The anti-vaxxer talking-heads are angry! And they're
feeling so, so hurt, because they are no longer able to promote their
science denialism without getting
pushback from the sane in this world who, you know, want kids to be free from preventable deadly diseases.
Speaking of diseases, I was home today recovering from the flu, and cruising the internet, where I found this hilarious story by Joanna Rothkopf on Salon, about an anti-vaxxer, Stephanie Messenger, who's delightful children's book, "Melanie's Marvelous Measles" (that aims to “educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully.") is relentlessly getting trolled on Amazon. After laughing myself into a coughing fit reading some of the book's snarky troll comments, I began to wonder if other anti-vaxxers were getting the same treatment online.
Below the deadly orange kos retrovirus for more.
I first checked the Facebook page of Dr. Jack Wolfson, the Paradise Valley, AZ doctor who practices the make-believe specialty of "integrative cardiology" that Medicare and Medicaid won't pay for. Wolfson became an instant media darling of sorts when journalists decided to put him on tee vee to provide "balance" to the story that vaccines save lives. Because the integrative cardiologist thinks immunizations are toxic and only "bad moms" would do such a horrible thing. So I typed "Dr. Jack Wolfson" into the Facebook search tab and up popped a page:
This little parody page went from 422 to 454 likes in the short amount of time I was on it. Of course Dr. Wolfson's outnumbered true believers took to the comment lines to express their indignation ("your a asshole fake account"). Thankfully one of the minions posted a link to the "official" page of "The Drs. Wolfson." So off to see how The Drs. Wolfson are doing with their new found fame!
Well, well, it looks like fame isn't much fun for The Drs. Wolfson, who's fee fees got hurt by Elizabeth Cohen and CNN.
This woman from #CNN (elizabeth cohen) interviewed me last week. A short sound bite was used to make me out to be insincere and uncaring. Media lesson learned, don't do anything that is taped.
She asked me the same question 20 different times. Every time but the last I started off, "I hate to see any child suffer." I especially hate to see a #vaccine injured child.
CNN won that battle but will not win the war.
Those of us fighting for our children are only doing this because we care about all children and the rights of parents to choose.
I am a very loving father, physician, and human being and seeing any sick child can bring tears to my eyes. I am doing this for the children.
Yep, prefacing, "It's not my responsibility to be protecting their child," with "I hate to see any child suffer," makes it all better! Just like saying, "You have nice shoes. The rest of your outfit is ugly and makes you look fat." Perfectly acceptable. And don't forget, he cares about all the children so much, that he and his minions offer up The Brady Bunch episode where the kids get the measles, as an example of how to live through it with humor!
Along with declaring war on CNN, The Drs. Wolfson also cancelled on Fox's Megyn Kelly, because:
When I first agreed to an interview on Fox, I thought it would be "Fair and Balanced." In reviewing the video from the show host, I have decided to cancel my appearance.
Let us keep fighting for the rights of parents to choose whether or not to vaccinate.
I don't know how The Drs. Wolfson are going to win this war if they first fell for the Fox-News-is-fair-and-balanced-propaganda, and then surrendered to Megyn Kelly before she could even fire off a question.
And while The Drs. Wolfson post several links a day about Autism! Thimerosal! Aluminum! Natural immunity! Not a peep about The Arizona Osteopathic Medical Board investigation that was just opened up on Jack. But that's okay, the good trolls are on top of that! (And the minions defending their hero are even funnier)
Over on
yelp the avatars of internet truth, have crashed Dr. Jack's rating down to 1.5 stars. Some of the "reviews."
"Dr. Jack Wolfson promotes the flawed ideology and belief that children should not be vaccinated. This man willfully ignores scientific proof commonly accepted the medical community. You can see more information here: cnn.com/2015/02/05/healt…"
Dr. Wolfson also currently being investigated by the State of Arizona and any continued business by this man should be seriously thought about. Does a person who really believes that vaccines are dangerous should trusted with your health and wellbeing?"--John A., Phoenix, AZ
"Total POS, say's it's "not my responsibility to protect your child" to parents of a child with leukemia in response to his refusal to vaccinate his own children. So here's the question, would you go to a doc who is exposed to unvaccinated children, one who could easily come to work and infect you with a disease he picked up from his kids at a time where your health is vulnerable?"--Kdiddle D., Oakland, CA
"This is man that needs his license revoked. I wouldn't see him to put a bandage on a paper cut, let alone care for my heart problems."--A.G., Philadelphia, PA
Moving on, I decided to check out the Facebook page of VaxTruth.org, since so many fans of The Drs. Wolfson were equally miffed about VaxTruth founder, Marcella Piper-Terry's treatment by the media, and boy is she angry too! January 29 seems to have been a particularly trying day for Marcella, bless her heart, since she posted both the "I'll get you, and you're little dog too!" rant at the beginning of the diary, and the one below on that day.
BOOM! Shakalaka!
What frustrates them so much is that they
feel logic is on their side:
As of January 30, 2015 there are 91 cases of measles reported in California, with 63% of those cases in adults over the age of 20.
Tell me again how this is the fault of "vaccine-free" children?
Because, for crying out loud, certainly unvaccinated adults were never unvaccinated children or anything!
Next, I moved on to a kindler, gentler anti-vaxxer: Dr. Robert Sears. (Not to be confused with his father, Dr. Bill Sears, who co-authored with his wife, Martha Sears, R.N., "The Attachment Parenting Book: A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby.") On first reading Dr. Bob's work a few years back, the impression he gave was one of a reasonable person who wants to listen to both sides. The trap here is this is like listening to "both sides" about climate change: It's a subject where there isn't a "both sides." There is science, and then there is feelings and belief, and entering into a "both sides" discussion is giving credibility to disproven theories. It's kind of like saying, "Can we all agree the climate is changing, if we don't say man is causing it?" We've essentially conceded that climate change isn't a serious threat, because it's natural, and if man didn't cause it, how can he stop it?
As Dr. John Snyder, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts put it in sciencebasedmedicine.org in 2009 (bolding mine):
. . . [Dr. Sears'] plain language “parents know best” philosophy has attracted the admiration and trust of parents looking for authoritative validation of their fears, concerns, and beliefs. Unfortunately, Dr. Sears is good at repeating and reinforcing common parental fears and anti-vaccine myths, but is quite poor at reading the literature and understanding epidemiology.
A few nights ago on my Facebook feed, up popped a post by PolitiFact that busted Dr Sears for inaccurately presenting statistics on the risk of injury from vaccines. They labelled his key claim in an interview with CNN "Mostly False."
Here is what
PolitiFact concluded (bolding mine):
Sears said, "Every year in the United States between 3,000 and 4,500 severe vaccine reactions are reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Not mild reactions. Severe reactions that land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death."
Sears reached this conclusion by doing some math based on data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, at the least, he would have been better off sticking with the CDC’s general claim that 10 percent to 15 percent of reported reactions are deemed serious.
The fact is, the CDC’s database includes a clear warning that the there is no evidence the reported cases are related to vaccines. Nor do the specific years we looked at -- going back to 2006 -- back up Sears’ specific range.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, which is our definition of Mostly False.
So Dr. Sears failed to inform the audience of the limitations of the data in the
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) before he used some of their numbers. Here is a scenario that illustrates some of the limitations in the VAERS data. I get a flu vaccine at my doctor's office, drive home, have lunch, clean the kitchen, then slip on the tile floor, fall, and bonk my head on the counter on the way down. I get to the ER, get a few stitches to close up a cut, and get sent home. The ER reports my accident to VAERS as a possible vaccine adverse reaction. When my PCP gets the report from the ER about my fall, she reports it to VAERS too. There likely isn't a causal link between the shot and my fall, my injury isn't serious, and the incident was reported twice! Does Dr. Sears not understand this? Or does he understand it, but choses not to disclose the limitations of the data he is using? The commenters on PolitiFact's page aren't happy with the good doctor.
Again, Dr Snyder (bolding mine):
While he doesn’t overtly tell parents not to vaccinate, he certainly stacks the deck this way. In his discussion of each vaccine, his “reasons to vaccinate” section tends to downplay the risks of the disease. He “balances” this with a section called “reasons some parents choose not to vaccinate”.
With that in mind, let's go see what Dr Bob is posting on his Facebook page:
Here is what Dr. Sears says when he elaborates on the three reasons he thinks measles is so scary (Along with the comments from people who took issue with his awesome assessment of measles risk):
So, the lie is that measles has a high rate of serious complications. It doesn't. It CAN, but it rarely does.
Ask any Grandma or Grandpa (well, older ones anyway), and they'll say "Measles? So what? We all had it. It's like Chicken pox."
Potentially fatal? Technically true, but herein lies the lie. It's been publicized as "the deadliest of all childhood fever/rash illness with a high rate of complications." Deadly? Not in the U.S., or any other developed country with a well-nourished population. The risk of fatality here isn't zero, but it's as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero.
Did you get that? The risk of being seriously ill, much less dying, from the measles is as close to zero as you can get! Move along, nothing to see here: It's just a little sniffle, a little fever, and a few red spots.
UNICEF may say 330 children die every day from the disease, but that's because they're malnourished. Move along!
The only way to test Dr. Sears' (and other anti-vaxxers') assumption that our superior sanitation and nutritional status will prevent the measles from being so miserable and deadly, would be to arrange for a nationwide epidemic. And who would want that? Which brings me to another point: Dr. Bob flippantly throws out in one of his posts that there is no reason to "force" people to vaccinate their kids, that the voluntary vaccination rate is such, that a large outbreak is unlikely because of herd immunity. He states that most of the 600 reported measles cases last year occurred in an Amish community in upstate New York, and a community in Texas where there were a lot of unimmunized people, so the public at large is safe because, immunizations! Why does he not mention that vaccination rates are dropping? And in clustered communities of the unimmunized, the rate is falling precipitously, and we've already lost herd immunity AS EVIDENCED by last year's outbreak in two such clusters?
Amongst the fawning fans of Dr. Sears, some people called him out on his "reasoned" b.s. which heartened me, because so many people eat it up. This guy is dangerous, he presents himself as a reasonable, both-sides-of-the-argument fence-sitter, but if this is true, then why are most of his fans firmly planted on the anti-vax side?
I leave you to read one of Dr Bob's last posts: