Kim Stagliano on HuffPo: Paul Offit Pope of the Church of the Immaculate Vaccination
Please pop over to HuffPo (HERE) and comment, won't you? Thanks. Kim
I grew up in Boston, and am old enough to recall when the Catholic Church adamantly denied the sex scandal. Priests harming children? Sex abuse? No one wanted it to be true, and so it was easier to swallow the denials than to believe the children and adults whose lives were altered forever and who had the courage to speak out. That is, until the injured parties brought forth so much proof that the Church had to do its own digging and Catholics had to open their eyes and say, "My good God, the children and parents were right." The Church has survived and programs are in place to avoid going back to those dark times.
The November issue of Wired Magazine included a cover story titled, Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All, about vaccination. Wired, "The magazine of the digital future" writing about vaccination? The only digit here is Dr. Offit waving his middle finger at the vaccine safety community...
still seeking good scientific basis for the claim of a proven link.
Posted by: BlueMacs | December 11, 2009 at 04:43 PM
Geez, don't those dolts who always post over there ever get bored with the same outdated talking points? They must be really well paid, but they seem kinda behind the curve on the research side, like they came from 1999. Really, they should ask middle management in the diocese...er, the PR department... to get them an updated prayerbook...er, playbook... with fresher recitations...er, arguments. Instead of "asked and answered!" and "correlation doesn't equal causation!" and "better diagnosis!" and "10,000 vaccines at a time safe for everyone!", maybe we could get something novel and remotely relevant to the current science.
Posted by: Garbo | December 02, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Thank you Kim. Yes we parents are on the right track. Research data and new evidence is coming up all the time.We have evidence
that that both mercury(thimerosal) and aluminum adjuvants are neurotoxins. Please review PubMed Journal of Neuroscience 2009
May1;87(6) 1474-1483 Aluminum -induced defective mitochondrial metabolism perturbs cytoskeletal dynamics in human astrocytoma cells.A proof that aluminum("the new mercury")
causes mitochondrial dysfunction and reduced ATP (cellular energy) production.
These liars like offit (yes he only deserves lower case) deserve 10,000 needles with mercury and aluminum into their body.
They have destroyed my beautiful son and I will fight them until my last breath.
Posted by: C. Professional | December 02, 2009 at 08:43 PM
Kim, your analogy comes closest to explaining the discomfort and denial that prevent otherwise good people from speaking out against institutional wrongdoing.
Offit personifies demagoguery. However his use of disease fears grows less and less effective as more people learn about his irrational claims and profiteering. It's just a matter of time before his constructed image collapses.
Posted by: nhokkanen | December 02, 2009 at 08:34 PM
"Amazon had the nerve to put "Autism's False Prophets" on my suggestion list. Marked down 40% but still!"
Julie...you gave me my giggle for the day!! Thank you so much I really needed that!
Posted by: rileysmom | December 02, 2009 at 07:51 PM
Tonight on television they were discussing the people in the EPA fudging data for global warming, and email discrediting those that disagreed with them.
One of the guys discussing it quoted Bill Murphey's character in Ghost Busters "Back off, I'm a scientist!"
This all sound familiar to any of us here at Age of Autism
Posted by: Benedetta | December 02, 2009 at 06:23 PM
Nice work, Kim. For those who haven't seen it, check out Dr. Robert Mendelsohn's "Confessions of a Medical Heretic". He furthers the concept of The Church of Modern Medicine, and explores their sanctified rituals--including their golden goose, vaccination. He's now deceased and his books out of print, but used copies are always available.
Posted by: Zed | December 02, 2009 at 04:54 PM
I want to volunteer to administer the 10,000 vaccinations to Dr. Offitt (since he is so sure they're tolerable). If he won't accept that offer, I'll change it to a weight-adjusted one-time dose of IM thimerosal to equal that received by my sons in their first six months of life. C,mon doc, man up and be a sport.
Posted by: Theodore M. Van Oosbree | December 02, 2009 at 11:17 AM
Mean? Good!
Posted by: Natasa | December 02, 2009 at 04:47 AM
No, Kristina - what I'm saying is that humans have lost babies - and that pain is surely programmed into our brains. A woman would bear 9 children and 5 would live to adulthood - over time. Of course as sanitation improved infant mortality improved. But vaccinations came into play to prevent childhood diseases and they became widely used about 60 years ago. Here's some info on US infant mortality - which was radically improved after 1900 with sanitation. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm Thanks. K
Posted by: Stagmom | December 01, 2009 at 09:59 PM
What in the world??? In 1949 more children died than lived in the U.S.? Good article, until you took this bizarre turn:
"For as long as homo sapiens have walked the earth, until just about sixty years ago when vaccinations came into wide use, mothers and fathers buried as many or more children than they raised to young adulthood. Perhaps we're biologically programmed to want to protect our children to such a degree that unless we've been badly burned, we simply can not wrap our heads around the concept that the very medicine designed to save our children, so that we can raise them past infancy, could be causing harm."
Posted by: Kristina | December 01, 2009 at 09:40 PM
Kim, Each time I see one of your pieces, I say thank God Kim is there! I'm so glad you made the analogy with all those who would not/could not accept the truth about what some Catholic priests were doing. It's a major war to educate parents to the perils of blanket vaccinations. Please keep up this important battle.
Posted by: Jane Doherty | December 01, 2009 at 09:12 PM
Kim you are awesome, one of my heroes! The Church analogy is very apt. But I am afraid the Pharma cartel is worse. At least there were some moral
people in the Catholic Church!
Amazon had the nerve to put "Autism's False Prophets" on my suggestion list. Marked down 40% but still!
Posted by: julie | December 01, 2009 at 08:25 PM
This was the ugly truth put simply and elegantly-- thank you. I always wonder this about people who've gone through other atrocities-- does it seem unlikely that some might understand the reality of what happened to our kids faster than the average joe?
Posted by: Gatogorra | December 01, 2009 at 08:02 PM
I see the paid pharma shills are on the clock today . . . (or do they get paid by the word, the number of posts, or what?).
Posted by: Parent | December 01, 2009 at 04:22 PM
GG, thanks - I'd neglected the link! KIM
Posted by: Stagmom | December 01, 2009 at 02:16 PM
Here's the link-- going over to have a good read now:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-stagliano/dr-paul-offit-pope-of-the_b_329919.html
Posted by: GG | December 01, 2009 at 02:09 PM