That’s really sweet. I appreciate the support.
Kolga is a wonderful writer and a great source of information on this topic as many others as well.
This is another great link full of good info on some of the more common anti-vax myths:
I would strongly suggest reading anything by Dr. Paul Offit on this subject. He’s the head of the infectious diseases unit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Here’s his take on of the more infamous court rulings on vaccines in the United States:
yes but it would be better if we could beat their heads against the wall.
Oh, I left out the best part. The kid was a vegetable, pure and simple. I doubt very much that she was even aware of her own existence. VaxMom was convinced otherwise. According to her, “Lorena” was an Indigo Child, and the reincarnation of a long-dead American Indian warrior. (I shit you not.) She once went to a psychic convention in Las Vegas and Silvia Browne convinced her stupid ass that she was in telepathic communication with Lorena. (As God is my witness, I’m not making this up.) Another time she hired a witch doctor to roll coconuts down her driveway in an attempt to cure Lorena. When the kid broke her leg, VaxMom started shoving purple Kool-Aid down her throat because another psychic told her that the color purple was a healing color. The stories are endless. Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure which one of the two was suffering from the most brain damage.
I’m not trying to be sweet. It’s really good information. I appreciate you posting it.
Excellent responses guys. Thanks a million. Kolga, that was, in all seriousness, one of the best and most useful posts I’ve ever read on these boards. Nice one!
You guys do all realize that Kolga’s reaction to all this fawning adulation is “so buy my book, bitches,” don’t you?
Heck, what happened to me would fit better than that. At least I was (erroneously, as later discovered) diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder that likely came from my seizure following the MMR vaccine. (PDD being an autistic spectrum disorder.)
You’d think the kid dying would be a pretty obvious clue: people don’t die from autism.
It’s not that she believed that Lorena was autistic, it’s just that after she died VaxMom needed some sort of cause célèbre to involve herself with, and anti-vax nuttery was a handy target. To this day she still thinks that there was something wrong with the vaccine itself. She constantly misuses the term ‘hot lot,’ and has no real idea what it actually signifies.
So what did actually happen to you? Do you really have a PDD, or is that what was misdiagnosed?
I’m not sure what the point of this comment is, frankly. Because I wrote a book about the issue being discussed, and have written some notes on the Facebook page for the book and guest blog posts for other blogs that are relevant to the issue being discussed, I’m not allowed to provide that information in an attempt to help people out?
Or are you being funny and I haven’t yet had enough coffee to recognize it (a strong possibility)? 
More coffee is clearly in order. You haven’t snapped into Jesse Pinkman mode yet. (Yes, I’m still in BB withdrawal. There’s no vaccine yet, but there’s always the hope that medical science will find the answers.)
Anti-vax stupidity is nothing new. It was old even before your time.
For example: the Montreal smallpox outbreak in 1885. The French newspapers and a couple of doctors said that vaccination was not necessary or even that the English were pushing vaccination on the French because it was harmful.
Of course, there were some legitimate vaccination side effects, including a clinic that wasn’t properly cleaning or sterilizing their equipment, but the anti-vaccination crowd undoubtedly increased the casualties from that outbreak.
Thanks! I’ve had more coffee now, and recognize the Pinkman style (didn’t watch BB, but was exposed to Pinkman-isms enough).
It’s even older than that. It goes back to at least as early as Jenner’s first inoculation attempts. Here’s an editorial cartoon published in 1802 (I really want a framed copy of that in my office).
Apologies for the frivolities. I’ve been this way ever since they expelled me from Clown College for refusing to join the carpool network. Because you posted in the BB finale thread, I assumed you were a card-carrying member of the tribe.
Oh, and for the record, I bought your book. (Damned 10 femtosecond edit window…)
Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The Montreal incident is just stuck in my head since watching a documentary on it. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
I believe the specific case that the OP’s “Friend” was referring to (the claim that the vaccine court compensated for autism) was that of Hannah Poling. She was born with a rare mitochondrial disorder that her vulnerable to fever-induced encephalapathy, which in some stages presents symptoms similar to some of those of autism.
The vaccine court found that her condition might have been triggered by a vaccination, so awarded her parents compensation.
However, it’s not related to autism except in the minds of the antivaxers.
Most recently, Pakistani fundamentalist terror groups attacking and killing free vaccination workers. A perfect storm of causes - it’s western science, therefore cannot be trusted; it’s science generally, therefore a challenge to religion and God’s will; it’s a government initiative, so they are trying to gather information and undermine the local groups; and finally, best of all - the cover for checking on bin Laden’s hideaway was a fake vaccination drive, so therefor all vaccination workers must be CIA.
No good deed goes unpunished.