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

Alicia Silverstone wrote a macrobiotics cookbook and it was kind of a bummer.

btw fuck anyone who doesn't vaccinate their kids
that's still my staynce

yeah me too. I felt bad cos I lashed out at someone I didn't even know that was a friend of a friend who was bragging about being Vax-Free on Facebook but it's like...it's so irresponsible that I don't feel bad doing it anymore.

i know a couple that divorced in part b/c of this stuff

yeah me too. I felt bad cos I lashed out at someone I didn't even know that was a friend of a friend who was bragging about being Vax-Free on Facebook but it's like...it's so irresponsible that I don't feel bad doing it anymore.
--getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal)

you absolutely should not feel bad about this. these people are making irresponsible and ignorant decisions that not only affect their own children but also all the people that they come into contact with. there's no reason in the world they should be permitted to endanger the lives of others without repercussions or, at the very least, criticism

stevia is such a ridiculous product, all marketed in 'natural' green and white and brown boxes

america: just beacuse it's got a white background and some earthtone text, don't think for a second that it isn't made in a damn lab

http://b.monetate.net/img/1/183/58845.png

follow up to previous post - these people deserve to be marginalized by society because they are active agents working against public health and the well-being of the most vulnerable. i'm not saying that they act maliciously or with any specific intent, but they're adults who've been educated (at least to some degree) and don't understand the difference between what is scientific fact and what is unsubstantiated opinion, and will not listen to reasonable arguments as to why their decisions are reckless.

I find that the anti-vax crew are largely bullies, too. They're kinda like Amway salesman in the way that they attempt to paint the pro-vax crowd as 'uneducated' on the topic, or largely fleeced by Big Pharma, and they largely appeal to the less confident folk who only need that one little seed of reasonable doubt for their child's safety to opt out of vaccines altogether. They often use condescending phrases like "When you read up on the topic and become educated, you'll see that..." or "It's not your fault you fell for the Big Pharma lie, they're a powerful industry". I haven't yet met an anti-vax person that has been legitimately interested in having a real debate. I'm sure they're out there, but it's all smoke and mirrors with these assholes. Sadly, I feel a lot of well-meaning people have been snookered in by them.

Hell, an old friend of mine last month, who isn't even anti-vax, responded to say that the current vaccination schedules are too aggressive and cited a book proposing alternative vaccine schedules. She is normally a reserved individual, but was surprisingly arrogant in this post, responding to critiques that hadn't even been made yet, pointing out the doctor that wrote it "didn't appeal to emotion like others, and just used cold hard facts". I don't remember the book, but I lol'ed a bit when I read reviews which basically illustrated the doctor is practically a pariah amongst his peers and the entire thing was largely rejected by the medical community.

sad thing is, I can easily see 23 year old me falling for this bullshit. Facts/arguments don't matter - once you are convinced that you are being 'lied to', any opposing thought or refuting arguments are clearly part of the 'big lie' and it becomes a big circle-jerk.

government and corporate dishonesty has played its own part in this kind of stupidity tbf

while true, I get tired of people treating everything as absolute. 'Government dishonesty' does not = 'nothing the government says can be trusted, ever'!

fortunately in this arena, there is no shortage of non-government/non-corporate literature that also corroborates the pro-vax stance.

whooping cough and measles making a big comeback here in western mass the land of the enlightened. *sigh*

it's a natural instinct to distrust people who've lied to us in the past. you're right probably that no argument will convince a hardened anti-vaccer but i feel like more could and should be done to combat this lunkheadedness. governments have a role to play in educating their citizens. corporations i have less faith in doing the right thing.

what also bothers me--hinted at above--is when self-styled "reasonable" people decided not to go Full No-Vax like Alicia Silverstone but instead pick a "middle ground" where they give their kid(s) some vaccinations, or they choose some vaccination schedule that's much slower than what the medical community recommends. it's like they've taken the whole "we tell both sides of the story" newsspeak to heart: they imagine that the most reasonable position must be somewhere in-between the Anti-Vax nutcases and the medical community.

it's like, "gee, the entire medical community tells me not to eat feces, but here's this website that tells me eating a pound of feces a day is actually quite pro-biotic. i guess i'll only eat a little bit of feces everyday."

xpost

i also think shitty science education has a lot to do w/ this stuff

So an anti-vax stance is basically no different than a creationist stance, no? It's anti-science to such an extent that it's pretty much impossible to argue with. "Prove it!" "Well, these facts do prove it." "Well, if you ignore those facts and focus exclusively on my selfish concerns, you can't prove a thing." Once you choose faith over facts, the game is up. The big dif. I guess is that creationists are not inherently dangerous, just ignorant and potentially disruptive. But believing that the earth is 5000 years old or whatever won't lead to the deaths of little kids. Though I suppose dismissing science to such a severe extent will or could lead to such pervasive ignorance that the next step is replacing our potable water with Gatorade.

I'm thankful that my circle of FB friends is small enough that I haven't run into anti-vax posts because I'd have hard time resisting the urge to be combative.

it's creationism for people who should know better. and that's what bugs me the most.

new hampshire. so much to answer for. but thanks for the fireworks and untaxed cigarettes!

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/unschooling-homeschooling-books-tests-rules/story?id=10796507

unschooling different than the vaccination thing. but i read that one day and it reminded me of it. a certain attitude found out here. not everywhere though.

The big dif. I guess is that creationists are not inherently dangerous, just ignorant and potentially disruptive.

i dunno, they lead the charge on the whole anti-science thing which empowers politicians to take "i don't believe in anthropogenic climate change" stances which leads to making improvements impossible

also they ensure that public school science programs in many places will be sorry shadows of real science and thus will perpetuate the scientific ignorance of future generations

Couple unschooled friends got whooping cough

wonder how many of these anti-vax folks own a large amount of As Seen on TV products and Anti-GMO bumper stickers

Creationists are super dangerous to the health of national education. But I bet the anti-vax crowd has proponents on the left and right. Lots of leftists rightly think healthcare in the states is too corporate and too corrupt and who would you rather give your money to, greedy insurance company or your friend's Sound Healing group?

there are definitely plenty of anti-vax folks on the left :/

as well as Neo-Loraxers

As well as anti-education sentiment. "Education is for consumers, man"

"We devised our own math. We don't need the government pushing '2+2=4' down our throat."

perhaps if we ended our pro-vax arguments with "-Bob Marley" they would be more well=received?

"You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time." -Bob Marley/Abe Lincoln.

I have found it helpful in reading up on conspiracy theorizing, as the cognitive patterns/mechanisms/subroutines/etc work exactly the same way independent of the particular milieu of said conspiracy, as we've mentioned over the past coupla years in this thread and others.

What we as modern humanity really need to grasp is that we don't come to our beliefs rationally; we tend to arrive at beliefs emotionally and then rationalize them after the fact. It helps explain why high intelligence stats alone cannot stop you from believing weird things(c.f. Linus Pauling in the latter half of his life).

Unsurprisingly, wisdom is a far greater defense, but that's really hard to come by.

You sure there's not some buzzfeed listicle I can share to impart deep, cautious wisdom to all?

re the current spread of mumps in central Ohio, esp. OSU: the politics of vaxx http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/04/no_immunizations_required_for.htm

What we as modern humanity really need to grasp is that we don't come to our beliefs rationally

Though you'd think a shot you can get that will potentially save you and others from dying would trump emotion.

i'm not gonna post the picture here, but this is what smallpox looks like:

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

a disease COMPLETELY wiped out by vaccinations.

i don't know what else to say really. i kinda think it's sad that it's even a choice to vaccinate your kids for diseases. and yet i do kinda hate the government...but, man, these people could start getting polio or something! you know?

it's a failure of law that children in most countries still aren't afforded legal protection from idiot parenting

Slippery slope etc.

It's one of the more depressing things about social psychology how the success of a program or initiative becomes the argument for its own demise -- whether it's glass-steagall, labor laws, the civil rights act, or now vaccinations.

Here we go, talking about The Backfire Effect.

Talks about anti-vax thinking, then later gets into why Dubya supporters would increasingly insist Iraqi WMDs had been found, even when told by all sources(trusted or not) that it was bollocks.

While younger adults became less likely to misremember a false claim as true after being told three times that it was false, older adults became more likely to misremember the claim as true. (Skurnik et al, 2005)

Hey Plasmon, you out there? What's your most recent take on all this?

Oh hey, sorry I missed this.

I think the backfire effect is probably not as cut-and-dried as it's been presented so far. It would mostly appear in cases where the new/contradictory information runs against a narrative/meaning/account that's deeply important to the person believing it, for whatever reason.

I wrote an overlong exegesis upthread about how anti-vax parents of autistic kids might find that "scientific" explanation ("scientific" in the sense that it's based on a materialist cause-and-effect explanation) much more satisfying than the actual medical understanding of autism, which is something close to "we have no idea why this happened, almost everything and nothing seems to play into it somehow but there's no clear cause, and there's nothing we can do to prevent it".

The broader cultural idea that vaccines are toxic or dangerous is an old one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversy#History -- that dates back to the very first vaccines. Skepticism of medications in general also has a long, broad tradition, which still shows up in my clinic several times a day ("I don't like to take medications" or "I'm not a pill person"). Those latter sentence shows how the question of what to ingest/incorporate into the body for medicinal purposes is very much a question of personal identity.

I could sketch a bigger picture here about our endless array of 21st century food preferences, intolerances, moral choices and "allergies". Of course the major differences there are that the vaccination question carries far more potential danger than gluten, dairy, or free trade coffee, and that most of the risk is borne by children who aren't capable of making their own choices.

With questions or controversies that get to what people see as central or important to their identity, contradictory information leads more easily to skepticism of the source than a reconsideration of the belief. If I "know" that gluten is somehow bad for me, because I cut gluten out of my diet and felt better in 17 specific ways, I'm not going to have much patience for anyone touting the recent study that showed that placebo gluten produced the same nocebo-style negative effects as real gluten -- in fact, I'm likely to react against the source as untrustworthy or victim-blaming or corporate-tainted or whatever, long before reintroducing bread into my diet.

Same deal with Fox News watchers rolling their eyes at anyone who says that Benghazi wasn't a big deal, or Iraq never had WMDs. Same deal in fact for people on the other side of the political spectrum rolling their eyes at climate change denialists or people who try to delegitimize the discussion about structural racism or sexism. In the latter case of course I agree with the eye-rollers, and believe that they're correct, but there's still a tribal-identity aspect to the debate that extends beyond the scientific or historical evidence (as it should, and must, lest everyone of us be responsible for independently assessing the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming or whatever -- we have to take some things on faith, and trust what seem to be trustworthy sources).

The structure of the media debate on these questions of identity is aimed at stoking people's reactions in either direction, rather than reaching a point of agreement. That makes sense for the media model -- getting people fired up about who they are and what they believe keeps them engaged in the debate, watching the shows, clicking on the websites, etc. I watch a lot of sports, and you see this very clearly in sports TV -- "Is Joe Flacco elite?" is a meaningless question that's just designed to get people arguing, and the average sports commentator on ESPN is basically a troll.

Nothing much about even the pro-scientific account of the anti-vaccine question, as it's filtered through the media, is actually designed to persuade the people involved, but to badger them with their heresy, while reassuring the people on the other side that they're on the right team. Persuasion would require a different sort of discussion, with an aim of understanding instead of blaming/mocking or other forms of aggression.

I struggle with that myself at work. I do my best to see my patients' side of their situation and to pitch my discussion of their problem in terms they understand. But sometimes the fatigue and irritation is too much, and around the time I'm being asked to fill out a long-term disability claim on an apparently healthy 47 year old who continues to insist that s/he has Lyme disease despite repeatedly negative testing (note: this is not a real patient but an example of the kind of thing I see), my tolerance sometimes wears down to the point that I get quite blunt about the difference between feeling ill and having an actual, verifiable disease. I've learned the hard way that there is a subset of patients that I can't reach despite my kindest, most patient approach, who will not be satisfied with reassurances from a specialist and normal test results, who want me to endorse their fantasy about "black mould" or whatever no matter how often I've tried to redirect them. For these people, as soon as I realize that I'm unlikely to make any progress in the discussion, I do my best to wrap things up as quickly and amicably as possible, agreeing to disagree essentially.

The good news is that there's a bigger subset of people who have less at stake in the discussion about their illness or disease, who are willing and in fact eager to be educated and reassured, who (I like to tell myself) actually benefit from spending some time talking it over with a sympathetic ear who's an expert in the field. I don't think there's a backfire effect there at all.

But then, that's an important part of who I am, so even if you proved to me that there was, I probably wouldn't believe you.

with an aim of understanding instead of blaming/mocking or other forms of aggression

As an example of the latter approach, consider the title of this thread.

There is also a factor that hearing one, detailed, relatable account has way more effect than hearing about 100 times the opposite in dry statistics. E.g. you read one review of, say, a University from someone, that chimes with you, and you're more likely to ignore 20 people giving it a 1-star rating.

As an example of the latter approach, consider the title of this thread.

― Plasmon, Friday, May 23, 2014 11:52 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well but see she told me personally

Plasmon, your faux-measured, faux-reasonable approach is futile and wrong. The kind of dialogic persuasion you are describing is a mythical beast. Public shaming and/or completely refusal to humor idiocy (e.g. with Benghazi) are the best approaches.

I did not realize that Hurting was literally a strawman

lol yes I am trolling a bit, but I have never had a single reasonable conversation/exchange/dialogue with an anti-vaccine person or a person who thinks there is "more we don't know" about Benghazi, or a 9/11 truther, etc. I am the kind of person whose curiosity drives me to read even far-fetched theories. I watched that stupid loose change film and actually considered its points as though they were serious. I researched vaccines when it came time to vaccinate our own daughter, and I even considered the "modified schedule" or whatever before being adequately convinced that there was nothing to it. The people who cling to the idea that vaccines are poisoning our kids or causing autism or whatever are clinging to tiny tiny fragments of information while faced with a deluge of contrary, more reputable information. There is little use in dialogue at that point.

I mean tbf, if someone was like "I have some concerns about vaccines, do you think they're safe?" then of course I would engage in dialogue with them.

In politics, you can win power and impose your will. That's the best approach for a lot of these questions. No point waiting until the sweet day bye and bye when Republicans endorse global warming or socialized health care, just win the elections, pass the bills, and pack the courts to uphold them.

Seriously.

But medicine isn't like that. Even as a medical specialist with a degree on the wall behind me, I can't force someone to take a medication she doesn't want to or agree that her illness isn't caused by whatever she deeply believes is the cause. I can try to persuade, but I can't coerce.

If you don't like that dynamic, you should stay far away from the caring professions. But then you're a lawyer IIRC, so playing the game to win is your job, and you're not really required to consider the opposing point of view except to try to defeat it.

There's a fair point to be made that the societal effects of a multitude of individual medical decisions can and should better be managed with political or societal means. For example, no you don't have to vaccinate your kids, but then we won't let them attend public school. There would be pros and cons to that approach, but it's a fair way to run a society, with many successes to date (say, seatbelt laws or drunk driving penalties, no longer a personal choice but the law), and it's probably easier and more effective than convincing a bunch of people to do something that they strongly oppose.

I'm not society's doctor though, I'm this individual patient's doctor. And so I have to play the game on her turf. Other people doing other things can try to solve the problem in other ways.

Faux-apologies for ongoing faux-reasonableness here. Not impressed with the trolling, you should try harder to understand the details of what we're discussing here.

The good news is that there's a bigger subset of people who have less at stake in the discussion about their illness or disease, who are willing and in fact eager to be educated and reassured, who (I like to tell myself) actually benefit from spending some time talking it over with a sympathetic ear who's an expert in the field. I don't think there's a backfire effect there at all.

more of these folks than you might think, hurting. for example (compiled from several different pts), the parents of a child with a severe mental illness who were reluctant to start metformin in addition to the anti-psychotic because they didn't want to "add another pill." (when that same reluctance is why their child was admitted in the first place---they wanted to see how their kid did w/o his psychiatric meds)

it'd be easy to get blame-y and smack yr forehead, but really a little education was all it took in the end. which is much of what good physicians ought to be doing: educating patients about the risks/benefits of treatment. the serious hold-outs will hold out, but there's a lot more ppl on the fence that are just waiting for someone to at least ~validate~ their concerns---once that's accomplished, it's much easier to allay them.