By JC
Gratuitous link to the blog I am responding to.
Anti-vaccination Activist: Vaccines cause autism. Jenny McCarthy said so, and I don’t want my kid to be vaccine injured!
1) Jenny McCarthy is a red herring. The flak about her prominent role in the vaccine debate is only because she was a playboy bunny — and blonde. And who would ever believe anything a blonde playboy bunny would say… right??? You’d have to be a pretty marginal person to do so (or so PW would have us believe).
Anti-vaxxers: Meh. I saw a bunch of stuff on Facebook, so I’m not vaccinating my kids.
2) Casting anti-vaxxers as nothing more than FacebookBots again is a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize any argument that people may have by casting them as ignorant. Some of us were anti-vaxxers 25-30 years ago before the internet projected it into a red-hot topic.
Anti-vaxxers: Look, I don’t trust that science. My worldview dictates that anything from Official Sources is probably corrupted by giant corporations.
3) Implying that anti-vaccers don’t trust science again ignores the fact that many anti-vaxxers are scientists and intelligent people — who may or may not believe the pro-vaccination research — and have good reasons behind their position. Casting anti-vaxxers as anti-science (like he is doing) allows him to ignore any science or public policy that may question either the safety or efficacy of vaccines.
Want some real reasons to be anti-vaccination? Here’s a few (there are many more):
1) What gives the government the right to demand that they can inject undisclosed (and potentially harmful) materials into one’s bloodstream? Do public health concerns raise to the level that individuals have to give up certain inalienable rights in order to participate in society — like go to school? One would think that if you believe that the government has the right to inject undisclosed substances into our bodies, then maybe the government, in its quest to “protect” public health, might first enact a public health care system that all citizens have a right to participate in.
2) If the science is so settled, then why does the government maintain a slush fund to pay off those who have been harmed by vaccines (the hush money is funded by a 75 cents per shot excise tax)? If the science was settled, you’d think local governments demanding vaccinations for access to public schools wouldn’t be afraid of lawsuits claiming harm. I mean, what jury trial would convict and award damages if the science said vaccines were safe and didn’t cause harm?
3) Why, when the anti-vaccine discussion comes up, must we be shuffled off onto stupid arguments, when there are many legitimate studies in mainstream, peer-reviewed academic journals that show the potential dangers of vaccinations?
Here’s one: “Review of Vaccine Induced Immune Overload and the Resulting Epidemics of Type 1 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, Emphasis on Explaining the Recent Accelerations in the Risk of Prediabetes and other Immune Mediated Diseases.”
“There has been an epidemic of inflammatory diseases that has paralleled the epidemic on iatrogenic immune stimulation with vaccines. Extensive evidence links vaccine-induced immune overload with the epidemic of type 1 diabetes.”
Here’s a quote from a government CDC scientist in a legal deposition admitting he fudged the data in a study:
“I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism.”
So why can’t we have a rational discussion about vaccines, without resorting to red herrings, guilt-by-association tactics, and false narratives? No wonder Monsanto gets away with its BS — because people like Polish Wolf amplify the delegitimization of any who would question the lock-step drive to vaccinate, or ignore the existence of real science that can inform the debate.
No, we must all just cowtow to the powers that be and offer our children up for a grand experiment in toxic injections. I find no humor in Polish Wolf’s chosen literary device here.
His innuendo that anti-vaxxers are responsible for the depredations of Monsanto is sad. It is tantamount to him telling those of us who have the gall to question the “authority” of the government or certain acceptable scientific outlets should just shut up, or bear the responsibility for the negative affects and horrors that Monsanto’s chemicals, genetic engineering, and patenting have wrought upon the world.
Why would the powers that be want cow towing? If your meant obsequious servile obedience perhaps kowtow would have been a better choice.
My editor (left brain) is on vacation. And I’ve turned my spell check off as it is wrong as often as right. But nice to know you’re paying attention. But actually, towing some cows around is an interesting image.
Good, good, we have you on record endorsing the anti-vaccination movement. Though your point number 1 is excellent – I was thinking of including that in my own dialogue, but it was getting lengthy. (I would add that it’s pretty difficult to simultaneously argue that the government can demand that your children recieve some medical procedures while arguing that government cannot ban others – like abortion). All in all though, responding to each of my ID posts, coupled with your prediliction for Facebook stalking, combines to paint a mildly troubling picture of you as a human and a citizen of the internet.
Come on….. JC doesn’t do any more that what I have experienced with Don, but yet you don’t chastise him as “mildly troubling.” BTW, there is no such thing as a “citizen of the internet” as citizenship is bestowed by a sovereign authority.
Craig,
I normally ignore you and most of the posts here, but the temptation to read a good anti-vaccination screed was just too much. I’d like you, though, to point out the times I have taken a screenshot of your personal online profile and exposed your family members publicly, as the anonymous writers here have done to PW. I’d also like you to show that I have spent an inordinate time following you around online, attacking you.
Failing that, perhaps you can simply offer an apology for the assertion that I have behaved in a way even close to the behavior of the hosts here. I’d like to imagine you can understand the difference between arguing online and harassing someone, but perhaps I’m wrong.
Don
I imagine, knowing you as I do, Pogie, that your shallow little mind never got beyond Jenny McCarthy. You’ve been gamed (sigh) again, and of course. Would be the last to know.
Oh yeah, and you won’t read this as you’re even afraid to come here and face your critics. In addition to shallow, you’re a coward.
Don, you have demonstrated you are not above slimy attacks on a person at your blog in a topic post that you trolled from another blog like LiTW. Instead of responding to that person at the first blog as to the subject matter discussed, you slink away to make a collateral attack on that person from the control and safety of your own blog. Personal experience with you. I don’t ever recall you offering an apology for your behavior.
PW, I never endorsed any “movement.” That’s your illusion that such a thing exists. What I explain, is that there are many rational, scientific individuals that can look at respected science and come to a different conclusion than you. You are generalizing across many different sorts of people to create an “anti-vaccination” movement, and then attacking them as a whole, which does not exist.
I personally am anti-vaccination in general. What I am more than that is a person who applies a standard of “informed consent” when I consider any medical treatment (and a vaccination is a medical treatment). With vaccinations there is no informed consent, as the ingredients in vaccines are trade secrets, and research is cooked. No informed consent, no medical procedure. Simple as that.
As to your attempted ad hominem take down of me (“troubling picture of you as a human”), I have this to say: 1) I have never responded to each of your ID posts, not even close — I only respond here to blogs that involve me or ideas I hold, as I have been banned at your blog; and 2) I spend very little time on Facebook, and if you believe that looking up public information is “trolling” then you don’t know what the word means.
Using your term “citizen of the internet” implies that there is some right to freedom and liberty that goes with that citizenship, with access to and commentary about the information that is available there.
Or is your inability to secure your personal data on Facebook from people whom you have not “friended” more about your tech ignorance than it is about the ease with which anyone on the internet with half an ounce of intelligence can use the google? You left your profile public, yet you would label any who view it and comment on it as a troll? Laughable, if not so ignorant and sad.
But if I’m not being snarky and instead trying to defend my post, which, I guess I should, since you quoted rather selectively here, and either misunderstood or intentionally gave a false impression of my point. I actually agree with you more than you’d think. I think it’s entirely possible we give too many vaccinations – and I actually agree with the world view referenced there, that large corporations aren’t great sources of unbaised information (hence the line that followed in the OP – “that’s understandable”). I think, and most the world things, anti-vaxxers are wrong, at very least when they make their most incredible claims, like the inefficacy of the smallpox and polio vaccines. My precise point was that Monsanto is using that common, and now stronger, opinion to invalidate the worldview that gives rise to it – a mistrust of corporate ‘science’ as the be all end all of decision making, without pausing to consider the legal, ethical, or social aspects of ‘biological’ decisions. That’s a worldview I’m on board with, but which I’m seeing be squelched by a very clever PR campaign from Monsanto (I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the whole Jenny McCarthy/red herring movement was funded and created by Monsanto to ensure just such an outcome, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility).
PW, the takeaway I got from your post is that anybody who is anti-vaccination, led by Jenny McCarthy, is to be held responsible for Monsanto’s egregious operations. Monsanto has many different ways it propagandizes its operations. And it really doesn’t need the anti-vaxxers to justify its world view. That’s just you taking a cheap shot at people who are anti-vaccination. And as I am for the most part anti-vaccination, I took it personally.
If you really wanted to go after Monsanto, you could attack its policies and products directly on their own merits. Pete Talbot asked at ID recently about why there is no “environmental movement.” Attacks like yours on people like me is part of the reason why the environmental movement has splintered so badly. You just can’t tolerated people who think differently than your mainstream dem thought.
Just so you know, I tried to add a comment to your post, and it disappeared into the ether, as all my comments have at ID since Don banned me, and never showed up. So I took the comment and expanded on it for this post.
JC, kudos. You’re the only other living person I have encountered who understands the role of Jenny McCarthy.
Vaccinations are nothing more now than another rent seeking opportunity, what with 31 of them now and corporations attempting to pass legislation to re
Relieve themselves of liability.
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Do you realise how bad vaccinse are for you??? Read up on what they are made of and educate yourself! I’m sure God did not mean us to inject goat genes into our kids!