Of course, but then one should not resort to exaggerations and straw men about what the critics of Dr. Sears are talking about.
Sorry, but I’m not sure exactly what you are saying in your first sentence.
Offit says “Sears does not recommend the meningococcal vaccine for teenagers because of the possible risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome.”
Yet in his book, Sears most definitely DOES recommend the vaccine and while he does acknowledge a small risk of GBS, he provides numbers, tells us they are small, and indicates the temporary nature of GBS in contrast to the horrors and death risk from the actual disease. Nothing he wrote sounded even slightly like he thought you should skip this vaccination and he even stressed that is as safe as salt water!
I quoted the article and the book directly. No straw men present!
See post #156, you need to pay attention, not only here but you need to recognize that people like Dr. Sears are counting on many people out there to not realize how he is twisting what the critics are telling us.
We know that in his rebuttal Dr Sears does report that indeed he “believes that parents should have the right to decline vaccines.”
You are really what Dr. Sears expects indeed.
It is not the same thing to say that Dr. Sears is not weighting the risks accurately (what Dr. Offit actually said) than you or Dr Sears claiming that Dr. Offit said that Dr Sears is “not reporting the risks” (Dr. Offit did not say this)
I meant there seem to be some words left out or mixed up in your sentence. I’m not mocking you for a typo, I just don’t know what the sentence is meant to say.
The right to decline vaccinations is, in my opinion, a political issue not, a public health one.
I read his book to determine if he is twisting things with that agenda, and that’s not the impression I got. If you read only criticisms of something and not the thing itself, obviously you’d get a different impression, but more accurate due to lack of reading the thing itself? How so?
Anyone interested in “Dr. Bob” Sears’ reputation for honesty might like reading this article by Seth Mnookin (author of “The Panic Virus”).
it includes a nifty photo of Sears posing with (and getting a hug from) none other than Andrew Wakefield, whose unethical and fraudulent research led to demonization of the MMR vaccine and a marked increase in measles cases among unvaccinated children.
To supply “context” to the photo, Mnookin says that it was taken less than a week after Wakefield was struck off the British medical register (i.e. lost his medical license), which was in 2010. The antivax site Age of Autism proudly displays the same photo, which it notes was taken at that year’s Autism One conference, which annually hosts speakers condemning vaccines and promoting cures that are supposed to reverse vaccine damage (which include giving autistic children enemas with MMS (an industrial bleach).
It is a bit hard to reconcile the Bob Sears who allegedly is “pro-vaccine” with the Bob Sears who gets into a group hug with Andrew Wakefield at a conference dedicated to antivax promotion and related quackery.
Do not ignore post #165, you really are asking us to mock you on not reading things carefully, uh?
I’m reading things and responding because I’m interested in the topic, not because I’ve agreed to accept assignments from you.
You mock me because you want to feel like you’re part of some kind of clique and it makes you feel good, like you’re smart and cool. Maybe you feel kind of powerless IRL or have been bullied before. It’s nothing to me if you enjoy mocking me. If it makes you happy, do it more, in fact, as it costs me nothing.
My long post covered what you bring up in #165 pretty clearly, so I guess we’ll just have to disagree.
Yeah, I came upon that one too. It’s one of the things that makes me strongly suspect there’s quite a bit Sears has to say on some topics that I would not agree with at all.
Sure, he could be trying to get Wakefield supporters to consider some vaccinations, and sure, being photographed with someone is not necessarily proof that you agree with them, but I don’t like the looks of it either.
Interesting. In what way is it not a public health issue?
Avoidance to what was a reply to your long post noticed, again you and Dr. Sears are misrepresenting what Dr. Offit said; there is a big difference (and a misleading one) from claiming that Dr. Offit told us that Dr. Sears **“did not tell us” **about the risks. What Dr. Offit actually reported was that Dr. Sears was not being accurate with the risks.
IOW: Dr. Offit did indeed report that Dr. Sears told people about the risks, but that Dr. Sears got the actual risks wrong and doubling down on the straw man that Dr. Offit claimed that “Dr. Sears did not tell us” only shows an attempt at deceiving others.
The bottom line is that it remains reprehensible for Dr. Sears to tell parents that they should have the right to decline vaccines.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore can stay on your own shore, thank you.
Like seat belts, motorcycle helmets, etc.
Obviously yes, there is a public health aspect, but the assumption that our right to make a decision for ourselves ends where that decision could negatively affect others and exactly where to draw that line and what behaviors qualify is a matter of what we think a government’s role ought to be.
Like we’d probably all agree that even though a peanut-allergic kid in school may cost the other kids some lunch options, the answer is not to place the group’s interests ahead of that person’s and ban them (the kid that is) from the school.
We probably also would agree that if a kid comes to school and infects your kid with a cold virus, that sucks, but the parents of that kid are not responsible for any cost your kid incurs with a doctor visit or your missed days of work.
The question of whether people should be forced to vaccinate from a public health standpoint only is yes. Even if a vaccine actually was very risky, as long as it’s reducing the overall risk to the population, the answer could still be yes.
But should the government be able to do that? I say no, regardless of vaccine risk, because I place a very high value on personal freedom, but someone else may believe that it’s worth it to save some lives. I absolutely do think those lives are valuable and am not writing them off carelessly, but what with all the lives lost to ladders and cars and televisions falling on people, there is no perfect solution.
That sounds like a pretty good business model, for those willing to dabble with evil. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I would think that it could be applied to all manner of crackpottery. I mean tossing bones is pretty easy, and you can concede the biggest mainstream point, while screwing around with the supporting details. This gives superficial credibility.
Ick.
LavenderBlue: A few pages back you asked whether you should agree to post something at Dr. Evil’s website. I can’t really answer that. But if you do, keep a diary. Track what you hope the effects would be, what you fear the effects might be, then re-evaluate a year or so after your article is published. We pretty much know that it’s a bad idea to, say, give Holocaust Deniers a platform by engaging them in a public and oral debate. I’m unaware of the proper strategy in dealing with Credentialed Pander Bears. It’s something we need to figure out.
I don’t know that I ever had it.
AnaMen,
You are the perfect audience for Dr. Sears. You are not like us idiots who rely on blogs and always see things in black-and-white (post 85), dismiss anti-vaxers as non-people, are bitter and troubled (post 99).
You are such a weaselly hypocrite. I mean hey you evaluate facts for yourself unlike those who mindlessly parrot others instead. You don’t trust anyone including the CDC. You dismiss the articles I’ve pulled up because, “Many open with banal errors, claiming Bob Sears is the youngest son in his family, which simply is not true (Wikipedia reports him as the second child of eight), so how accurate is the rest likely to be?” (post 81) Meanwhile you fiercely defend Sears when it’s clear that he makes much greater mistakes and deliberately lies. No one will be harmed by measles if they fail to remember if Dr. Sears is the oldest child or youngest child in the family. The same cannot be said if they buy into his bullshit and refuse their child access to necessary vaccines.
Sears panders to your ego and you, like many of his followers, mindlessly eat it up. I wouldn’t care if you just did it to yourself but we have to spend 100k to clean it up and kids get hurt, it becomes rather freaking annoying.
You have yet to offer up any indication that he deliberately lies.
You just hand-wave that away and name call, screeching for his license to be revoked, when that’s clearly not even on the table.
I see Sears as a potentially useful tool to get more people to consider vaccinating, but you’d rather quarantine them. So caring about all the hurt kids though!
Sorry critical thinking isn’t your thing and you’d rather follow someone else’s instructions about what you should think about stuff, but maybe looking for the right person to follow and latching on truly is the best choice for you.
As I believe someone else said in another thread on this subject . . . the irony here is almost a physical sensation.
I have discussed this with some friends of mine and we are quite torn about what to do. The Aussies say ignore the fucker as they did with Meryl Dorey. Some of my other friends say respond to him but as little as possible with facts. Still others say go after him full throttle.
I honestly don’t know what to do. :eek:
Meanwhile the outbreak has spread to seven states. Thanks guys.
Point 3 is made wrong by its qualifier. No, not “most people”. Unless you have an acute allergic reaction to the vaccine, it absolutely outweighs the risk.
Wrong. The problem is not acknowledging #1; Paul fucking Offit acknowledges that. The problem is when people use it as a way of scaring parents away from vaccinating. When people stress the phenomenally unlikely risks of the vaccines over the very serious risks of the diseases they are meant to present. People like Dr. Bob, who essentially says “nobody’s going to die of it, don’t worry about it”. Uh, Bob? You’re a shitty physician. 1:2000 is not a tiny death rate. The reason people aren’t dying of measles is because almost nobody is getting it, because most of the population is vaccinated against it.
No, the way you’re putting your argument and the way you’re backing Bob Sears is what paints you as such. It’s about dog whistles - when you start screaming about “welfare queens” and “urban violence”, you don’t get to turn around and say, “Huh? Wut?” when people start calling you a racist. Similarly, when you come into a thread about a goddamn measles outbreak and start talking about how the vaccine has risks, and that for some people, those risks apparently outweigh the benefits, then what the fuck do you expect people are going to think?
And then you say phenomenally stupid shit like this:
Because what we’re talking about is a phenomenal cost increase on using a basic tool that has some inherent risk no matter how you use it. People need to use ladders. They ought to do so safely, but the fact is that standing 10 feet above the ground on a skinny, propped-up piece of metal is inherently risky. Also, it misses one important factor:
The only reason this is true is because we have vaccines. Compromise that herd immunity, make the disease freely communicable again, and those numbers skyrocket. That’s the real danger of antivaxxers. Not “their kid might get measles” but “everyone’s going to get more measles”.
Nobody’s flinging shit at you because you’re saying “there’s a risk, let’s vaccinate anyways”. People are flinging shit at you for making blatantly stupid antivaccine arguments and throwing out dog whistles left and right.
And yet the end result is exactly the same. Funny how good intentions work, huh?