Anti-Vax Movement

[Cosmos]

"I'd rather my child end up in an iron lung, crippled, or six feet under instead of risking them getting autism. Fuck those aspies, and fuck those other kids, too, I don't give a rat's ass if they get polio or the measles."

Yeah, quality parenting right there. Forget that, for about 99% of humanity's history, infant/child mortality was a massive problem because children were highly susceptible to illness and disease, and that now we have the means to prevent those awful diseases and give our children the opportunity to grow up healthy and happy. These people will gladly throw that away because of insufficient evidence and the threat of their child contracting autism (which makes no fucking sense). Wonderful.

 

[Dilbertmann]

"I'd rather my child end up in an iron lung, crippled, or six feet under instead of risking them getting autism. Fuck those aspies, and fuck those other kids, too, I don't give a rat's ass if they get polio or the measles."

Yeah, quality parenting right there. Forget that, for about 99% of humanity's history, infant/child mortality was a massive problem because children were highly susceptible to illness and disease, and that now we have the means to prevent those awful diseases and give our children the opportunity to grow up healthy and happy. These people will gladly throw that away because of insufficient evidence and the threat of their child contracting autism (which makes no fucking sense). Wonderful.

Well, we all know who to blame for providing parents the delusion that autism was some sort of cancerous disease, worse than cancer itself *coughAutismSpeakscough*

 

[Zeorus]

I'm going to do my best to explain my views on this without being too spergy (as difficult as that may be).

Spoiler: Autistic rant; try to be patient with me

I experience double consciousness in a lot of facets of my life. My brain tends to divide into the autistic part that wants me to follow my impulses (read: be a total sperg, almost at OPL level) and the "real me" that forces me to think about things and follow the course of action that allows me to pass as neurotypical. The one area of my mind where this doesn't happen as clearly as I'd like is in my personality. My case of Asperger Syndrome mostly manifests neurologically rather than psychologically at this point (thanks to years of therapy), but I still don't know what parts of my personality belong to me and which belong to this disorder.

It's for this reason that I absolutely despise anti-vaxxers. I suffer from depression from time to time, but on the whole I like to think that I'm a decent person. Am I (or people like me) so horrible that I should have deserved death in childhood rather than the life I've lived thus far? Is my state of being so grotesque that we should teach children to fear people like me?

Life with ASD isn't easy. In fact, it sucks a massive bucket of dicks sometimes. Worse than death? Definitely not.

 

[Zenotwapal]

My question is how they even came up with the ridiculous premise that vaccinations cause Autism.
I'm pretty sure it is been THOROUGHLY researched and confirmed that Autism Spectrum Disorders are birth defects during development. How dumb can you get?
There's so much evidence stacked against this it's unreal. A whole new realm of stupid has been discovered it seems.

 

[Rilakkuma]

My question is how they even came up with the ridiculous premise that vaccinations cause Autism.
I'm pretty sure it is been THOROUGHLY researched and confirmed that Autism Spectrum Disorders are birth defects during development. How dumb can you get?
There's so much evidence stacked against this it's unreal. A whole new realm of stupid has been discovered it seems.

It's because autism rates have gone up and so have the rates of people being vaccinated.

GOD, DON'T YOU GET IT, THEY'RE CLEARLY BEING CAUSED BY THE SAME THING.

 

[Zeorus]

My question is how they even came up with the ridiculous premise that vaccinations cause Autism.
I'm pretty sure it is been THOROUGHLY researched and confirmed that Autism Spectrum Disorders are birth defects during development.There's so much evidence stacked against this it's unreal. A whole new realm of stupid has been discovered it seems.

Because correlation equals causation, you fascist scumbucket.

 

[neelyky]

This anti-vaccination bullshit is a frequent topic on lolcow public access show The Eli King Show, largely thank to frequent anti-vaccine guest and human Grimace impersonator Sally O. Elkordy:

 

[Marvin]

View attachment 15380

If I saw that, I'd key that car.

 

[Cavity Sam]

I used to laugh at crazies like these, now I'm utterly depressed at the subject.
My own mother has recently become an anti-vaxxer.
She had a child 20 years after having me (I'm 23).
So my toddler sister is smack in the middle of Los Angeles, and that's terrifying.

My dad agrees with me on how ridiculous anti-vaxxers are, but he will not go against my mom.. So he has done nothing to get her vaccinated.

The worst part is, my mom is going by her friend's advice- a friend who didn't vaccinate her kids (to prevent autism) and guess what? Her kids got autism anyway. Knowing that fact my mom still will not budge on her beliefs.

I really, really, really feel helpless for my little sister. When I visit my family next week, I want to try to convince my mom face to face, but I'm sure that won't do anything.
It's really hard to just not outright scream at her-- but I hold back.. I'm pretty sure I'm going to snap one day though.

 

[MysticMisty]

Here is Stephanie's Blog:

http://naturematters.info/

From her blog appearently she had a kid who died after getting vaccinated. The Doctor said the kid had a different problem called Alexander Disease.

http://ulf.org/alexander-disease

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/alexander-disease

She blames vaccines rather than the possibility her child was born with a severe genetic defect. She has 4 other books.

Spoiler: Stephanie's Other Books

View attachment 15413
Sarah Visits a Naturopath,
View attachment 15411
Vegetarian Muscles,
View attachment 15410
Don't Bully Billy
View attachment 15409
Goodbye Grandma

My initial thought for all of those is how bad the cover "art" is. If I showed those to my former digital art teacher he'd probably show them to his students as an example of how not to do digital art.

 

[Cavity Sam]

My initial thought for all of those is how bad the cover "art" is. If I showed those to my former digital art teacher he'd probably show them to his students as an example of how not to do digital art.

The lining is just the most awkward thing I've ever seen.

In the Goodbye Grandma one I get the feeling that oddly rendered sparrow is supposed to represent the dead grandma and it just... creeps the fuck out of me.

 

[Randall Fragg]

Hahaha I just read this and it makes me literally laugh out loud.

I remember seeing a anthropology documentary that observed what they believed to be the oldest skull of a human ever found. It was something like 50,000 years old and looking at the bone they could see odd scarring on one half of his face. It was determined that this person died from a fungal infection that ate away at him so badly it carved his bones. If that isn't the most painful fucking thing you've ever heard of, I'd like to know what is. I think being set on fire by ISIS would suck less ass.

Jesus fucking Christ, that's something out of The Last of Us or Attack of the Mushroom People. And somehow the preindustrial era is supposed to be some sort of utopia for these morons?

 

[Dudeofteenage]

My question is how they even came up with the ridiculous premise that vaccinations cause Autism.

There was that academic paper that purported to show this to be the case, but it was not really the cause - it was, at best, the spark that lit the flame.

Clearly a lot of people wanted to believe that vaccines cause autism, or something roughly along those lines, so they heard about the paper (usually second or third hand) and ran with it. It's worth noting that most of the people who hold up that paper as proof are ignorant of every other academic study that's been done on vaccination (and this is before the paper was revealed to be fraudulent, as opposed to simply methodologically questionable), so you can't say they believe it simply because it was published in a peer reviewed journal.

I think you have to see the anti-vax movement as part of a general conservative (note the small "c") tendency in first world, post-countercultural societies to value the 'natural' and 'authentic' over what they perceive as artificial and synthetic. Movements as diverse as chemtrail conspiracies, David Ike's lizard people ideology, the organic food community and localvores all draw from the same psycho-social well. There's a really good pHD thesis in there for somebody with the time and the funding.

 

[ChurchOfGodBear]

What pisses me off about these nuts is that it completely takes away any possibility rational discussion or criticism of V.accines. I think evidence shows not all vaxs are created equal, and that opting out of a flu or chicken pox shot is a bit different than opting out of polio or measles. (The latter being almost suicidal). But you can't even talk about that anymore because these crazies mix hard science with fucking voodoo.

Now, I'm solidly pro-vax, but let's look at the "my rights" angle for a minute. If we make v.accines mandatory, then we're saying the government has the right to forcibly insert something in your body. At least in concept, that has to be unnerving, especially to people who insist that a person has a full right to control over their own body. We should have a conversation, society-wide, if we can force people to take v.accines, and what the consequences will be if we do or don't.

BUT WE CANT HAVE THAT CONVERSATION, because instead of dealing with real issues, we have to argue with JENNY GODDAMN MCCARTHY.

Related tangent: I knew an older guy who insisted that his grandmother would open her windows and "air out" the house everyday, in all weather. And people back then never got allergies and we're always healthy, so he blamed air conditioning for all our illnesses today. Funny, I'm pretty sure his grandmother's generation DROPPED LIKE MOTHERFUCKING FLIES at measles, dyptheria, and the Spanish influenza. And it didn't matter if they opened their windows.

But that's the level of analysis we're having to contend with.

 

[Vitriol]

its worth mentioning that the fellow in the uk who promoted the whole autism vaccine link was angling to have his own company take the nhs contract when the hysteria he created caused the then current mmr vaccine to be removed. Of course his study was debunked so this never occurred and he was debarred when people realised what he'd been up too.

A thoroughly evil man and its depressing seeing well meaning, if incredibly stupid, parents parrot his woo.

 

[silentprincess]

My aunt had her kids vaccinated, and she has to lie to the Anti-vax mums at school. But she was frightened that they were going to start on her about her youngest having autism.

 

[Peace and Harmony]

So what percentage of lolcows were vaccinated?

 

[Billy_Sama]

The Anti-Vaccine movement going to be forgotten when the upcoming outbreaks of once eradicated diseases come around.

Sadly there is a good amount of people who have the memory of a goldfish and blind themselves from the events of the past. The only way they learn when their friends and family are crippled with disease, or they just blame it on the government or the sodomites or whatnot.

 

[Vitriol]

So what percentage of lolcows were vaccinated?

Really?

I think we all know autism is caused by abusive babysitters and is easily cured with a sweetheart from the ground up.

Or perhaps caused by islams/cured by catholic marines?

 

[Zeorus]

The Anti-Vaccine movement going to be forgotten when the upcoming outbreaks of once eradicated diseases come around.

Sadly there is a good amount of people who have the memory of a goldfish and blind themselves from the events of the past. The only way they learn when their friends and family are crippled with disease, or they just blame it on the government or the sodomites or whatnot.

"Upcoming"? We've already got outbreaks of measles that are worse than anything we've seen in decades.