February 3, 2020
The day before yesterday, an article came out in the U.K. Telegraph stating that the U.K. might soon make it a criminal offense to post “anti-vaccine propaganda” on social media. This was Crush’s response on her Facebook page. It was so good, we decided to post it here.
The thing about this is, for every time they call it pseudoscience or misinformation, we just happily continue sharing their information.
If you notice, not one of my posts have ever been flagged, not one removed, not one with their special little warning about “false information.” Why? I am clearly labeled an “antivaxxer.”
The problem is that when the information shared is directly from the CDC, NIH, FDA, WHO, peer-reviewed medical and science journals, manufacturer inserts, safety studies, federal lawsuits, FOIA requests, VAERS, medical records, etc., you can’t then say, “Don’t listen to those antivaxxers; they post misinformation.”
Well, I mean I suppose you can say that, but then you technically are saying, “Don’t believe any of our science because we are liars.”
You don’t get to have it both ways. If we are spreading misinformation, it is your misinformation. It’s not ours. We aren’t carrying out our own studies and posting them on Facebook; we are kinda busy caring for those kids you pretend don’t exist and kinda broke trying to support their needs now that we have had to give up our careers to provide daily care.
I’m not screaming, “Don’t vaccinate your kids”; that choice is yours. But I am fighting to keep medical choices (all of them) as yours to make because we all know what happens when a government gets to make your medical decisions and decide whom they deem worthy. And I am screaming that we have some very big problems with the products and schedule that need to be addressed. I am no more anti-vaccine than I am anti-water. In both cases I am sure we want the safest possible version for our children, and I believe that should be the only option.
When we have entities that are fighting to silence the public, we should always be questioning it. Ask why.
What would make tens of thousands of parents stand up to pharma, an industry that has made clear they will silence anyone who speaks against them? Should the Vioxx families have been silenced? Should we have sat quietly against tobacco lies? Should those fighting for the Flint kids have been called crazy and been jailed? Did we scream about those who spoke about their brakes not working, labeled them anti-car and legislate their Pinterest pages? Should we ban books that changed sanitation laws too?
People should speak out when there is a problem. Silence changes nothing. Silence is what created the so-called anti-vaccine movement. If public health agencies had addressed any of the problems that they are well aware of, we wouldn’t be having a discussion on how to silence social media.
I promise you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. You may not agree with me on this topic, but this banning of words will one day affect something you believe in and you will wonder why you sat quietly by or encouraged this idea.
Other countries are fighting for uncensored information, and yet we have that freedom and we are fighting to allow our governments to put a stop to it?
Think people.
~ Crush
For more by Crush, click here.
Pseudoscience includes chiropractic, naturopathy, homeopathy, Therapeutic Touch, Christian Science, Reiki, aura, some of traditional and “standard” medicine. All have their believers. Ask one who practices that discipline if they would choose their therapy over “standard” medicine for a very serious health problem. If so, they’re at least consistent, but may die younger than planned.
Good lord. You really don’t read science, do you? I’m not wasting anymore time on someone with such an utterly closed mind.
Science – what can be replicated by repeating the study, especially with a randomized control trial
Pseudoscience – soft, squishy results, “I think I feel better”, but it can’t be duplicated, or the “experimental protocols” are “secret”.
C’mon, Zoey, you used to be a smart woman, graduating from Williams in 3 years with complex science courses. Now, what, you have given up the superb background you had to become a writer for a blog that spouts pseudoscience. Very disappointing
😀
Thanks for today’s laugh. I was talking about scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals that you’re not reading. But thanks for once again revealing YOUR bias. 😉
For what it’s worth, I’m MUCH smarter than I was at 22. It’s a real shame that you can’t see that or that your opinion of me or my actions could not matter less.
Look in the mirror about closed minds. You used to be someone involved in science. Now??????
Now I have a much better understanding of science (and the many inherent biases in those who practice it) than I used to. That’s what reading hundreds and hundreds of studies, as well as commentary written by those who edit the most prestigious journals publishing those studies, does for you. Hint: It’s kind of the opposite of a “closed mind.” 😉
Have a lovely day, Billie.
Billie, you should know that most people who see Naturopaths and Chiropractors, etc, are seeing them because mainstream medicine has failed them. You also seem to be assuming it is all or nothing. People try everything they can find when they have a chronic condition, trying to find something that helps.
I know nothing about Reiki or aura that you mentioned and wont judge them, I would keep an open mind.
Mainstream medicine is great for trama and accidents, but pretty much useless for anything chronic.
If you have arthritis, fibro myalsia, asthma, allergies and other chronic illness’s you will do much better with Dr Google or a Naturopath than with a mainstream doctor who will just try to sell you a pill for pain or some other bandaid solution.
Ten years ago a friend said his doctor told him he had hi cholesterol and he would need to take statins. He did not want to, so saw a Naturopath who got him to make lifestyle and diet changes and got all his numbers perfect, no pills with horrible side effects.
What would you do Billie, take the statins? Will you live longer if you take the statins?
I know someone else who got rid of their asthma seeing a naturopath, their mainstream doctor just gives him an inhaler.
I am a senior citizen now, any problem I have, unless it was an emergency which I have not had yet, I goto Dr Google and look for an alternative treatment, as I know I will get little help from my doctor beyond a pill, or endless goofy tests. My doctor is my last resort now. And I am up in Canada where my medical doctor visits are free.(paid for thru taxes of course)
The WHO held their yearly Vaccine Summit in Geneva in December 2019. You can view it on the WHO website, The Highwire has a program on it called: WHO IS LYING TO YOU? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82KJGSLT2e4.
Or yo can review Levi Quackenboss’s condensed version of the “WHO IS LYING TO YOU?” broadcast from the Highwire Youtube channel that focuses specifically on the comments made by the WHO scientist at the World Health Organization Vaccine Safety Summit for Lawmakers : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xey8zlyQo&t=.
This 56-minute video is condensed from Highwire for easy sharing. Markers are below for skipping ahead. What’s really interesting in regards to the censoring of people who speak about about the dangers of vaccines is what Dr. Heidi Larson says at
timestamp 8:06. I interpret this as her indicating the info on social media from vaccine choice and people who declare themselves anti-vaxx is not misinformation, it’s information from scientific sources that cannot be disputed or challenged by Drs on the front line aka pediatricians. The Highwire video and the condensed version are very informative. It just shows that all along the people making decisions that affects the lives of others have no clue what they are doing. This statement freaked me out:
31:28 Dr. Friede, admits that it’s necessary that we figure out how adjuvants work so they can start to asses how plausible it is that adjuvants are causing the major health concerns.
WTF!!!!!!!!!
2:00 Dr. Heidi Larson, PhD, Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project says the biggest factor in vaccine hesitancy is vaccine safety.
4:26 Dr. Larson says that doctors and nurses are “very wobbly” and “starting to question the safety of vaccines,” and it’s a “huge problem.”
6:20 Dr. Larson admits doctors don’t have confidence in vaccine safety to stand up mothers asking questions. Doctors only got a “half day of vaccine instruction in medical school.”
8:06 Dr. Larson admits that the WHO’s issue with social media is not vaccine “misinformation,” but that the information “seeds doubt.”
10:24 Dr. Larson admits that global health replaced natural immunity with dependence on vaccine-induced immunity on the “assumption that populations would cooperate.” People got the 6 vaccines in the 1960s-1980s, but now it’s a problem. But since they got the world dependent on vaccines, global health has no choice but to continue pushing vaccines.
13:10 Dr. Larson says there is a lot of safety science needed, they can’t keep repurposing old science that isn’t relevant to the new problem that vaccines are causing.
16:04 Dr. Marion Gruber, FDA admits that vaccines NEED to have safety monitoring specifically tailored to the one vaccine under consideration. Risk management plans WILL need to take into account all of the safety evidence they have. These safety measures do not exist.
19:40 Dr. Martin Howell Friede, WHO cautions vaccine makers from using adjuvants because they cause adverse events. If makers must use an adjuvant, they should use an old one with a “history” (that allows the vaccine maker to say the adverse event wasn’t the adjuvant.) The new adjuvants will be accused of causing adverse events, but there will be no new vaccines without adjuvants. His solution is to build confidence, not make them safer.
25:15 Professor Stephen Evans says “It seems that adjuvants multiply the immunogenicity of the antigens they’re added to; they multiply the reactogenicity, so it’s not unexpected they multiply the adverse reactions. Is my thinking is correct?”
27:22 Dr. Friede, says the “major health concerns they see are the long term effects of vaccines,” not the sore knot on your arm. Adjuvants act differently with every antigen, and impurities. We need larger studies and we need to measure the appropriate things.
31:28 Dr. Friede, admits that it’s necessary that we figure out how adjuvants work so they can start to asses how plausible it is that adjuvants are causing the major health concerns.
31:38 Dr. David Kaslow, Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access admits that they do their studies on very small groups of people. Says that “one of the things they need to invest in” are better biomarkers and mechanistic understanding of how adjuvants work so they can understand the adverse events.
32:25 Dr. Gruber states that one issue that complicates the safety evaluation is the length of follow-up because the longer you study the group, the more “coincidental” adverse events pop up. Giving adjuvants to the elderly may do nothing, but be reactive in younger people.
38:13 Dr. Kaslow, “Coming down the pike relatively quickly is a new target population for us in vaccines: maternal immunization. We don’t have a strong pharmaco-epidemiologic baseline in that target population to say ‘is this an expected adverse event due to pregnancy, or is this the vaccine?’ We need an investment in that study so we don’t derail our pregnancy vaccines as they go into low-resource settings.”
40:07 CDC ACIP meeting vaccinating pregnant women is “off-label.”
41:24 The FDA admitted they have no studies about vaccines and pregnancy.
41:55 Nigerian doctor asks if there are any safety studies on injecting multiple vaccines, from multiple makers, with multiple adjuvants, into a child at once.
44:12 ACIP meeting, the CDC admits they have no data on injecting multiple adjuvants at once, but they recommend it anyway, in different limbs.
45:22 Dr. Robert Chen admits no, they don’t have data on injecting multiple adjuvants at this time, they need to link databases together to “start to answer these types of questions.”
50:01 Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist with the WHO, says in a commercial that vaccine safety tracking is robust, and examining the data lets them promptly address problems. They are “thoroughly monitored.”
52:40 Dr. Swaminathan admits, “We really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries. We can’t give answers about the deaths. We need to put mechanisms in place to monitor what’s going on. With many drugs, we only learn about adverse events after they are introduced to the populations.”
Were it a crime to spread vx misinfo, then many of the studies, with their massaging, would be unrepeatable and by law criminal?
At the very least, their messaging around those studies would be criminal.
Unrepeatable studies are not necessarily criminal, just bad science. Of course, if they are deliberately fraudulent, as we know at least two important studies, the first concluding no link between Thimerosal and neuroimmune disorders and the second no link between the timing of the MMR and development of autism, are then I sure would love to see some of the authors and their bosses in prison.
The range of those concerned about vaccination runs (pardon me) the spectrum. Some are virulently anti-vaccine in any form, some want only to change the frequency, others want to pick and choose. Consequently, we have a cacophony of ideas, beliefs, wants, and wishes. While many will always believe causality between vaccination(s) and some medical consequence (autism, encephalitis, cancer, death, etc.), large studies might be needed to establish this, yet when these are done (eg. Danish study regarding MMR and autism), the results are attacked by those who fervently believe otherwise. Science loses when beliefs are given the same credence as results.
We live in a time when there is too much information, but often not enough understanding. Most of the diseases prevented by vaccination are, at least in the USA, uncommon, and, consequently, the incidence, and severity, are not appreciated by a large % of the population, including physicians and other medical personnel. If a disease is uncommon, a large number of people have to be treated to eliminate one case (Number Needed to Treat), and, consequently, the Number Needed to Harm (of those who are treated, how many suffer an injury or illness that wouldn’t happen without treatment) is lower than ideal.
While some believe that the entire medical community is in the thrall of big Pharma (and some undoubtedly are), most physicians want what is best for their patients, and don’t profit off treatments, regardless of how expensive they might be, to the patient or insurance provider. If you choose to seek care with alternative medicine, recall that there expenses are often out of pocket, not covered by insurance providers, because in their determination, these therapies aren’t effective, are potentially harmful, or not beneficial.
Those studies are “attacked” because the methodology and/or analysis leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. While, on the other hand, vaccine promoters (and the media that they support) completely ignore the mountains of science contradicting the “safe and effective” narrative.
And I literally don’t know anyone who doesn’t know that the minute they step outside the allopathic medical system that they are on their own with regard to payment. It is one of the single biggest reasons that many people don’t support a single-payer medical system. Better access to a broken system will not improve healing outcomes by more than a tiny margin in this age of rampant (often iatrogrenic) chronic illness.
FWIW, allopathic only refers to the medical system of MDs; it excludes (by definition) DOs. If you wanted to refer to the traditional, physician led, medical system, then medical system would be better understood.
Regarding the attacking of methodology or analysis is easy to do, I suppose, but empirical assessment is not the counter argument.
What chronic illnesses do you feel are iatrogenic (aside from those attributed to vaccines)? Most of the chronic diseases in our society are due to lifestyle choices, genetics, and environmental factors, rather than physician induced, or perhaps your experience differs from mine.
Actually, the dictionary definition of “allopathy” is MUCH more broad than that:
(from Merriam-Webster.com)
1: a system of medical practice that aims to combat disease by use of remedies (as drugs or surgery) producing effects different from or incompatible with those produced by the disease being treated — compare HOMEOPATHY
2: a system of medical practice making use of all measures that have proved of value in treatment of disease
By that definition, you could include herbalists as well, though few people would. I saw a D.O. in Brooklyn and unfortunately observed little difference between her approach and previous MDs’ approach. She didn’t berate us about the vaccine issue, but she did urge them “because immigrants.” I think most people would understand my intent.
As far as iatrogenic chronic illnesses OTHER than the myriad illnesses that have been linked to vaccines (there are over 100 autoimmune diseases alone, and countless allergies), there is more and more evidence that indicates that many of our “psychiatric” diagnoses, as well as obesity (which is linked to most of the so-called “lifestyle” illnesses) that overuse of antibiotics has drastically altered the gut flora in the entire population that will have terrible consequences for many years to come.
In addition, the current opioid addiction crisis is clearly iatrogenically caused. Doctors have created thousands and thousands of chronically addicted people, many of whom would never have experienced addiction at all if it weren’t for doctors. A similar situation exists for SSRIs. Studies have indicated that the benefits of most are little better than placebo, and most “depressed” people would feel better with a few “lifestyle” changes rather quickly. Their doctors, however, go straight to SSRI prescriptions, which makes them chronically addicted. I’ve spoken to many, many people who have been prescribed SSRIs. Some love them, but many more have found they feel WORSE after them and that withdrawal symptoms are intense and terrifying when they try to taper off.
And, lastly, we can’t know the full extent of iatrogenic illness because we don’t know how many of them are related to the drugs prescribed to treat a previous illness. this is how senior citizens end up on dizzying medication cocktails.
In addition to chronic illness, we know that “medical errors” are considered the third leading cause of death at this point in time, and that “correctly prescribed” medications cause another huge chunk of deaths.
FWIW, no osteopath would refer to himself or herself as “allopathic”, though now osteopathic medicine is more closely aligned with “allopathic”, because of the long history of OMT (osteopathic manipulative therapy), still taught in osteopathic medical schools, and practiced by many. The original concern was that they were closer to “mixed” chiropractors than MDs, hence the prejudices which persisted at least into the ‘70’s against osteopathic medicine.
Opiate addiction predated the widespread problems of the last 10+ years, as I’m sure you know. Big Pharma, of course, had their bloody hands in this, by instilling “Pain is the 5th vital sign” campaigns, with subsequent pressure on prescribers to provide more (and stronger) narcotics, with the predictable result of more addicted people, part of which is lifestyle choice and part genetic.
I’m not sure that the “addiction to SSRIs” you tout is a big deal, but certainly benzodiazepine and, earlier, barbiturate use, are. Not everyone who uses medications has a problem.
Finally, I would hope that you understand that the study of, let’s say, medical intervention being the third leading cause of death, was deeply flawed and extrapolated from small numbers.
I hope with your deep distrust of the medical system that you never need it for something untreatable by chiropractic, homeopathy, “essential” oils, Reiki, “therapeutic touch”, naturopathy, or other alternatives.
Best regards
Of course opiate addiction predates the widespread problems of the past 10 years. That doesn’t for an instant absolve doctors for their part in the recent epidemic, however. Autism predates the 1980s, too, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of it isn’t caused in doctors’ offices all over the country today. And you can rest assured that I understand the integral part that pharmaceutical companies played and continue to play in iatrogenic illness.
I have had countless conversations with people who are addicted to SSRIs, many of them prescribed when someone faced an acute grief situation where “depression” was a completely normal and rational response, who then struggled to get off them after experiencing myriad side effects. It is a very big deal.
Where did I say that “everyone who uses medications has a problem”? What I will say is that the cavalier approach of prescribing pharmaceutical medications rather than trying to get to root causes, especially when there is no attempt to take family or personal medical history into account, is reckless and dangerous.
I have already needed the medical system for such things. Where do you think the “deep distrust” came from? I am sure there will be additional “needs” in the future, but my experiences and those of many others I know have convinced me that the fewer encounters between my family and mainstream medicine the better it is likely to be for our health AND our economic health.
Thanks for a thoughtful comment. You touch on a number of threads.
First, on the harm done by vaccines, vaccinepapers.org is an excellent overview of how vaccines cause brain damage — fully referenced with peer-reviewed science; they just connect the dots. The site has other helpful analysis of vaccine safety studies.
You are correct that the number needed to treat in the US is very large, which reduces the risk from the illnesses prevented/ameliorated by vaccines, and increases the relative risk of injury from vaccines. What we don’t know, because no one keeps track in a public database, is the full extent of vaccine injuries. Posting to the VAERS public database is voluntary, and studies show it captures 1-10% of actual injuries. Many plausible vaccine injures are denied by doctors who have both a business interest and an ethical/conscience issue in giving vaccines. Without knowing the true injury rate, we can’t (scientifically) recommend vaccines, because we don’t know the true risk/benefit ratios.
Finally, the way the medical system works can’t be used as evidence for which protocols are effective. The system maximize revenue to the pharmaceutical companies, and they have captured medical practice standards and the regulatory system. Robert F Kennedy Jr speaks about this capture at his site, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/ — lots of actual hard evidence exists, if you are open to it.