BTW, I’m reading The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe which details logical fallacies, and he notes a website called Spurious Correlations which lets you enter several variables to look for apparent correlations between them. His favorite a tight correlation between organic food sales and autism diagnoses. 
Some of you may be unaware that a standard tactic in the antivax Bag O’Tricks is to condemn vaccines on the basis that Big Pharma is Evil and Untrustworthy, therefore Vaccines are Bad Too (a common ploy is to haul out Vioxx as an example of why we should avoid immunization. A companion tactic is to tell us that doctors once appeared in cigarettte ads, so don’t trust doctors).
If you agree with antivaxers’ hyperbolic rants about how Big Pharma is Evil and Organized Crime, you won’t have much of a logical comeback when they tell you that’s why they don’t trust vaccines.
I’m with Megan Doodle* and Scary Mommy on this one.
That you’re an asshole?
After years of being attacked in online vaccine debates as a Pharma Shill, I have very little tolerance for it, and even less when it occurs on a message board supposedly dedicated to fighting ignorance.
So fuck off.
*I love the name “Megan Doodle”.
I think the sensible approach is to refuse to grant the premise that anything in the vaccine debate hinges on the honesty of Big Pharma in the first place. Of course, Big Pharma is not always evil or always good. But we’re not advocating that anyone needs to trust them. We know that vaccines are safe and effective not because anyone at Big Pharma told us, but because of the mountain of independent peer-reviewed research.
If you don’t frame the debate this way, then what’s your logical comeback when a major case where Big Pharma acts very badly actually hits the headlines?
Again, to quote Ben Goldacre:
I thought were discussing a substantive issue, but if you don’t want to, feel free to disappear up your own asshole and refuse to listen to another reasoned perspective from someone who’s essentially on the same side on all the issues.
Whew! It’s a damn good thing no one has done that! As soon as someone does, I’ll join you in ridiculing them!
In the meantime, how would you characterize the Sacklers? Or indeed, the practices of Lili, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk re insulin? What kind of language of condemnation would you consider appropriate without providing aid and comfort to the enemy?
One suggestion might be to resolve that assigning a characterization to them is beyond the scope of a discussion of how horrible the antivax movement and its advocates are; agree that if any antivax assholes show up and attempt to Gish gallop or otherwise shoehorn the subject into the discussion, they will be shut down; and hold the Pitting of the Sacklers and Big Insulin in a different thread.
Okay that might count as three suggestions, but it seems like bunch of anti-antivaxxers should be level-headed enough to adopt them as a suite.
Done and done!
But nobody wants to be an anti, it’s just such a downer! If the anti-vaxxers get to call themselves “pro-vaccine-choice”, I want to be pro-something. I even prefer provolone to antipasto.
Well, since vaccination saves lives, you could call yourself “pro-life”…
(what?)
A crazy politician in Arizona
Forcing measle shots is Communist she says. What a bitch.
Arizona state Rep Kelly Townsend says pushing for vaccines is “Communist”.
(bolding mine)
When people, especially people in a position of power and influence, say that no amount of scientific evidence will change their position the debate stops. They have declared you to be the enemy, and that everything you say is just part of the conspiracy. Fight them, expose them, get them out of office and get those kids vaccinated before this deliberate ignorance kills even more people.
ninja’ed by Baker.
I thought we didn’t hate Communists anymore.
I’m just going to drop this in here to lighten the mood a little:
Saw that this morning. It was awesome.
Christ. Seriously, Oregon is batshit enough, we don’t need unvaccinated Illinois assholes tramping through.
“God, I hate Illinois anti-vaxxies.”
Once we get schools dealt with, are we going to have to start requiring vaccination records to get on an airliner?
If people keep spreading disease at airports that’s not an unlikely scenario. And if I recall, people traveling on airplanes was a major reason SARS jumped from Asia to Canada a few years back.
If you are a foreigner coming to the US, you have to be up to date on all your shots.
We don’t require US citizens to prove immunizations under the assumption that a US citizen is vaccinated unless there is a good reason not to be.
Since that is no longer a valid assumption, due to anti-vaxxers, then yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Proof of vaccines or medical exemption, or no flying.
Side question: Is there any benefit to getting re-vaccinated with MMR, if you happen to be near a measles outbreak? It is only 97% effective, and while it is good for life, well, we are not all the same. Could do a titers, but that’s usually more expensive than the vaccine anyway.
I asked my PCP if I should be re-vaccinated with MMR; since I’d previously had the booster (possibly twice due to international work), she thought not.