More like this
This week hasn't been a particularly good week for science. It started out on Monday with news of the social media storm from over the weekend over a blatantly antivaccine screed published the Friday before by the director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Clinic. Then, towards the middle of the…
It was just over a year ago that I had my last bit to say about a man who can arguably called the antivaccine activist who gave Orac his start. I'm referring, of course, to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Indeed, my first deconstruction of the nonsense about vaccines that Kennedy laid down in 2005 in an…
The whole post-Christmas thing left me without time to do anything other than a couple of brief bits. Consequently, given Deirdre Imus' two recent appearances on the Huffington Post, I thought it would be as good a time as any to resurrect this post from June 27, 2005. For those of you who haven't…
I'll be on the road as this posts. However, for your edification, enjoy a tag-team smackdown of some truly ignorant "mercury causes autism" evidence-free handwaving, courtesy of Dad of Cameron and Not Mercury. In keeping with the theme of twos, it's done in two parts, separated by two weeks:
Part 1…
You know your site has a lot of good facts. At first I thought you were a good critical thinker. Then I saw that you are hooking up with Orac re: the thimerosal autism, aka mercury-poisoning, controversy. It might interest you to know that Orac's opinion of RFKjrs article is in line with that of Michael Fumento's as published in the Wall Street Journal. Hmmm. You don't seem to have much regard for Fumento's abilities as a critical thinker usually. I think you need to do some further investigation of this thimerosal issue. I have been researching it a long time and while I don't think a definitive answer is available, there is a lot to indicate that thimerosal should never have been included in vaccines and that it could well be implicated in causing autism and other issues like ADD, ADHD, ODD, speech delay, NLD and who knows what else. Personally I would like to see a couple of recent laboratory studies replicated and some better documentation and study of kids reportedly "recovering" via vitamin supplementation, removal of mercury via chelation, and enzymes. But I think you are missing the whole argument by leaping to the conclusion that the argument is over vaccines. It isn't. It is over the inclusion of thimerosal in vaccines. You seem like an intelligent person. I challenge you to read all the info out there, including the study by Mady Hornig and research by Jill James, and much more. Read everything on the site "Nomercury.org" and report back. I really would like to know if you still find yourself in agreement with Michael Fumento--and if so, exactly why.
Thanks,
Sue
Just because Fumento says something doesn't mean that it's wrong. RFKjr's piece was rubbish. Orac and the others more than demonstrated this. Are you seriously going to defend it? Didn't you think there was something wrong with it?
Of course, the fact that RFKjr's piece was rubbish doesn't prove that there is no link just as much as Fumento writing about it doesn't prove that there is a link.
It is amusing because Dan Burton and Kennedy are on the same side for this one.
Tim, I was puzzled by the reaction to the Thimerosal issue as well as Sue. Although I'm not very well up on Thimerosal, I am a passionate ANTI-anti-vaccination person. (I consider parents who are anti-vacc to be little better than murderers; It brings out the intolerant person in me. I love Steven Jay Gould's story about walking through a country churchyard and pointing out all the graves of babies and children.) So you see I'm primed to be on Orac's side. But like Sue, while not knowing so much about it, I got the impression that RFKjr was writing about mercury contamination in vaccinations, not vaccination pro or anti. And I'm pretty sure that mercury isn't a good thing. I know it's not a good thing to find in the fish you eat.
So, I can imagine the reviewer might have thought RFKjr's research was inadequate or whatever, but I do not see where it pushes the anti vaccination cause, any more than warnings not to eat too much swordfish is anti-eating fish.
Clarification maybe?...
Geez, it was just a link to Orac's post and not an essay on the topic. I changed "vaccination" to "Thimerosal" in the hope that this makes it clearer.