Boo on you, Democratic candidates : Pure Pedantry

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Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.

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Boo on you, Democratic candidates

Category: Politics
Posted on: April 23, 2008 3:59 PM, by NotoriousLTP

Boo on you, Barack and Hillary.

Others have this subject amply covered, but I wanted to note that Barack and Hillary have both jumped on the anti-vaccinationist bandwagon. The bandwagon is getting crowded what with McCain already being on it.

Granted, Barack and Hillary did not say something as flagrantly wrong as when McCain cited "strong evidence" that thiomerosal causes autism. But it is still very disconcerting when politicians engage in this sort of flagrant pandering. Don't they have advisers? Don't they have a single person on their staff who can screen out this nonsense?

It just sucks that they have made evaluation that kooks are a much more valuable constituency than people who care about science.

I dream that there will someday be a candidate who comes out strong not just for scientific funding but scientific accuracy -- for making what they say conform with what we know about the world.

Sadly, it doesn't look like any of these three fit the bill.

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Don't you think there was probably a discussion? I imagine a conversation something like this:

"Barak, McCain has come out clearly on the side of the 'vaccinations cause autism' group. What's our stance?"

B.O. "Let's see - how can this help us? Well, if we offer support to the same demographic we won't lose any voters on this issue alone. If we don't, we will lose the really serious ones to McCain, and if Clinton goes there, too, we'll lose all of the Democratic 'believers'."

Aid: "What about those guys over at Scienceblogs? Will we lose them?"

B.O. "Not a chance. They're not going to put McCain in office, period. If we come out in reserved support of the autism-vaccination connection, so will Clinton, and it becomes a non-issue because no one will have the choice of a candidate that called bullshit on it. It's a win-win for us."

Aid: "What about the fact that the connection appears to be bullshit?"

B.O., Clinton, and McCain, in chorus: "Who cares what the FACTS are? We're trying to get Elected!"

Posted by: Steve | April 23, 2008 8:38 PM

Regardless of the truth of the position no politician is going to say to a genuinely concerned (however deluded) parent's face, "Sorry, you are just plain wrong about your child's condition." It's just not in their nature, however much the parent needs to hear it.

Anyway, I really doubt any of them know any more about the issue than "Some people assert that vaccines can cause autism".

Posted by: Scott | April 24, 2008 12:15 PM