It is my contention that, as much as they try to deny it over and over and over again, the “thought leaders” (if you can call it thought) of the antivaccine movement are indeed truly antivaccine. That’s why, whenever I see Andrew Wakefield deny that he is antivaccine, I laugh. Whenever I see Jenny McCarthy claim that she is not “antivaccine” but rather “pro-safe vaccine,” I laugh. And when I see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. describe himself repeatedly as “fiercely pro-vaccine,” not only do I laugh, but I feel obligated to mock him with every bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence that I can muster to show just how ridiculous his claim is. I mean, anyone caught making Holocaust allusions in reference the vaccine program might be many things, but “fiercely pro-vaccine” is not among them. Yes, most parents who don’t vaccinate, what are commonly referred to as the “vaccine averse,” are probably not really antivaccine, but the people who spread antivaccine ideas, like Andrew Wakefield and RFK, Jr., definitely are, their denials notwithstanding.
And if you don’t believe me, let me point out a post that appeared on that wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (yes, I know I use that phrase to describe more than one websites, but there’s nothing that says there can’t be more than one wretched hives of scum and quackery), Age of Autism. It’s by Laura Hayes, and it’s entitled, Vaccines: What is there to be “Pro” About?. In it, she basically provides an hour and twenty minutes worth of pure antivaccine pseudoscience, every trope out there, as well as the transcript. If you can stand to watch her, here’s the YouTube video:
The transcript is over 12,000 words; so even my logorrhea probably won’t do it justice. Of course, you have the choice. You can watch the video, or you can read the transcript. Either one risks causing brain damage. However, it’s important to peruse screeds like this (at least to me), because doing so allows me to demonstrate my point, namely that the leaders of the antivaccine movement are either lying or deluding themselves when they claim that they are “vaccine safety activists.” So let’s take a look. I’m not going to go into every single little bit of antivaccine nonsense that Hayes lays down, because, damn, she goes into so many antivaccine tropes that even I have a hard time covering them all. I could do a multipart deconstruction, but, truth be told, it’s not worth that, even though it is worth applying just a bit of Insolence too. The reason is that it makes my point so well about how antivaccine many prominent “vaccine skeptics” really are.
The first part of Hayes’ speech is easy to cover, because I basically covered the same sorts of arguments about “informed consent” (or, as I like to call it when invoked by antivaccine activists like Barbara Loe Fisher, “misinformed consent“). I could write the antivaccine speech myself: “Nuremberg Code…blah, blah, blah…Helsinki Declaration…blah, blah, blah…’the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential’…blah, blah, blah…” Of course the Helsinki Declaration is about human subjects research, and the vaccine program is not research, but antivaccine activists like to mistakenly conflate the vaccine program with research because they believe that vaccines are basically untested and experimental and that ignorance about vaccines informs their efforts to persuade.
Of course, it’s not just about misinformed consent and mixing up research with well-supported preventative interventions like vaccines. It’s also about fear of contamination:
We must also ask ourselves, what benefits are we forever forfeiting when we interfere via vaccination in an attempt to try to avoid contracting infections naturally? To list but a few, one is forfeiting: permanent lifetime immunity; the future ability for females to pass on immunity to their baby both in the womb and via breastfeeding; contracting these illnesses during childhood, when they are mostly benign, and instead contracting them during adulthood, when they are far more serious; protection against and avoidance of many types of cancer, both during childhood and later on in adulthood; and, perhaps most importantly, the purity of one’s immune system, which can never be restored. Wow, that is quite a list of health benefits one forfeits when one chooses to vaccinate.
Excuse me. Whenever I see the word “purity” used in this fashion, my contract requires me to post this video:
And, of course, this one:
Yes, I’m referencing the famous bits from Doctor Strangelove about protecting the purity of our “precious bodily fluids” because it fits. Antivaxers are obsessed with what they view as “natural” and they view vaccines as somehow “contaminating” their bodies. “Natural immunity” is always better to them. Never mind that the price of obtaining that natural immunity is suffering from diseases that can cause long term disability or even result in death. Also never mind that, contrary to what antivaxers believe, infection with a disease doesn’t necessarily result in “lifetime immunity.” That fear of contamination leads to their fears of vaccine ingredients and portraying vaccines as some sort of toxic soup too dangerous and deadly to inject into the bodies of their precious children. Referring to the “purity of one’s immune system” is not an anomaly. It’s how antivaxers think. Even though vaccines stimulate the immune system in a way that is quite “natural,” antivaxers portray them as utterly unnatural.
Hayes also reveals an ignorance of how vaccines work, bringing in her fears of “contamination” into her choice of language yet again:
Vaccine “efficacy” is allowed to be determined by the presence of titers post-vaccination in small numbers of study subjects. Titers are concentrations of antibodies. However, the presence of elevated vaccine-induced titers does not mean a person is now immune from that which he was vaccinated against, it simply means his blood has been purposefully and artificially tainted by a vaccine. In reality, people with low to zero titers for a certain infection can remain uninfected when exposed to that illness, and conversely, people with extremely high titers for a certain infection can contract the illness when exposed. Therefore, the presence of vaccine-induced titers offers no proof of vaccine efficacy…yet, it continues to be used as proof of efficacy…and vaccine recipients continue to be duped…and poisoned.
“Purposefully and artificially tainted”? Scary! Yes, for many vaccines there is a poor correlation between the level of antibodies provoked by the vaccine and immunity to the disease vaccinated against. There is not a single vaccine scientist who would deny this. However, vaccine scientists would also tell Hayes, if she were to listen (highly unlikely), that the production of an initial antibody titer is not unimportant and that the development of long-lasting immunity often requires the generation of immune memory cells capable of being rapidly and effectively reactivated upon subsequent exposure to the antigen used in the vaccine. Hayes, like most antivaxers invoking arguments about how titers don’t correlate well with immunity, has apparently never heard of memory cells or all the other complex interactions in the immune system that determine immunity. A nice primer on these issues is published by the WHO, although I doubt Hayes would bother to imbibe the knowledge therein. Also, I doubt that she’d bother to learn that scientists don’t rely on titers alone to determine if a vaccine is effective. They actually do clinical trials to determine if the vaccinated get the disease vaccinated against at a lower frequency than those receiving placebo or sham injection.
Hayes then goes on to ask 17 questions. I thought about responding to them all, but in reality there are so many antivaccine tropes here that I’ve discussed before that even I don’t have the stomach for it, at least not as I write this. So I’ll “cherry pick,” if you will, a few of the dumber questions, and not even necessarily in the order Hayes asks them. For instance:
7. If vaccines work, why in nearly every “outbreak” of pertussis, measles, and mumps in our country has the majority, if not a full 100%, of those infected been vaccinated? That should not be the case if vaccines work as claimed, and it makes null and void the theory of vaccine-induced herd immunity.
This is a clever mixture of the sort of true with innumeracy. Yes, in many outbreaks, the majority of those affected have indeed been vaccinated. However, raw numbers don’t tell the story. What tells the story is the attack rate of the disease in the vaccinated and unvaccinated population, and, in virtually every outbreak, the attack rate is much, much higher in the unvaccinated; in other words, the unvaccinated are at much higher risk than the vaccinated to contract the disease going around. They just did it again for a recent mumps outbreak. The bottom line is that children not vaccinated against pertussis are at a 23-fold increased risk of getting whooping cough in an outbreak. The numbers are similar for other common vaccines, like MMR and the prevention of measles. Again, raw numbers don’t matter. Normalized numbers, in which the number of cases in the vaccinated is divided by the total number of vaccinated potentially exposed to the disease and the total number of cases in the unvaccinated is divided by the total number of unvaccinated potentially exposed to the disease, are what matter, and these comparisons never work out in favor of the unvaccinated, particularly during outbreaks. Yes, some vaccinated will contract disease during an outbreak, but that’s because no vaccine is perfect. Even so, relatively small decreases in vaccine uptake can lead to big increases in vaccine-preventable disease.
Here’s another one:
1. How can vaccines be both safe, as touted by doctors, government regulators, and the media, and unavoidably unsafe, meaning inherently dangerous, as declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011? Both statements cannot be true.
It seems as though I just addressed that one a week ago, doesn’t it? I even referenced this post deconstructing this lie.
Next up:
2. If vaccines are safe, why then do we have the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the Vaccine Injury Table, and lengthy sections on each and every vaccine package insert detailing adverse events, including death, that have resulted from those very vaccines? If vaccines are safe, then why do this Act of Congress, this reporting system, this compensation program, and these warning lists exist?
The stupid, it burns.
Of course, this is typical of the binary thinking so common among ignorant antivaxers like Hayes. Basically, to them, if vaccines aren’t absolutely, perfectly safe to the point that it is impossible for them ever to cause any harm whatsoever, they’re utterly worthless. The NCVIA was passed during the Reagan administration because dubious lawsuits were endangering the nation’s vaccine supply, as manufacturer after manufacturer decided to stop making vaccines for the U.S. market.
Later in the post, Hayes just flat out lies:
Not one vaccine has ever been tested according to the scientific gold standard, that of a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Yes, you heard that correctly, not one.
This is an antivaccine chestnut so easily refuted that I can’t believe that antivaxers repeat it so frequently. All one has to do is to search PumMed, and there are literally hundreds of randomized clinical trials of various vaccines. How does Hayes think that new vaccines are approved, anyway? Seriously, whenever I see this particular antivaccine trope, I laugh because I know I’m dealing with someone who has no clue what she’s talking about.
As I said, the antivaccine lies come fast and furious; so I’ll cut to the chase now and quote Hayes:
Yet, these medical procedures, not properly tested, improperly declared safe, known to contain toxic and neurotoxic ingredients, and barbaric as they are, have not only been approved, they have been mandated. That is corruption and insanity at its worst. It is evil, and it is destroying the majority of our citizenry.
Since our government regulators have failed to require or ensure vaccine safety, it must be assumed, and can be shown, that not one single vaccine is safe or advisable. Therefore:
What is required is an immediate moratorium on all vaccinations, for all people.
That is what should have happened in 1986, versus Congress passing an Act indemnifying all who make and administer vaccines, at a point in time when vaccines were maiming and killing thousands.
No, vaccines were not and are not “maiming and killing thousands.” Quite the contrary. Vaccines are incredibly safe, as far as medical interventions go. They have to be, because they are used to prevent disease in otherwise healthy people, administered to untold millions of them over the years. Yes, Hayes is antivaccine.
If that’s not enough:
To state it very plainly, vaccination is child abuse in the form of medical assault and battery. With regard to adults, when vaccination is carried out against one’s will or wishes, say for school admittance, job requirements, elder care and housing, or military admission, or when carried out with one who is hesitant, or with one who is unsuccessful in resisting and refusing, it also meets the legal definition for assault and battery. We must begin to label these vaccine atrocities for what they are: blatant and inexcusable child abuse; medical assault and battery; and when death is the result for the vaccine recipient, involuntary manslaughter. These vaccine-induced injuries, illnesses, and deaths are iatrogenic in nature, meaning they are caused by doctors and nurses. Vaccinations are crimes against humanity, and there is no time to mince words about this fact.
Yes, look at Hayes’ choice of words: “child abuse,” “assault and battery,” “involuntary manslaughter,” “crimes against humanity,” even! If that’s not antivaccine, I don’t know what is. Of course, none of this should be surprising. Remember, after all, that Hayes is the same person who has a marked propensity for using the word “Holocaust” to describe the vaccine program. She’s also argued in the past that you can’t be “pro-vaccine” and pro-science. Here’s just a sample:
For those who think “holocaust” is too strong a word, I assure you it is not. “Holocaust” is defined as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”, and that is indeed what vaccinations are doing to those who receive them, which can often be observed in the short term, always in the long term, and for generations to come as you will learn as you study these issues more. There is an ominous agenda underway, named Healthy People 2020, with the goal being to vaccinate all people, from fetus to grave, worldwide, with scores of vaccines and a recommended list that is ever-increasing…and that goal is in serious danger of being achieved. We must not let that happen!
Because preventing children from suffering and dying of infectious disease is just like what Hitler did to the Jews. Because autism is just like being marched into a fake shower in order to be gassed. Because health authorities are doing all this on purpose, just as the Nazis intentionally murdered millions of Jews and other “undesirables” and “subhumans.” That sounds pretty darned antivaccine to me.
I can’t resist closing by citing a known “friend” of the blog with whom long time readers are certainly familiar: Jake Crosby. Although he’s basically burned all his bridges with the “respectable” antivaccine activists who previously had nurtured him and mentored him through his becoming an increasingly paranoid, conspiracy-driven, alt right-loving, Donald Trump supporter, I’ll give him this. Regarding this one area, he is probably more honest than liars like Andrew Wakefield, who proclaims himself “pro-vaccine” as he spreads antivaccine misinformation and, even more risibly, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who’s called himself “fiercely provaccine” while promoting his antivaccine book. Here’s what I mean:
Autism Investigated has requested to go onto Del Bigtree’s show – not to attack JB or anyone else – but to argue why anti-vaccination is the right position. Not only is it right because vaccinations are dangerous and the outcomes of vaccination are horrific, but because the people behind vaccination are totally corrupt.
We can talk about the “safe vaccines” all we want. We can talk about how we want the miracle potion of the “safe vaccine,” but it doesn’t exist. We all know it, but we all don’t want to say it.
It is the life’s work of Autism Investigated’s editor to dismantle the vaccine program in its entirety. Its creation was a disastrous mistake. It must be opposed and so too should vaccines in their present and only conceivable form. That is why Autism Investigated is anti-vaccine, and that is why you should be too.
At least the mask has slipped, and Crosby’s admitted it. Even more useful, one of his commenters explained the purpose of the “I’m not antivaccine” gambit:
I see being pro-safe vaccines as a strategic tactic to educate the sheep and build broad-based support. It is a conversation starter that gently challenges the majority belief that vaccines are “safe and effective. Once the discussion is about the question of “safe” vaccines, and people start reading the ingredient list etc., then we win because, even the supreme court ruled they are unavoidably unsafe.
Thanks for the admission. It’s part of what I’ve been saying all along. Actually, not quite. The claim by antivaxers that they are “not antivaccine” but rather “vaccine safety advocates” is an incredibly transparent ploy, but it’s not what Crosby’s commenter says. Rather, antivaxers know that being antivaccine is viewed—shall we say?—unfavorably by the general population. (This is, of course, as it should be.) So they avoid the word “antivaccine” and instead try to portray themselves as something far less threatening: Vaccine safety advocates.
This rhetorical ploy on the part of antivaxers is indeed transparent, but it works, at least with people who are not familiar with the tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement. Never forget, though, that, whenever you see someone oh-so-piously and self-righteously proclaim herself as “not antivaccine” but rather a “vaccine safety advocate” you’re looking at an antivaxer.
133 replies on “The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 26: “No, I’m not an ‘vaccine safety’ advocate””
Love the Dr. Strangeglove clips. Antivaxxers can’t trigger a world-ending nuclear war, but they are doing their best to roll back society to a time when childhood diseases regularly crippled and killed. And how do they think our health system is going to handle thousands of kids who need to be hospitalized from complications?
Well, as you know, only those chlldren who are not superior specimens, whom diseases don’t injure, are worth keeping alive. At least in their minds. So why bother using the health system? Keep the kids home, if they live or die shows whether they deserve to live or not. And, of course, since *their* children are always superior special snowflakes, they won’t have any sequelae from VPDs and no other children matter.
Personally, I will continue to promote vaccines among family and friends. I will continue to keep UTD and encourage my family to do so also.
It’s still a lie, but it’s the no saline placebo lie.
Which I addressed for Gardasil at least here:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2017/08/16/more-gardasil-fear-mongering-a-critical-review-of-hpv-vaccination-that-lacks-critical-thinking/
Thank you for wading through this. Just to add to your excellent response to her claim about outbreaks and vaccinated people, in measles outbreaks even the raw numbers go against her: most people are unvaccinated. That’s true of the Minnesota outbreak this year, the European outbreak, and more generally.
In the Italy outbreak, with four death and over 40% hospitalized last year, it’s very glaring.
http://www.epicentro.iss.it/problemi/morbillo/bollettino/Measles_WeeklyReport_N33eng.pdf
Thank you. Just to add to your excellent point about outbreaks – in measles outbreaks even the raw numbers work against her: most are unvaccinated. It was clear in Minnesota this year, in Europe, and generally. In Italy, with four measles deaths and over 40% hospitalizations, the fact that most victims are unvaccinated is glaring.
http://www.epicentro.iss.it/problemi/morbillo/bollettino/Measles_WeeklyReport_N33eng.pdf
And the Gnat has gone full “Doxing” mode now – I don’t see how his efforts will result in anything but an eventually lawsuit.
I saw that. Wow. Just when I think The Gnat can’t get any more despicable, he proves me wrong.
@Lawrence: Do I really want to know who the Gnat is doxing?
I feel so sorry for that young man, sometimes. One day, life is going to slap him hard upside the head and he won’t be able to handle it. Mommy and daddy won’t live forever, and if he doesn’t get his head on straight, unless they set up a darn secure trust fund, he’ll be broke and on the streets because he’s so immature.
Richard Dimirijen,one of the fathers in Wakefraud’s Lancet paper.Jake has published his home address and phone number on his blog.In a way I Feel sorry for Jake too.It isn’t that well known,but many people with Asperger’s,or high functioning autism often have serious coexisting mental illness,that doesn’t always get diagnosed,until they do something really drastic.I am not quite sure what,but Jake does show signs of some kind of mental health issues.
Like I said before, catching a disease to get immunity to it is like burning something to fireproof it.
I was going to point out that in several recent outbreaks more than half the infected were unvaccinated, but I see Dorit got there first.
If driving is so safe, why do cars have crumple zones and other safety devices, and funds like the Road Accident Fund? Boring, dishonest rhetorical device.
A good analogy, as is one with which American readers are more likely to be familiar: “We had to destroy this village in order to save it.”
” With regard to adults, when vaccination is carried out against one’s will or wishes, say for school admittance, job requirements, elder care and housing, or military admission, or when carried out with one who is hesitant, or with one who is unsuccessful in resisting and refusing, it also meets the legal definition for assault and battery.”
She didn’t run this past a lawyer, did she…
Under that logic, given the breadth of her language, giving a vaccine to someone who wants the vaccine but is nervous about needles and hence hesitant, or giving a blood transfusion to someone who is scared of needles and hesitant, is a battery.
Adults get to decide whether they want a treatment or not, and their motivation for the choice, or ambivalence towards it, doesn’t negate consent if the provider did not coerce them. “I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, but vaccinate” is consent.
Was it the fact that these are two different crimes without uniform definitions from state to state that tipped you off?
Orac describes the ‘binary’ ( black and white) thinking of some anti-vaxxers: a product like a vaccine or med can only be all good ( which brings in the Nirvana fallacy) or all bad to them. We hear the same in woo CONSTANTLY. This is a characteristic of children’s thought prior to the increased sophistication that occurs in mid childhood when they begin to see shades of grey and gradations of value. Things can be better or worse, more than or less than. You’ll notice that books and films aimed at children progress along these lines in regard to characters’ qualities age appropriately.
Hayes’ analogies illustrate her inability to consider outcomes – even if vaccines did cause autism, autistic people are not dead or mutilated. Or else she’s just trying to get readers/ viewers angered and perhaps ready to call governmental representatives.to advance the anti-vax agenda.
Jake seems to be especially busy at his blog of late: he keeps adding posts including a Vlog the other day telling a vaccine supporter who sells shirts (‘ Vaccines cause Adults’) how he trolled her by photoshopping ‘incontinent’ onto her image. Since he was dismissed from UT, he must have little to do. Trying to get on Del Bigtree’s ahow is not much of a goal for a person who is supposedly educated. I’ve recently found Jake’s Linked in profile where he describes his abilities as a researcher and writer.
( there are several ‘Jacob Crosbys’ at Linked in- he’s the one in Austin.)
I watched his video and just had to laugh. I even played it for a class I’m TA-ing. We couldn’t stop laughing. In one moment, he claims that the shirt campaign didn’t get him (antivaxxers) riled up, and then, in the next moment, he’s all riled up against it. He’s such an angry little boy. Sad, sad, sad.
He could’ve been somebody. He could’ve been a contender.
I wonder if he’s ever going to tell us how his adventure in doctoral school ended, or why?
I’ve always said it, even when he was still in high school. Jake had potential. He really could’ve been somebody. It’s so sad that he wasted that potential and instead become an antivax conspiracy mongering, Trump-worshiping, alt right misogynist.
Meantime,
I could use an SBM mentor, or several. Basically, I got a gazillion tons of ideas, some good, some bad, some ugly but in the end, I made a deal with the school’s counselor several weeks ago: expose my ideas and she direct me to the best ones to take which I take.
Alain (who’s still trying to build a career).
To give the Devil his/her due, isn’t the point about increased severity of diseases with age true, at least regarding polio? (Though sanitation is just as ‘guilty’ in preventing the more benign childhood cases.)
Is the point about breastfeeding true? It doesn’t make intuitive sense; how can the body distinguish vaccination from true disease? I know nothing about the science involved, so I’m having difficulty searching the literature.
Perhaps this might help: http://www.vaccineinformation.org/how-vaccines-work/
Thanks, but I meant the science of acquired passive immunity.
A more specific link (if this works) to the same site
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/passive-immunization
“During the first few months of life, maternal antibody levels in the infant fall, and protection fades by about six months of age.”
The chances of complications in relation to age depend on the disease. Whooping cough is at its most dangerous before the age of 1, so for the very young. And IIRC, measles has a higher risk for both the very young (again up to the age of 1) and from adolescence onwards. This alone invalidates the whole argument that children are better off just getting through the diseases at a young age.
Things are a bit more complicated with polio: until about a century ago, most children came into contact with the polio virus soon after birth, due to generally poor hygiene, the highly contagious nature of polio and ubiquitous infection sources. As these children were still protected by the maternal antibodies until the age of 6 months or so, they didn’t get the full-blown disease, leading to a sort of ‘natural’ vaccination. Also, polio is not or only mildly symptomatic in the vast majority of infections, leading to an abundance of disease carriers; only a small number of unlucky people actually developed paralysis. With improving hygiene, however, an increasing number of children came into contact with the disease after 6 months of age, and that gave rise to increasingly catastrophic outbreaks.
With most of the other childhood diseases, hygiene doesn’t play a significant role (cf. flu or colds); close proximity to or touching a patient is often all that it takes. Measles is so contagious that even spending fifteen minutes in the same room as a measles patient is often enough to catch it.
And no, the body can’t really distinguish between vaccination and true disease. In both cases, the same immune response is evoked through the introduction of (parts of) pathogens into the body. The only difference is that true disease sometimes produces a stronger immune response due to the far more invasive and damaging nature of the disease. OK, things are admittedly more complex in reality — for instance, the tetanus vaccine doesn’t produce immunity against the tetanus pathogen itself, but against its toxin; and contracting live tetanus does not produce immunity at all (another good reason for vaccinating, as tetanus is one of the most horrible diseases one can contract).
Note: I’m not a true expert on the subject, so if anyone spots mistakes, I’ll be happy to see those corrected.
Polio is more likely to cause paralysis and death in older people than in small children, yes. Chickenpox can be more severe in adults. About half the deaths from chickenpox pre-vaccine were in adults. However, pertussis is much worse in infants and most deaths are in infants, particularly those under 6 months. Most deaths from measles are in kids under 5 or people over 20. Just two examples. It’s unclear what role sanitation plays/played in polio. As sanitation improved, polio cases increased. However, there was lots of polio in India which has some appalling sanitation conditions, yet it was wiped out there by vaccine.
The breast-feeding point is pretty much false. Little antibody to the infectious diseases we vaccinate against is passed on through breast milk.
Orac concludes,
Never forget, though, that, whenever you see someone oh-so-piously and self-righteously proclaim herself/[himself] as “not antivaccine” but rather a “vaccine safety advocate” you’re looking at an antivaxer.
MJD says,
Wait a minute, you’re suggesting that Scientists and Pharmaceutical Companies that research/promote/advocate for the continuous improvement of vaccines are “antivaxers”?
Breakthrough technologies are often based on showing the deficiencies in the prior art and the vaccine industry must not be immune to this process.
In my opinion, “vaccine safety advocates” are the cornerstone of improved herd immunity.
@Orac,
In your concluding sentence, changing the phrase “you’re looking at” to “you may be looking at” would overcome my objection.
Please consider…
Try reading all the words you quoted instead of just a few of them.
If you noticed rw23, I made a correction/addition to Orac’s concluding statement with the addition of the phrase “herself/himself”.
Q. Will the minions acknowledge this act of kindness i.e., effort to make Orac’s rant less sexist.
No, you pathetic shіtbag. That snotty little item was just a sidebar to the main payload of dumbfυckery.
You idiot. The article is about Laura Hayes ant-vaccine rant.
Laura Hayes is female.
First of all, “I’m not anti-vax, but. . .” is a dog-whistle that means “calling all anti-vaxers”. I can guarantee you that someone who posts that on a message board will be talking about “toxins”, “mercury”, “alumininum”, “autism”, etc in their next 2-3 posts.
Secondly, even if a naive person says they are pro-vaccine safety sincerely, they don’t mean the same thing as people like Jenny McCarthy do when they say it. Working on vaccine safety is far different than saying “I’m not anti-vax, I’m pro-vaccine safety. I’ll vaccinate myself/my kids when I know vaccines are safe.”
You might want to consider not annoying our kind host with tone trolling disguised as pendantry (or vice versa).
Would you please provide a link to an example of an actual scientist doing vaccine development research (such as Paul Offit) or company that manufactures vaccines that included the disclaimer that they are not “anti-vaccine” in an official statement?
Actually, I’m pretty sure you are aware of the difference and just choosing to ignore it to score a rhetorical point.
I can’t provide a link to a vaccine manufacturer that has the disclaimer “not anti-vaccine”.
In the contrary, I can give you an example of a company that manufactures vaccines that actually compliments its competition while trying to put them out of business.
https://www.passporthealthusa.com/vaccinations/flublok-egg-free-cell-based-influenza-vaccine/
They teach that “extremely safe and effective” vaccines are now obsolete based on their advanced technology.
Protein Sciences, which invented and manufactures Flublok, was recently acquired by Sanofi.
http://www.sanofipasteur.com/en/articles/Sanofi_completes_the_acquisition_of_Protein_Sciences.aspx
Continuous improvement, I love it!
Thanks for the reply, Michael. I just got the GSK flu vaccine, but if I had an egg allergy, I’d definitely ask for flublok. It’s good to know that products are being developed to meet the needs of people with allergy issues with current vaccines.
And it’s also nice to see a smaller technology company that specialized in research get the results of their labor implemented by Big Pharma.
And Protein Sciences is still in business. They’re just a subsidiary now.
I think we can have a much better discussion if each of us will answer the question that was asked.
So, for your question, I try to offer both a and b, constructive and respectful criticism at least until it is obvious it is wasted.
My preferred tone is usually more ironic than insolent, but I have risen to outright anger when I felt it was appropriate.
And I would still like to see an example to back up your assertion.
Also, which version of the shingles vaccine would you choose for yourself, the older version which has fewer side effects but is less effective or the newer version that provides better protection especially in the elderly but has more short term side effects?
Do you know of anyone who insisted they were not anti-vaccine and then proceeded to actually discuss such a tradeoff?
squirrelelite asks,
Do you know of anyone who insisted they were not anti-vaccine and then proceeded to actually discuss such a tradeoff?
MJD says,
Q. Which of the following statements best describes Orac and his minions:
A) Constructive criticism directed at a person who claims to be “not anti-vaccine”.
B) Respectful criticism directed at a person who claims to be “not anti-vaccine”.
C) Self-serving insolence directed at a person who claims to be “not anti-vaccine”.
Hint: When in doubt always choose (C) in that multiple choice questions are designed to fool the ignorance.
“Never forget, though, that, whenever you see someone oh-so-piously and self-righteously proclaim herself/[himself] as “not antivaccine” but rather a “vaccine safety advocate” you’re looking at an antivaxer.”
It’s the vaccine discussion equivalent of the ethnic/racial “Some of my best friends are…”
I am heading for Chiang Mai tomorrow, and get to hold my 2 month old stepdaughter for the first time on the 20th (long flight with long layovers). On the 23rd, we will be taking Baiboon (Elena is her English name) to start her vaccine series.
To all you anti-vaccine idiots may you get what you deserve. Unfortunately, it will probably be your children that suffer.
As usual, the comments of an AoA Post have a few WTF moments also.
With this response –
In the antivaccine world, vaccines can do anything and everything, except prevent disease.
Now that’s an “effect” I haven’t heard before; points for creativity for that loon!
Lol. My friends with a non-gender-conforming child are some of the biggest hippies you’ll meet, except that they vaccinate their kids (and themselves, because their insurance is crap and they can’t afford to get sick). So clearly it’s the vaccines and not a willingness to see what’s in front of them.
The AOA people are more awful every day. Picking on non-gender-conforming kids too?
A subtle one here is that Hans Litten/Georg Elser/White Rose/etc. routinely used to babble at Jake’s place about how awful AoA was for banning it, even though it was still posting there.
Oh, right: AoA commenter Benedetta has been doing this sort of thing for years:
Wow. Talk about going off the rails. Vaccines lead to drug addiction and overdosing? That’s…..wow. I just have no words.
To be honest, the opiod war annoys me. Yes, kids can be vulnerable. But believe me, if an ADULT would get pain medications for a procedure, I will make DARN SURE that my child will be given adequate pain relief. It doesn’t have to be an opoid, but it does have to relieve my child’s pain. Why on earth would I want my child to suffer pain? Give me a minimal amount – 1-2 days worth of dosing – so it’s not sitting around. But don’t forbid medication. (Yes, I know what the guidelines say. But I’ve already heard people talking about how doctors are refusing to prescribe adequate pain relief for their kids after surgery.)
Apologies for the derail…
The vaccine safety gambit is depressingly effective, I find though that I can counter it equally effectively with ammunition from this blog. If you don’t know any better, the safety argument looks entirely reasonable.
One good thing from has come from it – I decided to order myself a shirt. They donate a part of the proceeds to the Gates Foundation, so Jake has helped make it possible for 4 kids to get polio vaccines.
Silver linings are where you find them.
@ Johnny:
So if you were doing Jake’s infamous 6 degrees of separation schema…
he would then be responsible for getting kids vaccinated!
Although JC would never acknowledge it, we may be credited for some of Jake’s traffic at his blog: we check him out, tell others what he says, link to him. He should especially thank Orac. I doubt that he has many readers on his own.
He should even thank me for directing people to his Linked In entry. Maybe someone will hire him**
** I say sarcastically
He mentions doing “Event Planning” as well on his LinkedIn profile… Maybe he can plan my friend’s wedding?
And Jake goes on. His latest makes no sense to me what so ever, except for Jake stealth bragging that he knows how to Google.
Gee, it couldn’t possibly be that trans people and other LGBTQ folks have existed for as long as humanity has, ame finally feel comfortable being open about it.
I know right?
My thoughts exactly. When I was a kid, there were severe social penalties for not conforming with the gender roles that were considered socially acceptable for your birth gender. The predictable result: people being forced into relationships that didn’t match their gender identity. At least one of my mother’s high school classmates went that route, and only came out in the last 10-20 years when that became acceptable.
There is one additional factor for trans people: gender reassignment surgery was still a novelty forty years ago. The only case I knew about was Walter Carlos (creator of Switched-On Bach, which showcased the capabilities of the then recently invented Moog synthesizer in arrangements of Baroque-era music), who became Wendy Carlos and subsequently became famous as an electronic music pioneer. The only way trans people could exist before such surgeries were developed was to appear to be of the other gender and hope nobody noticed–obviously easier to pull off if you are a biological female pretending to be male than the other way around (among other things, your “five o’clock shadow” would have given you away). Today trans people are not exactly common, but common enough to encounter every now and then.
My friend Bart’s dad just came out as trans (she’s Jean now, not Eric) 4 or 5 years ago. I was pretty shocked – she had always been very performatively masculine, I would say. But performance can be just that – performance. (He still calls her dad, so I still refer to her as “Bart’s dad,” I guess.) They did end up leaving our town and moving to Vancouver, WA, where things would be much easier.
Indeed, there are stories even in Russian history of women pulling this off either to join the military, or simply because they preferred living as men. But none of men managing to live as women that I know of; like you mentioned, it’s easier for a woman to pass as a man than the other way around.
Those kinds of stories, as well as the fact that many cultures have had genders besides “man” and “woman” only serves to prove that trans (or genderfluid, or non-binary) people have existed forever.
Love Wendy Carlos, by the way. 🙂
Eric, you would be surprised how often trans women ask me for fashion advice in clothing shops.
Not that I dress in particularly feminine ways- quite the contrary. I guess they see that I really know the basics and seem sympathetic to them.
I did once advise a cross dresser ( not sure about his/ her orientation though) so I won’t say trans.
Don’t forget the jazz pianist and bandleader Billy Tipton.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/middlebrook-suits.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/02/arts/one-false-note-musician-s-life-billy-tipton-remembered-with-love-even-those-who.html
Renee Richards got a lot of publicity in the 70’s as well.
The Germans and Swedes pioneered the surgery and Christine Jorgensen was the first notable American in the 50’s.
Even though transsxuality is much more generally accepted now, an excellent pianist like Sara Davis Buechner can have significant problems restarting their concert career.B
SOB was practically required listening when I was in college but I like Wendy’s more recent work as well.
No, but trans people are more common now than they were more than 35 years ago. I’ve once said, it looks like they distribute brochures about gender reassignment nowadays. A friend of mine was in her 50s, when she underwent surgery, making me think: “why didn’t you do it 30 years earlier?”
On the other hand, she has a partner and works, while I have neither, since I was in my 20s.
I love Wendy Carlos, who doesn’t seem to like to be outed. She is defenitly not the only musician. There is also the formerly David Palmer from Jethro Tull.
Yes, vaccines are apparently also responsible for the anti-bullying campaigns in modern US elementary/middle schools.
Now a lot of antivaxxers are trying to say they are ex vaxxers
The “I’m not antivax, I’m pro-vaccine safety” line has the same ring of authenticity as when anti-GMOers say “We need more testing!”.
All the research and safety testing in the world (assuming it’s allowed to occur*) won’t make a dent in their fixations, as long as they dismiss it as corporate skullduggery.
*striking how anti-GMOers demand testing, then vandalize and destroy test fields.
When I was thinner, I could easily pass as a (short) man just by wearing a button up shirt, a vest, and slacks. Sometimes a “newsboy” cap or even, on occasion, a bowler hat or something. (No moustache, though.
Once when I lived in Portland with some good friends, I had gone over to my friend Desmond’s place where he lived with his then girlfriend to help paint the apartment. I hadn’t thought to wear schlubby clothes, so I wore a dress Rose was going to get rid of as a smock.
I wore it home unthinkingly, and the next morning at breakfast, my housemate Andrine said “so what were you up to last night? I saw you come home in drag.”
What I like to ask is what it would take to change these peoples’ minds. I’m pretty sure what it would take to change Orac’s mind about the safety of modern vaccines: actual, honest to goodness scientific evidence. However, all of the actual, honest to goodness scientific evidence available today shows that on the contrary, that vaccines are indeed safe and effective. Now these people like Laura Hayes will look at this mountain of scientific evidence and dismiss it as a mountain of lies concocted by scientists in the pay of Big Pharma, but such an accusation isn’t something you can just toss out without, you know, evidence that it is actually true. It is a very serious accusation to make against any scientist!
You can’t change these people’s minds.
They will simply dismiss any evidence they don’t like as tainted. Likewise, they will accept any lies, so long as these support their existing view.
You can’t reason someone out of a position he didn’t reason himself into.
You might be able to change some of their minds if and when reality hits them hard in the short curly hair. That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. As we see on the political scene, there are some who will cling to their alternative realities even when true reality bites them.
Seems true enough. I’ve read some hair-raising stories right here (well, it was back before the move) about antivaccine parents who actually made their kids suffer through pertussis:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2015/11/04/horrifying-suffering-caused-by-treating-pertussis-naturally/
Good grief. If smallpox were still a thing these loons would rather have their children risk death and disfigurement than undergo vaccination. Or risk lifelong paralysis rather than take the polio vaccine. Edward Jenner facepalms from beyond the grave.
Hah, being quite tall and lean I ask trans women and male cross-dressers where they shop.
I both love you and hate you at the same time! Though I am seriously smiling.
I have learned several sew the clothes themselves, or hire folks like my new daughter-in-law (who does contract sewing for a burlesque production company of both drag queens and drag kings).
Hayes states: “7. If vaccines work, why in nearly every “outbreak” of pertussis, measles, and mumps in our country has the majority, if not a full 100%, of those infected been vaccinated? That should not be the case if vaccines work as claimed, and it makes null and void the theory of vaccine-induced herd immunity.”
Well, in addition to the excellent (and correct) counter arguments presented by Orac and Dorit, it’s worth noting a recent research paper showed how these networks of anti-vaxxers and their unvaccinated children provided a transmission route for the spread of pertussis among them that was clearly more rapid than the rate of pertussis spread among vaccinated children during a 2012 pertussis outbreak in Oregon (http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(16)31542-6/pdf). So I would ask Hayes why her precious unvaccinated population is spreading disease better than the vaccinated? Is this herd anti-immunity?
I used to think vile loons like Hayes were so far off the deep end of anti-vaccinationism that few, if any, parents would listen to them. I’m worried that this assumption is now wrong.
JP:
For an interesting twist: Monsieur D’eon Is A Woman: A Tale Of Political Intrigue And Sexual Masquerade, by Gary Kates.
Thanks for the reference. Sounds
Ike a good book.
There was also the case of Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, who was governor of New York under Queen Anne. The Wikipedia entry has an especially good review of the history as background.
“I used to think vile loons like Hayes were so far off the deep end of anti-vaccinationism that few, if any, parents would listen to them. I’m worried that this assumption is now wrong.”
Hayes is a paragon of reasonableness next to Kent ((“I Will Accept Your Surrender”) Heckenlively:
“What we need to be saying is VACCINES POSE A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. That is weapons-grade persuasion.”
(this is part of a recent screed in which Kent goes off on Mexican undesirables, has high praise for Trump and suggests recruiting Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) to take on the vaccine issue. Oh, and Kent has called himself “the world’s #1 anti-vaxxer”). As he dials the crazy up to 11, Kent’s ultimate success in promoting himself as the face of the antivax movement will probably do the pro-immunization cause a world of good.
[…] The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 26: “No, I’m not an ‘vaccine safet… November 16, 2017 […]
In related news, Jake has doubled down on his doxxing/harassment and has gone after the wife of his latest target. I warned him he’s playing a dangerous game but you can imagine his warped justification.
Holy crap, that’s vile.
@ Science Mom:
Oh wow, he’s really obsessed isn’t he? I’m glad you spoke up to him.
I truly hope that someone ( maybe the couple he’s doxing or other people we know) does something legally.
He’s doesn’t like what someone said and wants him to ‘take it back’, so he harasses him and then complains about people harassing anti-vaxxers.
His rationale for ‘revenge’ is pretty hard to follow and I KNOW the whole story.
What does he think that he is the Great Avenger for victims of Pharma Crime or suchlike?
You know now that you mention it, it does appear as though he needs a new lot in life having cocked up his education and subsequent career. What you suggest is consistent with his delusion of grandeur, complete lack of moral compass and experience to do something meaningful.
Could what Jake is doing be considered cyberbullying? Cyberbullying is now illegal in California,where the family lives.
Crap. It’s getting even worse.
I note that even among Jake’s fanboys that nobody is piping up to say ‘this is great’ or ‘I’ve contacted them…’ or offered any encouragement or endorsements in any way. Even his sad rump of desciples know what he’s doing is over the line.
I have very rarely visited young Crosby’s site and have just looked at some of his most recent posts and they are very disturbing. Shades of David Mabuse, my gast is flabbered. Does he realize what he is doing? Do his parents know what he is doing? Do their lawyers?
@ sirhcton:
Well, he’s technically an adult so they may not HAVE to be involved. but…
People with real money can have interesting arrangements so that their children- especially problematic ones- may have access to money or be given a place to live but have no obvious financial ties to the parents-
I know a horrible story involving awful people where the wealthy parents gave a daughter with minor drug problems a lump sum to sell off her inheritance rights and relationship to them ( not related to any counselling I did although I know LOTS of those stories too).
It’s possible though that his mother supports his ideas as well as his lifestyle.
-btw- I’ll bet that Jake’s traffic is up lately because we’re discussing him.
@ Science Mom:
I wonder.
Some of the idiots I survey appear to have similar delusional identities . In the case of some of them, it may just be a ruse to attract loyal followers/ customers. A few of them I think really believe in their own press. ( Null, Heckenlively, maybe Adams, some of the TMs and AoA creatures, Bolen maybe)
And now Jake goes after the kid.
JFC, he just sinks lower and lower. He makes fun of him to boot. Jake’s playing with a dragon’s tail. His only salvation is that hardly anyone reads his swill.
I really hope that this family goes after him legally although it’s easy to change phone numbers and e-mails.. They must be well to do judging by their home and its location.
Jake has a history of harassing people which Orac, Rene, Brian Deer and Drs Godlee and Offit can verify.
After I interacted with him a few years ago and wondered if he would try to bother me ( I don’t use my full name here) because of his obsessive style ( -btw- there is another woman on the net using DW because it’s her name: she lives in Hobart, Tasmania- I hope he didn’t bother her) There might be ways to find out my full name because of some business transactions I was involved in but so far, he’s never contacted me,
I’m sure he would try to go after anyone on RI who criticised him if he had their real name.
It’s even easier to send an E-mail to the abuse department of his hosting company.
I have criticised him on his blog using my real name, as well as when he was writing for the Epoch Times. Perhaps he doesn’t see me as worth going after. Perhaps I am too far away. Perhaps he has spoken to Clifford Miller. I suspect he is like most bullies, he targets the weak and keeps away from those who might give him a serve back.
First good laugh I’ve had all day, thank you. Cliffy was Wakefraud’s “foreign counsel” during the BMJ suit (he’s based in the UK), and I’d bet my bottom dollar* that the Texas attorneys didn’t let him utter a word.
The literal presence of which is a frequent enough occurrence that the bet could be either more or less meaningful.
^ As a related item, it appears that starting a paragraph with asterisk-space will result in the characters’ being disappeared.
Almost, but not entirely off topic –
Remember when the antivaccine idiots thought an advertisement was news?
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2017/02/09/no-the-trump-administration-is-not-going-to-remove-all-vaccine-related-information-from-the-cdc-website/
Well, the movie, A Cure for Wellness, is on Cinemax, and I had to watch it. It’s not good.
I like a good horror movie, and the basic premise of the movie sounds good – a posh private retreat designed to provide rest and rejuvenation actually causes sickness and does bad things to the guests. But beyond that, it rather falls apart. The plot has more holes than a screen door, and there are more twists on Interstate 40 west of Santa Rosa, NM.
The biggest hole is how they manage to carry on a la Hotel California. Powerful people, rich people, people of means, captains of industry, check in to a not inexpensive sanitarium, but they never leave. After a coupla years, someone is gonna notice.
The smallest hole (but one I have experience with) is how a guy with a broken leg, with associated plaster cast, able to get it as wet (saturated, actually) several times over several days as our ‘hero’, and not have the cast fall apart and get stinky. I had to take great pains to be able to shower, and this guy is wading in his cast.
I’d say it’s a good candidate for MST3K, but at close to 2 1/2 hours, even TV’s Frank would say it’s too much for the crew of the Satellite of Love.
Johnny, hole in the story?
when did you break your bone? What decade? I don’t think they’ve used plaster since before the 1980s. I got fiberglass in summer ’77, and it was considered a “swimming” cast. And I did. Pretty much every day for four weeks in it. So, yeah, the guy could wade in that without too many consequences.
My kids got fiberglass in ’12, ’14, and ’16. They were told to keep them dry. On the other hand, their casts came with a lot more interior padding (which if wet will get nasty) than mine did. And yes we did bag them up for showers, pool, and beach.
Oh, I haven’t broken a bone, more like 8 or so, and over many years. Some plaster cast, some fiberglass, some not cast at all (ribs, a coupla fingers, and surprisingly, a leg*). A few falls, an auto accident (not my fault) and a football injury or two.
I’ve never had a cast that I was allowed to get wet, including the fiberglass ones. Clearly the padding would be the issue. I believe mine were padded with cotton, but I guess wool or some synthetic material might dry quick enough that it would be OK to get wet.
But, yeah, the guy in the movie had a plaster cast, and it was soaked several times. But, as I noted, that was one of the more minor plot holes. If that was the worst thing wrong with the movie, it would be a good movie. It is not a good movie.
*I was pruning a tree, and was climbing down from a ladder. When I got to the bottom, I stepped off – but I was paying attention to the chain saw, and not where I was, and where I was wasn’t the bottom of the ladder. I came down on my fully extended right leg with my full weight from the second rung, almost 2 feet up. My tibia split from the top down about 6 inches, along with smashing all the bits inside the knee. A brace and crutches for 6 or 8 weeks, but no cast.
I had a plaster cast on my ankle in the mid-1990s. I decided that my kid born in 1994 needed a diaper change during a park kid event in about 1996. But I stepped in doggie doo… and when I hit the grass both I and the nearby cop heard a very audible crack.
I broke my ankle and several bones in my foot. So the nearby cops called for an ambulance (life lesson: break bones near police, they have an inside to emergency services! 😉 snerk!)
Anyway, after waiting a couple of days for the swelling to go down, I got my first plaster cast. When the swelling went down even more, I got another one. I think the decision on the material depends on how often they have to change the cast. My healing took much longer than four weeks, and there was serious swelling that needed to be dealt with.
Also they were both walking casts, sturdy enough that I did not need crutches. Fortunately it was my left ankle, and I could still drive.
So plaster still existed in the 1990s. My most recent bone break was my wrist, that required surgery… there was no cast. By the way, in 1977 when I broke ribs in a an car crash due to just having a lap belt, there was no cast… the the tincture of time. It is just a reminder it depends on the bone that was broken;
(um, yeah… I have had broken ribs, foot, ankle, and wrist/arm… and hubby has never broken any —- aargh… though his 19 year old idiot driving is what caused the car crash that landed me in a hospital for two days with broken ribs!).
Time for my obligatory invocation of Forthman Murff. (A kid at my high school claimed to be his nephew, which seems at least plausible given that he was the one who told us the otherwise unknown story back then.)
Jake is hosted by GoDaddy. Let’s look at their abuse policy:
I’m thinking he’s pretty close to running afoul of the third item.
His domain is registered by GoDaddy.com, but is it hosted by GoDaddy.com? I’m not sure. The DNS entries are to a proxy service and a traceroute peters out before reaching any servers that give the game away.
The presence of ars.mgmt.phx3.gdg at the end of the traceroute, I think, does indeed give the game away.
Yes, ars.mgmt.phx3.gdg does appear to be hosted by GoDaddy. So it looks pretty likely that GoDaddy hosts Jake’s blog, just behind a proxy. I’m also willing to bet that Jake’s posting of information about the family and child with the intent to incite harassment probably violates GoDaddy’s terms of service.
Jake has breaking news* – – – child 11 has restricted his Facebook account to not public. But it’s not Jake’s fault – he never sent anything to the kid via Facebook, just email. And post the link for all** to see.
He says he’ll keep it up until they answer him. I hope the answer comes from a lawyer.
*Seriously, he claims it’s breaking news.
** All of his loony readers, that is, which is maybe 3 or 4 people
It really is an exhibition of petulant harassment from Jake. But then, harassment has always been Jake’s method of operation. Sadly, he was encouraged to do this early in his life by the adults* at AoA. He really can’t see how bad this looks to those happening by his site. It is probably why he has only one person providing 90% of the comments. If he hadn’t before, he now has certainly passed the point where anyone in the big person’s world will take him seriously.
I suspect Jake may have exhausted the readily-accessible publicly available information now. He is in the realms of making shït up now. I am hoping Jake gets bored and lawyers don’t get called in.
*Adults in age only.
@ Johnny:
Most of his readers probably come form RI.
In all seriousness, I looked up his Alexa ranking and it was as you’d expect ( millionths). Interestingly, his UK rating was better than the US one but I’m not sure if that means he’s more read there or that they just have less websites to be considered. Narad would know.
I agree he’s getting worse. I noticed his more frequent posts lately: I think that that was a warning sign.
I’m not surprised that the Gnat’s viewership is higher in the UK – the “White Rose” guy is from there.
Well, that probably doubles The Gnat’s readership in the UK compared to in the US. 🙂
It’s amusing in a pathetic sort of way that Jake redacts his own phone number from his pestergrams to people whose personal information he has happily disclosed.
Dammit, I’ve left two comments with the wrong E-mail address, as a result of autofill after posting at the mass-energy guy’s place. They’re both really mine.
Isn’t the White Rose guy the same as the Hans Litten guy?
But yes 55.7% of his site visitors are from the UK, apparently. I reckon a lot of those are Becky, pointing and laughing.
Yes. There are more with similar WWII derivations, as well as misspelled versions now.
“White Rose” dude is keen to snatch the mantle of anti-Nazi heroism while simultaneously sympathising with the goals of Aktion-T4. Go figure.
I agree with Denice: I hope the family goes after Jake legally.
Jake has posted the child’s name in bold, as part of Jake’s “contact him!” plea, directly under the mugshot of a convicted felon.
I’m sure he thinks that the parenthetical “(photo from facebook profile)” is enough clarification, but when I looked at it, it had the opposite effect.
Unfortunately, I went back to see if Jake had any commenters on his three most recent posts and- Oh Lord! He did.
Rebecca and two other seemingly reality-based commenters remarked on his doxing
Jake’s responses to them illustrate his cluelessness.
I almost feel sorry for him**:
he’s a lost soul working feverishly on meaningless projects feeling that somehow someday he’ll be recognised as the great researcher/ journalist/ genius/ hero he desperately wants to be.
He has nowhere to go and nothing to do so he churns conspiracies about long dead cold topics trying to resurrect a theory that never had much life in it anyway.
AND even worse, he has real money which he could be spending doing interesting things like travelling, starting a business etc
** no, what he advocates can harm children and hurt a particular family in CA..
PLUS it’s hard to feel sorry for the ultra rich ( unless they have serious illness)
FTFY.
I have done the same, although I doubt it is going to help and worry that it will just incite Jake to do more.
@ Chris Preston:
I saw that!
He also goes after researchers who were funded by this family.
I notice he quotes an e-mail to the father- wasn’t that from Brian Deer’s article about this issue and written to BD?
No attribution? No source?
What’s really funny is that if Orac writes about his nonsense he can’t even link to it for his – er…* audience * because he will not contribute to Orac’s numbers at this new site
So Orac can have fun. HOWEVER Jake is probably not important enough for him to bother.
Well he’s up to seven posts on the same topic of stalking every member of this family and anyone who associates with them. I guess he’s just going to keep doing this heinous stuff until it bites him in the arse. Then again, it has but he keeps doing it anyway.
This whole “Fly, my pretties!” notion of deploying the flying monkeys against one’s targets is endemic in the Alt-Right white-supremacist circles to which Jake has gravitated, but I don’t know how well it works if you do not, in fact, have any flying monkeys to deploy.
Age of Autism has used that technique for years now. Basically its “media editor,” whenever she sees an article or blog post about vaccines or autism that she doesn’t like, makes sure to post a link to it on AoA in order to incite AoA’s flying monkey squad to swarm over to the comment section and dive bomb it by flinging their poo.
There’s an article at gizmodo.com titled “The Last of the Iron Lungs” about the last few polio survivors coping with their aging iron lungs at home. They have to rely on handyman and technie friends to keep the lungs running because the original manufacturer has been sold, and sold again, and no longer provides parts.
Heartrending. The positive side is the denunciation of anti vaxxers in the comments.
I’ll just leave this here – measles outbreaks in Leeds and Liverpool, UK
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britain-brink-measles-outbreak-what-11575456?ICID=FB_mirror_main
Squirrellite: Funny you should mention the Earl of Clarendon. I think I was reading a post where he (or his dad) was mentioned as James the second’s male lover.
It’s possible, but you may be thinking of George Villiers and James I.
Edward Hyde initially supported James II, but switched to support William and Mary and eventually Queen Anne, which led to him being sent to New York.
Chemmomo:” vaccines are apparently also responsible for the anti-bullying campaigns in modern US elementary/middle schools.”
Yes, because it is totally a bad thing that autistic and other disabled kids or LGBT kids or anyone who’s slightly different gets treated like people! Of course, Aof Agers were all prom queens and super popular in their high schools, so why should they have any empathy!
In other anti-vax ( non) news…
Jake seems not to be content harassing 3 different members of a family in California and now bothers a researcher who received money from the aforesaid family.
More importantly, in current RI gossip/ conversation…
PGP and squirrelelite:
When you visit the NY Historical Society, one of the best selling souvenirs is a cup emblazoned with the image of Hyde in his dress. The painting itself was fairly hidden in a mass of other colonial era works ( at least when I went): you had to know where to look. I’ve heard various tales about the source of the painting: whether he commissioned it himself or if it was created for a political rival to smear him etc. One story I like is that he dressed this way to show loyalty to Queen Anne..
I note that in Jake’s e-mail to Dr. Gupta, that he doesn’t identify himself as the ‘editor’ of AI. It’s almost as if Jake doesn’t want the good doctor to know about his silly web site.
I’d be surprised if Gupta could even make heads or tails of it. Leaving aside the basic errors in composition, Jake seems to be under the impression that random people will be conversant with this particular, weird fixation of his. Jesus, I had to sort through a couple of layers of his posts to figure out what the hell he was babbling about.
A quick search of UC irvine Honor Rolls of Donors suggests these gifts by the Demirjians were made from 2007 to 2010. Asking Gupta to stop taking money from the family now seems rather pointless (if it would have been anything other than pointless at any other time).
One of the MMR class action parents has turned up at Jake’s blog to correct him on who got money from the Legal Services Commission. This includes Anthony, Harvey and Walker-Smith in addition to Wakefield. The information is on the public record having been released under a FOIA. But Jake is having none of it. It must be frustrating for the parent trying to get this corrected, but this illustrates how far off beam Jake has gone.
She may correct Jake, but we may never know about it. Jake has told her to e-mail him from now on.
http://www.autisminvestigated.com/richard-demirjian-autism-wolves/#comment-293780
I guess he’ll do whatever it takes to hide facts he doesn’t like.
What, he didn’t demand her phone number, too?
Very good article in the current issue of Texas Monthly about Peter Hotez and his activism on behalf of vaccination.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/scientist-stop-measles-texas/
There’s a brief comment from a leader of a Texas antivax group to the effect of “we’re not antivaccine, just pro-vaccine choice” but the reporter does not make the equal time mistake.
@ Dangerous Bacon:
That was very good indeed, oh Dangerous One.
Hotez discusses a growing attitude of anti-science that is developing in contradistinction to rampant pop culture, Maybe an hour ago, I read an article ( on MSN news) about how a certain faction is quite perturbed with universities and a university education. AND it’s exactly what you’d expect: one party believes that universities do more harm than good ( and the other side, the reverse); the article profiled a fellow who’s done very well without a standard degree he tells us.
I hear the same parroted on prn and naturalnews nearly daily. Similarly, anti-vax moms/ parents routinely “correct” various professionals. It’s enough to make one despair. I’ve glad I live in Liberal Utopia- I don’t meet these partisans often.
Denice Walter wrote:
It’s sad that Jake is still unable to understand Wakefield’s Lancet paper after so many years and so much wasted effort.
Congrats to one of my ped’s parent. This parent, in her infinite wisdom, decided on no vaccinations whatsoever nor any clinic visits. Kid developed h.flu type b meningitis over Thanksgiving and is in critical condition. Mission f’n accomplished. outstanding.
If it were anything but a karma payback, she was found to have developed an aggressive thyroid carcinoma, incidentally on exam. And of course, refusing any further treatment.
[…] I’m pro-safe vaccine” or “I’m not ‘antivaccine’; I’m a vaccine safety activist” gambit. In fact, I discussed the very op-ed referred to above when it was originally […]