Woo/Science /antivax/other stuph

I think rof said it best.

I think you are right. It’s too hard to figure out how people work together to make science say anything they want it to say, to fool the public and make a lot of money.

I get just enough evidence of links suggesting conspiracy --for example, looks to me like Kelly Brogan’s family and her husband’s family are connected to US intelligence and the Laetrile mafia. Which might make you think, maybe she went to med school and residency in psychiatry knowing all along she would become an anti-psychiatry media personality. That is fucking crazy, in my opinion. But not if there are tens of millions of dollars per year coming your way afterward.

But I do not get enough evidence to actually tell anybody what I’ve found in a convincing way.

A better strategy would be for everybody to stick to “DOX or GTFO” as the rule for science. Do not let any doctors get away with promoting unproven therapies to the public. If we do that, the bad guys won’t put so much energy into creating the appearance of legitimacy, which can be really time consuming to unpack and rebut.

The anti-pharma anti-science stuff gets to me because people in my family totally fall for that stuff and it makes me crazy I can’t have a rational conversation with them.

Fighting the good fight is noble. Going all OCD on it makes one look a little iffy, no matter how true the dox are.

Well at least I’m anonymous here. So if I’m iffy, you can just lol at me.

I think you are awesome, but working too hard. If you can keep it up without destroying yourself, go for it. But if you are human, take a break every now and then.

The Laetrile people got state governors and some congress critters to fight the FDA on their behalf using the “health freedom” argument, same as the Burzynski cancer quack in Texas today. It is hard to face that argument from someone suffering with cancer. But you have to ask, why do these patients want this treatment?

If the answer is, because they’ve been lied to, then the choice those patients are making is not truly their own.

But once the hook has been set, it’s hard for people to let go. You have to let them do what they gotta do. But you can take steps to save the next victim. It’s enough, I think, to delegitimize the unproven therapy by dis-associating it with legit medicine.

Patients look at Burzynski’s fancy clinic and his sciency papers and they think he is legit. Maybe he is unpopular because he’s too smart or too confident. A brave maverick. This is a plausible read so long as the US government and the medical profession as a whole do little to condemn his inflated claims.

I like how the FDA addressed this “freedom” meme back in the 1970s:



I would add that giving quacks the freedom to pimp unproven therapies burdens me with a confusing marketplace where I can’t be sure I’m getting health advice based on a community evidential standard. How can I get that if the standard is ignored when someone feels like ignoring it?

Posting every fact you find is interesting, but not helpful if no one boils it down into a simple, easy to understand synopsis that can be given to the proper authorities. If such things exist.
Make a database of each of your causes, and see if you can write them up without a wall of text or docu overload.
Civil servants are who you have to get through to get to the people who matter.
Just being right is irrelevant. You have to be not boring or crazy sounding.
I wish you the best of luck.

Lemmi you expect too much if you want me to understand and organize and summarize while I’m Googling stuff that *might* be a piece of the puzzle.

Conspiracies almost by definition can’t be documented. The best you can do is build up piles of circumstantial evidence. This is why only losers go conspiracy hunting.

But I’ve seen enough circumstantial evidence to strongly suspect that a portion of our own intelligence services are crooked going back to prohibition. And now this network is promoting quackery and aiming at neutering the Federal government. The pace of this effort seems serious. But I got nethin to prove this right now.

If you can do it without burning yourself out, go for it. I have learned much from your posts.
But I have to admit I have skipped a few.
WWP can be a sort of wikileaks backup, if the stuff you find disappears from its original location.
Your work is useful and does no harm. Unless you burn yourself out.

I was surfing YouTube waiting for the GeekSquad when I saw a Kelly Brogan related ad. “Shit she’s everywhere now!” I says to myself.

Behold the Fisher Wallace Stimulator, made by a company Dr. Brogan has shilled for:



Wikipedia:

Why Fisher Wallace no produce double blinded study of this stimulator as a treatment for insomnia? Because BigPharma won’t let them? Because FDA is full of meanies? Because totally impossible?

No, they did not publish a well controlled trial of this device because they know what such a study would show and it would not help their bottom line. Ergo, YouTubes. Soon Dr. Oz. Then TV ads. You will buy one because hey, why not. But it won’t do shit and it will wind up in a box in your basement.

Nothing to do with Kelly Brogan, but just another weird quacky product ad I saw waiting for GeekSquad. I was like, holy fuck Dove, you are treating low self esteem or social anxiety with patches now?



Turns out Dove admitted the “Beauty Patch" was a hoax after these women were suckered. Perhaps slightly less disturbing than an actual product pitch. But still weird.

TI, I find it almost impossible that you are not familiar with it, but the James Randi Educational Foundation seems like it was made just for you.

"Welcome to the JREF Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way."
http://forums.randi.org/forumindex.php
I have spent many hours there learning new things that piss me off.

Oh yeah, I like that short little magician guy in his 80s. He was fighting Scientology before it was cool.

In the beginning were some operating thetans, Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff, doing Remote Viewing for the CIA at Stanford University. Also that spoon bending guy. Randi worked with another magician to infiltrate and expose their fail. Good stuff.

On the topic of “Integrative Medicine, what’s the harm?” here is a blog comment that explains:

Sastra
April 11, 2014
Denice Walter #7 wrote:

It seems like they’re taking advantage of the situation in order to proselytise or act out their own beliefs perhaps in order to recruit new believers.

Exactly. This is very much a science vs. religion (oh, excuse me, “Spirituality”) issue. It’s not very different from teaching creationism along with evolution and letting students “choose” what works best for them. The status and imprimatur of science is being granted to supernatural claims in order to sway people into a spiritually enlightened understanding of reality.

This leads to a whole host of problems which extend beyond the fact that these remedies don’t really work.

It messes with the entire world view of average people and their understanding of medicine, science, and reason. It screws with their ability to think critically and rationally weigh and assess options in everyday of life. When science includes both “other ways of knowing” and confirmation that Nature is on your side, a lot of the normal checks and balances of common reason are going to be jettisoned.

And as an atheist I can attest that alt med proponents blithely assume that my “materialist naturalism” position has been clearly and obviously refuted by the latest discoveries in medicine, discoveries which confirm what the mystics and pious have known all along –that the cosmos contains (or is made of) magical components and intentional energies which care about us. Universal Life Energy is more or less another name for God. And they are claiming that science found it.

Or … they are claiming that PEOPLE found it and we don’t need no stinkin’ science. One way, the other way, or both: whatever works. Defenses of Reiki are as likely to sound like apologetics as pseudoscience (“you can’t see love with a microscope, but we know it’s real!”) Energy Healing not only promotes and encourages a religious world view, it draws a lot of its strength from existing religious world views. If you already have a system in place which gives credit to using “faith” to accept supernatural claims, why wouldn’t you use it for something like Reiki, which trips all the right buttons?

I suspect that in addition to making money many of these medical centers and academic forums are granting the usual special privilege to matters of faith and letting their rigor slip as a result.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/04/11/faith-healing-everywhere-in-medical-academia/

Both groups are derps.

One for being an idiot and not vaccinating their children, thus, increasing the risk of child's dying at the age of 2.
The second for being an idiot and arguing with the other idiots. A practice known as "feeding the troll".

WWP is still here and amaX is still posting, faggot.

Do you think the Kardashians are anti-vaxxers ?
What do you think about anti-vaxxers ?

Jim Carrey Slams School Vaccine Legislation: It's "Poisoning More Children" - Hollywood Reporter. http://tiny.iavian.net/5s1h

Not sure but if the Kardashian family is but...

Lolol @ 411 troll and Co., wasting their time on such a dead forum is , like, so durrrry-smert

Wut?

Westborough Baptist church?....
They are kinda targeted by other anons at this moment and this sounds like their faggotry.

Nah, I don't think WBC can be bothered, but, on the other hand, CoS cult of grief and division, their trolls and trollings, yeah baby, shake that funky nut-tree!

http://theconversation.com/dumb-or-...s-expose-the-tactics-of-internet-cranks-44236

I'm gona go ahead here and make some stupid questions:
Why are we either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine? Is there no room for skepticism?

I know some might be tired of this debate, and if you are, no problem... just ignore me lol.

According to the WHO Smallpox killed between 300 -500 million people in the 20th century, now it kills no one thanks to vaccination. What is there to be sceptical about?

Jim Carrey has been forced to apologise after tweeting a picture of a child suffering from autism and tuberous sclerosis without his family’s permission.
Carrey tweeted the picture of Karen Echols’ son Alex as part of a protest against recent legislation in California that removed the personal-belief exemption from public health vaccination programmes.
Carrey’s tweet was posted on Instagram by Echols’ aunt Elizabeth Welch. Carrey wrote: “A trillion dollars buys a lot of expert opinions. Will it buy you? TOXIN FREE VACCINES, A REASONABLE REQUEST!” accompanied by a picture of Echols. Welch accused Carrey of using the post to “mock” him and and his family, and that vaccinations played no part in his condition.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/201...-child-photo-without-permssion-autism-vaccine

Nothing.
But there are things to be sceptical about, concerning big Pharma. After all, this is an industry to make money. Without regulations, this system tries to make more money out of nothing. Everything else would make no sense. Tamiflu, anyone?

I dunno if anyone noticed, but most actors rely on other people's words for a living and applying critical thought to issues involving complex sentences and polysyllabic words is not a tool in their toolbox. The Patron Saint of Dumb Things Actors Say has to be Jenna Elfman, but she's busy raping babies.

I always thought Jim Carrey was a reasonable guy.
Not that I know him or something, but I had the impression that he wasn't retarded.

I would like to get your opinions on some of the saved links I gathered, if you have the time =P
Is this all bullsh*t?

Nurses Against Mandatory Vaccines:
http://www.namv.org
(video has a lame intro, skip 20s lol)


Gardasil Vaccine in Denmark: Serious Adverse Reactions Now Number 1 in 500 Girls:
http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/ga...s-adverse-reactions-now-number-1-in-500-girls

Summary of Supportive Science Regarding Thimerosal & Vaccines:

http://1awito2t72lx1idocf1h98ia.wpe...015/02/ThimerosalScienceSummary-SafeMinds.pdf

Transcriptomic analyses of neurotoxic effects in mouse brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24675092

Scepticisms to whet exactly? Sceptic to vaccines always working (they don't)? Sceptic to vaccines always being without side effects (they aren't)?

A lot of these studies are missing the point.
Vaccines have side-effects. After all, it's an injection of a disease (a neutralized disease, but still a disease).
They also add stuff in it as a catalyst. If vaccines didn't have these toxic elements in them, they would be far less efficient.

But the point is that for 1 person who gets annoyed by the side effects of the vaccines, a lot of other persons don't.
Instead of 2000 people dying from an old disease, you have 1 people who gets sick because of the vaccine and 1999 others who are just fine and don't get sick.
In the end, the vaccines protect a lot more than they harm (if they really harm, the debate is not closed yet).

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Concerning the "omg, flu vaccines suck" part, it's because diseases have mutations.
Every year, scientists have to predict which one of the mutations of the flu will infect the most people.
Then, they prepare vaccines for this type of mutation.

Let's say that scientists predict that "flu A" will infect most people this year.
They create flu A vaccines. Then :

• If everything happens fine, flu A becomes very virulent. But people who got their vaccines are fine. Still, some other people (fewer) get "flu B". Even though they had their vaccine, they are not immunized versus flu B.

• If everything doesn't happen fine, flu A doesn't do much this year, most people get flu B. Their vaccines are useless in this case because the predictions were wrong. In general, studies who are against vaccines are based on data from these type of years.

This is because we cannot predict with 100% accuracy which mutation of a virus will be dominant. It's like playing russian roulette every year, except that the chances of success are quite better (most of the time, scientists get it right).

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Concerning autism : it may be a side effect of the catalysts, or maybe catalysts don't help people who have predispositions to autism, maybe not. More (deeper) research is needed. The true answer may be much more complicated than "vaccines cause autism" or "vaccines don't cause autism".
The true answer may be something like "vaccines with catalyst X increase the chance of developing autism by Y in people who have the gene Z, the others are safe". We've seen this a lot in medicine (some cancers, viruses, diabetes ...).

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To make it short, your links are not bullshit : they are just based on incomplete data (on purpose or not, I don't know) and/or do not consider the amount of lifes saved by vaccines.

If you only look at the bad side effects that can (possibly?) be caused by a vaccine (what most of the anti vaccine studies do), you can't find anything good.
If you also consider the good parts of the vaccines, you realize that the good parts are orders of magnitude bigger than the bad ones (what most of the pro vaccines studies do).

Thanks for the detailed reply Duff, appreciated.

Is there independent studies that confirm this?
a) Vaccines need toxic elements like Thimerosal.
b) The vaccines in question have protected people.

Not asking for you to google for me, just asking if you can confirm what you are saying =P

I agree completely, specially studies outside of big pharma.

wow that smallpox picture…. *shudders*
Again, what if the kids of these parents want to travel to countries were diseases are more rampant? Maybe some want to join the peace corps or help out in other countries.
I mentioned this before.
And many of these wealthy families travel with their kids all over the world. They are at a huge risk.
Too bad Carey went the route with bozo McCarthy, who is now with one of the Wahlburgs.
He was just in a vid with Seinfeld where he said he was on day 21 of a cleanse.

ANYWAYS, getting back to parents who do not vaccinate their kids….
What about Scientologists who do not vaccinate and their kids become VMs? Granted they do nothing to help other countries and do nothing more than hand out other people's supplies and pose for pictures, but they are still going to questionable areas that can be dangerous. THEN, they come back here.
I know the COS can care less, but what about the rest of us?

They do not need them, but having them significantly boosts the immune response to the vaccine.
It's like adding whiskey in your coffee to get more "courage"

I remember a few studies that used the double-blind method (and a reasonable amount of people), and compared the amount of lymphocites (I think) in the blood of people who didn't get the vaccine (group 1), people who got the "pure" vaccine (group 2) and people who got the vaccine with a catalyst (group 3).
Group 3 had like 30% more lymphocites than group 2, and group 1 had almost none.
Need to find these links.

Yeah, you can easiely find graphs showing the number of deaths from disease X during the several last decades and look what happened in the years when vaccines against this disease appeared. Just make sure to look at graphs that are not using logarithmic scales.
Usually, the number of deaths drop in the few years after a new vaccine is introduced (you can also check what these vaccines contained and compare the efficiency of several catalysts).

We're vaccinated and safe
Let them cough.