Narad. Alternatively we can ignore the hype and concentrate on staying healthy and unvaccinated.
happy monday
Narad, let’s take it that you can’t find the WI description of how the measles fairy story began……. Once upon a time……there was a nasty witch…………..
I have no idea who Mr Hills is, perhaps you would like to tell us how your obsession here started? Was it Jack and Jill went up the hill? You do seem rather keen on fairy stories.
“Well that’s more vaccine mythology – the chances of getting 95% compliance with even tax returns is just never going to happen is it. So where is the science that has proved when we have 95% it works?”
95% depends on the disease, but hey we got rid of smallpox and Nigeria just went 6 months without a case of paralytic polio so what do you think caused these things that just happen to coincide with vaccination campaigns designed to wipe them out.
For awhile the USA was clear of measles as well, but unfortunately when the rest of the world has a lot of it around it is going to be brought back in from time to time.
FWIW several states have over 95% vaccination rates for the measles and seem to all be doing pretty well in this recent outbreak compared to California where there are pockets of very low uptake.
Pop socket; Where on earth are you getting your information? There seems to be a disconnect on vaccine efficacies, herd immunity, and how many people got infected with the Disney exposure. I’m wondering if you are a Germ Theory “skeptic” . I’d suggest you test your beliefs by plopping yourself down in a measles endemic region without an N95 respirator handy; however, I’m guessing you’ve likely had your vaccinations for measles. Am I correct?. I find the majority arguing against vaccinations to have been protected with vaccinations themselves.
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/multi-state-outbreak.html
From the lying troll
Any lurker reading this blog for some time will quickly stumble upon one of us acknowledging that vaccines are not 100% effective on the individual level. Reality is between 60 and 99%, depending on the vaccine.
We see it as one more reason for encouraging vaccination.
Anyone reading the news on the recent Disney outbreak will also know that quite a number of the people who caught measles were non-vaccinated.
FTFY, Phildo. Remember the “new (2009) NICE guidelines” that you still can’t find?
I don’t know the current compliance rate with income tax returns, but the U.S. government (and I think the Canadian and UK governments) have pretty high compliance rates on payment, by collecting most of the taxes as wages are paid.
How about a health and safety comparison: What’s the compliance rate with the laws against driving on the wrong side of the road?
The Hope Osteopath and Acupuncture Clinic.”
There is also the Hope Cosmetic and Acupuncture Clinic, which operates out of the same premises and is evidently the other buttock of the same bum. That appears to be the wife’s side of the family collaborative scam
@Lori (#115)
@Panacea (#129)
You were inquisitive about allergies and autism. Here’s a good summary about immune dysregulation in ASD from the “Journal of Nature”.
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v17/n4/extref/mp2011165x1.doc
I’m pretty sure my article about allergies is referenced.
If anyone is interested in allergies and ASD the Autism File magazine has a plethora of information:
https://www.facebook.com/autismfile
The Autism File Magazine? Owned and operated by Polly Tommey and Andrew Wakefield through their Autism Media Channel?
That’s the rag where you published your thoroughly debunked theory of “Latex allergy-induced autism”.
Go away MjD…you’re a persistent, self-promoting pest.
lilady says (#153),
That’s the rag where you published your thoroughly debunked theory of “Latex allergy-induced autism”.
MjD says,
Nothing has been debunked…
The Autism File Magazine is a valuable resource for information about living a better life with, and around, the autism experience.
It takes a lot of good people and effort, including Polly and Andrew, to run such an organization.
@lilady,
Would you be willing to leave the dark side and write an article for said magazine?
@152:
Please.
Getting cited once doesn’t legitimize pseudoscience. Even the best researchers screw up sometimes.
And the author of that chapter didn’t actually cite you. Sure, your “article” is listed in the Reference list, but it is not actually cited in the paper (I’d ding a student for doing that, but that’s neither here nor there).
And the article doesn’t even mention latex, which is probably why you weren’t truly cited. Thanks for playing.
Get back to me when someone actually does some real research on this hypothesis (which is all it is right now, a hypothesis).
Here’s a good summary about immune dysregulation in ASD from the “Journal of Nature”.
In the interests of pedantry, I am obliged to point out that the journal in question is not “Journal of Nature”, but “Molecular Psychiatry”. Also, the paper was not “a good summary about immune dysregulation”, but a survey of fashions in research. The title of the paper should have been a hint:
“A review of research trends in physiological abnormalities
in autism spectrum disorders”.
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v17/n4/pdf/mp2011165a.pdf
The authors were careful not to bias their survey by filtering out papers for weakness of evidence or risibility of hypotheses.
Panacea says (#155),
Get back to me when someone actually does some real research on this hypothesis (which is all it is right now, a hypothesis).
MjD says,
Have you ever heard of the saying “do no harm”.
Well it’s medically unethical to inject infants with the harmful proteins from natural rubber latex.
Wait a minute, I may be wrong in that doctor/nurses do it all the time when such proteins contaminate vaccine solutions.
If I was your student I’d probably get dinged because I would refuse to run such an experiment to prove the hypothesis.
@Panacea,
Let’s just take natural rubber latex out of vaccines, it’s about that time..
MJD, like all cranks, has an odd notion of the scientific process:
1) Scientist observes a phenomena.
2) Scientist comes up with brilliant-sounding explanation.
3) Scientist declares it fact.
Here’s how it actually works.
1) Scientist observes a phenomena.
2) Scientist comes up with simple explanation.
3) Scientist tests explanation.
4) If tests fail, go back to step 1 and observe more closely.
5) If tests work, call simple explanation a “theory” and report it as such.
6) Go back to step 1 because a better explanation may always exist.
MJD has no understanding of the concept of evidence. He’s simply the type of person that’s so arrogant he thinks he cannot possibly be wrong.
MjD has been fixated for eight years on latex stoppers and syringes as the cause of at least one of his child’s ASD diagnosis.
What about the other child who also has an ASD diagnosis?
What if it’s genetic?
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2007/03/25/new-autism-parents-forum/
MjD,
I’m so sorry that you have two children with Autism. No doubt that drives your behavior to find the cause of the devastating condition. Unfortunately, no definitive cause has been identified at this time and repeating latex and immunological causes over and over along with diagnosis not in a DSM (regressive autism) will not change the facts. I was pleased to read in lilady’s link posted that you are not certain immunology plays a role in Autism. This was, evidenced by the word “if” preceding your comment regarding immunological cause. If I were so focused on latex and causes of a disorder, I would be addressing the condom industry……more bang for the buck.
“More bang for the buck.”
(waiting for herr doktor bimler’s response to this one).
Cranks citing cranks as evidence their crankery is legit. I’m shocked I tell you.
Lori, from MjD’s book…’twas a latex balloon (or maybe a condom) which caused one of MjD’s children’s autism. The odd thing is that the child met all of his developmental milestones until his second birthday when he blew up a balloon. At the emergency room he was given an epinephrine shot for his reactive airway episode and a prescription for a bronchodilator…not an epinephrine pen. The ER doc didn’t think the child had an allergic attack…but of course…Dr. Dochniak has a different medical opinion.
Science Mom: Have you seen the huge amount of ad space that is sold in that rag…which goes right into the pockets of those two good people?
“More bang for the buck.”
Far be it for me to disrupt a comment thread with tasteless jokes.
Perhaps it’s related to “Immunity Journal.”
Speaking of antivaccine crazies:
http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/toronto-star-backs-off-anti-vaccination-story-150215.htm
ANTI-VACCINE AND PROUD!
Vaccines are so “1966” !
EPIC FAIL Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919891/pdf/pubhealthreporig00027-0069.pdf
Wild measles protect babies….vaccines don’t! 1989…Epic Fail!
http://cmr.asm.org/content/8/2/260.full.pdf
Lilady: Thanks for that information. I had no idea, how sad. I don’t know any two year olds capable of safely blowing up a balloon and don’t know people who would give a two year old an un-inflated balloon to blow up secondary to choking hazards. MjD’s focus is misplaced; however, one can certainly see how it developed as a coping mechanism after that experience.
[…] to pockets of low vaccine uptake. We’ve had antivaccinationists likening vaccine mandates to human trafficking and rape. Then, of course, after five years of mostly laying low with his antivaccine views, Bill Maher let […]
A major precedent for the power of the state to mandate vaccination is Jacobson vs. Massachusetts
So no, adults aren’t going to be forcibly held down and have a needle plunged in them. That really would be a kind of needle-rape. And if a parent objects to their child getting vaccinated, people aren’t going to come to their house and hold down the child and plunge a needle into them.
What does happen is that the state may impose sanctions on people who refuse vaccination. A parent might be unable to enroll their child in school. Someone working in health care might lose their job if they refuse a flu vaccine.
It’s a good idea to have an option for people who passionately object to vaccination. But it should be an option that isn’t easy. For example, in Mississippi there are only medical vaccine exemptions for children attending school. But parents can avoid getting their children vaccinated if they homeschool. Homeschooling is a lot of work, so the “homeschool exemption” doesn’t make a big dent in vaccination rates.
@pop socket
That particular code of practice was adopted in 2010, but Australia had other codes in place before then.
You don’t get it; Philip Hills told you that there’s no such thing.
Traces of the trade…
Vaxxer mom caught usin’ her chil’n for the shillin’…pharma-style!
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/02/exposed-viral-pro-vaccine-campaign-tied.html
[…] Sadly, the comments after Barajas’ post are enough to make the Baby Jesus cry. You can see why Dr. Bob likes to blow his antivaccine dog whistle so much. He knows what his people like to hear. He just likes to present himself as the “reasonable” face of the antivaccine movement, not like those nuts likening vaccine mandates to the Holocaust or human trafficking. […]
[…] comparing vaccination and their fantasy of “vaccine-induced autism” to everything from human trafficking, to rape, the Titanic, Nazi-ism, and, of course the Holocaust. In fact, comparisons to the […]