As I’ve discussed, described, and mocked for 15 years as of two days ago, when it comes to medicine and science, antivaccine activists fail—and fail big. They don’t understand the science. They don’t understand epidemiology. They don’t understand clinical trials. Unfortunately, they do understand conspiracy theories and are very good at constructing and spreading elaborate conspiracy theories. After all, antivaccine activism and beliefs are based on a conspiracy theory that, at its core, posits that “they” (the CDC, the government, big pharma, doctors, the Smoking Man) “know” that vaccines cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), autoimmune disease, and all manner of maladies but are hiding/suppressing/denying/obfuscating the evidence, which only brave antivaxxers have uncovered. It’s a very simple form of conspiracy theory, that of hidden knowledge that a powerful cabal is hiding and that only the initiated have discovered; indeed, this sort of conspiracy theory is at the heart of cancer cure quackery, Holocaust denial, 9/11 Trutherism, QAnon, Pizzagate, the JFK assassination, and pretty much every major conspiracy theory ever. The amusing thing is that antivaxxers think they are the ones with the knowledge, which is why something that happened yesterday in New Jersey (where I lived for eight and a half years) made me laugh out loud. Let’s take a look at some Tweets I saw yesterday about an incident related to S2173, a bill being considered in NJ that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates:
And, yes, Del Bigtree himself was in da house!
Just watch the videos. They’re short. In one of them, an antivax speaker likens S2173 to Naziism, because of course she did. It’s a favorite claim of antivaxxers up to and including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Be that as it may, you really should watch the two videos. Antivaxxers showed up en masse yesterday to protest S2173:
A Statehouse hearing Thursday afternoon is likely the last chance New Jersey residents will get to tell elected officials what they think about a bill that would repeal the religious exemption that has enabled thousands of children avoid vaccinations required to attend school.
The state Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the legislation, S2175, which, if enacted, would make New Jersey the sixth state to eliminate religion or “personal beliefs” exemptions to vaccines.
The bill gained steam after an outbreak of about a dozen measles cases in Ocean County in the first half of 2019 raised concern about the growing number of families who distrust and refuse vaccines. There have been 19 confirmed cases of measles this year in New Jersey, and 1,276 nationwide.
It’s not S2175, by the way. The news report got it wrong, and in a previous version of this post I relied on that news report and therefore got it wrong too. (Thanks, Susan Livio and the editors of NJ.com!) Also, contrary to that previous version, it also turned out that antivaxxers didn’t go to the wrong room, as originally Tweeted by Brandy Zadrozny on Twitter. They showed up at the right meetings room hours early and wouldn’t leave when informed by staff that the hearing before the S2173 hearing was about NJ Transit. To be honest, that doesn’t make the antivaxxers look any better to me. Rather, showing up hours early to take over the meeting room and then refusing to leave a public hearing that had nothing to do with S2173 held before the public hearing on S2713 makes the antivaxxers look entitled and obnoxious, particularly if their presence forced people actually interested in the bill to have to stand or made it impossible for some of them to get into the room. (Maybe they learned something about mass transit, though.) There’s something very meta about my making a mistake like that in a post mocking antivaxxers for making an obvious mistake. Oh, well, it keeps me, if not exactly humble, at least from getting too arrogant.
And antivaxxers are still entitled and obnoxious.
In any event, measles outbreaks will have the effect of making legislation that was once politically impossible become politically possible. Before the Disneyland measles outbreak almost five years ago provided the political impetus to pass SB 277 in 2015, only Mississippi and West Virginia had laws that didn’t allow for religious and/or personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates. This year, ongoing measles outbreak provided the political impetus to get similar bills passed in Maine and New York and for Washington to pass a bill eliminating nonmedical exemptions for MMR only. Now New Jersey is considering eliminating nonmedical exemptions as well.
Of course, with S2173, as with every other bill of its type, antivaxxers have mobilized to dominate the public hearings on the issue. S2173 avoided a public hearing earlier in the year when the state Assembly, according to the news report, took an existing piece of legislation that would have made it harder to qualify for a religious exemption and amended it during a voting session to abolish nonmedical exemptions entirely. They planned on having hundreds of parents show up in order to voice their opposition to S2173 and urge lawmakers to vote no:
Hundreds of parents, resentful over what they see as a government intrusion and a violation of their constitutional rights, plan to attend the hearing for a chance to testify, said Stephanie Locricchio of Branchburg. She said she’s been involved with an effort for the past week to bombard legislators’ offices with calls and emails demanding they vote no.
“This group of people are steadfast in their beliefs…who don’t feel comfortable injecting fetal tissue in their child’s bodies,” said Locricchio, the mother of a 12-year-old son who received vaccines when he younger, but resented how her pediatrician demeaned her when she asked questions.
Antivaccine parents like Locricchio frequently complain that they feel attacked, “bullied,” or demeaned when pediatricians try to persuade them to vaccinate their children. Although I’m sure there are pediatricians who are jerks and that occasionally pediatricians let their exasperation with parents like Locricchio show when they shouldn’t, in reality the vast majority of pediatricians are incredibly patient and respectful. Indeed, I don’t know how they do it day in and day out, dealing with parents of patients spewing the same ignorant antivaccine blather like “vaccines contain fetal tissue.” (They don’t. Really, they don’t. That’s a distortion of the fact that the virus stocks used to manufacture some vaccines are grown in two cell lines derived from fetuses aborted over 50 years ago and maintained in cell culture ever since. These cells are removed from the virus stock before the vaccine is made. In reality, fetal cells have been instrumental in saving millions of lives and preventing billions of cases of disease.) The vast majority of pediatricians I know have the patience of a saint when dealing with these parents.
In any event, Locricchio’s response to the reporter who wrote the story shows just how apt a metaphor antivaxxers showing up to the wrong meeting to voice their objections to S2173 and refusing to leave when told the meeting was about NJ Transit, not S2173. Contributing to this metaphor, according to the report, Locricchio stated that she moved to NJ when New York eliminated nonmedical exemptions and said that she’d move again, using a rather histrionic analogy:
Locricchio said she moved from New York when it eliminated the religious exemption to vaccines, and she’s prepared to leave New Jersey, too. “Telling people (they must vaccinate) if you want an education for your kid is like putting a gun to your head,” she said.
Because requiring a child to be vaccinated is just like threatening a parent with a gun. Seriously, that analogy says way more about Locricchio than it says about S2173. It also says a lot about antivaxxers that many of them stayed in the room as the hearing regarding NJ Transit began, leading to some very amusing responses:
Unfortunately, eventually the meeting about NJ Transit ended, the meeting about S2173 began, and antivaxxers were again able to do they always do whenever bills like S2173 are being considered; i.e., to flood the hearing and drown out any opinions supporting the bill, a technique they “pioneered” during the political debate over SB 277 and amplified during the debate over SB 276 earlier this year in California. Here the tactics are the same, but fortunately without an attack on a state senator or throwing menstrual blood at legislators:
I particularly like the part where they said the Lord’s Prayer, because nothing says love like saying the Lord’s Prayer before opposing a bill designed to enhance the protection of children against potentially deadly diseases. In any event, the hearing went on:
So what happened? Did S2173 pass the health committee? Here’s the answer:
And:
Unpersuaded by hundreds of pleading and occasionally hostile parents, a state Senate panel voted Thursday to eliminate religion as an acceptable reason for New Jersey children to avoid vaccines required for school attendance.
After seven years of stalled efforts to compel better vaccine compliance and a recent reemergence of measles, state lawmakers are moving quickly to end the religious exemption that allowed 14,000 students to decline their shots last year.
The Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee approved the bill (A3818) by a 6-4 vote Thursday. Even before the hearing, the measure was listed on Monday’s agenda for action by the full 40-member body.
S2173 is the Senate version of the bill, while A3818 is the Assembly version.
Further adding to the aptness of the metaphor of antivaxxers showing up to the wrong room earlier in the day, some parents apparently indoctrinated their children to spew their antivaccine talking points:
“I love God with my whole heart,” said 7-year-old Emelia Walls of Cape May. “He made our immune systems perfect. We take really good care of our bodies because that makes God happy.”
Emelia, a second-grader, said she would be “heartbroken” if the law passed and she had to leave school. “I have a bright future ahead of me. I am going to change the world,” she said.
I feel sorry for Emilia. It’s not her fault that she was born to parents who not only medically neglect her by not vaccinating but shamelessly use her to promote their antivaccine message.
Also reinforcing what I’ve been saying about how the antivaccine movement has successfully packaged its message in the language of small government anti-government conservatives and libertarians, in particular the language of “parental rights” and opposition to regulation, the vote split along party lines, with all Republicans voting against it and all Democrats voting for it, with Republicans saying after the vote:
State Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cumberland, voted no, calling the legislation “unconstitutional and un-American.”
State Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Bergen, said he doesn’t oppose vaccines but voted no because “I am not going to take away people’s rights.”
“Even though I would make a different choice from the people in this room, it’s their right to be wrong,” Cardinale said. “It’s their own right to follow their conscience.”
This echoes perfectly the observation made by my now fortunately ex-state representative Jeff Noble that the Republicans on the Health Policy Committee in Michigan are the only ones receptive to vaccine choice initiatives, while the Democrats won’t even consider them and want to “shove vaccines down your throat (or arm).”
In the end, it looks as though New Jersey is likely poised to become the next state to eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Even better, unlike SB 277, which originally allowed any doctor to write a medical exemption letter (thus allowing quacks to start a cottage industry writing bogus medical exemptions) and later had to be fixed with SB 276 and SB 714, New Jersey looks as though it’s doing it right the first time. The bill mandates that the state Health Department define which health conditions qualify for a medical exemption and that a physician, advance practice nurse or physician assistant verify in writing the child has the condition or illness for which vaccination is contraindicated.
One thing’s for sure. As much of a metaphor the wrong meeting antivaxxers seeking to speak against S2173 were on Thursday, if the NJ State Senate does take up S2173 on Monday there’s going to be a spectacle of ignorance and stupidity every bit as facepalm-inducing as the ones in California over SB 277 and 276.
392 replies on “S2173: NJ antivaxxers show up too early and refuse to leave a meeting about NJ Transit. There’s a metaphor there somewhere”
The legislator that compared the bill to the anti-Semitic shooting was horribly jarring, too.
They are doing their best, and I understand their fear – if you’ve been misled to think vaccines are dangerous, of course a bill like this will scare you. But their false beliefs are not a good reason to leave children unsafe at school.
I hope the child finds a way to complete her education – and learn science – in spite of her parents’ unwillingness to protect her from disease.
I’m always surprised that anti-vax parents aren’t happy to homeschool their kids. Not only is that a badge of Affluent Mommy Warrior Honor, but it’s also a way to make sure the kid doesn’t learn any biology and go get stealth-vaccinated, which we know many do.
I know we may be too simple for you but since you’re SOOOOO much more advanced than us, ?I’M SURE you’ve seen the research on the Amish and how healthy they are (little to no cancer, autism, etc) and they DON’T vaccinate. But don’t let a little thing like EVIDENCE and the FIRST AMENDMENT get in the way of that big brain of Your’s!!
Which Amish? They are not a uniform group. Anyone who treats them as a single block clearly knows nothing about the Amish.
The Amish do vaccinate, and they also suffer from a tremendous number of genetic diseases that are not found in the general population. Heck, even the Old Order will let their kids have electric wheelchairs if they need them. Have you ever met an Amish person? Or a Mennonite person? Have you asked them their opinions about vaccines?
I think you need some more facts.
Would you be kind enough to clarify how the First Amendment gets in the way? Free speech, religion? As to actual evidence, would you also be kind enough to provide some for your claims about the Amish, preferably to peer reviewed research? Thanks.
Would that include the Amish children with or without maple syrup urine disease?
First Amendment prevents laws targeting a specific religion. Vaccine mandates does not do that, which is reason why vaccine exemption lawyers always lost.
We can read about healthy Amish, if you give us a citation.
I think someone is still mad they spent their day in the wrong hearing room.
Here’s a recent article from USA Today about some of the many diseases that run through an Amish community in Wisconsin. Doesn’t sound so healthy to me: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2019/11/29/wisconsin-rural-doctor-treats-amish-studies-rare-genetic-diseases/3995625002/
The Amish do vaccinate. Last time I checked, on average, about 85%, which is lower than national average; but certainly far above “don’t vaccinate.” In addition, the Amish aren’t homogeneous. Some groups vaccinate at higher rates than others. As for general health, the Amish, thanks to inbreeding, suffer far higher rates of genetic disorders, some quite serious. Of course, those without the genetic disorders are, on the whole, healthy; but they live a very different life style from most of us, including hard physical labor, healthy diet, and strong social support system. And, for instance, when polio broke out among the Amish decades ago, a non-vaccinated from Holland visited kin in Canada who in turn visited Amish in U.S., they accepted vaccination of their children. However, it is interesting their reasoning. Whereas many antivaccinationists state they have to think of their children, no sense of community, the Amish, who believe things up to God, vaccinated their kids to protect the surrounding non-Amish community. After Age of Autism’s incredibly stupid series on the Amish and vaccines ( i read the over 100 articles), I read three or four books on the Amish and several dozen articles.
So, you are full of it! ! !
No just serious genetic defects and they vaccinate after an entire group of babies died from measles and pertussis. You should also research what research means.
Somehow, my comment got lost…
I watched ( skimmed) @ high wire talk’s 1:25 video featuring Del, Mary Holland**, anti-vaxxers a minister ( priest?), a group of 4 Public Health nurses and a doctor: when one of the nurses reported that she had had VPDs as a child and survived , the crowd hooted, hollered and were told to restrain themselves, later, they waved BOTH hands frantically to express their disdain. Another younger nurse discussed her H1N1 illness and its repercussions; the oncologist talked about his young cancer patient who can’t attend school because of unvaccinated students..Somewhere, it was reported that “thousands” showed up to protest.
NJ PBS 50 reported on both hearings ( Transit and vaccine) and their camera angles better illustrated the anti-vax crowd indoors and out : a few hundreds at most, maybe less. Both the host, Ms Williams and a journalist did not seem to be particularly sympathetic to the protestors and predicted that the governor will sign the bill.
I have seen various estimates of the number of children who have religious exemptions in NJ ranging from 13K to 30K – reliable news sources have given 2.6% as the rate of these exemptions..
** crossing state lies to endanger children?
njtvonline.org has the report video: yesterday minutes 9- 12
In peripherally related news: “California anti-vaccine activists abandon initiative to roll back new law.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article238228629.html
FWIW, the Los Angeles Times weighed in on anti-vaxxer’s pathetic attempts to repeal SB276:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-12/anti-vaxx-message-cant-compete-with-cold-hard-facts
Emelia is free to love God as much as she wants. I want to be able to breathe.
“Going to the wrong room” was a metaphor? Oh, but wait! That doctor just fumbled the vial and it shattered on the floor. There’s a metaphor there: the gods are displeased with vaccines! C’mon! Can we move away from emotion and draw nearer to data?
Don’t obsess over the metaphor thing, there’s plenty of data in this article and elsewhere on the site.
“Oh, but wait! That doctor just fumbled the vial and it shattered on the floor. There’s a metaphor there”
No, but there’s an antivax meme. “Omigod, the vaccine spilled on the floor! They’ll have to call out the hazmat team and shut down the building for decontamination!!!” 🙂
My real problem is that I see so much sickness in children these days–serious sickness–and in the days when I grew up–the 1960’s–there were hardly any vaccines and serious ailments in children were virtually nonexistent in my Connecticut town. Autism was also virtually unheard of. Something changed. Nobody freaked out about measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. either.
There’s nothing like childhood memories to firm up a position.
Gregg, in the 60s, my dad worked at the country hospital, in the ward where disabled people were housed for their whole lives, from intellectual disabilities, to twins who, at 16, turned out to be deaf, not mentally impaired, to a boy who was bed-ridden due to osteogenesis imperfecta. It was a small community, and he knew the families of all of them. No one ever mentioned these people in public.
Narad: Childhood memories are not a valid source of history? Ever watch a documentary? Are you denying there were less vaccines in the 1960’s? Nothing like youthful insolence to doubt the wisdom of those who are more experienced.
“serious ailments in children were virtually nonexistent”
Selective memory, limited exposure to lives of others, etc., There are many reasons for such a foolish statement.
Hey Gregg, if you step on a rusty nail and it goes right through your shoe and deep into your foot, would you get a tetanus shot? (I hope that this does not happen, foot injuries suck.)
Autism was also virtually unheard of.
Has the argumentum-ad-personal-cluelessness ever convinced anyone?
If so, vampires exist.
Why, yes. One of my favorites is Asylum. Have you seen it? Do you have any opinions about transactionalism of the Watzlavick archetyke?
No, but this is simply a mind-numbingly dumb stagger toward successfully begging the question.
Accurately state what you imagine to be my age, and then we can hook up for a date where you buy me a sloe gin fizz and get to pull my finger in exchange.
“Autism was also virtually unheard of. Something changed. Nobody freaked out about measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. either.”
They were also trying not to freak out about possible nuclear war and earthquakes: Are you going to tell me that there were no destructive earthquakes before you reached adulthood? Similarly, people often tried not to talk about cancer–that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, obituaries said someone had “died after a long illness.” Gradually, it became acceptable to say “my relative died of cancer” and “I’m sorry, Mrs. Patient, the tests say you have cancer” and talk to the patient about treatment options and life expectancy, rather than keeping the diagnosis from the actual patient and only telling her husband.
It also occurs to me: when I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, nobody freaked out about vaccines. By your logic, that means the measles, polio, DPT, and smallpox vaccines, all of which I had as a child in the Sixties, were a slight and acceptable risk in the 1960s and 1970s–which is true, but you apparently think they have somehow become dangerous since then.
@Gregg: hardly any one in the 60’s had autism?
I was born in the 60’s. I have autism. It was identified early, but my providers didn’t have a name for it as Asperger’s Syndrome was not well known then.
I knew any number of other Aspies my age. We all knew we were different. We just didn’t know why.
Pretending to take the dispassionate high road only works if you actually listen to the data (and/or leave off with the Nazi analogies or the histrionic metaphors about guns being held to your heads). Observance of a group of people refusing to leave the wrong meeting tells you something about that group of people that is not a bit metaphorical.
I desire MORE data. Is RFK Jr. an idiot? Has he ever been on the wrong side of an issue? All he’s saying is more data, too.
That would be all well and good, if that’s how he actually treated it. If you desire more data, as you say, you should search Orac’s blog for the overwhelming amount of information about what RFK jr actually says and does. Further, if you are a physicist, you should also recognize that there’s a difference between having access to the data that you want and having the competence needed to interpret that data at the state of the art of the field where that data originated. Just having the data isn’t enough if you’re saddled by a lack of awareness that you can’t process the data you have. I would be willing to bet that this is a part of why you introduced yourself as a geophysicist instead of a quantum physicist or a biophysicist. I like data too, but I’m not afraid to listen to what an expert immunologist or epidemiologist has to say.
foolish physicist: (I’m a retired geophysicist) I don’t stand with conspiracy nuts or over-the-top rhetoric. I merely want more data.
If you search this blog for his name you will find that RFK jr. has been wrong on vaccines for over 14 years and has consistently rejected extensive data on the topic.
“Is RFK Jr. an idiot?” Yes.
Agreed. RFK Jr. is an idiot full of the arrogance of ignorance.
Also, I’ve worked in oil exploration and defense. One thing in common to both is that they are never willing to admit a mistake–a wrong direction even–and go back to what they know worked.
I don’t think he is an idiot. I think he’s clever enough to know exactly the type of lies the anti-vaccination people want to hear, and he supplies them.
“All he’s saying is more data, too.”
No, he isn’t. I don’t know how you are that misinformed, but he doesn’t want data at all. There is a huge amount of data already available, and it flatly contradicts everything he says. I don’t know, because I can’t see into his mind, whether he really understands the studies and knows they prove him wrong, and is simply shilling because he enjoys being viewed as a “maverick”, or whether he is simply incapable of understanding the current evidence. That doesn’t matter: the stuff he’s selling is flatly wrong, and dangerous, and giving him any benefit of the doubt is not good.
All he’s saying is more data, too.
You mis-heard. All RFK Jnr is saying is “more dollar too”.
“Is RFK Jr. an idiot? Has he ever been on the wrong side of an issue?”
Yes and yes.
The first time was when he got hooked on drugs and was court ordered into community service, which is how he ended up in River Watchers. Then there was the whole “We don’t wanna have wind turbines off our exclusive Cape Cod communities!”
Oh, and then there is this: http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flushes-its-credibility-down.html
Um, yeah. Never take medical and or science information from a lawyer, especially a privileged one.
Robert Kennedy Jr has lost every vaccine exemption lawsuit. You may want go to Charity Navigator and check Children’s Health Defense’s 990 form and check how much money he pays to himself.
@Gregg Jardinas: “I desire MORE data.”
PubMed is thataway, dude. Go fill your boots.
Serious survivor bias there Gregg.
Anecdotes: I knew people with polio. I am related to at least one person who died from spanish flu.
Data: Evidence
Same here Mike, my grandmother was orphaned by the Spanish Flu, my aunt had polio and I got both the Mumps and the Chicken Pox before I was able to be vaccinated. Now I need to get Shingles vaccine because of the Chicken Pox.
Gregg, we all have anecdotes and personal experience. Science has the data that says vaccines are safe and very effective.
If you really want to know how things were in the long ago time, go walk through a cemetery from before the time of vaccines and look at the number of tombstones for young children there, children who died often before they were 5 years old. Not so rosy a picture there.
“I love God with my whole heart,” said 7-year-old Emelia Walls of Cape May. “He made our immune systems perfect.”
Someone tell Emelia about all of the little kids who died of Type I diabetes before recombinant insulin was a thing. Or of VPDs before vaccines were a thing. If there’s a god, the one thing we know for sure is that he really hates kids.
“That’s a distortion of the fact that the virus stocks used to manufacture some vaccines are grown in two cell lines derived from fetuses aborted over 50 years ago and maintained in cell culture ever since.”
Yes, and I feel like I should always mention that nobody ever has an abortion for the purpose of providing fetal cells. The option to donate the tissue is given after the decision has already been made. And nobody ever pays the person having the abortion; the money goes to the procurement company (Planned Parenthood’s cost sounded like it really was cost of harvesting and shipment – very reasonable.)
This perfect immune system – the one that protected all those people in the Bible from leprosy? – the one that over-reacted and killed countless healthy people during the “Spanish” flu epidemic? the one that wanders off uncontrolled and causes a whole raft of auto-immune diseases? the one that snuffs the life out of little kids and adults alike when they eat peanuts or are stung by a wasp? the one that is still busy trying to respond when Ebola virus has already killed its host? the one that …?
The immune system is an amazing product of evolution. Perfect it ain’t.
I’m just waiting for them to say that anyone who gets sick is being punished for past sins. Rather amazing that God’s reward for being perfect is to lead an average life until you die of old age. Not exactly a carrot and stick system, just a stick.
Hmmmm. I suppose an average life in a rich country would be seen as a reward from the perspective of poorer parts.
Has the divinely enlightened child play ever persuaded a fence sitter to change their mind? Or are they just wheeled around like Trigger the Horse with the sole purpose of delighting fellow travelers with parroted talking points.
The ploy of using kids to scold adults is pretty common in my area with NIMBy groups trying to block marijuana dispensaries.
I really have no objection if kids are given the occasional voice. It gives a nice glimpse into the minds of the parents and the techniques they are using to indoctrinate them.
I just ask that they be given the level of credibility they deserve. The opinions of a 7 year old being about as relevant as a friendly dog deciding the victor in a debate by sniffing the participants and first offering his paw to the winner.
Ah, yes, “Weekend Update” from 1977.
The irony here is that there is accumulating data that the rotavirus vaccine also prevents the development of Type 1 diabetes in the children that receive it. So more needles for insulin if the antivaxxers get their way.
Childhood memories are a valid source of history. Ever watch a documentary?
Asked and answered.
Ever heard of Elizabeth Loftus?
The Bugs Bunny researcher! She does great work.
Yes and they are never based just on childhood memories, but also on witnesses, experts, written sources and other evidence. Memories are notably not trustworthy. Look at documentaries on planecrashes, eyewitnesses stating something exploded in the sky, which in the end appears to be wrong.
It’s been my experience that people asking for “more data” or “more studies” are just being lazy in their argument. There are tons of data, thousands of studies. There are observational studies. There are experimental studies. There are ecological studies.
Then there are the people who don’t remember kids being so sick? Motherbleeper, kids have never been so healthy. With the exception of obesity, childhood morbidity and mortality is lower than ever. Cancer treatments, recombinant insulin, new drugs and therapies for things like cystic fibrosis.
There hasn’t been a death from polio in the western hemisphere in forever. Congenital Rubella Syndrome? Only if you’re an unvaccinated woman who went to SE Asia or Africa and brought it back with you and your unborn fetus. Typhoid? Anyone get typhoid recently?
I could go on and on. Why do antivaxxers keep lying? What are they trying to do?
I’ll tell you what… If they somehow, miraculously manage to get rid of the vaccine court, the lawyers will make a killing suing vaccine manufacturers and fleecing all of these “Karens” and “Kevins” who believe that vaccines did something to their children. They’ll laugh all the way to the bank, the way a certain showman laughed about autistic children being like monkeys or dogs while his adoring fans (some of them parents of autistic children) bought him dinner and drinks and nodded in agreement.
And we know what happens when the vaccine court goes away – the manufacturers decide “to hell with spending so much defending against frivolous lawsuits, it’s not like these vaccines make us any money anyway,” and they stop making vaccines. Everyone loses. Yay.
That could well be what antivaxxers really want.
@Orac: Anti-vaxxers want to feel powerful and in control. A white-collar version of the teenage street gang always smashing in windows.
“It’s been my experience that people asking for “more data” or “more studies” are just being lazy in their argument. ”
I go around and around with certain family members and acquaintances about this. (Disclosure: I am a statistician, Ph.D, so they come to me with questions.)(Second disclosure: my wife worked as a statistician here in Kalamazoo from ’85 to ’96 as well, UpJohn to Pharmacia/UpJohn to Pharmacia to Pfizer.) Without fail, after I lay out an explanation of a study or why something isn’t valid, the response (from the same subset of family) is “Well, I just can’t buy that. Your comments don’t match (personal observations, friend’s comments, etc.). I don’t get the big conspiracy stuff often, but the sense from feedback is that they view the good studies as simply complicated ruses to distort “reality” as they know it is.
Shorter impression: an entrenched distrust and suspicion of complicated explanations to things that seem as though they should have simple explanations is also an important factor in all of this.
More expansive, in West Michigan in general. there is a huge libertarian view that views children as property, and opposition to vaccination there is rooted in “you can’t tell me what to do with my possessions”.)
@ Rene F, Najera, DrPH:
Who is that “certain showman….monkeys and dogs… “?
That’s something I’ve never heard ,,, I’ll guess AJW… RFKjr? DEL???
Who else could be so clueless, cavalier, insensitive.
And here I thought I was the only person who had suffered all three installments of Dullman’s self-hosted birthday spectacular.
Here’s the video of the showman saying such things: https://thepoxesblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/06/autistic-children-are-like-chimps-and-dogs-dont-you-know/
Your disdain and attacks on anti-vaxxers is disgusting. Why don’t you tell the TRUTH… there are NO true random samplings done with vaccines and many of the ingredients in vaccines, IF INGESTED would require a call to the Poison Control Center. Additionally, tell them how many BILLIONS of dollars have been paid out for vaccine deaths and injuries. And IF your vaccines are SOOO PHENOMENAL and PROTECTIVE, then why should you care if a “few loony parents” choose NOT to vaccinate? It’s all about the almighty dollar. Don’t believe us, look into yourselves. See how much Big Pharma gives to campaigns and check to see if doctors are compensated. Lastly, next time you go, ask to see the inserts BEFORE vaccinating and see how that goes!! ?
Ma’am, if you’re going to start making claims here, you really should know that there are few, if any, antivax claims I haven’t seen and refuted many times before. For example:
Seriously. These are lame arguments that antivaxxers present as though they inflict devastating damage on the pro-vaccine position. They don’t. You need better arguments. The problem for antivaxxers is that better arguments for their case don’t exist.
Up top, she was pulling the “Amish don’t vaccinate” trope, which gives her the anti-vax BINGO all-square.
Ann, you said “why should you care if a “few loony parents” choose NOT to vaccinate? ”
What if I change that to “why should you care if a “few loony parents” choose NOT to put their kids in car seats?” In New Jersey not having you child in the appropriate car seat for their height, weight and age will net a parent a fine of between $50-75. And the only person at risk in the case of a child without a car seat is that child.
An unvaccinated child can get sick and then spread that disease to children who have damaged immune systems (like kids being treated for cancer), or who are too young to be vaccinated, or the elderly. If the state of New Jersey has the power to insist that parents protect their children from car crashes, why can’t New Jersey insist that all children be protected against serious, potentially fatal diseases?
“If the state of New Jersey has the power to insist that parents protect their children from car crashes,”
Sadly, you will find a good number of people who claim even that is an overreach.
I believe anyone else in the vehicle is also at risk if the child goes flying through the passenger compartment. Of course, back in the day we used to lie down in the back of the station wagon while mom and dad were driving.
I called poison control and they are very much provax AND they understand dose toxicity. Nothing in vaccines is poison. Doses are too small.
https://vaccinesworkblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/poison-control-is-provax/
Needs more ALL CAPS.
Now I gotta worry about “NO true random samplings”, whatever they are. 🙁
Something Scottish, I’ll wager.
Please tell me that ‘Ann’ is a parody and that no-one regurged all those Moron Shibboleths while really meaning them.
List of vaccine ingredients are there:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf
None of these merit call to poison control center when ingested . Educate yourself and read Wikipedia articles about these compounds and media. Generally, if you do not understand something, google for definition
If a manufacturer actually adds something not in list, they could be sued. I am sure that Robert Kennedy Jr knoes that.
Wait, is that Natalie’s STYLE of EMPHASIS?
@ Narad – Aw. Is someone missing me? I’ve toned it down. Looks like Duhnice has become a fan of ALL CAPS though.
So….in the spirit of holiday giving, would you or anyone else with access help me get a hold of this? https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2019/03/04/peds.2018-3578
Could you at least pretend you are a grown-up?
Del Bigtree makes more scamming you than I do as a pediatrician. I vaccinate children because I’ve seen these diseases kill children and vaccines prevent them from contracting these diseases.
“Additionally, tell them how many BILLIONS of dollars have been paid out for vaccine deaths and injuries.”
The NVICP has, over 43 years, made 4153 awards totalling $4.2Bn to individuals suspected of being harmed by vaccines.
You’re welcome.
Now let me ask you: How many BILLIONS of dollars have been paid out for vaccine-preventable disease deaths and injuries?
I will try to check, but I think that figure may include lawyers’ fees, even for cases that were not decided in favor of claimants, but you rarely (never?) see that mentioned by plague promoters.
I checked and the NVICP awards amount does not include lawyers’ fees. According to Wikipedia, “If wanted, claimants in the vaccine court can hire attorneys to help navigate the process, which can be very confusing, at no cost to them. No person making a vaccine claim ever has to pay attorney fees and costs if they choose to use an attorney, that is always handled by the court. This is ‘to ensure that vaccine claimants have readily available a competent bar to prosecute their claims,…’ “
The total award amount does include the lawyer fees, and you are right, it does include fees for cases who lost.
Individual awards do not include lawyer fees but the totals do. Scroll down to Award Paid.
https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/data-statistics-vicp.pdf
First off, the NVICP has only been in existence since about 1986, so it is about 33 years.
And yes, it does pay for the lawyer’s fees. Several rulings can be found with certain search terms (legal fees vaccine, and the website of the opinions): https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=ACYBGNSNRxeuYjmWhI7LWVUFWUCYb_775w%3A1576344830365&ei=_hz1XcTxFdO8-gSp2abYCA&q=legal+fees+vaccine+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fecf.cofc.uscourts.gov%2F&oq=legal+fees+vaccine+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fecf.cofc.uscourts.gov%2F&gs_l=psy-ab.3…22157.24170..27241…1.0..0.75.548.9……0….1..gws-wiz.RVMWAixTvq4&ved=0ahUKEwjE6KCN1rXmAhVTnp4KHamsCYsQ4dUDCAo&uact=5
There some very interesting rulings if “Geier” is added to the search: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2002vv0010-298-0
@Chris & @doritme: Thanks for corrections. (Teaches me to trust Wikipedia’s math.)
Still waiting on Ann to tell us how much compensation has been paid to victims of VPDs. I’m sure she’ll be along with accurate figures any time now.
Vaccine Court compensation rules:
https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/resources/about-vaccine-injury-compensation-program-booklet.pdf
Go to table injuries. These are presumed to be caused by vaccines. You would get compensation, even if vaccine is not actually cause of injury. One wonders what the compensation amount would be, if proof of causation would be required.
“We can diagnose autism ourselves but we cannot figure out which room our hearing is in” is amazing. LOL
I wonder if the crazies are going to give a demonstration of how unhinged and deranged they are come Monday’s Senate hearing and vote.
Will they block vehicle traffic?
Will they idiotically chain themselves to the entry doors?
Will they be banging on the walls and doors of the hearing room, chanting anti-vax slogans?
Will they be standing on the chairs and refusing to get down?
Will they be shouting insane anti-vaccine slogans from the gallery?
Will they physically attack the senators?
Will they be throwing menstrual cups filled with human blood at the senators?
(These are all things they have done at other venues.)
.
I hope the Senate security has 25 of the biggest state policemen there to rapidly eject the terminally delusional loons.
Maybe we’ll get to see a few of them tased.
.
Remember… these are very religious people… just watch them in action.
@ Reality:
I wouldn’t expect menstrual blood being thrown.. maybe another disgusting but non-biologic substance I don’t know car oil, paint
It IS NJ so it will be loud and the Karens will be out in force perhaps dragging their children behind them teaching them civil disobedience or whatever they’ll be calling it. Perhaps Del will ring up other celebrity anti-vaxxers to appear and give impromptu
speeches.
Fun fact: NJ has towns with 15K people per sq mile. In other words, close quarters..a great place for disease transmission.
Actually 15K is a low number. nearly suburban
@Ann I started to read about Amish and autism. In a second, I hit this:
Christopher Jackman MD Nicole D.Horn MD Jean P.Molleston MD Deborah K.Sokol PhD, MD
Gene Associated with Seizures, Autism, and Hepatomegaly in an Amish Girl
Pediatric Neurology
Volume 40, Issue 4, April 2009, Pages 310-313
Pediatric Neurology
I wonder what you are reading
Do we really need the dramatic music for my entrance? K – maybe we don’t. So I was browsing the ‘net lately and I came across this article: It definitely was a ‘holy shit!’ moment. Seriously drug dealers– checkout this ‘loony’ antivaxxer?
And…
And…
https://politichicks.com/2019/09/co-author-of-vaccine-bill-expresses-remorse-grandchild-diagnosed-with-autism/
Endless Wakefield bashings? Need for more mandates? Need to tightening existing mandates? Social media must crackdown on those ‘crazy’ antivaxxers with their misinformation campaign? Measles epidemics everywhere?
Choir, as I stated, that big, freaking elephant in the pink tutu and eating ice cream is not going anywhere!
Imagine Pan running into Stone at the Cali Legislature. Pan would be like thinking — ‘Yeah, thanks for your efforts with getting the ball rolling with bills that are shafting ‘antivaxxers’. Too bad you got shafted too. Sucks to be you!’
Um, Gerg, SB 277 became law in 2015. Do the math.
Show us a single piece of evidence that vaccines cause autism. A.Single.One. You cannot, of course.
@ Arno:
AND they assiduously avoid any research that point to the genetic and/ or prenatal origins of autism. There are mountains of research that illustrate these simple facts and they’re been around for DECADES. I was immune to AJW’s claims in 1998 because I studied physiology in the 1980s. I was able to advise my cousin in 2001 when he feared vaccinating his son.
So all of these BRILLIANT “scientists”. genius woo-meisters and brave mother warriors are unable to find what is easily available if you know how to look up stuff. No studies supported Wakefield at the time of his paper or later on except for his cronies. NO ONE else was researching vaccines as causative of ASDs BECAUSE they knew it would not yield results. Why would a scientist try to get research money for a project that would show NOTHING.
And this isn’t just in the UK or US but worldwide.
Recently, I’ve provided some bits and pieces of the research that shows prenatal origins and early indicators of autism. If MMR causes autism ( at age 12-18 months) how come researchers can find early indicators of it much earlier ( e.g. gaze,other interaction)? Why can researchers find genetic evidence for ASDs that show both heredity and de novo variation? Do vaccines change genes? Or how the brain and/ or the FACE looks different? Do vaccines suddenly do that at 12 months?
This research leads to earlier treatment.
They cling to illusions that they can’t support with data because it fulfills psychological needs.
By all means Aarno, please go first. Show us A single piece of evidence that the ‘full schedule’ has been tested.
@Greg – Considering the full schedule has been administered, I believe it has been tested in practice.
Greg
Um, nope.
Your elephant is not “is the vaccine schedule tested?”, but “vaccines do cause autism”.
In the recent threads about Samoa measles epidemics, you made it quite clear, any vaccine is a risk, no matter the schedule.
IOW, goalpost shifting. For someone who accuses his opponents of lying…
So we are waiting. What’s your evidence?
Read this one
Hviid A, Jensen AV, Frish M et al
Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism nationwide cohort study
Ann Intern Med 2019;170:513-520
doi:https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-2101
“The highest risk for autism was conferred by being a boy (HR, 4.02 [CI, 3.78 to 4.28]), being born in a late birth cohort (2008-2010; HR, 1.34 [CI, 1.18 to 1.52]), having no early childhood vaccinations (HR, 1.17 [CI, 0.98 to 1.38]), and having siblings with autism at study entry (HR, 7.32 [CI, 5.29 to 10.12]). The autism risk score had a modest effect on autism risk compared with sex and sibling history of autism (highest-risk group versus moderate-risk group; HR, 1.38 [CI, 1.28 to 1.48]).”
Not having childhood vaccinations increase autism risk
Sigh.
@Greg I see that you have no arguments. I am shocked, shocked.
I went and had a look at that article, then at some of the other articles on the “Politichick” website.
Not exactly an unbiased news source.And by that, I mean I don’t believe a word on it.
I looked around. There are no other sources reporting this, except for linking to the Politichick story. Everything else, which is reported in multiple news sources, is a quote from Stone saying he thinks false exemptions are an issue for the medical board, not the legislature.
Another post about Jeff Stone’s about face….
https://z-m-www.facebook.com/YourBabyYourWayBook/posts/2524325224351728
No links to any sources, not even to a Faceborg page that is supposedly a primary source. Conspiracist website made everything up, details to follow.
Is that really the case, Smut? The Politick story reporting about his granddaughter’s autism diagnosis stated that he shared the story with vaccine injured families before the Senate hearing on SB276. This was back in September when the story came out and it was never refuted by him. We also have the record of Sen. Stone’s actual Senate testimony against SB277, and in which he stated…
As well, it was recently reported that Sen. Stone made the bold move of resigning his position to join the Trump administration. I would say all these details do not lend credence to the Politick’s story being a gross fabrication.
https://hi-in.facebook.com/HealthChoiceMN/posts/comments-of-dr-robert-rowen-mddraconian-vaccine-mandate-passes-california-senate/2212690645727874/
”
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/from-temecula-to-washington-d-c-state-senator-jeff-stone-to-join-trump-administration/
You know, Greg, you keep going on and on about there being an elephant in the room, but your screeds are so wildly unfocused that I have no idea what elephant you’re actually talking about.
The elephant thing is kinda strange and is pretty close to being a mixed metaphor- granted two involving pachyderms.
Adding the ice cream and tutu elements to the doughty old “elephant in the room” makes it sound like you are describing The vaccine autism link as a Colorful delusion (More along the lines of the pink elephant) rather than an issue that is being ignored
Lay off the pot & booze dude. The fact that they’re both legal in this country doesn’t mean they’re good for you. Your friendly medical doctor hasn’t told you so? Oh, I forgot, your primary care provider is not-a-doctor…
Al
I was thinking the Benny Hill theme suits you better Greg.
So, parents who reject government intrusion into child care and believe in vast child-killing government conspiracies demand government education for their kids. Have I missed anything?
Antivaxxers have never been consistent in their thinking, have they?
Oh, they are 100% consistent on the idea that vaccines are bad.
Antivaxxers do the following:
1. Discount the seriousness of vaccine-preventable diseases
2. Discount the effectiveness of vaccines
3. Grossly exaggerate the serious adverse vaccine reactions
4. Ignore the benefits to cost ratio, that is, if even a couple of serious adverse reactions, ignoring the literally thousands of lives saved. And, not considering that if a child reacts to an attenuated vaccine, odds are they would react as strongly or worse to the natural full strength microbe.
They see the world in exaggerated black and white. Often they use the term “believe” and are absolutely certain they are right, that is, “believe” they have god-like certainty. This reminds me of fundamentalists in various religions who tell people who do not accept their specific religion they are going to Hell and assume they can speak for whatever deity they believe in.
After a recent exchange of Age of Autism, I sent an e-mail to John Stone, their UK “editor” suggesting they change their name to:
The Church of the Age of Autism or
The Holy Church of the Age of Autism or
The Divine Church of the Age of Autism
What do you think???
Stone never replied. Golly gee!
p.s. Age of Autism was started by Dan Olmsted after his 100+ series on the Amish and vaccines. Among other things he interviewed medical director of a new clinic who stated he didn’t have any autistic patients; but the director of an old long-standing clinic contacted Olmsted several times to arrange an interview; but Olmsted didn’t. Olmsted also interviewed a woman who lived in neighborhood of an Amish community, who had never actually been in the community, who had NO expertise; but she said she had not seen anyone with autism. And on and on its goes. In other words, the founding series for Age of Autism, was literally GARBAGE.
@ Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH: “Antivaxxers do the following:”
Like other true woos, movement anti-vaxxers are paranoid narcissists at heart, to which they bring their own peculiarly passive-aggressive twist:
If they do not vaccinate and their child lives, they took the right decision.
If they vaccinate and their child lives, they took an unnecessary risk.
If they vaccinate and their child is not 100% “perfect”, the vaccine did it.
If they do not vaccinate and their child dies, it was God’s will.
Thus, for fully committed anti-vaxxers, the only valid solution is to sit on their hands. Even if others suffer, that is not their responsibility because they themselves did nothing.
Further attempts to rationalize that position might hint that on some deep-down level they know they are lying to themselves. However, they cannot afford to lose everything they have built upon those lies—their sense of purpose and importance, their social standing, their pleasingly pat answers and unshakeable certainty in the face of a difficult, complicated, and frankly frightening universe—so the more you tear those lies apart the harder they double-down to protect them, because those lies and their ego are as one.
By attacking their lies you are directly attacking their ego, and these are not people for whom “humility”, “fallibility”, “empathy”, or basic “theory of mind” exist in plenitude…or even outside of a dictionary definition. The drive-by liars and frequent fliers here on RI and in other critical forums are first-hand testament to that, not that they can see it for themselves. Gerg, Ann, et al: take a bow; you do your awful movement proud.
Maybe you missed that pro choice folks are US citizens, pay taxes, and should have the choice of what goes in their body as well as all the other rights provided our citizens.
Does that really need to be justified?
Insane.
Your children are not part of your body, and it’s troubling you think otherwise.
The unvaccinated children don’t have a choice here; it’s the parents choosing not to protect them from disease.
That apart, these parents can continue not to protect their children, and homeschool. They’re not forced to protect them.
By the way, taxes aren’t fees for services.
Yes. Especially if you want to take advantage of public schools.
Do you also want the freedom to ignore traffic laws on publicly funded roads? Or to dump your garbage and sewage on your neighbor’s properties.
There is no inherent “right” to cause harm to other citizens from your own ignorance. Now if you are upset at the rules that allow kids to attend public schools, then create your own special school. Let them be tittle the School for Special Snowflakes Who Hate Public Health. Make sure you go all in by not including any plumbing, but just pits without any soap to wash up with, and ignore all food safety rules by not keeping food at proper temperatures.
You’ve already got that choice. Vaccinate and be a fully paid-up member of society, or don’t vaccinate and take reasonable precautions to avoid harming others.
No, what you malignant turdbuckets want is carte blanche to do 100mph through a school zone, and fuck everyone else. Get bent, you two-faced shit.
Chris, Dorit, Has, and other Choir members for that matter, here in Canada in the province of New Brunswick, their Provincial Government recently introduced a bill to eliminate non-medical exemptions for school kids. After the attorney general office reviewed the bill, the Government was informed that the court would likely find the bill unconstitutional and strike it down. Desperate, the Government is attempting to override the bill with the Notwithstanding Clause, but even that is going over badly. In Sweden, they have also ruled that compulsory vaccination would violate their constitution.
Drug dealers, why do you suppose that highly developed countries such as Canada and Sweden would have constitutions that do such ‘disservice’ to protecting the health and well-being of its people, especially kids? Drug dealers, setting aside the farce that you’re attempting to push as arguments, the short answer is both countries value and respect the inalienable rights of their citizens. They don’t see them as slaves.
PS: Hhmmnn — ‘paid-up member of society’? Your existence comes at the price of being injected with chemicals?!
https://globalnews.ca/news/6225053/notwithstanding-clause-new-brunswick-vaccination-bill/
Oh, poor baby troll! How about a nice tinny drone from the world’s smallest violin?
Provaxxers tell a lot of lies, perhaps the biggest in regards to eliminating non-medical exemptions for school admittance is the claim that it’s about protecting kids while they’re in school. The truth is it’s about prostituting kids education to increase vaccination rates. Unfortunately, the US Constitution allows this, where the state needs only to show that such ‘blackmailing; is achieving a pressing interest.
Canadian Constitutional law, however, is different, where such blackmailing is essentially forbidden. Where a Constitutional infringement occurs and the Oakes Test is applied, the government would have to show that objective of the law is rationally connected to its purpose. In regards to leveraging schooling to increase vaccination rates, these two conditions would likely be deemed as not rationally connected; increasing vaxxed rates and schooling are two separate entities. The government bid would likely fail with the court admonishing the government to find a more rationally connected way to increase vaxxed rates.
Arguing that they’re increasing vaxxed rates to maintain strong herd-immuntiy and protect kids while they’re in school could be seen as more rationally connected objective. Yet, even here the Government could lose on another Oake’s consideration. That of course is the issue of whether the government could find ways to protect kids that want to be protected while they’re in school, and while also respecting unvaxxed kids’ right to schooling or an education. The simplest solution of course is the government could implement unvaxxed schools in the same way there are faith or gender based schools.
Of course the defeat would also amount to a defeat of all blackmailing attempts.
Perhaps the New Brunswick Government was well advised of these possible ‘unsavory’ scenarios and leading them to visit the Notwithstanding Clause. Indeed they may be seeking not to get ruthlessly exposed in court.
http://ojen.ca/en/resource/in-brief-section-1-of-the-charter-the-oakes-test
I
Greg
Because you don’t want to understand the science doesn’t mean it’s a lie.
@Greg Disease pusher, Sweden does not mandate vaccines, yet, because situation is not serious enough. As far as I know, notwithstanding clause is quite a nuclear option.
Unvaccinated schools would be epicenter of epidemics.This happened in Samoa. Government would, of course, not allow this.
@Gerg: Cack off, oxygen thief.
Quoting myself…
Yet, here again, the Oakes Test is so strict that concepts such as herd-immunity would have to be argued in ascertaining whether the Government’s bid to kick unvaxxed kids out of school to protect other kids is not only a rationally connected objective, but whether it’s also achievable (another Oakes’ consideration). Indeed the science would have to be fully argued.
In the US where the bar is quite lower and the Government merely only have to argue that vaccination is important so they should be permitted to essentially do ‘whatever’, there is not much emphasis on going into the science. The courts with their usual rulings upholding mandates seem to be merely deferring to the various health agencies position that vaccine science is sound.
In Canada, however, concepts such as herd-immunity would have to be argued in details, and, again, to not only determine whether they’re real, but also achievable. Here we can picture to Government having to face the laughable task of accounting for such things as how herd-immunity in schools would be possible when undervaxxed parents, teachers, support staff or other visitors or allowed into the schools. Not to mention, kids are only in schools for only a certain portion of the day and other times they’re not existing in bubbles; they’re out in their communities, living in a largely under-vaxxed world, and ‘making’ them vulnerable ‘disease vectors’.
Interestingly, here in Ontario some parents have taken the extraordinary step of launching a lawsuit, challenging that even being forced to attend information sessions before they’re granted exemptions is unconstitutional. In their claims, the parents are also arguing that herd-immunity is not real or achievable. Initially, I was struck by how this lawsuit was such a bold move, but now I am thinking maybe these parents are really sensing blood in the waters. Perhaps they’re seizing the opportunity to mercilessly expose the Government and vaccine ‘science’ in court. I say — go parents!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-vaccination-scheme-charter-challenge-1.5339169
@Aarno
Sweden is not balking at mandates, suggesting they have a high enough vaxxed rates and they’re not necessary; they’re saying they are not interested in pursuing them because they would be a violation of their constitution!
Oh for sure:
not only education but therapy, day programmes, medical care, disability payments ( for adults). One of the loudest mouths at AoA receives multiple forms of assistance because her daughters are adults and she is supposedly impoverished with no help from her former husband.
“that big, freaking elephant in the pink tutu and eating ice cream is not going anywhere!”
It’ll vanish once you get treatment for the DTs.
@ Orac,
Q. How is vaccine injury like paraneoplastic syndrome.
A. Both have complex immunologic etiology requiring more data and understanding to “fix.”
Here’s a recent attempt, by MJD, to “fix” metastasizing cancer through maladaptive immunity:
http://www.tridhascholars.org/pdfs/maladaptive-immunity-and-metastasizing-cancer-CMJ-03-1017.pdf
@ Orac’s minions,
Respectfully insolent 2020, my RI friends!
Alway take time to shill your own particualr brand of snake oil eh mjd? No sense of shame from you, apparently.
Such a disgusting read. Hateful and disrespectful! Just another sign of the times we live in.
The laws never allowed one to chose not to vaccinate because of the evidence and science. If they did then there would be a heck of a lot more evidence. However there are many very intelligent people that can provide all the arguments and research needed to explain why this should be a decision to be educated about. Most of society blindly follows the experts who say they have science behind them. To them I’d recommend the trust but verify approach. Look up what’s the third leading cause of death in the US and see how much faith you should place in the medical system.
All those who refuse to allow those with the belief in God’s creation and gift of the child continue to ridicule away and to live in fear and hatred of your fellow man who celebrates life.
Very well said, Matt. A person that has no choice in something so basic as what chemicals get injected in him is not a person. He is a slave. Perhaps even more appaling is most people are not seeing this.
It was mostly a meaningless word salad, as is your moronic response. Any adult has a choice, they just need to take the consequences. These would include not working in certain medical setting, having to homeschool the children who they have left vulnerable to diseases and accepting quarantine if they do come down with certain diseases.
If you don’t want chemicals in your body, hold your breath. Oxygen is a chemical.
And even that is still my choice.
Try not to breath for an hour or so. I’m pretty sure your body makes the right decision for you.
Peoples, we all have choices but as represented by this prime example, antivaxxers refuse to accept any consequences or accountability.
Alain
So you are in favor of letting kids suffer high fevers, seizures, encephalitis, pneumonia and possible permanent disability or death from measles because reasons? Mostly you don’t like vaccines because of your special evidence. Well, do share that evidence with us. Provide us the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the American MMR vaccine that has been used since 1978 has caused more harm than measles, mumps and rubella.
Then explain why the at least 5000 cases of measles with over seventy deaths in Samoa is a good thing.
Well here are the top ten causes of death by age (most recent is 2017): https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_2017-508.pdf
So which particular “third leading” are you telling us shows science is evil? Is it lack of prenatal care, genetic disorders, cancer, homicide, heart disorder, unintentional injuries, or chronic respiratory disease?
Greg also seems to miss the fact that this isn’t about vaccinating the parents making the decision. They were, mostly, vaccinated and protected by their own loving parents, and at any rate, the law doesn’t apply to them.
This is about children who don’t have a choice either way.
They’re not part of their parents bodies. When you equate this to forcing something on one’s body, you’re suggesting children are either limbs, or slaves, or property. That’s not true.
I was responding to Monetti, who said: “Look up what’s the third leading cause of death in the US and see how much faith you should place in the medical system.”
So I looked for the third leading cause of death in the USA. Nothing really to do much with the medical system other that they cannot do miracles like fix everyone after severe trauma, cure certain genetic disorders and manage to eliminate all causes of mortality.
Monetti is just another anti-science drone like Greg. They expect us to believe their blatant assertions, even though they are just random drivel.
@ Chris – Perhaps Matt was referring to medical errors as the third leading cause of death, per Johns Hopkins. ‘Ya know, Johns Hopkins, one of the holy of holies of the medical industrial complex! The article also claims the CDC needs “to change the way it collects the nation’s vital health statistics”. What!? CDC statistics questionable….from the masters of obfuscations and extrapolations!? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
Why am I not surprised you uncritically use stats that are not reliable but support your bias. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-medical-errors-really-the-third-most-common-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s-2019-edition/
There was never a requirement that states give a religious exemption from vaccines mandates.
States choose to provide it as a privilege, seeing it as an acceptable balance between public health and allowing parents to send children to school unprotected.
If the balance doesn’t work, states can choose a different one. There’s no constitutional bar.
“All those who refuse to allow those with the belief in God’s creation and gift of the child continue to ridicule away and to live in fear and hatred of your fellow man who celebrates life”
What the f#ck does that mean? Faith in God will prevent harm? I really hope this is a case of English as a second language. Otherwise, it’s frightening that this level of unintelligible waffle comes from someone who thinks they can argue on the same level as a medical expert.
If I had to guess…
“I will take religious-inspired creed for $500, Alex”
You can’t celebrate life without breaking a few eggs.
So a search of PubMed. Start with “Vaccine AND safety”. You will find almost 20,000 entries. Then narrow it down, for instance, adding Placebo or Measles and you will still find thousands of entries.
And the requirements for FDA approval of vaccines, for WHO approval, are much much higher than any other medicine. And post-marketing surveillance is also much much higher. And, whereas with other drugs and foods, FDA has the mandate to order a stop immediately on use of a vaccine if some serious condition uncovered, which they did with first rotavirus vaccine and intussusception. Whereas for minor adverse events VAERS only gets about 1%, for serious conditions a much higher percentage is reported; but teams monitor VAERS constantly and if only a very few serious conditions are reported, they investigate. Plus, VAERS is only one of several monitoring programs. Check out the Vaccine Safety Data Link which gets real time data, not reported data. It gets vaccine, lot number, kids age, gender, any existing comorbidities and any reported reactions.
If you believe we should accept God’s creation as is, then we should also reject antibiotics, chemotherapy, etc. Whether we live or die should be God’s will. And we should also outlaw quarantining anyone who brings a dangerous disease into the U.S. Even in Blblical times they quarantined people. In fact, we shouldn’t even chlorinate drinking water.
And my reading of the Bible is love for ones fellow man, including a community responsibility.
As for the 3rd leading cause of death, this has nothing to do with science. If a hospital, for instance, doesn’t follow a strict protocol for preventing infection, people get antibiotic resistant infections. The antibiotic industry sells 80% of antibiotics to agribusiness, despite numerous studies by scientists documenting how this creates antibiotic resistance infections. And, individual surgeons may make mistakes; but this is on them, not science. Whenever myself, loved ones or friends have been recommended some medical intervention, if time, I check out PubMed for what the science behind it is and also check out the individual doctor. That is where I apply “trust but verify.” Not all doctors keep up with the latest medical developments, just too many of them, which is why teams of experts develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines; but even those need “trust but verify” because there can be several. Antivaccinationists see the world in exaggerated black and white. It is complicated and requires time and effort to navigate it, something antivaccinationists ignore. Simpler for them, even if dangerous.
In (possibly) related news…
from Katie Wright ( @ katiewr31413491) who is shrieking that Gov Murphy ( NJ) had a vote at 9:30 at NIGHT to mandate HPV vaccine….
I couldn’t find any other references to this so far. Wright lives in poshest Manhattan ( photos of Park Ave) and her son is now in upstate NY at a residential school.
Wright’s parents founded Autism Speaks when her son was diagnosed; she is on the board of Safe Minds and Children’s Health Defense.
Her tweets are a joy to read
I’m wondering if she’s confusing her bills or being unclear? There isn’t an HPV mandate bill in New Jersey, to my knowledge. There is one proposed in New York. ??
I never saw any either.
Well, the US House committee voted late on impeachment so maybe that threw them.
We shouldn’t look to katiewr for data.
Confusion with this, perhaps?
^ Oh, wait, that’s what the whole post is about. Cue Emily Litella.
Yikes. How embarrassing for you to be so wrong. We weren’t in the wrong room. We were ushered into the correct room (room 4) and then also took every single overflow room. When the doors opened at 9, we we already there with hundreds of people and we were allowed into the room that the hearing would be held. However, there was one hearing before ours so we did take up much of the public seating for that hearing as well. This is because there were thousands of people who came and were pushed into overflow rooms with audio, but the main room which seated a few hundred people was filled with those who came earliest in the morning. Those people didn’t want to lose their spots (they were not allowed to leave and return to their seats), so stayed for the day.
This article makes me very sad for you.
So we should just believe your narrative? It sounds like you were following random orders by others like sheep. If you disagree, then post the video of that actual room where the vaccine law was being discussed.
IKR? A reporter posted pictures and video, and I’m supposed to believe some random antivaxxer?
Especially at the top of this page is a picture of Del Bigtree sitting in the NJ Transit hearing. The screen shows a map, which would be expected when the issue is transportation.
By the way, that was one of the worst hearings to take up seats in because policies of public transit are very important to the disabled population. From the blind who cannot drive to those with mobility issues and many others. Their behavior of hogging seats in that hearing was very ableist.
There is a lawsuit in our area that addresses the issue of anti-tax libertarians not thinking about anyone but themselves: https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/11/25/why-transit-riders-are-joining-the-suit-against-tim-eymans-initiative-976/
Plus the seat hoggers really do not have a scientific leg to stand on.
Thousands?
Yet NJ PBS 50 showed videos and reported “hundreds”
so did Washington Post, Boston CBS and Patch.
I suppose they all plotted together and lied about the numbers
Also northjersey.com and newscream.com: “hundreds”
rawstory has Mr Munoz on “wrong room”
Let me add nj.com :
all of these sources say hundreds of protestors ( not thousands)
and a few of them report about them being in the wrong room.
So whom do you believe: a bunch of journalists in different venues, different cities or anti-vaxxers commenting hatefully on a SB blog/ Del?
( I should perhaps more carefully ask “Whom do realistic people believe?” because anti-vaxxers never believe media except their own pathetic attempts)
So there is the possibility of a miss-placed metaphor; the truly sad thing about the article is it shows how people are being duped into fighting against the community’s best interests by opposing vaccines. We can only hope that good sense and reason will prevail for the good of us all.
“people are being duped into fighting against the community’s best interests by opposing vaccines”
Oh, my dear sweet innocent child. Do you honestly believe movement antivaxxers give a flying fuck about “the community’s best interests”? The only thing they care about is themselves. Hell, they only care about their own children inasmuch as the children are remote extension to their own ego, not autonomous creatures with rights and agency of their own. Poor little Emelia Walls innocently regurgitating parental turds is testament to that.
Have I mentioned narcissists? I’m sure I have. Nasty manipulative narcissists with a fat side serving of passive-aggressiveness. Others may die, but they didn’t do anything so it can’t be their fault. Nothing ever is.
WE MEANT TO DO THAT.
“All those who refuse to allow those with the belief in God’s creation and gift of the child continue to ridicule away and to live in fear and hatred of your fellow man who celebrates life.”
Part of celebrating life is avoiding needless suffering and death from vaccine-preventable diseases.
And that’s why every major religion supports vaccination.
Hey, I just got a phone call from a friend who said I should stop by. I’m doing pretty good, all things considered; the only main problem I got right now is financial, as in I ain’t got no job. Hard to come by for some reason. I’ll figure out something eventually, I’m sure, it’ll just take a little while. In the meantime, I guess if anybody wants to send me some scratch, they can do it here: paypal.me/ComradeJP
I’m still living in Vancouver, WA, with my friend Jean. (Her son Bart is one of my best friends from growing up, and she worked with my grandma in the Forest Service for decades; she used to give her a ride to work every day after she got so many DUIs she couldn’t drive any more.) I got a friend I shack up with for a couple-few days most weeks, that’s great. Sometimes at his place but usually out at this little old houseboat that goes back to his grandma’s. It’s nicer because it has an actual deck and sh*t and we don’t have to worry about being the noisy neighbors. You know, family upstairs, kids got school in the morning and stuff. There’s a funny story about the deck I might relate at some point.
Yeah, anyway, doing pretty good. I’m getting in shape, even. There’s a gym just a ten minute walk away or so that costs ten bucks a month. Eating brocolli, telling fascists to f*ck off on the internet. You know, all that good stuff.
Hi JP!
Should I go back to JP? I mean, same initials.
@ Jack
(Hi)
No worries, pick whatever best suits you.
Since Orac moved from the old Scienceblog to here, a number of us changed their ‘nym, and we managed to adapt. So, one more name in the mix… 🙂
I’m sure the old regulars will follow your identity, whichever you choose.
Hey there Jack, nice to hear from you. Really hope the job prospects brighten up for you.
Yeah, I mean, I don’t have any experience as an auto mechanic or anything, and nobody wants to hire a 31 year old transsexual in the middle of things to be a nanny, so it’s kinda difficult.
I mean, I have the MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures, but it seems kind of pointless to go back and finish the PhD since I can’t really go over there any more, being trans and all. (Don’t particularly want to stick anybody with the funeral bill.) Government won’t pay for a second bachelor’s degree and colleges charge up the a** nowadays. Idk. Figure something out I guess.
Welcome back Jack. Hope you find a job that suits you.
Being transsexual can make things a bit more difficult, I know, though things have improved a bit. Not sure it is the same in the US, but it seems to be in the Netherlands.
I’m unemployed myself and consider myself lucky, to live in a country with good social security. Still it sucks, but who wants to hire a 60 year old, with 40 years of experience in being without a paid job?
@ Jack:
Glad to hear you are doing better!
It would be difficult for me to advise you on job prospects because I don’t know your area BUT
does your state have rules that allow people with masters or doctorates to by-pass teacher training/ degrees by a one day test? My cousin’s wife tried this but was a terrible/ terrified test taker despite having masters in business and public administration – she found another way to teach anyway, she is a long term substitute who has been doing that for 10+ years ( every day) and is a black woman in semi-rural whitey-ville ( which needs teachers)
Another option is helping people who live nearby with errands or tasks they can’t do alone (.seniors/ disabled)- in a city, I’d suggest dog walking- my friend’s niece did this at age 15-17. You could go to stores or help with minor tasks for elders, Put up a sign in grocery stores. If you live in/ near a city, there may be temp services where you can try different jobs- usually office work
If you are worried about how being trans might cut your chances perhaps you need to find potential jobs where it might be an asset.. Cafes, bars, artsy venues, restaurants .. you’re not that far from Portland ( joke)
But I’m confident that you’ll find something because you have a way of landing on your feet – like a cat ( no joke)
.
Oregon and Washington are both possibilities, being on the border, I suppose. I looked into Washington at one point and I don’t remember all the rigamarole, but Oregon is a lot more lax about a lot more stuff. I don’t wanna be a schoolteacher anyway, though; not my scene. Although Tom did bring up teaching night school, which is how he managed to graduate high school; he said the teachers are all chill as f*ck for some reason, and the kids are all pretty chill because they know it’s their last chance.
Not really my scene, unless we’re talking about some hole in the wall joint where you can get the “Hamm’s and eggs” special (two egg breakfast, tall boy of Hamm’s), but those are getting a lot fewer and farther between these days. F*cking Californians!
It ain’t easy anywhere, man, in part just inherently, but then people gotta go and be an a**hole to you on top of it.
I’m just goofing, Denice, some of my best friends are Californians, but there’s some truth to the expression. It’s usually something we say amongst ourselves, though, you know, letting off steam. And even then we know we’re joking around.
@ Jack:
Somehow I left out night school : for GED or adult ed/ Community college which could include ESL/EFL. I’ll bet that you being multi-lingual could help people trying to learn English. My friend who studied special ed/ language correction wound up teaching EFL kids in LA when she lived with her brother. She had no training but was able to help kids who spoke Chinese, Korean and Spanish ( she knew a little Spanish and had strong Italian but no Chinese, Korean at all) She also worked with SMI teens in FL in a private school – no license required- English skills and recreational aide.
Hi, Jack. I know things will be difficult for you, so I wish the best for you.
Depending on your Apple Health coverage and/or ability to access services from the DSHS you might try getting some vocational rehabilitation services. It is an actual rehab treatment supplied through medical services and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) at WA state DSHS (Dept of Social and Health Services).
After my oldest got their autism diagnosis they got six weeks of vocational rehabilitation sessions at the local hospital (they now get services through the Developmental Disorders Admin). For his Apple Health to cover it there had to be a referral from a medical care provider. Which for them was the psychologist who diagnosed at the university’s autism clinic. So if you have a medical care provider, see if you can get a referral.
Or do what I did five years ago: walk into the closest DSHS office and ask for help. I was kind of at my wit’s end because everyone said our adult child was going to be okay, they were not… and literally went to the navigators’ in the lobby and said “Help us please.”
Even though my kid was directed to DVR, the same lobby has this resource, which is related: https://www.worksourcewa.com/
I know Jack, even in a liberal country like the Netherlands there is still a lot to be desired for transsexuals (shouldn’t that be transgenders?) A lot are unemployed,although things have improved a bit since I was young. A former friend of mine (transsexual, or ex-transsexual) found a nursing job. Another friend of mine, who started the transition in her 50s has her own bookkeeping company. And I have known some who worked as hairdressers. And one who could keep her job in the end commited suicide, because things still became difficult (but that was a long time ago, when I was still in my 20s.
Transgender is an adjective, transsexual can be an adjective but is usually a noun. I kind of like to use it sometimes in a spirit of irony, like “homosexual.” I mean, you don’t really need to ‘splain me things, y’know, I’m in the thick of it.
Ronald Reagan was a dumb son of a b*itch, but “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” actually can be a pretty terrifying phrase for some people for certain reasons, maybe it’s certain populations or something, idk. I mean, yeah, thinking back, uncle Tim got taken away by the state and stuff when he was a kid (for truancy, you know, them white trash people.)
At a minimum talk to whatever healthcare supplier you have available. And then actually call the DSHS number and ask questions. Try to find an advocate.
<
blockquote>vocational rehabilitation sessions
<
blockquote>
“Kid, have you reeeehabilitated yourself?”
Sorry, I’m in a mood.
Of course, it takes the right mind set because it is a process. Essentially there are paper tests, some therapy like discussions and in some cases like WorkSource workshops. My kid went through the process, which still involves a job coach due to autism, anxiety and desire to be the sole member/president of the Anti-social Social Club.
That’s cool, it just 100% ain’t me. I’m over at Tom’s, we were shootin’ the sh!t some sitting in the doorway drinking and smoking about teaching night school, I’m gonna look into it, think it might be a good fit. You know, fck ups and fck ups. Got some stupid TV on in the background right now while we both do some Internet nonsense.
@Jack
There’s always time for Alice’s Restaurant.
I think I know more than enough about being transsexuel. In the Netherlands it is a bit weird. The word transsexual was used, though to some transgender was the prefered word, because transsexual had a sexual connotation, like homosexual and because it had nothing to do with sexual preferences, but with gender, people prefered transgender. Currently it seems some consider transgenders as those who feel in between sexes, neither male, nor female.
Something else is, some consider being transsexual (transgender) as a permanent identity, while when I was young, being transsexual was a temporary thing. If one has lived 38 years as a female, should one still say one is transsexual?
Don’t use the tone, please. I am. Are you?
Transgender. Ain’t. A. Noun. Sheeit.
I don’t really have the energy right now to get into all of the other stuff, but “in between male and female” is kind of akin to “non-binary,” although “in between male and female” is definitely not how all or even most non-binary people would describe themselves. Man, don’t frikkin’ talk down to me about this, seriously, it’s me.
I explained why I use the word “transsexual,” I know the reason why it isn’t the generally preferred word, but also some people (who I’m close to) of the older generation prefer it because it’s the word they’ve always used, and I like it because I’m a funny guy and I use humor to cope, and honestly, don’t tell me/us what f*cking words to use, Jesus Christ, think a little bit.
Am I, or was I?
In The Netherlands transgender is used as a noun. Can’t speak for the US.
Now transsexuals are lumped in with gay, lesbian and bisexual people, while being transexual has nothing to do with sexual orientation. When I was in my 20s, transsexuels were even frowned upon by gay and lesbian people, who stated transsexuals were just gay, or lesbian, who couldn’t accept their sexual orientation. In some feminist circles there was a popular book, stating transsexuals were just an invention of males, to bring back women under the patriciate. A friend of mine suffered a lot from this. She was active in feminist circles, untill this book (The transsexual empire) went round.
Oh yeah, TERFs! They’re still around in a major way, especially in the UK, ain’t never went nowhere. And there’s still a “LGB without the T” movement. Things ain’t changed that much. We just fight amongst ourselves a lot more now for whatever reason, which is pretty sad. Generational stuff or whatever.
Yeah idk, “is,” “was,” as far as I know I’m a fuggin’ tranny for life, can’t change that one way or the other, what’s is is. I mean I could go stealth, but that wouldn’t change the reality, and it seems like the community needs somebody to hang out with and shoot the sh!t with, so, you know.
If something is 38 (40), to 35 years ago, why should one still identify with it? To me in a way it is weird. When I was in my 20s, you were supposed to be the desired (felt) gender and more or less no longer a transsexual after the transition. Now it seems one is transsexual for life and it is something making me feel uncomfortable. I was and suddenly I am again. Why should one live with something that happened so long ago? If one has had some serious illness in the past, one isn’t reduced to that illness. I’ve spend nine months in psychiatric care, am I till I’m dead a former psychiatric patient?
I don’t want to step on any toes or hurt anyone, but sometimes I seem to do.
I mean, that’s cool I guess if it works out for you, you do you, no skin off my back.
Perhaps it’s a generation thing. I don’t know many transsexuals who went in transition in the 80’s, but the one I met considers herself as being female and no longer transsexual. Ask Wendy Carlos how she sees things.
My parents moved, when I had my transition and almost no-one here knows about my past. Most consider me just as a woman. Only if people know it, they look at me in a different way. I never gave it a thought. And now suddenly I seem to have to think about it.
Oh wait, it’s actually paypal.me/comradeJP apparently, I had a capital letter off.
“Telling me I have to give my child proper nutrition and stop beating him is like saying he’s not my property to do with as I will. I’ve never felt so violated!” sobbed the child murderer.
Maybe the AVs could tag-team with NAMBLA? Common cause and all that.
I was there. Do you know why the anti – vaxxers were “in the wrong room? I’ll tell you why-because this bill, so incredibly important to them, was going to be heard by the senate health committee at 2:00 and THEY WANTED A SEAT. By the way, that room you so smugly showed as the WRONG ROOM HAPPENED to be the room that the meeting took place in. I think your ignorant mockery of trivial things such as this is pathetic. Maybe you should know what you’re talking about before you trash passionate mothers with babies strapped to their chests. You are a brainwashed fool and the next time you report such trivial or important lies make sure you are there before you skew the truth to make people look bad. You know NOTHING about what you posted but I do – I was in the state house that day from 9 am waiting for that meeting and that room, the “wrong room”, was the right room that was FULL after the transit meeting. You smearing anyone knowing nothing of what you’re writing about says nothing about anyone but YOU.
Provide verifiable evidence that was the actual schedule. Otherwise you are just a random person on teh internets whose veracity cannot be determined.
And if it was the same room but an earlier time, you make no Brownie points by taking up space for others who were interested in that the NJ Transit system (something that is very important to those with disabilities, making you all even more ableist). Fortunately, the disease promoters did not get much of a win due to their poor behavior and even worse lack of science.
@Chris: Can’t you read? Debbie needed a seat. Cripples can wait. Debbie does lots for cripples already.
😉 It is all about being more entitled. Because when an unvaccinated child gets injured or damaged by a disease, it is because the kid deserved it. Especially if they live far away and are brown.
I hate to do this, because I’m very pro-vaccine and hope these bills pass and get signed into law. But it’s true that both meetings were in the same room. Link to the NJ Legislature Schedule for that day is below. Note that both committees were assigned to, “Committee Room 4, 1st Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ,” the first at noon, and the second at 2 PM.
https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/Default.asp
The post was rephrased before you posted this and addressed in the same paragraph about the “S2175” mistake in the news report. That’s what happens when one relies on Twitter, I guess, and I’m afraid that Brandy Zadrozny, who’s usually pretty reliable, is the source of the “wrong room” claim instead of their being at the wrong meeting. Of course, to me showing up hours early and then refusing to leave a public hearing that had nothing to do with S2173 being held in the same room before the meeting they wanted to attend makes the antivaxxers look entitled and obnoxious, particularly if their presence forced people actually interested in the NJ Transit bill to have to stand or made it impossible for them to enter the room to observe and participate.
So, Debbie, have you succeeded in convincing the NJ transit authorities in stopping vaccinating children?
I mean, you attended that meeting, too. As responsible and informed citizens, since you were there, I’m sure you made good use of your and everybody’s else time.
So they purposefully went in the way of other people’s “incredibly important” affairs.
You know, when it’s geeks camping in front of the theater two days before the opening of the new Star War movie, it’s cute, and it’s not inconveniencing many people.
When you are occupying a public meeting room while other groups are trying to discuss important matters… All it says is “me me me me”.
You really sure you want to go for “selfish a-hole” instead of “clueless slob”?
“You really sure you want to go for “selfish a-hole” instead of “clueless slob”?”
Why not both?
@ Greg
You wrote: “In Sweden, they have also ruled that compulsory vaccination would violate their constitution.”
Nope, they didn’t rule that compulsory vaccination would violate their constitution. However, two bills were defeated to mandate vaccines. The Bills were submitted because of low vaccination rates in other European nations which had resulted in a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, e.g., measles. At the same time the Bills were defeated, Sweden added rotavirus vaccine to their list.
The vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in Sweden is slightly higher than 97%. In other words, Swedes, belonging to a nation where people both have individual rights and a sense of community, plus are highly educated, don’t need to be forced to vaccinate. They already have the highest vaccination rates in the world, so those who can’t be vaccinated, e.g., autoimmune diseases, undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, et. are protected.
Vaccines are absolutely free for children in Sweden.
So, as usual, you are full of . . .
By the way, I am fluent at Sweden, lived their almost 10 years where I earned my PhD and still keep in touch with friends by e-mail, though, unfortunately, several have passed away. Besides e-mails, from time to time I check out Swedish newspapers on the internet.
Jag kan flyttande svenska. I am fluent at Swedish.
Så du får gärna dra åt helvete. So, please, go to hell.
The Antivax section of the Loonisphere need a victory story to circulate, to distract themselves from their collective accomplishment in Samoa. They’re going to be telling one another that “Sweden banned Vaccines!” for months.
You’re up to more BS, Joel. So the bills were defeated because they were deemed ‘unnecessary’? Why exactly were they defeated, Joel?
And while we’re waiting back from Joel, here is more evidence that it was indeed a case of the Swedish government deeming that mandatory vaccination would be in violation of their constitution….
https://www.ageofautism.com/2017/05/sweden-votes-down-mandatory-vaccination.html
As usual you missed a key point I made, namely, that Sweden has the highest vaccination rates in the world, over 97%, and I can read the original Swedish. Relying on what Age of Autism says is like relying on a maffia lawyer claiming his client is innocent.
Explain to me why a nation would need to mandate something that the overwhelming population already does? And, at the same time, vote to add another vaccine to the list of free vaccines to be offered?
By the way, the horrible socialized medical system in Sweden ranks among the highest in life-expectancy, lowest in infant mortality, among the highest in quality of life years for those with chronic conditions, and these stats include almost one million immigrants/refugees to a nation with only eight million. Their health care system can sometimes appear bureaucratic; but the quality is as high as it gets. In fact, when I lived in Sweden, on a per capita basis, before advent of for-profit journals, they had more peer-reviewed publications than U.S.
You’re still not answering the question, Joel. You said the Swedish government voted down two bills that would’ve made vaccines mandatory; what was the justification given, Joel? You can speak and read Swedish fluently? Put it to use Joel and translate that Swedish article from the AoA link explaining why their government backed away from mandatory vaccination.
Thank you Joel A. Harrison. I read your posts with interest and find them clear and illuminating. As for Greg he proves, yet again, that, as you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink, you can lead a Greg to infomation but he will stubbornly refuse to think.
Um, Gerg, that’s from NHF Sweden, “A Non-Profit Health-Freedom Organization,” who are the only people who claimed that there was a constitutional issue in the first place.
There is no justice in this world. Dr Harrison still gets annoyed with me when I keep reminding him that he is full of shit.
That’s because your reminders to hiim are, like everything else you say, pure bullshit and not based in any way on facts.
@ Greg
You referred to Age of Autism’s “Sweden Votes Down Mandatory Vaccination” (2017 May 11). Available at: https://www.ageofautism.com/2017/05/sweden-votes-down-mandatory-vaccination.html
They, in turn, refer to an article from National Health Federation – Sweden: Riksdagen röstade Nej till alla (2017 May 10). Available at: https://www.thenhf.se/riksdagen-rostade-nej-till-alla-vaccinmotioner/
Note. that the NHF, among other things, successfully lobbied for a U.S. law that
exempts dietary supplements and complementary and alternative medicines from any requirements. Studies have found that some production facilities for alternative meds had mold and rat droppings and the amount or even inclusion of ingredients on the labels were often grossly inaccurate, e.g., stating 50 mg of something could be 5 or 200. Several independent sources have described the National Health Federation as a fringe lobbying group or as a promoter of dubious and unproven medical claims and devices (Wikipedia. National Health Federation)
And NSF, in turn, referred to Betänkande 2016/17:SoU7 (pdf, 812 kB)
Available at: https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/77EB646D-37F9-4E33-9A89-331A5AA0E85A
So, let’s look at the report they refer to from the Swedish Socialutskottets betänkande 2016/17:SoU7 (Swedish Committee on Health):
I sin lägesrapport om de nationella vaccinationsprogrammen 2016 konstaterar Folkhälsomyndigheten att vaccinationstäckningen fortsatt är hög och stabil, att de sjukdomar som omfattas av programmen är under god kontroll och att vaccinerna som används inom programmen är fortsatt säkra. Vidare konstaterar myndigheten att den höga vaccinationstäckningen tyder på att allmänheten har ett högt förtroende för vaccinationsprogrammen och för personalen som erbjuder vaccinationerna. (page 45)
In their situation report on the national vaccination program in 2016, the Swedish Health Authority found that vaccination rates remained high and stabile, that vaccine-preventable diseases that the program deals with are under good control and that the continuation of vaccines used in the program or for individuals continues securely. Further it was found that high vaccination rates demonstrate that the Swedish public has a high degree of confidence in the vaccination program and the personal who deliver the vaccinations.
Utskottet ansåg inte att det behövde tas något initiativ med anledning av motionerna. Riksdagen beslutade i enlighet med utskottets förslag.(page 46)
The committee considered that they didn’t need to consider the motion [proceed to a vote on mandatory vaccines]. The Swedish Parliament followed the committees recommendation.
Riksdagen ställer sig bakom det som anförs i motionen om att se över möjligheten att utöka barnavårdscentralernas vaccinationsprogram till att omfatta även rotavirus och tillkännager detta för regeringen.(page 67).
The Swedish Parliament supports the recommendation to look at the possibility of increasing the childhood vaccination program to include the rotavirus vaccine.
So, the Age of Autism article states: “Sweden’s Parliament just rejected 7 motions that would have promoted forced vaccinations. The Swedish Parliament decided forced vaccination policies are contrary to their citizens’ constitutional rights. May every other country in the world follow their lead.”
Actually, there were only two motions. And nothing in the Committee finding mentioned “constitutional rights.” The NHF mentions suggestion 3 and suggestion 4. Like mentioning paragraph 3 and 4, then claiming 7 motions. Wow!
So, as I already wrote, Swedish authorities felt that due to high levels of confidence in the vaccine program, with highest rates in world, over 97%, mandatory laws were unnecessary. No mention of Constitutionality. And they even voted to explore adding another vaccine, rotavirus vaccine.
So, you refer to an Age of Autism, a radical anti vaccine group not known for their honest rendition of events, who, in turn, refers to a radical small fringe group, whose article ignores key paragraphs in Swedish report. Well done Greg. The blind leading the blind.
Once more you just wasted my time showing the world what an ignorant moran you are. I hope that the sane people monitoring this blog appreciate my efforts. I’m sure they do.
So., who is full of shit? Sound like psychological defense mechanism of someone projecting their own deficits on to others!
Several independent sources have described the National Health Federation as a fringe lobbying group or as a promoter of dubious and unproven medical claims and devices (Wikipedia. National Health Federation)
Do I count as a sufficiently independent source?
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2019/01/foundation-and-empire.html
They purged a lot of their old archives, so the overt racism (“brown-skinned persons are disease-ridden vermin who trash the environment while out-breeding the white race”) can still be found if you go looking.
I am also familiar with these people and their activities concerning DSHEA
@ Greg
You referred to Age of Autism’s “Sweden Votes Down Mandatory Vaccination” (2017 May 11). Available at: https://www.ageofautism.com/2017/05/sweden-votes-down-mandatory-vaccination.html
They, in turn, refer to an article from National Health Federation – Sweden: Riksdagen röstade Nej till alla (2017 May 10). Available at: https://www.thenhf.se/riksdagen-rostade-nej-till-alla-vaccinmotioner/
Note. that the NHF, among other things, successfully lobbied for a U.S. law that
exempts dietary supplements and complementary and alternative medicines from any requirements. Studies have found that some production facilities for alternative meds had mold and rat droppings and the amount or even inclusion of ingredients on the labels were often grossly inaccurate, e.g., stating 50 mg of something could be 5 or 200. Several independent sources have described the National Health Federation as a fringe lobbying group or as a promoter of dubious and unproven medical claims and devices (Wikipedia. National Health Federation)
And NSF, in turn, referred to Betänkande 2016/17:SoU7 (pdf, 812 kB)
Available at: https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/77EB646D-37F9-4E33-9A89-331A5AA0E85A
So, let’s look at the report they refer to from the Swedish Socialutskottets betänkande 2016/17:SoU7 (Swedish Committee on Health):
I sin lägesrapport om de nationella vaccinationsprogrammen 2016 konstaterar Folkhälsomyndigheten att vaccinationstäckningen fortsatt är hög och stabil, att de sjukdomar som omfattas av programmen är under god kontroll och att vaccinerna som används inom programmen är fortsatt säkra. Vidare konstaterar myndigheten att den höga vaccinationstäckningen tyder på att allmänheten har ett högt förtroende för vaccinationsprogrammen och för personalen som erbjuder vaccinationerna. (page 45)
In their situation report on the national vaccination program in 2016, the Swedish Health Authority found that vaccination rates remained high and stabile, that vaccine-preventable diseases that the program deals with are under good control and that the continuation of vaccines used in the program or for individuals continues securely. Further it was found that high vaccination rates demonstrate that the Swedish public has a high degree of confidence in the vaccination program and the personal who deliver the vaccinations.
Utskottet ansåg inte att det behövde tas något initiativ med anledning av motionerna. Riksdagen beslutade i enlighet med utskottets förslag.(page 46)
The committee considered that they didn’t need to consider the motion [proceed to a vote on mandatory vaccines]. The Swedish Parliament followed the committees recommendation.
Riksdagen ställer sig bakom det som anförs i motionen om att se över möjligheten att utöka barnavårdscentralernas vaccinationsprogram till att omfatta även rotavirus och tillkännager detta för regeringen.(page 67).
The Swedish Parliament supports the recommendation to look at the possibility of increasing the childhood vaccination program to include the rotavirus vaccine.
So, the Age of Autism article states: “Sweden’s Parliament just rejected 7 motions that would have promoted forced vaccinations. The Swedish Parliament decided forced vaccination policies are contrary to their citizens’ constitutional rights. May every other country in the world follow their lead.”
Actually, there were only two motions. And nothing in the Committee finding mentioned “constitutional rights.” The NHF mentions suggestion 3 and suggestion 4. Like mentioning paragraph 3 and 4, then claiming 7 motions. Wow!
So, as I already wrote, Swedish authorities felt that due to high levels of confidence in the vaccine program, with highest rates in world, over 97%, mandatory laws were unnecessary. No mention of Constitutionality. And they even voted to explore adding another vaccine, rotavirus vaccine.
So, you refer to an Age of Autism, a radical anti vaccine group not known for their honest rendition of events, who, in turn, refers to a radical small fringe group, whose article ignores key paragraphs in Swedish report. Well done Greg. The blind leading the blind.
Once more you just wasted my time showing the world what an ignorant moran you are. I hope that the sane people monitoring this blog appreciate my efforts. I’m sure they do.
I for one value your postings very highly indeed – I’ve just started ‘A Different Mirror’ which you recommended a short while ago (only 9 pages in, but it feels like it’s going to be good).
There does seem to be a general assault on truth and reason in the world at large, and one of the reasons why I drop in on this blog, despite my lack of education in the area, is to maintain a somewhat precarious connection with people who can think properly and, although we all look at the world through bullshit coloured spectacles, at least know how to clean the crap from their lenses.
Oh, you mean Gerg was wrong? I wonder how that happened?
@ Greg
You really are dishonest and unethical. You request I translate from Swedish, then expect me to continuously monitor your comments, drop everything, and do the work. Otherwise, before I can act, you again attack me. Well, I did submit my response; but it didn’t get posted. They have a screening program which I suspect held my comment up because of it containing Swedish characters or, maybe, some other reason. I e-mailed them, of course it is Sunday, so expect when they get the e-mail they will see to it my comment is posted and it backs my previous comments perfectly.
I don’t get annoyed with you for your attacks on me; but use you to show others monitoring this website just how unscientific, illogical, dishonest (ignoring or twisting what I and others write) and then attacking them.
And, though only completely fluent in Swedish, I can read German and French with help of a dictionary.
You are Canadian. Comprend tu la Français? When France lost Quebec to Brits, Voltaire allegedly said to Louis XV that he shouldn’t be upset because all they lost was quelques arpent de neige (a few acres of snow).
By the way, I got my M.A. in social psychology from Carleton University, 1970. Pierre Elliot Trudeau spoke on campus and I got to shake his hand. I’ve a book written by him and a biography of him. In fact, I’ve got 20 or so books on different aspects of Canada, even biography of Samuel Champlain and book on early settling of Quebec, plus half dozen books on Canadian health care system. I was there when they implemented OHIP, start of Canadian Medicare. Have also hundreds of articles on Canada, I know CBC had 30+ part series on Canadian history; but can’t be viewed online from U.S. and I’ve requested our local public library get the DVDs several times; but I have a couple of other books on Canadian history. For many years kept in touch with Canadian friends, some even visited me, one while I was in Sweden, when I was in Texas, in Philadelphia, and San Diego. Good friend passed away a few years ago. One winter on open invitation his mother to get out of cold visited my mother for a week. Now both are gone.
Paging Narad,
Do you have an email address? I need a second pair of hands to strangle a web server into compliance.
Alain
If you have the old one, add an ‘m’ between the first two letters and use Gmail as the domain.
Thanks 🙂
This had been a long day.
Al
Greg, if your claim is that Sweden voted down two proposed laws, why are you presenting as proof an article that states there were seven? Please learn to count.
@ Greg & Everyone else
Though I found no mention of Constitution in the sections on vaccines of the long report, just to be sure I used the search box to see if mentioned at all in the report. Swedish word for Constitution is “författning.”
As for everyone else, besides responding to moron on steroids Greg I responded to someone claiming Amish don’t vaccinate and someone claiming no real studies on vaccine safety. If interested you can go to top of page, open search box and simply type my name: Joel
As I wrote in a previous exchange, Greg must be a really unhappy individual as he doesn’t seem to want to actually enter into a dialogue, just irritate people. In addition, he has made it clear that he hasn’t studied anything related to vaccines; but I wonder what level of education he has since he doesn’t seem capable of critical thinking. He doesn’t understand that second hand sources, especially ones known to be highly biased, can’t be relied on. Of course, Age of Autism has several times shown sitcom Brady Bunch episode on measles. If Greg buys that I wonder if he has ever met someone who was Nazi prisoner of war and insulted them for claiming they were mistreated. After all, there is the sitcom Hogan’s Heros that seemed to show that being a Nazi prisoner of war was lots of fun and none looked malnourished, etc. And Age of Autism is now showing a series of dolls from 1962 with measles. Of course one can find photos from 1950s of real measles cases; but, heh, why go for reality when you can feature a sitcom and cartoon figures???
Now for a bit of escapism. I found a series on Netflix that is absolutely entertaining, Merlyn, about King Arthur, Knights, Wizards, Sorcerers, etc. Characters, plots, staging, etc. a good way to forget about all the current evils in the world. Unfortunately, their contract ends tonight, so I won’t be able to watch the entire series. Oh well
Joel writes,
I found a series on Netflix that is absolutely entertaining, Merlyn, about King Arthur, Knights, Wizards, Sorcerers, etc.
MJD says,
I really enjoyed it too.
Joel, Greg can’t tell the difference between two and seven. I think that basically sums up the intellectual level of his comments.
@ Terrie
Shouldn’t use the word “sums”, may confuse him. LOL
Though in a previous exchange he said he was intelligent enough to learn any science, just an extension of 1+1 = 2. I guess his arithmetic skills go a bit further, all the way to 7. I’m impressed.
You folks are supposed to be the smart ones? Okay then.
It was the right room. That fact is not difficult to confirm. Very lazy and stupid on your part.
It’s also false that the room was full of “anti-vaxxers”. Is this another error, or just a lie? I’ll tell you why it matters:
The people who filled that room, and those lined up outside, were parents, acting as parents. Well over a thousand of us showed up to witness and speak against the evil that is desperately attempting to preserve itself in the face of an inevitable wave of truth.
When that wave crashes – and it will – it’ll even flood this dingy hollow. While it will wash away your errors, your lies can never be erased. They’re yours, forever.
If you really want to convincingly deny that these people – which you clearly identify with – are Antivaxxers, it might be a good idea not to refer to the effort to tighten school mandates as evil.
And there were several anti-vaccine activists from out of state in that crowd. For example, Del Bigtree, and Susie Corgan Olsen from Washington State. There were multiple people who were there purely as anti-vaccine activists. I’m sure others were parents who were also acting, in that case, as anti-vaccine activists.
Also Mary Holland ( NY)
You’re right. There were actually quite a few New Yorkers, and they are mobilizing to come tomorrow, too.
Yeah, I’m going to keep an eye on social media tomorrow when I’m in my office and can do so while doing paperwork, to monitor what they do.
Good. I don’t know how much time I’ll have, I’m grading exams and also need to teach my son’s class about Hanukkah. Anyone want a dreidel? I have extras.
But I’m sure I will find out what happened soon enough.
If you really aren’t antivaccine, presumably that means you’re not against all vaccines. So, please tell me which vaccine(s) you consider safe and effective enough that you’d let a pediatrician administer it/them to your children and would recommend that parents give it/them to their children. I’ll wait.
So you sat your butts down, thereby keeping those who wanted to discuss the NJ Transit system were left out. Especially those who really need public to transit to get around like those with low income, epilepsy, the blind, those in wheel chairs and other disabilities. Like my oldest who has autism and does not drive.
So those “parents” did not care about others since they are ableist. This latest stunt was a grand example how you neither care about the science and how your idiocy affects others.
Matt, what you have written is high in emotion yet devoid of meaningful content. Do you think the parents of the Samoan children who died in the recent measles outbreak would be in favour of vaccine avoidance, or do you think they would be begging that other parents not make the same mistake?
Thank you, Matt! Very poetic and indeed so true. The proposed bill is an evil and treacherous violation of citizens’ inalienable rights. Secretly, these shills are entertaining their ‘one domino’ strategy; ‘we take them down one state at a time, and today California, tomorrow, the rest of the world!’ Of course such sinister plots have always failed in the past and are they are bound to fail again. They fail because living free and having their inalienable rights protected are some of the most basic and sacred aspirations of people the world over.
Speaking of treachery, what more proof do you want!…
https://www.njspotlight.com/2019/12/controversial-bill-to-eliminate-religious-vaccine-exemption-set-for-final-vote/
Are you changing tack here? Only you seem to be leaning away from the world wide conspiracy (governments, Pharma, academic institutions etc) to murder/disable all children and leaning towards health freedom as your argument du jour.
In your ideal, freedom of choice, world, how do you see the parents of unvaccinated children being punished in the event of an outbreak, exacerbated by their child’s unprotected status? Given that there’ll be, as a minimum, parental loss of earnings and, as a maximum, death?
Or do you advocate no consequences for your actions?
And just like in history, the provaxx war machine also has a Red problem. Can a deal be struck with Stalin (Trump) to allow a free hand? Maybe get him to make another speech on the Front Lawn commanding citizens to get vaccinated? Perhaps even promising to drop impeachment if he promises that vaccination will become the law of the land if re-elected? That might not be enticing enough though with impeachment set to fail.
Indeed the parallel is so striking on so many levels. We also have an holocaust on our hands!
Currently the only “holocausts” going on are those being caused by the measles outbreaks.
Oh, to HELL with you! In 2018 I learnt about Aktion T4 and that Hans Asperger wasn’t the hero everybody believed him to be. People like me were murdered, simply because they didn’t fit in with the Nazis’ ideals. Even after Germany surrendered, Aktion T4 murders were performed.
It is revolting that you use the Holocaust to support your wrong beliefs.
It is revolting that you use the Holocaust to support your wrong beliefs.
Gerg is disgusting trash who’s only here to annoy people and earn the contempt of anonymous strangers. He has succeeded in that last goal so I don’t know why he still hangs around.
@Smut Clyde: Malignant narcissist with insatiable ravening need to be center of attention. An abject failure in real life, here we make him feel king of the world. /armchair. Nobody to blame but ourselves. DNFTT.
@Greg I can add to Joel’s post that constitutionality of proposed laws, in Sweden, are evaluated by lagsradet. If there would be a problem here, we would have its report. Of course, no constituion on earth protects freedom of spread diseases.
I can, btw, read and speak Swedish, too, though I would speak a dialect.
Swedish antivaxxers did cause a measles epidemic in Finland, as you may expect. Goverment did not find mandatory vaccination necessary, but it did consider not paying child benefits to families that do not vaccinate.
@ Aarno
Hi. From my experience, the Finnish Swedish dialect was actually the easiest to understand, clear pronunciation of every syllable. I had several friends who were Finnish when I lived in Sweden and one Estonian, language very similar to Finnish. There is a Finnish au pair who goes to the gym I work out at. I get to practice my Swedish.
For Greg:
“The Constitution is not a suicide pact” is a phrase in American political and legal discourse. The phrase expresses the belief that constitutional restrictions on governmental power must be balanced against the need for survival of the state and its people.” (Wikipedia. The Constitution is not a suicide pact). First attributed to Abraham Lincoln, it has been cited in several U.S. Supreme Court Decisions. For us who base decisions on science, it simply means that if vaccines were eliminated or used at much lower rates the risk to the population would be serious. I’m sure Greg has NEVER read the history of any of the vaccine-preventable diseases.
And, by the way Greg, I translated the Swedish. No comment? You relied on 3rd hand info and YOU WERE WRONG! So, what else is new?
@ Dorit
Hannukah sameach!
I think I’m a bit too old for a dreidel.
That the antivaccinationists blocked other people, especially those with disabilities, is typical of them. I’ve seen interviews where they clearly state that they can only think about their own children, no concern whatsoever for other children, no sense of community. If everyone thought as they do, we would ALL be in trouble, them included.
As I wrote in a comment above at: DECEMBER 15, 2019 AT 9:52 AM
The founding document for Age of Autism, a series on the Amish and Vaccines by Dan Olmsted was seriously flawed, the Amish vaccinated, about 85%; but when polio broke out, they agreed to vaccinate their children, not to protect them alone (believing in God’s hands); but to protect the surrounding non-Amish community. Sounds like real Christianity to me, loving they neighbor. Just to repeat, Age of Autism began on a bogus article series.
Age of Autism has had a few articles on a child on the Spectrum going missing and found dead or a parent who killed their autistic child. These are real tragedies; but the problem is that they want it to sound as if autistic children are the only ones or even a majority of these tragedies. Children go missing all the time and parents abuse their children. WRONG WRONG WRONG; but the world doesn’t center around just autism. So, besides being wrong about vaccines, thinking they have absolute god-like perfect knowledge, many antivaccinationists discard any sense of community, rights AND responsibilities, and think the universe centers on them.
I support well-funded programs to help kids with ASD and even adults; but I support programs to help those with Down Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, etc, ALL children and ALL people. ALL life, especially human life has an inherent worth and dignity and any disability can be seen by others as “there but for the Grace of God go I”. Unfortunately, though not spoken directly, antivaccinationists subscribe to Social Darwinism along with their paranoid conspiracy theories.
Right, it doesn’t sound as though you rely on anything other than a catchy headline.
Is that your lazy, stupid go-to for those who disagree with you and point out your errors? How sad to be you.
<
blockquote>How dare an institution like Johns Hopkins question the omnipotent CDC?! <<<sarcasm
Guess the experts at Johns Hopkins and BMJ are lying according to you.
Black or white huh? They aren’t lying; they didn’t use solid sources for their study and binned medical errors incorrectly. Johns Hopkins and the editors of BMJ look down upon anti-vaxx propaganda and highly recommend vaccination as the safest, most effective way to prevent VPDs. Why don’t you rely on them for vaccine recommendations? Cherry pick much?
@ $ciencemom – You ask: “Is that your lazy, stupid go-to for those who disagree with you and point out your errors?”Only if the shoe fits…..
Your blog: “I am an infectious disease researcher employed by an academic institution” https://www.blogger.com/profile/08832263571481452559
So, you don’t understand the difference between academia and “the industry”? Figures.
What part of academic do you have difficulty with? No pharma funding whatsoever. You’re pathetic.
@Science mom. Uh, I don’t rely on blogs, like Novellas. You speak of bias. We all have a bias, remember? You are biased as you are paid by the industry. The scientist is biased per Athaic. Medical institutions are biased. Pharma is biased. Medical publications are biased. Academia is biased. Therefore, not a stretch to say medical science is biased.
How dare an institution like Johns Hopkins question the omnipotent CDC?! <<<sarcasm
Guess the experts at Johns Hopkins and BMJ are lying according to you.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
Oh, White, they’re not lying. You’re just refusing to read the pertinent parts. Sure, medical errors are the third leading cause of death, but it’s not like I’m walking down the street and, boom!, a medical error kills me. Something took those people to the hospital where the error was made. Something led them to the care they received where an error was made.
Hell, one can make the case that errors in judgment are the leading cause of death, not bad diets, watching your phone while driving, drinking too much, failure to use a condom, etc.
See the difference?
Of course, you don’t. You’re biased. 😉
@ Natalie White
Medical errors are not science, they are individual or institutional. For instance, some hospitals don’t practice best infection control. Individual doctors make mistakes. Science isn’t biased because it is self-correcting based on objective criteria. Of course individual scientists are biased. Their bias chooses what they research. if their bias is anti-vaccination, they looked at designing studies that focus on serious adverse reactions to vaccines; but once the study is published others can look at it and see if there were errors in the methodology and/or it contradicts other studies. Even a well-designed study can have results due to random error, that is, uncontrolled unmeasured variables that affected the outcome which is why science looks at sum total of studies whereas, for instance, antivaccinationists cherry pick those studies that confirm their rigid ideology. Good reviews and meta-analyses include ALL studies related to a subject.
As for antivaccinationists, their bias includes lack of knowledge of immunology, epidemiology, the history and current status of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases together with not understanding that all people have selective perception, selective time distortion, and often interpretations based on subconscious and unconscious criteria and, as opposed to scientists who deal in probabilities, they see the world in black and white together with paranoid conspiracy theories. Scientists have the same psychological; but scientific methodology controls this.
So, again, medical errors does not reflect on science. However, science may not have researched a particular diagnosis or intervention or the research continues because different studies disagree, so individual doctors then have to do their best.
An analogy is the two crashes of Boeing planes. They ignored the science, the known risks, because they wanted to get the product to market as soon as possible to earn as much money as possible. The technology, the science, was ignored.
So you’ll accept this single study (which fully admits it’s an estimate and that current data methods make it impossible to do more than estimate), but not the dozens showing severe vaccine reactions and injury are rare events? Why the difference?
Because it’s more in line with what woo-meisters believe? And the estimate keeps growing- now it’s first!
( see Death By Medicine/ also Orac’s take in search box; also SBM)
I expect that anti-vaxxers are now preparing to take over the hearing room for the senate vote; nj.com features an editorial about anti-vaxxers’ movement ” going off the rails” ( also starledger/ updated today) which reminds me how anti-vax is an extremely niche position Only 2.6 % of children now have a religious exemption. Age of Autism lists the groups that oppose the new law and it sounds like a few mother groups that are not well-known. I don’t think that the average parent is much concerned or else there would be more coverage in the news ( I had to really search for the references I got) I also imagine that if other support ( phone calls, e-mails etc) was very strong we would see the leadership respond- savvy politicos would follow what the majority of voters want or fear for their own future. We find that the largest exemptions ( 4-5%) occur in more conservative counties ( Hunterdon, Sussex, Monmouth) which lean republican in a blue state. ( Cardinale ( R) who spoke up against the law is from Bergen as is strong supporter Weinberg (D)- Bergen is rather like Brooklyn lite with enclaves of wealth)
I find it interesting that anti-vaxxers from CA and WA made such a long trip for little effect. Maybe to get videos for their sites. Let’s see if RFK jr shows up
Del is now LIVE @ HighWireTalk
According to Del ( @ high wire talk) the bill just passed the Assembly 45-25
@ Dorit:
Thanks. Unfortunately, I can’t access that from this computer. But there was live coverage of the chamber with speeches where you can hear the protestors ranting outside and images of them as well.
Eh, they do the same thing for the ACIP meetings. They clog up the public comments, film each other, post on social media platform and prance around like peacocks for their “job well-done”. It’s nothing more than lame-ass theatre for the rubes.
Certainly.
It seems obvious self- promotion: I’ve been sporadically watching Del’s intermittent LIVE coverage of the thousands in Trenton today ** and anti-vaxxers step up to the mic professing their endless love of G-d and children – so much histrionics and poseur display. I swear, women came there from CA ( that trio including white-tiered dress mom) and assorted Karens from NJ (and probably) NY, PA ( which is nearby). Reciting prayers, tales of woe, death and damage and their heroic defense of freedom,
AS I’ve said many times before, anti-vax is a platform that gets automatic attention from the faithful so woo-meisters, trolls and “concerned parents” find an ready platform on which to perform.
** although Susan K.Livio of NJ.com says “500”.
There’s very little coverage except for Del and her( only in the last hour)
Denice, here is a live video from inside the Senate.
https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.locricchio/videos/10219726702293347/
They sound like they’re trying to do what they can to disrupt the proceeding.
Continuing…
There were large crowdS outside the capitol today because an additional group of advocates ( hundreds) were present in support of driving licenses for undocumented residents- some had been there overnight
it appears that the anti-vaxxers were so unruly that State Police had to lock the door to the chamber ( nj.com)
“I find it interesting that anti-vaxxers from CA and WA made such a long trip for little effect. Maybe to get videos for their sites. Let’s see if RFK jr shows up”
At times like these, I would think the NJ capitol would require proof of residency in NJ before entering the building. It is a law for those in New Jersey, so only residents should have a say.
Well, rabble-rousers from CA may have succeeded because the Senate didn’t vote ( see @ SusanKLivio) being one vote short: it may be taken up again I January.
Crap. Antivax social media will be insufferable tomorrow.
RFK jr & Co suggest that followers pressure a young senator to vote against the law ( see ChildrensHD).He did. The vote was called off because they missed the magic number BY ONE vote.
“Thousands” rallied and disrupted the process ( nj.com reporters say “hundreds”) .
Most people in NJ support vaccines.
OOPs! That’s @ ChildrensHD
@ Orac:
They’re already at it:
see twitter of Kim Rossi ( CT), Katie Wright ( NY), RFKjr ( CA), Del Bigtree ( CA) other non-NJ supporters
I wonder how many of their wide shots of “thousands” or protestors included the groups for non-documented persons’ DLs or to make pot legal?
Denice, I don’t understand. Did you guys experience a Stalingrad moment today?
So, this young senator was swayed by non-residents. Let that be a signal for his next election that he is in it for special interests that are contrary to public health.
And that noone without proof of NJ residency should have been allowed into that room.
FYI: I live in a regional transit area that had locally voted for a special car registration tax to pay for increased transit, including more light rail. A libertarian idiot created a initiative to let the entire state vote to have it repealed, even though most of them did not have to pay that registration tax. It passed. Needless to say, those of us who spent an hour crossing Lake Washington in rush hour in what usually takes 20 minutes are a bit pissed (one expansion is going across that lake straight to Microsoft’s Redmond campus). Also many disabled folk are pissed and have joined a lawsuit that I mentioned earlier: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/majority-of-voters-paying-sound-transits-car-tab-taxes-opposed-i-976/
The beauty of that badly written initiative is that it also limits road, bridge and other transit infrastructure to be done in the entire state. So many bridges will not get repaired or have to close (including one on an interstate highway), and roads with high maintenance will not be repaired… like those in mountainous areas.
It has also created some rumblings of why those who did not live here get to repeal stuff we voted for should benefit from our taxes that support their counties: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-are-we-exporting-billions-of-dollars-around-the-state-the-coming-showdown-over-seattles-money/
Oh, Gerg, if you had the wits to slap together a Downfall entry, I’m sure that mirth would prevail across the land.
Re: Stalingrad,
I haven’t noticed anyone surrendering their Boston yet.
Yeah — but the resistance in Boston is likely paying attention to Stalingrad -Trenton. Emboldened, they’re likely planning an even more ferocious defense. Perhaps structural reinforcing of their Legislative building is in order.
Also as an aside, if I were Trump, I would be LMAO at the various ways the Democrats are setting me up for re-election. I’d be thinking, why even bother wasting time and resources on campaigning when they keep finding me votes!
@ Chris:
It looks like social media may have played a part but NJ has been attempting -and failing- to get rid the exemption for several years. Amongst those now crowing is Rob Schneider who says the “people of NJ” spoke. SRSLY
.
Actually most NJ voters support vaccination and most children ( around 95%) are vaccinated. So who exactly won?
A privileged small minority led by outside activists who are libertarian and/ or pseudoscience advocates. Only about 2.6% of children have a religious exemption. The senator in question is from Paramus ( a/k/a Shopping Mall, NJ) is not from a county which has high rates of exemptions but I imagine there are well to do naturalistas ( see Brooklyn Lite/ Bergen) in his district
Interestingly, all of the activists I read on twitter are NOT from NJ.
re: this is Stalingrad I fail to see how the above scenario in any shape, manner or form resembles Soviet patriots defending their homeland from a foreign invasion trying to destroy them
Thanks.
And yes, that Stalingrad thing confused me. Especially when the NJ legislature was inundated by non-NJ residents!
The Stalingrad thing is confusing and quite overwrought. Was California the anti-vaxxer Bagration? What if New Jersey is a false dawn and their Warsaw uprising. Comparing political resistance to decisive military battles is just tone deaf preening.
There are surely analogous political situations to draw upon. This doesn’t appear to be the last word on the issue. It’s a bit early to claim a decisive victory, Zhukov.
Denice, most New Jersians and the population on the whole at most are apathetic about vaccination. Seriously, did the average New Jersian lose sleep last night that the bill did not pass? Why are they not at the Legislature today decrying the ‘shame’, in the same way the ‘antivaxxers’ showed up to protest the bill?
I keep telling you guys that you don’t have true supporters; you have sheep. I’d wager even with the ‘tiny’ amount of informed and committed antivaxxers, their ranks are greater than provaxxers who are likewise informed and committed to their cause. Whether nefarious or not, the simply truth is the vaccination agenda is largely industry driven.
@Gregg Jardinas
Autism was unheard of in CT in the 60’s?
No. No it wasn’t.
Kids who weren’t neurotypical ended up in sanitariums like Seaside,in Waterford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seaside_(Waterford,_Connecticut)
Antivaxxers claim they aren’t given a fair hearing, all they want is a dialogue, that people “listen” to them. Yet, antivaxxers have testified numerous times before Congress, before State legislatures, at other government meetings, e.g., CDC, and even had someone (don’t remember who) from SafeMinds on Advisory Committee on Vaccines at CDC. In addition, they have well-known figures such as Robert Kennedy Jr, movies stars, speaking for them, and millionaires supporting them. They get letters and sometimes longer opinion pieces published in newspapers and magazines and their demonstrations/testimonies in newspaper articles. In addition, they have 100s of websites. I would venture to guess there exist few people in the U.S. who are not aware of them and who could easily find their websites with Google or some other search engine.
When they say they just want to be “listened to” they don’t mean their position heard (see above); but more like a parent saying to a kid: “You didn’t listen to me, so now you are grounded.” In other words, for them being “listened to” means people agree with them. Interesting that despite studies showing 70 – 80% of Americans lack a basic understanding of science and critical thinking; the vast majority of Americans still allow their children to be vaccinated without protest or attempts to get fraudulent doctors letters. I guess just plain common sense works.
Since antivaxxers say often that they “believe” and give the impression that they are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, have god-like knowledge, and basically condemn those who support vaccines to hell, I repeat what I wrote earlier, they should be considered a church. For instance, Age of Autism should change its name to:
The Church of the Age of Autism or
The Holy Church of the Age of Autism or
The Divine Church of the Age of Autism
I welcome feedback.
I’ve had two immunizations in the past 48 hours – flu vaccine and round 1 of Shingrix.
Given all the heavy metals, fetal tissue, mercury, aluminum, human DNA, monkey DNA, monkey pus, antifreeze, polysorbate 80, sucrose and other toxins contained in those shots, I should be under the weather and not able to post for the next few days, if ever again.
And that doesn’t count the government tracking microchips they sneak into all vaccines nowadays. 🙁
My arm is sore.
I’ll have to report this side effect to VAERS, or be accused of hiding something.
@ Gregg Jardinas DECEMBER 13, 2019 AT 2:49 PM
You wrote: “My real problem is that I see so much sickness in children these days–serious sickness–and in the days when I grew up–the 1960’s–there were hardly any vaccines and serious ailments in children were virtually nonexistent in my Connecticut town. Autism was also virtually unheard of. Something changed. Nobody freaked out about measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. either.”
First, prior to introduction measles vaccine, on average every year over one million American children suffered from measles, 7 – 10 days of high fevers, terrible itching, loss of appetite, and more, 50,000 were hospitalized, 300 – 500 died, and another 500 or more suffered permanent disabilities, e.g., deafness.
Second, rubella, also called German measles, is usually a very mild disease, except for pregnant women. Incubation time for rubella is 10 – 12 days. In 1960s there was one year with a major rubella epidemic in U.S. Result was almost 40,000 cases of miscarriages, stillbirths, and congenital rubella syndrome (deafness, blindness, seizure disorders, mental retardation, and microcephaly, small brain with short life-expectancy), and, cases of Autism.
Third, read my article on Polio. People were extremely frightened.
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH (2018 Nov 9). Wrong About Polio. Available at:
https://n1s1t23sxna2acyes3x4cz0h-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Part-1-Joel-A.-Harrison-2018-Oct-28.-Wrong-About-Polio-A-Review-of-Suzanne-Humphries-MD-and-Roman-Bystrianyk-“Dissolving-Illusions”-long-version.pdf
As for “Autism was virtually unheard of”,
The following is just an outline of a longer paper I plan to write.
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
The late Autism researcher Lorna Wing (2005). wrote: “Nothing exists until it has a name.”
As an example, in 910 treatise, the Persian/Arab physician, Al-Razi, noticed that a disease, up to then considered one, actually was two separate diseases, smallpox and measles (Cliff, 1993, p.52). So, did smallpox or measles suddenly develop in the 10th Century?.
Contributing Factors to Diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorders:
Leo Kanner’s 1943 article introduced the diagnosis of Autism and gave estimated statistics (based only on his own office practice); but in 1971, at a conference, he admitted that he rejected minorities and working class whites, believing it only a diagnosis for children of educated whites.
A number of journal articles and other reports, going back to early 1900s, used mental retardation and childhood schizophrenia diagnostic categories; but if I gave the listed symptoms without the source, they would definitely be categorized as Autism Spectrum Disorders.
A few described cases from various sources from the 19th Century and earlier would similarly be today diagnosed as ASD.
Psychiatry was a relatively new profession, only developing the last two decades of the 19th Century, so nearly impossible to know how people with problems would have been diagnosed earlier. Prior to World War II, there were few to no social services in the U.S., the age required for school attendance was lower and children with problems were either just kicked out, some finding menial jobs, some institutionalized.
After World War II, with the rise of America’s middle class and family politics, more attention was paid to children. After the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, more funds and programs and emphasis on public education was developed and the minimal age for leaving school increased. Psychology became a popular degree in American universities and we began churning out psychologists, school counselors, and more psychiatrists and, of course, this led to more work needed for them.
Originally ASD was diagnosed by psychiatrists using various techniques; but gradually standardized diagnostic instruments were developed, allowing for easier and quicker diagnoses by others.
In 1986 the Federal government passed legislation for grants to local schools for special education, dealing with children with problems. In the early 1990s this was extended to include ASD. Studies have found as the number of cases of ASD increases, the number of cases diagnosed as mentally retarded or childhood schizophrenia have decreased, at least, partially a response to availability of funds.
What was originally classical autism cases, became Autism Spectrum Disorders. Asberger’s wasn’t added until 1994 and there are cases of men in their 70s who have been diagnosed with Asberger’s. ASD includes kids with a variety of different signs and symptoms; but with some in common.
As an example, in the 19th Century, high levels of white blood cells were originally thought to be signs of infectious disease; but then discovered to be cancer, so they were included in the category Cancer. Certainly doesn’t mean that cases of cancer were increasing, just another group was added. Blood cancers differ in many respects from solid tumor cancers; also have signs and symptoms in common.
Another example, imagine that medicine begins looking at respiratory diseases, first including just asthma and pneumonia, then later emphysema, chronic obstructive disease, cancer, etc. Imagine the government creates a separate institute with lots of funding and grants, both for research and education, ending up with more and more respiratory therapists, pulmonologists, and researchers and, of course, diagnosed cases.
Increased awareness/screening/surveillance.
Childhood mortality has been decreasing over the past century. Children who would have died at birth or early on, e.g., low birthweight, especially very low birthweight, and genetic disorders, now can live long lives; but often have physical, cognitive, and emotional problems.
A relationship has been found between ASD and children born to older parents, more mutations in eggs and sperm.
We live in the age of a therapeutic society. More and more people are being diagnosed with something. If this continues, no one will exist who doesn’t have some medical/psychiatric label (e.g., Brownless, 2007; Hadler, 2007; Payer, 1988, 1992; welch, 2011).
Since World War II over 85,000 new chemicals have been introduced into our environment with little to no oversight. Before then, despite overwhelming medical science, lead was added to gasoline. A mass of studies has found that HIGH levels of lead in the blood of fetus and children results in lowered intelligence, behavioral problems, etc. And studies have found some post-war chemicals “cause” ASD when fetus exposed. High levels,
not the minuscule levels of various additives in vaccines. So, yes, one can attribute some increase in ASD to the environment, either interaction with genes or by itself; but this doesn’t change that the vast majority of cases can be explained by the above.
And ASD is based on behavioral observations which are not as reliable and valid as physical observations. We don’t diagnose ASD by blood tests, other labs, MRIs, etc.
I believe in community and wish a society where all human beings are treated with dignity and resources provided for them to obtain whatever potential they have, so I support evermore funding for children and adults labeled with ASD; but also cerebral palsy, Down’s Syndrome, etc. All lives are precious. And we can “easily” afford this if our governments didn’t continuously lie to us about threats from abroad, while acting on behalf of corporations (access to raw materials and selling of weapons), resulting in CIA, MI6, and
military spending trillions of dollars, risking our loyal military, and killing, crippling and impoverishing people in developing nations who were NEVER a threat to us. Of course, by killing them, we become the enlistment stimulus for terrorist groups, which we then claim the need to defend against, a vicious circle. Trillions of dollars that could have benefited us and used for real foreign aid (Blum. 2003; Butler, 1935; Gaffney, 2019; Schlessinger,
2005).
REFERENCES:
Blum W (2003). Killing Hope: US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II. Available at:
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03…
Butler, Major General Smedley (1935). War Is A Racket. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabadcompound
/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf
[Butler is the most decorated Marine in history]
Brownlee S (2007). Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.
Cliff A, Haggett P, Smallman-Raynor M (1993). Measles: An Historical Geography of a Major Human Viral Disease. Blackwell.
Gaffney M (2018 Mar). Corporate Power and Expansive U.S. Military Policy. American Journal of Economics and Sociology; 77(2): 331-417. Available at: https://www.globalresearch.ca/corporate-power-and-expansive-u-smilitary…
Hadler NM (2007). The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System.
Harrison JA (2018 Nov 9). Wrong About Polio: A Review of Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk’s “Dissolving Illusions” Part 1. Science-Based Medicine. Available at: https://n1s1t23sxna2acyes3x4cz0hwpengine.
netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uplo…“Dissolving-Illusions”-long-version.pdf
Payer L (1988). Medicine & Culture: Varieties of Treatment in the United States, England, West Germany, and France.
Payer L (1992). Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers are Making You Feel Sick.
Schlesinger SC, Kinzer S (2005). Bitter Fruit: The Untold story of the American Coup in Guatemala (revised version). Harvard University Press.
Welch HG, Schwartz LM, Woloshin S (2011). Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health.
Wing L (2005 Apr). Reflections on Opening Pandora’s Box. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders;
35(2): 197-203.
$ciencemom and Narad – https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/public-universities-get-an-education-in-private-industry/521379/
Long read. Synopsis: private industry can and does fund research at university….more bias and more obfuscation.
YAY FOR NEW JERSEY!
You’re about as right about me as you were about Prof. Reiss and the ginormous windfall you claim she made by speaking out in support of CA SB277. You can’t prevail on merit so you just make up stupid shit. Grow the hell up Natalie.
@ $ciencemom – Prof. REI$$ has stock in GSK. As a medical fascist, she actively works to limit personal medical freedom and wants the government to make medical decisions for its citizens. She and Sen. Pan successfully limited medical choice in California. She is business savvy for sure. It’s time to display her winning formula again.
LESS EXEMPTIONS + MORE MANDATES = MORE VACCINES SOLD = MORE MONEY.
It’s quite simple yet you and the other megalomaniacs don’t seem to get it or conveniently play dumb. Could it be cognitive dissonance?
YAY NEW JERSEY!!! You give me hope!
@Natalie White MORE MANDATE = LESS INFECTIOUS DISEASES = PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MONEY SAVED = LESS MONEY TO PHARMA (think all money they could earn from a measles emergency)
I use ALL CAPS because you use them. They are REALLY STUPID, though.
I pay my own health insurance, and I like premium reduction. Call that a conflict of interest, if you want.
Measles vaccine is not a money spinner at all. Check Merck’s financial reports. They like to boast succesful products.
Well, it’s clear that you are not “playing” dumb. I’ll leave the application to the rest of your comment as an exercise.
Natalie, does this mean that you reject any study that is funded via people and organisations that could be construed as having an agenda? Does it also mean that you reject any study that is produced by an organisation that has EVER had funding from the same sources? Only it would rather shorten the list of anti-vax ‘science’ you could reference. For shorten, read eliminate.
No, Natalie and her kind only reject studies that are not saying what they want to hear. If a study confirms their believes, the funding doesn’t matter. They may be funded by the pharmaceutical industry, communists, environmental groups, or anything else, as long as they confirm their believes it doesn’t matter where the funding came from.
@ Natalie White
You refer to an article in the Atlantic about private industry funding of research at public universities. The Bayh-Dole Act was passed by Congress in 1980 and, yes, it allowed for public-private partnerships. The alleged thought was that the additional funding would speed research to the benefit of the public. Unfortunately, because of patents, etc. industry withholds info that could be used by competitors. Withholding findings counters everything that science stands for and worse, often the research withheld is mainly funded by the taxpayers, only a smaller part by industry. So, what else is new, our government cares little about the 99%. Unfortunately, due to tax revolts and especially the Republican Party, funding going to our public universities has declined significantly, starting with Governor Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
However, your black and white, dichotomous, moronic antivaccinationist way of looking at things misses more than it covers. First. only some research at public universities is joint private-public partnerships. In addition, some actually include in contract that the funds are given without any control over the research, etc. Once published in peer-reviewed journals research is subject to public scrutiny, so, there may be a bias in choosing the subject; but the methodology must meet certain standards. Second, vaccine research is conducted ALL over the world, at universities in nations that DON’T have public-private partnerships. The UK did begin a few years ago to allow such partnerships at some universities and there were mass protests against this. Vaccine research is carried out in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Australia, etc. Third, vaccine research is also carried out by government entities, e.g, in U.S. CDC, in Sweden Hälsovårdsnämnden, etc. Fourth, these various nations have different cultures, educational systems, healthcare systems, etc. Do you really think that government employees and medical/vaccine researchers all over the world would allow children to suffer just to help a few companies make a profit? I, for one, made sure my late grandparents and parents got flu shots, pneumococcal shots, etc., and that all my close friends made sure their kids got vaccinated. And I know numerous researchers at CDC, medical schools, etc that did the same. Yep, sacrificed their loved ones for Big Pharma. Fifth, the total worldwide profits for vaccines amounts to 2% of Big Pharma’s total profits, though a couple of companies do make more. Mandatory vaccines for children are subject to negotiations with governments and large health insurance companies which allow for reasonable profits, not more. In fact, prior to the late 1980s there were more than a dozen companies producing vaccines in U.S.; but most left the vaccine business. Statins alone make more money than all vaccines combined.
So, yes, I hate that our Congress allowed for public-private partnerships; but not for just vaccines; but the withholding research results, thus, actually slowing progress. But to assume because there some exists public-private partnerships, to ignore that vaccine research is carried out by both governments, universities, and non-profits around the world, to assume that so many people would sacrifice children for minimal corporate profits, is insane; but typical antivaccinationist.
You write: “Prof. REI$$ has stock in GSK. As a medical fascist, she actively works to limit personal medical freedom and wants the government to make medical decisions for its citizens.”
So, Prof Reiss has stock in GSK. Do you or your husband or any family member have a 401k or other pension plan? Many are invested in broad stock and bond funds which usually include some Big Pharma stocks. While I have NEVER purchased any pharma stocks and haven’t bothered to check the multiple pages covering what my 401k contains, I’d be willing to bet it has some shares in Big Pharma. Yep, for a few bucks I willingly risked the health of my grandparents, parents, friends, and their children. Maybe it is you, like so many other antivaccinationists, who don’t care about anyone but themselves projecting your own contemptuous attitude onto others.
As for “she actively works to limit personal medical freedom and wants the government to make medical decisions for its citizens.” All nations accord their citizens rights; but also responsibilities/obligations. An old say is “your rights end at my nose.” If you really studied the history of vaccine-preventable diseases and understood that, for instance, some kids can’t be vaccinated, e.g., some autoimmune diseases, chemotherapy for cancer, etc. and they also have a right to go to school, shopping with their parents, Disneyland, etc. and you understood infectious diseases, we live in communities and laws can require people who don’t believe that rights are balanced with responsibilites/obligations to live up to the obligations part. I wonder how you would feel if one of your kids was infected by an unvaccinated kid who travelled abroad, became very sick, perhaps, hospitalized, maybe losing their hearing, or even their life?
And I already refuted your ignorance about medical errors. DECEMBER 16, 2019 AT 12:19 PM Typical of antivaccinationists, ignoring refutations of your claims and just going on to the next claim.
Finally calling Prof Reiss a “medical fascist” just steps over the line. She has children and vaccinates them. So, so far I’ve simply countered your stupidity; but I’ll end with calling someone a fascist just proves you are an A-hole.
@Twelve-year-old: “Prof. REI$$ has stock in GSK.”
[Citation required]
Also, check your own pension fund; chances are you “own” pharma stock too. OHNOES YOU GOTS TEH PHARMA COOTIES TWO!!!!1!1!
Maybe we should always resort to LOLspeak when discussing their criticism.
@ Has – You calling me a 12y/o makes me laugh. I’ve witnessed your adolescent behavior on this blog, too, but since you are on the “right” side of the issue, you get a pass.
As requested… https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/142/5/e20182009.full.pdf Her COI is on the front page right lower corner.
You assume I have a pension plan. I do not. I’m not a feeder from the pharma trough.
Still at it? We don’t care. No one but a petty hysterical loon trying to smear a decent person would care. It’s not an issue; stop humiliating yourself.
Ms. White, why do you want children to suffer from vaccine preventable diseases? Is there some reason you would rather see a child suffer from a high fever and possible hospitalization than have them vaccinated? You have not posted any actual science, but just innuendos. Which is juvenile.
Do you have stock in Big Hospital Supply?
By the way: over twenty years ago we had some stock in Merck, Amazon and some tech stocks. After the 1990s dot.com collapse we realized we are not good at playing with the stock market. Which is why we now have managed funds, which change.
And after what transpired in Trenton last night, why so quiet on the RI front? Drug dealers, I know it would’ve been the best Christmas present had the bill pass and having the means in your hands to force parents to accept cocktails of known neurotoxins for their kids, or risk their kids getting booted from schools and growing up as homeless vagabonds. Oh well — Santa doesn’t always bring us what we want!
Seriously though drug dealers, I keep telling you that you’re missing the big picture. Your strength lies not in mandates, but with the gullible masses remaining clueless and as they continue to drink the kool-aid. Your push for mandates is shining a spotlight on the vaccination issue, and this runs the risk of waking the sheeple out of their slumber. They might start to think, and this is the very last thing you want! What happened in Trenton last night was an epic public relation disaster in this regard, and regardless of the bill not passing.
I have gone over this so many times with you guys, but it doesn’t seem to be sinking in. Hell — maybe I am wrong about you guys; maybe indeed you are not shills after all. Surely pharma would hire smarter operatives!
Disease pusher, the masses actually know that infectious diseases are dangerous. They may be afraid of mercury, but aluminium is much less scaring. Your cooking equipment contain lots of it.
“Your cooking equipment contain lots of it.” Maybe yours, I got rid of mine a long time ago when some scientists started speaking about the Alzheimers and aluminum connection. It’s funny how you and the pack use your extrapolations for everyday life with layers of assumptions upon assumptions. Looks like you and Chris apply the same methodology. It is dishonest, misleading, and you know it.
@ Greg
Besides being wrong about Swedish Parliament’s decision on vaccine mandate, besides asking me to translate, besides attacking me before giving me any time at all to respond (you really are an a-hole), you ignore my response, including translation, and return with your belief and absolute certainty that you have god-like knowledge about vaccines. Though you’ve admitted you haven’t actually studied immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, history and current status in the world of vaccine-preventable disease, you just know you are right. Must be nice to live in a world of delusions.
Since you avoid actually entering into a civil discourse, that is, you request a response or state something; but don’t rationally respond to the response, it is obvious that you aren’t here to contribute to a dialogue. As I said before, you must be an extremely unhappy individual, someone who hasn’t accomplished much in life (little education); but deludes themselves into thinking they don’t need the education because they have god-like intelligence and intuition. To cap it off, to overcompensate for your being a moron, you attack other people, a classic strategy for losers, resort to ad hominem attacks. So, am I being hypocritical in pointing out your flaws? Nope, because I have multiple comments where I directly responded to you, compared to your almost total lack of similar comments.
Why don’t you seek professional help? Or, take some courses in night school, that is, if you have a daytime job and if you actually have any basic intelligence to benefit from them. Or, at least read books on immunology, etc. A good starting point is: Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works, 6th Edition”. Only about 150 pages, one of the best books I’ve ever read, clear explanations, good diagrams, allows one to see the forest for the trees. And inexpensive. Perhaps your local library has one of the editions or you can suggest they purchase it. Oh well, keep not taking your meds and living in your fantasy world of delusions of grandeur, god-like knowledge, and waste people’s time.
For anyone with an open mind, Greg is a great example of the mentality of an antivaccinationists. As I mentioned in another comment, I have a poster with a picture of someone with the caption: “Cheer Up. You Can Always Serve As A Bad Example.” Fits Greg perfectly.
Greg, why don’t you read my comment above on reasons for increase in diagnoses of autism, Hiding In Plain Sight, why it is NOT an epidemic and also my recent comment to Natalie White. Then see if you can in any sensible way respond. LOL
Based on Greg’s previous statements around here I’m not sure that he is capable of reading a book. He certainly has expressed so much contempt of people who read books that he has imposed a psychological barrier on himself touching a book. Truly, I’ve never met anyone more determined to remain ignorant. Even the average Medieval peasant wasn’t so incurious.
Any chance of finding a source offering both? Seriously though, why would I need professional help when I find conversing here so ‘therapeutic’? Seriously Joel — do you know the rush I get reminding you that you’re full of crap!
Likewise, why do I need night school when I am learning so much here. I kid you not, I am getting more science out of this blog than what I obtained from my four years BA degree. Thanks Athaic for inspiring to research B-cells and immunology. That Khan tutorial was awesome.
It’s almost Christmas, so just this once I will pay Orac and the Choir this compliment: If you know how to wade through the crap, you can actually learn a lot from these blogs.
Joel, call it what you will, but frankly I find arguments denying the autism epidemic as simply embarrassing and queasy. It’s kinda like when you meet up with Jehovah Witnesses at a busy intersection and they hand you those Awake magazines showing life in heaven, with edenic pictures of smiling people and kids cuddling up with wild animals such as lion and tigers. They ask you for a few minutes of your time, and you politely rack your brain for any excuse to get the hell out of there.
Joel, I am still thinking about you paying guitar in a band. What were your rock influences? What music did you like to play? You also shared a lot about yourself but I don’t remember you ever mentioning having kids. Do you have kids, be they grown up? I often wonder how Orac would blog differently, especially on the topic of vaccines and autism, if he had kids.
[y]ou politely rack your brain for any excuse to get the hell out of there.
Please, feel free to excuse yourself from this conversation. We’re happy to let you go. Or are you the JW in the metaphor?
Really? She and Pan? Wow how did Prof. Reiss do that when she isn’t even in the CA assembly? She also explained to you how the maths of your absurd accusation worked out and now I’m the shill and you say nothing but praise for those who directly profit from anti-vaxx activities. It’s not a good look for you when you can’t argue merits and instead fall back on a churlish accusation of shill. Get a new hobby Natalie, you can’t even do anti-vaxx well.
they don’t understand science or the legal process. What a shock.
By paying off Pan with all the GSK dividends. Simple, just like Natalie.
@ Narad – Nah. There’s plenty of pharma cash to go around. You already know this. You’re a smart guy…a professional. Prof. REI$$ doesn’t have to pay Sen. Richard aka Dick Pan. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article24913978.html
Ms. White, what do you have to gain from the suffering of children due to measles, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, Hib, etc? Is it because you have stock in Big Hospital Supply, or that you just like seeing kids suffer?
Ah, she missed this boat.
This time.
@ Narad – Thinking of you dahling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqgD3D_kGgw
I have to admit that outside of what I encounter in the media and in blogs like this one I have virtually no contact with anti-vaxxers IRL. Certainly they exist but mostly are silent about it as go about their daily lives. The same is true of many racists in that they rarely speak it aloud. These ideas influence how they conduct their lives and otherwise keep it private.
So what I see of anti-vaxxers is quite surprising. Their leaders tend to be either delusional or grifters. Followers are juvenile in their behavior. By juvenile I mean pre-adolescent emotional maturity. This is obvious in the steady stream of hit-and-run commenters and the regulars like Natalie, Greg and others that I’ve seen come and go over the past several years. The same is true of the activists that flock to public hearings and their in-crowd hate fests
Most people leave behind the puerile insults and egotism in the elementary school playground. Some have never left and may be there for life. Although I enjoy poking fun at them from time to time it’s mostly just very sad. Coming to RI is often like going to a old time freak show. I can’t stop them from embarrassing themselves but I can stop allowing myself to be entertained by them.
Shades of the original Bedlam.
Similarly, I find two main reasons people become anti-vaxxers and both paths involve self-serving mechanisms:
— parents of children with ASDs or other difficulties need to blame factors other than genetics, their own actions or chance itself, so they invoke external nefarious forces ( Pharma, the Government, plots ) -people who attribute negative outcomes to external causes can feel better about themselves ; they have no bad genes, did nothing wrong and are not the victims of bad luck
— woo-meisters, cure providers, activists ( including some parents) profit in several ways: they can be experts without a degree ( Del) or with suspect degrees or unrelated ones ( Gary Null, RFK jr, respectively) and be highly respected amongst followers and earn money for products, books speeches, charities as well as the adoration of their fans.
Since it is my field, I have to mention the possibility that some of these people are not entirely in touch with reality: if you can dismiss hundreds of studies worldwide that show NO relationship being vaccines and autism, ignore studies that point to genetic and prenatal origins and the majority of scientists, doctors, psychologists, universities et al totally reject your model: there must be something wrong with you. Researchers have shown that people who believe in anti-vax have certain personality quirks that may make them immune to SB truths: they see themselves as outside the common herd as mavericks and contrarians, dismissing both authority and expertise. They are more likely to believe other conspiracy theories; they value Freedom and Purity above all else. You can see how these qualities fit in with various religious and/ or political trends. AND are not extremely common in the general population.
Denice, I think at least some parents of children with ASD or difficulties end with anti-vaccine groups because they can’t find other support sources. Unfortunately, at least in the U.S., support for families is not always readily available, and people who need it may easily be trapped in a group with false believe not because they want to feel better about themselves, but because that’s where they can find support and help.
True, but I think that the most vocal ones are trying to turn a bad situation around to benefit themselves. Support is in short supply but that doesn’t mean that the only way to get help is to check your brain at the door and buy into bizarre theories, groups and protocols and disregard what most professionals illustrate through research. They probably want to know-it-all and tell people off.
As a few do here.
Social support certainly plays a role; but the need to have an explanation, to blame something, is key. The world is complex and becoming ever more complex and due to personality limits and poor education in science and critical thinking, anti-vaccine groups give them both the black and white world where focusing on one cause together with social support supplies them what they think they need.
Or it happens that they’re getting support from a group for their child’s condition but there are tangential groups and the next thing you know they’re way, way, way down a scary anti-vax rabbit hole. It just happened to a friend of mine who ended up reading some clearly dangerous people on Instagram. Luckily the people she was reading went from “crunchy but normal” to “coconut oil for everything!” so fast she recognized that it was a bad place and got away before they could convince her to not vaccinate her kids or that the flu shot had caused her kid’s congenital malformation.
When she told me what had happened I offered passionately to explain anything I could any time she had questions, and to find resources when I was out of my depth.
But if the person who was super helpful identifying something serious about your kid also suggests that you drink elderflower syrup to prevent colds, wouldn’t you believe and trust them? And if that person says “you should follow CrunchyMomma, she knows all kinds of stuff”, well, what harm can that do? It’s easy to end up in weird places.
I agree with Justatech (and I don’t know percentages, so don’t know which is most, Denice; I think the most vocal ones in public may not always be the majority in groups).
Here is a story for you all. On November 1, I took part in an interdisciplinary day of conference in UCLA to discuss vaccine hesitancy. It included people from the public health school, social science and humanities, and the school of engineering. We had four different presentations on internet trolls, bot, and the conspiracy theory universe.
In one of the presentations the speaker told this story. They had a team to monitor the conspiracytheoryverse. A group of researchers who came in to study what they all saw as this strange world.
And one day one of them came to the lead researchers and said, “you know, I have been thinking. I think they’re right. The moon landing was faked.” They had to take him off the team and to adopt multiple strategies to protect members going on.
This was one of several examples of how contagious the woo and conspiracy stuff can be, and how easily reasonable, rational people can get caught unaware – by sites that are very good at appealing to us in clever ways and convincing us of things that are not true. f
Perhaps to clarify a bit:
Most of the anti-vaxxer mothers I’ve watched are INDEED special cases who set themselves up as educators, mentors, guides, leaders to younger parents who seek them out. They write books, give lectures and appear at events like Autism One ( AoA, TMR) as well as having social media presences where they gather thousands of followers. A few discuss how they stop younger mothers/ pregnant women in stores to “teach” them about vaccines.Thus I’m not looking at the “average” anti-vaxxer. They may invent theories of causation or cure or help spread those concocted by others.
Unfortunately, they probably mislead vulnerable women who are isolated because their child has autism and feel abandoned. Through these facebook pages/ twitter/ websites, they have instant friendship, solidarity and easy explanations as well as a direction in which to channel their frustration and rage. This “audience” may start out being less extreme but may remain in order to have social contact or hope – a few leaders hold out promises of “cures” through diet or supplements ( discussed in panel meetings at Autism One by TMR). They are led towards political action like rallies, phone/ e-mail solicitation of governmental officiasl/ elected representatives; they may spend time on social media spreading their beliefs but they are not the voices I hear the most.
In fact, the relationship between the elite anti-vaxxers and their followers resembles that of woo-meisters and their charges who may also be alienated from SBM and seek out alt med lifestyles .Again, the followers are taken advantage of by the leaders who often support their ideas with “science” ( bad science).
@ Greg
You are so amusing writing: “Seriously Joel — do you know the rush I get reminding you that you’re full of crap!”
And, yet, once again you fail to actually enter into any actual discourse, backing any of your claims. directly responding to what I actually wrote. If I am full of crap, then the literally thousands upon thousands of researchers who also support vaccines must also be full of crap; but you, sterling intellectual that you are, you know more than all of us combined. As for your getting your education from comments on a blog, since you reject anything that contradicts your god-like certainty, and even if you did actually pay attention to them, the comments on a blog can only touch the surface of subjects like immunology, just reinforces that you really don’t know jack shit.
So, keep making a fool of yourself calling other people name’s while displaying your inability to support your position.
Without the internet and its anonymity what would a reject like you do to get attention???
I do think that, in Gregs case, its the journey rather than the destination.
@ NumberWang
Back in the days of biplanes there was a pilot called “Wrong Way Corrigan”, always getting lost, the opposite direction. Is it possible that Greg is a descendant of his???
Nah. Greg just enjoys the flying. He has a parachute of smugness to prevent any emotional backlash from fact caused engine trouble.
He does not really come here for the hunting.
Still crickets! Why haven’t the masses of provaxx parents in NJ, who dutifully vaccinate their kids, taken to the streets in protests demanding the bill be passed and protection of herd-immunity in schools?
And that proves what? You act as though it’s a contest and the group with the best representation wins. This is about public health, not a popularity contest.
Really? It seems as though you’ve had plenty of replies. Perhaps your delicate routine needs more nuance.
^ Delicate poutine, that is. Autocorrect, ptooey.
The ‘crickets’ was more in reference to the quiet on the streets of Trenton. Such a ‘shame’ that provaxx parents don’t realize or seem to care how much you guys have their backs.
@ NumberWang:
Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with that attitude from many of those I survey:
( for brevity, I won’t separate woo-meisters and anti-vax thought leaders because they have much in common)
there is a tendency to dismiss SBM data and consider those who support it – such as professionals- deficient . They themselves know and understand all despite being quite uneducated in relevant areas.( see PRN, NN)
— a mother who has a “vaccine injured child”, Jameson, stops other women in grocery stores and warns them about vaccines because doctors lie, pharma is corrupt etc
— Alison McNeil, coming from privilege with a social work degree, calls her child’s doctor “Asshat” ( TMR)
— Ginger Taylor ( today on twitter) mocks vaccine supporter Gates as a “dropout”
— Katie Wright tells autism researchers what is worth researching
— others, both woo and anti-vax, insult SBM contributors like Orac, Drs Novella, Hall etc.
— Del Bigtree never shuts up spouting anti-vax pseudoscience
— anti-vax mothers tells newbies how to “deal” with doctors and nurses ( not in nice ways)
— Professor TMR ( O’Toole) regularly dismisses SBM commenters provide- she knows more than SBM
— various scoffers annoy Orac’s People with their brilliant theories and accusations of corruption despite having no evidence
Adults develop a means of evaluating others’ ( and their own abilities) – it’s part of executive functioning and is related to other more advanced mental abilities but NOT ALL adults develop this capacity well.
If anti-vax leaders cavalierly display these tendencies they in effect encourage followers to go ahead and do the same. Their insulated environment allows them to try topping each others’ braggadocio and unrestricted self-promotion. Social media helps spread the wealth of malicious obnoxious name calling. As Orac says, ( paraphrase) “Let me bask in my fans’ adoration”
”Social media helps spread the wealth of malicious obnoxious name calling”
…from the same antivaxers who continually complain about how cwuel and mean immunization advocates are. 🙂
@ Denice Walter:
And Greg calls me a liar, full of crap, etc, without ever addressing my comments. However, I now realize that Greg represents for me more than just a prime example of the unscientific, illogical, ad hominem attacks of antivaccinationists. I value civil dialogue, One of my most admired authors, Eric Hoffer, was a longshoreman, maybe with a high school diploma; but his book “The True Believer”, is a classic of insights, probably applies to Greg and antivaxxers. I have over my life interacted with people of varying educations, most actually listen and respond accordingly, and, not just Hoffer; but I’ve learned from others who did NOT have diplomas after their names. Life is complex and no one or small group can cover all aspects.
However, Greg, in some ways, makes me feel young again. He reminds me of my pre-adolescent years when we called people “cootie bugs”, used cuss words we didn’t understand. Everyone said F you. One day I asked my mother what it meant. You should have seen the look on her face. So, Greg not only serves as a perfect example of an antivaxxer; but he reminds me of the carefree, non-scholarly, non-scientific, illogical, fun days of my youth. Thanks Greg?????
Hey, at least I try to whomp it up properly when I have the energy and motivation.
I believe I have posted these links before,at other RI blog posts,but there are a number of documented cases,of what is now recognized as autism,in the 19th Century.One of the main ones,was found in the papers of one Dr William Howship Dickinson at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children,in London,who identified children with autism and GI problems in the 1870s.Here are two links to read about his work.First the 2004 journal article,that brought attention to Dr. Dickinson’s work
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.858.9418&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This comes from Mitzi Waltz’s 2013 book Autism: A Social and Medical History,a book anybody with any interest in autism needs to read.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EC0RYUtuXgsC&pg=PT183&lpg=PT183&dq=Dr+William+Howship+Dickinson+at+Great+Ormond+Street+Hospital&source=bl&ots=suF20DtKCV&sig=ACfU3U3x5p0-EsVXoADcTVtQAUuyIru_Bw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiA8pzw0r_mAhWTAZ0JHWooAT4Q6AEwBXoECBAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Dr%20William%20Howship%20Dickinson%20at%20Great%20Ormond%20Street%20Hospital&f=false
As some of you may recall,I was diagnosed with autism as a child almost fifty years ago.Had it not been for my mother’s intervention and advocacy,I would have ended up at the infamous Rosewood Center,in Owings Mills,Maryland,but parents like that were rare,but not unknown.I would suggest seeking out the excellent 2003 documentary “Refrigerator Mothers”,originally done for the PBS POV:Point of View series,for other such advocate mothers during the 50s,60s,and 70s.
@ Robert Kulp
Thanks for the references. I downloaded the article and will order the book. My younger brother was born 1950 and would most likely have been diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum if born in this century. However, though not the refrigerator mother, my parents went to a psychiatrist with him. In the 1950s, psychoanalysis was all the rage, despite any scientific validity. In any case, my parents were blamed, ignoring that I was quite normal. Someone suggested he be examined by a neurologist several years later and he was given the diagnosis of Minimal Brain Dysfunction and IQ tests put at 85. There was no funding for this and, though lower middle class, my parents paid a fortune to private schools, claiming to work with special needs kids, they didn’t. We discovered when he acted out, tantrum, they locked him in a dark closet. So, we lived near poverty line and they didn’t help him.
If you didn’t notice it, you might find my comment above, HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, interesting (I’m curious what you think of my comment?)
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH DECEMBER 16, 2019 AT 11:09 PM
Some other books, if you haven’t already read them, that you and others might find of interest are:
Roy Richard Grinker (2007). Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of AUTISM
John Donvan and Caren Zucker (2016). In a Different Key: The Story of Autism
Emily L. Casanova and Manuel F. Casanova (2018). Defining Autism
Bonnie Evans The Metamorphosis of Autism: A history of child development in England. Free download at: https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/9781526110015/9781526110015.xml [note on right FULL BOOK DOWNLOAD] I just downloaded it.
It didn’t stop there (the Freudian I’ve seen was way better than the Rogerian, but the former was a brief dalliance for another purpose). I’m repeating myself, but RD Laing was quite the exemplar well past the ’50s.
@ Robert Kulp
Found couple more, book, and online outline of Waltz’s book at: https://disabilitystudies.nl/sites/disabilitystudies.nl/files/autism_a_social_and_medical_history_2014.pdf
Steven Taylor (2018). Child Insanity in England, 1845-1907. I saved the Amazon.com page; but haven’t ordered it yet.
I have three of his articles (search Google using titles):
Steven J. Taylor (2012 April ). ALL HIS WAYS ARE THOSE OF AN IDIOT’: THE ADMISSION, TREATMENT OF AND SOCIAL REACTION TO TWO ‘IDIOT’ CHILDREN OF THE NORTHAMPTON PAUPER LUNATIC ASYLUM, 1877–1883. Family & Community History. Vol 15, No 1
Steven J. Taylor (2016). Depraved, Deprived, Dangerous and Deviant: Depicting the Insane Child in England’s
County Asylums, 1845–1907. The Journal of the History Association, pp. 513-535
Steven J. Taylor (2017). ‘She was frightened while pregnant by a monkey at the zoo’: Constructing the Mentally-imperfect Child in Nineteenth-century England. Social History of Medicine, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 748-766
For your archives, have you come across Treffert’s observation that Down described autism in his 1887 lectures?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-006-0183-1
“Dr Down and ‘developmental disorders’”.
Unfortunately Down already has one syndrome named after him so he doesn’t get enough recognition for his other contributions.
@ Smut Clyde
Yep, have that one; but always appreciate suggestions.
Did you ever read Told in the Drooling Ward ?
Jack London wrote this story in 1911 which would probably irritate modern anti-vaxxers who believe that there were no disabled/ ID/ ASD people in those days. The writer lived near the Sonoma County School for the “Feeble Minded” . I’ve actually seen the campus which still has residents as well as London’s ranch. Glen Ellen, CA.
Didn’t Freud describe people who weren’t attached and couldn’t speak even earlier than that?
Just downloaded free copy of Jack London’s Told in the Drooling Ward. Will read in next few days. As for Freud, don’t know.
@ Joel:
I can’t say for sure where I read it but somewhere Freud writes about a group of children/ adults in institutions who do not form attachments to other people, who don’t speak, who aren’t educable. It may be where he describes how children become attached to parents early in life setting up their further development socially. It struck me at the time because he didn’t name this phenomenon or refer to other observers who describe it.
‘She was frightened while pregnant by a monkey at the zoo’
Almost as memorable as ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’.
@$ciencemom and Chris – I was responding to has who asked me for a citation re: Prof. REI$$ and the COI from GSK. Has doesn’t follow his/her/its own advice DNFTT and you two just can’t help yourselves. Perhaps the aluminum nano particles lodged in your brains has affected your cognitive abilities? You are the smart ones, right?
@ Joel – You obviously are a smart guy with a lot of time. Be more concise. Your posts are too long.
Here is the winning formula ala Prof REI$$. I realize I left out an essential part the last time. I’ll spare you the ALL CAPS as it seems to be sensory overload for some.
Fear + Less Exemptions + More Mandates = More vaccines sold = More $$$$$$$$$
Historically the flu vaccine has had a low uptake from those in healthscare. Hmmm? What do they know? Prof. REI$$ and Mr. Najera are trying to fix that “problem” with more mandates.
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1594&context=healthmatrix
You are still being juvenile. Again, why do you think that children should suffer high fevers, seizures, encephalitis, pneumonia and possible permanent disability instead of getting two doses of the MMR vaccine? Please do tell us why treating and hospitalization is cheaper than vaccination, tell us exactly with a verifiable economic study that this one is wrong:
Pediatrics. 2014 Apr;133(4):577-85.
Economic Evaluation of the Routine Childhood Immunization Program in the United States, 2009.
Really do think about why you want kids to suffer from preventable diseases. As someone who had to take care of a six month old with chicken pox a year before the vaccine became available I think it is because you are sadistic child hater.
Even though your “argument” is juvenile, it has a name: ad hominem. You have no data so you try to claim they are wrong because they own stock. That is wrong.
Please remember to thank your responsible neighbors who are protecting you kids from some nasty diseases by vaccination their families. You probably don’t have to worry because your parents had you vaccinated when you were young.
” You have no data..”
Exactly. AND they refuse to accept data that others present:
— Orac ( and many others here) point out that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism
— You show a video that explains genetic causation of autism
— Others ( including me) show early indicators of autism and research on prenatal brain development
— Rene ( and others) show how bad anti-vax research really is.
I hear outrageously awful pseudoscience on a near-daily basis and often, the argument increasingly revolves around pharma money EVEN though Skeptical Raptor ( and others) shows how little of these companies’ profit involves vaccines.
They accuse many of us of being paid by pharma with no evidence : pharma spends big money on television/ print ads – why would they need internet commenters who reach thousands daily when television reaches millions?
-btw- I own two mutual funds which sometimes include pharmaceuticals as a very small percentage of the total which the funds determine: the ones I have chiefly involve tech and mortgage/ other debt.
But ideas like that make sense- so I guess they’ll be discarded.
I wonder why anti-vaxxers accept “data” from anti-vax “researchers”, woo-meisters and actiivists without question- n matter how bad- but mistrust SBM, universities, governmental bodies etc?
Perhaps because they identify with them..
What really disgusts me is that they demonize autism based on literal lies. Due to even more lies will make children suffer from vaccine preventable diseases instead of protecting them.
Only someone who truly hates children would do that, especially after news like this: https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/news/local/2019/12/16/texas-reports-sixth-flu-related-child-death/2665680001/
As I said before less exemptions = less vaccine preventable diseases = public and private money saved = less money to pharma, Was that short enough ?
@Chris – Per Chris….”Please remember to thank your responsible neighbors who are protecting you kids from some nasty diseases by vaccination their families.” <<<proofread much?
Obviously you don’t know my neighbors! LOL
Again, per Chris… “You probably don’t have to worry because your parents had you vaccinated when you were young.”
The schedule from the mid-60’s is very different from today. Maybe three shots? The schedule today between 60-70 if you count the annual, worthless, inflammation inducing flu vax. My parents were also told I would have lifelong but oopsies guess not! You and the pack are recommending we all get in line again to support the herd immunity THEORY and line the pockets of the stakeholders.
STOP COMPARING THE SCHEDULES FROM THE MID 60s TO NOW. IT’S DISHONEST AND YOU KNOW IT! We’ve already danced around this, remember? Is dementia setting in?
You really can’t help yourself along with Duhnice. Step away from the computer! Take a walk! Shed those extra pounds. Stop eating crap food ie.. fake ice cream with cheap emulsifiers like Polysorbate 80. It messes with your gut! Just imagine what it does to your brain!
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324232.php#1
The schedule from the mid 1960s was different. It had smallpox vaccine and OPV, both with real risks modern vaccines don’t have. It included DTP, with a higher rate of moderate, frightening side effects than any vaccine currently on the schedule (even if current studies do not support a link to long term harms). And it may have included the killed measles vaccine, depending on timing.
In other words, although the 1960s schedule protected you against less diseases, it was less safe than today’s schedule, thanks to technological advances in today’s vaccines.
Just counting the diseases prevented and assuming more diseases prevented=less safety doesn’t work.
We don’t have 60-70 vaccines. We can protect our children against 15 dangerous diseases in early childhood. And you’re being dishonest – or badly wrong – in counting vaccines, by not counting DTP as three and not counting the multiple doses in your schedule, but including that counting in your counting of today’s schedule.
@ Prof. REI$$ – You’re back! Where’s Chris? Did she take my advice and go for a walk? Of course, there’s Duhnice, again, with her 2 cents.
You wrote – “We don’t have 60-70 vaccines.”
I didn’t write that Prof. REI$$. Please stop twisting what I said.
I said, “The schedule from the mid-60’s is very different from today. Maybe three shots? The schedule today between 60-70 if you count the annual, worthless, inflammation inducing flu vax.”
I didn’t say there were 60-70 vaccines. I’ll clarify between 60-70 DOSES. Is that better? More understandable? That is quite different from my childhood schedule and the failed promise of lifelong immunity.
There aren’t 60-70 shots either, and your schedule was not 3 shots; note that your original post did not have the word shots or doses.
See my other corrections on the comparison of schedules.
I am inclined to limit my response to the more mature parts of the comment.
Why should I care about what a sadistic child hater suggests? All I expect from you is an economic study showing it is cheaper to treat and hospitalize children with measles, mumps, rubella, etc.
Also, the first measles vaccines were introduced in the 1960s, there was also vaccination for smallpox, polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. That is more than “three.” Oddly enough, the vaccines you all demonize and cheer whenever some unvaccinated are injured by the actual disease are four of those listed. Like this poor kid: https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2019/03/unvaccinated-oregon-boy-6-nearly-dies-of-tetanus-racks-up-1-million-in-bills.html
“That is quite different from my childhood schedule and the failed promise of lifelong immunity.”
No one has ever promised lifelong immunity, which is why there are boosters. I really hate that lie. I say this has someone who got mumps twice in the 1960s. Possibly because the measles I possibly had few years before wiped out my immunity to mumps.
In addition, even after surviving tetanus, that kid can get it again because his sadistic parents refused to get him vaccinated. There is no such thing as lifelong immunity from many diseases if you survive them. Examples include pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, norovirus, rotavirus, etc.
Now get cracking on that verifiable economic study that shows it is so much cheaper to treat diseases like measles, mumps, pertussis etc… that to protect a child from it with a few vaccines.
@ Chris:
So Natalie has studied neurophysiology, psychological testing and neurodegenerative diseases.. EXACTLY where?
Natural News? Obviously she never heard of Orac’s critique concerning mice. The amount of active ingredients in earlier vaccines was much higher so the total load could have been similar ( although as Dr Offit says kids could handle much more- as they do when they encounter multiple assaults on their immune systems on a daily basis thorough everyday life- getting colds, cutting themselves, eating and drinking)
and -btw- doesn’t she know that people with dementia do not write complicated essays involving multiple external references about science using complex, university level language and calmly tolerate insults from less skilled individuals.. She probably thinks that Orac isn’t too bright either.
-btw-
Anyone who hasn’t been in a cave for the last few years, knows one of the ways dementia and other cognitive issues can be suspected is through language:
a famous man speaks using very simple language and less variety in his word choice
because he is famous, there are videos of him speaking 15 years ago in which he sounds much more articulate, uses more complex language and even can be rather funny. Psychologists, political experts and reporters comment that something “must be wrong with him”.
Damn mathematicians and their vaccines.
Stop eating crap food ie.. fake ice cream with cheap emulsifiers like Polysorbate 80. It messes with your gut! Just imagine what it does to your brain!
I think we can all agree that it’s a bad idea to live entirely on ice-cream (with up to 0.5% PS-80) or on water with 1% PS-80. Like any other dietary supplement / probiotic, eating indigestible stuff that becomes food for your gut microbiome is going to affect the nature of that microbiome.
I am not sure if the cheapness of an emulsifier is relevant here, unless you have evidence that increasing the price will make it healthier.
@Smut – Dude, ice cream is made from cream, milk and sugar….all the other stuff is non food, fake food fillers and emulsifiers. Try it sometime, homemade is the best.
@Prof REI$$ writes “and your schedule was not 3 shots;” Please Prof REI$$ tell me how many shots I received as a child? Wow, now you’re omniscient?
On the U.S. schedule, if a baby has all the recommendations from the ACIP/CDC…a baby from in utero exposure to 18 with an annual flu shot and now the HPV is receiving between 60-70 doses. A DTP should count as three not one. The vaccine can be made into three. Same with MMR. Exposure to three live viruses. You are being dishonest.
I’m too tired to pull it up and tediously count. Maybe tomorrow with coffee.
So where is the economic report that shows it is cheaper and safer to treat diseases, including hospitalization, compared to giving kids those vaccines. As I recall the Hib meningitis was no picnic, especially to a woman whose oldest kid was the same as mine, except that child was dead due to Hib.
Really do better to convince letting kids get high fevers, encephalitis, pneumonia, meningitis and possible permanent injury…like with some actual data.
If a DTP should count as three and you got the 1960s schedule you would get a series of DTP (so by your alleged count, 15 – 3*5, at least two doses of smallpox vaccine, and 4 OPV, and maybe the killed measles vaccine, depends when.
Inconsistent counting to make today’s schedule appear extreme while under counting your schedule isn’t honest. Be consistent.
And as I pointed out, a much more dangerous schedule than today’s entire schedule.
See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/vaxopedia.org/2017/10/31/four-generations-of-vaccines-and-vaccine-preventable-diseases/amp/
@ Prof REI$$ – In utero to age 18 by the current U.S. schedule, with all the recommendations, a total of 74 exposures to disease bits. Although I counted pneumo 13 only 4x, in reality there are 13 serotypes per vaccine, which brings the total to 126 exposures, using the language from the FLULAVAL insert. (Shout out to GSK! Cha-Ching!)
So…jab count is 51. I didn’t break the flu into tri and quads, which would be even more exposures. The Vitamin K was not added to the total jab count.
Today’s schedule is VERY different from the mid 60’s schedule.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
A. Yes. Today’s schedule is very different than the 1960s. Thanks to technology, it’s much safer, thanks to vaccines eradicating smallpox it’s also safer, and yes, it covers more diseases.
Again, I understand that you think that’s a bad thing that we can, today, protect children from more diseases than your parents could protect you, and more safely.
Most people, I expect, don’t share that somewhat strange point of view. They would appreciate both the increased safety and the increased protection in today’s schedule.
https://vaxopedia.org/2017/10/31/four-generations-of-vaccines-and-vaccine-preventable-diseases/
B. The fact that you have to engage in counting shenanigans to make your point doesn’t make it stronger, it makes it weaker. Children are not vaccinate in utero. Mothers are vaccinated, make antibodies, and the antibodies also protect the newborn when born. Your need to try and inflate the schedule by counting types is a little sad – and the fact that you don’t do it for your own schedule, which you stated had three vaccines, even though they, too, including combination and series, and your polio included 3 serotypes, doesn’t help you. It suggests either lack of knowledge or dishonesty.
And what about removing cellular pertussis vaccine. Whole bacteria has lots of antigens. By this action, number of antigens in the schedule was drastically reduced.
And if you think that Prof Reiss is a vaccine advocate because she may earn hundred bucks, go to Charity Navigator and check what Robert Kennedy Jr earns (990 form of Children’s Heath Defense). 131250 for working 20 hours per week. Perhaps he is antivaxxer because of that
@ Chris – Chris writes, “Why should I care about what a sadistic child hater suggests?” <<<Is this considered an ad hominem attack?
Chris, you know I have mentioned the problem of under-reporting vaccine injuries to children. You also know I expressed concern about the “one in a million” sacrifice that you and the pack consider an acceptable loss because the majority can withstand the assault to the immune system.
The “one size fits all” mentality needs to be re-evaluated. Screening needs to be done to identify children who are not able to withstand the current recommended schedule.
I will own that I am rude, juvenile and disrespectful, however, I am not a sadistic child hater.
No, it is an accurate description of your behavior. You are not wrong because you are a sadistic child hater who would rather have kids suffer from several diseases. Perhaps it is due to your abject ignorance.
You will retain that title until you come up with two things: the economic report that shows it is cheaper to let kids get diseases like measles, mumps, tetanus, hib, etc which causes high fevers, pneumonia, seizures, encephalitis, and a real possibility of permanent disability. One that shows this one is wrong: Pediatrics. 2014 Apr;133(4):577-85.
Economic Evaluation of the Routine Childhood Immunization Program in the United States, 2009.
And now due to the idiotic “under reporting” trope, you now need to provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that show any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the diseases. So if it is the MMR vaccine introduced in 1978 you must show it causes pneumonia in more than one out of ten doses, and more encephalitis than one out of a thousand doses and death in more than one out of a thousand doses. If it is the DTaP, then you must show it causes death in one out of thirty five cases. Because those are the harms of the diseases (especially diphtheria and tetanus).
This has been demonstrated in the recent outbreak of measles in Samoa (almost 80 deaths in a bit over 5000 cases), and in the 1990s diphtheria outbreak in the countries that made up the former Soviet Union: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2640235/pdf/9866730.pdf
VAERS reports are not allowed because those are not PubMed indexed studies.
Now get cracking on that data if you do not want to be known as a sadistic child hater who likes to see them suffer from high fevers, seizures, pneumonia, etc.
FTFY
Natalie, when you stop ignoring your own ‘acceptable sacrifices’, THEN you can claim moral superiority.
Deaths and suffering due to guns, due to alcohol, due to motor vehicles, due to foreign policy. Due to many more everyday sacrifices that societies make for their own benefits. Indeed, due to vaccine preventable diseases. Caste out the beam from thine own eyes first matey.
Notice that I gave anti-vaxxers at RI a big hint when I said that one should compare the active ingredients in vaccine schedules of today and yesteryear instead of the number of vaccines/ doses because if they knew anything about the topic they would use the actual term but none of them has mentioned it. Today’s vaccines are purer than those given in the 1960s-1980s. Vaxopedia has an article about antigens which shows how today’s vaccines have much less antigens even though there are more vaccines. That is what Dr Offit was referring to when he said kids could handle more than what the schedule gives and DO in everyday life.
But then. anti-vaxxers will find something else to carry on about: Hg, Al, aborted ‘babies’, monkey cells, latex in syringes, H2O, propylene glycol, formaldehyde etc..
You perhaps have noticed that I have lost patience with several sadistic child haters who want kids to suffer from diseases like measles, etc. Especially rude obnoxious ones like Natalie White and David Foster who both continue to spout lies (recently from Foster was that Vitamin A treats measles, apparently he thinks it is cheaper and safer to just force feed kids that vitamin, um, no).
One reason is this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/world/asia/samoa-measles.html
The photos include many tiny coffins: “For weeks, families have been holding burials all over the island nation. Funeral homes, used to handling the elderly, are preparing tiny coffins for the bodies of young children and babies, with many offering their services at no charge.”
Though White and Foster will now come up with some excuse for that carnage caused by that virus facilitated by the anti-vax folks. It predict it will have something to do with racism.
@ Chris:
You know, years ago, I had to try to find ways to explain how a “deadly disease” was transmitted and how it could be prevented, often to people who did not have the advantage of education because of poverty or lack of opportunity/ support. This was not as hard as you may think: people listened and read the brochures we produced and asked meaningful questions. Some were counselled if they were already positive and sought assistance for medical and other concerns.
I think that we at RI have another problem:
people who don’t want to learn or can’t learn despite being ( supposedly) college educated. They already know better than Orac, medical science and most of the world. They are brave maverick-y contrarians, attention whores.
Self-reflection is not their strong suit.
And they are helped along maintaining their lies with motivated reasoning. It is also Dunning-Kruger on steroids.
It is about individual right to decide if one wants medical treatment or not. It is about forcing people to “medical treatment”! Are you all lost your mind, or was it thoroughly washed ….?
Except not vaccinating yourself or your children puts at risk the immunocompromised and those too young to be vaccinated. It also severely endangers your unvaccinated children.
“There’s a metaphor there somewhere.”
Maybe something about missing the bus? “Train to nowhere?
@ Dr. Dave – Maybe this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA
I cannot percieve why so many people here are for suspension of right to chose if person want to be subjected to medical treatment!? It is beyond me…..”useful idiots”….
@goran writes, “I cannot percieve why so many people here are for suspension of right to chose if person want to be subjected to medical treatment!?”
Yes. The RI pack believe health comes in a syringe. If anyone says anything contrary to their mantra, “safe and effective”, you are labeled a heretic, fool, and a sadistic child hater. They are also too dumb to realize once you mandate the government to make medical decisions for you…..GAME OVER!
These are the “educated” yet they really don’t think.
“Yes. The RI pack believe health comes in a syringe.”
This is Natalie lying. She does that every time she comments here.
And you are being called a sadistic child hater because you promote behavior that endangers children. This became evidence when you and other anti-vax sycophants actually refused to take responsibility for the measles deaths in Samoa. One you idiots is actually claimed they were caused by the vaccines.
Just stop telling lies that kill kids.
As I said above…
Except not vaccinating yourself or your children puts at risk the immunocompromised and those too young to be vaccinated. It also severely endangers your unvaccinated children.
Yes, goran, you and others like Natalie and Christine are useful idiots because you endanger children, like this child: https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2019/03/unvaccinated-oregon-boy-6-nearly-dies-of-tetanus-racks-up-1-million-in-bills.html
You guys are also a drain on tax payers, which had to foot the bill for keeping that kid alive.
@Chris, “One you idiots is actually claimed they were caused by the vaccines.” Huh?
Slow down, Chris. Breathe. Take your time. Remember long inhale through the nose and then exhale with pursed lips. Optimally, the exhale will be slightly longer. You will increase your nitric oxide levels which dilate your blood vessels. Your body will have more oxygen for use.Take a few of these breaths before your next tirade.
Take care Chris and have a great day.
[…] proclivities) to his YouTube show High Wire, to his antivaccine advocacy nonprofit ICAN, to his speaking at antivaccine protests, to his production of viral antivaccine videos, Bigtree is excellent at spouting pseudoscience, […]
[…] For example, New York banned religious exemptions last year, and out-of-state antivaxxers have descended upon Trenton because the New Jersey state legislature is also considering eliminating medical exemptions. To […]