# Cheerleader who supposedly got dystonia from flu vaccine is "cured" and has a website. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653 "2009-11-06T23:32:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/21 "2009-11-10T15:27:02Z")
In a related story (to the tomato juice as appendix burster topic), my sister swears by cabbage rolls to induce labor. She has two children. For each one, she ate cabbage rolls the evening before going into labor. This is why I avoid cabbage rolls. I don’t need any more kids. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/22 "2009-11-10T16:41:21Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > In a related story (to the tomato juice as appendix burster topic), my sister swears by cabbage rolls to induce labor. She has two children. For each one, she ate cabbage rolls the evening before going into labor. > This is why I avoid cabbage rolls. I don’t need any more kids. Common now, she didn’t say she was immaculately conceived with a cabbage patch doll. It just means all the gas produced by cabbage rolls gave a little push to get things started. 🙂 To the op, I hope this gets evening news coverage. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/23 "2009-11-10T17:11:38Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > My wife refused to drink tomato juice for years because she drank a glass of tomato juice for breakfast and later that same day had to be rushed to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Obviously tomato juice causes acute appendicitis. Sadly I can top that. One of my sisters insisted, for years, that she was allergic to the color _red_. Yes, all red foods were bad for her. However, there is a happy end to this story, as my mother eventually lost her temper with RedPhobic the Rhymer and ordered her, at the top of her lungs, to stop being such a bloody twit. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/24 "2009-11-10T17:26:29Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > My wife refused to drink tomato juice for years because she drank a glass of tomato juice for breakfast and later that same day had to be rushed to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Obviously tomato juice causes acute appendicitis. She was probably feeling nauseous, as sometimes happens with appendicitis, when she drank the tomato juice, or shortly afterward. Nausea plus the taste of a certain food is all you need to get a taste aversion going. The taste of tomato juice reminds her, on some subconscious level, of the nausea she experienced with oncoming acute appendicitis. It’s an evolved reaction that works to protect us from eating something poisonous more than once. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/25 "2009-11-10T18:48:21Z")
**Anne Neville** , that sounds like a reasonable theory. It happened before I knew her, but it matches what I remember of what she told me. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm my recollection since she died five years ago (I probably should have referred to her as “my late wife” but I didn’t see it as relevant to the story.) ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/26 "2009-11-10T19:28:17Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > My wife refused to drink tomato juice for years because she drank a glass of tomato juice for breakfast and later that same day had to be rushed to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Obviously tomato juice causes acute appendicitis. If she did drink it again, would she have to have ANOTHER appendix taken out ( assuming it grew back.) ---
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/27 "2009-11-10T19:32:42Z")
> [@norinew](#): > > OK, first I’ll say the would-be cheerleader in the OP is clearly a whack-job, and probably emails regularly with Jenny McCarthy. > > Second, I’ll say this in your wife’s defense: if I get violently ill after eating/drinking a particular food, even if I _know_ it’s not the food that _made_ me ill, it’s often a _long_ time before I can stomach that food again! Once, a couple hours after eating my Mom’s spaghetti, I got sick with a kidney stone. I always get physically ill with a stone. All I could taste on “the return trip”, so to speak, was the Italian sausage from the spaghetti sauce. I knew damn well it wasn’t the spaghetti sauce that made me vomit, but it was _years_ before I could stand to eat Italian sausage again! When my Mom was a kid she got sick after eating hot dogs. She’s almost 70 now and she -still- won’t eat hot dogs. ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/28 "2009-11-10T19:50:10Z")
> [@tacoloco](#): > > When my Mom was a kid she got sick after eating hot dogs. She’s almost 70 now and she -still- won’t eat hot dogs. Well, I _do_ occasionally eat hot dogs, but knowing what’s in them, I have to say. . .smart woman! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/29 "2009-11-10T19:55:25Z")
Does this mean I can safely laugh at that first news story now? _Please?_ ---
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/30 "2009-11-10T20:14:55Z")
The [blog](http://www.desireejennings.com/blog/?p=8) has some interesting quotes from the doctors on House. One thinks it might be lupus. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/31 "2009-11-10T21:20:22Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > My wife refused to drink tomato juice for years because she drank a glass of tomato juice for breakfast and later that same day had to be rushed to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Obviously tomato juice causes acute appendicitis. I’d call that more of a phobia. I know someone who has a mosquito phobia for the same reason: appendicitis while camping. It took awhile for an emergency vehicle to get to the camp site, so there were several hours of hearing that high-pitched whining “ziiiiiiii” mosquito sound while lying in the grass wishing he was dead. So while a fully rational guy, he _knows_ mosquitos didn’t cause the medical emergency, but he has that SOUND indelibly associated with being near death. To this day he will not go into the woods. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/32 "2009-11-10T21:42:11Z")
I’m a member of another board which is populated by much thicker people than SDMB. They are swallowing Jennings’s and Buttar’s shit hook, line, and sinker. They don’t even WANT facts. ---
**Author:** ![Hirundo82](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/919ad9/32.png) [@Hirundo82](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hirundo82)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/33 "2009-11-10T21:58:05Z")
It’s amazing how powerful the [_post hoc ergo propter hoc_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc) fallacy is. I’ve often seen it ascribed to the human ability to rapidly make associations being an evolutionary advantage, but in the modern world it so frequently leads to faulty associations and superstitions. I read an anecdote by a pediatrician once (I think it was in [Autism’s False Prophets](http://www.amazon.com/Autisms-False-Prophets-Science-Medicine/dp/0231146361/) by Paul Offit) that was a great explanation of this phenomenon. A physician was preparing to give a child a vaccine. As he was drawing it up into the syringe, the child started having a seizure. Obviously it wasn’t related to the vaccine, but if the seizure had happened two minutes later the doctor would have never been able to convince the child’s parents that the seizure wasn’t caused by the vaccine. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/34 "2009-11-10T22:32:02Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > My wife refused to drink tomato juice for years because she drank a glass of tomato juice for breakfast and later that same day had to be rushed to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Obviously tomato juice causes acute appendicitis. but if she had it removed she can drink it, no more appendix to get sick …:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/35 "2009-11-10T23:25:48Z")
Oy vey. This story is patently ridiculous - between the website, and its associated sponsors, and the video of her (she can run, but goes into tremors when she slows down? She can pause briefly while going up the stairs - backwards of course - but can’t stand still? She can only talk like Sean Penn in _I Am Sam_?) I’m thinking she’s either an outright fraud, or extremely troubled and in need of psychiatric treatment. The media outlets breathlessly reporting on this should be ashamed - they are enabling a potentially very sick individual without corroborating evidence, and worse, are contributing to the cloud of fear surrounding flu vaccines. But at least Google News shows that the big news outlets are staying the hell away from this one. ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/36 "2009-11-10T23:56:27Z")
> [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](#): > > Oy vey. > > This story is patently ridiculous - between the website, and its associated sponsors, and the video of her (she can run, but goes into tremors when she slows down? She can pause briefly while going up the stairs - backwards of course - but can’t stand still? She can only talk like Sean Penn in _I Am Sam_?) I’m thinking she’s either an outright fraud, or extremely troubled and in need of psychiatric treatment. > > The media outlets breathlessly reporting on this should be ashamed - they are enabling a potentially very sick individual without corroborating evidence, and worse, are contributing to the cloud of fear surrounding flu vaccines. But at least Google News shows that the big news outlets are staying the hell away from this one. Good. I really don’t understand how anyone can swallow this steaming load. It’s patently ridiculous, and you don’t even have to be a doctor. Or watch House. It looks like she just picked a rare neurological disorder that she knew very little about (and banked on the same from others) and wove a big BS story about it from whole cloth, and despite her being _the only person in the world, in all of recorded medical history_ who has symptoms like she’s claiming. I don’t think she has any sort of serious mental problem. I think she’s just an attention whore. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/37 "2009-11-11T03:16:30Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > but if she had it removed she can drink it, no more appendix to get sick …:dubious: It’s [Conditioned Taste Aversion](http://psychology.about.com/od/cindex/g/def_contasteav.htm) and isn’t uncommon at all. I learned about it in my high school Psychology class. It’s a response that makes you not want to eat possible poison (even if your brain logically knows that the tomato juice didn’t cause appendicitis, there can be this almost instinctual reaction that tomato juice == SEARING HORRIBLE PAIN). Friend of mine got seriously trashed on Goldschlager in college, to the point of vomiting. It took her _3 years_ before she could smell _any_ cinnamon without her stomach churning. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653/38 "2009-11-12T04:07:01Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Antivaxers have been falling all over themselves to use this woman as an example of the Evils of Vaccines. > > I was suspicious from the get-go about the story, but what’s most telling is that Jennings supposedly started improving right in the quack doctor’s office shortly after he started administering chelation. There’s no way in the world you’d start getting “cured” of “mercury toxicity” that fast. But this means vaccines are ok now, because if anything goes wrong we now have a “cure”. Right? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-who-supposedly-got-dystonia-from-flu-vaccine-is-cured-and-has-a-website/516653.md?page=1)