Sometimes, as I sit down to write a blog post, I have no idea what I'm going to write about at first. Fortunately, it's rare that I truly have zero idea what I'm going to write about. Usually, there are options, and I don't know which one I'm going to pick. Sometimes, however, something happens that demands that I write about it. Either that, or it's something that I know my readers will want me to write about and will be disappointed if I do not. Unfortunately, in this case, the timing is such that there's been nearly a full day since the announcement of this particularly stupid decision (and I know you know what I'm talking about, even though I haven't explicitly stated it yet) that everyone and his grandmother has already blogged about it. I have a highly demanding day job; so I have to wait, to the point where I'm already bored with this story, having seen endless Tweets, Facebook posts, and blog posts that I perused just over lunch earlier today, with more having poured in over the several hours since lunch. At this point, should I even bother?
What the hell? Why not? After all, my ego tells me that whatever all those other bloggers have to say is as nothing compared to the awesomeness that is Orac's ability to dissect antivaccine nonsense, and few have followed the antivaccine "career" (such as it is) of Jenny McCarthy.
By this point, anyone who gives even a part of a rodential posterior about the antivaccine movement has already heard that the producers of the daytime chat show (I love the British term; so posh) have made an enormous, bone-headed, idiotic mistake on par with hiring Colin Baker to play the sixth Doctor back in the 1980s. No, much worse. Colin Baker didn't promote dangerous pseudoscience, and, I hate to admit, I did occasionally like his portrayal of my favorite Time Lord. Yes, I'm referring to the hiring of Jenny McCarthy to be a regular on The View.
I can't help but point out right here that it's been very clear to me over the last couple of years that Jenny McCarthy has been making a conscious effort to—shall we say?—deemphasize her antivaccine crankery. Oh, sure, she still shows up every year to bask in the adoration of the antivaccine faithful at their yearly Autism One quackfest and even did it just this May. But the rest of the year she's nowhere near as visible promoting "her" organization Generation Rescue as she used to be a few years ago. Indeed, other than last week's post about the speculation that she might become a regular on The View it's been a long time since I've written a post that was primarily about something Jenny McCarthy did. This post defending Andrew Wakefield in 2011 might well have been her most recent appearance as "star" of a post by me on this blog. Sure, I've written posts that have mentioned her secondarily, but it's been at least a couple of years since she was the primary recipient of some of Orac's not-so-Respectful Insolence. Heck, even when a bill was being considered in California to make it harder to obtain non-medical exemptions, it fell to Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider to bring the stupid home and step up—or, if you prefer, down—to be The Official Celebrity Antivaccine Idiot rallying opposition to the law. Not so long ago, that job surely would have fallen to Jenny McCarthy, but she was nowhere to be seen. Even Chuck Norris is outdoing Jenny McCarthy in laying down flaming swaths of antivaccine stupid these days. No longer do we get such brilliant statements from Jenny McCarthy as:
Examples:
- "Without a doubt in my mind, I believe that vaccinations triggered Evan's autism."
- "Following bio-medical treatment — which is basically changing the diet, giving vitamins and supplements and detoxing the body from metals or candida — and he recovered. And the reason the medical community has such a hard time with this is because we are treating and healing a vaccine injury ... this is truly a revolution."
- "People are also dying from vaccinations. Evan, my son, died in front of me for two minutes. You ask any mother in the autism community if we'll take the flu, the measles, over autism and day of the week. I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids."
- "The reason why [the medical community] is reluctant to talk about it is because there's such a huge business in pharmaceuticals."
- “I look at autism like a bus accident, and you don’t become cured from a bus accident, but you can recover.” — She said in a Time magazine profile, The Autism Debate: Who's Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?
- “Let me see if I can put this in scientific terms: Think of autism like a fart, and vaccines are the finger you pull to make it happen.”
And let's not forget her famous rant in the TIME Magazine article mentioned above:
I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their fucking fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s shit. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism.
No more, but I don't believe McCarthy has changed her views. Her silence on autism and vaccines is very much more likely to be part of a plan to resurrect her career. It's apparently all worked. Jenny McCarthy has become "respectable" enough to land a high profile gig on The View. Or maybe I should say that she is no longer disreputable enough to be denied such a gig. It used to be that the only jobs she could land were low-budget direct-to-video gigs, starring in video games, and other sundry bottom-feeding entertainment jobs. Memories are clearly short, though. She soon started appearing in a recurring guest role on Two and a Half Men and landed a spot as a cohost of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve. Eventually, somehow she got some guest shots on The View, and now she's a regular. Hiding her antivaccine proclivities has served her well. Five years ago, she was leading antivaccine cranks in marches on Washington demanding that politicians "green our vaccines." In 2013, she's the new cohost of The View.
So what's the big deal? Everyone deserves a second chance, right? If McCarthy keeps her yap shut about vaccines while she's on The View, then who cares? To some extent, I can understand and partially agree with that view. There are plenty of performers with political or other views that I find odious whom I nonetheless find entertaining enough to watch. Nor does hiring someone to be on a coffee klatch that provides infotainment by discussing the issues of the day in a light, fluffy, frothy morning brew of a show, even more forgettable as a typical summer blockbuster imply that ABC agrees with her views. After all, the woman she is replacing, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, has some—shall we say?—questionable views, but this is different. Jenny McCarthy's views endanger children by encouraging parents not to vaccinate. Sure, McCarthy denies to high heaven that she has told parents not to vaccinate, but she has a history of spreading the sort of misinformation that frightens parents, claims that vaccines cause autism. I've been writing about it for years.
Jenny McCarthy's ignorance of science and antivaccine views are perhaps best encapsulated in this video, in which she parrots easily debunked antivaccine misinformation claiming that vaccines contain aborted fetal tissues, ether, and antifreeze, none of which is accurate. She blames autism on children reaching a "toxic tipping point" and claims that autism can be healed by various "detoxification." If you want to see an example of sheer, unmitigated antivaccine stupid, watch the videos below. The antivaccine crank blog originally posted this video, but took it down, apparently out of embarrassment. But YouTube knows all, and I hope that as many people as possible watch these videos and read my deconstruction of them here:
Pay particular attention to the part where McCarthy tries to give a discourse on neurology. As I wrote at the time, I rather suspected (and still do) that the shock would cause poor Steve Novella to clutch his chest with crushing chest pain if he tried to watch it, as she describes neurons as the "kings" and the glial cells the "chefs," which, according to her, can "morph into Rambo" and fight off Iran and Iraq. In fact, she even describes it and acts it out. Her analogy? Allergies change the "chef cells" into "Rambo cells," and the "king cells" starve.
Painful.
I also encourage people to look at the sorts of signs that were carried by protestors at the rally that Jenny McCarthy led:
More images can be found here. You get the idea. This is not just a matter of hiring someone with misguided ideas that are kooky but harmless. This is someone who has not only been an antivaccine activist and a leader of a rally on Washington designed to get the government to "acknowledge" that vaccines cause autism.
No doubt ABC will argue that that's all in the past, except that it's not. Not really. Jenny McCarthy still shows up every year at the antivaccine quackfest known as Autism One. Before, when she showed up, she was just a washed up former Playboy Playmate, comedienne, and actress with fringe views. Now she's on a show with 3 million viewers broadcast nationally, which raises her status immensely. Before, when she showed up at the Autism One quackfest, no one outside of antivaccinationists and those of us who oppose them cared. Now, one can anticipate that her new status will allow her to raise the profile of the quackfest. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if McCarthy does the keynote for the 2014 Autism One meeting, as she has done for the past several years. Unless a ban on McCarthy appearing at such events is written into her contract, I don't see how ABC could stop McCarthy from appearing there and raising its profile by her now magnified celebrity.
Even though The View is fluffy infotainment, it's fluffy infotainment with millions of viewers, many of whom are young mothers who might be wondering whether it's safe to vaccinate or not. If Jenny McCarthy is allowed to let her antivaccine freak flag fly again in this venue, the damage could be severe, as questions of science are presented as manufactroversies in which pseudoscience is presented as science. I'd be shocked if McCarthy's antivaccine friends in Generation Rescue aren't plotting right now to give her talking points and ways to work them into conversations on the show where they don't sound out of place or forced, and it wouldn't surprise me to see her slipping such messages in every now and then. It might not even be noticeable to anyone without a deep knowledge of the antivaccine movement, at least not at first.
ABC, what have you wrought?
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@MO'B
Hmm...perhaps he was being sarcastic, but it really is hard to tell when he has such a history of being a pompous blowhard.
Of course it is proper and appropriate -- if your interest is in what this person has said in previous threads, other threads or on other sites.
If it is to implicitly threaten someone with revealing their real life identity, it is neither. In fact, it makes you a complete bully and insecure scumbag.
Denice,
That raises two questions with me:
Firstly why is it we find some genetic ancestries more thrilling than others? I'm just as guilty of this as anyone, proudly nurturing my 25% Welsh DNA and feeling vague post-colonial shame at my English ancestry. My Michigander stepson, who has always been proud of his Irish ancestry, was horrified when I told him I had traced it back to Scottish Planters (I was joking with him).
Secondly, I don't really get these DNA sequencing things. I know they track a single specific sequence, usually mDNA I believe, that is more common in certain parts of the world. But I had 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, with 2^x ancestors after x generations, so that mDNA sequence presumably only belonged to 1 in x^2 of my ancestors at any given generation.
To put it slightly differently, why is my mother's mother's mother more important than my mother's father's mother? If you see what I mean.
Do these genetic ancestry tests mean anything at all?
"@elburto Never mind. I found you. I understand better now. [REDACTED], right? My name is Jay, not “asshole” by the way."
I'm coming in late, but I gather what happened is that Dr. Gordon tried to out elburto, and Orac redacted it. Is that correct?
And I thought my opinion of Dr. Gordon couldn't sink any lower...
#503 Well no, they don't mean a lot, but if you're in an area where your particular type is common as dirt, as I do, it's kind of boring to be what you are.
Whereas when you find out you're something more exotic you feel a bit proud! ... only to do a little research and find out your "exotic" type is actually also a bit dull. Ah well.
Krebiozen,
One might well ask the same about genealogy conducted via conventional means (family trees and searching official records). In my mind they provide a mirror to your own beliefs. In my view, one's ancestry (particularly the regions or countries of origin of ones ancestors) is of only passing interest once you go past, say, 3 generations.
@Stu and @Alain The links that are inflammatory and inaccurate will be removed. Rather than leave them up for even one more minute, the entire Link Library is disabled.
@Alain #466 That is truly wonderful
@ToddW I don't really have a yacht . . . (Another lie!)
@lilady For some strange reason, I visit AOA far less often than RI. I have never seen any assaults on you there. I have no doubt you're not popular at AOA, I just haven't read those posts. And, by the way, look back and you'll see that I did apologize to elburto.
@LW elburto does not stalk me. She does relentlessly insult me though. I'm OK with that, I guess.
@Bronze Dog When I am discussing important topics, I find it helpful to know more the person with whom I'm speaking. You do that, too.
@Everybody If finding out more about someone is so incredibly offensive, why in the hell are you visiting and revisiting my benighted website?! :-)
@elburto No, I never accused you of stalking me. You made that up. And, yes, Eliza is a sore spot. Perhaps you never read what I said after that terrible incident.
@Alain Again, gaining more information about a person and their ideas is very helpful.
@Mephistopheles O'Brien It really seemed like an obvious joke to me, too. Thanks.
@Stu 404, yes. And of course you can keep the old crap in an archive. The whole point of this interchange was to show me, thank you, that the website contained inaccurate information that would be best removed. Mission accomplished.
Jay @ #476:
@elburto My apologies. There is no excuse for my mentioning your first name when you wanted it to be kept secret. Your ill will towards me and your stalking of me affected my judgement. I was wrong and again, I’m sorry. (Bolding for emphasis mine.)
Just to that in context, from Jay's post at #507:
@elburto No, I never accused you of stalking me.
Might need to start using those jk or sarcasm tags, Jay – or maybe keep all your comments in a secret journal so you can ctl+f your accusations so you don't contradict yourself in a matter of hours. Whichever suits you best.
#507, Jay
Er... I'm not looking at your website, actually.
However, if you do have information about breastfeeding up, would you please put something up to the effect that there are legitimate, good reasons not to do it for some people?
I have a good friend who was given a nasty guilt trip because she had to go back on antidepressants after she gave birth--the postpartum depression was very severe for her and she thought it better to be a good, functioning, loving mama than to try to breastfeed and be totally nonfunctional, potentially leading to danger for baby as well.
In addition, some women simply can't produce enough milk to satisfy a hungry baby.
There are legitimate reasons not to breastfeed. I haven't seen your website, but please make it reflect that fact. People with real reasons should not be made to feel bad.
@LW -
Yes, that's correct. I saw the name before Orac took it out.
@Mewens: You beat me to it. Dr. Gordon needs to work on his truthfulness issues.
@Khani: You should rather ask whether Dr. Gordon believes your friend should be arrested and imprisoned for the crime of not breast-feeding according to his standards.
@Khani @LW Your friend was given inaccurate information. There are virtually no routine medications that cannot be taken while breastfeeding. This includes most antidepressants. Khani, when I step into areas with insufficient knowledge, and I sure do, I get my head handed to me. Not breastfeeding increases the risk of both minor and serious illnesses in babies. Those risks far exceed the risk of refusing a polio vaccine. Google that one, please.
Thanks to our host Dr. [REDACTED] for protecting elburto's identity.
(ToddW, Stu, that [REDACTED] was a joke.)
@ Krebiozen:
Well, in this guy's case, It's an attempt to somehow connect to his father who was killed in a bombing long ago ( -btw- NOT by the IRA).
And also, as Khani says, he's now an exotic *Spanish*-Irish guy- which is much more interesting than being a standard white guy.
I think it can be a learning tool to illustrate how interconnected all peoples are rather than having an emphasis on *differences* or on "purity" of pedigree.
In the long run, perhaps we'll learn that we are much like interbred and diversely blended * regular* cats , not those inbred and freakishly specific creatures we observe at cat shows or those generic dogs that you find all over the world- not the fancy pants breeds.
@Alain -
There's a reason I took my 'nym from a fictional character. :) If you Google it you would just turn up a lot of fansites dedicated to the Second City television show from the '80s and biographies of the brilliant Andrea Martin, a truly gifted comedienne (unlike certain potty-mouthed bimbos who think it's funny to equate autism with fart jokes.) Though given the level of intelligence demonstrated by the antivax trolls who've washed up here *cough* Dreggles *cough*, some of them may actually believe I'm the general manager of a small-town television station who wears harlequin glasses and a lot of leopard print.
Actually, wearing leopard print is the sole thing I have in common with my Internet alter ego *hides from DW*
Mewens beat me to it!
It's a pity your words appear in black and white, for all to see, eh Jay? Bloody hell, who knew a fat, crippled, crazy, dyke pityacker could be capable of putting the wind up Doc Hollywood to such an extent?
Bloody hell Jay, your paranoia and wibbling is alarming, to say the least. I almost pity you man.
As for lilady, you've belittled and harangued her on several occasions. She's someone who actually deserves the kind of respect and fame that you have garnered, having worked hard to change the world for the better. If there was any semblance of justice and sanity in the world she'd be the well-known and respected one, not you.
You've been so determined to smear her, gaslight her (as you tried with me) and prove her wrong that you fabricated an entire work history for yourself! You really don't like women who don't fall for your "charms", do you? Seems like our failure to swallow Dr Jay's Patented Paternalistic Pablum really rattles you.
Sad really. Also, I don't care how many crocodile tears you cried over Eliza, or the children who've died because of lies you've promoted about childhood vaccinations. You're not hurting. Eliza may have dented your ego, but Jenny helped tap out the dents and buff your esteem back to a blinding shine. It's not your four week old baby who died of pertussis, your toddler didn't die from measles, they're just number to you, accidents of fate. All the weasel words of fauxpology in the world can't take away the contribution that you, and other like you, made towards the unnecessary deaths and suffering of children and their families, or tthe wretched, stomach-churning fear of those who depend on community immunity, and have to be fearful of freeloaders that you instructed to hide among the herd.
So deny, deny, divert and lie - we're not going away, we won't let you and the other science-deniers win. It's one thing to defend your little friend, quite another to attack ordinary people who disagree with her message.
Beware the Streisand Effect.
At http://drjaygordon.com/alternative/earinfections-2.html , I read:
Homeopathy? Do you charge for that?
The whole web site is full of bad advice and bad science, not just bad vaccine information*. I'd be ashamed to have my name associated with venture. I'd suggest you take a day off, and give the whole thing a good going over, and dike out about 90% or more.
*I wouldn't go so far to say that everything posted on Dr. Gordon's site is wrong, but anybody that supports homeopathy is likely to have problems distinguishing fantasy from reality in other areas.
@elburto I have not attacked anyone here. I have not called you names, impugned your reputation or accused you or anyone else here of lying. We just disagree, that's all.
So what's different now from when you promised to this EXACT THING a few months ago, Jay? Is it because I actually spent a few minutes trawling to more explicitly expose you? This crap has been on your site for years. It has been pointed out to you. Repeatedly.
What's different now, Jay?
@ Edith Prickly:
How did you know that I am not especially partial to leopard print?
HOWEVER I do observe than my indolently lounging Big Cat has quite a few leopard-like spots and rosettes so I guess it's not all bad. He also has stripes.
#507: Dr. Gordon: "@elburto No, I never accused you of stalking me. You made that up."
#517: Dr. Gordon: "@elburto I have not attacked anyone here. I have not called you names, impugned your reputation or accused you or anyone else here of lying."
Does he think we don't read his comments?
What do you mean, Johnny? It's just solid, solid stuff. Who would not keep a link like this (FOR YEARS)?
#512 Unfortunately, Dr. Jay, given your track record on vaccines, I do not trust you on breastfeeding, either.
You seem to have some incorrect information on the subject; whereas my friend was actually advised by a doctor to decrease her dosages during pregnancy, as well as to not breastfeed when she returned to her ordinary doses. Her baby has been extraordinarily healthy, though of course that's only an anecdote. The baby is also fully vaccinated, and so are those who were permitted to hold the baby when she was very young. (May I say: Ouch! That pertussis-etc. shot stung like hell.)
I surely hope you are not advising women about breastfeeding with these claims.
No one should be made to feel guilty because her body cannot supply enough nutrients, and no one should feel guilty because of an illness, either--whether a physical one or a mental one.
By the way, I also know a woman who was deathly ill when she gave birth and was not permitted to see her baby for a long time, for fear of infection. Another case in which a woman should not be made to feel guilty for not breastfeeding.
Please at least include that with your other information, rather than making blanket statements that are cruel to women who cannot breastfeed even if they very much wish to do so.
Even if you do not accept antidepressants as a valid reason not to breastfeed (and clearly other doctors do) I have given you two other instances that are also legitimate reasons not to breastfeed, neither of which have anything to do with convenience, neglect or bad parenting.
You know, proper desiccants aren't controlled substances or something.
Ah, the enlightenement never stops. Jay's general vaccine information page links us to a very informative whale page, which tells us what REALLY causes the flu!
By the way, as we can all see from my short expedition through Jay's link library, let's all re-evaluate this earlier comment of his for truthiness:
Pathetic, stupid and obvious lie.
Nope. I checked. I haven't attacked anyone here or called anyone names.
I'll be out for the weekend but I'll try to check in from time to time.
Again, thanks for helping me clean up my website.
Jay
Gawd, Jay, if I'd've known your sewer of a site was this much of a target-rich environment earlier...
http://rodale.womenshealthmag.com/autism-environmental-factors
From here, we learn that autism is caused by old parents, carpet, toxic clothing and cheap sunscreen.
No, seriously. Go look.
(The previously filtered expedition is at #464, currently)
Lest anyone think I was joking when I suggested that Khani's friend should be concerned about whether dear compassionate Dr. Gordon wants her thrown in prison for failing to breastfeed to his personal satisfaction, see here:
If it's the legal norm, you'd better satisfy it or you're facing criminal charges.
Dear compassionate Dr. Gordon then goes on to say, with no apparent recognition of the irony, "it’s impossible to misinterpret what the World Health Organization says about these artificial (chemical) feeding options:" and then he misinterprets recommendations and statistics pertaining to babies worldwide, i.e., mostly in developing countries, as directly relevant to babies in America. See, for instance, page 4 of the document which he misinterprets, where the WHO expresses concern about high risk of contamination of formula, lack of clean water, and parents unable to read instructions. Does that sound particularly relevant to Khani's friend, or indeed anyone likely to be reading Dr. Gordon's execrable website?
BD: Personally, I like to keep my info private because I'm perpetually applying for jobs, and no one likes the local Retail Robin to have opinions. Plus some of mine are a bit out there..like the radical notion that the US needs fewer states. And I find a certain amusement in the fact that no one can figure out my gender.
Jay: Finding publicly available info is not stalking. You have no idea what it actually is, do you? And I see from Stu's post, taken from your website that you have no idea what leprosy is or what its causes are. Which is a little distressing, considering that you presumably went to med school. Did you sleep through all your virology and bacteriology classes?
Jay: I have not attacked anyone here.
Lie from the king of liars. Threatening to out someone is an attack. Some of us like our anonymity, buddy.
Man oh man, that wayback machine...
Here's Jay's page on vaccinations 12 years ago.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011201123243/http://www.drjaygordon.com/li…
Breastfeeding resource my foot.
@lilady #489
"Have you seen the vicious personal attacks on me that have been posted on Age of Autism by their “groupies”? "
lilady, can you post links to these personal attacks? I'd like to see them.
From Jay’s FAQ on vaccination,
“When I started looking into vaccination information everything I found was either very pro orvery con.” — which strongly suggests Jay’s dominant ‘source’ is Google University. (It also is consistent with a point I tried to raise with Jay another time, that he’s trying to ‘out-guess’ the medical science community, which aside from being unwise isn’t really his job.)
It ends, “even though I know that this would slow the development of immunity to whooping cough which may come back any year.” — hasn't it already come back in California (and elsewhere) and his wording, to my reading, ‘overlooks’ that his practice could cause (or contribute) to it coming back (it’s worded as if it would come back from some place else).
I'm with you on that. I can be myself as Bronze Dog and be proudly atheist, skeptical, and liberal, and it won't hurt my job prospects. I live in Texas, and they don't like my kind in these parts.
I really recommend the front page link on Jay's site before he tries to memory hole that one, too.
"Dr" Gordon ("Dr" in scare quotes because of his obvious violation of all reasonable expectations of a real physician, regardless of credentials.) sez
Since you profess ignorance of the realities of homeopathy, here's a quick lay explanation that even a "Dr" should be able to understand:
The putative active ingredient in the potion you mention is one or more of the 33 (or so) species of Pulsatilla (Wikipedia can help you learn about this noxious weed).
The '6X' nomenclature signifies a dilution to 1 part per million (ppm); the 'X' means diluted to 1/10th; the number ('6' in this case) gives the number of serial dilutions. So 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10, which is 1 ppm. At this dilution, there should be little (if any) toxicity (or other effect) remaining, as is typical for homeopathic potions.
The '12C' notation is similar, except for dilution to 1/100th rather than 1/10th: '12C' is exactly equal to '24X', or a dilution to ten-to-the 24th of the original concentration. If you can recall your high-school chemistry, you can observe that Avogadro's Number is less than ten to the 24th (WordPress does not support mathematical notation, so I have to spell it out.). Thus, there is less than one molecule of putative active substance per 18 ml of 12C (or 24X) potion: a whole ounce (approx 30 ml) is likely to have exactly one putatively active molecule.
All the above presumes, without evidence, that the potion-mixer actually started with a gram-mole of the putative active ingredient per gram-mole (18 ml for water) of diluent. This simplifying assumption is likely to be false, since Hahnemann's potions were developed before Avogadro's work. Hahnemann seemed to use (IIRC) saturated solutions as his starting point. Since few compounds are soluble to 1 Molar, it's more likely that the putative active ingredient is not present in nearly the amount assumed for the calculations.
When I got home after my work day I was much more tired than usual. It took a little while to realize why that was. I have just spent almost all my time between patients with the most unpleasant group of anonymous "haters" I know.
The mistake was all mine.
Anonymity allows the kind of mess you see above. If people posting used their own names 90% of the nastiness would disappear and an intelligent discourse would take place.
If you are ashamed of your opinions and points of view, maybe you shouldn't post. You have to have courage and honesty to make your views public and "own" them in public.
I have email conversations with a few of you and would love to continue those. For the rest of you, I'm not worth your time and energy.
It's a privilege that some of us are in the position to be open about our beliefs. It's unfortunate that you don't seem to realize that not everyone shares that privilege.
Yes, Jay. Let's just pretend that you didn't treaten to reveal the identity of someone on this very thread (and pretty much did). Let's pretend that you have not been lying throughout this thread, and on other threads for the past few years. Let's pretend that many people did not clearly state their reasons for remaining anonymous on this very thread. Let's pretend that you aren't now and haven't been tone trolling to try to distract from your lying and your willfully harming children for financial gain.
If I ever have the distinct misfortune of meeting you in person (which would be completely by chance) I shall tell you my name and give you my honest opinion of you, free from obscenity filters.
And no, you are not worth our time and energy -- but you keep showing up, begging to be publicly humiliated and exposed. Sometimes it's simply a civic duty, Jay. Or maybe compassion.
Sweet dreams. May they be haunted by memories of all the children you have knowingly injured for fame and fortune.
Besides, looking at your site... 12 years of proud linking to whale? Perhaps you should have had the common decency to keep those views private.
#536 Jay, I have not been nasty to you. I am not a "hater."
I have explained why I am anonymous, and requested you to back up your assertion of the motives of people who are anonymous.
You have not provided so much as a Pew phone survey to support your statement that people are anonymous in order to be nasty.
And you appear to believe that googling for health information will yield reliable health information. That's not a good practice, as I'm sure you learned in medical school.
Dr. Jay,
with all due respect, you are being passive-aggressive. You are slamming people for using pseudonyms. If you want to take issue with people whom you believe to be overly critical, go ahead. It has nothing to do with pseudonyms.
take for example, the host of this blog. His pseudonym is just that--a fake name. What difference in style can you point to in pre-outing and post-outing? I don't detect any.
There is a slightly less "insolent" nature to articles on the other blog.
It's easy to dismiss someone as a "hater". My guess is that you don't read minds and, as such, I consider that conclusion to be speculative.
If you want to say, "My time is not worth the effort of countering the responses I get here. I expect responses that are of the tone of my own comments." Well, it's hard to argue with that.
Jay, stop playing coy with us. You came posting on this particular thread to defend Jenny McCarthy.
I have a "suspicion" that you allowed one of your office staff, (your lactation specialist, perhaps?) to post those crappy links to information about vaccines. After all, you allowed that person to give out medical advice to a mother of an infant, about delaying a vaccine...and I called you on that, last year.
To dig yourself even deeper, you accuse those who use 'nyms as having sinister motives, hiding behind our anonymity and being uncivil. You, who have never been cyberstalked, have never received mail threats and never received telephone threats or have had your child threatened, have the colossal chutzpah to stand away from the fray and comment about posters here.
Last April, you kept taunting me.."who are you lilady"? I'm your worst nightmare come true Jay...a retired public health nurse who stood at bedside watching infants and children die of vaccine-preventable diseases and as long as you keep posting here, I will remind you of your responsibilities as a health care provider to reject your ignorant "feelings" about vaccines and do right by the youngsters intrusted to your care.
If people posting used their own names 90% of the nastiness would disappear and an intelligent discourse would take place.
Dude, this WAS an intelligent discussion until you and Dreg popped in and started derailing the thread. You were the one who put your dukes up and started swinging.
I was going to say that acombination of wget, tr, grep, and sed should be able to pull all the outbound links from the site, but a bit of playing around is giving me the impression that there's too much Javascript cruft for this to work. I couldn't, for example, get it to spit out the "Recommended Reading" link to Peggy Freaking O'Mara's Vaccination: The Issue of Our Times.
Narad: I could probably whip something up on a full wget; the WP cruft is not all that bad. However, that would be too much like work... I expect to be paid for things like that, and not in a day of sloop use, either.
Snirk.
Jesus Christ, could you stick to a single name? I'm afraid my "hater" pseudonym is merely irritated by having to add yet another entry into the killfile.
Please pardon the failed blockquote and insane autolinking.
Oh, right, WP is brain-damaged. Let me try again:
wget -nv -r http://www.drjaygordon.com/ -O ‑ | tr "\t\r\n'" ' "' | grep -i -o '<a[^>]\+href[ ]*=[ \t]*"\(ht\|f\)tps\?:[^"]\+"' | sed -e 's/^.*"\([^"]\+\)".*$/\1/g'
BD: My condolences on Texas. I don't even live there, and I'm seriously fed up with the state. It's only redeeming factor is the birds.
There are two very good reasons why I use a nom de 'Net - I started using it on some other sites where I made mention of my sexual orientation. My dear spouse has asked me not to come out for the present, and I promised not to do so beforetimes. The second comes from the time I realized that posts made under my real name could have led a potentially dangerous person to one of my children.
So, Dr. Jay, stuff your 90% up alongside your head.
And yes, I do mean to insult you.
Jay,
You seem to have missed Orac’s reply to you on this (#454).
You wrote: “Anonymity allows the kind of mess you see above. If people posting used their own names 90% of the nastiness would disappear and an intelligent discourse would take place.
If you are ashamed of your opinions and points of view, maybe you shouldn’t post. You have to have courage and honesty to make your views public and “own” them in public.”
Loose thoughts, then -
The style of discussion does not make the points people make right or wrong, honest or dishonest - that applies to both "robust" discussion and more measured conversation.
When someone’s actions seem abhorrent to others, criticism will be strongly expressed - I’m not sure that’s any different in public settings, e.g. face-to-face.
Some people use aliases as a name that reflects who they are that appeals to them. It’s a bit of (geeky, nerdy) fun, rather than something about lacking conviction in what they express or security or whatever.
#536 jay gordon July 19, 2013 sez:
I post under my own name: no anonymity here. (I may be anonymous in venues where I need to be, though.) I am quite capable of intelligent discourse on a variety of subjects — I dearly love learning from it. I'm also quite capable of nastiness when the other party shows me that nastiness is appropriate (ref my comment #535, above).
Nastiness is indicated when dealing with an MD (etc) who's using his credentials to peddle quackery and to promote VPDs. Intelligent discourse is contraindicated when dealing with intellectual dishonesty.
@jay Gordon: "I have just spent almost all my time between patients with the most unpleasant group of anonymous “haters” I know."
You don't visit a lot of Internet sites, do you? Why, we haven't even accused you of eating babies at Thanksgiving, or being a white supremacist, or any of the other lovely accusations that your friends have made against people like our esteemed host.
@LW!- Don't forget the delicious puppies that our esteemed host allegedly snacks on.
I think that the comment by 'jay gordon' is a fake. The tone and style don't match, and the real JG would never post without listing his credentials.
It's probably one of his fans.
I have no problem using my name when opposing the likes of Gordon and Sears, especially as vaccination is one of the most important things I do as a pediatrician to keep children healthy. What Dr. Gordon says, does and sells strikes straight at the heart of one of the most important individual and public health interventions we have, and his lies and deceit cannot go unopposed.
I guess the only credit I'll give Sears is that he's learned to keep his stupid festering gob shut around here, unlike Gordon, who, for whatever narcissistic/masochistic reason still feels the urge to get eviscerated on this blog.
Jay is acting FIFUDOS again.
There is a difference between "finding out more about a person's ideas" and "digging for personal information about a person that can be used to threaten them."
Those who visit Jay's website are trying to do the former. Jay, when he attempted to 'out' elburto, was doing the latter.
The former is laudable, because it advances the discourse when people understand others' views in more detail and complexity.
The latter is reprehensible, because it attempts to exclude others from the discourse. "The content of your views isn't important," it says. "The fact that I can make you regret saying something I don't like, that's important."
Of course, Jay is claiming that it's really the former he's doing. "@elburto Never mind. I found you. I understand better now."
If just these sentences alone had come from someone we didn't have a long history of good reasons to distrust, it might be possible to believe that something like the following was meant:
"Never mind. I found a story you posted elsewhere about how you once got your hopes up when a doctor who painted himself as a 'brave medical maverick' offered hope for your problems, and then turned out to be just a quack. I can see how that would make you suspicious of others like me who also disagree with the medical consensus."
Now, this (completely hypothetical, I must make clear) example is still a bit presumptuous. It assumes elburto's objections to Jay stem from factors that have to do with her, and not factors that have to do with Jay, such as him saying "Oh, thanks for pointing out those links on my website that are absolute bullbrownies; I'll make sure they come down right away" and then still having them up months later. But at least it wouldn't be utterly inconsistent with Jay's claims that he went trawling trying to find elburto's real name to "understand" her.
By contrast, what are we supposed to believe Jay understands better about elburto's views if he now knows her real name? And by what process of logic are we supposed to think that revealing what he thought to be her real name* in any way assisted the discourse?
No, Jay's claims that either it's okay for him to "out" people who want their private lives to be inaccessible to malicious strangers on the Internet, or it's simply awful that anyone would actually go to look at the information on a website that he put up for people to visit is just FIFUDOS.
FIFUDOS, by the way, is an acronym I've developed to fight back against Jay's tone-trolling. It stands for Functionally Indistinguishable From Utter Dishonesty Or Stupidity.
See, if Jay does something utterly dishonest, like claiming "I never accused you of stalking me" when anyone with a search function can see him doing exactly that, and people say "Jay, that's dishonest," then Jay clutches his pearls and says "You called me dishonest! So uncivil!"
And if Jay does something stupid like taking an article that says "An estimated million lives in the developing world might be saved by breastfeeding for longer" and claiming that's the same thing as "Earlier weaning in the UK would cost a million lives", and people say "Jay, that's stupid," Jay clutches his pearls and sobs "You called me stupid! So uncivil!"
Pointing out when Jay's behavior is FIFUDOS, however, isn't calling Jay dishonest or stupid. It just notes that he's acting in exactly the way you would if you wanted everyone who encountered your behavior to think you were dishonest and stupid. It completely leaves open the possibility that Jay is an intelligent, completely honest adult who, for some very good reason that he can't share with anyone, has to tell very stupid transparent lies every time he comes here. See? No incivility in pointing out that his behavior simply emulates that of a dimwit weasel scumbag.
* Not that I think he got it right.
DW -
You gave a rather detailed description of your 'look' on another thread recently and it suggested you favour a chic, minimalist aesthetic - doesn't really mix with bold prints. :) I don't have that kind of discipline and can't resist an attention-getting colour or print (animal. abstract, bold paisley or stripes...)
@ Antaeus;
You got it, Mister.
@ Edith:
You are correct altho' I do own simple stripes, subtle paint splatter ( Calvin) and ultra-muted - look closely or you'll miss it- plaids by B.
On the other hand, in many cases commenting under one's real name isn't necessarily much less anonymous. According to howmanyofme.com, there are an estimated 150 people with the name Bill Price just in the United States, plus an additional 3296 William Prices. And of course there are likely to be a large additional number in other English-speaking countries.. Which one is commenting here? Who knows?
There are only about 80 with my name, and I've given enough clues that I could be identified and harassed so, no, I don't think I'll identify myself to the likes of Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP.
LW, I just looked on that site, and I am the only one in the US with my name. I'll just be "Stu", thankyouverymuch.
Let me know if it's cleared up; I currently have three entries, with Schecter making up the other 25%.
LW, one people of me in the states.
Alain
Goodness gracious, I have 3 posters on AoA sliming me...
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/07/jenny-mccarthy-and-journalists.html#…
Question. This is the first time I ever read more than a single paragraph of Olmsted... is his English truly this pathetic, or was he drunk for this particular one? I mean, it is eye-sore what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you bad.
Also, I love this:
"I think, because I said so, that this is true." Circular "logic" for the win!
By the way, bonus points for "vaccine-type mercury". A chemist Dan is not.
The comments are too pathetic too comment on, really. For the six comments currently up, I stopped counting at 9 lies and 17 spelling/idiom errors. Bonus points for one of the clowns actually correcting one because "we faux skeptics" like to be pedantic.
lilady, you trawl this daily? Can I have some of your Xanax?
Oh crap, I said the Olm-word in the previous post and BOOM, filtered again. I'm curious how much cut-and-paste tripe Orac actually has to junk daily.
Anyway, until that comes out of the queue, here's another gem from that thread:
Yes, people were afraid of Sarah Palin because of her looks. It had nothing to do with her being a psychopath Dominionist dumber than your average sack of hammers. At all.
Oh, and lilady, I see you have "changed your credentials"? I've only known you to claim ex-R.N. status for oh, the past half-decade or so? What did you claim before then?
(Snirk)
Hey, Yoda comments at AoA!
Proper English you have learned not!
Ah, what good fun. Such a target-rich environment.
ha ha, Stu, as has been pointed out in the comments here already (though obliquely, admittedly,) an XRN must trump an RN because it has more letters, dontcha know.
And to think that lilady pretended to get that fancy new acronym when she retired! For shame.
Yup, and I am a stalker according to one of the posters. Every time I link to a different science blogger who is covering Jenny McCarthy's The View gig...they all follow me there.
Emily Willingham at Forbes, Phil Plait at Slate and David Perry at The Atlantic all "owe" me for driving traffic, in the form of the CIA Parker and the AoA cranks, over to their blogs.
I retired eight years ago, but I am still a R.N. and still a graduate from a university, awarded a BSc-Nursing.
About Dan's video; I'm not even certain that the person in a deep shadow is Dan Olmsted. That video will never play in Peoria.
@Stu: yeah, there are only 2 of me in the US with my married name, and over 100 of me with my maiden name. I think I'll stick with just my first name, thanks Dr Jay.
@lilady: it's funny, Phil Plait went pretty hard with the accomodationist tripe during the Intersection spat a while back when it was about religion... I think a few more rounds with this particular brand of religion might sway him a bit more towards the "accommodate this!" school of thought that is now over at FtB -- climate change to begin with, and reality-magnetism taking care of the rest.
(Apologies for the de-rail, Orac -- I'll stick to Danny boy from here)
Farther up the page I mentioned "the young autistic woman who wears a tee shirt reading “Just because I don’t speak doesn’t mean I have nothing to say”. "
Suddenly it dawned on me that we could make shirts for Greg, Dr. Jay, and all the other antivaxers - "Just because I speak doesn't mean I'm worth listening to".
I also notice only one other person in the US with my name. I also have a 2nd cousin with a variant spelling of the family name, and a first cousin with the same variant spelling and first initial sometimes gets email that was intended for me.
Actually, ORD, for Greg we should make a shirt saying "Just because you're autistic and have a job doesn't mean you don't smear poop on the walls".
*Someone* posted on a lot of the science blogs, about Jenny's son possible diagnosis (Landau-Kleffner Syndrome). Now all the groupies at AoA are trying to figure out whether or not Jenny's son was misdiagnosed:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/07/pharmas-mccarthy-ism-in-full-view.ht…
The line about shame is sticking in my craw since I had thought about pre-empting it:
We're not ashamed of who we are. The problem is that we live in a world inhabited by people who have no shame and are just looking for excuses to savage innocent people. Sometimes it's because we're merely different. Sometimes it's because they resent being held to moral standards. Sometimes it's because our criticism cuts into their profit margins.
"There is a difference between “finding out more about a person’s ideas” and “digging for personal information about a person that can be used to threaten them.” Those who visit Jay’s website are trying to do the former. Jay, when he attempted to ‘out’ elburto, was doing the latter."
I continue to aver that I pose no threat to elburto. @Antaeus Feldspar, did you really think I looked up her name to threaten her? you seem pretty smart in many of your post; You really don't believe that.
And making up "Internet Etiquette" to suit where you have placed the goalpost on any given day is not very . . . scientific.
Knowing someone's story helps understand what they're saying and why they're saying it. I'm also trying to figure out how knowing a person's identity, available just by Googling them, is really "outing."
@Old Rockin' Dave I will wear that tee shirt! I promise.
Jay
Dr. Jay, what's your size? I will order you one from the print shop where my autistic nephew works (And, no, Gregger, he has never smeared feces anywhere. But I bet for you he could make an exception.).
Doc, I hope you can swallow an entire tee shirt - you're probably going to have to, to get it over your head.
@lilady - I'm a little distressed that I haven't been mentioned by name yet over at AoA - I guess I'm not a big enough thorn in their side yet....
I'd still love to get a DC-area Happy Hour together for the Orac gang....
@Jay Gordon,
No one complained about your outing elburto because you found out her identity by Googling; the complaint is that you then publicly announced it. Announcing it is outing her. Knowing it is not.
Do you really not grasp the difference between (1) finding out the true name of someone who prefers to remain pseudonymous, because you're curious about them and (2) publicly announcing the true name of someone who prefers to remain pseudonymous?
I learned Orac's true name years ago, by accident. Since he prefers to remain pseudonymous, I have never, not once, referred to him by his true name. I know another pseudonymous commenter in real life; I never call him by his true name in comments.
Do you get the picture? Regardless of the reason someone wants to be pseudonymous, honoring their wishes is just a matter of common courtesy that even a Pediatrician to the *Stars* should be able to grasp. The fact that some people have good reason to fear being outed just makes your action more reprehensible.
@ Bill Price:
Notations for exponentials can be achieved with ^ so 10^24 seems to be accepted.
LW: I don't normally pontificate on what other people know, since that's a hallmark of arrogance, paternalism and trolling. (Note comment #577.)
However, I'll go out on a limb here and say that not only does Jay Gordon know the difference, he also understood what it implied when he dropped what he believed to be elburto's name. In subsequent comments, he's too careful to avoid the fact that he didn't just Google her, but that he published her name here. He's too quick to point out technicalities in other people's posts to not notice this one.
I'm putting him on a shelf with Greg at this point; while we have our fair share of altie-woo true believers in the comments of this blog, most of them seem earnest types. Gordon and Greg? They seem to come here just to stir up comments. At least with Greg, we can't blame it – it's just following its programming, bless its code.
Jay, though – he seems to actually understand mores and codes of conduct (since he falls back on them so often). To inverse the old adage, he does have a soul to damn, and that makes him all the more worthy of our contempt. As far as I'm concerned, when he drops the "goodness gracious" act, he can come back and have a sit at our grown-up table (even if that table is rowdy and poorly mannered); until then, I'm skipping over his posts the way I do w/ Greg's.
@Mewens,
Yeah, my questions are really rhetorical. Of course he knows exactly what he did and why it angered people.
I've known a lot of doctors over the years. I've told a couple of them about Jay Gordon, Pediatrician to the *Stars*. They didn't believe me. They didn't want to believe me.
But Lawrence ( @ #579), how can you forget -they thought you were the Great Dark Lord of Journalism himself? You were much discussed.
Probably thinking that you were that fellow was the only reason they tolerated your sane comments- wait a minute! What a concept!
A place that tolerates sanity occasionally.
No, Dr. Jay, I think you used what you thought was her first name, in a completely unnecessary fashion, in order to threaten her. And part of the reason I think this is because you do it all the time. There's someone here on this blog whose real name you know; you know he prefers to go under his pseudonym; you know that he takes responsibility for his words and so all your bleating about "uuuuu, uuuuu, anonymous people use their anonymity to say things they wouldn't say under their real name!" is nonsensical applied to this person. In short, there is no reason for you to be addressing this person by his real name every chance you get except to be a jerkhole. And you make that jerkhole move, over and over and over again.
I don't? Really? What reason do I have not to believe it, Dr. Jay? Do you have a reputation for honesty? No, you have a reputation for lying, and not even lying very well; as anyone can see, on this very thread you accused elburto of stalking you and then turned around and told the lie that you never accused her of stalking you or any such thing. Do you have a reputation for integrity, of living by the same code of ethics you suggest others should follow? Hardly; you have a reputation of a double standard that shifts at lightspeed. The electrons are hardly dry on the comments you made attacking others when you shift gears and sanctimoniously bemoan how "uncivil" they are to you.
Don't tell me I "don't believe" that you did to elburto what we've seen you do before more times than I can count. Give me instead one good reason I shouldn't believe it.
I now use a pseudonym because of a very annoying incident on another blog where I commented. I made a few remarks that someone took exception to (I was civil, BTW), so he or she dug up comments that i had made elsewhere as well as information about me and posted it, with some snide remarks. The thing that pissed me off was that this coward posted it ANONYMOUSLY. Not even a pseudonym. That's the closest I came to punching out my monitor. Since I have no desire to feed chickenshits like that, I have used a pseudonym. Don't like it, Jay? Tough.
I’d still love to get a DC-area Happy Hour together for the Orac gang….
So do I but unfortunately, there's no acela express between Montreal and DC.
Alain
10²⁴ sort of works, too, although Unicode is a frank slopbucket.
Is 'Jay Gordon' (#577) the one and same as the person with the same name but who usually insists on putting his qualifications after his name?
(For the record: better he wrote as just Jay Gordon: you don't see scientists parading their qualifications like that, for example. I don't exactly add list my qualifications every time I write, eh? It’s a given all scientists have a Ph.D. (these days, at least; I wasn't always the case) and that doctors have an MD and are a member of their professional body. Besides, there’s a good rule of thumb that if someone waves their credentials too much, they’re suspect - "Dr." Nancy Malik who has written on another thread here might serve as a useful example.)
10<sup>24</sup> doesn't work? 1024
Guess not. Carry on.
@ Lawrence: I'd love to meet some of Orac's minions at a D.C. meetup. I'm getting cabin fever, what with the beastly hot weather and my latest infirmity. I need to stay close to home as I may have experienced a stress fx. of my right anterior tibia (according to one orthopedist)...or...I have an "impending" stress fx. of my right anterior tibia, per the other orthopedist. Come September, I should be good to go...in a cast or sans a cast.
How nice, that the cranks at AoA slimed me, just after I explained to Dr. Jay why I post under a 'nym.
Of course not. That would require marginal WP competence.
although Unicode is a frank slopbucket.
I can attest to that, currently building a samba + netatalk file server with a ru_RU.UTF-8 (russian) locale...
Alain
Ahhh, UTF-8, the "let's pretend Unicode does not exist" flavor of Unicode...
Beats pretending at actually having semantics.
@Stu
Indeed... and I wish UTF-16 would be implemented in linux but I'll have to wait a major upgrade and hell freezing over to see that. Currently, I need en_CA, fr_CA and ru_RU on the fileserver to cover the spoken languages here.
Alain
10²⁴
Forgot Character Palette. Kind of clumsy to use, though.
I don't know how it renders for you, but for me the glyphs aren't the same size, meaning that it could easily (I'd even argue properly) be read as 100 million by anyone used to what's left of mathematical typesetting.
@Alain: oh man, I feel for you. I have the luxury of working in .NET.
#581, Science Mom July 20, 2013
Look at the context: I was explaining some medical/scientific concepts to "Dr" Gordon, concerning some meds he was using on his patients — meds about which he had expressed his own ignorance. He gives me no reason to conjecture that he is able to understand anything outside the bare minimum of mathematics, if that.
Of course, 10^24 would work, as would 1.0E+24 (FORTRAN, C), 1e24 (Pascal, Smalltalk), @24 (Burroughs Algols) or even 10**24 (some FORTRANs). I personally prefer 10↑24, if the up-arrow character isn't corrupted by Wordpress.
But the problem lingered: if "Dr" Gordon has to have a layman explain his homeopathic meds to him, would it be fruitful to use even the simplest math notation?
#588 Narad July 21, 2013
I considered using unicode entities, but I tried that some time ago, and Wordpress corrupted too many of them out of existence. Without preview, one can't trust Wordpress with anything.
If I wanted to experiment more with Wordpress comment corruption, I would try expressing Avogadro's Constant using the Gnome 'character map' applet, like this: 6.02⨉10²³. It might work: you can see whether it did or not, but I can't until I submit it. But finding the character in the character map and getting it into the comment is a pain, even if WP doesn't mess it up.
#590 The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge July 21, 2013
#591 The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge July 21, 2013
We've known for ages that Wordpress corrupts most useful markup, like <sup>, into oblivion.
#593 Narad July 21, 2013
;-). Or, if Wordpress has corrupted the emoticon into an image, ;-).
I've never been in a gang, but if by DC-area you don't mean Maryland...
Dear "Jay Gordon", or whatever your real name is, how do we know you're not a rival doctor trying to discredit the real Dr. Gordon by posting under his name? All your talk about posting under your real name seems like a rather specific denial.
According to howmanyofme.com, there are an estimated 110 people named "Jay Gordon" in the United States. So this commenter might be perfectly non-pseudonymous and still not be Dr. Jay Gordon, Pediatrician to the *Stars*. Which is why it is so stupid to complain about people commenting pseudonymously.
@Johnny - I'm pretty sure DC-area includes Maryland.....downtown Silver Spring and Rockville are pretty nice nowadays
Alain, peut etre dans le futur nous pouvons nous recontrer a Montreal. C'est rare que je visite la bas, mais c'est possible. J'aimerais bien ca......(apologies for not having access to a french keyboard)
Frankly, given Jay's record of FIFUDOS behavior, my guess for the comment credited to just "jay gordon" is that it really is Dr. Jay, but he wants plausible deniability.
@ Agashem,
Sure, I'd be happy to meet you. You have my email?
Alain
Everything you say is true - but DC is 30 miles away from here, and Silver Spring and Rockville, while nice areas, are 40 or so.
@Johnny - ah, Baltimore is nice too....not to mention spots in Northern VA....
@Bill Price I don't know much about homeopathy except that it makes no sense to those of trained in Western medicine.
@LW My favorite other Jay Gordon is the lead singer for the band "Orgy." I met him once. He's a foot taller than I am and considerably wealthier.
@all "jay gordon" was typed with laziness about capital letters.
@lilady I am truly sorry that AOA denizens slimed you. That behavior is inexcusable.
@TBruce ORAC and others have explained well why people here use pseudonyms. The heat involved in vaccine discussions apparently leads not just to intemperate speech but also to intemperate behavior.
By the way, the directors of the programs in the all four hospitals where I practice have been contacted by people who do not agree with me and think I should not be able to continue seeing patients at these hospitals. They have let me know about it. It has adversely affected my relationships with these hospitals although I continue to practice at each of them. I still refuse to use a pseudonym.
@Dr. Jay - given that you give horrible medical advice, it is not in a hospital's best interest to be associated with you. I, of course, would never complain directly - as it is that type of behavior that the anti-vax folks love, but a simple search would give a hospital administrator all the information that he or she would need to know to make a rational decision about associating with a Doctor that knowingly endangers his patients.
Dr Gordon (if this is indeed the real Dr Gordon) says
Yet, not knowing much about it doesn't stop Dr. Gordon from recommending it to his patients. These are what can reasonably be called Dr. Gordon's own words, not from articles he has linked to.
drjaygordon.com/faq/traveling/firstaidkit
(you know where)/faq/medicalconcerns/earinfections
/alternative/herbal-treatment-of-depression.html
How about a little different woo?
/alternative/natural-treatments-for-colds.html
Colloidal Silver? Not as silly as homeopathy, sure, but these examples, combined with the "good" Doctor's anti-vax ideas, expressed in his own words on his own website, should make any competent hospital administrator consider pulling his privileges.
Uh-oh, someone mentioned homeopathy. Now how do I not look like a total dunce to the science-literate, but still avoid from condemning snake-oil claptrap I have recommended for over a decade on my site?
I know! I'll just use more weasel-words! Nobody will ever notice!
To wit:
Ten minutes of Google research should tell you all you need to know about homeopathy, Jay. It's a load of fetid dingo's kidneys. Since you love to Google for things, I strongly suspect you've known this for years and are again disseminating to make sure none of your *STARS* withdraw their *INDIGO SNOWFLAKES* from your practice.
In essence, again, lying for money.
What you do actively endangers children. You know this. The only reason you keep on lying is because it makes you money. Notifying hospitals you practice at that you do this is a civic duty (full disclosure: I did NOT contact anyone you do business with). Answer me this, Jay. Would you or would you not notify a hospital if you knew a doctor practicing there was openly advocating bloodletting and lead supplements?
@Johnny: THANK you for doing the trawling on that one. After the expedition I did a few days ago I just did not have the mental fortitude.
@Jay Gordon (No initials):
It took the hospitals this long to figure out that they should be concerned about Dr. Gordon? I feel lucky that I don't live anywhere near California, as otherwise I'd have to try to find out which four hospitals those are so I wouldn't accidentally go to any of them. I would worry that an antivax physician is unlikely to vaccinate himself or his staff against the flu and other diseases that would be very risky to vulnerable people in the hospital.
Oh, for Dr. Gordon's information and for any lurkers, homeopathy is Western. There is no non-Western culture that ever practiced homeopathy.
I did do a little bit more, and watched the trailer for Jay's "105 minute multi-chapter streaming webinar", which he still charges -- wait, $8.99? I thought it was just $5? -- for...
Hang on. Seriously Jay? You charge concerned parents over a full hour's worth of work to lie to them for an hour and a half?
Saying things like
I couldn't make it far past that. "Vaccines act differently". "They create memory cells". It's so willfully stupid it hurts.
You, Jay Gordon, are a scumbag. If you dislike me saying this anonymously, pick a time and place for me to tell it to your face.
So Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, promotes colloidal silver. Why am I not surprised?
Presumably he promotes argyria as a result of colloidal silver in ignorance just as he promotes homeopathy despite admitted ignorance of it.
As previously mentioned, homeopathy is indeed "western" in origin. But that's pretty irrelevant to us aside from its role in exposing Gordon's ignorance and/or hypocrisy about the use of the word.
One important note you can pretend you didn't hear next time this comes up: Some of us consider the phrase "western medicine" to be a racist dog whistle, insulting to both Easterners and Westerners. Sure, science-based medicine may have gotten its start in one hemisphere, but who cares? There's nothing inherently "western" about it aside from that historical accident. We do science to check against cognitive biases that are universal to humans.
@Bronze Dog, yeah. I thought of mentioning the racist aspect of his words, but, well, everything about him is so loathsome that it's hard to cover it all.
Also, homeopathy makes no sense to those trained in science. Science is neither western nor eastern. And Dr. Gordon doesn't appear to be trained in science.
@Stu @ORAC
"You, Jay Gordon, are a scumbag. If you dislike me saying this anonymously, pick a time and place for me to tell it to your face."
OK, ORAC, you're waiting for a place to ban, censure or warn a threatening poster? If this isn't what you're looking for, you'll never find it.
Stu, calm down.
Dr. Gordon says people say things on line that they wouldn't say in person. Stu offers to say the same thing in person. Dr. Gordon demands that he be banned.
@ Dr Jay:
Why would be Orac ban Stu?
While he may indeed be speaking in a rough manner, he refers to "saying" and "tell"-ing it to you, not threatening violence or trying to get you into trouble. He says that he'll tell you so in person so you can see who he is.
Calm down, Dr.
Jay, how disingenuous of you to be engaging us in a dialogue about vaccines where you were accused us who use 'nyms to post, of evil nefarious motives, while feeding your ego as the "go-to guy/expert" on a local radio station.
Too, too bad that you now face censure from the hospitals where you admit your young patients. No Jay, I did not notify those hospitals, but I am delighted that your anti-vaccine, anti-science activities have (finally), been noticed by hospital administrators.
You've overplayed your hand with this latest PR coup...time now, to face the consequences.
Jay Gordon (the doctor who tries to 'out-guess' medicine science research) -
You haven't replied to earlier comments of substance, yet prefer to try poke people about pseudonyms, language, etc. - your crying wolf isn't looking good.
"There are children born with genetic predispositions to certain illnesses and medical conditions and vaccines may be one of the triggers causing overt disease. Those who claim 100% certainty of these causal links are just as unscientific as those who claim 100% certainty that there is no link at all." - a lousy argument. In practice for many (most?) of these conditions they're still better to get vaccines. You’re trying to "out-guess" medicine science based on Google University by the looks of it (like my noting that you claim about the nature and balance of vaccine evidence reveals that you're overly relying on Google University earlier).
"The original varicella vaccine was available for special use…" So? There's a difference between medicines people opt in to use and those approved as part of large public health programs.
"I’ll update my current thoughts and practices regarding vaccination as soon as I have time." - if the website is out of date and has erroneous material the simpler, quicker and more honest thing to do is simply to take the website (or offending pages) down until you have time to fix it (or take it down permanently if you haven't). It's what responsible medical services do.
"knowing someone’s story makes it easier to understand why they act and feel the way they do" - this is an excuse. If it's about science it's never about the person writing the material. As a point of reference, consider that peer review of scientific material is most often anonymous.
"I’m also trying to figure out how knowing a person’s identity, available just by Googling them, is really “outing.”" - you don't seem to understand the idea of respecting other people's wishes: if people write using a pseudonym, that's their wish - accept it. See LW @ #580 for more in a similar vein.
Ah, my bad Mr. Price. As we can see, you are correct by his own admission...
Note the use of "Western medicine", clearly a pejorative. But I would like to ask Dr. Gordon why on Earth he would even dabble in homeopathy if he is so ignorant of it? Perhaps more of his desire to cater to his 'more money than brains' clientèle? Proffer himself as an 'enlightened' and avant garde physician?
While I don't particularly approve of this approach and wouldn't use it myself in part because of what anti-vaxxers (the people you constantly defend and cater to) do to those who they view as enemies in retaliation for a perceived attack. In your case however, I don't think this is entirely inappropriate as you are a treating physician and you clearly don't practise ethically.
As someone who works in the public service, I've usually found the people who insist on putting their letters after their name in every single communications are utter twerps. The ones who insist on people using their titles in front of their name if they're something other than "Mr/Mrs/Ms" are even bigger twerps.
At least homeopathy is relatively harmless -- since it's just water or sugar pills it won't do any harm unless you use it instead of real medicine. But he recommends colloidal silver for colds!
I can't put it any better than Rosemary Jacobs (victim of a doctor who recommended colloidal silver for colds) put it:
Of course, she was talking about naturopaths. She didn't realize that there was at least one person with an MD who likewise didn't know as much about medicine as she, an educated consumer, does.
I wonder if any of Dr. Gordon's unfortunate patients have started to look a little blue ... oh, well, it usually takes some years for the effects to become visible so perhaps they won't realize the problem until they are permanently disfigured.
"As someone who works in the public service, I’ve usually found the people who insist on putting their letters after their name in every single communications are utter twerps. The ones who insist on people using their titles in front of their name if they’re something other than “Mr/Mrs/Ms” are even bigger twerps."
You mean something like this?
R.N.,BSc-Nursing, Public Health Nurse/Clinician-Epidemiologist (retired)
Homeopathy and colloidal silver? I would have bet money that my opinion of Dr. Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP couldn't get any lower—good thing I couldn't find any takers.
@Curious Lurker:
What part of "people who insist on putting their letters after their name in every single communications" did you not understand?
Well Curious, that is the sort of thing I was talking about. However, I suspect you are making a clumsy indirect attack at lilady. By citihg her experience as a nurse and epidemiologist, lilady is pointing out why this is such an important issue to her. There may be a touch of "right, let's talk qualifications and see whose are more impressive" but the difference is, lilady doesn't do it just about every time she comments.
Right, but that "works" because the glyphs for superscripts '2' and '3' (and '1', in that order) are insanely* in different blocks from '4' through '9' and are basically guaranteed to render in typographically incompatible fashion. How the characters are inserted doesn't matter.
Oh, and the Unicode logo is jaw-droppingly bad design, which I suppose is at least one bit of consistency to be had from the effort.
* I know what the rationalization for this is; it's the pretense that Unicode itself is anything other than a truly giant mess built atop a fairly small mess that rankles me. L-rd knows how people would get along without a code point for a roman superscript 'n'. (And make no mistake; once you start specifying "DOUBLE-STRUCK ITALIC SMALL I," the jig is up.)
Science Mom, http://justthevax.blogspot.com/,
July 21, 2013:
That's Bill, to you, young lady ;-) and to all readers on the side of health vs the antivaxxers.
#633 Christine (the public servant Christine),July 22, 2013
In particular, lilady does not use her qualifications and credentials as part of her identity. She drags them out only when challenged. This can be contrasted with "Dr" Gordon, {alphabet soup}'s identity.
Gordon seems to have dropped the alphabet soup, since he's been called on it. Let's see if that lasts until his next visit.
We can also compare Gordon's use of his alphabet soup with others, like Chris Hinkle: an easy way to make the comparison is to enter each name in the search box at the top of this page (or any other on this blog). A "Jay Gordon" search yields a bunch of results; a "Chris Hinkle" search yields none. Gordon doesn't need to use his credentials – we are well aware of who he is, and a visitor will likely recognize his name from his celebrity connections. Chris Hinkle doesn't post enough (unfortunately) to be immediately recognized by the all the commentariat and lurkers, and likely would not be known at all to the casual visitor. Hinkle's credentials are useful, even though they're not strictly necessary.
LW - "At least homeopathy is relatively harmless" - as long as it's not delaying sound treatment and, with that, letting the condition advance, perhaps making it harder or impossible to treat.
One possible example in NZ was a case I covered of an iridologist offer ‘natural’ treatment for a (massive) scalp cancer. Although I can't formally confirm that treatment included (but was not limited to) homeopathic remedies, they showed a box of meds the patient was offered in a TV documentary - some looked to me to be local homeopathic remedies judging by the colour & design of the labels.
(The patient eventually got surgery, including reconstructing part of the skull, but died some time later.)
So now we have another example of Jay Gordon FIFUDOS: he recommends homeopathy on his website and then claims, here, that he doesn't know much about homeopathy.
I've been wondering, if we do start an RI wiki, would it be a good idea to have a special page for subjects like "Examples of Jay Gordon getting caught telling blatant untruths"? It might or might not, depending perhaps on whether the wiki is "a wiki for RI commenters" or "a wiki for science-based commenters who happen to be primarily RI readers".
Even if it's decided not to be a good idea for the wiki, I think maybe it's time to catalog all the many, many times we have caught Jay in what can only be utter stupidity, an utter disregard for the truth, or an utter commitment to simulate the previous two. This thread alone provides plenty of examples, but we'd be remiss if we didn't include examples like Jay citing the Brady Bunch as evidence for the harmlessness of diseases, and claiming that measles is actually symbiotic with humans.
If we assembled links to all these gems and posted them all in a comment, that comment would of course take time to clear moderation, but once it did, it would be easy one-stop shopping, every time Jay comes here and tries to pretend that his reputation should give him the benefit of the doubt.
@Antaeus Feldspar, I've thought of making a "Best of Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP" as well.
@Grant, don't forget the ghastly case of Penelope Dingle, who died of untreated colon cancer under the "care" of a homeopath.
"Royal Baby Fever Sweeps Britain", luckily I seem to have been vaccinated against it.
Dr. Jay's Twitter handle is @JayGordonMDFAAP, pretentious, moi?
LOL, Jay Gordon, if I were ever to meet you, I would break into my best Burgess Meredith
@ Bill Price, #635--There's still not much out there, but you definitely won't find much out there on me as "Hinkle" when my last name is "Hickie" (although usually I get lost under searches for the more common spelling "Hickey"). When I put my alphabet credentials after my name, it's to make sure people know I'm opposing Gordon as a pediatrician and as a scientist, since, given his views and general sliminess on vaccines and woo, I don't think he passes muster as either.
@LW - dinna forget Health Canukistan has appwooved homeoquackish vaccines as safe and effective:
(emphasis mine)
Let's not forget malaria - in 2000 the EU reported over 15000 cases of malaria in returning travelers. How many ended up like this (from dcscience.net):
Speaking of The Greatest Hits of Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, here we have Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, on June 19, 2009:
And here we are more than four years later and he finally got around to taking down some of his links to whale.to.
By the way, that page is a treasure trove of Gordonisms.
@sheepmilker - ya me too, immune prolly because of the dusty old bint on our money. Squirt the whelp out and be done with it.
@ Curious Lurker: I always use lilady as my 'nym and only add my credentials, when they serve a purpose. That's the difference between me, the other nurses and physicians who post here and the pompous a$$ Jay Gordon.
LW,
I'm not picking on you particularly; this is something I've meant to raise for a while.
To be fair, you would have to consume thousands of times as much colloidal silver as most CAM proponents recommend to develop argyria. All the cases of argyria I have seen cited are either:
1. People who were prescribed intranasal silver salts (usually silver nitrate) at high concentrations, such as Rosemary Jacobs, or
2. People who tried to make their own colloidal silver by electrolysis using either tap water or salt water instead of the distilled water recommended, thus actually making solutions of silver salts with concentrations in the hundreds or even thousands of parts per million, and then drank literally gallons of the stuff, such as Stan Jones, the so-called 'blue senator'.
The colloidal silver still on sale in my local health food store* is (or claims to be) 5 ppm or 5 mg/L and the recommended dose is one 5 ml teaspoonful per day. This is within the EPA safe limits for chronic intake in drinking water**, and I think this is highly unlikely to cause argyria. I think it is highly unlikely to stimulate anyone's immune system or do anything else beneficial either, of course.
I entirely agree that taking colloidal or any other type of silver internally (topical silver is useful as an antiseptic, and as a treatment for burns) involves risk without benefit and should be firmly discouraged.
However, I find the claim that colloidal silver taken in the doses normally suggested causes argyria uncomfortably close to the claims of antivaxxers that mercury in vaccines causes neurological damage. As we all know, dose matters, and I think we skeptics should be consistent about this.
* Illegally I suspect, since I believe the EU has banned its sale, though the store owner simply shrugged when I mentioned it to him.
** The EPA chronic oral exposure reference dose for silver is 0.005 mg/kg, or 350 µg/day for a 70 kg person. A 5 ml teaspoonful of 5 mg/l (5 µg/ml) silver solution/suspension contains 25 µg of silver, assuming that the bottle actually contains what it says on the label, which is another issue.
Stu: Just getting around to many of these comments from yesterday. That really does sound threatening even to me me, and, as much as it pains me to agree with Dr. Jay, in this case you really do need to take it down a few notches.
This is an interesting comment. It's true, but what I am trying to understand is, why the restriction "to those trained in Western medicine"? Are there some people out there for whom homeopathy DOES make sense? I suppose so. For example, I guess homeopathy _could_ make sense to those who believe in magic, assuming that the concept of "magic" makes any sense at all.
For whom else might homeopathy make sense?
Orac: no problem. The "to your face" only referred to Jay's whining about anonimity, but out of context I can't say I disagree.
@Jay Gordon
Uh, Jay? As a physician, isn't it your responsibility to know at least a little about what you prescribe for your patients? You know, like indications, contraindications, dosage amounts, etc. Of course, for homeopathy, you ought to know that it is more often than not nothing more than water, alcohol or lactose. Then again, there are things like Hyland's Teething Tablets (you mentioned you like teething tablets), which had measurable (and variable) amounts of deadly nightshade (belladonna) in them.
And regarding breast feeding, Jay, I've seen comments from you shaming mothers who do not breast feed, even if they are unable due to physical or medical reasons.
Finally, Jay, if you do not like the type of responses you are getting, you may want to take a good bit of time for some introspection to see what you are doing that may engender such replies. You get the treatment that you earn. When you are caught misbehaving, own up, apologize and change. Don't respond by whining about civility or tone; don't try to distract by changing the subject; and don't lie about things that you have said or done, particularly when there is evidence (in the very same thread!) to the contrary.
Now, about Jenny McCarthy. Do you still contend that she is not "anti-vaccine"? Give us some evidence that that moniker does not apply to her.
@Jay Gordon
Uh, Jay? As a physician, isn't it your responsibility to know at least a little about what you prescribe for your patients? You know, like indications, contraindications, dosage amounts, etc. Of course, for homeopathy, you ought to know that it is more often than not nothing more than water, alcohol or lactose. Then again, there are things like Hyland's Teething Tablets (you mentioned you like teething tablets), which had measurable (and variable) amounts of deadly nightshade (belladonna) in them.
And regarding breast feeding, Jay, I've seen comments from you shaming mothers who do not breast feed, even if they are unable due to physical or medical reasons.
Finally, Jay, if you do not like the type of responses you are getting, you may want to take a good bit of time for some introspection to see what you are doing that may engender such replies. You get the treatment that you earn. When you are caught misbehaving, own up, apologize and change. Don't respond by whining about civility or tone; don't try to distract by changing the subject; and don't lie about things that you have said or done, particularly when there is evidence (in the very same thread!) to the contrary.
Now, about Jenny McCarthy. Do you still contend that she is not "anti-vaccine"? Give us some evidence that that moniker does not apply to her.
Yay, glitchy comment system! Apologies for the double post, everyone.
Yay, glitchy comment system! Apologies for the double post, everyone.
Kate sez: "god I love Barbara walters, the queen of journalism"
But... Howard Stern is the KING of all media!
That was funny, Todd.
1) Jay taught Jenny everything she knows about vaccination
2) Jay is not anti-vaccine (just ask him)
3) Therefore, she cannot be anti-vaccine
And Spock beat the computer at chess.
Dr. Jay, I've worked as a website editor for numerous professional entities, in both the medical and legal fields, and they would be appalled to let such ludicrous, misleading, and dubious links sit up on their company sites for a week, let alone months. It's incredibly disingenous to act as if this was a mere housekeeping oversight. (Not that removing a link should require any in-depth IT knowledge to begin with, let alone checking where it leads in the first place.)
I have much more faith in the consistent pseudonymous testimony of the commenters here than someone who speaks so disingenously under his own name.
It's also quite disingenous to pretend that outing someone on the internet, particularly a woman, has no threatening subtext. Of course, since you are not web-savvy enough to manage your website appropriately, perhaps you are ignorant as to the long history of threats of this nature. It still speaks poorly of you.
At the risk of offending our esteemed host, I'm forced to absolutely disagree about Stu's "threat" directed at Dr. Jay. Jay complains (correctly) that the anonymity of the internet leads people to say things that they wouldn't say to your face—fair enough.
Actually, my experience on the internet is that it's a bizarre combination of macho swagger and pearl-clutching pusillanimity. This is most common among right-wing nut-jobs: They'll dish out the most egregious abuse to anyone else, but if anyone calls them on it, or even quotes what they say back at them, they retire to their fainting couches—"Help, help, I'm being oppressed!"
Dr. Jay simply complained about people saying things about him they wouldn't say in person. All Stu did was say: "Give me a time and place and I'll say the same thing to your face." To call this a threat is really torturing the meaning of the word. First of all, all Jay has to do to avoid this fate-worse-than-death is not offer the time or the place.
Secondly, offering you the opportunity to hear something you've already read is a "threat"? Seriously, there have been plenty of threats offered on this forum, but they've all come from antivaxers and woomeisters. Some of them have been carried out. To put Stu's offer to tell Dr. Jay what he thought of him in person in the same category as the threats to people's livelihoods and careers that have been made here is just ridiculous. What would be the worst effect on Dr. Jay of hearing Stu's opinion in person rather than in writing? A hit to his self-esteem? Doesn't seem to be possible.
In any case, I agree the internet could profit from a little less bravado and empty abuse, but it could also profit from a little less faux pearl-clutching as well.
Of course, since this is my blog, my opinion with respect to such issues is the only one that matters. :-)
I also think you miss the point by focusing on the exact words rather than the big picture such a post conveys. Let's just put it this way. I'm pretty inured to threats on the Internet, but even I was a little disturbed by Stu's post.
Of course your opinion prevails, oh great and beneficent overlord! Please don't send the Lizard People after me!
Apologies; I guess Dr. Jay's smarminess annoyed me more than usual that time.
Reverend: like I said, if you took the comment in context (like you did), it was pretty obvious it was just a sneer at the pseudonym hissy-fit Jay threw; but I should have been MUCH more careful about including that context in the comment itself. On its face, without context, it's very much in the "whoa, slow down, tiger!" category. Even I thought so when Orac quoted it.
I'm not going to apologize for it, because in context it is obvious that it was not threatening at all; but I will exercise a lot more caution when I get salty to ensure context and intent are obvious.
And of course, the blinkenlights are always right.
@ Stu and The Very Reverend: Just watch your remarks before Dr. Jay puts you "on probation" on Orac's blog.
It's kinda cramped here in the penalty box. Am I off "probation" now, Orac?
Toronto Public Health is speaking out against the hiring of Jennypoo
@Krebiozen, I do see what you are saying but ...
Dr. Gordon is a pediatrician, so I'd guess the nostrums he recommends would be given to children rather smaller than 70kg.
You allude to the question of the actual contents of over-the-counter colloidal silver preparations. I'd hope the sellers are just fraudsters selling very expensive tapwater, but they might not be, and quality control on "alternative medicine" is pretty bad. Remember how Gary Null was poisoned by his own product?
Dr. Gordon recommends colloidal silver to "boost your body's immune system". or your child's body's immune system, I guess. And if you boost it with a little silver, and still get colds or ear infections? Boost it some more, right? After all, silver is safe and natural and certainly not produced by those wicked Big Pharma types.
Speaking of Big Pharma, you never know when they're going to shut down the people who make competitive products like colloidal silver. Fortunately you can get the equipment and make it yourself ....
@ al kimeea: I'm impressed that you scooped the Dachel bot and her Media Updates. I've posted a comment there.
@Lilady - did my bit for public health over at the St. Louis editorial page.....
*koff*I'mAdopted*koff* The best part, of course, of the retorts to this observation are WetNurseMilkBankYouPoorThing.
Really, I don't see what Jay is fussing about. I've learned to develop a fairly thick skin around the 'net,' though I use a neutral nym to make it harder to track me. He'd be laughed off Pharyngula- in fact, I'd pay to see him up against the commentators there.
LW,
I see your point too, my concern is that telling people they shouldn't take colloidal silver because it will turn them blue is likely to alienate those who have been taking it for years, and who have not (yet) turned blue. They are then more likely to dismiss anything else we tell them. I think we should just point out it has no known benefits, and that large doses over a long period can cause argyria, leaving the hyperbole to the scamsters.
@Krebiozen,
I agree. Taking colloidal silver is like acupuncture: no benefit and a known serious risk. Some people may use acupuncture for years and never have a problem; others end up with a needle in a lung ... or in their heart. Some people take modest amounts of silver and never have a problem; others think they're taking modest amounts, but turn blue anyway.
@ Lawrence: I just got to view your comments on the St. Lawrence editorial page...top notch job...in spite of the bot and her cronies spamming. Too bad "I don't do Facebook"...I would have posted there as well. :-)
Al Kimea has already mentioned that Toronto Public Health has weighed in against Ms. McCarthy. In Toronto's own paper, The Star, the comments are overwhelmingly against her. Nice to see reason winning over celebrity!
OMFG!
Today at TMR, Ms Prof,( who is supposed to be a psychologist) compares Jenny & the antivaxxers to Harry Potter & Cie , as both battle Dark Lords etc...
The article is not short, unlike how her grasp of reality comes up.
Thanks sheepmilker, for the link to The Toronto Star blog...I've posted a few comments there.
3-2-1 Waiting for Bob G. to critique my comments.
Giggles @ 346:
I'm late answering you, partly because autism is not in my field of practice and partly because several other commenters have ably dealt with it already. However, here's a recent article from the Toronto Star describing the lack of support that adults with autism experience:
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2013/02/05/groundbreaking_adult_aut…
I was also searching for a study that I recall that found the rate of retrospectively diagnosed ASD in British adults is about 1 /100, close to the rate seen in children. When I find it, I will provide the cite.
As far as the severely affected individuals, I expect that they are cared for by relatives or in small institutional settings like group homes. Probably some are dead, since severely disabled people may be at higher risk for life-threatening complications such as aspiration, seizures and infections.
Denice Walter,
so, she's saying they live in a fantasy world?
TBruce, is it this one?
http://www.hscic.gov.uk/pubs/autism11
Summary
This report presents a new estimate of the prevalence of autism among adults aged 18 years and over. This was derived using data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS 2007) in combination with data from a new study of the prevalence of autism among adults with learning disabilities, who are a key group to study because they could not take part in the APMS 2007 and have been found to have an increased risk of autism.
The study was based on adults with learning disabilities living in private households and communal care establishments in Leicestershire, Lambeth and Sheffield. Whilst the study comprised a relatively small sample with limited geographical coverage and did not include the institutional population, it did include two non-mutually exclusive populations (people in communal care establishments and people with learning disabilities) which were not covered by the APMS 2007.
The study demonstrates that autism is common among people with a learning disability and, in taking these into account, at 1.1 per cent nationally is slightly higher than the previous estimate of 1.0 per cent in the APMS 2007. Sensitivity analysis showed that the estimates for national prevalence produced by this study were relatively insensitive to inaccuracies caused by the limitations.
Discussed here
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2012/02/01/estimating-the-prevalence-o…
And for those interested, an article at the Simons FoundationAutism Research Initiative (SFARI) on autism prevalence research around the globe:
https://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2011/researchers-track-down-aut…
Think it's Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Adults in the Community in England by Brugha et al, found at
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=211276
@Liz Ditz:
Thanks, that's the one.
@PGP:
Oh dear, that would be brutal -- especially if he were to start in the Thunderdome. I picture two well-polished, empty loafers with wisps of smoke slowly wafting towards the charred ceiling. If this thread made Jay reach for a woobie...
The Toronto Sun, yesterday ran an editorial portraying the issue as one of free speech not public health.
@al kimeea
Some good comments there. Was going to respond to one person, but then noticed that the comments are closed.
let me see if i am understanding your view:
creating safe vaccines is somehow a stupid idea?
"unmitigated anti-vaccine stupid?" so - no one is ever supposed to even ask what goes into a vaccine ever or they get called stupid by you?
a pre-test like a blood test to see if the vaccine will cause harm is a bad idea?
i think i understand your argument: human safety is a bad idea and anyone advocating medical and health rights is stupid.
am i understanding you correctly?
No, you didn't understand.
Mr. Michel has a dangerous agenda. From an anti-vax campaign Facebook page last month, he posted:
Dainis W. Michel: parental rights are parental rights. period. there is nothing more to discuss. please stop the debate. the debate is over. for better or for worse, outbreaks or not, these are parental rights. we can talk about the consequences of particular parental choices, however, parents have the right to vaccinate or not vaccinate, based on their own understanding of the facts. children have a right to be raised by their parents -- and they are in the care of their parents -- and vaccination is a choice made by parents. period.
August 25 at 3:15pm
Mr. Michel has also set up a website to promote urine therapy and believes in the "30 Bananas A Day" diet.
#686 You can find out what's in vaccines pretty easily. It's not a big secret. You can find out how safe vaccines are pretty easily, too, with exact percentages of side-effects detailed in the CDC's pink book, by number.
#687 Children have rights too, and not dying of measles-caused encephalitis should be one of them.
Mr. Michel: "a pre-test like a blood test to see if the vaccine will cause harm is a bad idea?"
What test? Please provide a citation that there is even such a test or it is feasible.
Strawman, safer and more effective vaccines are constantly in the research pipeline. But I suspect your idea of "safer" is either just a talking point or you expect rosewater and sunshine in a syringe.
And in a single sentence you provided a glaring example of the unmitigated anti-vaccine stupid. We know every last excipient in vaccines. Why they're even hiding right out in the open all over the interwebz.
Do tell me braintrust, what is this blood test supposed to find? What are you looking for in the first place? Do you think it's like a CSI episode where you drop a blood sample into a magic machine and tells you everything?
No you don't understand the argument because you have done nothing but talk out of your arse and set up strawman arguments. What medical and health rights don't you have? Don't want to vaccinate your children? Don't but you also don't get the benefits of fully participating in society and yes, we will think you are stupid for it. But you want everything don't you? Typical self-entitled prat.
am i understanding you correctly?