if i remember correctly recent studies have shown that all that information is BS, but i can’t seem to find them at the moment. I also cant seem to find anything about the doctors quoted on the site.
Can anyone help me out, or am i wrong on this? cites either way please. Especially since the mentioned website doesn’t list any.
Just going to bump it for you since you haven’t gotten many responses yet. My advice would be to have the mods move it to GQ and also do some searches on the board…this subject has been done to death here, and there are tons of old threads giving details.
As for the claims in your link, they are pretty much completely horseshit. A lot of them are deceptive, and have to do with the fact that in the past many things were diagnosed as something else than they are today…thus there is ‘more’ ADD, autism, food allergies, etc, than there was in the past, where ‘more’ is defined as the people who had those things 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago weren’t diagnosed as having them, and instead they were diagnosed as having something else…or weren’t diagnose at all.
The claim that vaccines kill more people than they save is the worst kind of malicious lie, since people reading that and following that advise are actually putting themselves at risk. And, sadly, a lot of this anti-vac horseshit has trickled down to many 3rd world countries, where the local populace has been fed this distorted propaganda, with the results being more deaths and sickness than would otherwise be the case.
Anyway, if you have the mods move this to GQ I think you’ll get plenty of answers. Also, don’t forget to do some searches on past threads, since none of this is remotely new, and all of it has been previously covered and debunked.
The problem with the website in question is that just about everything the writer asserts is wrong.
Sigh.
Explaining why would take a lot of posts and time.
I’ll give you a single example.
This paragraph makes me want to take the writer who wrote it and just him smack a few times because it is so wrong and so full of disgusting scare mongering.
By “independent research” the author clearly means anti-vax groups with a vested interest in suing pharmaceutical companies over what is clearly a genetic disease.
For example both sets of a pair of twins are more likely to have autism:
Thimerosol is a form of mercury but it is ethyl mercury rather than methyl mercury and no harmful effects have been demonstrated:
Thimerosal has been removed from vaccines as a precautionary measure yet autism rates continue to rise:
The symptoms of mercury poisoning and autism don’t overlap very much.
The reason children are being diagnosed with autism in greater numbers is because the diagnostic criteria have changed. Children who were previously diagnosed as mentally retarded or learning disabled are now considered autistic:
And that’s just a single idiotic paragraph. If I have time later I’ll attempt to examine more the of stupid over there. Hopefully some well informed posters over here (dseid, jackmanii, Kolga) will have time to drop by.
In the second paragraph, they talk about problems in children’s health that have happened concurrent with increases in vaccines. They give no evidence whatsoever that any of those problems are connected to vaccines. That’s a basic logical fallacy, the post hoc fallacy.
They even talk about childhood diseases being helpful for development. Anyone who believes that should visit a cemetery that was in use before the mid-20th century. The diseases weren’t so good for the development of the kids in all the childrens’ graves they’ll see there. Or maybe they should talk to someone who remembers what it was like to have things like polio epidemics.
The website linked to in the OP is the usual antivax conglomeration of false information, correlation-equals-causation fallacy and fearmongering.
In addition to the takedowns by LavenderBlue and others, I’ll mention that the site includes the typical nonsense about vaccine “toxins” (including gelatin - give me a break), while showing no realization that infectious diseases help make you sick through the action of real toxins that when you’re infected can be present in amounts sufficient to cause serious illness or death.
The nostalgia for the good old days when we lived in harmony with nature and disease is also revolting. Say Mom, remember the wonderful days of yore when lots of kids died in diptheria epidemics, or parents panicked every summer over the prospect of polio paralyzing or killing their children? We can return to those glorious times, just don’t vaccinate!
To counter the nonsensical fearmongering, there are good, reliable sources of information out there from the likes of the CDC, vaccineinformation.org and especially from the Vaccine Information Center of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which debunks antivax myths and has lots of helpful info on immunization.
Even if people reading this are not interested in watching 30 minutes of video I encourage you to watch the first 1.5 minutes. Pretty much sums it up well.
ETA: It is stuff like this that challenges my fervor for free speech. In the case of the link in the OP, Jenny McCarthy and others they are actively hurting people via terrible misinformation. Some kids somewhere have died and/or needlessly suffered because of their brand of bullshit. They should be sued into oblivion for that if not outright locked up. Hideous.
This is so fascinating. When someone mentions, say, Catherine MacKinnon on the Dope, straight male Dopers rush to condemn her, painstakingly claiming that performing in porn is a free choice and does not subjugate women at all.
But then, in your remarks above, we learn that it’s ok to make blowjob jokes about Jenny McCarthy, ostensibly because she once was in Playboy.
So, let’s settle it once and for all: are the Catherine MacKinnons of the world right, that porn is inherently exploitative and subjugates women? Or is your observation about Jenny McCarthy’s job irrelevant?
I can’t speak for them but my read is it is a snarky way to point out why is it we should listen to a Playboy Playmate versus, say, the Center for Disease Control?
Playmate seems poor bona fides to make proclamations on the evils of vaccination.
And yet nobody ever makes a joke about Jim Carrey eating pussy in these conversations. Why do you suppose that is? Does Mr. Carrey have an epidemiology credential that I’m not aware of?