No Link Found Between Vaccine Mercury and Autism

by leavingwt 132 Replies latest social current

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  bohm

  RGB:

  Here are some statements from M.D.'s since Boeeeeeehm, I spell it anyway I want it's my post, doesn't accept the fact that anyone that isn't an M.D. has a right to an opinion. Not really Bohm, I just used your tactic Boahm of putting words in my mouth.

  Sentence parse do not. What happened with your old happy self, RGB, did you run out of tinfoil for your tinfoil hat or something? After a little rant where it seem you persieve yourself as a victim because noone agree with you, it suddenly gets worse:

  Bohme says I can't pull out medical research research, [no and you cant] it is hard to find anything after Wakefield got steam rolled by the vaccine/pharmaceutical/medical establishment. Think about it who is gonna pay for it, sure as hell not the medical establishment. Look, Wakefield got steamrolled by the scientific method because he lied and cheated. As far as who is going to pay for new research, well, perhaps there is another laywer out there who throw a huge sum after the first researcher who will lie and create data to support his suit? Because thats what happened in the case of Dr. Wakefield, and somehow he is the only trustwhorty guy in your world. Still those court cases in vaccine court keep deciding against the vaccines while the establishment calls you a nut if you think there is anything wrong with them, what a dilemma for a thinking person. The first part is simply factually wrong. What you copy pasted was a child with a very rare disorder that might have been made worse by the vaccine. It has no bearing on the general usefullness of vaccines and you know it. The establishment, unlike people like Dr. Wakefield, make huge, expensive research programs involving thousands of people who all come out with the same result: No link between vaccine and autism. On the other hand, you have a convicted crook who took money to come up with the following amazing discovery: if you friggen hand pick parents with 12 autistic children who believe vaccine caused the autism, and you interview them, they will say vaccines cause autism! Furthermore, he came up with the amazing finding that if you falsify bowel biopsies you can make them say anything you want. BING money for Dr. Wakefield! But wait - you will say - Dr. Wakefield is not a crook! The courts are in the pants of Big Pharma and he was framed! There is a pattern here:

  • Courts: Agree with them when their finding can be usefull rhetorically (allthough it does not support your case), dismissed as conspiracy when they call Dr. Wakefield unethical and reveal what a crook he is
  • Science: Wakefields study which is based on 12 hand-picked children and gaping full of obvious holes are taken as gospel, huge studies involving thousands of children in many countries are dismissed as an invention of big pharma.
  • Experts: 19th century doctors, HIV/AIDS denialists and pretty much anyone who agree with you but have no friggin clue is taken as huge, weighty testemony for your case. Pretty much the entire branch of medical establishment who is in a position to have an expert oppinion is dismissed as in the pockets of big pharma.

  On all counts, anything that could be constructed as a support for your case is accepted without a batter of the eye, but all conflicting evidence is dismissed as a conspiracy.

  Yah, what is a thinking person to do. I dont think your the right person to ask. Since the experimental part of the case is so hopelessly bad (the two supposed studies you quote are hiding behind a banner ad and i cant read them, give me the pdf to where they was puplized so i can go through the methology; but to be honest, i am not going to hold my breath since they seem to have been carried out by a cancer quack), you now seem to have shifted focus to the scientific method known as "quoting experts who agree with me". The middle ages called once more. It want that methology back to. I dont have to remind you that this is precisely the way science is NOT supposed to operate, and has not operated since the days of Kepler and Tycho Brahe. Science should be about collecting observations and testing hypotheses, but - allow me for getting ahead of you - perhaps the scientific method itself another snare invented by BigPharma? It does indeed seem that they mainly operate that way, and champions of truth like Dr. Wakefield have abbandoned that new-fangled invention in favor of "just making shit up and sue". Going through the two list of experts you have produced in your previous post and a few pages back is an embarresing affair. First off - you must have noticed that the list of experts reach back in time to the days of charles dickens, right? Have you by any chance considered that medical science might have progressed since the times the Pasteurs germ theory was a new-fangled thing? Secondly, i have tried to google some of the names on your past list, and so far i have not been able to find a single person who has carried out significant medical research in the effects of vaccine. In fact, the list a few pages back seem to be composed entirely of people who promote various diets and believe said diets will cure pretty much everything, especially if you buy their books and supplements. thirdly, and more troubling, it seem the experts you quote on those lists that come out strongest on vaccine/autism are those who have a criminal history, and fall into the category Cancer Quack. Lets take a case study, namely the last person you quote: Dr Vernon Coleman MB Vernon Coleman believe:

  • Its a big lie vaccines ever eradicated smallpox.
  • " 80% of cancers can be prevented or to investigate the many new alternative therapies "
  • "getting rid of the malaria in an area will result in a rise in the cancer rate."
  • "when 22 samples of his[Dr Sam Chachoua ] AIDS vaccine were tested 20 of them showed 99% efficacy in neutralising HIV-1."
  • generally speaking, cancer research is an invention to cheat people. Chemotherapy does not work. Relax, eat vitamins and buy his book is the best cure against cancer.
  • he has been visited by a DEAD SHEEP CALLED KAREN.

  If coleman says it, i believe it!
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  bohm

  GAH. the board software choked on my last post.
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  BurnTheShips

  Bohm, your posts are excellent. They are also likely wasted on these.

  BTS
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  bohm

  BTS: Thanks! I got to admit that the past few posts was written with pre-morning-coffee diplomatic skills :-).

  Besty: Yah, well, to be honest, i dont think its an obvious comparison given that the burden of proof is different and the experimental situation with respect to autism seem (in my oppinion) to be far better (i am here talking about the impact of human activity, not the fact the temperature goes up, but i have far to little knowledge to really compare these things). I think the main similarity is how much weight one put on the oppinion of "97% of all scientists" (or whatever), though it is a strange measure of truth :-) .
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  nolongerwaiting

  Sorry to resurrect a thread that is slowly dying, but it takes a while to get registered on the forum. Funny that I've been reading this site off-and-on for almost 2 years, but this topic finally motivates me to register.

  First, as an aside, since this is my first post .. I was born and raised one of JWs, and baptized as a teenager. I'm now in my late 20s, married, career, house, etc. I started breaking free from JWs over 2 years ago. For any current JWs lurking on this site, let me just say: "If you want to keep your faith, don't check your references." I embarked on an innocent project to better understand the anti-evolution argument, as I realized that many of the points in the Creation book were out of date. Unfortunately, I came to realize that most of those points were specious when they were first written, and the book is riddled with quotations out of context. (A trick, I believed, that only apostates used.) From there is was a very fast and head-spinning slide to the blood issue, doctrinal concerns, the ugly parts of JW history, and so forth. Most people on this forum know what I'm talking about. It's like becoming a new person through a series of car crashes.

  Fortunately, my wife followed me to freedom, and we are now both pretty well-adjusted secularists/athiests who are trying to re-integrate ourselves into "the world" while trying to avoid issues with our JW family. We are both happier and more tolerant people than when we started.

  Anyway .. the point (sorry), during the first year after I escaped the JWs I became really obsessed with organic food, global warming, impending economic doom, anti-vaccine, anti-modern-medicine, etc. What I gradually realized was that I had substituted the Watchtower propaganda for the alternative-medicine/economic-collapse propaganda. I had gravitated toward the same sort of easy answer, the same fear-based motivation, the same egotistical "I know something that everyone else doesn't want to hear!" sort of world-view. I believe that 25+ years of witness programming makes us especially susceptible to poorly backed arguments of impending doom. I mean, we've been trained that virtually all scientists are either idiots or lying to us and that all governments are operated by the devil. We've been trained to focus on the 1 person dying of HepC from a blood transfusion and ignore the 100 dying for want of a transfusion. From there, it's easy to become a cynic who can be easily leveraged by fearmongers to join their causes.

  If you asked me a year ago, I would have said that vaccines cause autisim. Today, as I work to demand rational arguments for all my beliefs, I realize that there is no evidence-supported link between the two. Yes, the number of austism cases and the number of vaccines has increased during the last 50 years (and yes, government-mandated immunizations are great for corporate profits), but correlation does not imply causation. As pastafarians will tell you, the number of pirates has decreased as earth's temperature has risen. There is no connection there either. I'm just glad I didn't withhold vaccines from my kids (no kids) or push someone else to do the same. It's hard to accept any argument which ignores the incredible number of lives that have been saved by vaccination or the result when people choose to stop using them.

  What I've learned from this is that examining one's beliefs is not a one-time action as you escape from the JW world. It has to be a continuous process. Evaluate new ideas using multiple credible sources, and do not be quick to accept "global conspiracy" as an argument. Some of my beliefs have stayed, and others had to go. I've found that the hardest thing at times is just to be humble enough to admit that I was, once again, wrong on something.
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  Leolaia

  Welcome to the forum, nolongerwaiting, and for your thoughtful opening post.
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  mrsjones5

  Welcome to the board Nolongerwaiting.
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  SweetBabyCheezits

  Welcome, NLW, and excellent first post! Need more background details (esp regarding your defection from the WTS) in your own official introductory post.
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  cognizant dissident

  Welcome, to the board nolongerwaiting.

  Great first post. You completely got to the core of the issue and nailed it, which is pretty impressive for your first post.

  I agree with you about the JW mindset transferring over to other issues in life. Take my mother for example. (I mean really, someone please take my mother!)

  She was the one who first began studying with the JW's the year I was born and initiated the family into the JW organization. However, through the years she has continually spent many, many thousands of dollars on alternative medicines. Some are probably just over-priced herbs and tonics that don't do any harm. Others have been obviously quackery and she has been scammed out of many thousands over a lifetime. The problem is her. She is always looking for the quick fix, the miracle cure, that will solve all her problems without her actually having to do any work to take care of her health, like eating properly and exercising regularly.

  She is also getting more and more fearful as she gets into old age, because she can't come to terms with aging and death. She just keeps spending more and more money on anti-aging miracles. She will die penniless and afraid. She also constantly feeds her mind on the news and true murder shows. Thats all she watches (besides home shopping network). She always has a horrible story to tell about how awful the world is. It completely validates her WTBTS viewpoint. I tell her that the reason those events make the news is because they are statistical anomalies. They get ratings because they are unusual. You won't hear about the billions of people every day, who went to work, took care of their families and did nice things to help each other, on the news.

  When people refuse to look at facts and logic, there is always some type of emotional hook for them or payoff that is over-riding reason and is stronger than the human need for things to make rational sense. If you can discover what that is and address that issue, then you have a better chance of reaching them.

  I look forward to hearing more from you.
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  nolongerwaiting

  Thank you, all, for the welcome, but I don't plan to do an official introduction. It's just fine here on page 7 of an unrelated topic. :)

  cognizant - Love your screen name, by the way. I've certainly had enough time to formulate my thoughts over the last couple years. My wife and I have long what-if conversations on topics such as this.

  I'd offer you my mom, but we'd both be in about the same situation. The depressed world-view is a JW requirement. I can almost see the joy in my relative's eyes when two earthquakes occur in the same month.