Hey, antivaxxers! I just wanted to send you guys a quick note of thanks for all the work you do.
For example, that whole thing about getting mumps to resurge due to lower vaccinations rates in the UK? That’s very cool. We all missed mumps so much.
Also, the way you guys dupe parents is simply brilliant!
You’ve been pretty effective getting the word out, especially the way you market yourselves as just trying to be questioning, just trying to get all the facts out. It works! You’ve been able to trick inquisitive, rational people into thinking maybe you’re onto something, when of course we all know you’re using outdated ideas, twisted facts, and sometimes out-and-out lies (which, of course, appeals to people prone to conspiracy thinking anyway). I mean, taking something that almost certainly has nothing to do with vaccinations but making that a meme spreading across the media? Great stuff! And the way you viciously attack people who disagree with you? Fantastic!
But you should really sit back and take a look at Suzanne Somers. Now there’s someone who takes incoherent nonsense about cancer and is able to market and spin it into quite an industry for herself. And who can blame her? She gets on Oprah, CNN, radio shows… and the only cost is a maybe a few thousand people dying of cancer because they tried her provably wrong "cures" instead of seeking real medical help. But hey! We all have to die someday! I mean, let’s have some perspective here. After all, what has science ever done for us?
Hat tip to Gerick Lee and many others for these tips.
In the crazy topsy-turvy world of alternative medicine, the forces of reality win some and lose some.
WIN: An alleged quack who allegedly sold herbal cures for cancer has been slapped with a fraud lawsuit. The charges are that this ordained Pentecostal minister preyed on vulnerable terminal cancer patients using religious trappings. Nice.
LOSE: The Natural News altmed website — which promotes all sorts of nonsense, including connecting vaccines and autism — reports that a "health freedom attorney" (heh) has filed a suit against the FDA to halt the distribution of swine flu vaccine. However, their claims of this vaccine being rushed, untested, and so on, are all completely false.
Y’know, if people want to take tinctures and poultices and whatever that does nothing whatsoever instead of real medicine, that’s their right. But when they try to stop others from getting real medicine — medicine that can save many lives — because of their own gross misunderstanding of science, then that becomes a public threat. I hope the judge throws this case out of court, and then fines all those involved for frivolous lawsuits.
Not-so-incidentally, the Natural News website says this suit is being filed on behalf of Gary Null, and a perusal of his website shows him to be antivax as well as an AIDS denialist (someone who doesn’t think HIV causes AIDS)… and I am shocked, shocked, to find out he has his own line of alternative cures. These are the kinds of folks we’re dealing with, and why I get so very upset about all this.
So this really isn’t a "lose" yet, but it’s a lose in the sense that people with such a tenuous grasp of reality attack it with such fervor. They are putting everyone at risk: you, me, everyone. That’s why I am so vocal, and will continue to be.
