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

Ugggghhh found self at bar with someone I've known socially for years but never gotten to be friends with, and I was like, aha, finally! time to actually get to know this v talented person, and he turned out to be a committed (lol) Libertarian. So...yeah.

One of the quotes I'm reminded of from that MoJo piece is that if you want to find the closest hotspot of science- and medical-denialism, head to the aisles of your local Whole Foods.

There's a slippery slope between "this food is healthy" and "this food has magical health powers" apparently.

* sips kombucha *

I actually complained to Whole Foods for selling homeopathic remedies - pretty unethical imo - and they sent me a stock response. Then I went to Rainbow Groceries in SF and realised how sane WF is (at least they don't sell homeopathic suppositories...)

*how sane in comparison, that is

i dunno if that slope is exactly slippery.

xps

seems like a well marked cliff to me honestly!

This also eventually leads into 'have your cake, eat it too' approaches. "It's all cacao and no added sugar in this chocolate bar so I can have four a day..."

There is a healthy/organic grocery in my neighborhood that I don't want to ever go back to because they have EAR CANDLES.

The lady at the cash register seemed pretty nice but I ended up having a short conversation with her because she mentioned her dating experiences (I have no memory of how this was a casual topic) and she seemed to be into the worst crazed scammers. Seemed kind of... ditzy? I just have this vision of the all-natural slightly dippy people being taken advantage of by assholes constantly.

Just remembered my complaint to WF about their selling homeopathic remedies was after reading their newsletter/coupons paper's advice about nutritional supplements "Choose those - such as ours - that are based on science with targeted ingredients in doses that studies have shown to be effective. Avoid those loaded with fillers, token amounts of beneficial substances or artifical colors, flavors and preservatives. Why pay for ingredients that aren't helping you?"

not quite related but one time late at night a dude I knew started talking about how major governments have retrieved underwater alien technology for their own uses and I was like wtf who the fuck are you all of a sudden

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, 21 April 2011 20:36 (55 minutes ago)

I wanna hear more about this!

of course i would

I know a few parents who have staggered their vaccines, but not much worse than that. Though one of them refused the chicken pox vaccine, stupid reasoning being, hey, we all used to get this. Except, maybe me, so thanks dicks, I had to go get a booster. Also, people do occasionally die of chicken pox, and those vaccines do wear off over time.

WF's war against HFCS had me convinced for a while, but now I've learned (or at least recognized) that many of the sweetener subs they enlist - like agave syrup - are just as bad if not worse for you (health-wise) than HFCS.

Chicken pox vaccine is pretty awesome, imo. I somehow made it to the age of 14 without getting the 'pox, and the vaccine had just come out in the US so I was lucky. My sister's doctor was kind of a jerk and was like "hey, she might just get it on her own, etc" and so she was nearly (or was) 12 and had to put up with a godawful preteen version of it. I still have no idea what the hell the doctor was thinking.

My grandparents have had breakouts of shingles, and I really shouldn't since that's the dormant virus becoming active. So, vaccines... GOOD

I made it to 24. Ended up with breathing difficulties that nearly sent me to the hospital and scars all over my forehead, arms, and chest. The next year the vaccine came out in the US.

HFCS is bad for you. so is agave because it basically is corn syrup. don't know of any other sweetener subs are bad for you though. this isn't really a 'non-science' thing though, I think medical and scientific opinion are all pretty much anti-HFCS.

it's funny how the anti-vaccine crowd kind of doesn't necessarily correlate with the climate change denial people when they are both anti-scientific in thought. although I guess anti-vaccine people correlate more with 'all manmade things are bad' so are more likely to align with proponents of climate change.

- All sugar bad in large quantities
- Some don't taste "as sweet" so they add more of it
- Just stop drinking soda all the fucking time so you can recalibrate your taste buds

Oh man have you guys heard the "store-bought bread has evil shit in it" people? A distant friend commented on facebook about some bread she threw out for the birds still looked the same a couple days later and she smelled a conspiracy

What irks me about this isn't even the child abuse aspect of it, it's the danger to other children and to ppl w/compromised immune systems.

i haven't heard that in particular about store bought bread but I will say that about 90% of it tastes like crap. It definitely doesn't taste as good as it did when I was a kid. I'm not sure why.

there are plenty of decent store bought breads; they're just more expensive than locally made breads.

this dumb bullshit about not vaccines is for latebloomer, I don't know why I'm posting it, I typed it I guess

It was me that underwater alien technology dude and one other friend sitting in that other friend's apartment late at night after going out to a show, and we were talking about how hilarious my friend's apartment was because his landlord (a USC professor) put a freaking little curved bathroom sink into his kitchen. I mean I still smile when I think about it because he can't even fit any dishes in it, and those that do fit fall on their sides and take up the whole sink, and its covered with 70s bathroom tile for some reason, like when I first walked into his apartment I was like "Holy shit is...is that a bathroom sink?" and he was all (in a soft voice because he's a soft spoken guy) "I...I guess so, I guess that's why it's so small. I never realized that" and I just started cracking up for a few days.

We were all sitting there, talking about that again, because that's usually the first thing we talk about when we're there, and suddenly alien technology dude was like "Have you guys heard about the alien technology people are all talking about these days." At this point I was extremely stoned and alien technology dude was not, so for a while, while he was talking, what he was saying was so out there, that I didn't even want to believe it was really happening, that a friend of mine could wholeheartedly believe this in all earnestness and that I didn't have any inkling about it.

So I silently listened wide-eyed to his theory that because there is life on Earth, there must be, there has got to be, advanced life in other galaxies, and, if you look at the course of human history, there have been so many major technological advances in a relatively short period of time that it is impossible for humans to have developed such technology on their own. Then he kept talking about the surface area of the ocean on earth and how if an alien aircraft fell somewhere where the masses would not know it would be the ocean. When I asked him if he was really serious about it, after I had turned this O.Rang album playing in the background off, because it wasn't helping anything at all, he said, "DO YOU HAVE AN IPOD?" and I was like "an old one yeah" and he was like "listen, do you really think man can make ipod, do you think everything humans have achieved is due to only mankind's work" I don't know how I changed the subject after that, but I think I was able to. I'd never seen this side of him, usually we used to just talk about how dumb lost was after every episode.

sorry for that post

don't apologize!

Not at all!

lol thanks for typing that out!

"...do you think everything humans have achieved is due to only mankind's work"

"Uh, dude just because you're dumb doesn't mean everyone else is."

What irks me about this isn't even the child abuse aspect of it, it's the danger to other children and to ppl w/compromised immune systems.

Yup. F these ppl imo

I didn't mean to imply that the child abuse aspect doesn't bug me, btw.

the part about aliens crashing into the ocean seems logical tho

anyway I'm in a lecture about ~autism~ right now and dude is basically saying that there's at least twenty odd genes involved in autistic disorders, and that several other developmental disorders are related. all this magic bullet stuff is the sad theater of ppl reaching for answers for something they don't understand

all this magic bullet stuff is the sad theater of ppl reaching for answers for something they don't understand

I think that's one of the reasons this stuff is still ongoing; it's a little bit harder to respond vehemently, even with some indignation, to someone who has an autistic child.

yeah that's true, also sometimes its hard just to know where to put the effort in life

Fucking iPods, how do they work?

*sorry*

If you found an ipod lying on a beach would you assume it assembled by random, or would you judgementally look through the playlists?

ancient alien civilization: what's on yr ipod

If you found an ipod lying on a beach would you assume it assembled by random, or would you judgementally look through the playlists?

― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Thursday, April 21, 2011 11:43 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

A+

Would people here (or in general) be opposed to, or made uncomfortable by, mandatory vaccinations?

I'd say I wouldn't be uncomfortable simply because I always thought they WERE mandatory when I was growing up, in the sense of "Well of course everyone gets their shots, surely."

Right. You enroll in public school, you get your shots. Unless you're Amish.

Right, just wondering why it's not mandatory as it is. There surely must be people who object, but it just seems like a straightforward case of public safety trumping individual delusions.

ilx book club imo:
http://i.imgur.com/e2pyv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TndBh.jpg

Not "mandatory" as in "the state will perform this procedure on you, period" - that's a bridge too far. But I'm 100% into "no child may attend public school who isn't vaccinated," and I'm 100% for all private schools setting the same rule for themselves, and even into weaselly state maneuvers like refusing to license any private school that doesn't require vaccination. Which don't get me wrong is high weaseldom - it'd be the state mandating a medical procedure for a person to be able to avail themselves of a private service - but the risk to other children (and to teachers) is high enough that a workaround like that seems like fair play.

I have that voodoo histories book but haven't read it yet

sorry for getting way off topic here but,

while this is kind of a dumb documentary:
http://i.imgur.com/baNoL.jpg

the segment in this clip (from 2:22 - 8:12) is kind of a chilling anecdote about how much weight our culture gives emotions over science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww7WqrB2M2o

"My son is dead. All of the intellectual arguments about whether or not steroids are dangerous or not... don't matter to me."

http://www.bma.org.uk/images/childhoodimm_tcm41-20002.pdf Some interesting stuff in here from the BMA addressing compulsion.

Table 3: Those who agreed with compulsory immunisation for some vaccinations
Group Per cent
GPs 51
Health visitors 58
Paediatricians 29
Clinical medical officers 30
Parents 53

Also: MMR
• compulsory: Barbados, the Czech Republic69
• semi-compulsory (if you want to go to school): Canada, USA, Belgium
• measles compulsory: Singapore, France (if the child goes to nursery)
• rubella compulsory for girls: India, Kuwait70
Other
• USA: Laws which require school children to be immunised against tetanus exist in 47 out of
50 states. All 50 states require children entering day care to be immunised against tetanus.71,72
In all states, children must have proof of immunisation or immunity to certain infectious
diseases, including whooping cough, before they start school. However, parents can opt out of
immunisation on ideological or religious grounds.17
• Italy: Compulsory vaccinations for children are required against the following diseases: polio,
diphtheria/tetanus, and hepatitis B virus (HBV).73 Children must have proof of immunisation
before they can go to school. However, compulsory vaccination has not been enforced for
many years.74

listen, do you really think man can make ipod

omg

http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/Picture%203-114.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/384194403_c3df4db38c.jpg