Only some conspiracy theories are welcome at the Huffington Post. 9/11 Truthers are out, autism-vaccine-linkers in. Scary, since the Jenny McCarthys of the world are bringing a lot of disease and death to the children they claim to care about.
Is this article for real? (via Jezebel). Treating fat people like people should do just fine.
Law, Lies and the Abortion Debate: the Times on the various anti-choice infringements upon women’s health and rights.
Bart Stupak, he of the anti-abortion activism in health care reform, has a pro-choice Democratic primary challenger. Let’s hope the party gets behind her.
And that Stupak guy? He’s not actually against subsidizing abortion. He’s against subsidizing abortion for poor women.
Apparently old ladies don’t like sex! Echidne breaks it down.
Ms. Magazine has a new blog. Check it.
Hiram Monserrate, who was booted from the New York State Senate after slicing his girlfriend’s face with a glass bottle, is running to replace himself. His platform? Family values. His opponent will apparently “destroy our way of life” by supporting gay rights. Unlike Monserrate, who will keep our way of life perfectly in-tact by living — unmarried! — with a woman he physically abuses.
Finally: If LOST were Baywatch.
“Scary, since the Jenny McCarthys of the world are bringing a lot of disease and death to the children they claim to care about.”
Regardless of whether vaccines cause autism or not, there is no denying that vaccines can and do cause very serious adverse effects. These adverse effects include death in many cases. There are many people who love their children and children in general who do believe that vaccinating is as much a game of russian roulette as not vaccinating (even when you take the autism scare out of the equation). The decision to vaccinate and the debate surrounding vaccinations is a deeply emotional and sensitive one, much like the abortion debates tend to be deeply emotional and sensitive. It isn’t anywhere near as cut and dry as this comment makes it out to be.
Gosh, I would hope that old ladies like sex, since I’m going to be old myself eventually. If that article is true, I guess I’ll have to just go after the younger women with Daddy complexes.
As for conspiracy theories, all conspiracy theories are offensive. But some conspiracy theories can get you sued.
Wow, that article on whether fat people deserve contempt is… yeah. I mean, I approve of the drive not to be a douche (to the extent that it’s better than the alternative), but the wholesale acceptance of the validity of the current mainstream obesity discourse leads to some pretty horrifying commentary. I mean:
Just no. A perfect example of how the intent to help will fail without also challenging and changing the fundamentally hurtful ideas, because that’s one of the most dismaying and hurtful things I’ve ever read on the subject, and damn have I read and heard a lot of fatphobic crap over the years. Treating people as victims of their own bodies who really need pity instead of contempt is… yeah, no. Not that big of a change.
Also, shades of the “last acceptable prejudice” trope. Bleh, the whole thing makes my skin crawl.
No. There is not a hidden epidemic of people dropping dead from vaccinations. It just doesn’t happen. That’s conspiracy theory territory.
They may believe such, but that doesn’t make it true. And to the extent that there is a grain of truth (in that, yes, you can probably skip vaccinating and your kid won’t get the mumps), it’s because most of the rest of the parents in society aren’t as incredibly reckless and irresponsible toward public health hazards as those who don’t vaccinate. The anti-vaxxers get to benefit from herd immunity, despite their choice to deliberately put their own children and the rest of the community at risk.
Faith–
No, sorry. It IS clear cut. It’s true that vaccines sometimes cause side effects. It’s also true that those side effects are FAR outweighed by the benefits of of innoculating against infectious disease. Further, it is true that it is not just one’s own child that one puts at risk when one doesn’t vaccinate. There are kids out there who actually have legitimate reasons not to be vaccinated (e.g an allergy), and the fact that everyone else’s kid is vaccinated protects them. It’s called herd immunity.
People may believe that vaccinations are “just as much a game of russian roulette as not vaccinating”. It doesn’t make it true. The science is clear on this– the benefits of vaccinating dramatically outweigh the risks.
Jill, I’m going to have to ask you to marry me for that LOST link alone. Just so you know.
Church groups are endorsing Hiram Monserrate because his homophobia apparently shows what a Godly d00d he is. I guess beating up and cutting the face of your live-in girlfriend is also Godly. Glad we have that sorted.
Long time reader… first time commenter.
I’m in Monserrate’s district and haven’t seen any of his “family values” flyers yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve written emails to him on several issues and never received a reply. One of those issues was, of course, the gay marriage bill the NYS senate recently considered.
I’d really love if he would just GO AWAY. But from what I’ve been reading, apparently he is NOT universally reviled in this district. Ugh.
I get pretty tired of listening to the so-called vaccine debate get reduced to its lowest common denominator (ie, you are an irresponsible child killer). I do not, for the record, think that vaccines cause autism, whether from thermisol or anything else. And I don’t really care about Jenny McCarthy, let alone being “fan” of her. But have any of you actually heard her position on vaccines? She is NOT ANTI-VACCINE (in spite of the fact that she does indeed believe that the MMR caused her son’s autism). Nowhere does she suggest that people should not vaccinate; in fact she’s said publicly and clearly on numerous occasions that she believes vaccinations serve a vital public health function. Rather, she speaks to a much more complicated issue that no one talks about publicly – that is, why can’t we follow an *alternate* vaccination schedule that spreads the vaccines out over time. Yes, that’s right, she had the gall to question the CDC’s vaccination schedule for children – which, nobody should be surprised, is the most aggressive in the industrialized world (and the most aggressively enforced – does that mean that American children have a lower mortality/disease rate than Canadian, British, or Japanese children who not only have a slightly modified schedule with fewer vaccines on it AND a more permissive system wherein it is EASIER for parents to eschew vaccination should they wish it? Nope.). (JMcC also advocates efforts to reformulate vaccines so they have fewer potentially dangerous ingredients, like the preservative aluminum, which *can* exceed toxicity levels for infants when following the CDC schedule.) The majority of people categorized as “anti-vaccine” are not in fact anti-vaccine, but people who want to follow alternative and sometimes selected schedules for a variety of nuanced and well-researched reasons. Trying to silence these opinions by dismissing them as crazy or evil only prevents having a public conversation, and causes people with anxieties about vaccinations to become even more alienated and entrenched in opposition.
anon, Jenny McCarthy gets called up by the mainstream media constantly to comment on autism. I don’t think you need to worry about her being “silenced”.
Unfortunately, the “nuanced” position to which you refer isn’t the one she typically lays out on these TV appearances. Instead, we hear her attack the safety of vaccines claiming that her anecdotes and Googling outweigh all scientific studies. Moreover, that “nuanced” position is still dangerous: delaying vaccines means more time during which a child can be infected.
Finally, her website also repeatedly notes that parents cannot be forced to vaccinate at all, so I think portraying her as someone who only suggests an alternative schedule is more than a little disingenuous.
Not to mention the fact that McCarthy is silencing autistic adults through her claims that we don’t exist. She is not the person being silenced. She is in a privileged position and is using that position to promote ableist ideas which are potentially dangerous for everyone’s health.
The vaccine schedule the CDC developed is designed to help the most disadvantaged people gain access to vaccinations for their children with the fewest doctor visits and the least expense. They are not out to make your child suffer immune trauma or whatever y’all “the schedule is scary and bad!” folks are calling the normal functioning of the immune system right now.
You go ahead. Delay the vaccines. Encourage others to delay vaccinating their children. Understand that you will also be encouraging others to not vaccinate their children at all.
Understand that by doing so you risk the health and lives of children younger than the recommended age for a vaccine and everyone with a compromised immune system.
The CDC schedule doesn’t mean the US has a lower child mortality rate than other wealthy nations. The CDC schedule does mean that the US has a higher vaccination compliance rate than other wealthy nations. Children in the US don’t die from diseases they could be vaccinated against. They die from accidents, cancer, and violence. Not surprisingly, these deaths skew towards the low end of the income/wealth spectrum. It doesn’t matter if there’s a treatment for your kid’s cancer if you can’t afford it or if no one diagnoses it until it’s too late because poor people and non-white people just happen to be diagnosed at much more advanced stages of the disease than wealthier, whiter people.
We have a high child mortality rate because we don’t have universal health care and because the health care system we do have is racist.
Jenny McCarthy’s “I’m not anti-vaccine, but” caveats are every ounce as intended to mislead as “I’m not a racist/sexist/homophobe, but” statements, where the person is going to do something that proves they are *exactly that*, but doesn’t want to get the full brunt of negative ire that having such a repulsive worldview entails.
And, assuming she wasn’t actually anti-vaccine, but “merely questioning” the evidence-based vaccine schedule – she is not a doctor, or medically trained in any way. Her “questioning” medical science is as valid as if she was “questioning” aerospace engineering, and trying to redesign the space program. Sure, people can wonder about things, but they can’t be allowed to take up more space than experts who *actually know better*. If you question anything about modern medicine, see what other doctors and medical scientists have to say about it. If there is a real debate, real scientists have already thought about it.
McCarthy is simply a horribly self-deluded person using her privilege to push her wacky new-age beliefs (Indigo children? seriously? I thought that died with up-the-wall shag carpeting) and needs to stop getting air-time, immediately, before her ignorance kills more people.