The Refusers prove Orac's corollary of Poe's law once again

Remember The Refusers?

They're the antivaccine band with the recycled classic rock sound lacking a shred of originality or chops that flooded the blogosphere with their crazy in the form of Clash wanna be songs like Vaccine Gestapo, which inspired Surly Amy to make me a Vaccine Gestapo pendant to wear at TAM a couple of years ago. (I still wear it to various skeptical events from time to time.) Particularly amusing and pathetic was the antivaccine sing-along The Refusers ran a couple of years ago at the demonstration at Age of Autism in Chicago, complete with Andrew Wakefield gamely playing along, looking embarrassed. Then they made a return last June with a song called Mad Hatter Blues.

Well, now they're back again, promising a new album of antivaccine tunes called First Do No Harm. The title track is called, appropriately enough, First Do No Harm, and it's utterly hilarious in its over-the-top imagery:

The usual style of The Refusers' imagery is all there. Big pharma logo with a hypodermic needle as part of the logo? Check? Suffering children? Check? Bald doctor looking like a Nazi mad scientist? Check. Imagery of giant needle inserting itself into a person's head (all as a shadow, so as to be "artsy")? Check. The most absolutely god-awful lyrics you can imagine? Check:

Watch out families, your baby is a target

For medical charlatans to immunize

They make kids autistic and then they deny it

Don't trust their propaganda, they're telling you lies

Hippocrates said don't hurt your patient

Modern medicine has forgotten his words



First do, first do no harm

First do, first do no harm

First do no harm

That's what's wrong

As I said before, The Clash's The Guns of Brixton, this ain't. As I've also said before, the antivaccine movement has degenerated to the point where it is impossible to distinguish real from parody. It's just like Poe's law with fundamentalists, only this time with antivaccinationists. If I hadn't known that The Refusers and First Do No Harm were real, I would have had a hard time knowing for sure whether they were real or parody. It's Orac's Corollary of Poe's Law at work again. I mean, The Refusers even have a song named Vaccines Ãber Alles. It's as though they think they're hip punk rockers like Dead Kennedys or something. It's the perfect 1980s reference for the antivaccine contingent, most of whom were probably in high school when the Dead Kennedys song The Refusers are aping was last popular.

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Keep drinking the pseudo-scientific Kool-Aid folks, and don't forget to wash it all down with a good dose of formaldehyde, aluminum salts, squalene, aborted fetus cells, ammonium sulfate, monosodium L-glutamate, chick embryonic fluid, guinea pig embryo cells, potassium chloride, mercury and mutated animal viruses... because you know that toxic waste is good for every body!

Or is it?

If vaccines are so effective in preventing disease why have epidemics occurred around the world following mass vaccination programs? In the Philippines for example, "after ten years of compulsory inoculation against smallpox (25 million shots) over 170,000 got smallpox and 75,000 deaths were recorded between 1911 and 1920." (from the Townsend Letter for Doctors article "Are Vaccines Generally Detrimental to the Human Defense System", Feb/Mar 1994).

Why would U.S. corporations and pharmaceutical companies that run the vaccine industry hire mad scientists from companies like I.G. Farben, BASF, Hoechst and Dow and Bayer, only years after the Nuremberg trials found them guilty of mass murder and enslavement? If someone condemns what the Nazis did during the war, why on earth would they advocate the work they're doing today?

"This vaccine has been shown to cause serious reactions including convulsions, anaphylactoid allergic reactions, serum sickness-like reactions and death." (Pediatrics, 1987, Milstien et al., 80: 270-274.)

"Vaccination is not necessary, not useful, does not protect. There are twice as many casualties from vaccination as from AIDS." -- Dr. Gerhard Buchwald, West Germany, specialist of internal diseases and participant in about 150 trials of vaccination victims.

"I once believed in Jenner; I once believed in Pasteur. I believed in vaccination. I believed in vivisection. But I changed my views as the result of hard thinking." -- Dr. Walter R. Hadwen, J.P. M.D., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., L.S.A

"I think that no person would permit anybody to get close to them with an inoculation if they really knew how they are made, what they carry and how they have been lied to." -- Dr. Eva Snead, M.D.

"Vaccination is expensive and represents a cost of one billion dollars annually. It therefore benefits the industry; most notably, the multinational manufacturers. One sells the vaccines. The other then provides the arsenal of medications to respond to the numerous complications that follow. Their profits increase while our expenses go through the roof." -- Dr Lanctot MD

"Official data shows that large scale vaccination has failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection." -- Dr. Sabin, developer of Polio vaccine.

"There is insufficient evidence to support routine vaccination of healthy persons of any age." -- Paul Frame, M.D., Journal of Family Practice

"All vaccination has the effect of directing the three values of the blood into or toward the zone characteristics of cancer and leukaemia...Vaccines do predispose to cancer and leukaemia." -- Professor L.Vincent - founder of Bioelectronics

"Many here voice a silent view that the Salk and Sabin Polio Vaccines, being made from monkey kidney tissue, has been directly responsible for the major increase in leukaemia in this country." -- Dr F. Klenner, M.D.

"The vaccinations are not working, and they are dangerous.. We should be working with nature." -- Lendon H.Smith, M.D.

"Among school age children, (measles) outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination levels of greater than 98%. These outbreaks have occurred in all parts of the country, including areas that had not reported measles for years." -- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 29/12/1989.

"An outbreak of measles occurred among adolescents in Corpus Christi, Texas, even though vaccination requirements for school attendance had been thoroughly enforced." -- New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 316: pp 771-774.

"(Whooping cough infections) are common in an immunised population." -- Journal of the American Medical Association, 1998.

"The incidence of asthma has been found to be five times more common in vaccinated children." -- The Lancet, 1994.

"There is no doubt in my mind that in the U.K. alone some hundreds, if not thousands, of well infants have suffered irreparable brain damage needlessly (due to being vaccinated)." -- Prof. G. Stewart, Dev. Biol. Stand. Vol. 61: pp 395-405. 1985.

"There has been a tendency (by doctors) to play down the likelihood of common adverse reactions. Immunisations are thus commonly given without the informed consent of parents. When problems arise after vaccination, these doctors tend to play down the severity of the complaints and will often deny a connection with the vaccination." -- MJA (Medical Journal of Australia) Submission on Vaccination. Dr. Mark Donohoe MB BS.

"89% of doctors rely on drug company salesmen for their information." -- The Australian Doctor 1989.

"There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good." -- Dr. J. Anthony Morris, former Chief Vaccine Control Officer and research virologist, US FDA

Conclusion:

#1: "The only safe vaccine is a vaccine that is never used." -- Dr. James A. Shannon, National Institutes of Health.

#2: "The Refusers are right!" -- M. R. Wilde