Im almost positive that Andrew Wakefield has caused more harm to modern medicine than any other person in the last 200 years.
His human megaphone, Jenny McCarthy, isn’t much better. No one heard of him before she advocated for his findings to be mainstream.
Don’t forget Oprah who amplified the idea more than they ever could have done on their own
and got Dr. Oz his start in daytime TV.
The Four Horsepersons of the Horseshitalypse.
Lol jokes on you. I already have autism. So, vaccines just make me stronger.
I’m getting tested for autism as an adult next week. If it turns out I am, who do I contact from the Autistic community? Or does a representative contact me? I don’t want to mess this up and I have a costume ready and everything.
Anthony Hopkins will get in touch with you about filing all the paperwork.
I make this joke every time I get a vaccine. I ask them if it’ll make me extra autistic and for how long. I’ve never gotten a laugh.
I would have laughed (except I don’t administer vaccines).
There’s a correlation between wearing socks and athlete’s foot. Socks cause athletes foot, clearly, and so we shouldn’t wear socks when wearing shoes.
Amen, brother! I have long freed my feet from the prison that is the sock!
That just seems like a practical cost cutting measure for a squid.
True. Also, buying five pairs of socks at once gets expensive.
I think the air gets colder the higher up you go, so maybe that?
So I can walk on uneven surfaces. Duh.
Wait. Real question. How does a squid wear footwear? they don’t have feet.
Squid or not, the ends justify the means!
actually yes https://lunasandals.com/products/mono-winged-edition
You wear socks…. With…. Sandals?!?!?
E’eryone, git your pitchforks!! They’re coming to force you to wear SOCKS WITH SANDALS!!!
socks with crocks
Alright. I got nothing. You win.
enjoy shopping at walmart.
socks with sandals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7En0z2A38c
It’s because there is no punishment for spreading false information. These cunt celebrities and politicians spread their fucking lies and if they are found out, they make an empty apology that reaches 1% of the people that they lied to, and it’s all forgive and forget. Fuck all of that. Every anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-education cunt out there needs to be strung up from the societal rafters. They have to be made an example of. At the bare minimum they should be doing tours helping to correct the lies they have spread, spending time on social media and running commercials like fucking community service hours. There has to be a punishment for this shit.
I’m curious as to how that law would be written and what it would look like in practice.
Ideally, you wouldn’t have to write a law for it, and the people would be held accountable by others. That’s a BIG wish, though, and I’m a realist–it’ll never happen. Instead, if it were written into law, it would have to be done the same ways that libel and slander laws are written, and there would have to be a criminal trial for it. I understand that up front that seems like a lot of extra work for the courts, but if the punishments were severe enough, then hopefully we would see an outright reduction on it.
Some precedent for it would be libel laws as previously stated, false advertising laws, and public health laws like what Germany has instituted (NetzDG) that required social media to remove false health information within 24 hours.
And just to make it clear, I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s right to free speech, but just like libel and slander laws, when that free speech damages others, then it has to be curbed. The scientific evidence is there for things like the mask mandate and the efficacy of vaccines, we just have to prove it in court and punish those who are guilty of spreading that false information.
I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it. But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.
I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie. I don’t have a solution for that yet.
I’m not saying that the idea is perfect by any stretch, but we also can’t be beholden to what ifs. If we give up before we try because we might see failure down the line, then we might as well just start drinking bleach to cure our illnesses. Science can be proven. Mask mandates weren’t a hypothesis. Vaccine efficacy isn’t a hypothesis. If we get to where people in power are buying facts and we can no longer prove a truth in court, then we are beyond “mis-information” already.
I’m collecting vaccines like infinity stones. I’m going to unlock complete autism.
Oh, you’re autistic? Name every time someone said you don’t look autistic and that everyone is a little bit autistic
plus you get amazing hair
And you know what happens when you unlock complete autism? That’s right: you gain the power to create your own vaccines, making you capable of reaching even new heights.
Is that what the anti-vaxxers refer to as shedding? They’re shedding vaccine particles everywhere as a community service?
i already have
So, the universe is like a video game but the lesson is morality. Long story short, i have met the antivaxers and i understand. They are dishonest people. I dated their daughter. They will not listen because they’re arrogant. They will face horrors until they learn their lesson. The point is, this is a morality problem, not an education problem. Nothing will save them but their own misery you’re honestly trying to prevent.
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Can we convince people that Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and RFK, Jr. cause autism?
(I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)
Being a Kennedy is more likely to cause lobotomies.
(I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)
there’s probably a less tenuous correlation there, though. just saying. Granted, correlation is not causation, but, eh… yeah.
I know, but imagine all of these people in this ludicrous panic suddenly thinking Wakefield is the culprit for autism…
We run into a few interesting possibilities here. Start with the assumption that more children are being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. That gives us a few possibilities.
- Because there’s more and better screening autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is being caught more often. Okay, maybe. But.
1.a) If more children are being appropriately diagnosed with ASD, then perhaps the criteria needs to be tightened up; at a certain point, behavior/feelings/thoughts are just normal.
-
Because there’s more screening–but not necessarily better screening–children are being pathologized as having ASD when they do not, because too many clinicians don’t have the necessary expertise. This is a distinct possibility, in much the same way that kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.
-
More children are actually on the autism spectrum now than there were 30 years ago. E.g., it’s not that more kids slipped through the cracks 30 years ago, but there is actually a higher rate of ASD than there was 30 years ago. This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?
1)a) you missed the part where you clearly said “spectrum” before.
maybe instead, you/we need to change how we react to parts of the spectrum. That is a) it isn’t “normal” and b) that’s okay.
Even though it’s a spectrum–in that it’s comprised of a number of different characteristics that are present to varying degrees–I think that perhaps some of those characteristics have been overly pathologized. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it. If I made up a disease–I’m going to call it Short-Man Syndrome (SMS)–and said that any male under 5’2" had SMS, then someone that was 5’2.1" wouldn’t fit the criteria. But wait!, he says, I feel short. So maybe that definition gets widened a little bit. So now a person that’s 5’2.5" says, well, I feel short too, and maybe a doctor disagrees, since 5’2.5" is pretty short, and that definition gets even wider. Eventually maybe someone that’s 5’11" is saying, well I feel short compared to Yao Ming…
And maybe that’s what’s happening here. I don’t know. Even though all of these characteristics may exist on a continuum, you need to have a definite cut off point where you say, this point and beyond is pathological, and anything up to that, no matter how close, isn’t. Otherwise your definition becomes pointless.
no. in so many ways, no.
I like “Normal is boring” as a slogan.
I like boring
When I was a kid, I used to have a button on my backpack that said, “why be normal?” Of course, I got bullied for it. Because the worst thing you can ever be is non-normal. Fuck 'em, I’m still weird.
If there ARE more cases of autism(which we dont know if there are, or if it’s a result of better screening. Smarter people than me would have to determine that) my first instinct would be to look at microplastics and other environmental pollutants. Again, more qualified people than me would have to look into that, but it seems to be a better hypothesis than the conspiracy theory about vaccines.
kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.
I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.
I can say from personal experience that Adderall helped me study even without ADD. Its a performance enhancing drug, of sorts. And if landing a diagnosis means giving your kids a chemical edge on the next state exam, then more parents are going to discover their children have a problem.
I might take this one step deeper and assert that the real problem we’re attempting to medicate isn’t autism, its poverty. The underlying fear of an autistic diagnosis is that the child won’t grow up to be self-sufficient. The drugs (whether they’re necessary or simply a competitive edge) are intended to turn children into the successful mindless drones who are capable of churning mechanically through rote exercises that the school system / workforce demands of them.
This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?
Its possible that this is entirely due to a survivorship bias. Kids with autism are considered “salvageable” in an age where drowning the weakest of six children in the bath tube because they’re dead weight on the family income is no longer consider practical (fewer kids) or acceptable (surveillance state).
Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers or sunlight deficiency or toxic food/water/air in a heavily industrial society.
Autism could arguably even be a kind-of beneficial mutation - the result of increasingly smart people having increasingly more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap, because we’re trying to fit them into those aforementioned square holes.
I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.
Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes? Full disclosure: I was formally diagnosed with ASD in my later 30s; Asperger’s didn’t even exist as a diagnosis until after I had graduated from public schools. I had a very hard time focusing in all of my classes.
Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers
I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues. I’m not disputing it, just saying I wasn’t aware of them.
more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap,
It is absolutely a handicap. This is undeniable. It’s a handicap because it hinders your ability to interact appropriately with the world. I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with. There’s a lot more, really. But trust me, it’s a handicap in dealing with life.
Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes?
Our education system has grown more rigid, more test-centric, and more exhausting under iterative attempts at reform. I’m not even speaking to “worse outcomes” so much as maladaptation. Kids with ADD are going to be more prone to exhibit symptoms in an environment that buckles them down and compels them to concentrate on singular tasks for longer amounts of time.
I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues.
There’s a number of physical and psychological correlations but not a ton of causation. So its mostly a conjecture.
I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with.
I’ve heard different takes on this from different people. And I’ve seen at least a few people horrified at the idea of any kind of change in their condition, for fear of it taking away something fundamental about them.
So… idk. I definitely understand wanting relief from a handicap. But I’ve also heard people describe the tunnel vision and detachment as comparable to the deep immersion one gets in a state of flow.
All the information available to us now and yet all people care about is if someone the Internet likes them.
While I hate what the internet is becoming because of AI, and I dread what’s going to come from the better systems down the road, and all the people who will be utterly lost as they fall in love with their phones, I am wondering if just maaaybe these LLM’s will be able to satisfy some people’s desperate craving for attention and acceptance with simulated social circles and virtual supportive communities and give people at least some kind of outlet or if nothing else keep them out of the way while the rest of us make progress.
And the tech school I got a degree from now hosts courses on “Reiki healing” and “Crystal healing”. America is fucking doomed.
I met a nice lady at the dog park, we vibed, she was into reiki and tarot, I dipped.
… but you know what will eventually die? People who do not believe in vaccines
Too bad they will take many with them because of their wilful ignorance… but eventually the problem will correct itself
Someday I hope to live in a society where confidently saying something idiotic is shameful as crapping your pants in public or realizing you have a bugger hanging off your nostril
It’ll take a really deadly disease for that to happen. Smallpox and the plague could kill over 50% of the population in an area they hit. No one had vaccines (though some portion would have had incidental previous exposure to cow pox, which became the first vaccine, but I wouldn’t guess that all survivors had been previously exposed to cow pox). Note that that’s 50% of the total population, it’s not just looking at those who were confirmed to be infected. Nothing that currently exists (considering treatment options, since the plague does still exist) comes even close to that, so don’t hold your breath that they’ll go extinct from catching easily preventable diseases that they chose not to prevent.
And personally, I think shame isn’t a great teaching tool and is a mechanism that leads to people doubling down on incorrect beliefs rather than correcting them as well as attacking new ideas that conflict with currently accepted ideas. I’d like to see a society where being willing to admit you were wrong is respected and where everyone can appreciate that whatever they currently believe, reality is likely more nuanced and complex than their model of it suggests, if it’s even on the right track at all.
Just give the option to be injected with a vaccine or with chlorine. Watch the numbers drop spectacularly.
Something of a selection bias on this experiment, as you’re not going to make the wrong choice twice.
Nah, the “chlorine” is actually a microdose of ecstacy.
I would choose the vaccine.
duh…they cause magnetism not autism. /s
So thats why everyone with Autism is magnetic
That explains why I repel people.
But only other autistic people, right?
I sure hope I can get some autism for the bird flu.
Specifically, the survey asked them to assess the accuracy of the statement that the CDC has said there is no evidence linking vaccines to autism.
That is an such a poorly conceived question for a researcher to pose. I don’t even know what else to say tbh.
I shake my head.
