Categories
Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 27: Vaccine mandates as “medical rape” (again)

It’s ba-ack. In response to efforts to make personal belief exemptions harder to obtain, an old and particularly vile antivax trope is back: Vaccine mandates as rape, with a new #metoo-inspired twist, namely “vaccine injured” children as victims of sexual assault whose assaulters are trying to silence them.

After you’ve been blogging for over 14 years, more or less continuously (as I have), there are certain topics you end up covering again and again and again and again. This is particularly true if one of your major topics during that time hasn’t changed. In my case, that major topic that I’ve been writing about regularly is antivaccine misinformation and the antivaccine movement, and there are a number of topics that I’ve covered more times than I can remember. Examples include the toxins gambit, bad science, “Dr. Bob” Sears, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nonsense about aluminum adjuvants, chelation therapy, bogus science claiming that mercury in vaccines causes autism, and so many more. Of course, the problem with this is that there are only so many variations of nonsense that antivaxers can come up with before it becomes repetitive. On the other hand, I realize that newer bloggers might not have seen my earlier discussions of these topics, and, although the posts are still there, it is unreasonable to expect all but the most hardcore Orac fan to dive into the Respectful Insolence archives and see what I’ve said in the past about these topics. So it’s worthwhile to revisit these topics from time to time and hope that I can do it in a manner that doesn’t bore longtime readers. This brings me a particularly vile post on that wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery, Age of Autism. Yes, sadly, we’re dealing with the “vaccinations as rape” trope, or, more specifically, the “vaccine mandates as rape” trope.

Yes, there’s a reason there have been 26 entries in this series thus far, making this the 27th, and this particular trope is once of them.

So let’s go to the AoA post, #UsToo Open Letter to Washington State Legislators About SB5841 Removal of Vaccine Exemptions. It gets vile right from the start:

I’m writing to ask you to vote NO on SB5841, the bill which seeks to remove philosophical exemptions for vaccinations.

In this day and age where everyone is hyper-aware of bullying, rape culture, the #metoo movement, and obtaining consent from both parties, I cannot believe that there are people who would try to force vaccinations on those who don’t want them. In my mind, this equates to medical rape. All the elements are there.

Rape: Rape is when someone uses force to penetrate another against their will. The force can be physical, coercion or abuse of authority. If SB5841 passes, many of us will be saying NO, we will try to get away from our assailant, but because of abuse of authority and coercion we will be medically penetrated anyway.

SB 5481 is a bill similar to SB 277, the California law that banned nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. it doesn’t go as far as SB 277 in that it wouldn’t eliminate religious exemptions. Even so, antivaxers have reacted to SB 5821 as emotionally and vociferously as they did to SB 277 back in 2015, which was no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the antivaccine movement over the last several years.

The claim that vaccine mandates are the medical equivalent of rape is not a new antivaccine trope, either. I remember that I first wrote about this analogy in detail four and a half years ago in response to a post on VaxTruth by Marcella Piper-Terry entitled Coerced Vaccination and the Medical Rapist, which I deconstructed in my usual manner. Interestingly enough, I can’t help but zero in on a sentence from the original version of Piper-Terry’s post that read:

Vaccination of our children is in many ways similar to medical rape.

It now reads:

Coerced or forced vaccination of our children is in many ways similar to medical rape. (I have edited this statement, which originally did not contain the modifiers “coerced” or “forced.”)

Having read enough of these posts over the years, I’d say that the original more accurately represents the opinion of antivaxers who use the “vaccination as rape” analogy. Piper-Terry only changed it because she was so bald-faced in her analogy that even some antivaxers cringed. Basically, the whole thesis of her post was that a medical procedure designed to protect children against diseases that cause significant mortality and morbidity is a violation, an assault akin to sexual assault, and the relationship between parents and pediatricians is an abusive relationship. She even carried the analogy further, talking about how the “rapist”-pediatrician will say “It was consensual. After-all, you came here asking for it. What did you expect?” and how the parent, like a rape victim, is retraumatized every time she encounters the rapist in public.

This AoA “letter” that it’s urging Washington residents to personalize and send ot their legislators is basically the same vile analogy, updated in light of the #metoo movement, which hadn’t yet occurred in 2014. Here’s what I mean:

No Means No: We teach our daughters to say NO, because unlike phrases like “not right now” or “I’d rather not,” the word NO cannot be misconstrued as being anything other than what it is. Taking away our right to philosophical exemptions is the same as taking away our ability to say NO. It’s as simple as that. Can you imagine a sexual assault situation where someone is repeatedly screaming NO, but it doesn’t matter because their mouth has been taped shut? Passing SB5841 is taping our mouths shut.

To co-opt the #metoo movement in service of antivaccine pseudoscience completely, the author of even named this an “#UsToo open letter.” This is, of course, a particularly vile strategy beloved of antivaxers, namely to claim victimhood and then liken themselves to persecuted people. For instance, besides rape, a favorite analogy applied to vaccine mandates is to liken it to the Holocaust or Nazi eugenics and medical experimentation. It’s so common that even Dr. Bob Sears does it.

Next up, here’s perhaps the single dumbest statement I’ve ever seen on AoA, and that’s saying a lot. No, seriously. I warn you: Shield your neurons:

Catcalling: SB5841 has been one giant catcall. I’m walking down the street minding my own business, and SB5841 is gyrating its hips at me, whistling and telling me all the things it’s going to do to me and my family. It’s going to molest us, puncture us, and inject us with fluid. Not once, not twice, but 72 times, and we’re going to like it! It’s going to be sooo good!

Do you feel stupider after reading that? Do you feel dirty for having read it? I sure did. I’m sorry if I’ve subjected you to the same, but it’s necessary. This is the way a lot of antivaxers think. You can’t understand the antivaccine movement until you understand this, Personally, I’m concerned about whoever wrote this and this person’s fixation on the needle and “injecting with fluid.”

Of course, this letter echoes exactly the same theme that Marcella Piper-Terry did in her “vaccine as rape” screed from 2014, namely the “blaming the victim” analogy:

Blaming the victims: Most of the people speaking out against vaccines have first-hand experience of being vaccine injured. My sons lost eye contact, executive function, and coordination skills. One son had paralysis in his leg after a vaccine and a red hard bump the size of a baseball at the injection site. This happened not once, but twice. At the time we believed the doctor when she said it was a normal reaction. All of our children suffered injuries and acquired autoimmune issues after vaccines that required years of therapy and interventions. Many others have suffered even greater damage: encephalopathy, autism, seizures and even death. When people like me speak up to warn that vaccines, like any other drugs, have side effects (just look at the vaccine inserts!), we are labeled “ANTI-VAXXERS,” “ANTI-SCIENCE,” and “DISEASE SPREADERS.” Somehow, we have been made to look like the bad guys. We are not anti-vaxxers. We are ex-vaxxers who were once pro-vaxxers. Vaccines are no longer a good fit for us and we have stopped. That is all. No need to blame us or call us names. We didn’t ask for this.

I’ve noticed a new theme arising in the antivaccine crankosphere. It used to be, “I’m not ‘antivaccine’; I’m pro-safe vaccine,” or “I’m not ‘antivaccine’; I’m a vaccine safety advocate.” Lately, antivaxers have adopted a new “I’m not antivaccine’ talking point, and that’s to say that they are “not antivaxers” but rather “ex-vaxers.” The idea is that they used to be fervently pro-vaccine and would still be, were it not for the horrific injury their children suffered from vaccines. It’s not entirely inaccurate, at least when it comes to the loudest antivaxers, the ones who are on social medial decrying vaccines or blogging for AoA. Many of them have special needs children, usually with autism, and blame vaccines for their children’s status. However, you’ll excuse me if I doubt that these parents were ever really fervent “pro-vaxers.” More likely they did what most parents do, which is to follow their pediatrician’s recommendations. Of course, the vast majority of the “injuries” that antivaxers blame on vaccines are not caused by vaccines; e.g., autism, autoimmune disease, sudden infant death syndrome, diabetes, and more. These “ex-vaxers” became ex-vaxers because they turned antivaccine because they mistakenly blamed their child’s autism or other developmental disorder or other medical condition on vaccines.

Worse, some of them became the sort of antivaxers who routinely liken school vaccine mandates to rape.

Of course, inevitably, the “vaccine as rape”-variety antivaxers have to find a way to carry this offensive analogy even farther:

Silencing the victims: A few weeks ago approximately 2,000 parents drove to Olympia braving the threat of a snow storm to represent and be heard for the HB1638 hearing. None were given an opportunity to testify. During the press conference that followed, only legislators in favor of HB1638 were in attendance and answering questions. None of the parents of vaccine injured children were allowed in to the press conference. Those are examples of passive silencing. Others, however, don’t even try to hide that they’re silencing or censoring us. It’s insidious how Adam Schiff (who wrote Mark Zuckerberg a letter telling him to shut down vaccine websites), Peter Hotez (who wants to censor books and social media ), Richard Pan (who wants to pass legislation penalizing “speech criminals” online including personal texts and emails) and others who are pushing pro-pharma legislation in this country make no secret about wanting to silence those who stray from the party line that “VACCINES ARE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE, HAVE NO SIDE-EFFECTS AND A FULLY VACCINATED NATION IS A HEALTHY NATION.” Many of us believed that, had our children vaccinated, suffered through the side-effects, and now focus daily on their diminished health. Are we not allowed to tell our stories? Are we not allowed to warn others? Are we now second-class citizens who don’t even deserve the right to free speech? We try to speak up, but we are silenced. Those who push for vaccine mandates would have it so much easier if the victims of vaccine injury would keep their mouths shut and go away. It’s similar to when people don’t want to hear the stories from rape victims because they want to protect the star quarterback.

First of all, wherever antivaxers appear to speak, they turn the proceedings farcicle with their mixture of self-righteousness, anger, and pseudoscience. Also notice how the examples chosen have been cherry picked. Not mentioned are the numerous times when antivaxers were given free rein to express their opinions. The most recent example was a mere two weeks ago, when antivaxers inundated the CDC Advisory Panel on Immunization Practices (ACIP) public comment period. Only two pro-vaccine advocates spoke and were overwhelmed by antivaxer after antivaxer coming up to the microphone and recounting anecdotes, spewing pseudoscience, and even going full religious wingnut. As for the question of antivaccine misinformation on social media, it’s a complicated question, but it is very, very clear that social media and streaming platforms have become antivaxers’ most powerful tools for spreading their message, to the detriment of public health, just as they’ve become incredibly powerful tools for spreading conspiracy theories (and, let’s face it, antivaccine pseudoscience is just a particularly harmful variety of conspiracy theories). Something had to give. Also, private companies have a right to decide what they will and will not host on their services, and antivaxers can still get their message out by any number of other means.

Particularly offensive is the likening of efforts to limit the ease with which antivaxers can spread their message to how rape victims are “silenced” because “people don’t want to hear the stories from rape victims” and “want to protect the star quarterback.” What are vaccines in this analogy? The star quarterback who is a rapist? The doctors giving them? The lawmakers mandating them as a requirement to enroll in school? All of them? Or someone else? I’m so confused, albeit not as confused as whoever wrote this neuron-apoptosing black hole of offensive idiocy, someone who thinks this is a coherent argument:

Is this the kind of culture we are trying to create here in America–medical rape culture? Where instead of “boys will be boys” we say, “Pharma will be Pharma.” Instead of listening to victims, we trivialize their experiences, accuse them of making up stories, paint them as crazy and tell them to shut up and go away. Instead of seeking justice for those who have been harmed, we join in with the bullies, laugh at them and try to drag them through the mud again. Instead of believing that no means no, we say “your no means nothing and we’ll have our way with you regardless of what you say.” Instead of respecting personal space, we say “we’ll come at you because we’re bigger than you and we can take away your privileges to get you to do what we want you to do.” Is this REALLY the kind of country we want to live in?

Here’s the thing. Doctors and scientists have listened to the parents. They’ve listened to the parents to the point that they’ve done study after study after study trying to determine whether vaccination is correlated with autism or any of the other conditions that antivaxers blame on vaccines. The answer in well-designed, large (and expensive) epidemiological studies has always been no. Indeed, yet another large epidemiological study exonerated the MMR vaccine as being associated with autism. It’s never enough, and scientists keep listening to the parents to the point that they keep doing studies like this, even though they do nothing more than confirm what we already know: Vaccines do not cause autism. The problem is that if you don’t agree with them, if you criticize thee harmful pseudoscience they’re peddling, antivaxers view you as “not listening to them.”

They also invoke the fallacy of future vindication combined with the fallacy of future punishment of the evildoers:

If there is anything we’ve learned from the Me Too movement, it is that people in our society are not like they were 10 or 15 years ago. Times have changed. We’re no longer willing to look the other way when sexual predators in positions of power abuse that power by having their way with those who are weaker. In 10 to 15 years when more and more people realize that the documented side effects of the vaccines are in fact impacting many of our children (similar to what Thalidomide did to babies in the 50’s and 60’s), and it comes to light that legislators who knew about the side effects went ahead and steamrolled bills forcing vaccinations on everyone, including the most vulnerable members of our population, there is going to be a huge backlash. When this happens, do you want to be viewed as the Harvey Weinstein of the Mandated Vaccine Debacle? Choose the right side of history and stand for choice. Stand for freedom.

Harvey Weinstein? Really? I also can’t help but note that the FDA actually prevented the thalidomide debacle from occurring in the US by refusing to approve it for use here. In any event, I like to refer to the claim by cranks that at some future date their viewpoint will be vindicated as the fallacy of future vindication. As for the idea that those who oppose antivaxers will suffer some sort of righteously applied penalty sometime after that future vindication, this, too, is a common theme in antivaccine rants, as is the theme that there is a “witch hunt” directed at the parents of unvaccinated children.

The analogies that antivaxers like to use to describe vaccination and vaccine mandates are very telling, particularly when they claim not to be “antivaccine.” In these analogies, they are unjustly persecuted victims of horrific persecution or crimes. To them, vaccination is the crime, and they are victims. The protestations of antivaxers denying that they are antivaccine notwithstanding, likening vaccines to medical experimentation without informed consent, as some antivaxers do, is antivaccine. Likening vaccine mandates to the Holocaust (with one mother even going so far as to make a vaccine-themed “Star of David” based on the ones Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi regime to identify themselves as the underclass, as people without rights, is antivaccine—and offensively so. Without a doubt, likening vaccine mandates to rape is antivaccine, and perhaps in the most offensive manner of any of the many brain dead analogies that antivaxers use to demonize vaccines. It’s an analogy that trivializes the crime of rape and its victims by comparing the act of protecting a child from dangerous diseases as sexual violence.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

191 replies on “The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 27: Vaccine mandates as “medical rape” (again)”

Compared to vaccines, there are much more invasive non-consensual medical procedures whose risk/benefit ratio is in certain cases totally not worth it. While I believe the concept of “medical rape” has to some extent some validity in certain cases usually involving deception, I really do take personal offense that antivaxxers are equating vaccination to rape.

Seriously.

There is no equivalency here. Rape is sexual in nature. Calling something “medical rape” is an attempt to add an emotional component to the argument that shouldn’t be there. It is utterly offensive and demeaning to people who have really suffered rape or sexual assaults.

I see what you’re getting at, but if to talk about unethical medical practices involving deception, we would need to find a more accurate and truthful term.

“To talk about unethical medical practices involving deception, we would need to find a more accurate and truthful term.”

That’s true.

But I believe that the term conveys an emotional component rather adequately in some situations, as the psychological manifestations of the trauma can be strikingly similar.

Anyhow, vaccines are really not comparable to rape, however one may be willing to bend reality to fit its own fantasies.

We have one. Battery. “A physical act that results in harmful or offensive contact with another person without that person’s consent.”

It also doesn’t apply in this case, because parents can still opt out of vaccines. IT’s just that their choices have consequences in terms of their kids not being able to attend public school.

“We have one. Battery.”

Unfortunately, the fact that rape is generally about power makes it closer to what antivaxxers have in mind.

Panacea writes,

…we would need to find a more accurate and truthful term.

MJD says,

Orac’s controversial post allows us to come up with our own definition of “medical rape.”

Forced immunity (e.g., vaccinations), without consent, where said immunity generates antibodies having a life-of-their-own based on genetics and epigenetics.

@ Orac’s minions,

I can define “life of their own” if requested.

You know, Michael, there is nothing that requires you to actually be a jackass. Try being a nice person sometime. You may actually find you make friends and earn respect.

F68.10, Antivaxxers are about as accurate on law as they are are on science, and I can’t say I’m impressed by your willingness to indulge their nonsense even this little amount.

If vaccination is to be called “medical rape” then what do we call these malignant narcissists who demand that their self-entitled right to swing their fists must end at the graves of other folks’ kids?

I’m for “viciously unhinged child-abusing disease perverts” myself.

Right, where is the right to consent for the actual victims of the antivaxx movement?

@Sullivanthepoop: “Right, where is the right to consent for the actual victims of the antivaxx movement?”

And also, where is the National Vaccine-Preventable Disease Injury Compensation Program (VPDICP) to compensate individuals and families of individuals injured by vaccine-preventable disease? AVers do love to point to the $3Bn (~$1m/individual) paid out over the last 30 years to the unfortunate sufferers of serious unintended vaccine side-effects, as if this basic duty of care is a damning condemnation of vaccination’s social pact.

So how many dollars have antivaxxers paid out to those hospitalized, crippled, and killed by their beloved poxes? At a disease-death-vs-vaccine-injury rate of 1000:1 they should easily be coughing up similar compensation to the millions of victims of their pathological cult.

C’mon, disease perverts, speak up!

It’s a simple question: just tell us the sum.

We can’t hear you for the sound of those cricket chirrups.

I suppose these people don’t want any medical treatment, if there is a small risk they may feel something not completely right after the medical treatment, even if it has nothing to do with the medical treatment itself.

I think these people never have been raped and actually I hope they will never experience it. I’ve been vaccinated, but have no memories of it what-so-ever. Being raped is something you don’t forget.

I think these people never have been raped and actually I hope they will never experience it. I’ve been vaccinated, but have no memories of it what-so-ever. Being raped is something you don’t forget.

Renate, I offer my sympathies if you were raped, but forced vaccination is absolutely comparable to rape. Like rape, it is an unwanted violation of a person’s physical autonomy using coercion — your kid can’t go to school unless she submits to vaccines.. The only reason vaccine pushers don’t see it as rape is because they view vaccination as a good thing and not as violent. “How can it be rape when we’re protecting the child and community from infectious diseases”? This is on par with saying, “how could it be rape when the sex was good and I think she ended up enjoying it”? Legal rape is still rape.

“Forced vaccination is absolutely comparable to rape.”

No. No way. Munchausen by proxy is medical rape. Vaccinations are not. Get real.

Although I am an atheist, couldn’t agree more with this FB sharing from Rep Kelly Townsend…

Our country is sovereign, our State is sovereign, our family is sovereign, our God is sovereign and the most holy and sacred last frontier of sovereignty is our own body.

Dearest friends and people of Arizona, it seems we are prepared to give up our liberty, the very sovereignty of our body, because of measles. I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.

I have sworn an oath to the Constitution five times, now, and I take that oath very seriously. It was not just something I repeated in order to get sworn in to an office. I do not make my decisions based on my next election or what the populace demands if it violates that oath.

Folks, I am going to ask you to educate your children, educate your family, educate those around you about the fundamentals of liberty and what that means. It seems we have lost those fundamentals along the way and are chasing our fears.

And finally, I am going to demand, as a mother of an injured child from her vaccines, that we insist that we spend the time and money on discovering what in these vaccines is causing so much injury, instead of insisting on taking your liberty in the name of the collective.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Live free or die,
Rep. Kelly Townsend
2.3K2.3K
2.7K Comments
792 Shares

“The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.”

Vaccinations are in no way like rape. To suggest that they are proves your complete lack of empathy. You a a piece of slug slime for asserting the comparison, sticky and difficult to get rid of, no use to anyone.

You really must be an idiot. Forced vaccination is so far removed from rape, they could be on a completely different planet.
Forced vaccination is not forced, the way rape is forced. Forced vaccination only means you are not allowed to go to a school, if you aren’t vaccinated, or have a medical reason why you can’t be vaccinated.
I suppose you are also against laws for wearing safety-belts in cars, or to prevent people from driving drunk.

Rep Townsend is bat shit crazy, and so are you.

Rape is a sexual act. The goal is power.

No medical procedure is anything like that. Your whole rant is demeaning to people who have really been sexually assaulted or raped, and minimizes their very real suffering.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

I would say that good public health policy, which includes limiting the spread of infectious diseases, falls under “promoting the General Welfare.”

Nowhere in the Constitution does it give people the right to spread disease.

By that logic, we need to outlaw “no shirt, no shoes, no service” signs as coersion.

The only reason normal people don’t see it as rape is because we have ethics and are not worthless.

I guess you would say that forcing somebody to use seatbelt is a legal rape, too. And what about draft, and paying taxes ? Military service could actually kill you.

Since jackasses like Greg like to quote Benjamin Franklin, here’s another quote from the great man himself. About vaccination, nogal.

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

Franklin would have held Greg and the clowns over at AoA in complete and utter disdain.

Well the bill does not allow for forced vaccinations, it only mandates that if you want to send your crotchspawn to a school, you have to protect them and others more vulnerable.

Still AV scum have no rock bottom when it comes to offensive and idiotic comparisons.

Though as usual, logic and common sense will not sway you; but for others monitoring this exchange: Rape is a violent act, not about sex. Carried out by men who hate women or men who hate other men. It is a violation of a women or man’s basic sense of self. And a rapist doesn’t tell a woman/man if she/he doesn’t submit she will be banned from work or school or anything else.

Public health officials are not vaccinating people as an act of violence, not even close and if, in your warped mind a minor needle stick equates with beating a woman senseless, tearing off her clothes and penetrating her, well, what can I say; but you really are nuts.

Rape victims often change for life and not for the better. On the other hand, except for a minuscule number being vaccinated, the vast majority go on with their lives unscathed. And the minuscule minority doesn’t include Autism Spectrum Disorders, regardless of what you choose to believe.

And please explain how you would look at some kids getting sick from a vaccine-preventable disease resulting in at best a week or more of suffering and for some, life-long disabilities, or even death, or a pregnant woman infected with rubella resulting in a stillbirth or a deformed child. I guess you would see nature as the rapist.

Basically, for you and other antivaccinationists, resorting to the most absurd extreme analogies, false analogies, is just standard modus operandi.

Gerg, you sick fuck.

What do you call it when your unvaccinated child attends a public school and infects another child with SSPE-inducing measles. Because I call that felony murder.

You don’t want to vaccinate? That’s absolutely fine. Short of national emergency in defeating a lethal global pandemic, there’s no such thing as “forced vaccination”. The vast majority of vaccinations are prophylactic rather than therapeutic medical treatments, and like all medical treatments they carry a non-zero level of risk (~1:1,000,000 of serious side-effect); thus it is right and fair that it’s an elective procedure.

But if you choose not to vaccinate, then it is also fair to everyone else that you keep your dangerous child well away from close-quarter environments where they run the highest risk of injuring or even killing themselves and others, until they are of such age where they are free to choose for themselves.

Opt-in to the social pact. Or opt-out. Pay your dues and enjoy all its privileges. Or pay nothing, and still enjoy most (though not all) of them. That’s the trade-offs you make in choosing one or the other. What you do not get from society is the unfettered entitlement to leech off everyone else; and your endless screeching entitled demands to do exactly that serve only to out you as the greedy narcissistic parasite you are.

Hell, you should be incredibly grateful society doesn’t even ask you to cover the financial costs of your malignant recklessness; never mind be held personally accountable for the misery, injuries, and deaths that your benighted cult spreads to others.

But please, by all means, do keep on smearing your verbal shit over everyone else’s walls. Nothing crushes all credibility and patience for your position like your very own words.

@ Renate:

Thank you for all of your comments at RI:
today you lend an air of grace and relevance in an atmosphere otherwise polluted by unrealistic and self-serving nonsense that balks at SBM. I hope that you continue because you inspire others.

I’m sure these ‘activists’ are equally opposed to intubation on unconscious victims in the emergency room. Y’know, since that’s forcible penetration without consent. eyeroll

A. I can’t help but think that the fact that AoA thinks it’s a good idea to send this letter to legislators – to the extent of encouraging people to do that – shows serious detachment from reality. I mean, assuming their goal really is to get people to listen them, rather than just convince legislators they’re extreme and irrational, it might be a good idea to consider that some things don’t sound the same way outside the echo chamber.

B. Aside from the points you made – and remembering that school mandates do not involve anyone coming to their house and force vaccinating their children – it’s important to remember that the children don’t have a choice here either way, and that no one is talking about vaccinating the parents. This language makes me question whether these parents understand that their children are different people with their own separate bodies.

Exactly. Viewed through the prism of an actual, rational human being, their diatribe reads like a Unibomber-level of crazy manifesto.

Statements like his are what inspired my new standard for stupidity: “So dumb it’s libertarian.”

I prefer Kahlil Gibran:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

There you go talking sensibly Prof. Reiss. I think it’s grand that they encourage people to send this letter so that legislators can see how unhinged and how unchanging anti-vaxxers are. They have no self-awareness to see how vile, offensive and detached-from-reality their co-opting of sexual battery and assault are to those that may be unfamiliar with their “movement”. This escalation of rhetoric is not going to be persuasive.

“SB5841 is gyrating its hips at me, whistling and telling me all the things it’s going to do to me and my family. It’s going to molest us, puncture us, and inject us with fluid.”

me and my family”?

On what planet would this apply to adults?

Demeaning actual rape victims is one thing, but this goes into a realm of bizarre fantasy.

I know. This was bizarre, even for AoA and its stable of antivaxers. I wonder who wrote this particular “gem.”

I’ve been trying to figure that out myself:
it’s probably not Rossi ( the writer has sons, not daughters) and it isn’t elaborated with poor allusions and jokes but she does cry #MeToo frequently.
It’s not Gamondes, no bizarre imagery.
There are a few women who write now and then and who are quoted,

” On what planet does this apply to adults?”

Why on THIS planet, Dangerous One.
Some alties maintain that Pharma is planning hundreds of new vaccines many of which will target adults. If you don’t comply, you may be denied a job, a passport, etc. Null usually says 270 new vaccines are on the way.

Does that mean there will be 270 diseases we won’t have to suffer through?

I suppose this is just another way antivaxxers see their children as extensions of themselves and not as their own people.

Forced vaccination is not forced, the way rape is forced. Forced vaccination only means you are not allowed to go to a school, if you aren’t vaccinated, or have a medical reason why you can’t be vaccinated.
I suppose you are also against laws for wearing safety-belts in cars, or to prevent people from driving drunk.

Renate, we are forced to do stuff such as wearing seatbelts and then there is violation or penetration of our physical autonomy by another such as rape or forced vaccination. Renate, you were violated or penetrated, and obviously you weren’t cool with that and rightfully so. Though in good faith you may feel forced vaccination is different, for me I just see it as your hypocrisy.

“Though in good faith you may feel forced vaccination is different, for me I just see it as your hypocrisy.”

You just floored me.

You have no moral compass. At all.

You just noticed that now and not with the earlier comment? A lack of ethics seems to be a requirement for this particular cult

“You just noticed that now and not with the earlier comment?”

I tend to have sympathy to people who object to medical procedures. I know how bad experiences can twist your sense of trust in medical authorities and can twist your mind into delusions about medicine. So there’s a lot I’m willing to hear out.

But, yes, this particular statement was completely over the top. It’s beyond psychiatric help.

I suppose you don’t want anyone giving you a live-saving mouth on mouth treatment, because you didn’t give your concent and it’s forced on you.

Given how Gerg describes people with autism, it isn’t surprising that he lacks empathy or a moral compass.

I have to say, that was a wonderfully cool and graceful response to an ugly attack on you as a sexual assault victim by the antivaccine activist. You’re amazing.

@ Dorit Reiss,
The sexual assult I experienced was overshadowed by the treatment I got from the police. And it was defenitly not as bad as that of a lot of rape victims. At least there was no violence involved.

Again, the violative nature of someone sticking their ‘member’ inside you without your permission is indistinguishable from the violative nature of someone sticking you with a needle outside of your consent. The only rationale for claiming one is different or ‘better’ than the other is the claim that good is coming from one. ”Vaccination is a good thing.’ ‘We are raping for a good reason.’ Anyone here aware of past excuses given for rape such as it was good way to eliminate an inferior race and produce a better one?

How do you find your way to work each morning with a moral compass so badly broken?

You are beyond arrogant, and beyond pathological. People who have really suffered sexual assault have pointed out to you that there is no comparison between vaccination and rape/sexual assault and your continued and pathetic attempts to double down on this demean very real suffering by people who’ve been through this.

Let me point out to you that the government doesn’t come into your home, hold your kid down, and give him shot.

If parents refuse to vaccinate, the consequence is the kid can’t attend public school. That’s. It.

Even the judge in New York, in the midst of a real measles outbreak, isn’t resorting to forced vaccination. He’s simply barred the kids from school until the parents wise up and get the kids their shots, or until the outbreak abates.

Please don’t reproduce. We don’t need anymore sociopaths in the world, thank you very much.

Right. Let it be known to everyone in the whole world that Greg does not want any medical treatment if he is unable to consent, so whatever you do, if you see Greg hit by a bus, don’t call 911, don’t put him in an ambulance and don’t let anyone intubate him.

Vaccination is beneficial bigly to the individual, so the analogy, even if it could be credited, has the wrong valance. Being raped is very bad; being vaccinated is very good. Spot the difference?

What about draft, then. That is certainly violating physical autonomy, up to death. Besides, idea is to prevent you violate other peoples’ physical autonomy, by infecting them with a very serious disease.

It’s been quite a few years since there was a military draft in the US. Not sure what the status is in other countries though!

Orac,I think this comment from Greg is cause for banishment. I have been reading Renate’s comments for year here and elsewhere, and she doesn’t deserve this. I’m really tired of Greg’s Garbage. I know I can skip it, and I will from now on.

Orac,I think this comment from Greg is cause for banishment. I have been reading Renate’s comments for year here and elsewhere, and she doesn’t deserve this. I’m really tired of Greg’s Garbage. I know I can skip it, and I will from now on.

Actually comparing vaccination to rape did get me banished at SR, but then I was reinstated. I was then banished again but no reason was given for that second banishment? Or was that my third? Whatever!

But seriously minions, outside of feigning disgust and shock, can someone please in the most qualitative and clear terms describe the difference between forced vaccination and rape?

But seriously minions, outside of feigning disgust and shock, can someone please in the most qualitative and clear terms describe the difference between forced vaccination and rape?

What’s the matter Greg? Out of wank material?

I’ve already told you, and so have others here. We can’t help it if you have no reading comprehension.

What Mimi said. Greg is a vile, unrepentant garbage person and contributes nothing of value or decency to the comments. Banish.

what a nasty little man you must be Greg, i can only hope this you being an armchair arsehole and that in realty you not this bad.

This is reality. Under the veneer of internet anonymity people routinely expose who they really are.

I don’t understand why people like you don’t like a particular type of weakened or altered versions of viruses in your body when you’re all right with thousands of other pathogens every day and also the og super deadly and dirty virus that can also contaminate your immune system long after it’s gone. You can’t exactly ask measles for permission to invade your body or not.

And if you bother to read my comment above, I just see your position as an absurd false analogy.

“I have to say, that was a wonderfully cool and graceful response to an ugly attack on you as a sexual assault victim by the antivaccine activist. You’re amazing.”

Dorit, what ‘ugly attack’? I offered my sympathies. I told her what happened to her wasn’t right. I just honestly don’t believe sticking someone with a needle outside of their consent is different.

It was ugly. You do not even understand why what happened to her wasn’t right. You amply made that point.

Educate yourself about rape victims.

But if they say “no” it doesn’t happen. The exact opposite of rape.

Again, And if you bother to read my comment above, I just see your position as an absurd false analogy.

No one is being stuck with a needle without their consent. Anyone who doesn’t want to vaccinate their children is free to educate them at home.

“I just honestly don’t believe sticking someone with a needle outside of their consent is different.” <– Says the dude who’s never been sexually assaulted, thus he feels perfectly equipped to compare the two things.
Antivaxxers just keep getting worse in their statements and beliefs. No one is being immunized without consent or assent. Child not allowed to go to school? Boo-hoo. Poor you, so persecuted, so distraught. There is homeschool. There are private schools willing to take your unvaccinated child. They can just go without a formal education and thank you for it when they’re adults. No one is going to hold them down and immunize them.
If you don’t understand how not allowing your child to go to school and become the entrypoint for an epidemic is not at all like sexual assault, then there’s no hope for you.

I suppose you can expect anything from anti-vaxxers. If they can compare themselves to Jews in WWII or to people like the members of Die Weiße Rose, who were killed, because they where opposed to the nazis, I suppose no comparison is to weird for them.

Still, I’m pretty sure they want their lives to be saved, even if it is without there consent and there may be some risk involved.

Antivaxxers just keep getting worse in their statements and beliefs. No one is being immunized without consent or assent. Child not allowed to go to school? Boo-hoo. Poor you, so persecuted, so distraught

Yes, and the college student is not being forced into having non-consensual sex with her prof, and the housewife is also not being forced to submit. The college student can still refuse and get a failing grade, and the housewife can also refuse and not get money for groceries to feed the kids. Boo hoo, Poor you, so persecuted, so distraught.

“The college student can still refuse and get a failing grade, and the housewife can also refuse and not get money for groceries to feed the kids.”

You forgot the story about the poor jew being thrown into a gas chamber. Come on, Greg, be more melodramatic!

Greg
Oh for Gods sake, knock it off. You are just digging yourself into a deeper hole. I don’t know if you actually believe what you are writing, or just poking the anthill to watch the resulting frenzy and I don’t know which is worse.

And this is not 50 years ago. It is rape if force is used even against ones wife and husbands have been successfully prosecuted, ending in prison, and students, though not easy, can come forward and professors have been fired and even prosecuted. How about joining the real world?

And yes, many husbands who force their wives to have sex and professors who force themselves on students get away with it; but so do many who violently rape other women, doesn’t change that the law condemns all three types.

“I also can’t help but note that the FDA actually prevented the thalidomide debacle from occurring in the US by refusing to approve it for use here.”

I should point out that the scientist who was responsible for holding up the approval received a presidential Medal of Honor.

I can’t see that happening today.

Our hospital recently began requiring every worker who didn’t get a flu shot (for whatever reason) to wear a mask on the job.

Just another form of “medical rape”.

*thanks to this latest dingbattery, I have “It Depends On What You Pay” from The Fantasticks going through my head (as earworms go, it could be worse).

My old hospital has been requiring that for years. We had one nurse who was allergic to eggs and couldn’t get it; she still had to wear the mask, and she was fine with that. Everyone else complied and was fine with it.

My health system doesn’t make vaccination mandatory but if your not vaccinated you can’t work in critical care areas or with any paediatric patients . So anybody who refuses to be vaccinated gets sent to the wards for the flu season and the wards that always need staff are always the ones ED and paeds staff really don’t like working on.

@Shelly: Love this! That’s the way to incentivize the staff.

Of course, the downside is if someone actually agreed to go to the wards, they’d then be exposing vulnerable patients down there. But if they don’t call the bluff, very effective.

Panacea
Yes, it’s state wide and includes anybody working with what are called category A high risk patients (includes immunosuppressed and obstetrics too I think). The clincher is that the health department reserves the right to fire you if you don’t comply with the rules (and everything else they put in place has failed) although I’ve never heard of this happening. Oh and it includes everyone not just nurses.

That’s the case here, though we always have the odd nurse or case manager refuse cos of some AV trope or other. As a peer immuniser at my last clinic I was always tempted to ask them ‘how can you practice evidenced based care if you reject evidence based medicine’ but I’m sure had I done so I’d have got a talking to off my manage.

I’m willing to torture you to make you understand the nature of trauma.

So, trauma or torture is the metric to say sexual rape is worse than vaccination rape? What about the boyfriend who forces himself onto his girlfriend and she reluctantly gives in. Not much trauma here, but is this still not rape? Also, can vaccination rape not be more traumatic? Heck — it’s more likely to kill you. I won’t even go into the 1 in 36 odds that it will give you permanent neurological impairment.

“So, trauma or torture is the metric to say sexual rape is worse than vaccination rape?”

Well, it’s not the worst metric. Better than your obsessive rationalizations about needles.

“I won’t even go into the 1 in 36 odds that it will give you permanent neurological impairment.”

Please do. It’s so much fun hearing out your dingbattery.

You’re on my last nerve here. Knock it off with your assholery about rape or be banned. There will be no second warning.

You’re on my last nerve here. Knock it off with your assholery about rape or be banned. There will be no second warning.

Glad that I have your attention, Orac. I believe I’ve made a concise case of how forced vaccination is indeed, absolutely, make no doubts about it, comparable to rape. What do you say to my argument, Orac?

I don’t know what Orac says, but I’ve been raped and otherwise sexually assaulted more than once, and I say go fxck yourself.

“What do you say to my argument, Orac?”

That you an ignorant troll. It seems you are trying to get banned so you can run back to AoA to claim you are being censored on this blog. I think you should be ignored, but that you deserve this:

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

Looks like Greg is going for a mercy ban given how pathetically he’s spun out of control. He contributes nothing, less than nothing in fact, not even an entertaining “voice of opposition”. Greg you’re nothing but a rank troll and will be glad to see you relegated to the bowels of the internet where you belong.

Ban this useless troll now. His only contribution is demonstrating how delusional and immoral an antivaxxer can be.

Greg said, What do you say to my argument, Orac?

If Greg falls silent, then I think we’ll know how Orac answered him.

Looks like Greg is going for a mercy ban given how pathetically he’s spun out of control.

Again, IIRC, back at SB he spent a great deal of time demanding to be banned. It strikes me as an odd choice, as he really has nowhere else to go, except Disqustink outlets, I suppose.

Engagement at any cost.

Wow. Amazed. Even more amazed by the reactions congratulating Greg over there. Notably by women, which floored me. I liked very much the one downplaying emotional trauma, which can be pretty much as invalidating as serious physical illness.

They have no moral compass. This is beyond false balance.

@ F68.10
Women are not always in favor of their own sex. Look at the female judges in Italy who decided the victim of rape was to ugly to be raped, so they decided the offenders were innocent.

Yes. Aside from extremists, you could argue that men often do not understand correctly what rape is and that they often are indifferent by ignorance to issues such as rape or sexual assault. But I find women to be far too often vindicative and judgmental towards one another. I tend myself to be rather mysoginistic, but I cannot fathom how women can sometimes be women’s worst ennemies.

It did look deliberate, which is why he got the trolling song.

“They have no moral compass. This is beyond false balance.”

Of course they don’t have any morals. They are all lying sadistic child haters who enjoy it when kids get sick. Then make their kids misery all about themselves.

Vaccination is very likely to save your life or the life of another, and very, very unlikely to kill you. The 1-in-36 odds does not exist.

The main problem with everything you say is that they are predicated on falsehoods,

I guess you’ve never heard of date rape. Also against the law. And it is traumatic, perhaps not physically; but can affect a woman for life. Despite your beliefs, getting a quick jab with a needle doesn’t cause permanent or even long-lasting trauma for all; but a minuscule few; but, as I wrote in an earlier comment, what about the suffering for those affected by the vaccine-preventable diseases with some ending in life-long disabilities or even death?

As for 1 in 36 odds, you get nuttier and nuttier by the minute.

A recap, so what makes sexual rape worse than vaccination rape? Answers given so far: First, vaccination is not being forced. Second, it is not as traumatic. Third, vaccination is achieving a good. I’ve refuted all these points, so again what makes vaccination rape different?!

Something to do with the fact that vaccination isn’t rape

And I am asking again for the umpteenth time on what qualitative grounds are you making this claim?

Could you please explain how you refuted the three points you highlighted in your previous post? I’m really at a loss to pinpoint your arguments…

On the qualitative difference that it doesn’t involve a sexual organ of any kind.

On the qualitative difference that it doesn’t involve a sexual organ of any kind.

Please tell me why Greg seems to be struggling to understand this very important little point. This whole thing makes me angry.

On point of truth, and pardon the following crudity, but Vaccination can’t be “medical rape” unless it’s Larry Nassar injecting Dtap into the wall of some woman’s vagina. I would agree that that meets the definition of a “medical rape.” Otherwise, absolutely not: the Venn diagrams of the two do not remotely cross. The definitions are pretty unabashedly distinct, vaccination is vaccination and rape is rape. Having one become the other takes an extraordinary mangling of a medical procedure.

As long as we’re using analogies as definitions, it’s a rape when people like Greg get innocent children sick with vaccine preventable diseases. After all, the child is definitely entered without consent and to a degree of provable injury by a foreign body that is often shaped like a fluid-filled phallus that injects or contains detectable DNA. Actually, this is one better than the original analogy since intact pathogens actually do contain genetic material in the same manner as semen, where vaccines do not. As long as we’re holding this level of analogy to be the definition of “rape”… this too is rape and it more closely matches the definition than the original example! Pot, kettle, black.

You’ve refuted nothing. I’ve had better arguments with insolent two-year olds.

Peter Hotez

Somewhat in left field, but maybe on topic. Peter Hotez was a guest on the Joe Rogan experience earlier this week:
Here

For whoever is interested, if you haven’t seen that already. I know what you’re saying, “Joe Rogan? What??” But, hey, some pieces of it are good. I only watched about half, since I had no time. There were some things I liked and some things I didn’t.

Isn’t Greg being inherently sexist anyway? The 1 in 36 he keeps touting is only boys. Apparently the girls don’t count.

Don’t tell him! Since the diagnostic criteria for autism are supposedly going to change again in order to include female specific symptomology, the autism epidemic is about to get even worse.

My sons lost eye contact, executive function, and coordination skills. One son had paralysis in his leg after a vaccine and a red hard bump the size of a baseball at the injection site. This happened not once, but twice. At the time we believed the doctor when she said it was a normal reaction.

Somenody’s lying…and I don’t mean the doctor.

Yah. DTaP/IPV indurations seem to be about 50 mm tops, based on a quick skim of the Intertubes.

Right, when I first saw this I wondered which deadly shot it was: if MMR, the standard age is rather young for “executive fx” even the earliest forms- also how did she assess this? SRSLY.
And a bump the size of a baseball – in a small child? A lump that size would be a major problem for someone my size ( not small) as I try to imagine it.
I guess this is a creative way of saying;
“The light went out of his eyes” – which sounds to me like someone died.
Drama queens.

My sons lost eye contact, executive function, and coordination skills.

That happened to me after I was vaccinated. Mind you,I think it was because I became a teenager.

Another vile attempt by anti-vaxers to co-opt legitimate movements to validate their own…..they just can’t get over the fact that they aren’t “victims.”

“My sons lost…executive function”

Is this what’s known as the “white collar” sign?

I usually see “executive function” in the context of ADHD, but some anti vaxxers also think vaccines cause ADHD, sooo….

Executive function is also known to be impaired in autistics.
From the Wikipedia article on executive function:

Executive functions are impaired in multiple disorders including anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and autism.

I can vouch for this.

Hey, some of us are lucky enough to have BOTH autism and ADHD! I want my trophy dammit!

A judge in New York refused to allow about 40 unvaccinated students to return to school because of the local measles outbreak unless they get vaccinated.

Predictably, the parents are whining about their kids right to go to school.

The solution is simple. Get vaccinated. Judge says once they get the shot, they can go back.

I have no doubt the man felt violated and he should.

But lets not continue conflating actual rape with other horrific behaviors.

There was a recent case where it had been proposed that women seeking abortions would be required to have a vaginal ultrasound. Some people objected to this on the basis that it was equivalent to rape. It seems to me that this procedure could only fall under the rubric of sexual coercion.

Well, it certainly was about putting women in their place and taking control of their reproductive organs.

My point was, could it actually be considered to be sexual coercion in the eyes of the law? I know that this is really just a legal point and might possibly vary by jurisdiction.

I also do like this example in France:

http://www.slate.fr/story/108847/rapport-conference-doyens-facs-medecine-touchers-vaginaux

The gist of it is that medical students are regularly trained to perform pelvic and rectal examinations on patients who are either asleep or who weren’t asked to consent. Quantification of the phenomena is that 20% to 33% of such interventions on patients under anesthesia were performed covertly.

The problem is that it’s a rather pervasive practice, and almost no one saw a problem with it for far too long.

Sadly this happens in the US and the UK as well. It’s been reported on from time to time, and it isn’t any more ethical here than in France.

One of the bloggers on KevinMD has a good story about how he did this in med school, and the impact it has on physician patient communication, and physician morals. https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/09/ethics-conducting-pelvic-exam-anesthetized-woman.html

I agree with the females he surveyed. I would feel violated if this were done without my permission. However, I would readily grant that permission if asked in advance.

IANAL so I couldn’t answer that question.

I view it as hyperbole, which I dislike. However, I don’t need to call it rape to call it intrusive, despicable and if any woman who actually underwent it compared it to rape, I would not argue with her.

“My sons lost eye contact”

For feck’s sake, Marcella, your sons didn’t stop looking you in the eye because of vaccinations, they stopped because you’re a garbage person and they prefer not to acknowledge your existence.

I’d say Smut Clyde deserves at least a public warning from the creator of Respectful Insolence (i.e., Orac).

@ Orac,

Smut Clyde calls Marcella a “garbage person.” Is there antecedents for this not-so-respectful insolence in your fourteen (14) years of blogging? Please intervene.

MJD – stop pretending you are a moderator. Does your initial stand for “jackass”?

I cannot help but wonder if there would be so much concern over the rights of the individual over that of society if the disease in question were Ebola. Given how people returning from an area with an Ebola outbreak were treated we already know.

I’m wondering, if vaccines are rape, what is giving your child, which has autism, bleach enemas?

That’s what I think as well. But how do the people who consider forced vaccination (forced in name only, just because not vaccinating can have consequences) equal to rape, consider this?

I guess it really depends whom you ask, not all anti vaxxers stoop low for bleach enemas. Easier to just spout strong rhetoric.

Is it time to revisit how vaccines work?

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/how-vaccines-work

The generation of memory B-cells after vaccination provides evidence that forced immunity can create unique living-cells. Said cells form antibodies that affect a plethora of endogenous biochemical-pathways that can have multi-cellular effects.

In simplicity, vaccines create unique living-cells that can have a divergent affect on our well-being.

Q. Is giving life to said cells, through vaccination and without consent, a violation; especially if the multi-cellular organism is sentient.

The generation of memory B-cells after vaccination provides evidence that forced immunity can create unique living-cells. Said cells form antibodies that affect a plethora of endogenous biochemical-pathways that can have multi-cellular effects.

There’s nothing like poorly formed word salad to wrap up the evening with.

Narad writes,

There’s nothing like poorly formed word salad to wrap up the evening with.

MJD says,

A food analogy may bring clarity to the term “medical rape.” When a growth medium (e.g., egg protein) is utilized for viral preparation, inevitably, minute quantities of egg protein (or egg protein fragments therefrom) may contaminate the vaccine preparation. If a person is subjected to such a vaccine, there is a possibility that pre-existing memory B-cells are stimulated/activated to further increase the production of egg-protein antibodies.

Q. Is vaccine induced propagation of undesirable memory B-cells an insult/violation (e.g. medical rape), especially if forced vaccination is mandatory.

Every infection creates memory B cells. This is what is called immunological memory. When next hit, adaptive immunity reacts much faster, preventing repeated infection.

Yep, minute traces of eggs injected in muscles creates antibodies to eggs; but huge quantities of eggs ingested don’t. The fact that our intestines are lined with immune cells and our blood as well, would, of course, not lead to antibodies against eggs? IgG cells exist in all three, though in intestines IgA cells predominate; but they have same type of receptors as IgG, just twice as many. Oh well, when did simple immunology, logic, or common sense play a role in some people’s minds???

Of course one way to avoid a child developing allergies is to allow them to die at an early age. We could prevent many cases of ASD, cancer, heart disease, etc. by just eliminating vaccines.

Weekend entertainment from the annals of quackademic medicine: An Australian university (U. of Queensland) has decided against pursuing retraction of articles written by university researchers affiliated with so-called Universal Medicine (UM), which has been described as a “dangerous cult” run by an ex-tennis coach, Serge Benhayon. Benhayon promotes “esoteric breast massage” and “esoteric ovarian massage” and has claimed that women’s participation in competitive sports causes cancer.

Despite this nuttiness, he reportedly has adherents at the University of Queensland who didn’t reveal their affiliation with Universal Medicine when submitting papers for publication.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/universal-medicine-health-studies-wont-be-pulled-by-uq/10896690

I had never heard of this guy before, but he’s quite a piece of work.

“Mr Benhayon established his religion, Universal Medicine, in 1999 after allegedly receiving a spiritual epiphany while sitting on the toilet.

“I just gave myself a time to sit and feel that moment and I could feel something really, really beautiful,” he said in a video obtained by Sunday Night.

Mr Benhayon claims to be the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci and calls himself the “Ascended Master” or “One of The Hierarchy”.”

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/universal-medicine-cult-founder-exposed-as-charlatan/news-story/626fe650621ee65ba16b1a7af2f62aa7

While you’d expect testimonials from credulous patients (including one I saw that credited Universal Medicine with healing her acne rosacea), promotion of UM among medical professionals is discouraging.

An unpaid senior lecturer at U. of Queensland was reprimanded a couple of years ago for inappropriately treating a woman with a chronic cough, among other things referring her for an “esoteric lung massage”. Other medical practitioners are enthusiastic about Benhayon, including an Irish surgeon who speculates online that esoteric breast massage could successfully treat cancer through some sort of “secondary” effect.

Urgh.

Was Ben haying using a Squatty Potty during his epiphany?

My bowel movements are just soooooo boring compared to his.

One might suspect Benhayon to be antivaccine, but one might well be wrong. A follower says Benhayon told her to get her kids vaccinated, and she has an, um, interesting take on vaccine side effects:

“My feeling is that the adverse reactions people experience after vaccination may not just be related to the vaccination itself, but – as in my case – they may be clearing an old energy we have been holding in our bodies. And so vaccination, as with so many things in life that seem like a problem on the surface, can be a blessing, and another opportunity for us to heal and make more space in our bodies for the love that we truly are.”

I’m sure that explanation would go over well at AoA. 🙂

https://medicineandsergebenhayon.com/2015/04/02/vaccination-why-do-we-react/

Somewhere above Panacea: (paraphrase) the government doesn’t barge in, hold down your child to force- vaccinate

BUT that’s exactly what the woo-meisters say:
Mike Adams especially uses Third Reich imagery. Defend yourself, Sovereign Citizens!. ( he’s a gun nut)
One of Null’s ( many) anti-vaccine films shows someone slamming her door on an official ( city nurse?) coming to vaccinate!

I’ve read anti-vaxxers discuss the “mass exodus” fleeing from vaccine-obsessed California.
So it’s not just rape but conquest, control and a life sentence in the vaccine Gulag.

Of Sacramento.
( No rights but great food and river views!)
Or San Cruz. Or Huntington Beach ( Lots of money! Surfing!)

What Chris said earlier:
parents make it all about themselves. And it’s mostly- but not exclusively- mothers.

I’ve followed quite a few of their thought leaders – courtesy of AoA, TMR and PRN.
— they run websites, write posts and books, appear on television ( less so, these days), woo radio and conferences.
— they style themselves as experts as well as martyrs
— not one that I know of, has the SBM/ psychology/ research background to critique vaccine science as they do
— they try to make a career out of their child’s condition

A few of the top ( bottom?) :
Kim Rossi ( FKA Stagliano) fancies herself a writer: she narrates her experiences with her daughters to include her own valiant effort tackling day-to-day problems often being insensitive to their privacy whilst highlighting her own strength and love.
She’s always trying to sell herself ( ” HIRE me!”), all of her interests are catalogued for readers. She’s cries #MeToo often.AoA

Zooey O’Toole- the Professor- TMR. Runs the blog. Calls herself a “theatre geek with a degree in physics.. a nerd” Her children DO NOT have ASD ( ADHD? Apraxia? IIRC) yet she rallies the ASD AVers. She responds to SB commenters dismissively with all the arrogance her ignorance can summon.

Cathy Jameson ( AoA, TMR) patient as a saint, religious caregiver who discards science as easily as sin.

Mary Holland- a law ( actual) professor who twists facts and language to support her belief.

There are more but these are the essential contributors. Ann Dachel, tracking media, has been rather quiet of late. Conrick does “science”/ Gamondes does “art” ( all AoA)

Denice – I wonder if, deep down, these parents know it’s not normal or natural to despise their own children for not living up to their expectations and so look to blame anything they can to avoid having to address their own terrible attitude. They refuse to accept their child’s ASD as just an outcome of the genetic lottery because it would mean having to accept that their own genes are partially responsible.

Oh, certainly. I think that some of them on some level, at the very least, know that there may be genetic issues and thus, try to create a smoke screen of blame on others. Because they, of course, are rather perfect.

I think Brian Deer once remarked that when a parent buys into vaccines-cause-autism, there’s an element of guilt involved because who brought them to the evil doctor for the evil jabs? Well,you did. So you have prove who you were duped, because you’re innocent and now a fighter for children’s rights or suchlike. Super-parent.

Then there’s secondary gain: when you get lemons, you make lemonade** They try to make a career out of their superparenthood. So the child’s problems become topics for blogs or books; you lecture other parents at woo conventions and enter panel discussions. They’re angry now that a few of their venues on the internet may be closed off to them.

** Freud, Beyoncé.

Is your moral compass broken? Is it always pointing down? Throw away that old compass! It’s time to step up to the latest generation of new technology. You need Moral GPS! Just download it to your phone and you’ll never be in doubt of your moral direction again. Even facing a class 5 hurricane of contrary facts it’ll hold true and keep you on your chosen path.

In addition to GPS calibration the app will also sync with your social and news feeds. Soon you and all your friends can share the same moral direction, be it up, down or somewhere in between. When you wake up, check the app and you’ll know exactly how to behave for the rest of the way.

Too expensive a commitment without a test drive? No problem! For only $0.99 you can download Cheap Morals. You get pick one, but only one moral direction from our extensive catalog. Sure it might never be truly in sync with the world around you but you’ll gain a deeply ingrained certainty about how to behave. Just be sure not to be too cheap and get it from a pirate site. You don’t know where those moral directions have been.

A good moral compass doesn’t work properly, if you trow away the manual and just mess around with it.

Morality and meritocracy have been discussed in detail this past week on NN and PRN:

yes, youth today have no idea how much hard work it takes to become a professional and create a business as they have.
They expect to be rewarded just for showing up! Shameful!
Scientists like them have spent long years studying and researching: no one fixed admissions to universities for them!
Today if you hire someone they may have no ability or skill whatsoever in what they claim expertise. Especially those who went to “elite” places: they’re the worst. Two year college and trade school students are much more likely to be hard workers and actually know something relevant.
It is wrong to reward people unless they put in hard work: universities should be soundly scolded for their actions.

Sorry, Denice, but I’m utterly confused about what you wanted to say. Maybe a link would be welcome.

I don’t know how to make cute images for eye roll, tongue in cheek or sarcasm

Basically, Adams and Null contrasted their own sterling backgrounds to students today who pay people to take tests, never work hard and expect great rewards. ( There is a huge scandal now about rich people/ actors paying for fake test grades or made up sports ability to get their children into elite schools).

In truth, these guys have dodgy credentials and make false claims about their own education and work histories.
In contrast to someone who has actual degrees/ experience in science, they cobble together CVs that make them appear to be something they are not. Null always talks about his dissertation being such a huge task when it was for a mail order school, committee’d by friends and of a low level ( see Quackwatch)- he claims that he’s a researcher and a professor for 40 years etc. Adams claims to be a scientist but once admitted that his only degree was in writing. Much of their bios are merely window dressing ( decoration).

HOWEVER they have created websites which sell health products based upon their stories which have made them very rich. Also they have attacked Orac and other sceptics who uncover their mendacity.

Adams: My Brush with Poverty, Natural News July 19, 2014
Adams: Bio, Health Ranger website
contrast to
Wikipedia article about Natural News
Orac wrote about his attacks at RI, SBM

Null, Wikipedia bio/ Quackwatch/ Orac’s articles, too numerous to mention but esp. May 2018
contrast to
his own bios on You Tube, Gary Null website

This is a side point. Anyone else have a problem with this description?

a red hard bump the size of a baseball at the injection site

Did Marcella remember this correctly? How old was the child with the “bump the size of a baseball ”? Toddler, after the 12-15 mo injections? 4 to 5 year old after the ones they need to start kindergarten? Does she know what is the size of a baseball, or is it she really bad at judging sizes? Did she mix up a baseball with maybe a golfball, or did she think baseball-sized sounded more dramatic?

I have a kid who has recovered from baseball-sized bumps and bruises caused by actual baseballs. I know exactly what size that is. A baseball-sized bump on typical toddler’s leg would wrap around about half the circumference, and around most of a typical 4-year-old’s upper arm.

Maybe I am being nitpicky, but I just don’t this part of her story plausible.

Why bring it up? Because the antivax parents go around complaining that we don’t believe their vaccine injury stories they tell. Well, yeah. When you post stories with clearly inaccurate details, or exaggerated to the point it’s absurd, I find it hard to believe you.

With the revelation that Beto O’Rourke was (as a teenager) a member of a hacking group called Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) and that he wrote a story describing the “ecstasy” he felt running down children in his car, wonder how long it’ll take antivaxers to appropriate the story for their own purposes?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/15/beto-orourke-hacking-teenager-cdc-cult-of-the-dead-cow-election-2020-iowa-caucus-president-texas/3176632002/

Yep, minute traces of eggs injected in muscles can cause antibodies to eggs; but large quantities of eggs ingested, where immune cells line our intestines and are in our blood, pose no proble? IgG B-cells are found in muscles; but also in the intestines and blood, though the intestines have mainly IgA B-cells, which have the same type of receptors as IgG B-cells, just twice as many.

I guess immunology, simple logic and common sense don’t come into play with some people?

I entered this discussion late, posting various comments after other comments, so, I doubt many will skim above, so I’m re-submitting my comments to Greg and Orac

To Greg:

Me: Though as usual, logic and common sense will not sway you; but for others monitoring this exchange: Rape is a violent act, not about sex. Carried out by men who hate women or men who hate other men. It is a violation of a women or man’s basic sense of self. And a rapist doesn’t tell a woman/man if she/he doesn’t submit she will be banned from work or school or anything else.

Public health officials are not vaccinating people as an act of violence, not even close and if, in your warped mind a minor needle stick equates with beating a woman senseless, tearing off her clothes and penetrating her, well, what can I say; but you really are nuts.

Rape victims often change for life and not for the better. On the other hand, except for a minuscule number being vaccinated, the vast majority go on with their lives unscathed. And the minuscule minority doesn’t include Autism Spectrum Disorders, regardless of what you choose to believe.
And please explain how you would look at some kids getting sick from a vaccine-preventable disease resulting in at best a week or more of suffering and for some, life-long disabilities, or even death, or a pregnant woman infected with rubella resulting in a stillbirth or a deformed child. I guess you would see nature as the rapist.

Basically, for you and other antivaccinationists, resorting to the most absurd extreme analogies, false analogies, is just standard modus operandi.”

Greg writes: “Yes, and the college student is not being forced into having non-consensual sex with her prof, and the housewife is also not being forced to submit. The college student can still refuse and get a failing grade, and the housewife can also refuse and not get money for groceries to feed the kids.”

Me: And this is not 50 years ago. It is rape if force is used even against ones wife and husbands have been successfully prosecuted, ending in prison, and students, though not easy, can come forward and professors have been fired and even prosecuted. How about joining the real world?
And yes, many husbands who force their wives to have sex and professors who force themselves on students get away with it; but so do many who violently rape other women, doesn’t change that the law condemns all three types.

Greg: So, trauma or torture is the metric to say sexual rape is worse than vaccination rape? What about the boyfriend who forces himself onto his girlfriend and she reluctantly gives in. Not much trauma here, but is this still not rape? Also, can vaccination rape not be more traumatic? Heck — it’s more likely to kill you. I won’t even go into the 1 in 36 odds that it will give you permanent neurological impairment

Me: I guess you’ve never heard of date rape. Also against the law. And it is traumatic, perhaps not physically; but can affect a woman for life. Despite your beliefs, getting a quick jab with a needle doesn’t cause permanent or even long-lasting trauma for all; but a minuscule few; but, as I wrote in an earlier comment, what about the suffering for those affected by the vaccine-preventable diseases with some ending in life-long disabilities or even death?

As for 1 in 36 odds, you get nuttier and nuttier by the minute.



Orac: Rand Paul claims children belong to parents

I prefer Kahlil Gibran:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

And Orac, though I understand that you want this blog to be open to all as opposed to antivaccinatist blogs, at some point equating vaccines with rape or the Holocaust just is too repulsive to accept, so I think banning Greg wouldn’t be a bad idea. Or allow him to continue as an example of the false analogies, the degenerate resorting to them, the refusal to even attempt to respond to what others write may actually be even more appropriate for revealing antivaccinatinists mentality. Your blog, your choice.

Posting lengthy, logical, fact-based responses to antivaxers who are doggedly clueless and/or shameless liars is probably not an efficient use of one’s time.

Ignoring them, responding with a couple of succinct comments/links for the benefit of the semi-mythical fence-sitter who might read the exchange, or pointing and laughing are my suggestions.

After scrolling through the comments, the only thing I have to add is – I guess, in their metaphor, the kids of anti-vax parents who go off to get vaccinated on their own are like the kids who sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to have sex.

And I bet they think that other people’s kids do that, not theirs.

It’s just too bad that their kids will be in danger of suffering, long-term damage, or even death until then.

“I don’t trust the government not to poison my kids, yet I DEMAND the unchallenged right to dump those kids off on the government every day!”

Sounds about right.

Yep, let’s stop restaurant inspections. Let’s close down the FDA and allow anyone to market any alleged meds. Let’s close down USDA, end all food inspection. And don’t use your public water supply (Yep, one can refer to Flint, Michigan; but the vast majority of public water systems are safe). Let’s have a free-for-all. And let’s close down the CDC. If there is an outbreak of some disease in a community, why trust scientists when experts like you exist.

As for dumping the kids off on the government every day, do you have kids? Do they go to public schools or state universities?

Government isn’t perfect; but most of the time bases decisions, especially relevant to health, on science. If the choice is to trust scientists vs corporations wanting to make big bucks or individual’s with little to no understanding of science, odds are extremely high that the scientists are the best bet. Not a few so-called scientists; but the overwhelming majority. One can always find a few individual scientists who disagree; but history has shown over and over again that for every time such disagreement had proved right there have literally been thousands of times that they were wrong and consigned to the dustbin of history.

@ Jenna,

I think that too. The quotation-marks would give that away.

I suppose these people just don’t trust ‘Big Pharma’. They don’t have problems with airplane manufucturers, car manufactures or computer-scientists. Otherwise they wouldn’t be active on internet and just travel by horse and carriage.

OK, I didn’t notice the quotation marks; but if any antivaccinationist reads my comment, it still applies. I’ll have to be a little more careful when reading comments. Oh well, I’ll blame it on old age? LOL

Comments are closed.

Discover more from RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading