I didn’t expect to be writing about One Conversation, the panel discussion being organized by antivaccine activists Shannon Kroner and Britney Valas. As you might recall, Kroner and Valas invited me to be on the panel to discuss vaccines, but my skeptical antennae immediately started twiching mightily because they didn’t want to just come out and tell me who else was on the panel. It turned out that my skepticism was well-warranted, because basically One Conversation was the very epitome of false balance. There were going to be antivaccine activists on the same panel with pro-vaccine scientists. AS it is my rule never to debate cranks in a format like this, I demurred and then politely declined. After all, antivaccine quacks like Sherri Tenpenny and Toni Bark were going to be on the panel. Then, of course, there was Del Bigtree, the producer of the movie VAXXED, who, aside from his paranoid conspiracy mongering antivaccine propaganda movie disguised as a documentary, is well known for his rather—shall we say?—histrionic antivaccine speeches. There’s no way I was going to appear on the same stage with him, given that his very presence signifies an antivaccine crankfest.
Out of curiosity, late last week, I decided to follow up on One Conversation. Around the same time a reader sent me an email sent out to attendees of the event that revealed that all the real scientists were gone, having canceled. Basically, One Conversation had gone full antivaccine crankfest. Kroner and Valas had even gone so far as to add two more antivaccine cranks, James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, CEO of the Institute of Pure and Applied Knowledge, and Gayle DeLong, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics and Finance in the Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business. I won’t rehash what I wrote before, but it it worth mentioning a couple of things. First, DeLong is an economist who thinks she’s an epidemiologist and as a result has published some awful studies, for example, one claiming to link HPV vaccination to infertility and another one claiming to link vaccines to—yawn—autism. Lyons-Weiler, on the other hand, appears to have been a halfway decent scientist with a good funding record who, for whatever reason, turned to the Dark Side and embraced many forms of pseudoscience, including antivaccine pseudoscience.
Call me obsessive, but yesterday I couldn’t resist checking again. It wasn’t so much to see if, a mere week and a half from the event, Kroner and Valas had found any token skeptics to add to their stable. Yes, I know that they had basically gone down the route I had predicted that they’d go down if all the pro-science members of their panel were to bow out and blamed “heavy outside influences and coercion from respected national medical organizations (whose main concern is maintaining only one message of vaccine importance and safety to ensure public compliance),” but I knew from experience that Kroner and Valas were nothing if not persistent and desperate for affirmation and respect; so I figured they’d keep trying. Also, I had noticed a rather strange pattern to how they listed the panelists who had canceled. Basically, they only listed the pro-vaccine advocates who had canceled and failed to mention the couple of antivaxers who had bowed out. I also couldn’t help but notice another rather odd change since last I looked at the website: No first names of the pro-vaxers who canceled. Truly, Valas and Kroner’s pettiness knows no bounds.
More interestingly, the first name on the list that I saw this time around was a very familiar figure:
Dr. Bob Sears, MD
Pediatrician
Dr. Bob Sears a father of three, author of The Vaccine Book and seven other books, and co-founder of Immunity Education Group, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing balanced and complete information about vaccines, infectious diseases, and public health issues.“Dr. Bob,” as he likes to be called by his little patients, earned his medical degree at Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1995 and did his pediatric internship and residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He continues to practice pediatrics at his office in Dana Point, CA, where he provides a combination of alternative and traditional medical care. He has a passion for healthy natural living and incorporates this knowledge into his style of disease treatment and prevention by limiting antibiotic use, committing to breastfeeding success for his little patients, using science-based natural treatment approaches whenever possible, and focusing on good nutrition and immune system health.
By having one of very few pediatric offices in Orange County, CA, that accepts families who don’t follow the CDC schedule of vaccinations, Dr. Bob has had the unique opportunity to observe how these naturally-minded families grow and thrive in today’s world.
With the new threat of mandatory vaccination laws, Dr. Bob’s new mission is to ensure that all families worldwide receive complete, objective, and un-doctored informed consent before they choose vaccination and that people everywhere retain the freedom to make healthcare decisions for themselves and their children.
Yes, it’s Dr. Bob. Truly this has become an antivaccine crankfest. Of course, I’ve written about Dr. Bob more times than I can remember. Rather odd, don’t you think, that somehow Kroner and Valas neglected to mention that “Dr. Bob” Sears was recently disciplined by the Medical Board of California and entered into a consent agreement requiring supervision and remedial education based on his having granted a medical exemption that was inappropriate and not having done a neurologic examination when one was required, not to mention failure to keep adequate medical records. Of course, “Dr. Bob” is antivaccine and prone to flights of hyperbole in which he blows antivaccine dog whistles and going full Godwin over California’s law eliminating non-medical personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates even as he himself sells dubious medical exemptions to those same mandates.
They’re definitely going full antivaccine crankfest.
If you doubt me, see who their other new addition to the panel is:
Dr. David Lewis PhD
Research Microbiologist; Research Director & Science Advisory Board Member – Focus for Health Foundation
Dr. Lewis is an internationally recognized research microbiologist whose work on public health and environmental issues, as a senior-level Research Microbiologist in EPA’s Office of Research & Development and member of the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia, has been reported in numerous news articles and documentaries from TIME magazine and Reader’s Digest to National Geographic.He is Senior Science Advisor to the National Whistleblower Center and a member of its Board of Directors.
As a senior-level (GS-15) research microbiologist for EPA’s Office of Research & Development, Dr. Lewis used DNA-fingerprinting in the late 1990s to study the effects of global climate change on the breakdown of pesticides by bacteria. This research, which he published in Nature, was awarded EPA’s Science Achievement Award. EPA officials who developed the Agency’s sewage sludge regulations, however, moved to shut down his research when he began investigating illnesses and deaths linked to EPA programs promoting the agricultural use of processed sewage sludge. Nevertheless, his research in this area prompted the CDC to issue guidelines protecting workers handling processed sewage sludge.
Dr. Lewis is an internationally recognized research microbiologist who discovered, at the University of Georgia (UGA) in the early 1990s, that the AIDS virus could be transmitted by certain types of dental equipment that dentists share between patients. His research, published in Lancet and Nature Medicine, led to the current heat-sterilization standard for dentistry worldwide.
Dr. Lewis’ work has been covered in numerous news articles, editorials, and documentaries in a wide variety of professional, scientific and popular publications, and broadcasts including Science, Lancet, JAMA, The Scientist, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Voice of America, Paul Harvey, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, London Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS Healthweek, PBS Technopolitics, CBS Evening News, ABC’s Primetime Live, and BBC Panorama.
Here’s the funny thing. When I saw this name, I didn’t remember him. Then I Googled him. I also searched for his name on my blog, and it turns out that I’ve written about him multiple times. It’s just that the most recent time was well over six years ago. That explains why I didn’t immediately recognize his name; there have just been so many cranks in the interim who’ve “merited” a heaping helping of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful.
In any event, Lewis was indeed a microbiologist who worked for the EPA and appears to have been involved in reporting on suppression of research. So, you might ask, why on earth would antivaxers invite David Lewis to their little antivaccine crankfest? It turns out that the reason I wrote about Lewis is that he somehow managed to get himself entangled in l’affaire Wakefield. Apparently, the two met at an antivaccine conference at a posh resort in Jamaica in January 2011 and started working together.
Later that year, Lewis provided the BMJ with the original hand-written scoring sheets used by one of Andrew Wakefield’s co-investigators, pathologists Drs. Paul Dhillon and Andrew Anthony, to score the inflammation noted in the biopsy specimens from the subjects from Wakefield’s original Lancet case series in 1998. Lewis apparently thought that these scoring sheets would somehow exonerate his then newfound BFF Wakefield by showing that Wakefield was not, in fact, committing fraud but making good faith use of reports by Drs. Dhillon and Anthony, who were just making good faith diagnoses of enterocolitis. In fact the scoring sheets did exactly the opposite, as I discussed elsewhere. In fact, they showed that the specimens scored as representing inflammation were actually normal, without significant enterocolitis. As I said at the time, Wakefield must have been wondering, “With friends like these…?”
Actually, it turns out that there was more to Lewis’ issues with the EPA than he lets on. Investigative journalist Brian Deer, who published the BMJ report that documented the research fraud committed by Andrew Wakefield, became David Lewis’ target based on his work showing that Wakefield committed scientific fraud. You never want to get Deer pissed off, because Deer’s response was devastating, and revealing:
On Lewis’s webpage, a lengthy “director’s story” outlined what I later found to be a misleading account of an extraordinarily arcane dispute between himself and the Environmental Protection Agency. For most of his career, Lewis, now 63, was an environmental microbiologist at the EPA’s lab in Athens, Georgia. In addition to his paid employment, he became active on the side as an expert witness, leading at one point to a complaint to the EPA from a private company that he’d turned his employment with the government agency “into a vehicle to support his private, paid expert witness work”. It may be recalled that one of my revelations about Wakefield was that he’d secretly received huge sums of undisclosed legal money to make a pre-agreed case against MMR, beginning years before his infamous 1998 Lancet paper was published. There was no connection between the pair’s cases, but it’s not hard to see that Lewis, and others whose minds have turned to fantastic conspiracies, might want to exploit one to fuel the other.
Lewis’s principal expertise is in the potential contamination of agricultural land by harmful sewage sludge. It appears that he was being paid by lawyers to make a case against a firm called Synagro [Synagro report and summary on Lewis] – a company I’ve never before heard of, or had any dealings with. Complaints against Lewis included his alleged misuse of EPA credentials to further what was represented to be his private agenda. At some point, Lewis had himself declared a “whistleblower”. Despite its heroic-sounding quality, this is generally a technical legal issue in the US, often invoked in employment disputes. In fact, it appears that his “whistleblowing” was to make complaint against an employee of lower grade in a different section of the EPA, who took a contrary view over Lewis’s sewage sludge claims. Lewis then alleged that EPA had vicarious liability for this other employee’s conduct. Lewis signed a settlement agreement to leave the EPA, but when the date of its maturity arrived, he complained again. Lewis was represented in his dispute by Stephen Kohn, and generated increasingly long documents.
He made countless complaints which, as far as I can tell, were rejected. A relatively straightforward account of some of the matters is contained in a judgment in the US court of appeals dated February 2010, summarised online. This finally rejects his “whistleblower” complaints, after years of apparently futile rancour.
[I note that David Lewis disagrees with this interpretation rather strenuously, to the point that he was very…insistent…on telling his side. Since what he did or did not do at the EPA is not all that relevant to his agreement to participate in this antivaccine crankfest and his connection to antivaccine icon Andrew Wakefield, I did not resist too hard letting him provide me with a rebuttal. See addendum.]
As Deer says (and I agree), I can’t know what happened at the EPA with Dr. Lewis, whether he really did uncover anything objectionable or really was a legitimate whistleblower. At this point, ten years later, it’s irrelevant (at least to me). All I can go by for purposes of this antivaccine crankfest is that he’s buddies with Andrew Wakefield. All I can go by is that he tried to “exonerate” Wakefield of scientific fraud seven years ago. All I can go by is that he attacked Brian Deer, the investigative journalist who documented Wakefield’s scientific fraud. To me, whether or not he was or wasn’t a legitimate whistleblower at the EPA is irrelevant to his being an antivaccine crank, which is why he apparently completes the antivaccine crankfest. I suppose I should thank Shannon Kroner and Britney Valas for bringing back some long-forgotten memories of this particular antivaccine crank.
So One Conversation is about as much an antivaccine crankfest as you can imagine. In a way, I almost feel sorry for Kroner and Valas. They might actually have genuinely wanted a “balanced” conversation between pro-vaccine advocates and antivaxers, not realizing that any such conversation is necessarily false balance and elevates the antivaccine cranks just by having them on the same stage. Of course, antivaxers know this instinctively, which is why they try to set up events like One Conversation. It’s also why pro-vaccine science advocates who are invited to such events should decline to be used for this purpose, leaving antivaxers organizing such events stuck with the usual pathetic band of cranks.
ADDENDUM:
Response to Research Misconduct Allegations
David L, Lewis, Ph.D.
www.focusforhealth.org/davidlewis
Dr. David Gorski recently referred to allegations of research and ethical misconduct against me [1], which a reporter, Brian Deer, published on his website [2]. Deer, Gorski noted, also claims that I failed to win any of my federal whistleblower cases against EPA. The source of Deer’s allegations is a white paper published by Synagro Technologies, Inc. [3], which is involved in land application of sewage sludges. It alleges that EPA’s Office of Research & Development (ORD), where I worked as a research microbiologist, did not approve my research on land application of sewage sludges, nor me serving as an (unpaid) expert witness against Synagro, which was being sued over illnesses and deaths linked to its products.
I provided Gorski several of the exculpatory documents that a local newspaper had published in response to Deer’s allegations [4]. ORD, for example, concluded “there is no basis to warrant investigating Dr. Lewis for research misconduct.” EPA’s Office of General Counsel also concluded that Synagro’s allegations were “without merit,” that my research was “properly approved,” and that I “did not engage in any ethical violations.” The newspaper also included letters from the U.S. Department of Labor, showing that it had ruled in my favor and awarded me damages in multiple cases. It also included a letter from Synagro to the President of the University of Georgia, withdrawing all of its allegations.
Professor Robert Kuehn at the University of Alabama’s School of Law observed [5]: “In the 1950s, politicians sought to silence scientists that allegedly held political views sympathetic to Communists. In recent years, research results, rather than the scientist’s religion or politics, have motivated attacks on scientists.” Citing the U.S. Department of Labor’s rulings in my favor, Kuehn noted that allegations of research and ethical misconduct are used by government and industry to suppress research critical of certain government policies and industry practices.
It has, therefore, become necessary that science writers take extraordinary care when publishing allegations of research and ethical misconduct. Intentionally spreading false allegations constitutes scientific misconduct. Publishing them without any findings based on formal investigations conducted by governmental or academic institutions, and without contacting the scientist who is being accused, is just as bad in my opinion. It should never happen.
References
- Gorski D. One Conversation: An antivaccine crankfest adds two more antivaccine cranks. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2018/10/02/one-conversation-an-antivaccine-crankfest-adds-two-more-antivaccine-cranks/ Oct. 2, 2018.
- Deer B. David L Lewis: indignant abuse as complaints turn to nothing. https://briandeer.com/solved/david-lewis-1.htm Jan. 12, 2012.
- Analysis of David Lewis’ Theories Regarding Biosolids. Synagro Technologies, Inc. Sept. 20, 2001 (Withdrawn).
- Lewis, DL. False allegations suppress honest research. http://www.oconeeenterprise.com/opinion/article_b2d805b2-b7f9-11e6-96b0-ff371d671efd.html
- Robert R. Kuehn. Suppression of Environmental Science. American Journal of Law & Medicine 2004; 30:333-69.
130 replies on “One Conversation: An antivaccine crankfest adds two more antivaccine cranks”
Let’s see… Who else can we get here to complete the antivax idiocy? I’ looking at you, Stefano Montanari!
*I’m
Sorry about that, I’m writing this on a mobile device.
I still keep wondering if J.B. Handley will show up…
I think you’re right in your final assessment, though if you’re trying to get a panel of “balanced scientists and doctors,” you stick to scientists and doctors.
The moment they added Mr. Bigtree and, initially, Handley, they went from a sincere attempt at that to an attempt to put the real doctors and scientists they invited under attack in demagogic theater.
It looks like you only come out of the woodwork to do damage control when prominent figures tell the truth. Must be a tough job. Expect it to get a lot tougher.
A. Who in that conference do you consider a “prominent figure”? (I’ll give you a pass on the “truth” part for now, on the assumption you believe them).
B. I thought the anti-vaccine complaint was that I comment constantly. Shouldn’t you people be consistent?
I’m sure Pete, under his tin foil hat, thinks we’re all bots of Dorit. Consistency in thought is not a trait of anti-vaxxers.
Oh haven’t we been hearing that for years now all the while anti-vaxxers are getting ignored by the media, getting push-back from the scientific/medical communities and drawing every day people against your “cause”.
I noticed Handley’s new book about how to end the Autism epidemic. Particularly interesting are the books that bol.com references as suggested reading.
https://www.bol.com/nl/f/how-to-end-the-autism-epidemic/9200000092027947/
Q. Is everyone a quack who writes about vaccines and the etiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders.
On the image Orac used at the beginning of this post, I noticed that the needle has a very large orifice. Do small orifices have a tendency to clog when penetrating through the natural rubbery material used in some vial caps?
Please advise.
You should also have noticed the photo wasn’t to scale. It is literally larger than life. And if you think the needle orifice is small, you should go and donate blood like I did on Saturday. The orifice in a blood donation needle is wide.
You are right about the blood donation needle. I have been giving blood for years and, was amazed at how small the needles for a blood sample and my annual flu shots are.
Or you can step up to to a vetrinary needle intended for use with cattle and horses. Now, those are big.
Not to mention the magnifying affect of the glass vial. Not that someone cares about things like that.
Better than being a very large orifice. With a keyboard.
MJD; It’s an optical illusion created for photo aesthetics. That is at least an 18, if not a 14 gauge needle that has been placed on a 1 cc (insulin) syringe. As most injections with a volume of less than 1 cc are ordered to be given subcutaneously (SQ); the standard needles are typically about a 31 gauge, so this is wildly throwing off the visualized proportions.
Both the 18 & 14 (the bigger the # the smaller the gauge) are used for blood product administration & phlebotomy but usually at least a 20G is preferred. The 18G is typically used to place peripheral IV lines, while the 14G is too large to be ideal. The 14G is more suited for aspiration procedures.
The rubber seal on a multi-dose vial is kept pliant by replacing the volume to be withdrawn with the same volume of air. This avoids creating a vacuum in the vial, which is the only way of making the seal taunt.
Also note the beveled tip of the needle; I have never had a needle clog with rubber, the material used re-seals after puncture, versus having a hole-punch effect.
Bloody hell. After all the discussion on the damned image, I’m seriously tempted to replace it with one that provokes less annoyance. (Can you tell how much it irritates me when someone like MJD derails the conversation by focusing on something like the image? I should never have approved that comment of his.)
I wonder what Dr. Lewis thought he was doing with those scoring sheets. Did he even bother to read them and see if they correlated with the stat presented in the paper?
I suspect that he did that in a fit of anger, so blinded by his belief in Wakefield that it never occurred to him that they might incriminate Wakefield rather than exonerating him.
In any event, that action makes him a perfect pseudo expert for an antivaccine convention (I won’t glorify it with the word conference).
Here’s a link to the mental standing of David L Lewis.
If he wasn’t such a malignant crank, I’d say he was as barking as a box of Jack Russells:
https://briandeer.com/solved/david-lewis-true.htm
The guy’s certainly got…issues.
Yes, 5 bumblebees running up his bowel hitting random targets.
Alain
I’d have thought Sears’ disciplinary action by the CA Medical Board would be a “badge of honor” among the spreaders of deadly diseases (aka the organizers of this “One Conversation” debacle). Sears is just all giddy about this invite on his Facebook page, apparently unaware a whole bunch of non-quack physicians turned them down ahead of him. The “One Conversation” page notes:
“BIG NEWS! Our 8th and final panelist has been officially confirmed! Pediatrician, Dr. Bob Sears! We are so excited to welcome him to One Conversation! His book, “The Vaccine Book” has been instrumental in most parents’ journeys in learning about vaccines! We are grateful for his participation and can’t wait to hear what he brings to the conversation!”
In reality, his “Vaccine Book” has been instrumental in bringing deadly vaccine preventable diseases back to the US–in a “journey” of entirely preventable morbidity and mortality. What Sears will bring to to conversation, of course, is utter crap. He might play the part of the doctor who does vaccinate, but if he does it’s a sham given over half his patients are unvaccinated. He certainly isn’t a competent physician and he wouldn’t know the science of vaccines if his life depended on it.
I’d like to think the CA Medical Board is keeping a tally of his bad behavior regarding vaccine discourse since his sanctions, but I’m not terribly optimistic they’ll count this against him when his 3 years supervised probation is up.
I can think of two possible motivations for Dr Bob attending the meeting:
1. Because he’s recently learned that there can be consequences for physicians that overtly undermine vaccines his appearance at One Conversation will be a chance to say “help, help, I’m being repressed” to a receptive audience, and
The disciplinary actions may be hurting his niche practice financially. In a practice that relies on supervising NPs or PAs and doesn’t accept insurance it can only be damaging to lose the authority to supervise NPs/PAs and the negative publicity from the Board may decrease the number of vaccine hesitant folks (that pay out of pocket) in his practice . The meeting may offer him an opportunity to network with the truly anti-vaccine crowd for a side gig that would help pay the bills during the next three years…
Yeah, I wondered about that. A physician with a busy practice usually can’t just up and take off to appear at an event like this with less than two weeks’ notice. So the thought occurred to me that the reason he accepted the invitation was because his practice has been suffering due to the consent agreement with the California Board of Medicine.
I’m guessing he’d rather be paid to be in Bigtree’s next pseudo-docmentary or to speak at quackfests like One Conversation rather than accept patients with health insurance…
Maybe his bottom line is hurting (for Sears that would be the $$$) since he just started bleating excitedly about how he gets to give not one, but two “vaccine talks” at a La Leche League conference in California next month. Really should call it an “anti-vaccine talk”. Too bad the CA Medical Board won’t go after him for false advertising.
Well, now Sears is all excited on Facebook about giving two “vaccine talks” at a La Leche League conference next month in California. Maybe his bottom line (which for Sears is $$$) is hurting. Too bad the CA Medical Board didn’t stipulate that he call them “anti-vaccine talks” since calling them “vaccine talks” is false advertising (which does violate the CA Medical Practice Act).
” heavy outside influences and coercion..?
More like common sense.
So who will enlighten participants at the conference?
– a doctor who has to undertake remedial courses himself because of his beliefs and actions
– sludge guy
– an economist
– a television producer/ film maker with his own internet radio show
– a guy who started his own esoteric school ( after tinkling around RI for a bit)
– two women doctors who like their film director, Gary Null, have studied vaccines for ” over 15000 hours” apiece
– Handley?
Generation Rescue just had an ” education summit” in Dallas this past weekend that featured Dr Mercola, Handley and Jenny McCathy: isn’t scheduling too close in time for True Believers to attend both?
Personally, I would love to know how many paid admissions occur at autism quackfests like Autism One, the aforementioned AES and One Convo. A few years ago, Autism One claimed “thousands”.
” heavy outside influence and coercion…”?
More like common sense.
So who will enlighten participants?
– a doctor who has to take remedial courses himself
– an economist
– someone who started his own esoteric school ( after piddling around RI for a while)
– a television producer/ filmmaker who has his own internet radio show
– two doctors who like their film director pal, Gary Null, each studied vaccines for ” over 15000 hours” apiece
– sludge guy
– Handley
Generation Rescue just had an “education summit” last weekend in Dallas? Isn’t that too close in time for True Believers to
attend both?
I would love to know how many people pay for events like these and Autism One. The latter used to claim “thousands”.
Sorry about the double post: I got an error message for the first and it didn’t show up when I checked
I’ve been having to reload once or even twice to get the current version of the page.
And it also jumps right and left on the screen when scrolling, but this is an old browser. New behavior, though.
Like Orac, I can’t attest to whether David Lewis’ claims about the EPA have validity.
What I find interesting in general is the “whistleblower” mentality, and the public image of heroic “whistleblowers” often diverges from reality.
Based on my exposure to such people (both from public events such as the “CDC whistleblower controversy” and my own professional experience), their motivations often seem to go well beyond bravely exposing wrongs at risk to their own well-being. Economics (job protection, whether under “whistleblower” statutes or generating organizational fear of lawsuits, or hope of cash rewards), revenge, love of conflict and publicity are factors that may intertwine with (or substitute for) genuine concerns about malfeasance (the Karen Silkwood case is instructive). Sometimes mental disorders appear to be involved (one could argue about whether mental imbalance causes or is a consequence of “whistleblowing”* activities).
I have not been able to find an in-depth psychological study of whistleblowers, but would be interested to read it.
*apologies for what may be perceived as the use of “scare quotes”, but I’ve seen more than a few bogus examples of “whistleblowing”.
Certainly, not all whistleblowers blow the whistle on their employer for pure and good reasons. Some of them have baser motives, such as being out for revenge at a slight, real or perceived or financial gain. Even so, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their information isn’t useful. What I can’t figure out in Lewis’ case is if whatever he “blew the whistle on” ever did any good or resulted in any positive change. I suspect it didn’t.
If Lewis had already been receiving money from a competitor of Synagro to attack Synagro in the course of his EPA employment, I can imagine that the “whistleblowing” attack on an EPA colleague was part of that paid advocacy… or it could have been intended to safeguard his job there… this is only speculation, though, and Brian would have noted if either of these possibilities had been established by facts.
I guess since the One Conversation organisers couldn’t get legitimate scientists on their panel to abuse they just went ahead and hoisted their anti-vaxx flag all the way up the pole.
Yup. If you can’t pretend to be “balanced,” you might as well play to the base and go full antivax, particularly with the scheduled “CDC Shutdown” rally. To be honest, tough, I wonder if the rally is still on. I haven’t heard anything about it and the last time I checked the Vaccine Justice or Else! FB page (the CDC Shutdown Rally is being organized by this group) hadn’t been updated in a while. So I checked it now, and it looks like it’s up and running again. There’s also some sort of Vaccine Justice or Else! banquet scheduled for 7 PM the eventing before One Conversation.
NOW if Orac and his minions weren’t so widely dispersed, we could all meet and crash the Justice or Else! dinner: I’ve never been to one of those.
( of course I’m joking but let’s see if any anti-vaxxers quote me, uncovering another Pharma plot)
OffTopic,
Denice, would it be a good idea to start a mailing list or website of some sort where we can discuss social & group psychopathology? I happen to have a domain name and a server available for such purpose.
Alain
@ Alain:
It could be very useful for some readers BUT there is a possible problem:
you might attract more perps than victims and then you’d have to deal with their crap which may not be a tolerable situation for anyone.
Two of the biggest offenders in woo-dom offer articles and recitatives about ” how to spot a sociopath” or “what is a narcissist?” ** whilst basically describing themselves. Of course, they act as though they’re discussing OTHERS but SRSLY! They can’t fool me!
** which is almost as ludicrous as when they talk about cognitive psychology; they should jut stick to topics which involve their own expertise: how to bilk people, how to pretend you’re a scientist, how to create phony credentials
Never mind antivax crankfests, what we really need is another World Urine Therapy Conference. There are new frontiers being blazed as we speak:
“Until I first drank my dog’s pee, I was depressed, I was sad, and I had bad acne,” the woman says after finishing the last drop.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/fe46907b-d860-4a72-ae32-809a1da4c1eb
After I drunk my dog’s pee, I had a bad taste in my mouth, which made me forget everything else that ailed me. 🙂
Are these the same people complaining about toxins in all kinds of things?
The same toxins one gets rid of by their urine.
And you can never look your dog in the eye again.
A long time ago, I read that a psychic, Sybil Leek IIRC, knew about this therapy.
Interestingly, my father once said that gypsies/ travellers used it as a remedy for eye problems and other ills. How he knew about them I have no idea.
I have come across various pee woo over the years as well. It seems to fit in with nature obsessions- pee is all natural, not a product of pharma and ORGANIC!
They’re just taking the piss.
Mock all you want, but the African natives had a cure for dysentery that the Germans medical corps couldn’t figure out. Many German soldiers lost their lives while the natives watched and laughed at them. The sick natives ate camel dung to cure dysentery, and I’m sure if the internet were around then you’d be making your same claims about the total absurdity of that not realizing fresh camel dung contained B. subtilis. The Germans eventually figured out what the natives already knew, but even today its looking like the most effective cure for C Diff is eating human dung. Science doesn’t care how “icky” the solution is, as long as it works. Y’all seem to be squeamish and scream “quackery” about anything that doesn’t come in a prescription bottle, so I assume real, actual science ain’t really your thing.
Only if one is accustomed to talking out of one’s ass. Either you’re confused about fecal transplants or sorely in need of an antecedent for your malformed pronomial construction.
The sick natives ate camel dung to cure dysentery
If this whole anecdote is intended as a joke, you forgot the punchline.
The whole “Arabs-eating-camel-dung” story seems to have been invented about 2008. Let me know if you find any citations earlier than that.
Various sources converge on a 1993 advertisement, from a supplements company pimping its ‘EarthFlora’ product, for the invention of the “Arabs-eat-camel-dung” story:
http://users.penn.com/~rarearts/soilbasedorganisims.htm
The anonymous ad-writer credits “Dr. Peter Rothschild, one of the world’s foremost experts on human immune response and its relation to beneficial microorganisms”, for
As any fule kno, Bacillus subtilis was discovered a long, long time before 1941.
For “one of the world’s foremost experts on human immune response”, Dr Rothschild kept a very low profile, and is unknown outside the circles of Alt-Med pill-mill grifters. He seems to have been a Mexico-based charlatan, and his name turns up frequently among the documents accumulated by the FTC in their case against Jordan Rubin and his “Garden-of-Life” fraud.
https://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/rubin.html
https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2006/03/gardenoflifeexhibits-i.pdf
Anyway, this fabrication was passed around the human centipede of alt-med webstores, sometimes citing one another for authentication, until it rose to the giddy empyrean of Rense:
https://rense.com/general4/bac.htm
From there, it came to the attention of the clickbait Gosh-Wow sites. Which is why Cracked and MentalFloss repeated it as gospel (Rense being such a reliable source); “Warhistoryonline” invented further details, but at least cited Rense and MentalFloss before going on to fabricate further details.
Someone should blog about it.
Many German soldiers lost their lives while the natives watched and laughed at them.
I think I’ve read most versions of the Camel-dung-cures-dysentery hoax now, and none of them explain how the Allied army escaped the ravages of intestinal distress.
Commodus is the only one to describe the local informants as “natives”… everywhere else they’re variously Arabs or Bedouins or ‘locals’. Also, the detail of the locals ‘watching and laughing’ is Commodus’ own contribution. It may reflect a personal anxiety.
If you write that vaccines are part of the etiology of ASD, then yes, you are a crank. Or a quack.
I’m having the same problem today.
Hi, I’m #500! I’ll be your Internal Server Error today!
All I can figure, aside from that error, is some sort of persistent cookie being set. I hit the bookmark and see no new comments. Reload page. Oh, new comments! Click on one. Get taken to top of post. Reload page again. Finally reach comment.
You can get updated comments sans travail by clicking on this post’s link at our fearless leader’s twitter.
And I’ll bet that everyone is surprised that I could actually solve that type of problem by myself.
Everyone rush over to Amazon and order your copy of Mary Holland’s new book on how the HPV vaccine has “betrayed” young women.
This changes everything!
*it’s the new #1 Best Seller in Preventive Medicine. 🙂
Orac said: “There were going to be antivaccine activists on the same panel with pro-vaccine scientists. AS it is my rule never to debate cranks in a format like this, I demurred and then politely declined.”
Naturally, you didn’t decline to bash the debate panel from the safety of your personal blog, blissfully free of the strictures of debate decorum, where arguments are expected to be based on evidence and logic, rather than appeals to authority and ad hominem attacks.
Kindly explain what debate format you would politely accept. Name some names–or is it only the letters after names that concern you? Will we find any truly anti-vaccine doctors and scientists on your list, or only wafflers and fence sitters? Surely you agree that presentations by opposing sides of an issue are a necessary component of a debate, so you can’t just be surrounded by like minds.
Who do you think you’re fooling? Your real fear is that a bunch of anti-vaccine “activists” (who also, it seems, include doctors and scientists), would blow the pro-vaccine “scientists” (who also, it seems, include doctors and activists) out of the water, for all to see. I understand–your fear is certainly justified. 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/giantif/photos/a.292236864632361/442820749573971/?type=3&theater
Exactly, Chris. In a world where vaccine opposition is a serious threat to public health, and the scientific proof supporting vaccination is indisputable, civil public debate is pointless. People are just too stupid to understand. They are so stupid, they couldn’t possibly watch a debate and exercise their own sound judgment–even all the doctors and nurses and scientists out there who would surely be interested in watching .
Instead, people need to be kept in the vaccine fold by bombarding them with an endless stream of sock puppets like you, to shame and mock and covertly cajole them into submission to vaccine dogma. That’s how Science and Humanity triumph!
Are you unclear on the meaning of this term, Ginny, or just batshit insane?
Narad, it is the latter. She doesn’t even do sarcasm well.
Oh, Christ, look what oozed out of the woodwork. You make MJD look like a model citizen, Ginny. Just fuck the fucking fuck off. Your lack of traffic, or rather, wholesale irrelevance, is not the problem of anyone here.
Yeah, I’m only surprised it took NWO nearly a year to notice the new blog and figure out that I was starting from scratch with my automatic moderation/block list. Well, that’s easy enough to fix.
Yeah, I haven’t been cranking out any new material on the site lately–busy with other projects. You could at least demonstrate a little gratitude.
Ginny, have you been busy helping to incarcerate children near the border?
For what? That there’s nothing new to read at your site that nobody reads?
Well, I guess it’s time for Paul Simon and the Jesse Dixon Singers. You’ve got no soul in you, Ginny. Go back to imbecilic animations.
It’s been said before: Debating an anti-vaxxer about vaccines is like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks ove all the pieces, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory. There’s no challenge refuting all your dumb claims, NWO, and the anti-vax physicians who make them with you should be stripped of their medical licenses.
Read the comments. I realize that this may be an unfamiliar concept to you.
I knew about your new blog, Orac–I was just bored with it. You never blocked me before–why start now? I enjoy our witty banter.
I’m much less tolerant of bullshit than I was a year ago.
See–we have something in common. That’s part of the reason I was avoiding your blog (and so many others) — the bullshit. Maybe we can help each other clean out our stalls.
Then why the fuck are you here?
You should look up the difference between past tense and present tense, Narad. 🙂
Figure out the fucking preterite, emoji-shit.
Eh, screw it. I’ll go OT and note that Derek Lowe has a nice, brief post about the status of the Nobel prize in chemistry and what it means in the modern day.
Why didn’t you show studies that prove vaccines are effective? Don’t you wonder why half of our vaccinated kids have a chronic disease? Why is the US the sickest nation in the world?
I take it from most of the comments that you are not serious. That your article is Satire. You certainly have an immature following.
Too. Early. To. Start. Drinking. Did you just fall off the turnip truck, or is carpet-bombing neurons just a hobby of yours?
OhZone, how do you go through life without an original thought? We have heard those same tropes for several years, but instead of providing actual verifiable evidence you and your friends just spew insults. It gets very boring.
OhZone, of course this site is satire–but it’s masquerading as scientific truth, so it’s a little more complicated than the usual definition. Maybe we need a new name for it. How about dark reality satire? Like reality TV, but with a written rather than spoken script.
Don’t you advertise your jabbering as “satire,” Ginny? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
P.S. Stevie Wonder isn’t really blind.
1) Citation needed.
2) Supporting evidence needed that vaccines cause these chronic diseases. And yes, the burden of proof is on you. You make the claim, you stump up the evidence.
See response above.
Julian Frost, you are trying to shift the burden of proof. Vaccine proponents are making the claim that all vaccines are safe, effective in reducing overall morbidity and mortality in the population, and saved us from whatever disease each vaccine purports to prevent. The burden is on vaccine proponents to prove it, and they clearly have not done that.
Wrong, NWO Reporter. OhZone is the one insinuating vaccines are causing poor health and chronic diseases, therefore OhZone bears the burden of proof.
Julian Frost, so you aren’t claiming vaccines do NOT cause poor health and chronic diseases? Yet here you are, recommending them for all. Seems a bit reckless, doesn’t it, considering their record?
The evidence supporting a causal link between vaccines and serious and chronic health conditions is easy to find, including the data for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which awards millions of dollars each year to people who have been injured or killed by vaccines.
Engagement at any cost is pretty sad, Ginny.
” including the data for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which awards millions of dollars each year to people who have been injured or killed by vaccines.”
Total math fail. And it is also very sad that a lawyer does not know what “settlement” means.
Where did I say that? Point to where I said that or admit you were twisting my words.
If by “their record”, you mean the fact that they have sent disease rates into freefall and smallpox into extinction, have a rate of serious adverse reactions of around one in a million and have not been proven to cause a lot of things antivaxxers like you say they have, no.
To reiterate my point and what Panacaea wrote below, you and OhZone are the ones claiming that vaccines cause all sorts of harms, so YOU are the ones bearing the burden of proof.
@OhZone You certainly have an immature following.
Pot, meet kettle.
“In a world where vaccine opposition is a serious threat to public health”
It’s a pity Don LaFontaine wasn’t around to do the voiceover for the “Vaxxed” movie trailer.
@ohzone You should check Google Scholar. You would find lots studies of vaccine efficiency. And eradicating smallpox shows efficiency, does it not ?
Where you get idea that half of US kids have a chronic illness ? Older people have these, not kids ?
And how are US kids sickest in the world ? Child mortality is lowest in Iceland, and they do vaccinate there.
Ginny, Julian accepts the scientific literature on the subject, clearly.
But nice try with shifting the goal posts. Julian made no claims. OhZone has made claims, and you did as well. The burden of proof is on you.
Legal proof and scientific proof are not the same thing. The law errs on the side of compensating people for harm. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, for every 1 million doses of a vaccine administered, ONE claim receives compensation. That’s an incredible safety record. The dollar value really tells us nothing about vaccine risks; depending on the harm the patient might need life long care, and the compensation is meant to provide that. It also includes legal fees.
No one claims vaccines never cause serious side effects. It’s rare but it happens. That’s why the NVIC exists; to compensate people who suffer harm. But if you want to claim vaccines lead to chronic health problems for society as a whole, the burden of proof is on YOU, not Julian.
The proof of vaccine safety is in the reams of scientific studies on the subject. You can find them at PubMed or at the Cochrane Review. They’ve been cited here many times, and repeating the same data to you ad nauseum is getting very old.
Panacea, really? You think one compensated vaccine injury per one million doses of vaccine administered is an “incredible safety record”?
First, the CDC recommends 69 doses of vaccine from age 0-17, and at least one yearly vaccine for the rest of our lives. That means each fully vaccinated child’s chances of a compensated vaccine injury are 69 in a million, or about 1 in 14,493. And if they live to age 78, it’s 129 in a million, or about 1 in 7,752.
Second, many possible claims for vaccine injury are never filed with the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It’s the same with any other product injuries and malpractice claims. Someone who knows little or nothing about vaccines may never associate their injury or their child’s injury with the vaccine, or may not discover the possible connection until after the 3 years statute of limitations has run. Or they may elect to forego years of litigation for other reasons.
When it comes to reporting vaccine injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, there is widespread agreement that only 1%-10% of adverse events are ever reported. If we apply those estimates to the number of possible claims actually filed in the VICP, it means the chances of a serious vaccine injury are more likely somewhere between 10 and 100 in a million, or between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 10,000. With 69 doses of vaccine, that’s between a 1 in 4500 and 1 in 145 chance of a serious vaccine injury for each fully vaccinated child. And if they get the yearly flu vaccine for life, 129 doses of vaccine, the risk of serious vaccine injury jumps to somewhere between 1 in 775 and 1 in 78. Yikes.
Again, not a very impressive safety record, even according to your own numbers. But I’m sure parents are comforted when their doctor tells them the chances of serious vaccine injury are “one in a million.”
69 doses? Once again, citation needed. And don’t pull the trick of counting MMRV as 4 shots or DTaP as 3.
Julian Frost, “citation needed”? That’s funny. Just go to the CDC website and pull up the list of recommended childhood vaccines, and count the doses. It’s not complicated. It looks like you could get the absolute minimum recommended doses down to 50, but that doesn’t change my point much, does it?
Ugh. She is really revealing how seriously bad she is at basic math.
What is worse, she actually has a law degree! Sometime during her law education she was told what the legal meaning of the word “settlement.” Obviously she is ignoring that little detail.
What would you like to compare with, attention whore?
Widespread agreement among whom? Passive reporting systems are subject to both over- and underreporting. Stick to your crappy day job and sucking up to Rappaport.
^ Oh, right:
“We” would be complete fucking idiots. Happily, tinw.
According to the 2018 CDC schedule on their site today, these are the vaccines recommended for everyone 0-18 years old, totaling 50-60 doses of vaccine. There are more that are recommended in some circumstances, which I didn’t list.
Hep B — 3 doses
Rotavirus — 2-3 doses
DTaP — 5 doses
Hib — 3-4 doses
PCV13 — 4 doses
IPV — 4 doses
Influenza — 18-25 doses
MMR — 2 doses
Varicella — 2 doses
Hep A — 2 doses
Meningococcal — 2 doses
Tdap — 1 dose
HPV — 2-3 doses
And just to add, there are a slew of additional vaccines that are recommended for adults, beyond the flu shot.
In the real world no one reports a sore arm.
Chris, you seem to be stuck on the word “settlement.” Lemme guess…you think including a standard “no admission of liability” clause in the settlement is evidence the vaccine didn’t cause the injury. LOL. Seems like it is you who doesn’t understand the meaning of “settlement.”
I guess that “69” was a Freudian slip.
Obviously Ginny lives in a Htrae frame of mind.
A word to the wise: don’t presume to tell others what they are thinking. It’s the mark of a fool.
A “no admission of liability” clause is not evidence of anything one way or another. All it is is a concession that the vaccine MAY have caused an injury, not that it must have done.
Can we please get a feature added to this blog to improve the quality of chew toys it attracts?
Or at least some new ones? I’m kinda bored of these.
Gindo doesn’t rise to the level of chew toy. Just another passive-aggressive, dissembling collections agent who happens to have wasted getting a law degree and makes MJD look good by comparison. It’s anybody’s guess what drives her to periodically surface here, but as I’ve suggested, nobody but nobody’s giving a rat’s ass about her site is a possibility.
Yeah, this one gets boring faster than some, but I’ll appreciate the generally correct use of spelling and punctuation, unlike that one weirdo.
I wonder if someone’s made a classification system for trolls? Like the classification system for folk tales.
There’s a fair number of them.
I don’t think so, Ginny. I know so.
Yes, Julian is right: the series counts as one vaccine. A literal one in a million poor outcome is the best safety record in medicine. It has saved billions of lives, and billions of dollars.
When it comes of VAERS, well, it’s true that most side effects are not reported. Why would you: so you get achy for a day, or spike a mild fever. So what? It’s not actual harm. It’s evidence the immune system is doing what it is supposed to do.
Vaccines don’t cause austim, so those claims are rejected out of hand.
By the way “vaccine injury” is not a real term. It’s a made up term used by anti vaxxers to make a mountain out of a molehill. Take a statistics class. The one in a million chance of an adverse reaction is for each vaccine individually. It does not compound the more vaccinations you get.
Panacea said: “Take a statistics class. The one in a million chance of an adverse reaction is for each vaccine individually. It does not compound the more vaccinations you get.”
It sounds like you are the one who needs a statistics class (and maybe one in common sense, while you’re at it). You don’t get to wipe your risk slate clean after each vaccine. The risk of each vaccine would be added to the risk of each vaccine given before it. The more you get, the greater the risk.
Dice have no memory, shithead.
“Dice have no memory,…”
Exactly. Which is just one way she shows how ignorant she is of math and statistics.
NWO
If youu think the risk compounds, you prove it.
Common sense.
Flat earthers think they are using “common sense.” You are continually demonstrating that you are innumerate.
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Rawhide!
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Though the threads are swollen
Keep them comments trollin’,
Rawhide!
Cherry pick!
(Head em’ up!)
Move goalposts!
(Move ’em on!)
More insults!
(Head em’ up!)
Rawhide!
Make stuff up!
(Paste ’em in!)
Change topics!
(Cut em’ out!)
Whine some more!
Paste ’em in,
Rawhide!
Keep trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Though they’re disaprovin’
Keep them comments trollin”,
Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em
Just rope, laugh, and ignore ’em
Soon we’ll be discussin’ right without ’em
Panacea, your entire comment is an exercise in deception and misdirection.
“Yes, Julian is right: the series counts as one vaccine.” — Julian didn’t say that, and neither did the source you provided, which clearly states, “for every 1 million doses of a vaccine administered, ONE claim receives compensation.” If they really meant “series,” prove it.
And then your clever attempt to conflate a one-in-a-million chance of a compensated vaccine injury with a one-in-a-million chance of a “poor outcome” or an “adverse reaction.” Did you think no one would notice?
The CDC vaccine schedule recommends a bare minimum of 50 doses of vaccine from age 0-18. That means each child has 50, 1-in-a-million chances of a compensated vaccine injury in the vaccine court. It’s an additive risk–by age 18, their chances are 50 in a million, or 1 in 20,000. If they live another 50 years and only take the yearly flu vaccine, the risk of a compensated vaccine injury is 100 in a million, or 1 in 10,000.
But as with other product injuries and malpractice claims, only a small portion of potentially compensable claims are ever filed with the vaccine court. If claims are filed for 10% of serious vaccine injuries (which is probably a generous estimate) the chances of a serious vaccine injury would actually be 10 in a million, or 1-in-100,000. With 50 doses of vaccine, that’s a 1-in-2000 chance of a serious vaccine injury. With a yearly flu vaccine for another 50 years, 100 doses of vaccine, the risk of serious vaccine injury jumps to 1 in 1000.
You did some very fancy footwork there, Panacea, to try to dance around the clear meaning of the numbers you provided yourself. Do you have a tune to go with it? Maybe the theme song from The Sting?
No one files a claim for a sore arm.
So who should I file a claim with for the seizures that rotavirus caused my son when he was a toddler?
Stop revealing your agonizing lack of math comprehension, and just post the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.
Until then, just stop polluting these comment threads.
Chris, a sore arm is not a “potentially compensable claim.” A potentially compensable claim would be serious vaccine injury, for example, one of the vaccine injuries which have previously received compensation in the VICP, such as:
Acute Inflammatory Neurological Injury
Acute Demyelinating Encephalomyelitis (ADEM)
Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis
Acute Hemorrhagic Leukoencephalomyelitis (AHLE)
Anaphylaxis
Bell’s Palsy
Brachial Neuritis
Brachial Plexopathy
Cardiac arrest
Cellulitis
Cerebral Palsy
Cognitive Delays
Connective Tissue Disease
Chronic arthritis
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
Death
Demyelinating Polyneuropathy
Disseminated varicella vaccine strain viral disease (Removed in 9/2017 from the Table)
Encephalopathy or encephalitis
Frozen Shoulder Syndrome
Guillain-Barré Syndrome
Hearing Loss
Inflammatory Tendinitis
Intussusception
Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis
Kleine-Levin Syndrome
Leukocytoclastic Vasculitis
Lumbosacral Raduculoplexus Neuropathy (LSRPN)
Lymphangitis
Miller Fisher Syndrome
Multiple Sclerosis
Multi-Organ Failure
Myelopathy
Myositis
Neuritis
Neuralgic Amyotrophy
Neurologic Injuries
Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO)
Optic Neuritis
Overactive Immune Response
Paralytic Polio
Paresthesias/Small Fiber Neuropathy
Parsonage Turner Syndrome
Peripheral Neuropathy
Polyneuropathy
Psoriasiform Dermatitis
Radial Nerve Injury
Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration (Removed in 9/2017 from the Table)
Spinal Cord Myelitis
Strep A infection
Systemic Inflammatory Response
Thrombocytopenic purpura
Tinnitus
Toxic Shock
Transverse Myelitis
Vasovagal syncope (Removed in 9/2017 from the Table)
Vaccine Strain Measles Viral Disease
Vaccine Strain Polio Viral Infection
Varicella vaccine strain viral reactivation (Removed in 9/2017 from the Table)
Ventricular Fibrillation
Vision Loss
And your proof for this as a “generous estimate” is? Oh right, you are gathering data rectally or pollexally.
Man, if cellulitis is compensable, it just goes to show how easy it is to succeed with a claim. Then again, I don’t expect Gindo to actually think about the things she copies and pastes any more than I expect her to think at all.
Ginny, please provide the case numbers of someone who was compensated for cellulitis. Actually for each of the items you’ve claimed. These are public records; back up this list with evidence.
“Additive risk”
Asserts facts not in evidence.
The fancy footwork is yours, Ginny. Prove your bullshit or piss off.
Those shelter cats are going to owe me a lot of money.
Ginny what part of this did you not understand: “… just post the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.”
A list of what have been claimed, without any evidence they were compensated, is not a PubMed indexed study.
Okay, since you cannot follow instructions please stop polluting this comment threads with your nonsense.
“It looks like you could get the absolute minimum recommended doses down to 50, but that doesn’t change my point much, does it?”
Seeing that your point is that multiple doses of full-blown disease are better than prevention – no, not much is changed.
David Lewis? Shows just how low they need to go.
I am guessing that Wakefield convinced Lewis that the histology sheets would exonerate him and Lewis swallowed the idea completely.
Every time I have read something written by Lewis, I get the strange feeling that it is fiction I am reading. I got the feeling that somewhere along the line Lewis started believing he alone had access to the TRUTH and started acting accordingly. If the facts are inconvenient, well they are easily adjusted.
Well, the kook festival was yesterday…
I wonder how it went and how many ‘civilians’ showed up for the propaganda brainwashing by the ‘foremost leaders in the field’ (snicker).
.
Hopefully the two crackpots who put this dishonest fiasco together lost their shirts.
That goes for the coterie of anti-vax grifters up on stage as well. Hopefully they had boxes of books, DVDs, etc. to cart back home from this anti-vaccine trade show.
There was at least one science-based attendee. I’m anticipating a rare guest post about One Conversation next week. Stay tuned ?
[…] what was left was an antivaccine quackfest, that became an even quackier antivaccine quackfest with two late additions to the […]
[…] to devolve into what it was always going to devolve into, an antivaccine crankfest with bonus antivaccine cranks. That’s where I left […]