jenny mccarthy wants your kid to get measles: autism, vaccines, and stupid idiots

One the one hand, homeopathic vets make me worry for the pets' health. On the other hand, it is the only place I have seen a custom painting of a horse and its chakras.

http://www.patinkas.co.uk/Chakra_System_of_Animals/a_Horse_Chakras_Pic.jpg

Oh look, now you don't have to go.

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the gf told me about this one lady who had her cat on some crazy raw food diet with no vaccinations. it had worms and all sorts of other things going on - and she herself also got salmonella from sampling her cat's food.

lol/smh @ horse chakras

finally I have the information I need to take down my nemesis Das Pferd

I drive past a place on the way to work that I believe is a pet acupuncturist. Um, yeah.

See that's why i want a pet porcupine. Think of all the pet acupuncturist bills I'd be saving on.

Horse chakras!?

"alternate Heart site"

oh Christ, my old neighbour used to go to someone to do reiki on her cats. I'm still not quite sure what that involves but there are some 'interesting' websites about it if you google 'reiki for cats'. Anyway when the cat died this woman apparently was still able to do reiki on it once it was buried, and tell the owner that the cat was ok spiritually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model

loooooooool

Flashbacks to our cat whisperer discussion there.

Cat Whisperer, his green eyes implored, take me home.

lol

Review of Andrew Wakefield's new book, which will no doubt be given the licence-to-print-money description of "CONTROVERSIAL".

Henry got his 6 month shots today (a month and a half late) and the first thing I said when I saw him was 'aww you're all autistic now!'

holy shit @ the pullquote in the wakefield review -

"Maternal instinct... has been a steady hand upon the tiller of evolution; we would not be here without it."

great New Scientist piece: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.100-living-in-denial-why-sensible-people-reject-the-truth.html?full=true

echoes much of what Plasmon wrote upthread.

...Similarly, global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer must be taken on trust, usually on the word of scientists, doctors and other technical experts who many non-scientists see as arrogant and alien.

Many people see this as a threat to important aspects of their lives. In Texas last year, a member of a state committee who was trying to get creationism added to school science standards almost said as much when he proclaimed "somebody's got to stand up to experts".

It is this sense of loss of control that really matters. In such situations, many people prefer to reject expert evidence in favour of alternative explanations that promise to hand control back to them, even if those explanations are not supported by evidence (see "Giving life to a lie").

All denialisms appear to be attempts like this to regain a sense of agency over uncaring nature: blaming autism on vaccines rather than an unknown natural cause, insisting that humans were made by divine plan, rejecting the idea that actions we thought were okay, such as smoking and burning coal, have turned out to be dangerous...

some Not Really Getting It posts in the comments section.

Martin McKee, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who also studies denial, has identified six tactics that all denialist movements use.

1. Allege that there's a conspiracy. Claim that scientific consensus has arisen through collusion rather than the accumulation of evidence.
2. Use fake experts to support your story. "Denial always starts with a cadre of pseudo-experts with some credentials that create a facade of credibility," says Seth Kalichman of the University of Connecticut.
3. Cherry-pick the evidence: trumpet whatever appears to support your case and ignore or rubbish the rest. Carry on trotting out supportive evidence even after it has been discredited.
4. Create impossible standards for your opponents. Claim that the existing evidence is not good enough and demand more. If your opponent comes up with evidence you have demanded, move the goalposts.
5. Use logical fallacies. Hitler opposed smoking, so anti-smoking measures are Nazi. Deliberately misrepresent the scientific consensus and then knock down your straw man.
6. Manufacture doubt. Falsely portray scientists as so divided that basing policy on their advice would be premature. Insist "both sides" must be heard and cry censorship when "dissenting" arguments or experts are rejected.

think I have seen these tactics used outside of denialist movements tbh

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129198775&ps=cprs

my chiro, suggests that forceps harm the brain and push up against the skull, therefore, toxins get stuck,,, toxins from the vaccines, get stuck and cant get out and harm the brain,...???? sounds accurate to me... not to mention the ultrasounds constantly monitoring... 30 years ago they did not use ultrasound the same ...during pregnancy... comments please!!! just the facts

sounds accurate to me!

it's a, pretty compelling argument... she,..? makes

just the fax ma'am just the fax

Experiencing Teen Drama Overload? Blame Vaccines.

You had me up until 'my chiro.'

my chiro, suggests that forceps harm the brain and push up against the skull, therefore, toxins get stuck,,, toxins from the vaccines, get stuck and cant get out and harm the brain,...???? sounds accurate to me... not to mention the ultrasounds constantly monitoring... 30 years ago they did not use ultrasound the same ...during pregnancy... comments please!!! just the facts

That's strange. Twenty years ago I was told that they didn't use ultrasound the same way thirty years prior to that. One of us (or both of us) must be wrong. And the theory that most diseases are caused by stored toxins was disproven a long time ago. Alternative medicine is where bad science goes to die.

specifically?"

errr

should say:

One of my favorite questions to ask is: "Which toxins are you referring to specifically?"

why don't chiropractors just shut up and crack your back a few times? No one goes to their dentist and listens to a spiel about toxins.

That's because my dentist has seen my teeth, he knows toxins are the least of my problems.

Has anybody read the new book _ Denialism_?

Just wanted to say I got to give one kid the HPV vaccine today and another one an Adacel shot (the Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus booster) today, so I did my part to poison the youth of America today.

The hpv vaccine is kind of weird for me because I'm just old enough that women my age were right above the 25 yr old cutoff when it became more widespread, so for half the people I date it hardly enters their mind while the other half seem to have mostly gotten it. Probably a few vaccines like that historically, but it's interesting to me

I had the bad luck to have become an adult a year or two before the chicken pox vaccine became widespread. I caught the disease a month or two into my first job and spent a nervous week or two hoping that the breathing problems that I were having wouldn't get bad enough that I'd have to be rushed to the emergency room. I still have a lot of scars on my forehead, chest, and arms.

Yeah, that was the other that came to mind. My sister was not quite in middle school and was "too young" because her doc thought it'd be better to just get the illness if it was going to happen. I was 14 and had never had chicken pox so Ingot vaccinated. 15 years later, I'm still happy I was.

I got vaccinated, I mean. One-handed typing killing me, Unfortunately I never got vaccinated for wrist fractures

One of my favorite questions to ask is: "Which toxins are you referring to specifically?"

Overuse of the word "toxins" irritates me generally. "I need to clean out all the toxins that have built up from the bad food I've been eating." What have you been eating, rattlesnakes?

haha, I love when people are all about that stuff. they nearly always are referring to the stuff that comes out when they "cleanse." I always have to point out that's intestinal lining, and they are in fact just burning their digestive system

I've always thought that the reason why the toxin theory has stayed so popular with the half-informed public is that it has a lot of simularities with the Christian sense of sin.

I don't really believe in 'toxins' and get annoyed with anyone who talks about them (had a couple of arguments w my brother in law in this vein). Surely nothing is really a toxin by definition - it depends on dosage etc as well. Like, salt or water can kill you in big enough quantities, but you don't want to flush them out of your system.

Oh god the cleansers. Don't get me started. If people were as full of toxins as they claimed, they would be dead. The other reason people give for "cleansing" that makes me crazy is to "give their organs a rest." Do you know what will really rest them? Systemic organ failure.

Another thing I've been reading is about how the blood can be too acidic, so you should drink this pH water. Ummmm no. If your blood is too acidic, you are dead. Or at least way too ill to buy any damn bottled water.

I read about one cleanse that requires the participant to drink olive oil and I think lemon juice and people got all excited because they were pooping out little white balls that they claimed were coagulated toxins, but really the little balls were cause by the olive oil and lemon juice saponifying in people's guts. That's probably not exactly what happened but that was the gist of it. I think I read about it on a skeptical medicine site.

that and mucus lining. it is, i imagine, like that extruded molecular gastronomy faux caviar junk except instead of coming out of a turkey baster it sloughs out of your butt.

That is such an upsetting metaphor.

holy crap

thank you for ruining molecular gastronomy forever