What's the next move for the antivax crowd?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Courtesy of the British Medical Journal, part of their Secrets of the MMR Scare series:

How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money. Brian Deer, journalist

There have been many attempts to dislodge this pernicious lie from the public imagination, but his time it’s different. It now appears that the fake autism/vaccine link was planned from the beginning as a fraudulent moneymaking scheme; not just the pet theory of a bad researcher. What will the antivax crowd do now? I’m not talking about Wakefield, that fucker is probably going to be busy with lawsuits for a long time. What about the celebrities, yoga instructors, and other assorted hucksters who have helped perpertuate this bullshit?

It would be nice if everybody admitted they were wrong, apologized for the deaths and for insisting that their uninformed opinions were fact, and then shut the fuck up permanently. However, a ton of money has been made off of this and there’s probably an ton more to go, so they will hang on like a terrier with a rat.

What spin will they put on the latest development? Will it work?

2

They’ve already been spinning it, since the accusations first came out last year. Now it’s no longer the MMR, or the thimerasol, it’s too many vaccines, too soon. Or in combination with each other. Or natural immunities are stronger and longer-lasting than those given by vaccines. Or the adjunctives used in vaccines. Or that vaccines are actually contaminated by things like antifreeze.

3

The same as their last move, whatever it may have been.

They won’t let their precious views be taken away by such silly things as facts.

4

Denial. Lots and lots of denial, strawmen, a fatal misunderstanding of cause and effect, and desire to be anti-establishment for the sake of being anti-establishment.

5

Ingore it. Cry big pharma conspiracy. Scream louder and more hysterically than before.

6

From what I’ve heard, insist that there could still be a link, and do a lot of hand-waving about money and Big Pharma.

7

The anti-vax thing will die off eventually, though. You’ll always have some true believers but it had already peaked out. These things come and go. Before anti-vax is was flouride or whatever.

The nuts will just come up with something else. I’m putting ten bucks on a backlash against antibiotics, and twenty bucks on a huge backlash against antibiotic hand wash and possibly wahsing your hands in general. I’ve noticed an upwards trend in people saying that if you don’t get exposed to germs you’ll get sick more often, which strikes me as being both amazingly ignorant of how many germs a person is exposed to and logically equivalent to saying that if you don’t get hit by cars now and then you’ll never learn how to dodge them.

All it needs is a celebrity spokeperson.

8

Stephen King?

9

Triclosan is not an antibiotic. And the backlash against triclosan hand washes has been around for years.

10

Interestingly, they’ve been trying to dodge any association with Wakefield. If you read the anti-vax forum at mothering.com, you see a lot of denial…some claim they never heard of him, or they’ll say their decision not to vax has nothing to do with autism. A big claim now is that vaccines ruin your immune system, and that’s why so many people are coming down with autoimmune diseases.

11

Someone, explain this to me like I’m a child. How, exactly, is this a moneymaking scheme? How does one make money by convincing parents to not vaccinate their kids?

12

By selling them books, DVDs, or seminars designed to validate their pre-existing desire to be organic/natural/anti-corporate by declining to vaccinate their children.

13

Here is a quote from that source summing up the attitude rather succinctly -

Rather speaks for itself, I think.

Regards,
Shodan

14

Yup, Shodan, that’s perfect. It’s got “this Wakefield guy,” like they’ve just been made aware of his existence, it’s got “I don’t know if it causes autism and I don’t care,” it’s got “I’ve got all kinds of good reasons that have nothing to do with Autism,” and it’s got “the media and the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies are all lying to us.” I don’t think the anti-vaxxers will ever die out, there will always be a way to spin it.

15

IIRC, Wakefield was working for a lawyer with a scheme to sue vaccine manufacturers. His faked research was to be the weight behind the suits.

16

Yeah, except antibiotics are overused, especially in livestock, encouraging the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA and c. difficile.

And there is some documentation which indicates there may be a threshold of infectious disease exposure that if the immune system doesn’t meet, it may become sensitive to and attack its own host. Countries with endemic infections of intestinal parasites show significantly lower incidence of auto-immune disorders. Beekeepers have a lower incidence of rheumatoid arthritis than the general population, though exposure to bee venom after RA is diagnosed makes no difference.

Right now, it’s only hypothesis and correlation, but clearly we haven’t figured out all the ins and outs of the immune system and how it interacts with our bodies and the environment.

My money is on the stuff that is so woo-woo, that no one’s going to bother studying it empirically, because the empirical people know it’s a load of crap, and the non-empirical people think empiricism is a fascist plot to oppress their specialness. The commercials I’ve seen for special copper and magnet bracelets actually make my soul die a little bit every time I see them.

17

Well we didnt believe one study when it came to autism causing vax, so it kind of makes sense that one study being repudiated wont change their position because unfortunately theres sites like this now:

http://www.vaccinedangers.com.au/

Mercury - a neurotoxin that kills brain cells and creates Severe Nervous System Damage

Vaccine Injections can be instantly followed by Autism (1:100)

Up to 60 % of a Child’s Immune System may be permanently destroyed by multiple vaccines

Sudden Infant Death syndrome (SIDS) (1:500)

Aluminum and Mercury – (The Deadliest combination) - Catalyst for major Neurological Disease

Severe damage to the Central Nervous System causing Guillain-Barré Syndrome (Paralysis)

Auto-immune diseases (Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriasis, Multiple Sclerosis, Asthma) in children

Children suffer learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (1:10) and Developmental Damage

Normal Liver Function destroyed by Aluminum

Vaccinating immature immune systems causes the development of lifelong Allergies and Asthma

Toxic bacteria, Neurological metal & Living Viruses create Destruction of Developing Brain Cells

Seizures - Dementia - Memory loss - Listlessness - Severe trembling - Synergistic Toxicity

Organ damage - Epilepsy - Blindness - Deafness - Leukemia - Cancer - Death

Sites like this are now claiming zillions of effects, so its a horse has bolted situation, and will take a fair bit of work to get it back into the stable. Any single repudiation is just ‘denying the obvious’ rather than further evidence its all bollocks.

Otara

18

Also, the lawyer was getting at least some of the money used to pay Wakefield from a legal defense fund set up by the government to help poor people.

Not only that, the good doctor also drew up plans to monetize his wholly fabricated MMR-Autism-Crohn’s disease phenomenon by:

  1. Using public money to set up a ward at a public hospital to study the imaginary link between these disorders
  2. Selling unnecessary diagnositc procedures
  3. Selling a ‘safe’ alternative to the MMR shot

The timeline section of tbe article sums up the best parts. What’s funny about the whole thing is that the hysterical types were right-the government was involved. But it wasn’t a nefarious malefactor, it was another unwitting victim of the real villains.

19

Here you go, kiddo - in cartoon form, even: Darryl Cunningham Investigates: The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield

20

I honestly hate the anti-vaxxers with the power of a thousand suns. It’s child abuse to do what they do, to not provide fluoride to their kids, to not vaccinate them, to fuck them up so badly - to kill them, in some cases. We may see 50 Mormon children on tv, their mothers only 16 years older than they are, inbred to the max but the children of anti-vaxxers are abused themselves.

I know a handful of anti-vaxxers and they are the stupidest, most actively moronic people I’ve ever met in my life. People like to say Sarah Palin is the downfall of society; I completely disagree. Lots just like her for a pretty face. But the anti-vaxxers are actively perpetuating lies; they rely on a few or two physicians (whose medical licenses are often revoked in short order) who tout their views and scam them of thousands of dollars with snake oil treatments.

What’s next? What they’ve been doing. Soon California is gonna have a pandemic with all the damn loonies not vaccinating their kids. It’ll never stop.