Anti-vaxxers ate my brain – a tourist's diary

[Some have asked - feel free to reproduce this in it's entirety wherever you please. CreativeCommons gibberish at bottom of the article. The article in html format that includes all functioning links is attached as vax.txt]

[Change log: Appendix 1 added 15 November 2009]
[Change log: "Aftertaste" section expanded 20 November 2009]

This is so neatly sums up the current zeitgeist (not like the movie nutjobs) you'd think it was written today -


Huxley, as always, gets everything right. If only he were alive today to witness the Babel that free information has brought us. I suspect even he might be overwhelmed. For the unfamiliar, The Devils of Loudun is Huxley's surgical dissection of an alleged case of demonic possession in a convent that led to wholesale hysteria, further sympathetic 'possessions' and also provided a convenient vehicle for all sorts of grubby greed, revenge and power grabbing moves. “Possession” itself was just an excuse for human beings to do what human beings do best – be assholes.

What is your problem man?

What a lot of people fail to realise is that whether vaccines are good or bad is a secondary issue to me. What disturbs me first and foremost, regardless of topic, is that no one checks anything anymore. No one is willing to spend a few minutes, for the sake of their own integrity if nothing else, to check to see if an item has any actual validity. Some people don't seem to be even remotely concerned about whether what they say, cite or link is valid or not. I don't want this to devolve into an argument for or against vaccination (though the chances of that not happening are slim). The fact that this is even about vaccination is the result of chance. It just happens to be that particular turd that I stepped in, and against my better judgement, got involved more than any sane person should. It could just as likely have been about 9/11 truthers, Obama's birth certificate, or the patriarchal conspiracy.

So the real issue is bad information. Misinformation. Disinformation. Crap. Bullshit. Whispers and rumours. Shadows and smoke [*].

Bad information, I have always maintained, has caused more misery, destruction and chaos throughout our history than any other factor. Going forward, bad information is the greatest threat to our future, despite all our advances. Bad information – where would religion be without it ? Bad information: our current economic crisis, precipitated by it; we invaded Iraq over WMDs with it; Helen Ukpabio demonises children as witches with it; Obama's healthcare reforms are being skewered by it. And the climate change debate is derailed by it. Bad information is everywhere, and the only consistent thing about it is it's never good.

[*] - The Cynics used the term typhos which is far more approriate. Literally, "smoke and vapour", used to denote the delirium of popular ideas and conventions that are thoroughly divorced from reality or merit.

The Travelogue (Part 1)

Seeing as this is basically a travel diary, I'll try and do it chronologically. You'll have to bear with. Trust me, it gets more surreal the deeper you go...

[snap] Not in babies: In a review of more than 51 studies...

This was probably the first piece of 'evidence' that got thrust in my face several months ago. A document so widely spattered all over the web, with hack copy-n-pastes adding and removing stuff, that its close to impossible to work out what it actually was or were it came from originally, let alone begin to comprehend it. As with all epic conspiracist literature, it is a dense, garbled collage of information sound bites of extremely dubious credibility. This kind of thing is every cranks staple – it is designed to confuse and disorientate, and intimidate any thoughts of criticism because whoever sent it to you obviously understood it, and if you don't, you must be dumb. The original is here. Read it and shrivel.

The cast of this Jackson Pollock-like infomercial mashup is something else. Here we go -

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, the author. What is she a doctor of ? Osteopathy, which immediately qualifies her as an expert on vaccination. Regular appearances with Alex Jones/InfoWars, inductee to Freedom Force International Hall of Fame (Alex Jones is a member too. And The Illuminati do exist) and she has a very nice online store - that sells NeuroTransmitter supplements chock full of the very things she claims make vaccines so deadly. Never shy of publicity, she has a somewhat symbiotic relationship with Jenny McCarthy – who actually can claim to have done something for the planet's betterment. She got her baps out in Playboy. And last, but absolutely not least, in her What can you do?, she recommends contacting the Oath Keepers...

Dr. Viera Scheibner. Yes, she's a doctor too – of micropaleontology. Her services to reason have won a trifecta at Quackwatch and earned, by unanimous vote, the 1997 Bent Spoon award from Australian Skeptics (she now resides there).

Dr. Guylaine Lanctot. At some stage appears to have been a real medical doctor, but whether she resigned from the profession voluntarily or because her license to practice was about to be revoked will never be known. There's still plenty of her shrapnel scattered over the web, including this memorable quote - "Vaccination enables the selection of populations to be decimated. It facilitates targeted genocide. It permits one to kill people of a certain race, a certain group, a certain country. And to leave others untouched. In the name of health and well-being, of course."

[snap] Doctor Admits Vaccine Is More Deadly Than Swine Flu Itself & Will Not Give It To His Kids

We are introduced to a never before heard of Dr. Kent Holtorf on Fox News of all things, decribed as an “infectious disease expert”. Not. In fact, it is impossible to find what Holtorf's actual credentials really are, other than something to do with medicine and aging, possibly homeopathy as well. He's certainly not a disease or immunology expert, nor even registered to practice any form of internal medicine - both http://www.abms.org and http://www.abim.org know nothing of him. But he does appear in National Center for Biotechnology Information – for something called Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. That sounds even scarier than vaccination. Seems he's carving out his own alt.medicine niche - neither the natural nor scientific therapists want to have anything to do with him.

Why he has a sudden desire to appear on national teevee and preach about the evils of vaccination is anyone's guess. One can only assume he's heard the antivax gravy train whistling and he wants to climb on board. Holtorf hasn't really earned his stripes as a fully fledged kook yet, but the folks at Reddit are already calling him on it.

[snap] CDC Chief Admits that Vaccines Trigger Autism

Dear oh dear oh dear oh dear. Dr. Sanjay Gupta. The same Dr. Gupta that only earlier this year was singing the praises of Gardisil. And caught taking kickbacks from Merck to do so... You really have to wonder who's greasing his palm now. Next!

[snap] Vaccinated By FORCE, NOW AUTISTIC

By now, this is becoming Groundhog Day. There is no variation to the tune being cranked out. The only thing about this that elicited even the slightest interest is the “info” blurb from it's YouTube page -

For more info on this medical topic and many others, visit my blog:

Red Pill Reich
http://redpillreich.blogspot.com/

I am a nurse who is exposing the Illuminati's use of modern medicine to drug, poison and control millions in their pursuit of a New World Order.

Intermission

You get left kind of speechless and numb when you look into this stuff for too long. I am at a loss to try and understand how people can so relentlessly, almost monomaniacally, push this kind of thinking that -

* Flies in the face of all perceptual reality. Even if these biological side effects are valid and are in some way related, they are not reproducible or predictable and pale into statistical insignifice when compared to the actual disease being prevented, or even known and reproducible allergies such as with peanuts.

* Places a higher level of importance on these unreproducible anomalies than they do on the well-being of the community as a whole.

* Has absolutely no interest in analysing the information – simply taking it uncritically as gospel in the same way creationists take the Book of Genesis. Is there no active intellect there at all ? Is there no curiosity ? Is there no pride in wanting to know they are not being taken for credulous fools by people who's motivations range from outright delusion to defrauding the weak for profit with callous disregard for consequence.

It borders on delusional psychosis - the complete inability to see beyond a pre-defined reality space. But the tour is not over. It gets even stranger.


The Travelogue (Part 2)

[snap] Yes, but what about Thimerosal ?!? It has MERCURY in it !!!

I had this website shoved in my face in a chat somewhere, to punctuate an antivax diatribe as some kind of definitive and conclusive proof -

http://www.thimerosal-news.com/

There are some websites you lay your eyes on and just wrinkle your nose straight away, because it just looks so wrong. In some way you can't define it just oozes wrongness. This is one of those sites.

First off, it's thiomersal in the literature. Second, out of sheer habit when first seeing dubious sites, I check the metatags (view => source in most browsers, look for lines containing "meta-"). The sour smell became a reek, with an audible groan -

meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="thimerosal,vaccine injury,autism mercury,autism,thimerosal lawyer,thimerosal attorney,vaccine injury attorney,vaccine injury lawyer,mmr vaccine autism,mercury autism,vaccine litigation,vaccine personal injury,thimerosal litigation,mmr vaccine side effects"

Clicking around the pages, all of them came to a dead end with -

Click here to to find out more about your legal rights regarding mercury dangers.

Leading to -

Thimerosal Lawyer

Unfortunately, at this time we are not taking inquiries regarding thimerosal. Thank you for visiting Thimerosal News.

OK. Let's do a domain Whois -

Registrant Contact:
World Web Properties, Inc.
Bryan Dornan ()

Hello Bryan. "I provide result-driven marketing to increase sales and improve efficiency."

So, this is a parked domain, parked since 2000, to broker ambulance chasing lawyers in anticipation of a vaccine litigation storm that may or may not come. But, deep down, I bet he does care about your precious children.

[snap] “Don't you EVER accuse me of NOT being THOROUGH!”

Exchange in a chatroom, after asking a person to take an interest in being able to support their statements because it would help. Specifically about thimerosal-news.com. This defensive growling is par for the course.

a) I never said the person wasn't thorough
b) If they surprised me and were thorough, I'd never have a reason to say it either

Thorough is – checking to see references don't contradict each other (or actually are documents that exist); looking at who runs the web pages; looking at the page metatags for “illuminati” or “new world order” or other “they're out to get us” buzzwords. Thorough is firing up google and JUST HAVING A LOOK. Thorough is not throwing links indiscriminately and demanding they be believed without question.

[snap] "And then there's the rest. Have you ever READ the list of additives in vaccines ?!?!"

No, I am not making this up. This list of additives was rattled off to me in quick succession in a chatroom - potassium chloride, ammonium hydroxide, potassium phosphate and Triton 100. In order, these causes of terror are -

* a sodium-free substitute for table salt; intravenous saline
* household cleaning ammonia; non-metallic pH modifier
* a common fertiliser; food grade pH buffering agent; Biochemic cell salts aka Tissue Salts or Cell Salts (in alt.medicine)
* a common surfactant in biochemistry, specifically useful for dispersing proteins

This is a prime example of the irrational Pavlovian anti-science terror knee-jerk response. Give it a chemical name and the result is mindless fear. Accurate product labelling information is a great and necessary thing – but when there are masses out there that respond in this way, because it's the only way they know, you begin to wonder if it is such a great idea after all. But, to cut this a little bit of slack, it should be remembered Dr. Tenpenny (first item) included chicken eggs as a deadly component of these toxic cocktails.

[snap] "But what about Dr. Paul King ?"

Yes, what about him ? This was supposed to be an "Ahah! Gotcha!" moment. Searching for "paul king" is only marginally easier than searching for "john smith". The glee of presenting Dr. King as a credible witness was driven I guess by his own introduction -

Lest any take this reviewer's remarks as those of someone who is anti-vaccine, this reviewer again reiterates that, given the scientific information available, he currently supports national vaccination programs for those vaccines that have truly been proven to be both generally safe and medically cost-effective, provided the individual parent's constitutional right to "due process of law" is neither abridged nor ignored.

This is accompanied by a small pic confirming his objectivity and non-partisanship -

But there's this nagging "Dr." issue again - yes he is one: Ph.D in analytical chemistry, Masters' in Inorganic Chemistry. About as relevent to immunology and neurology as reading auras. But that's not what's interesting about the supplied link. The actual site itself is.

If thimerosal-news.com caused me to wrinkle my nose, thenhf.com caused my nasal hairs to crumble to dust and sprinkle dandruff down my beard. First, there is no "about" or general information section. Second, the metatags -

meta name="keywords" content="quackwatch, quackbusters, Be Wary of Quackwatch... Wholistic medicines, Holistic medicines... Fascism, biowar, population control, orthomolecular medicine... Tenpenny, shirleys wellness café, Friends of Freedom

Well might TheNHF.com say "Be Wary of Quackwatch". I think they must hold the record for largest file there. There is too much to list, but here are some highlights -

The National Health Federation (NHF) is an alliance of promoters and followers who engage in lobbying campaigns and many other activities. It is antagonistic toward established medical practices and uses the words "alternative," and "freedom" to suit its own purposes.

NHF wants anyone who merely claims to have an effective treatment or product to be allowed to market it without scientific proof that it works... contains ads for questionable treatments and products that are being marketed illegally. Nutritional fads, myths, and gimmicks are mentioned favorably by NHF publications and convention speakers...
Worthless cancer treatments, particularly laetrile, have been promoted in the same ways. Articles in NHF publications have looked with disfavor on such proven public health measures as pasteurization of milk, immunization, water fluoridation, and food irradiation... "Natural" and "organic" products have been promoted with suggestions that our food supply is "poisoned." Chiropractic, naturopathy, and homeopathy are regarded favorably. Books that promote questionable health concepts are given favorable reviews. Antiquackery legislation is condemned. Underlying all these messages is the idea that anyone who opposes NHF's ideas is part of a "conspiracy" of government, organized medicine, and big business against the little consumer... To bolster the influence of its lobbyists, it generates letter-writing campaigns that urge legislators and government officials to support NHF positions. These campaigns typically include charges of persecution, discrimination, and conspiracy. NHF also has filed lawsuits against government agencies and helped to defend people prosecuted for selling questionable "health" products or services.

Fred J. Hart, who founded NHF in 1955, was president of the Electronic Medical Foundation, a company that marketed quack devices. In 1954, Hart and his foundation were ordered by a U.S. District Court to stop distributing thirteen devices with false claims that they could diagnose and treat hundreds of diseases and conditions. In 1962, Hart was fined by the court for violating this order. He died in 1976.

a protégé of Lee, replaced Fred Hart as NHF's board chairman in 1975 and held that position until 1989. In 1971, after agents of the California Bureau of Food and Drug observed Donsbach tell customers at his health food store that vitamins, minerals, and/or herbal tea were effective against several serious diseases, he pled guilty to one count of practicing medicine without a license and agreed to cease "nutritional consultation." In the ensuing years, Donsbach has marketed supplement products, issued publications, operated nonaccredited correspondence schools, marketed a bogus "nutrient deficiency" test, and administered dubious treatments at Mexican cancer clinics.

Royal S. Lee, D.D.S., a nonpracticing dentist who died in 1967, helped Hart found NHF and served on its board of governors. Lee owned and operated the Vitamin Products Company, which sold food supplements, and the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, which distributed literature on nutrition and health. One of the vitamin company's products was Catalyn, a patent medicine composed of milk sugar, wheat starch, wheat bran, and other plant material. During the early 1930s, a shipment of Catalyn was seized by the FDA and destroyed by court order because it had been marketed with false claims of effectiveness against serious diseases. In 1945, the FDA ordered Lee and his company to discontinue illegal claims for Catalyn and other products. In 1956, the Post Office Department charged Lee's foundation with fraudulent promotion of a book called Diet Prevents Polio. The foundation agreed to discontinue the challenged claims. In 1962, Lee and the Vitamin Products Company were convicted of misbranding 115 special dietary products by making false claims for the treatment of more than five hundred diseases and conditions. Lee received a one-year suspended prison term and was fined $7,000. In 1963, a prominent FDA official said Lee was "probably the largest publisher of unreliable and false nutritional information in the world."

Makes your head spin doesn't it ? This is not hidden information. It is there for anyone that is WILLING TO LOOK. The circus doesn't stop there. Dr. King also publishes his articles at theoneclickgroup.co.uk, less well known, less hysterical, yet the same leopard, just different spots. This how theoneclickgroup.co.uk chose to attack one critic -

“By all accounts a gay man and therefore unlikely ever to have to face the multiple vaccine risk agonised over by parents from around the world in relation to their children...”

Throwing this irrelevant statement into the debate only shows rhetorical integrity is not very high on the priority list. Not having the right to criticise because you're gay ranks right up there with statements like people with Apserger's should not have the right to internet access.

It should be remembered Dr. King's articles are not stolen by these sites - they were offered voluntarily. 'Nuff said.

[snap] "Well, go look him up on vaers.gov then ! That's a government site !"

I tried to. You can click the link above too. What was that about being thorough ? Not only not supplying an actual document link, but not even getting the website address right. After searching (because I have to do all the work), the actual site is that of The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System -

http://vaers.hhs.gov/

There is an "L. King" that has been published there, but no Dr. Paul. In fact there is a total of only one article since of 2007 on the whole site that is even remotely relevant is -

Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders.
CONCLUSION: No association between measles vaccination and ASD was shown.

Not the desired result. The matter was quietly dropped.


Aftertaste

Rarely does the world of quackery, pseudoscience and black-hearted fraud exceed my jaded expectations, but after this ordeal I am simply stunned and flabbergasted. It is so disturbing on so many levels. These are the things that really struck me -

Cult methodology - considering a large number of antivaxxers are also highly critical of xtianity and religious cults in general, it is appalling how easily and unwittigly they apply cult techniques designed to break the wills of target victims for their own ends. The main tool is noise, distraction and information overload to overwhelm your opposition. Reasonable responses to their arguments dissipate against brute force. Each question you pose to the believers is ignored, and countered by 3 questions thrown back in your face. Discourse is not possible. Of Schopenhauer's 38 Ways to Win an Argument dirty tricks manual, there aren't very many that don't get routinely used. Documents apply the same in written form - so densely packed and terse, concepts not adequately explained (the impression pushed is if you don't get it you must be stupid), and positively overflowing with honourifics and post-nominals of all the "experts" referenced for the extra "wow" factor. You are not allowed to catch your breath, nor expose your dumbness by questioning. Chatrooms call in dummy reserve chatters to add to the babble when things start going the wrong way. The parallels to arguing with scientologists or creationists are stunning.

Laziness and deliberate blindness - I mentioned it earlier, but this is appalling. Not only is no effort made to find objective information or verify any of presented "facts", but anything that deviates outside of the peddled dogma is simply not even seen. It's invisible. Nothing you can do will change that. I keep the PLoS paper in the memetics of vaccine hysteria on hand at all times -

A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine–Autism Wars

I have given this link to the same people 5, 10, 20 times. Each time they claim I have never given it to them, and each time they state that they will, out of respect, read it. They never do, and the next time its as though nothing ever happened.

The "Sarah Palin" effect - The "folksiness" and "I'm just an ordinary person [usually a mom] that needs to know what's safe for my family" routine. The Barbara Loe Fisher's and Jenny McCarthy's. People that don't even have the most basic of science education, have no concept of logic and even less on how to go about researching a subject let alone critically compring data sources. Consider -

Humanist Mark: Oh yes, these vaccines are soo safe. Yah right. If they are so safe why is there so much controversy surrounding them?

(Doesn't it sound just like Ray Comfort?: Oh yes, these evolutionists are soo right. Yah right. If they are so right why is there so much controversy surrounding them?)

There is no controversy. The concerned nobodies can't deal with that reality, so they keep trying to resurrect some.

Humanist Mark: Take a minute to humble yourself and recognize that you do not have all the answers.

No one from the rational side of the fence has ever claimed "to have all the answers". This is what differentiates them from loons. Crap, crap and more crap, tactics straight out of Schopenhauer's dirty tricks manual. Though I doubt even one antivaxxer would know who he was.

Please, just give us something that is *not* snake oil - of the myriad of "experts" paraded, not one is even remotely associated with the disciplines of immunology, neurology or neurochemistry. Not one. Surely there has to be *someone* out there who is a specialist and supports your views ? Please ? For our sake as much as your own. Someone who is not a space cadet or merely exploiting the situation for purely financial self-interest. Anyone will do. Furthermore, having been a practicing scientist for many years, I resent the endless implications of "conspiracy" by the scientific publishing world, and I am sure the legion of other scientists here would agree. If you're theories are rejected for publication, it IS NOT because of pressure from the corporates or government. That is insulting beyond words. They are rejected because they fail to meet minimum standards. Stop bombing us with these lunatics and find something with substance. You do nothing other than ridicule your cause with what you have now.

Feeding other hysteria - does anyone pause to think that if you plant the seed of doubt about vaccines, you may also be opening the door to the entire universe of charlatanism for people ? That someone out there, reading your crap, may decide to also go to some entirely unregulated cancer treatment spa in Mexico rather than consult legitimate cancer specialists ? What soap do you use to wash your hands ?

All roads lead to conspiracy - every search you do on any of the people listed all lead straight into the heart of tin-foil hat central - 9/11 inside jobs, extermination programs, internment camps, Obama birthers, Jewish bankers, the Illuminati and never far away even holocaust denial and alien corpses in government bunkers. The degrees of separation are thin to the point of non-existance.

Conflict of interest - The most prolific poster of antivax hysteria I have seen is also a homeopath and never mentions that fact in any of the posts. Fancy that. Conflict of interest is seized upon and crucified whenever it becomes public for our journalists, politicians and professionals in general. What is the difference ? Conventional medicine is direct competition. If you insist on posting propaganda, you should have the decency to fully disclose your motives.

It's here - AtheistNexus is your oasis from the insanity of the outside world, right ? It's a place you come to to chill out and relax with other like minded clear thinkers - free from the charlatans and the spooks and the frauds and the hellfire preachers... Right ?



Appendix 1 - The Logical Extreme

As is widely agreed, religious extremism would not have quite the same traction in the world were it not for religious moderates. So too for antivaxxers. I entirely forgot about this maniac. Lest anyone think antivaxxers lack ambition. From way back in June, Ms. Jane Burgermeister -

[snap] Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder.

No, this hasn't faded and gone away -

http://theflucase.com/

There is evidence that shows that there presently exists an international corporate criminal syndicate that, in violation of the RICO Act (18 USC sec 1961-1969), is intent upon embarking upon a cascading event of genocide within the United States, in the UK, and in other countries around the world, most likely in Autumn 2009/Winter2010, using as their weapon an enforced program of toxic vaccines after a deliberate release of a virus to spark a pandemic could immensely profit vaccine companies.

The toxic vaccinations, classified as bioweapons by the US and EU governments’ own regulations.

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations (UN) declared, without adequate scientific evidence, resulting in much criticism from experts, a worldwide ‘Level 6 Pandemic, ’ so triggering laws that allow control over troops, law enforcement and health services to be transferred to the WHO and UN.

According to the International Health Regulations of 2005, which has been incorporated into legislation also in The International Partnership on Avian Influenza of 2005 of the USA and other country's national pandemic plans, the WHO and the UN become the controlling agencies of the US in the event of a declared Level 6 Pandemic, and are entitled to control of this country under martial law, with obvious implications for all of the above under the pretext of fighting a pandemic emergency.

Refusing a WHO-mandated vaccination has been criminalized; police can therefore use deadly force against “criminal suspects” refusing these vaccines. [and oh so much more can be read here]

There's even a page devoted to bioterrorism charge sheets.

I really have nothing to say. I'll let Ms. Burgermeister speak for herself.

Anti-vaxxers ate my brain – a tourist's diary by felch grogan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0....
Based on a work at www.atheistnexus.org.