Hard as it is to believe, I’ve been writing on this blog about the antivaccine movement for nearly 15 years and refuting antivaccine misinformation for nearly five years before that. Two decades. That’s right, it’s been nearly two decades that I’ve been dealing with the pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and fear mongering on the part of the antivaccine movement. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that the more things change the more they say the same. While it’s true that of late I’ve become concerned about the increasingly violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement and even an attack on California State Senator Richard Pan the other day, the threat is not new, and I see it more as an escalation of pre-existing paranoia than anything else. After all, Dr. Paul Offit was getting death threats 15 years ago. Nor do the the arguments change (much). Sure, they’ll add mitochondrial disorders and MTHFR mutations as “predisposing factors” to “vaccine-induced autism” without evidence, but what never changes is that it’s always about the vaccines. Nor do the conspiracy theories change that much. True, there are always new ones, like the “CDC whistleblower” of the antivaccine propaganda film disguised as a documentary VAXXED, but like that hoariest of antivax conspiracy theories, Simpsonwood, they’re all variations on what I like to call the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, namely that the CDC, the government, pharma, or in other words “they” knew that vaccines cause autism but have covered it up. Which brings me to Ann Dachel and Teresa Conrick.
I was perusing the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism (AoA) yesterday when I came across an a post by Ann Dachel, the “media editor” of the blog whose primary function has been to identify stories about vaccines or autism, particularly if they’re pro-vaccine, and unleashing her horde of flying antivaccine monkeys to fling poo in the comments section of the article and to harass the reporters, bloggers, and editors responsible for the articles targeted. This time around, another AoA antivaxer, Teresa Conrick, reposted a post by Ann Dachel from 2008 entitled Back To School Worries Then and Now, along with an introduction by Conrick:
Note: Anne Dachel wrote this post back in 2008, more than a decade ago! What has changed? Nothing and everything. Back in 2008, “anti-vaccine” was being used to brand us all as kooks and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Same today. But it’s worse in 2019, as laws are being passed that prevent healthy kids from attending school by the removal of vaccination exemptions. This Fall, thousands of children in New York and California will be staying home from school for lack of…. a flu shot???
There’s a video circulating on Facebook as of yesterday that seeks to clarify why so many of us speak out against vaccine damage, push for safety, push for medical freedom – the right to say “NO.” Here’s the Facebook link – Your Children. Your Choice. Please watch the video – share it on Facebook.
Why am I bothering to highlight the republication of an eleven year old post blog post from an antivaccine crank on an antivaccine blog, complete with a link to an antivaccine propaganda video? The reason is simple. Dachel is correct. Things haven’t changed much. But what her republication and the video she hawks before it remind me is that antivaccine misinformation hasn’t changed in 11 years later, which is a depressing thought because it shows just how impervious to evidence and science antivaxers remain. Let’s take a look.
What provoked the original post by Ann Dachel was an appearance by Dr. Marc Siegel on Fox News in which he stated, “The anti-vaccination movement is based on irrational fears and is absolutely destructive.” He was, of course, correct, although here I do like to make a distinction. The fears of vaccine-averse parents who have heard the message of the antivaccine movement demonizing vaccines but do not have the requisite scientific knowledge to know why antivaxers are wrong and how antivaxers distort and misrepresent science in order to make a false case that vaccines are dangerous and don’t work very well are not irrational. They are more based in lack of knowledge. In contrast, the fears of hard core antivaxers have generally gone well beyond this into full-on motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories. But that’s just a quibble. Let’s see Ann Dachel’s response:
No, Dr Siegel, you’re wrong. The loudest voices out there aren’t from ‘the anti-vaccination movement.’ They’re the parents who did vaccinate. They never missed the checkups for those scheduled vaccines.
They’re also the people who saw their children lose learned skills like making eye contact, talking, and being potty trained.
And they watched in disbelief as these same kids exhibited the signs of autism — rocking, staring at bright lights, and knocking holes in walls.
Here, we have the same confusion of correlation with causation that has been the root of the unshakeable belief among antivaxers that vaccines cause autism. I get it. Raising a special needs child is incredibly difficult. I’ve said many times before that I dont’ know if I would have been up to the challenge if my wife and I had had a child like this. I like to think I would have, but there’s no way of ever knowing unless you live the experience. The anger of antivaxers, however, is misplaced. It’s not vaccines that caused their children to become autistic. We have mountains of high quality studies looking for a link between vaccination and autism, and scientists haven’t found one. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that vaccines do not cause autism.
Let’s move on:
These parents are the voices out there asking that health officials clean up vaccines by getting rid of the countless toxins currently and routinely injected into children. The one thing that Jon and Terry Poling, Katie Wright, and Jenny McCarthy have in common is that they all vaccinated.
Why is it that anyone who asks for safe, non-toxic vaccines is ‘anti-vaccination’? Marc Siegel and everyone else out there blaming parents better understand one thing: The medical community is at fault for the rapidly eroding confidence in the vaccine program. Health officials do nothing to address the plague called autism. For years, as the numbers exploded, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked on, unconcerned. The CDC can’t tell us what causes autism and they’re the first to say there is no cure. They don’t even know if there really are more kids with autism out there, despite counting them for years. The only thing they’re sure of is that their vaccines aren’t responsible.
Yes, the “toxins gambit.” This is the antivaccine claim that vaccines are loaded with “toxins” that cause autism and all the other health issues for which antivaxers blame vaccines. Jenny McCarthy popularized this particular antivaccine trope, but it’s an old one that I remember seeing ever since I first started paying attention to the antivaccine movement. Back then, it was thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative that was used in several childhood vaccines until around 2002. These days, the aluminum-containing adjuvants used in childhood vaccines, especially HPV vaccines, are routinely demonized. And who could forget the greatest hits of “toxins” trotted out by antivaxers who don’t understand the concept of dose-response, “toxins” such as formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, “antifreeze” (a misunderstanding that the polyethylene glycol in some vaccines is not the same thing as antifreeze, ethylene glycol), and so many more than I can remember.
Note the other argument used by Ann Dachel. It’s still used, still unchanged. It’s the argument from ignorance. Just because we don’t understand yet what causes autism does not mean that vaccines are a potential cause. When Dachel says, “they’re sure that their vaccines aren’t responsible,” she views that as a condemnation, as being hopelessly close-minded. In reality, it is a response to existing evidence. Also, it’s not as though we don’t know a fair amount about what causes autism. We know that the cause is primarily genetic, and we know that vaccines don’t cause autism. That’s not a lot, but it’s far from nothing either.
That leads me to the video that Ann Dachel linked to:
It’s from Sayer Ji (remember him, the guy who was outraged that Google correctly views antivaccine pseudoscience as akin to conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon?) and his GreenMedInfo Facebook page. It’s a veritable “greatest hits” of antivaccine tropes, all of which have been around at least as long as I’ve been blogging about vaccines:
- “Too many too soon,” complete with the usual deceptive and erroneous exaggeration of how much the vaccine schedule has expanded since the 1980s.
- The “sickest generation” claim, which is also not true and, even if it were, confuses correlation with causation in blaming vaccines for a rise in chronic illness among children. (It even repeats the same deceptively cherry-picked figures from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claiming that chronic illness prevalence among children has risen from 12% to 54% since 1986.)
- Blaming vaccines for autism, food allergies, sudden infant death syndrome, autoimmune diseases, seizure disorders, and many other conditions that vaccines do not cause or contribute to.
- The lie that vaccines do not go through double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, complete with the lie that vaccines don’t go through saline placebo-controlled trials and the usual misunderstanding that including everything but the antigens used to provoke an immune response in the control group is actually a superior placebo. Particularly hilarious is the lie that no vaccine has ever undergone saline placebo-controlled clinical trial prior to approval. That is straight up false.
- There’s also the claim that health outcomes have never been compared in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. That, too, is false, and, in fact, the comparison doesn’t show what antivaxers think it will show. Sayer Ji even cites Anthony Mawson’s execrable, retracted zombie “study” that claimed to show unvaccinated children are healthier.
- Fear mongering about aluminum, the new mercury.
- The intellectually dishonest “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit.
- The central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, including the CDC whistleblower conspiracy theory.
- The false claim that “no one” is accountable for vaccine safety.
- The pharma shill gambit.
- The “health freedom” and “parental rights” gambits.
You get the idea.
By republishing Ann Dachel’s eleven year old post, Teresa Conrick thinks that she’s shown that the “opposition” (those of us who accept the science concluding that vaccines are safe and effective) never changes, but there’s a reason for that. It’s because the pseudoscience and conspiracy mongering behind the antivaccine movement she represents never changes, not at its core. Ann Dachel’s post shows that, as does the video by Sayer Ji. There might be new antivax conspiracy theories, but they’re always variations of the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement. There might be new “toxins” tagged, but it’s still always the “toxins” gambit. There might be new claims about vaccines and the immune system, but they’re all variations of “too many too soon.” Antivaccine pseudoscience and conspiracy theories might occasionally add new styles to its repertoire of pseudoscience, but they’re just styles. Nothing fundamental ever changes.
195 replies on “Ann Dachel and Sayer Ji inadvertently show that antivax pseudoscience never changes”
Ann Dachel was educated/ trained as a teacher! She must be over 70 ( based on her son’s age) and she always claims that autism is a new phenomenon, Where were autistics, she cries repetitiously? She never mentions the fact that people with developmental disabilities were often warehoused in institutions. Wouldn’t a person her age who was aware of what was happening in the outside world be aware of the scandals surrounding treatment of children and adults with ID? Especially a teacher?
She’s strangely silent because she knows that a great part of her audience- women with young children- are too young to remember those tragic news stories that led to real changes in how people were cared for.
“Where were autistics, she cries repetitiously? She never mentions the fact that people with developmental disabilities were often warehoused in institutions. Wouldn’t a person her age who was aware of what was happening in the outside world be aware of the scandals surrounding treatment of children and adults with (autism)? Especially a teacher?
This got me thinking about the Willowbrook State School, which eventually closed down with some of its patients going to autism treatment centers. Willowbrook has made a better name for itself recently as a source of research, including publication of this study showing predictors of autism as early as one month of age:
https://www.silive.com/westshore/2010/08/researchers_from_staten_island.html
Any other conspiracy could have been substituted above. Jews drink the blood of non-Jewish children, or today, harvest their organs. George Bush orchestrated 9/11 for support for a war in Iraq. Every heinous crime is a false flag designed to take away guns, erode our liberties, or (fill in the blank). It’s all around us, and the antivaxxers are no different.
The blood libel goes back at least a thousand years. False flag accusations go back at least to the 19th Century, when all sorts of violent activities were the work of agents provocateurs (although to be fair, sometimes it was or is true.).
The claims never change, and any proof or reasoning to the contrary is explained away by either an expansion of the members of the conspiracy, or with, “That’s what they want you to think, sheeple.”.
BTW, what’s the singular of sheeple? Sheeperson,? Sheepleman?
As an autistic bisexual Jewish liberal retired PA in an interracial marriage, I am apparently part of so many conspiracies that I can’t keep track of them all. I’m not sure where I fit into the “Deep State”, the “New World Order”, or the climate change “hoax”, but I’m sure Farts News will tell me.
Blaming vaccines for autism, food allergies, sudden infant death syndrome, autoimmune diseases, seizure disorders, and many other conditions that vaccines do not cause or contribute to.
How do you know this for sure? Has this been proven?
As far as I know farming communities have less asthma, and the amish community happens to not vaccinate, so it appears to me the possibility of a correlation, which is the first step to causation.
But I agree with the autism claim, correlation is not causation and EMFs are a more likely contributor(see Martin Palls studies on the harmful effects of non-ionizing EMFs)
Also, do you realize provaxxers are losing the battle?
Because antivaxxers now consistently call for more research, more science, and the provaxxers cheer censorship and mandating vaccinations.
(Godwin: the nazis liked censorship too!)
Do you realize that if vaccination become mandatory, double-blind placebo controlled RCT eventually become impossible? Thus the pro-vaxxers eventually cheer anti-science and the antivaxxers cheer proscience leading to an inverted world. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
They’re already impossible in a sense, because ardent antivaccine types would never consent to randomization.
A) Try a search on this website for Amish and Autism.
B) The Amish arent the only farming community. They’re not even the biggest one.
C) When people who believe in science and the scientific method say that there is no connection, it means the issue has been studied and no connection was found either biologically or mathematically. Unlike anti-vaxxers for whom it is a matter of faith, just waiting for proof.
D) Anti-vaxxers love to ask for more research. Trouble is they have that faith. No matter what studies are carried out, they will not believe the results. They either cry conspiracy or just ignore the results and shout louder.
Wow, that was a lot of nonsense. The whole antivaxx thing ebbs and flows. Sometimes they gain ground and then an outbreak happens, the act completely insane over it and they lose ground. Then people forget and the antivaxxers go back to acting somewhat normal and gain ground again.
“Martin Palls (sic) studies on the harmful effects of non-ionizing EMFs”
You do know Pall’s alarms on EMFs are as bogus as the link between vaccines and autism, right?
Honestly, this stuff seems to be a pretty common formula among pseudoscience and quackery in general, particularly the toxins gambit. (Antiretrovirals are what cause AIDS, psychiatric medications ‘zombify’ your children [I’ve heard this one the most regarding ADHD medication, but that’s possibly because I’m actually on ADHD medication so I take more notice], chemotherapy is poison, etc.)
“Antiretrovirals are what cause AIDS”
Funny, I was treating AIDS patients before the first antiretroviral was approved. When I started the job, I was assigned to do a chart review for the just-completed AZT trial. It was immediately clear that the treated patients lived longer and with fewer OIs and OMs than the untreated. If I ever met someone who made that claim, I would call out the lie in no uncertain terms because it is nothing more than a lie.
Orac writes,
Nothing fundamental ever changes.
MJD says,
In continuation, insolence is nothing respectful. Moving forward, I’ve been working on a Stage-IV cancer medicament and would like to share the website with my RI friends; including Denice Walter but excluding NARAD!
https://alleam.net/
Orac is right about this. Once an ignorant pompous windbag, always an ignorant pompous windbag.
I’m certain that Orac will really appreciate someone- especially YOU– blithely advertising anti-cancer woo on his personal website.
He’ll be absolutely thrilled and will perhaps invest a few hundred thousand HIMSELF in your project**
** if you believe that, I have a few nice bridges for sale.
Denice Walter writes,
..”blithely advertising anti-cancer woo”..
MJD says,
I’m shocked that a science-based advocate would disparage such an effort. A valid hypothesis is proposed, the null hypothesis is considered, conventional science-based testing procedures are underway, and all aspects of this effort will be placed in the public domain for evaluation and consideration.
@ Orac,
Thanks for being an important part of the adversarial process in medical science.
Michael, do you honestly think that people will invest good money in your project?
There is an internet: potential investors can research your past history, various literary projects and ideas about what causes ASD etc.
And I’m guessing you still think a p-value somehow indicates whether the null or alternative hypothesis is correct — statistical understanding seems to evade you.
So the wavefunction doesn’t collapse upon measurement? Thanks for chiming in.
How much is Bioaccent charging you for this one?
It’s part of the discovery process, Narad. Here’s a recent article describing additional costs:
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2018/cost-of-clinical-trials-for-new-drug-FDA-approval-are-fraction-of-total-tab.html
Paying a predatory publisher to put your semiliterate output into the “publish” machine and pulling the lever? I think not.
So, on top of the billions you doubtlessly put into developing your “medicament,” you’re going to complain about the comparative pittance for clinical trials? Maybe you could borrow Mike Adams’ “lab” for a piece of the action.
Are charlatans always so bold in announcing their latest scams?
Narad, I thought “medicament’ went out of use about the same time “apothecary” and “natural philosopher” did.
“working on a Stage-IV cancer medicament”
A medicament? No doubt you are working with an alchemist and a barber chirurgeon.
Keep it up. There are lots more doshes for the dochniak to distimm.
Fun fact: Doucheniak is not the assignee on any patents in the USPTO database. Of the 11 that mention him as an inventor, I’m amused by 5,354,807, the assignee of which is “H.B. Fuller Licensing & Financing, Inc.” It’s unclear to me whether this entity even exists any more, but I’m trying to pay attention to the Cubs game.
Or perhaps a francophone who doesn’t parle the Anglais
Perhaps — and I don’t think this is beyond the ken — he misspelled “unguent.”
“the amish community happens to not vaccinate”
Wrong – they do.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/why-are-anti-vaxxers-rallying-behind-the-amish/384151/
“(antivaxers) now consistently call for more research, more science”
What they call for has either already been done (and given results they don’t want to accept) or is unethical (having a large-scale vaxed/unvaxed study in which large numbers of children are left unprotected against dangerous infectious diseases).
”Do you realize that if vaccination become mandatory, double-blind placebo controlled RCT eventually become impossible?”
Vaccination is already to a large extent mandatory for school-aged children, but double-blind placebo controlled RCTs have been and continue to be done.
“Has this (vaccines not responsible for a laundry list of chronic ailments) been proven?”
No such links have been found in numerous studies. Those who want to “prove” a link need to undertake quality research themselves, not demand that others continually “prove” otherwise.
Your post does prove that the point of Orac’s article is well-taken – antivaxers keep churning out the same old nonsense and seem impervious to facts showing otherwise.
Kudos though for trying to link mandatory vaccination to inability to do placebo-controlled RCTs – it’s just as false as the other claims you made, but at least it’s one I haven’t heard before.
He prefers truth over facts.
Unfortunately, Dangerous Bacon, you arent as smart as you think. While you may have “facts” at your side, what I have is way more powerful. Its emotion and irrefutable logic.
First I want to say that my conclusion is still warranted based on what I have on my side. Pro-vaxxers are losing at the moment.
For example, you said: Kudos though for trying to link mandatory vaccination to inability to do placebo-controlled RCTs – it’s just as false as the other claims you made, but at least it’s one I haven’t heard before.
This is not actually a false claim, You just said in your own comment its alrdy somewhat unethical to not vaccinate. By making it more mandatory, it becomes even more unethical. Ergo, it becomes unethical eventually to do double-blind placebo-controlled RCT’s, because that requires not vaccinating some, thus it becomes harder to do science. At the same time pro-vaxxers keep calling for more science, and pro-vaxxers cheer censorship, so the optics favor them instead of you. I mean, who can be against science and look good that way? Think of Trump calling for more science before doing stuff for global warming.
Anti-vaxxers are being positioned as the David versus Goliath this way. Like Jesus vs the Romans. He became very influential.
Furthermore, you said: No such links have been found in numerous studies. Those who want to “prove” a link need to undertake quality research themselves, not demand that others continually “prove” otherwise.
It was enough to say we dont see a correlation, therefore is definately no causation. Thats how its proven. This shouldnt be hard to do right? Either the data alrdy exists because we do lots of monitoring after vaccination, or we need more safety testing.
My comment was logically speaking almost 0 effort, instead you replied to me instead of others who are more deserving of your genius. Why was that? Emotion. Keep in mind this is time you will never get back, and time, unlike money, cannot be replenished.
Think back to high school, when the pretty girl chose the jock over you, who logically speaking has better future prospects. Why? He was simply better at making her feel good, even though there were 1000s of logical reasons to choose you over him.
Trump. Did he master facts, or did he master emotion?
How can pro-vaxxers start winning again? Im thinking out of the box here, there are many ways. Keep in mind that I have no skin in the game, so Im objective, I actually take yearly flu shots and realize that a one-yearly exposure may be way less toxic than a 24/7 exposure like EMFs, or several times a day exposure like GMOs. Thats irrefutable logic.
– Antivaxxers doing terrorist attacks, due to the latest mass shootings even Trump started talking about gun control. Although I hope Im giving nobody any bad ideas (dont do false flags okay)
– More innocent ppl dying of vaccin-preventable diseases. This needs to be very obvious.
– strong visual imagery of children suffering from vaccine-preventable diseases next to articles about vaccines(like on cigarettes)
-definately not censorship, this just shoots yourself in the foot, because you invoke David vs Goliath/nazi germany imagery.
I hope I made a strong case, that emotion trumps facts. Emotion can only be beat with a stronger emotion. Its why charities start with a story about John Doe, who is suffering due to X. One persons suffering is a tragedy, many ppl suffering is a statistic. Sounds harsh, I know.
Lets face it. Science is boring. So including emotion draws attention and makes it more exciting. Its a skill that can be learned.
Unfortunately scientists are usually too much obsessed with facts, and forgetting the human, who is driven by emotion. Humans live in the real, not abstract world.
Here’s some emotion: Fuck off, you wanker.
Science improves our lives. Emotions don’t, unless they use science to improve our lives. Without science, we would suffer a lot more.
G-d, another poorly functioning gasbag.
What units are ‘ethicality’ measured in?
None of this matters, because you don’t have the sample size. Jesus, I’ve wound up quoting Prometheus in the past week.
TINU. Anyway, a curious statement coming from someone who explicitly disavows being a scientist and natters on and on about methodology and the psyches of scientists.
QBALL, you must really love the sound of your own voice.
There is no gradation in ‘mandatory’. Something either is or is not, so ‘more mandatory’ means diddly squat. Vaccines are required for (some) school attendance. It is not mandatory for you to send your unfortunate
disease vectorschildren to school. Figure it out.“Lets face it. Science is boring.”
You may think it’s boring but, I’d say the vast majority of the posters here find it very interesting.
“Unfortunately scientists are usually too much obsessed with facts, and forgetting the human, who is driven by emotion. Humans live in the real, not abstract world.”
If facts are not the “real world”, what is? Fantasy? You have a very sad and limited view of your fellow humans.
Meg: It’s clear that Q has never seen a group of scientists passionately debate a finding or theory or method or frankly anything.
Popular media may portray scientists as all Spock-like, but that’s so far from what scientists are actually like. They’re far more likely to spend three hours arguing the best algorithm to use to analyze some new data.
Q also seems to think that scientists aren’t really human, or lack human emotions. Which is obviously wrong too. (Can I blame that on The Big Bang Theory? I never watched that show because it was so unrealistic and stereotyping.)
And another potential measles exposure at California theme parks. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-23/officials-warn-of-measles-exposure-at-disneyland
Every new commenter on The Thread From Hell on twitter appears to think that they are the first to discover these arguments and are blissfully unaware of how far back these go.
It’s depressing to see them persist.
Thank you for reminding us.
It is amazing even in the not-Twitter universe that someone will come blazing in thinking that they have all the “evidence.” Except we have seen all before and can list the reasons it is wrong, even in our sleep.
Most recently this forum thread that started in the Science, Mathematics, Science and Technology section… but was changed to a conspiracy section: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=336671
It seems to be one reason Shot of Prevention is only letting certain comments through now. It is not worthwhile to deal with all of the repetitive nonsense. It is a good change.
This is interesting. Never mind having a special needs child but would Orac persists with these blogs the way he does if he had a child? I simply don’t believe so..
I have a special needs child, and yet you refuse to answer my questions. This is the third time I will have posted this request in the last twenty four hours:
Greg: “Ok ok — I also blame Pan for fathering legislations that en masse will vaporize kids’ brains..”
Citation needed. Do tell us exactly how any MMR vaccine used in North America causes more harm than measles. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that shows the vaccine causes more encephalitis than an actual measles infection (which is about one melted brain from encephalitis out of a thousand cases of actually getting measles).
The relevance Gerg2’s question to anything reality-based is zero. Also claiming you have a vaccine-injured child does not mean you get some magical protection from criticism when you make deeply flawed arguments against vaccines.
“Never mind having a special needs child but would Orac persists with these blogs the way he does if he had a child?”
Interesting how you seem to believe that a physician would never have the chance to see the consequences of a preventable infectious disease in a child during med school, residency training or subsequent practice.
Hear me out Dangerous one. What Orac is doing is just plain wrong. Reading the blogs, the contrived nature of them and where he peddles nonessential tidbits to justify writing them you get the sense of guilt and the impression that Orac is also well aware that whet he is doing is wrong. Why does he persist then with these blogs that are so hurtful to vaccine injured families? Dangerous one, I will break with many ‘antivaxxers’ and say I don’t believe Orac is the devil incarnate. Sure there is also accusation that he is a shill and he just might be one but I am chalking up his ‘zeal’ to something else. I just see him as simply lacking maturity. The maturity and sense of compassion that you won’t gain from your endeavours in med school but from looking your own flesh and blood in the eyes.
Its not exactly maturity and a sense of compassion if you allow someone to continue along a dangerous path just because they are grieving. It’s a form of cowardice.
Having seen unvaccinated children die from the diseases you anti-vaxxers have brought back let me tell you the only one wrong is YOU. For whatever supposed claim you make about your child, your selfishness won’t let you admit that you flesh and blood to look in the eyes every morning instead of only memories and a death certificate for a child you had to bury that should never have died.
The way I see it is that both pro and anti-vaxxers are sincere in their beliefs. Because of that sincerity they are shouting loudly about the dangers they see and can be seen as arrogant by the opposing camp. However, only the pro-science, pro-vaccination side have a rational, evidence based argument. I have yet to hear any argument from anti-vaxxers that can’t be overturned, whether on this blog or other forms.
As far as getting the message across, emotion does it big time and the anti-vaxx crowd have it in spades – of course, when people were regularly dying or permanently losing good health or the use of limbs etc due to what are now vaccine preventable diseases, pro-vax could count on emotion, I think we need to do more to show what vaccines are preventing and have prevented and what the results of lapses have been.
I also try to be polite and all that, as I consider it to be a personal defeat to allow them to make me lose my temper, but when you hear the pathetic name-calling, death threats, doxing and the targeting of parents whose child has died from a vaccine preventable disease, sometimes you have to call a turd a turd.
Gregger, please tell me what harm was done by the rinderpest vaccine?
Did the smallpox eradication campaign of the 1970s leave a trail of woe behind it, and if you claim it to be so, how does it stack up against the misery caused by a smallpox epidemic?.
Where are all the vaccine-injured dogs, horses, cattle, foxes, raccoons, etc.?
I notice that not one antivaxxer I have challenged with these questions ever responds.
Anti-vaxxers are marketing a product that isn’t changing so all they can do is try to put new spins on it–shinier graphics, different music, new stock photos, a different anti-vax quack doctor, a new web site, find new marketing venues etc. But in the last 15 years, they’ve mastered leveraging the internet and social media better than pro-vax groups, many of whom thought that anti-vaxxers would eventually go away if we just ignored them. They haven’t gone away and vaccine-preventable diseases have come back. Opposition to anti-vaxxers has mounted and now the anti-vax rhetoric ramps up along with the claims from them of how we’re somehow persecuting them when in reality we’re simply trying to bring up vaccination rates to protect children and public health.
Watching that Sayer Ji video along with looking at that “The Vaccine Guide” anti-vaccine binder covered over at SBM last week leaves the impression that anti-vax ringleaders are going the way of modern-day political ads which are long on drama/emotion and short on substance and duration–not that anti-vax material of any length ever has any substance.
Christopher, it’s Greg here, your old ‘friend’. I see you continue to bring ill-repute to your profession by loitering on these blogs. Oh well! Anyway, maybe you do have a point about ‘antivaxxers’ marketing a product, but I would say provaxxers too. Now you also expressed frustration that the ‘antivaxxers’ are not going away. I say the reason for this is quite simple. Perhaps you will say the ‘antivaxxers’ product is fictitious but it just happens to be a lot more appealing then the one provaxxers are offering.. The best the provaxxers can offer is 1 in 36 neurologically impaired kids, 1 in 10 with ADHD, SIDS, alleges, increasing childhood cancers, broken schools, families, and government having to deal with these problems, and it all being a head scratching mystery, Quite simply, your product is a nightmare!
Okay, prove it is a nightmare with some actual evidence. This will be the fifth request from me for actual evidence on just one vaccine:
Greg: “Ok ok — I also blame Pan for fathering legislations that en masse will vaporize kids’ brains..”
Citation needed. Do tell us exactly how any MMR vaccine used in North America causes more harm than measles. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that shows the vaccine causes more encephalitis than an actual measles infection (which is about one melted brain from encephalitis out of a thousand cases of actually getting measles).
You want a nightmare, Greg? Watch a child you love develop SSPE, slowly deteriorate and die. That’s thanks to YOUR product – antivax FUD and delusions. You must be so proud.
“1 in 36 neurologically impaired kids, 1 in 10 with ADHD, SIDS, alleges, increasing childhood cancers, broken schools, families”
Citations? Sources? Evidence?
Personally, I’m a big fan of giving my family members the best possible chance to breathe normally, which means protecting them with high levels of vaccination. Hardly a nightmare.
The one who grovelled to be banned until he got his wish? One can only hope that it carries over.
I forgot to mention, Greg, that the product you so unfailingly and maliciously market is indistinguishable from the sh*t you pull out of your backside. The product I offer and use myself — superior health through vaccination– continues to be endorsed by over 90% of parents. Your product, which brings injury and death to the youngest and more fragile of humans, is hurting for sales right now and by definition must because no parent wants to see their child die from vaccine-preventable illnesses that arise when you drive down vaccine rates. I counter pro-death propagandists like you now because I’d like to see the outbreaks not become as bad as in Europe. Remember, Greg–the vaccine-preventable disease always wins over the crap you sell. Bloviate all you want, but you lose.
Many antivaxxers earn money from their lies. Check financial statements. This may, just may, be one reason they do not disappear.
Jay Gordon: “DB, nice try.”
I never had any expectation Jay would actually back up his vague platitude about having disdain for hard-core antivaxers with something solid – such as a declaration of which hard-core antivaxers he supposedly rejects. It follows the pattern of his sliding in here every once in a while with something that sounds almost reasonable, then scuttling away when asked for clarification (like Jay’s still-mysterious HPV vaccination policy).
Curiously, Jay’s website, while scrubbed of a few of his more embarrassing antivax blog posts (like the one in which he fawns over Andrew Wakefield, having attended a talk by the Great One which removed all of Jay’s doubts) does not mention his professed dislike of hard-core antivaxers. The vaccination-related articles continue to have a theme of promoting fear, uncertainty and doubt about vaccines. And Jay proudly maintains a link to his appearance on Larry King Live (along with David Kirby and Jenny McCarthy) which includes the following Gordon gems:
GORDON…the tetanus shot also has a full complement of mercury (note: this show aired in 2008, seven years after thimerosal was removed from vaccines). And, by the way, I don’t believe that — I don’t believe that we’ve proven that vaccines cause autism. I think they contribute to autism. I think that there are a lot of environment at least influences, many of which you know about more than anybody that I know. But vaccines do contribute to autism…The risks of the — of our vaccine schedule exceed the benefits. Nobody sitting here is anti-vaccine…We do not have respect for the instincts of our parents. We don’t have respect for the immune system.”
KING: The Amish don’t vaccinate?
GORDON: No. And they have a very low incidence of autism and…
KING: Jenny McCarthy’s mate — call him that — Jim Carrey, called in. He says, and I’ll like you gentlemen to comment, vaccines are more of a profit engine than a means of prevention. And that’s why there are so many vaccines. Is that true? Jay Gordon.
GORDON: I think that’s partially true. Vaccines are hugely profitable. Vaccines make the pharmaceutical industry billions of dollars. They make my business billions of dollars. I don’t believe that Dr. Taylor was influenced by the money the American Academy of Pediatrics receives. But I think that the American Academy of Pediatrics policies are influenced by this profit motive.
GORDON: (The MMR) can be given later. A vaccine that maybe of a great public health value, but is of no benefit to that particular child.
Great stuff, Jay! By continuing to link to that program on your website, you sure demonstrate your contempt for hard-core antivaxers.
Oops, posted that to the wrong thread.
Anti-vaxxers and woo-meisters use loaded terms in order to evoke an emotional response in their followers:
a child gets a vaccine and then ” the light went out of his eyes”, he gets a “broken brain”, then, he was “gone”.( real quotes)
Language like this engenders sympathy and frightens potential parents who want to avoid the same situation. Similarly, saying that “54% have chronic illness”, or that “a sixth have problems learning” leaves out delving into what these numbers really mean ( Dr DG at SBM discusses how the first is unreal and the one sixth is based upon how experts draw the line statistically, sd ).
Right now, woo-meisters are freaking out about Wikipedia’s “mis-representation” of them and their careers: this too focuses upon language. If you read Adams’ bio ( Health Ranger.com) or Null’s ( PRN, several videos) terms are glowing, the accomplishments astonishing and the humanitarianism inspiring. HOWEVER, Wikipedia presents different material (Gary Null; Natural News articles) Wikipedia relies on outside sources- not what the subject says about himself. Thus, they list education and work activities: if perhaps, the subject attended a sub-standard, un-accredited degree mill or correspondence school, it will say so. If their degree is in business, not medicine, that will come out as well. If their careers involve self-created positions of authority ( leading a research org or charity that are vanity projects) or are exclusively sales-oriented, it will say so.If there are embarrassing news stories ( supplement seller poisons self with supplements) or if he ran millennium computer schemes, it won’t be hidden or covered up. Because those events ( both real) are NEWS, not self-promotion.
In addition, alt med providers paint SBM critics with a broad brush: pharma shills, “sociopaths” ” amateurs” ( see PRN on sceptics), cold distant scientists, atheists not spiritual at all- to make them seem unattractive and untrustworthy primarily because they don’t want anyone to believe what they write about alt med, woo-meisters or the anti-vax movement: even if we use emotional language ourselves, we have to back it up with outside information, not only opinion. AND we do!
@Denise–I’ve never had or seen a patient where ” the light went out of his [or her] eyes”, even after vaccination. After 19 years of being a pediatrician (including residency). You’d think after vaccinating thousands of patients this would have presented in clinic given how they claim this has happened to hundreds of thousands of children. Not that any anti-vaxxer would believe my anecdote over any of theirs because of course, they are WOKE while apparently now I’m a murderer of children who should be brought to justice.
In case anyone seeks evidence of how the AVs are doing in the battle for public opinion, go to the story below in the NYT, open the comments, and select the “Reader’s Picks” tab. They’re ordered by most “Recommended” first, and you can select “Replies” under them to see reactions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/anti-vaccine.html
Short version: “Winning” it ain’t.
Sounds reasonable, Carl.
I just realized I may have made an error in judgment. I looked up shotofprevention and it evokes all the right emotional triggers. Why is anti-vaxxing then still more popular than pro-vaxxing, so much so, that pro-vaxxers feel a need to cheer censorship? So maybe my conclusion of pro-vaxxing losing was not warranted after all, I may have been insulated in a natural health filter bubble, being subscribed to 30 newsletters who all crosspromote. I dont even care about vaccines, but they send me vaccine articles next to the stuff Im really interested in, which is lifestyle advice. The evidence is mounting that all chronic incommunicable diseases like diabetes, alzheimer and cancer are simply lifestyle/environmental diseases, so here nathealth is scoring victory after victory. So, It is then easy to also accept the homeopathy or vaccine stuff I guess (gateway drugs and all). At the same time big pharma is charging $300 for vials of insulin that used to cost much less, or asking 2 million for a drug so that insurance denies it. Furthermore big pharma has a higher profit margin than every other industry and spends more on marketing than others. Seriously, the optics are terrible.
Yes, I realize you have a reputation to upkeep. But important to not hate the player, just hate the game. I agree that pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers have way more in common than they realize. Life is just managing emotions, your own and those of others, maybe life shouldnt be this way, but its just something we have to accept. Just now TBruce called me a wanker. I must have triggered something primal. Paradoxically, I was not insulted, it actually felt good, because it meant that I got my pre-existing beliefs confirmed, that every human (even “rational” pro-vaxxers), are primarily driven by emotions. And it truly feels good to be right and feel vindicated, I enjoyed it. Feeling right truly is one of the strongest emotions in the world.
Honestly, I dont even know why Sayer Ji does the vaccine stuff. Next week hes doing the 5G crisis summit with Pall, an emeritus professor of Biochemistry, Notice that there is 0 health studies on 5G before it is introduced, while in the past few decades tons of studies have come out that say that non-ionizing radiation is not actually harmless. Heres a review by Pall with over 130 references proving it. https://www.emfacts.com/2018/08/martin-palls-book-on-5g-is-available-online/
Furthermore it may be the end of humanity as we know it
https://digitalsurvivor.uk/2019/04/15/martin-pall-end-of-humanity-in-five-to-seven-years/
So why should we care about a few vaccine-injured or children with measles, when we could possibly have 10 billion ppl gone extinct. Statistics show its not rational to care about vaccines versus EMFs, when thinking about the number of victims. Also keep in mind some vaccines are usually once-in-a-lifetime and EMFs 24/7. Im guessing its all simply emotion. Also it is interesting that kids with autism happen to live in housing with 20x the EMF-exposure, compared to non-autistic children. Or that bacteria and mold become more aggressive when under EMFs with more toxic endotoxins or more antibiotic resistance. We need more research, more science!
I was also thinking out-of-the-box a bit more and thought of another way that pro-vaxxers can win other than better use of emotion.
-Find a cure for autism (How about a vaccine for autism, is that possible? You guys should work a bit harder on this, honestly, and stop wasting time in a circle-jerk on this blog)
Ill show myself out now, I think Ive contributed enough nuggets of wisdom for now. You can make use of it and start playing the game better…
Wow, thanks for the suggestion! I never thought of doing that! Well, shoot, I’ll just go down to my basement right now, dust off the petri dishes and get right on that. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
Wanker.
Martin Pall the supplement shill? Yes, there’s a man with no physics qualification and a profitable side line in tablets to advertise.
“The evidence is mounting that all chronic incommunicable diseases like diabetes, alzheimer and cancer are simply lifestyle/environmental diseases”
All”? How is Type I diabetes induced by environment or lifestyle? Cancer a lifestyle disease? Which ones of the several hundred distinct types of cancer are you referring to? I discount cancers from smoking and some other well-known examples. There is no clear evidence yet of the cause(s) of Alzheimer’s disease. I will say with confidence that it’s not linked to Bigfoot sightings, but that’s as far as I’m going to take it.
And “simply”? If there was anything simple about them, they would have been eliminated or controlled long ago. I would let an epidemiologist or biostatistician get away with “simply” because it might be (but rarely is) simple for them, but I don’t think you’re either of those and it’s a good bet that none of them are producing those newsletters.
You’re going to have to do better than bald assertion.
There is a vaccine that prevents autism. It’s the rubella vaccine. It prevents one specific cause of autism (prenatal rubella exposure).
Next!
You’ll be having a decent citation or 2 to back up that claim about bairns with autism living in houses with 20x the exposure to EMF?
Because that certainly does not tie with my clinical experience…
I was enjoying my vacation, alas, more of my wisdom appears to be requested here. So I will do my best to connect the dots for you Murmur.
I couldnt remember wwho made that claim so I looked up autism and EMF and found it was most likely Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD
http://www.earthcalm.com/emf-radiation-cause-of-autism
https://www.defendershield.com/link-between-autism-emf-radiation/
I first thought it was Mark Hyman, MD, but he made a different claim I remember. You see theres a blood marker for autism, thats also approved for use as a preservative in bread. How creepy.
Now Klinghardt is also in Sayer Ji’s summit
http://the5gsummit.com/
Whats interesting about the EMF autism connection is that vaccines are suggested as co-contributor, in other words the current model where we test each thing in unison, may be severely flawed, and its the cocktail-effect that matters. Although it does appear EMF is more important for autism. That makes logical sense because EMFs are 24/7 and vaccines once in-a-lifetime.
Plus science has recently uncovered that the microbiome (which creates 90% of neurotransmitters) is part of the immune system, just like mitochondria (which evolved from bacteria). We are also still discovering other new parts of the immune system, like the glymphatic system, so if vaccines cause harm, we should find some effects in the newly discovered parts (so there is possible mechanisms for harm from anything mentioned here). The problem, is that whenever new tech is introduced, we simply dont, we only test what we know to test. Considering the effects of EMFs on bacteria and fungi, we should be more aware.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-10-19-breaking-news-about-cancer-bacterial-sensitivity-and-emf-pollution.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-fungi-grow/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Electromagnetics/comments/5l4cps/wiki_fungus_mycotoxins_emf_causes_fungus_to/
Also lets remember that the gut not only has a microbiome, but also a virome and fungome which are all balanced if the gut is healthy, and that autistics have abnormal gut flora. When you connect the dots its truly suspicious. Especially because glyphosate is also patented as an antibiotic. Add up all the toxins and what do you get? Maybe autism?
Although right now the 5G apocalypse is the biggest threat to humanity, because it is introduced with zero research on health effects.
I also should comment on what Dangerous Bacon said
Q-Ball: “Feeling right truly is one of the strongest emotions in the world.”
But it doesn’t compare to actually being right.
Because it proves my pre-existing beliefs that even a rational genius like Bacon is just a slave to his emotions. He linked one article about top profit margins around 20% which isnt even the top result and from 2015, I could easily find this one from 2016, that lists Pharma as no.1 with a profit margin of a whopping 30%!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/12/21/the-most-profitable-industries-in-2016/#69329ab15716
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
Now profit margins are a moving target. and Elsevier appears worst of all with 40%+ profit margin, but I enjoy knowing that Dangerous Bacon is a flawed human being just like me, and also a potential cherrypicker. Alas we must not blame Bacon, for it appears scientists in general are not very rational when reading this quote from the Elsevier link.
“What other industry receives its raw materials from its customers, gets those same customers to carry out the quality control of those materials, and then sells the same materials back to the customers at a vastly inflated price?”
And finally in reply to Dave
You’re going to have to do better than bald assertion.
Ofcourse I was talking about diabetes type 2
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/healthy-lifestyle-can-prevent-diabetes-and-even-reverse-it-2018090514698
and
and cancer is obviously a lifestyle disease if thats 90% associated. Why decide its nature on the 10%? Makes no sense
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/
https://anonhq.com/90-of-cancers-caused-by-lifestyle-not-by-bad-luck-or-genes/
reversal of alzheimer
https://mybiohack.com/blog/dale-bredesen-protocol-recode-alzheimers-mend
reversal of heart disease
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/08/medicare-now-covers-ornish-and-pritikin-treatments.html
Big Pharma is scared, that for sure. My new hypothesis is that CAM will gain marketshare over MSM, simply because its costs less and gives better results. Thats capitalism. Who cares about boring science when we can save money. Yet, I will not discount MSM, they are still the best at creating medicines that costs over a million and have no alternative. It is obviously more profitable to be a big pharma shill than a supplement marketer shill.
https://www.nbc12.com/2019/07/30/insurance-denies-child-million-drug/
What that means for vaccines I dont know. It could be that it gets lumped into MSM and thus also loses marketshare.
Another possibility is that MSM coopts/steals non-patentable lifestyle medicine (keep in mind currently <5% of research money goes to that vs patentable chemicals, so the big gains are yet to come in a few decades) to protects its marketshare, but I wonder if thats a victory for MSM, or for CAM because they promoted it first. In any case a victory for the consumer.
I must wonder about the fate of certain posts on blog like these that do not age well. For example this one
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-health-benefits-from-organic-food/
which is then made obsolete by new research
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/well/eat/can-eating-organic-food-lower-your-cancer-risk.html
This should really be the last post for now. Though I enjoy teaching, especially avant-garde novel science like these, I must keep the quality of my posts high, quality over quantity. I hope I made people on here think a little bit, after all, my posts are specifically constructed to leave every reader with a good feeling afterwards. After all, its all emotion.
And at the end of the day Christopher, the ‘awesome’ product that you’re peddling is so ‘awesome’ that not even its manufacturers will stand behind it. Nor do you guys have faith that it wil survive the free market since now you’re lobbying the government to force it on the public. Christopher, at this time in our proceedings I really think you’ve reached the stage where I must say, ‘sit down big fella — you’re making a fool of yourself.’
How Greg2 creates an online post:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmNeO63xCnU&w=740&h=555%5D
I sincerely doubt the fool being made is Dr. Hickie. You made a claim, but you have failed to respond to my query for you to provide evidence for that claim. This is the sixth time:
Greg: “Ok ok — I also blame Pan for fathering legislations that en masse will vaporize kids’ brains..”
Citation needed. Do tell us exactly how any MMR vaccine used in North America causes more harm than measles. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that shows the vaccine causes more encephalitis than an actual measles infection (which is about one melted brain from encephalitis out of a thousand cases of actually getting measles).
No product would survive lies you peddle. Starting with claim that everybody, actually, should have every VPD known to man. Some people would believe Big Lie.
Gregger, do you really believe that “the ‘awesome’ product that you’re peddling is so ‘awesome’ that not even its manufacturers will stand behind it.” If you want to look at the profiteers who are responsible for that situation, they are called “lawyers”.
When a self-proclaimed psychic can win a million dollar judgment because a CAT scan caused her to lose her psychic powers, then lawsuits, even the ones that never get within miles of a courtroom, can turn into a big problem.
“I think …”
Not well.
“… Ive contributed enough nuggets”
Why yes. I’ve seen many deer contribute such nuggets.
“Find a cure for autism (How about a vaccine for autism, is that possible? You guys should work a bit harder on this, honestly, and stop wasting time in a circle-jerk on this blog)”
Which kind of autism? Be specific, it is not just one syndrome, but hundreds. Here is a list of known genes: https://gene.sfari.org/database/human-gene/
Here is a more helpful website: https://sparkforautism.org/discover/
You are just like the wankers who whine for A cure for cancer, without realizing it is just a name for hundreds of different disorders. Some of them like cervical cancer and liver cancer are caused by viral infections.
Many autistic people consider a search for a “cure” a message of violence against them. I’m all for improving the quality of life of autistic people as autistic people, but really money is better spent on accommodations and social supports, not a “cure.”
Indeed. The most profound accommodations for my oldest is to just listen to him. He takes longer to complete a sentence, but he only speaks when he has something to say. Be patient.
Terry, autism is considered a disability along with Down’s syndrome,, Spina bifida, Dementia, alzheimer, blindness, cystic fibrosis, and so on. Terry, finish this statement — Scientists believe that some day they will have a cure for (blank). For the ‘blank’ Terry insert those other aforementioned disabilities but leave autism for last. Now why oh why is autism the only disability that it’s taboo to speak of a cure for it? Hhhmmnn!
Yes. Yes we do. And thank you for writing this.
Both Down syndrome, autism are a number of other developmental disability whose etiology affect how the brain is built contrary to the other like dementia or Alzheimer which affect brain functions and thus, how the brain is built affect the personality, the perceptions, the consciousness and the inherent disability is created primarily via social interaction.
The correct fix is to accommodate which expand the world’s view instead of trying to fix the brain construct. LGBTQ are similarly socially disabled and the general population is not intend on fixing them but accommodating them.
Of course, it’s much easier to blame vaccines but that come along with a closed mind’s world view and antiquated thinking.
Alain
Greg, if you want people to take you seriously, try spelling their name correctly. There are actually many ways to define “disability.” There’s the legal definition, the concept of a medical condition, there’s framing it in terms of things people cannot do, and there’s framing it as the need for accommodations to do what they wish. There are a great number of people who see their disability in terms of the need for social accommodation, not in terms of a medical condition or what they can’t do. Deafness and Deaf culture is a great example of this. Most people with Down Syndrome have no interest in a cure. I know many wheelchair users who consider the emphasis on removing their need for their wheelchair to be at best annoying. Many of them can walk in limited amounts, but find it slow and exhausting and would much rather see better wheelchair designs and accessible buildings. Autistic people are not unique in feeling that the search of a “cure” is to make people like you comfortable, as opposed to improving their lives.
I have an autistic spectrum condition, and I say “well said” to Terrie and Chris.
Gregger, I am NOT “disabled”. I am a normal human being. My brain is structured somewhat differently and I thinks and perceive differently. The only accommodation I need is the understanding that some people are different and that’s not a tragedy or a reason to shun or abuse us. That’s been my battle; Just because I can name my difference and because some people have heard of it doesn’t make it much easier. People still respond as if I could stop being autistic if I really wanted to. If it’s anyone’s disability, it’s your disability.Yours because you put emphasis on the mirage of a cure and not enough on seeing us as we are and accepting that. There’s too much attention to making us fit in and not enough to teaching the rest of you to fit us in as we are. So, Gregger, the best I can say about your calling me disabled is “shove it.”
Now a question from a strictly biological viewpoint. By what mechanism do any of these so-called cures restructure the brain? If they do that to autistic people, will they make neurotypicals into superbrains? Or do the bleach molecules or chelating agents come equipped with some kind of sensor or tropism that causes them to home in only on the differing neurons of the brain of autistic people?
Terrie, Greg is just an AoA troll. Engaging with him is like wrestling a pig in mud.
Best just to take his most egregious statement and prove it wrong. For example, Greg seems to think disabilities will all have a cure. I have two children with a registered disability caused by a single base pair mutation in a gene on the X chromosme. There is no cure, short of rewinding the clock and correcting the mutation in the embryo with something like CRISPR technology.
Chris, let’s be blunt. When it comes to genetic issues, most of the time a “cure” means abortion or pre-screened embryos in IVF. Which is exactly why many people point to “cure” talk as a message of violence against them, across many conditions. We’ve seen it happen with Down Syndrome, and I remember when the genes for achondroplasia were identified, many people voiced a concern that the same would happen.
Q-Ball: “…big pharma has a higher profit margin than every other industry”
Sorry, you’re wrong.
“Accounting/bookkeeping firms, commercial/residential real estate leasing companies and auto rental/leasing companies lead the way when it comes to squeezing the most profit out of revenue, according to the latest ranking of most profitable industries by Sageworks, a financial information company…
Companies in these three do-it-for-you industries generate net profit margins, on average, that exceed 15%, which is more than twice the average for all industries, according to Sageworks’ financial statement analysis of privately held companies. In other words, for every dollar of sales received, these companies are producing at least 15 cents in profit.
Accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services firms generated an average net profit margin of 19.6%.”
http://forbes.com/sites/sageworks/2015/09/06/these-industries-generate-the-highest-profit-margins
Q-Ball: “Feeling right truly is one of the strongest emotions in the world.”
But it doesn’t compare to actually being right. 🙂
Check out Elsevier.
Must we? They are very expensive.
I was referring to their profit margin.
OMG. ‘A cure as a form of violence’.
Rest easy; you can’t cure brain damage. Autistic children will continue to die in their sleep from seizures, continue to be killed by law enforcement, will continue to be hit by cars when bolting into traffic, continue to elope & be found dead in rivers, lakes & even a hole dug at a construction site that filled with water after a rain.
Don’t worry; they will continue to beat their parents & siblings into a bloody pulp & continue to require institutionalization when they have done so, one too many times. They will continue to be abused & bullied by those who know they can’t tell.
Will you now rest easy by my assurance that all this will all continue to happen; in the name of neurodiversity & vaccines? You may continue to trot your token, high-functioning autistics around like little show ponies; telling them they just would’t be very special if they were not autistic.
Don’t worry all! There will be no cure. I will hang wind chimes near my head tonight before I go to sleep in the chair 10 feet from the front door. Other parents will wake at 2 am to the ominous ‘thump-bump’ of the seizures that come in the dark & yet other parents will run bewildered into the pre-dawn outdoors, through the open door their child has wandered out of.
But you? YOU may sleep tight. Goodnight!
Autism is mainly genetic and not caused by vaccines. Your belief is not a fact.
Three days. That’s how long your leaving taking lasted. Please get help. This is not healthy for you or your family.
You truly are a profoundly offensive piece of work!
Next time you do a flounce, I strongly recommend you stay gone.
Agreed.
The concept of “brain damage” is offensive as well.
Dr DG (on twitter ) says that no amount of research findings will ever convince an anti-vaxxer and he’s right:
all data is scoffed on and dismissed whilst wild, idiosyncratic theories spin.
If vaccines cause autism
— why do we see evidence of ASDs prior to “implicated” vaccines- in videos, gaze, brain waves, physiognomy?
— why do studies that “implicate” vaccines come from suspicious sources – like AJW or Dwoskin funded research?
— why do unvaccinated kids with autistic siblings still get autism ( Jain et al, 2015)?
Instead, perhaps their ideas stem from emotional needs / form a part of their identity.
Not anything resembling research or data
“Autistic children will continue to die in their sleep from seizures, continue to be killed by law enforcement, will continue to be hit by cars when bolting into traffic, continue to elope & be found dead in rivers, lakes & even a hole dug at a construction site that filled with water after a rain…Don’t worry; they will continue to beat their parents & siblings into a bloody pulp”
A child doesn’t have to be autistic to have those things happen; they happen with neurotypical kids too, all the time.
And, yes, given what’s being peddled today as cures, bleach enemas, chelation, chemical castration, whatever evil nonsense predatory quacks can cook up, talk of those violent acts IS a kind of violence in itself, and no, although I am “high-functioning” (and I hate that term too), I am NOT anyone’s “show pony”. Getting to the point I’m at took a lot of work and pain,virtually all of it my own, over the course of most of a lifetime.
Autism isn’t brain damage.
Terrie (sorry for misspelling your name earlier) and Chris, indeed on many fronts I take issue with the position that we should never strive to improve on disabilities and not even search for cures even if they might be possible. Here is my most concise argument. Talk of acommodating and accepting disabilities doesn’t tell the whole story. What it doesn’t tell you is we are asking ‘normal’ to cede or sacrifice its rights.
Take autism for example and Christine who has a seriously disabled son. What about Christine and her ‘neurotypical’ rights? What about her right not to have someone in her house that continually turns it upside down, or maybe physically abuse her? What about her right to live out her old age in peace and not be saddled with caring for her extremely dependent autistic son?
Of course things are what they are and there is no cure for her son’s autism, so she has no choice but to look after him. She has no choice but to sacrifice and cede her neurotypical rights. Still, for those ‘neurodiversity’ clowns calling for no cures for disabilities and even when they are possible will you not also concede that your platform as a serious problem — it is inherently hostile to the rights of ‘normal’ and even it is quite natural and there can be no other way? WIll you not concede that your platform is naturally intolerant?
Blacks and Whites and Straights and Gays can live together without either parties asking the other to ‘accomodate’ or cede their rights. Not so with disabilities.
Christine, my post is about seeing how neurodicersity is discriminatory or hostile to ‘normal’ but your last one also does an excellent job of highlighting just how neurodiversity is also hazardous to disabilities.
Greg2,
Believe me; I understand what you meant. I don’t blame high-functioning autistics for wanting, for once in their lives; to feel like they are special. To feel like they belong. I am ASD myself & have spent my whole life feeling as though I were always on the outside; looking in.
This is what to me makes the neurodiversity movement particularly cruel; the exploitation of vulnerable young, HF-ASD adults, unknowingly drafted into portraying the delightfully spectrummy side of Autism, probably so that people won’t ‘fear’ autism & decide that ‘autism is better than measles’ or some other ridiculous meme.
Neurodiversity is dangerous in ignoring a disability that cuts one’s life expectancy in half but you are also correct that I have lost my rights. For children with my son’s level of impairment; the cost today if all of their parents were to die/give up; would be $400-$600/per DAY, PER CHILD; to care for.
The amount of uncompensated, family caregiving services being willingly donated is well beyond any ‘loss of rights’ but actually more akin to human trafficking.
My son’s sacrifice, as well as that of all those other children, in the name of ‘herd immunity’ should have elevated his status to that of a war hero. I am the mother of a son who came home from the front lines of the ‘war against VPD’s’ permanently disabled. I am the mother of a daughter who came home from that same war in a coffin.
Now they want me to shut up & go away; go amuse myself by finding a way to ‘accommodate’ my 6’3″ son’s autistic perseveration on violence? Sometimes the clock ‘tells’ him to punch me. The other day in the car he watched the clock roll over & with each minutes change; he threw a punch. It was 45 minute long drive …
Accommodate with what? Bear spray? Once after having a cold that made him cough & sneeze every few minutes; he perseverated on coughing. He made himself cough every two minutes for SIX MONTHS straight. It would only stop when he fell asleep. He would cough until he induced bronchospasms & he completely lost his voice. You can’t accommodate perseverations. The doctors didn’t have a word of advice. It continued until school let out for the summer, which changed his daily routine & the coughing suddenly ended.
Waiting in the wings are several proposals on immunomodulatory therapeutics but nobody wants to study them because autism as immune-mediated is ‘controversial’. Thanks a lot; SBM.
Christine,
When, where, why, how, did your son learn to punch you?
Especially why?
Alain
” I don’t blame high-functioning autistics for wanting, for once in their lives; to feel like they are special. To feel like they belong. I am ASD myself & have spent my whole life feeling as though I were always on the outside; looking in.”
You almost had it right, but I’ve never particularly wanted to feel like I am special. I have only wanted to be seen as an everyday human being and not as some kind of aberrant or abnormal or not-quite-human thing, or as someone or something to be bullied, mocked, or taken advantage of. For want of a better term, I wanted to feel normal.
And I am normal. I’m a different kind of normal, but I am normal. My problem is not so much my so-called disability as it is the disability of others – a moral disability.
As you are on the spectrum yourself, I expect that you will understand what I am saying.
Five centuries ago, Shakespeare gave us Shylock’s speech, and the meaning is universal, not limited to Jews alone; you can substitute nearly any kind of person and it will still have the same meaning.
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”
And that proves my point that your demands for a “cure” are about your comfort. not improving the lives of people with disabilities. Also, please explain how people like Christine would not benefit from improved accomodations and social support for people with disabilities.
I was just wondering about your last point. Improving accommodations, support and acceptance and understanding of people with autism (and their families) would help families not get to a situation where memebers beat up other members, will help the police not shoot people with autism. If you want to solve those problems, blaming vaccines (wrongly) isn’t the place to focus your energies.
And describing autism as brain damage seems to come directly from the anti-vaccine vocabulary.
Terrie, I see rather than acknowledging the merits of my argument and the inconvenient reality that caring and supporting disabilities often ivolves carers (often neurotypical people) giving up fundamental rights, you would rather disingenuously invoke guilt. Terrie, you and your neurodiversity friends are not just asking individuals to give up ‘comforts’ but fundamental rights! This fact is irrelevant to how people feel about the request
Greg, I’ll address your argument when you address mine. How would caretakers for disabled people with high support needs, such as Christine, not benefit from improved accomodations and social support systems for people with disabilities?
Which are? I certainly hope that it’s not more incoherent blab about “inherent[] hostil[ity] to the rights of ‘normal’, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.
No Greg. We’re asking for changes to be made to make things easier for autistics.
That’s neither concise nor an argument. It is somewhat deranged in terms of the mixture of person and number, though, so hooray for declarations of declamation.
So it is all about you, Greg?
Figures.
Gregger, you are way off the mark. I am a parent, and I would like to know, that seeing as I have an autism spectrum condition, what “neurotypical rights” I would have to give up if my child had a condition that required intensive involvement in his care? Some children have cancer. Some have cystic fibrosis. Some have AIDS. Sometimes to deal with those situations, parents have to give up careers, plans, or even their native country (See latest Trumpian evil: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/754634022/trump-administration-ends-protection-for-migrants-medical-care). They may have to give up vacations, meals out, movies, and much else. It has nothing to do with neurodiversity. It has everything to do with medical care in the US being divvied up among private for-profit agencies, generally underfunded nonprofits, underfunded governmental, agencies, and religious institutions usually with an agenda. To care for sick children, there should be no reason to pass the can around the movie theatre. In some of the countries with (Oh, the horror!) public-provided health care, physicians can order a vacation at the beach to aid in their patients’ recoveries.
Christine has had a heartbreaking burden placed on her shoulders, and I am not going to tell her how to handle it. Others can point her towards whatever appropriate help may be available. There are plenty of not-autistic children who are as hard to handle or even worse. Furthermore, there is nothing in autism that precludes any other kind of psychopathology. While not as extreme as Christine’s situation, being autistic and having rapid-cycling Type II bipolar disorder has not been a picnic in the park for me or the people around me.
This story is not about vaccines; it is about the pathetically disorganized state of health care and social services in the US.
Yes, I agree that health care and social services are lacking. But they do exist, and it does not help if you refuse to use them.
We have mountains of high quality studies looking for a link between vaccination and autism, and scientists haven’t found one. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that vaccines do not cause autism
What we have, is a consensus that Autism is a multifactorial genetic condition. And mountains of studies that have never isolated a genetically at-risk cohort & conducted an epidemiological study of the outcome of vaccines; in that ‘at-risk’ cohort.
So what we basically have, is a mountain of flawed epidemiology. Unless autism isn’t genetic; which would be a ridiculous assertion to make.
When you can show me the studies that say that vaccines do not cause autism in that genetically at risk cohort, versus the studies that dilute their groups; then it will look like you care about making sure vaccines are safe.
You have already deemed that a saline-placebo study would be ‘unethical’. That establishing pre-immunization, baseline cytokine profiles would be ‘too hard’. Now what’s your excuse for this study idea?
You don’t want to know? You want to redefine science to say that ‘studies that can’t find vaccines as causative for autism are the new gold-standard?
What’s your experimental design, and what would it quantitatively yield? How would it differ, say, from the “natural experiment” that is ring vaccination with VSV-EBOV?
@ Dorit,
And describing autism as brain damage seems to come directly from the anti-vaccine vocabulary
(sigh …) Dorit, the disruption of the microglial activity in the brain that begins at roughly age 2, causes synaptic density to form, that will, by age 5; have caused the brain to increase in volume by 5-10%. Irreversible, anatomical changes in the brain, not due to normal growth & development … IS, literally; brain damage.
But yes, I agree about your point about law enforcement. There is training available to departments regarding citizens with developmental disabilities but it’s considered ‘optional’. It really should be mandatory; it focuses on more than just officer interaction but also how to respond to missing child/vulnerable adult calls as well.
For instance, the order of response for a missing autistic adolescent is almost completely backwards from the response used for a neurotypical adolescent. A typical child you check friends houses & local convenience stores first. For an autistic child you check nearby bodies of water first … stores last.
Terrie, you are invoking a strawman. Of course they would benefit from improved supports, but if there was a cure for autism that would be most beneficial for future Christine’s.
Now answer my question: Isn’t the neurodiversity mantra fatally contradictory in that it is calling for equal acceptance for all neurological ‘differences’, yet one is also expected to cede their rights to ‘accomodate’ another?
Well, first you have to recognize that “fundamental rights,” the phrase you used earlier, is not a universally defined term. But, I’m going to assume you’re in the US, where fundamental rights means those considered by the Supreme Court to require a high level of protection from government encroachment. However, it is also recognized that any and all rights are not without limit, so if a law is able to pass a high level of scrutiny, it is considered to be constitutional.
Accomodations can be viewed as either a legal issue or a social one. Since you are invoking the legal concepts of rights, I will assume you are speaking in terms of the legal issue of accomodation. There are several laws which apply here, including the ADA and IDEA, among others, all of which establish the right of individuals to have access to accomodations within public programs, commercial facilities and other legal entities that are not natural persons.
As neurodiversity is not a government law, nor are accomodations a legal burden placed on individuals, when it comes to the question “Does neurodiversity impinge on people’s fundemental rights by forcing them to accommodate people with disabilities?” the answer is no, because all you’ve done is stringe a bunch of unrelated concepts together in a meaningless way.
If this is Gerg reprise, he’s Canadian in addition to not being worth the time of day. Wait for the “tee hee hee.”
Narad, based on his response below, he’s a Humpty Dumpty style troll. (“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”) “Oh, I said rights, but I didn’t actually mean rights.” Just another eugenicist who will rewrite the meaning of that term in order to deny they’re a eugenicist.
“When you can show me the studies that say that vaccines do not cause autism in that genetically at risk cohort, versus the studies that dilute their groups; then it will look like you care about making sure vaccines are safe.”
Once again: given the reported frequency of autism spectrum disorders in the population, there is no chance of missing them in large-scale studies despite groups supposedly being “diluted”.
You can’t argue on the one hand that autism is so common that it’s an “epidemic”, and at the same time claim it’s so rare that epidemiologic studies are missing it.
Unless of course you’re an antivaxer, for whom all science that doesn’t confirm your biases is fatally flawed and common sense has been discarded.
Well, it would have to be pretty rare indeed since problems with the earlier rotavirus vaccine and GBS with H1N1 were found,
It would be so vanishingly small that it disappeared?
@ Denice,
it would have to be pretty rare indeed since problems with the earlier rotavirus vaccine and GBS with H1N1 were found
Denice, GBS is mostly experienced by adults … who do not lose their words. They are able to complain & be heard.
The rotavirus vaccie caused Intussusception; easily & immediately visualized with imaging studies. Autism starts with an occult encephalopathy & initiates a slow regression; in children who cannot tell us how they feel.
But children are diagnosed with autism. Autism is not missed. Studies just don’t show the link to vaccines you want to believe in.
We are back to the reality in which you are trying to claim that something a lot more common than GBS mand intussusception – something that is diagnosed – was not linked to vaccines in very large studies, when more rare things were linked.
Doesn’t hold.
Autism starts with an occult encephalopathy
I blame the Rosicrucians.
Hey, back when they had an outpost on campus,* their book box on the sidewalk provided me with my copies of The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew and The Begatting of the President, the latter memorialized in spoken word by Orson Welles.
*Now Chabad, something else for a while.
@ DB,
given the reported frequency of autism spectrum disorders in the population, there is no chance of missing them in large-scale studies
You’re guessing …
If autism is genetic; the epidemiology of vaccines with autism needs to be assessed in those genetically at-risk for autism. This seems rather basic to me.
Sort of like my other idea when I noticed no study ever included baseline, pre-immunization cytokine profiles; to see if autistics were actually abnormal before immunization or not. You know; since we know that they are abnormal afterwards.
It seems like there is a big chunk of fairly preliminary data missing, that’s all.
If vaccines were linked to autism – whether because of something genetic or not – large studies should have picked up that link.
They didn’t.
There are autism sibling studies:
Jain A, Marshall J, Buikema A, Bancroft T, Kelly JP, Newschaffer CJ. Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism. JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534–1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077
This is about vaccination of people who possibly have autism genes.
It is always vaccines in general. But vaccines have very different cytokine profiles:
Inna G.Ovsyannikova, Karlene C.Reid, Robert M.Jacobson, Ann L.Oberg, George G.Klee, Gregory A.Poland
Cytokine production patterns and antibody response to measles vaccine
Vaccine Volume 21, Issues 25–26, 8 September 2003, Pages 3946-3953
“Overall analysis of cytokines in supernatants from PBMC showed that a predominant Th1 cytokine pattern occurs after the second dose of measles immunization. However, plasma levels of Th1 cytokines (IFN-γ, sIL-2R and TNF-α) were preferentially activated by measles virus after the first dose of measles vaccination. ”
Sarah C. Higgins, Andrew G. Jarnicki, Ed C. Lavelle and Kingston H. G. Mills
TLR4 Mediates Vaccine-Induced Protective Cellular Immunity to Bordetella pertussis: Role of IL-17-Producing T Cells
J Immunol December 1, 2006, 177 (11) 7980-7989; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4049/jim
“Whole cell pertussis vaccines (Pw) induce Th1 responses and protect against Bordetella pertussis infection, whereas pertussis acellular vaccines (Pa) induce Ab and Th2-biased responses and also protect against severe disease. “
That’s not what we were discussing, Terrie! I see you refuse to cease with your diversions and strawmen.
Of course it is legally permissable to infringe on rights in accommodating disabilities. Indeed hav
Ing to accommodate a severely affected autistic child will likely infringe on a mother’s Constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but, as you mentioned, special limits on rights are accepted.
The specific issue that we were discussing instead is whether there was an inherent contradiction in neurodiversity’s mantra. They call for equal acceptance for all neurological differences (no infringement), yet special accommodations for certain neurological differences (infringement). Again Terrie, please state whether you feel this is a contradiction or not, and why.
You do realize that you are semiliterate as well as being unable to correctly source the products of your bottom-shelf head, right?
Infringement and accommodations are both a legal concept, while equal acceptance is not. You can’t have a contradiction between irrealtive concepts.Come back when you’re ready to stop comparing apple’s to the complete works of Proust.
More diversions. What does legality have to do with determining whether two simple arguments are contradictory or not. On one hand there is talk of autistic and neurotypical being equals, and on the other there is calls for special accommodations for autistic individuals.
SIGH
Do you understand now, Greg?
Julian, or the fact that my SiL is 5’1″. There are actually people who think people of her height should be seen as having a medical condition to be treated, but I think that’s silly and think there’s nothing wrong with her height, even while I bought a stepstool when she first visited me, because she can’t reach some of the shelves in my kitchen. Almost as if the two thing had nothing to do with each other….
Greg2
There is no “constitutional right” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That phrase comes from the Declaration of Independence, which is not part of the constitution.
Greg2′
I’d like to invite anybody who is encouraging ‘acceptance & accommodation’ to ask the mother of the 6 year-old child my son punched in July because he was whistling; how she feels about further accommodating my son.
She was so sweet & said ‘It’s okay; it’s not his fault’ & she would be right; it was MY fault. I knew he was agitated. I should have stayed home. But I was picking up more paper plates & napkins, on the way to my twins’ graduation party that I was hosting.
There are no interventions that can make the frequency & pitch of the human whistle less painful to his hypersensitive ears. Headphones worked at age 8. At age 15; not so much.
No interventions that would have given me the superhuman strength needed to restrain him. The last time I was able to do that was in December of 2017, when I held him in a headlock to protect a random whistler in a grocery store. Came home & I took an uppercut under the chin which snapped my teeth onto my own tongue & caused profuse bleeding.
I tried, though; while he drug me through two checkout lanes, screaming ‘Run! Whoever is whistling; run!’
He’s been in physical, occupational, behavioral & speech therapy since he was 3 years old & nothing yet has given him the tools with which to say; ‘That hurts my ears; please stop whistling’ Due to his auditory acuity; he will almost always hear it first. I can’t always divert. What if it’s not a six-year old the next time? You could be built like a Sasquatch; he can’t discriminate.
So what is the answer? Respite care for him so that I can leave him behind & attempt a few normal functioning days a month? Somehow that lacks that certain ring for ‘acceptance & accommodation’. Sounds more like segregation & isolation.
The answer; is for ME to also further retreat from family & function. To keep my ‘walking not talking’ advertisement for not vaccinating; from disturbing your peace. If anyone here would like to require even more from that little boys mother; feel free. I will not. My heart breaks for her sweet boy & for my sweet boy, too. Shame on anyone who would want to perpetuate this any further.
@ Narad,
Uh; are you trying to get me killed? Although I did wait to play that until after I put him on the school bus this morning, it wouldn’t have worked.
Whistling that is electronically filtered doesn’t provoke him. He calls it ‘fake whistling’. Something about the ‘processed’ pitch, I dunno. Alain might. What it does do, is to inspire others to whistle. So do Christmas carols.
Someone needs to take a giant step outside her mind!
FWIW, I found this article from the Times a couple days ago to be very interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-streaming-music.html?fbclid=IwAR3gnSm42KjMpQjOz9SETh8EX9Qu2-1qt2VRwsoGtZ27m4AXDiJcuCqvcCA
The last half has some interesting insight into people dealing with other non-neurotypical conditions such as CP. There is also an interesting form of music therapy for children with auditory processing issues. It’s just an n=1 case, but at least the results were very good.
Earle Hagen actually came to my high school for a performance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jZYlY_8zi8k
Christine,
https://www.bose.ca/en_ca/products/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/noise-cancelling-headphones-700.html#v=noise_cancelling_headphones_700_black
Might be a solution for your son.
Alain
Christine,
Also, how about both you & your son learn sign language too?
That way, no need to remove the earphones while trying to speak to him.
Alain
“I’d like to invite anybody who is encouraging ‘acceptance & accommodation’ to ask the mother of the 6 year-old child my son punched in July because he was whistling; how she feels about further accommodating my son.’
It’s sounds as if you’re suggesting that only children with autism punch other children for odd (or no) reasons. Ashamed of it though I am as an adult, when I was about five or six, I punched the neighbor kid in the stomach. Just to see what would happen. I am neurotypical and didn’t grow up to be a serial killer. (The neighbor kid and I continued to be friends and even dated briefly in high school.)
.
Do you understand now, Greg?
Still no, Juian. Quadriplegic are not considered equal to able bodied individuals in terms of physical capabilities. Autistic individuals on the other hand are considered just neurologically ‘different’ than neurotypicals but equal in terms of neurological or cognitive capabilities, yet there is still the call for special accommodations for them.
@ Christine
Yeah, I hear your frustration at the drug pushers nonsense. Yeah — if we just think a little more creatively and work a little harder autism would be no.problem
@ Dorit,
If vaccines were linked to autism – whether because of something genetic or not – large studies should have picked up that link
No evidence because it has not been studied is not science based. Until there is scientific evidence; nobody should be compulsed to vaccinate. Period.
I understand that your posts are a form of “therapy” for you – that this is much easier than dealing with what is obviously a very difficult situation.
Unfortunately, living in your own fantasy world, where you’ve “solved” all of the problems you’re believe you are faced with is only a short term solution. Obviously, you require substantial assistance – and we live in a country where we’ve made the conscious decision to let the market decide access to healthcare.
In the past, your son would have been institutionalized – it was just the way things were done. Those institutions really don’t exist anymore, so you’re left trying to care for him on your own. And now you want someone to blame.
Blaming vaccines is easy – since you have a ready-made anti-vax echo chamber to back up your own biased opinions.
But seriously, get offline and get some real assistance – because I don’t see this trending well or ending well.
@ Lawrence,
get offline and get some real assistance
You mean you are uncomfortable with my showing you ‘real’ autism? The kind that should be avoided at all costs? You prefer to nurture images of high-functioning savants & their spectrummy neurodiversity?
You would prefer to convey to parents that autism isn’t all that bad & maybe; you’ll wind up with a interesting novelty child, when the reality is much more likely that they would wind up right where I am?
Prevent this. Do not accommodate this: Seizures that can kill, elopement that kills (the LEADING cause of death for children with autism, btw) & autistics that kill are not comfy subjects & if you are bothered by this, then I’m doing my job quite well, thank you.
@ Lawrence:
Right. Although I know that commenters here have only excellent motives in responding- including educating other readers- we can’t accomplish anything with Christine. She refuses SB information as well as suggestions about getting help. If she is so isolated from adult contact there are more efficacious ways to engage people.
What you said about institutions is correct: if someone is indeed so out of control that it takes a team of caretakers to control him- well, perhaps sometimes institutions or medications are called for.
She blames vaccine supporters for her woes: we are complicit. WE are the problem.
Yet she doesn’t take action herself: Getting help for herself or her son. She spends her time lecturing commenters about things that they studied, so she can “prove” them all wrong
I notice that Chris, Orac, Rene and a few others have not responded to her because they realise it will do no good
I think that that’s the right idea.
Denise, I stopped responding, because at this point, her repeated posting here is a type of pyschological self-harm. I’m not going to enable that.
While I fully support the end of institutions, the sad fact is that we as a society are failing in providing the needed alternatives. High levels of support services and community-based living situations would go a long, long way, but people don’t want to pay for them. They complain about how such things as an imposition on them. (As we’ve seen from some people here). A friend of the family is really struggling to find an appropriate setting that takes medicare for her adult son with multiple disabilites. She is recently divorced and, combined with cuts in PCA hours, she can no longer care for him at home. And you have anti-vaxxers pushing wasting money on a “cure” as a solution for these issues. And refusing to admit that what that too often means is finding the genetics and selective abortion.
@Denise – agreed. I was merely pointing out that her posts are a form of “escapism.” And unfortunately, ignoring what is a very traumatic home situation isn’t going to help her or her son. In fact, I have a feeling that this will end badly, because she appears to be completely unable or at least unwilling to take steps or ask for help.
It’s easier for her, as you pointed out, to make us the bad guys here.
And no, you don’t make me uncomfortable – not in the least.
One of my nearest and dearest friends has to visit her son in the hospital every single day – his birth defects were so severe that he will never leave the hospital, eat solid food, speak or have any meaningful life whatsoever. He will probably die before the age of 15, but his mother and father are by his side each and every day.
They asked for help & received it.
You, on the other hand, don’t seem interested.
@Lawrence, man, that’s tough. I know in the case of our family friend, she’s struggled with what the right thing to do is. Many of the parents of kids in her son’s class in high school encouraged her to consider programs and placements years ago, as he approached graduation age, on the grounds that despite his disabilities (both intellectual and physical), he’s not a child and deserves that maximum independance his conditions allow. (Also to maximize the time to find the right options for him). But because his physical condition is precarious (he was not expected to make it to age 5, and she’s been prepped for his not surviving complications several times), she doesn’t want to lose out on time with him, even while admitting the other parents aren’t wrong. Antivaxxers want simple, universal answers. Real life doesn’t work like that.
@Terrie – yes, and what makes it worse is that he was a twin. His sister is absolutely fine and great (and loves her brother with all of her heart). Being a child, she doesn’t quite understand – though she knows that her brother isn’t ever going to come home.
@ Aarno,
Thank you.
‘Cytokine production patterns and antibody response to measles vaccine’: No baseline, pre-immunization cytokine profiles & it was not an autism study.
‘TLR4 Mediates Vaccine-Induced Protective Cellular Immunity to Bordetella pertussis: Role of IL-17-Producing T Cells’: No baseline, pre-immunization cytokine profiles & it was not an autism study.
Obviously, vaccination will induce a cytokine response, as both studies found. People with autism will have a statistically significant, abnormal cytokine profile anyway. What I want to know, is if they were ‘born that way’ or did the abnormality occur after immunization?
That could ONLY be discovered with baseline profiles.
If two vaccines have different cytokine profiles, both profiles cannot be similar that one finds in some autistic people. Actually. all profiles I cited are very non-autistic, if this world is allowed.
And did not comment the sibling study, which is very relevant.
Too funny.
You have inadequate science where there is a HUGE chunk of preliminary data missing:
Multiple studies showing abnormal cytokine profiles in people with autism; an immune-mediated, multifactorial genetic disorder … And NO study done, that has ever bothered to establish the baseline cytokine profiles.
Referring to autism as genetic & then giving me links to chromosomal or other genetic disorders with ‘autistic-like’ behaviors.
Oh & let’s not forget; there are NO studies done; regarding autism, vaccines & that genetically at-risk cohort.
It sort of looks like somebody found ONE WAY to conduct a study that could obscure vaccines as causative for autism & then there was a mad rush to generate a shit-ton of similar studies that could be pointed to as the ‘mountain of high-quality research’, denying autism’s relationship to vaccines.
An epic joke that NOBODY here can even recognize; let alone admit to.
And now; you want to promote ‘acceptance’ of a disability that could be prevented. A disability that cuts a person’s life expectancy in half. Tragic accidental deaths, broken families, poverty … Hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed.
And I … am the pathological one? You know; I don’t know if I believe in a ‘God’ or not but if I were you; I sure wouldn’t want to.
Any number of people has cited this any number of times:
Jain A, Marshall J, Buikema A, Bancroft T, Kelly JP, Newschaffer CJ. Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism. JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534–1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077
It is certainly a study of a genetically at risk population.
My worry is that some quack will sell you immunotherapy. It would be useless, and potentially dangerous.
@ Aarno,
a study of a genetically at risk population
Siblings can vary greatly in their genetic status. Two of my adult full-bio sibling kids have done DNA analysis & only one of them came up with an astronomical amount of Neanderthal DNA (89th percentile of all humans ever tested); the other did not. Seven family members from three generations on both my mom & dad’s side tested & I am the ONLY one to show Sardinian & Japanese heritage.
I am the first in 5 generations that was born Rh negative; biologically related people can have widely varied genotypes. If they did not isolate by genotype; it was a shot in the dark.
I’m aware of the dangerous ‘treatments’ for ASD that are not science-based & I have zero interest in subjecting my son to such lunacy. The therapeutics I mentioned are only proposals at this time & cannot proceed to development due to their inconvenient association with immune-mediation.
Christine, maybe it would help to envisage science as the proverbial iceberg. Most of it unseen and unknown by you but supporting the tiny amount you can see. What you know isnt the iceberg, its a second hand description of the visible portion of the iceberg by someone who’s seen an icecube and extrapolated.
Greg: The maturity and sense of compassion that you won’t gain from your endeavours in med school but from looking your own flesh and blood in the eyes.
Says the man who’s so immature he made up a kid to impress people on an internet site. And why do you assume the mother is the only one to take care of a kid? Does autism render fathers incompetent or is that just you oinking?
Christine: Once again TAKE A VACATION FROM YOUR SON. Figure out some respite care, make your son’s siblings and his father step up , because this can’t end well. It’s like Alex Spourdalakis all over again. This isn’t anything like a family relationship.
Sixteen-year-old Ben Cohen spent 304 days in the ER of Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo. His room was retrofitted so the staff could view him through a windowpane and pass a tray of food through a slot in a locked door
In New Hampshire this summer, 22-year-old Alex Sanok spent a month in Exeter Hospital after he became violent at home, breaking windows and hurling objects at walls
Tyler Stolz, a 26-year-old woman with autism and a seizure disorder, was stabilized after a few weeks in a Sacramento hospital, yet she remained there 10 months, according to Disability Rights California, an advocacy group that described her case in its 2015 annual report
The court filing noted that Stolz “previously harmed hospital staff” and that “a security officer is posted to the patient’s room 24/7
James Cordone, 11, spent seven weeks in a Buffalo, N.Y., children’s hospital in a tent-like bed, with a hospital receptionist or instrument sterilization tech in his room at all times
https://khn.org/news/for-thousands-of-autistic-teens-hospital-ers-serve-as-home/
This … is the ‘help’ you wish for me to receive for my son?
I will reiterate – this “escapism” won’t end well. You are literally tilting at windmills, instead of productive activities to both help yourself and your son.
No. This: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/programs/JFKPartners/clinicalservices/Pages/clinicalservices.aspx
And this: https://thearcofco.org/about/the-arc-chapters/
Plus this: https://www.abilityconnectioncolorado.org/p2p-co/resource-storeroom/disabilities/division-of-intellectual-developmental-disabilities/
And this: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdhs/find-behavioral-health-help
” But it’s worse in 2019, as laws are being passed that prevent healthy kids from attending school by the removal of vaccination exemptions. ” I can’t find the link now, but the unvaccinated teenager in NY who sued when his school district made him stay home during a chickenpox outbreak has come down with…the chickenpox.
Kentucky. See; https://wgntv.com/2019/05/09/unvaccinated-kentucky-teen-who-sued-over-chickenpox-policy-now-has-the-illness/
Drug pushers, shills and astro turfers, this is to inform you that Orac has put me in automatic moderation. This could only mean that my banishment -the third!– is on the cusp. I am informing you of this in case I ‘mysteriously’ disappear, and hence depriving you of my valuable contributions to these blogs.
Well, you did violate the rules on multiple ‘nyms.
It wasn’t violating the rules. It was using ‘2’ to signify my rebirths after banishment.
@Choir
Watching you guys rip into Christine, I must ask this: How exactly is it abusing the blog, using it as therapy sessions, for Christine to report how she took some for the herd and is now up shit-creek without a paddle?
Also, along with the name calling (like this last comment) you also make outrageous claims that you refuse to support with evidence. This is the sixth time I will post this request for you support one of your claims:
Greg: “Ok ok — I also blame Pan for fathering legislations that en masse will vaporize kids’ brains..”
Citation needed. Do tell us exactly how any MMR vaccine used in North America causes more harm than measles. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that shows the vaccine causes more encephalitis than an actual measles infection (which is about one melted brain from encephalitis out of a thousand cases of actually getting measles).
Chris, although anti-vaxxers claim that they “research” everything they can’t seem to find an answer your question.
When I asked you about the “German study”, how long did it take to find? I looked for the Jain et al ( not remembering the lead author but knowing its results) : it took about 2 minutes on bing without PubMed or similar.
Unfortunately, anti-vaxxers follow their leaders and look to particular ( cherry picked ) sources and disregard all else. Sometimes I try to reconstruct where they get their ideas: it’s usually easy.
Here’s the problem that many people encounter when they try to self-educate themselves via the internet: they choose topics or instances that they like or feel answer their questions and focus upon those bits and pieces without surveying the entire area including the basics. This is unlike what universities present to students: an expert/ professor/ instructor selects material from a set of approved sources and ASSIGNS what students need to acquire first, later and last to fulfill the requirements of the course. Thus, students may be forced to read and learn material that is not interesting to them or is in some ways difficult or ungainly because it is a necessary part of the area being addressed. I recall certain issues or topics in bio/ physio/ perception/ statistics courses when students threw up their hands ( figuratively) after delving into those topics. Either because they were difficult or boring or didn’t suit their fancy( mostly, these courses were required or a less horrible choice from a set of requirements).
This model of pick-and-choose science ( Buffet style?) is that which is commonly used by woo-meisters and anti-vax leaders who lead their packs away from material that doesn’t fit their particular hobby horse or is difficult.
So they can talk about environmental insults form vaccines and ignore that which happens from infection.
BUT you KNEW that!
@ Greg,
Thanks. The idea that posting on RI is ‘therapeutic’ for me is laughable. I literally have to take deep breaths as I click on the tab.
They hate me here because I am a person with ASD who is immune (no pun intended) to their neurodiversity exploitation & many of them have gone on the record insulting me for communication errors that are due to my disability. They know that this has not been missed by the Lurkers.
They hate me because I have a valid appeal to pity; as the mother of a child who died within 24 hours of immunization.
They hate me because I refuse to hide my status as a victim of domestic violence from a child with ‘real’ autism. Again; refusing to be be exploited by the neurodiversity meme.
They hate me because I pointed out that their epidemiology is flawed; as there has never been a genotype cohort established & because I pointed out that no immune-mediation study has ever established baseline cytokine profiles. IOW; they can’t just respond to ‘trope’ & they are ill prepared to respond to the scientific evidence.
@ Chris,
When encountering the deadly bite of the rattlesnake; would you rather see the venom pool on the top of your steel-toed boot or sink into the wound from the fangs that punctured your flip-flop shod foot?
Route of transmission matters.
Christine, you are not Greg. Also, that makes absolutely no sense.
Go tell the Simons Foundation how to do research. Then go get some help, I gave you several links. We cannot help you.
Moreover, Gerg has quite the track record of expressing loathing for people such as your son. He’s not your friend; he’s his friend. It doesn’t even rise to the level of a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Christine, I doubt that anyone here actually hates you; I think that people here find you to be a Johnny One-Note (if that reference is not too out of date) and react with some mix of exasperation and annoyance. When it comes to hitting the same points over and over you are worse than I am, and that’s saying something.
I think that anyone here who has really read your situation feels some fellow-feeling for you, but there is little to nothing we can do about that through the comments section of this blog. For all I know you may be quite likable in person, but it is frustrating to many here that nothing anyone says, no matter their level or field of scientific or medical expertise, seems to make an impact. Your posts here are a perfect example of what is sometimes called butwhataboutism (I thought I made that term up, but I was wrong.).
You need to see what kind of social and medical services are available to you and then make use of them, all of them if needed. It will do you more good use your keyboard to look for solutions than to pound away on it here. If your son is a danger to himself and others, then you should not be handling him all on your own. I know none of the alternatives to that is very satisfactory, but your son has siblings, and you live in a community, and so there is an obligation on your part to get the assistance you need. You even owe it to yourself. You are not going to be the age you are forever, and your risk of harm rises apace. If going the usual route doesn’t work, I suggest getting in touch with an elected official. Constituent assistance for them is like a Milk-Bone to my dog. They will have better access and more influence than you alone can bring to bear, and you should not disdain to try it.
Your contributions are even less valuable than those of MDJ and that is laying the bar very low. And even MDJ isn’t banned, as far as I know.
Horseshit. Bannings are announced; you’re just whining.
Orac has done nothing of the sort, although you are a prime candidate for it if you get on my nerves much more. Read the rules. They basically say that this is not a democracy and I don’t care what antivax trolls think. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/commenting-policy/
Oh, dear, Gerg is making things up? Who’ve thunk it, given his sterling character?
Greg: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Christine: While I think that hospitalization is an extreme measure, it’s better than death. I just don’t see why you’re insisting on making martyrs of yourself and your son. It’s 2019, you don’t have to live like this!
The more comments I read from anti-vaxxers, the more I notice how negative they are about their kids. Based on their comments, they don’t like their kids and resent the imposition of having to parent them, and wish they didn’t have their kids. Given that there are people who feel like that about their neurotypical, abl-bodied children, it’s not shocking that the same thing happens with special needs kids. But of course that creates a certain amount of cognative dissonance. Society tells us that parenting is the greatest experience of a person’s life, and if you don’t agree you are selfish, immature and a bad person. And they know they’re not bad people.
Blaming vaccines lets them act like not only are they not bad people, but they are above average, because suddenly it’s not their kids they dislike. It’s the people who damaged their kids. They’re not resenting their lives and wishing they didn’t have their kids. They’re fighting for their kids. They’re not bad guys. They’re heroes!
No wonder it’s so hard to get through to some of them.
Terrie,
I was criticized by some here (different thread) for talking about my son in an ‘endearing’ fashion. I believe it was Denice who said ‘the violence trumps the endearing’ or something similar.
Did you miss the post where I called him my ‘sweet boy’?
My son is beautiful & perfect in my eyes; wise & profoundly, innately spiritual. His behaviors are the product of puberty + autism. I can hate that & love my son; all at the same time. I have seen him collapse, sobbing; as I was bleeding from my mouth & nose from his attack as he said ‘No! My beautiful Christine’ (he has always called me Christine; never Mom).
Do you think he enjoys this, any more than I do? This is crazy …
Then why, exactly, are you here? You’re literally posting to see yourself talk.
We don’t hate you, most of us couldn’t care less – but we do feel that you are on a self-destructive path & looking for a place to escape, so you can feel important (or just play the victim).
You are in need of serious help – if you continue to refuse to seek it out, this will end badly for both you and your son.
Terrie, psychologists liked to study attributions- people’s beliefs about what causes things- and if they are external or not ( other factors too like controllability- loads of research on this), it’s a way of avoiding personal involvement or responsibility. Vaccines are an external cause ( as opposed to genes, how one behaves, actions). The problem is outside the actor and thus, doesn’t affect how they feel about themselves. External attributions preserve self esteem and – as you say- allows them to go on and imagine themselves as heroes and see the world ( society, doctors, the Establishment, SBM) as villains.
And being an anti-vax warrior enables them to enjoy secondary gain – they “lost out” on their imagined life ( career, perfect family etc) BUT they have a new career as an anti-vax writer, researcher, activist. See AoA for many examples.
But Denice, won’t you address me in these psychological assessments. I don’t have kids with autism. What deep rooted failings am I compensating for by siding with the ‘crazies’ than with the respectable ‘science’ ones?
Greg: I’m talking about a general psychological principle; people who attribute negative outcomes to external causes may escape responsibility or guilt**- ” I failed because the test was too hard or the teachers were prejudiced or it was all fixed” not because of stupidity, lack of study or effort etc . Some events are truly due to external causes in reality BUT it can be used to avoid responsibility or stigma. It is never cut and dry: some events have more than one cause: “she passed the exam because she studied and it wasn’t terribly difficult.”
There are other reasons that people without children with ASDs attribute autism to vaccines:
they believe that autism is not predominantly genetic but an outside force ( vaccines, toxins, SBM, Pharma, doctors, the Evil Empire, etc-) caused it. If that were true, eliminate that force, eliminate autism.***
HOWEVER research has not shown that situation to be the case so why do they persist in that belief?
Maybe they want to be outsiders, rebels, mavericks surfing the tsunami of paradigm shift, changing the world. Many activists in the anti-vax movement don’t have children with autism BUT they have theories, sell books, offer treatments. I notice that Mike Adams gets many viewings whenever he writes about vaccines, so he writes a lot about vaccines.Followers identify with their heroes.
** despite the fact that no one is responsible for what genes they have but it can be stigma
*** if this were true we could control who had autism: no vaccines no autism. Similarly in woo: caner is caused/ cured by diet- thus it can be controlled easily. People choose beliefs that make them feel better.
That should be cancer
Greg,
Almost forgot; I’m also a non-responder to the measles vaccine & my answer to the ‘but what about those who can’t vaccinate’ doesn’t sound quite the way they would like it to.
I’m just one train-wreck of anti-antivax perspective but they prefer trope.
Christine: “You prefer to nurture images of high-functioning savants & their spectrummy neurodiversity?”*
This is ironic, considering that the increased prevalence of autism reported in recent years is heavily dependent on counting mild cases that would likely not have been diagnosed in past years. This fact puts a serious dent in the assumption that “the autism epidemic” reflects heavily impaired individuals.
https://www.sciencealert.com/is-the-rate-of-autism-actually-increasing
*why does Christine hate people who are struggling with ASDs but still functioning in society?
@Christine: @Gre:
Before either of you write another ill-informed comment about neurodiversity and what it supposedly is, instead of what it actually is, please read this.
https://autisticmama.com/neurodiversity-doesnt-exclude-your-autistic-child-you-do/
Do you see that, Christine? Narad is warning you to be wary of my apple offerings and look instead at my webfeet sticking out from the bottom of my cloak. Ok — I’ll place all my cards on the table and leave it to you to decide whether I am indeed an albeist monster.
Let’s start with how I think you see your severely affected autistic son. I think you can look beyond his autistic shell and see the true kernel of an adorable, sweet, loving boy. You consider this kernel as your true son, and the shell as an evil invader, robbing him of his authentic self.
As for the shell, the hypersensitivity, the screaming, stimming and flailing… As for the destructiveness, literal and figurative messes, and aggressiveness towards you and others… As for the accompanying fear — fear of reactions, fear of him, who he will hurt, fear about the future and what will happen after you are dead… As for all these things that goes with the shell you loathe them to the bottom of your core. You pray that they didn’t exist and could miraculously go way. You wish that your son didn’t exist, and even if you never for a moment stop loving the kernel that’s him.
Is this how you feel about your son, Christine, or does this spiel only confirm that I am an albeist devil? AS for you Narad, sometimes the occasion indeed begs sympathy for the devil.
Did you have your hand in your apple offerings when you whomped that one up, Gerg? I honestly don’t have the words to fully express the nauseation that your attempts to frottage Christine raises in me.
“Narad is warning you to be wary of my apple offerings and look instead at my….”
“… lack of evidence.” Fixed it for you.
“Is this how you feel about your son, Christine, or does this spiel only confirm that I am an albeist devil?…”
Yes. Especially since you have told us you do not have a child with autism. As a parent of someone on the spectrum I was offended by something you said… so I asked for evidence, which you have not provided.
For the seventh time I present this:
Greg: “Ok ok — I also blame Pan for fathering legislations that en masse will vaporize kids’ brains..”
Citation needed. Do tell us exactly how any MMR vaccine used in North America causes more harm than measles. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that shows the vaccine causes more encephalitis than an actual measles infection (which is about one melted brain from encephalitis out of a thousand cases of actually getting measles).
Sure thing, soggy poutine.
the sweet charming spell of the con artist…
Alain 😉
Greg: What deep rooted failings am I compensating for by siding with the ‘crazies’ than with the respectable ‘science’ ones?
You’re an obnoxious incel twit, and they’re obnoxious twits who you can fantasize about and suck up to in lieu of having actual relationships.