Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro Pull Anti-Vaccination Film 279
theodp writes: USA Today reports that one day after defending the scheduled screening of a controversial documentary linking vaccinations to autism, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro announced that the film is being pulled from the event. The film, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, was scheduled to debut April 24. It is directed by Andrew Wakefield, known to many as the father of the anti-vaccine movement. Wakefield authored a 1998 report on vaccinations and autism that was later retracted, He also had his medical license revoked. The decision to include the film in the festival resulted in outrage from many who are upset that the film's inclusion could offer legitimacy to a study debunked by leading scientists. "My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family," said De Niro, who has a child with autism. "But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for."
Health care advice from movie actors? (Score:2, Informative)
So what's the take away here. Do I take health care advice from movie actors or not. If the answer is yes then what about clowns and mimes?
Re: (Score:3)
Clowns and mimes are free to take health care advice from whoever they want either way.
Re: Health care advice from movie actors? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take "what is an incoherent rant based on no facts whatsoever for $500, Alex."
Re: (Score:2)
I thought Alex had been demoted down to doing life insurance commercials for Colonial Penn. Talk about a career low.
I don't know if that's a low. He's getting paid. He likes the money. I would sure do it. Why not?
Re: Health care advice from movie actors? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the science is settled. But is it? Why is there still research on vaccines, if the science is settled. There are no new illesnesses?
Yup, the science is pretty much settled. Thimerosol has been completely removed from vaccines as a result of anti-vaxxers outrage. The difference?
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe... [cdc.gov]
Okay, so they move the goalposts and call it the vaccines themselves. Now its on shaky grounds, as there is less commonality between different vaccines.
Here's your science teacher's data:
http://www.jennymccarthybodyco... [jennymccar...ycount.com]
We live i strange times, when people get their science education from Politicians and women who's main talent is taking off their clothing, and documented frauds with a plan to extract money via the sympathy gene.
But those darned scientists? Never! That's crazy talk!!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thiemerosol has *not* been completely removed from vaccines. It is present in full strength in the nearly useless annual flu vaccine (only 40% - 60% effective, according to CDC. You want to to get an annual dose of bio-accumulative neurotoxic ethyl mercury for a slim chance of not getting basically a strong cold ? ) AND, on the other vaccines like the DTaP, it is still present in "trace" amounts. So get your facts right.
M'kay
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe... [cdc.gov]
From the article:
Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines do not and never did contain thimerosal. Varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have also never contained thimerosal.
Influenza (flu) vaccines are currently available in both thimerosal-containing (for multi-dose vaccine vials) and thimerosal-free versions.
Also from the article:
Research does not show any link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism,
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Jesus fucking Christ. The guy was caught with a faked study that he was using to try to promote his own alternative to MMR. Let's be clear. MMR does not cause autism. There never was a link, just a faked study that Wakefield and some equally disgusting lawyers promoted.
And no vaccine is given to an infant, you fucking retard, and the rest is just ignorant blather literally made up.
Re: (Score:3)
Also, depends on where you live. In Ontario [ontario.ca] there's quite a few shots given to infants. According to Wikipedia, infant [wikipedia.org] is usually defined as up to 12 months old. Here's the Ontario vaccine schedule for the first year.
Re: Health care advice from movie actors? (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot the Tuskegee experimentation too.
Not only did we experiment on people, we denied doing it until the evidence was overwhelming that we did. It's easy not to trust the government if you just pay attention to the times it betrayed the trust people had in it in the past.
Doing the ecological epidemiology (Score:5, Interesting)
Locating by-State prevalence of autism stats over a decade ago, I started collecting by-State stats on hundreds of variables including vaccinations, mercury, diseases, econometerics, demographics, etc.
Three things stood out: 1) The best single-variable ecological correlation was mother's age at first live birth. 2) The best two-variable ecological correlation was Finnish ancestry and immigration from India. 3) Of all the variables, autism averaged the least powerful correlations with the wide range of by-State variables I had collected.
The mother's age at first live birth was a lower level of correlation than the 2-variable one, but it was more "robust" -- meaning that the scatter of points followed what you would expect from a "normal" distribution.
That was clear back in 2004.
I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, the original correlation I found in 2004 indicated it would be appropriate to, at the very least, add to the State-level database the age of father at first live birth to see if it was any better than age of mother at first live birth. Of course, the cost of that would be a few hours of some intern's time, which is why it would be the first thing to do. The second thing to do would be to add to the county-level database both the age of the mother and the age of the father at first live birth. This i
Re:Doing the ecological epidemiology (Score:5, Informative)
Because doing a wide-ranging statistical analysis on something as wide-ranging as "Autism," which is a diagnosis and not a particular disorder, usually results in findings like this:
http://tylervigen.com/spurious... [tylervigen.com]
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
JBMcB writes: "Because doing a wide-ranging statistical analysis on something as wide-ranging as "Autism," which is a diagnosis and not a particular disorder, usually results ..." spurious correlations.
It is the job of epidemiologists to do wide-ranging ecological correlations and use standard statistical techniques to discount spurious correlations.
If an "epidemiologist" says they aren't going to so such ecological correlations because they give rise to spurious correlations (aka "ecological fallacy", "cor
Re: (Score:2)
Whew, thank goodness it was nothing we did!
Re: (Score:2)
.... usually results in findings like this:
http://tylervigen.com/spurious [tylervigen.com]... [tylervigen.com]
After viewing the link I must say that, while I understand the point you're trying to make, I think that there probably IS more than just a passing correlation between the number of people who drowned after falling out of fishing boats, and the marriage rate in Kentucky.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Finnish ancestry and immigration from India"
Wait, how many Americans have a Finish ancestry, but also lived in India before immigrating here?
Re: (Score:2)
I am cheeky all the time, but not in this instance. Are you implying that maybe he meant "or" then? The two-variable correlation he meant was mother's age and Finnish decent OR mother's age and Indian Emigration? I am still really interested in his exact chose of words. It implies that Finnish GENETICS and Indian CULTURE both correlate to autism.
Re:Doing the ecological epidemiology (Score:5, Interesting)
That was clear back in 2004.
I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.
Your post was great until you got to the CDC. I work with them; your post assumes that they're job is to find the answers to all related health problems in the US. While that is partially true, it also doesn't change the fact that they are a government organization subject to the whims of politics. Case in point: it's extremely hard to get anything out of them over the past 6 months because half of the organization has been told to drop everything and focus on Zika. Years of research is now stalled because of the flaring up of a disease that is not even fatal, but it's huge in the news because it has been correlated to young moms and babies being born that have issues. There's been like 20 cases of this issue with Zika and none in the US, yet massive resources have been diverted this way ignoring the fact that 4,000 people die from TB every day, that TB and Measles and syphillis, diseases though eradicated from the US, are returning due to illegal immigration and poor vaccination efforts amongst the poorer immigrant neighborhoods, that autism is a major issue, etc.
The CDC is still a government organization and is still subject to the whims of politicians, who are influenced by their voters who are influenced by a scare-mongering media.
Re: (Score:2)
You're correct that government agencies are, due to political pressures, often ineffective in, if not destructive of, their stated missions. So perhaps "they" is a bad choice of words when "it" may have been more appropriate since the people in CDC -- at least the rank and file -- often go to work there because they _do_ care.
Here's my point though:
If there were neglect, or even active suppression, of the stated mission at the CDC due to political motives, the central role of ecological study in epidemiol [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Note that in this setting, failure to find a correlation tells you little about causation. Some factor X could vary greatly across states and correlate significantly with effect Y, yet at the state level (or at the level of other divisions), you would see no significant correlation.
How exactly is
Re: (Score:2)
Epidemiologists often _start_ their work with ecological studies [wikipedia.org] despite their lack of statistical power for a simple reasan:
They're cheap.
The cheaper they are, the lower resolution and statistical power -- so you get what you pay for. Ecological studies generally start at the State level (or at the national level) -- despite their lack of statistical power -- and are followed up at the finer-grained ecologies.
This is not to exclude conclusions, let alone to draw conclusions. It is simply practical to hav
Re: (Score:2)
Again, you are making the false assumption that people haven't done the "cheap statistical screening"; of course they have.
Federal agencies don't have unlimited authority to create registries of the mental states of citizens, a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You have eloquently stated my working hypothesis.
Streisand Effect? (Score:2)
Streisand Effect? of course. Nobody would have pressured for the removal of the film if it was about the Flat Earth Society.
Re:Streisand Effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Streisand Effect? of course. Nobody would have pressured for the removal of the film if it was about the Flat Earth Society.
Because thinking the earth is flat does not kill you, your children or your neighbours children.
Don't worry (Score:3)
There you go (Score:2)
could offer legitimacy to a study debunked
See, this is your problem right here. While I might think that the great space goat created heaven and earth, there is no evidence to support this and therefore I cannot claim it is legitimate or a "fact".
Re:There you go (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... (Score:2, Funny)
First there's Becky, then we get Rebecca, now there's a TRIbecca? What's next, Quadbecca?
Anti-vaxxers (Score:3, Interesting)
At least the anti-vaxxers can take credit for resurrecting diseases we thought had been eradicated [time.com].
That's right, thanks to the anti-vaxxer idiots, Measles, Mumps, Whooping Cough, and Chicken Pox are showing up once again.
Thanks, anti-vaxxer fuckheads, thanks a lot for your stupid anti-science delusions which now put everyone's children at risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I'm going to make a guess and assume you are talking about our border with Mexico. Guess you don't know or care to know that Mexico follows the CDC guidelines for vaccinations. They give free vaccinations to all children.
So really what we're basically dealing with here is stupidity. Unfortunately for you there is no vaccination for that.
Wake up sheeple! (Score:4, Funny)
It's all part of a government conspiracy. Follow the money it's all there. Big Pharma doesn't make anything off preventing a disease in the first place let alone curing it. It's all a cabal of 435 powerful individuals in Washington. They funded it, they're pushing it! And their shadow agenda? A healthier populace that can work and pay more in taxes!
Nuff said (Score:3)
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you're correct: Does it matter? Does any of this change the fact that, in the end, he did the right thing?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
People like Wakefield (and the other snake oil peddlers like faith healers, psychic surgeons, etc.) take advantage and prey on those emotions in order to prevent people from thinking rationally. Being able to look past your emotions and realize that even though something might make you feel better, doesn't mean that it actually helps you at all takes character in its own right.
Perhaps you've gone your whole life without being wrong and then getting pigheaded about it because you were emotionally invested in an answer, but I doubt it. Those that tend to believe that they have are usually the ones who are horribly wrong about something, but absolutely refuse to admit it and will just bury their heads in the sand even deeper no matter how much evidence you show them.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the mere fact that someone did anything to defend that charlatan demonstrates just how out of touch with reality the antivaxxers remain.
Re: (Score:2)
Evidently, fake internet points matter to you more than the "right thing."
You're that butthurt over the fact that I post at +1 that you have to make all manner of wild accusations--not to mention an implied threat--over it?
Maybe you should take a good, hard look in the mirror, buddy.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Informative)
I assume the reason that you were modded up
You assume incorrectly.
If you click on "(Score:1)" in his comment, you'll find it's a link that pops up a window with a list of the moderation done on the comment. In this case, it will pop up a message that says "No comment history available" because it hasn't been modded at all (at least not at the time that I'm posting this comment).
If you're going to accuse someone of modding their own comments up, you should at least do it in response to a comment that's actually been modded up.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case, it will pop up a message that says "No comment history available" because it hasn't been modded at all (at least not at the time that I'm posting this comment).
Is that true? It wasn't more than a few weeks ago that clicking on the score got you a table of the score modifiers, even when a post had not been moderated. It showed the base score (+1 for logged in users), and the +1 Karma Bonus (if applicable) on a second line. "No comment history available" looks like a recently introduced bug, to me. What does history have to do with anything?
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with this comparison is that the merits of Guantanamo Bay can be debated. There is no merit or truth to the anti-vaxxer position.
Re: (Score:3)
As I once told our old friend APK, "I've seen scarier shit than you as the toy surprise in my breakfast cereal". So, no, not in the least bit intimidated. Just slightly taken aback that a simple question would elicit such a nasty response which I utterly fail to see any rationale for.
Anyhow, enough with the meta-bullshit, back to the question: FWIW, yes, I know that intentions and history do matter. Yes, it would have been better that a public figure had not lent any recognition to idiocy to begin with. But
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
What if he is? It doesn't change what he said. The spam catch was put in purposely to foil automated email harvesting and the person replying purposely and with intent stripped that out for no good reason. If the op needed to be referenced the moniker used to post under is not only sufficient but more accurate because he could hide his email and most people don't bother linking posts to email addresses.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you fucking retarded?
Are you an idiot? Do you know why people post NOSPAM-munged email addresses, and do you know why other people post un-mangled versions of those in the comments? The latter do it solely to be dicks. Is this something you deny?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see the problem with showing the film in the first place. It would only bring attention to it so pointing to the fraud could be easily countered and illustrated when people start to fall for it.
Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?
Yes, there is a very big problem with that. People pay attention to slick films peddling easy and absolute answers. They don't pay near as much attention to cautionary statements about a lack of correlation in articles published in boring scientific journals.
Lies have a big advantage over the truth. They can be simple, clean, and confident, and concise enough to fit on a bumper sticker or a tweet. The truth is always messy, complicated, and couched in doubt. After all, we can't prove that vaccines don't cause autism, the best we can do is say that there is no evidence for that.
Re: (Score:2)
Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?
Yes, there is a very big problem with that. People pay attention to slick films peddling easy and absolute answers. They don't pay near as much attention to cautionary statements about a lack of correlation in articles published in boring scientific journals.
Oh. So you mean like "An Inconvenient Truth"? You mean like that? Of course you do. Sure.
Lies have a big advantage over the truth. They can be simple, clean, and confident, and concise enough to fit on a bumper sticker or a tweet. The truth is always messy, complicated, and couched in doubt.
Oh. So you mean like Climategate? You mean like that? Like East Anglia and all that they did? Like that? Of course you do. Sure.
Re: (Score:3)
So, you're a secret Fascist?
The truth fears no investigation.
Unfortunately we've seen over and over again, as Johnnie Cochran pointed out, it doesn't matter who has the best facts on his side, what matters most is who has a compelling and interesting story.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see the problem with showing the film in the first place. It would only bring attention to it so pointing to the fraud could be easily countered and illustrated when people start to fall for it.
Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?
Yeah, I'm a little leery of censorship. I know how gullible people can sometimes be, yet ideas should be able to live or die on their own. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems a bit paternalistic, an implicit assumption that people won't be able to think for themselves. It certainly bothers me when people with unpopular ideas are prevented from speaking on college campuses. I'm not sure this is any different.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I'm a little leery of censorship.
This is NOT censorship. The vaxers have a right to speak. They do NOT have a right to be given a forum at a private event. You are not being censored if I refuse to promote your cause.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing "censorship" with "first amendment violation." This is not the latter, but it most certainly is the former. A private party is not required to allow the airing of an idea--I think we can all agree that there is no problem with that. But the case we're talking about is specifically banning a movie based on the fact that many people find the point it makes to be objectionable. This is the very definition of censorship.
Re: In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
I mean is it really so hard top understand that it's government who is supposed to be forbidden from censorship. It's not a difficult concept, but people fail to comprehend it all the time.
The thing people fail to comprehend all the time is the idea that only the government is prevented from allowing you to exercise your right of free speech. In this instance, the event is censoring this film, because of public backlash against the idea. They're perfectly free to censor the film, of course, and I fully support their right to do so, but just because it's a private venue doesn't magically make it "not censorship."
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. Even lies are protected speech.
Re: (Score:2)
You may want to clarify your response a bit, because it doesn't make any sense in the context of what you're replying to. I agree with you that if the government were censoring this, it would be a first amendment violation (i.e. "protected speech") but we're talking about a private venue which has every right to prevent whatever they want from being screened there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that Wakefield's con cost lives. There have been a resurgence in childhood diseases that were all but gone when I was a kid. This isn't someone defending Bernie Madoff, this if someone offering aid and comfort to an individual who happily perpetuated a medical con that hurt and killed innocent children and still is doing so for his own material benefit.
At this point I honestly don't give a fuck about whether Wakefield's supporters are grieving parents or not. Grief is not a license for propagating a lie.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
... this if someone offering aid and comfort to an individual who happily perpetuated a medical con that hurt and killed innocent children and still is doing so for his own material benefit
And he caused something that's even incrementally worse than the suffering and deaths of innocent children because their parents fell for the con: The suffering and death of innocent children whose parents DIDN'T fall for the con - but were nevertheless infected by those who did fall for it.
Immunizations aren't anywhere near 100% effective. So a substantial number of people, even though immunized, are still susceptible to the disease. They are dependent on "herd immunity" to keep their chances of exposure low. Creating a population of unimmunized offspring of suckers, large enough to switch the contagion exponential from decaying to expanding, creates the exposures that sicken and kill these innocent victims.
Then there are those who are exposed before the can be immunized, or before the immunity can build, or after it decays, or who can't be immunized for other reasons (such as a deathly allergy to a component of the available formulas), or who are immune compromized for any of a number of reasons, ...
So seeing through the fraud and doing the right thing is STILL not enough to avoid the risk of disease and death created by this jolly psychopath.
Re: (Score:3)
I realize what you're saying and that you support vaccination, but the phrasing here made me cringe. Its the kind of thing anti-vaxxers jump on, along the lines of "Even supporters agree that they're nowhere near 100% effective."
Most vaccines are in the nineties when it comes to percent effectiveness, and some of them do near 100% effectiveness. I'd call even 90% effective "nearly all" because, with sufficient portions of the populated being vaccinated, an
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most vaccines are in the nineties when it comes to percent effectiveness, and some of them do near 100% effectiveness. I'd call even 90% effective "nearly all" because, with sufficient portions of the populated being vaccinated, an infection is not likely to get very far./
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and call them 95% effective.
Now apply them to the population of the US - cal it 300 million. (Just the states were 308 as of the last census.) That's 5 million susceptible people due to vaccine fa
Re: (Score:2)
It's a function of people always having to have someone to blame for misfortune. It's a failing of current human society, whether general loss of religious faith (it's God's will") or the inability to accept the basic laws of statistics, everything that goes wrong has to be attributable to something you can go after. For vaccines, it's seen more that way, because they come from a big, supposedly evil and self-serving, faceless corporation.
Because vaccination has been so successful, people hav
Re: (Score:2)
The fact is that Wakefield's con cost lives
Wakefield's con cost lives, so let's be a complete asshole to anyone who might have bought his con for a few days before looking into it and finding he might have been wrong.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
His study was a joke, so bad that even a fifth grader could see it was designed to prove him the answer he wanted.
But oh no, it's all Big Pharma...
Re:" the father of the anti-vaccine movement" LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And yet ironically, the concept of the Devil was born, and managed to stick around.
I don't know that that is irony. It's more another example of what the parent post said -- when we don't immediately see the source of "bad things that happen," we invent it to band together against it. Human society has always favored uniting against an adversary over just accepting that "Shit happens."
Re: " the father of the anti-vaccine movement" LOL (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you're honestly asking the question, I can only presume you missed out on all of the statistics and biology classes you were ever required to take.
But in case you needed a reminder:
1) "Getting sick" does not necessarily mean "becoming infected with influenza." Many common colds manifest symptoms that are very similar to influenza. It's possible your coworkers mis-diagnosed themselves.
2) The flu vaccine developed each flu season is based on the expected mutations of the virus for the upcoming season. S
Re: (Score:2)
You show some serious lack of understanding about what influenza actually is.
The grandparent just explained it to you, and you just showed that what he said went in one ear and out the other.
Re: " the father of the anti-vaccine movement" LO (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, demonstrate your claim. Produce the numbers,
Otherwise it's just an anonymous guy on the Internet making claims with absolutely no evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
The answer is in the article you linked:
"Influenza A virus was isolated from seven of 11 nasal swab specimens selected for viral culture. These seven specimens had HA1 protein sequences that were identical to each other and differed from the 2013–14 influenza A (H3N2) A/Texas/50/2012 vaccine strain by 5 amino acid substitutions (N128A, R142G, N145S, P198S, and V347K)."
These people got a flu shot, but the flu shot didn't cover the strain they were infected with.
Re: (Score:3)
I thought this was supposed to be a tech news site....in the past weeks....since dice took over...it's only mainstream crap...and wasn't expecting this from timothy.... maybe from that manishs guy...
You're a few years late there, buddy.
Re:what happened to /. (Score:5, Informative)
I thought this was supposed to be a tech news site....in the past weeks....since dice took over...it's only mainstream crap...and wasn't expecting this from timothy.... maybe from that manishs guy...
The anti-vaccine issue is about science. About how some idiots will reject it, and endanger their children's lives.
Anti-vaxxers are just one teeny little step away from being the people who refuse to give their diabetic children insulin on religious grounds.
The future.. (Score:2)
What happens when they perfect the artificial womb? Science will show how it's 1000 times safer for the woman and the child. What's wrong with a more natural/primitive lifestyle? It's a choice. You sure of your answer? Next will be natural sex vs doctor insemination in order to eliminate VD and other biological contaminants. Then reduced sodium and no beef. And finally we have the world in the Silvester Stallone Judge Dredd movie. It's quality of life and happiness issues. People should be able to live how
Re: (Score:2)
Societies the world over regulate the way people live, when it affects other people in society. That's clearly the case here. By not vaccinating their own kids, some parents endanger other kids who either cannot be vaccinated, or the vaccination was not effective.
Re: (Score:2)
> refuse to give their diabetic children insulin on religious grounds.
I'd not realized there were real cases of this: there apparently have been. I'm shocked: giving insulin to a Type 1 diabetic is as clear a case of lifesaving medicine as putting a tourniquet on a severed limb. It's one of the few cases where a state or community, aware of a family refusal to treat the condition, would be on solid legal grounds to override the family and insist on treatment. And diagnosis is pretty easy: the excessive u
Re: (Score:2)
I thought this was supposed to be a tech news site....
It's "news for nerds," kid. That means the site is open to any story that a poster thinks might be interesting to its readers.
Bug report (Score:2)
I thought this was supposed to be a tech news site....in the past weeks....since dice took over...it's only mainstream crap...and wasn't expecting this from timothy.... maybe from that manishs guy...
I'd like to file a bug report. This post appears to have come from September 2012, not 2016. Not only has Dice not taken over Slashdot but offloaded it, but also anti-vax movement has been widely discussed since 2012.
Slashdot please fix your database so these posts from the past don't make some people look like they don't know what they are talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
If dumb genes are killed off, why are there still so many stupid people around?
I don't think it works as easily as you would hope.
Re: (Score:2)
If dumb genes are killed off, why are there still so many stupid people around?
That's easy, because vaccines(among other forms of medicine) save stupid people and people with dumb genes that would contribute to their early deaths.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately the carriers of these "dumb genes" not only risk their childrens' lives, but also the herd immunity of the local community. Thereby putting the immune-compromised, newborns, and the unlucky for which the vaccine didn't take effect or are allergic.
Also: By providing a large enough pool of unimmunized to create repeated mini-epidemics and constant risk of exposure (especially in the case of human-host-only diseases that can be ELIMINATED), the anti-vaxxers "use up" the herd-immunity benefits, e
(Finishing up after Lenovo's touchpad struck again (Score:2)
(Lenovo's hypersensitive touchpad strikes again. Finishing the last paragraph.)
With effective herd immunity, the number and/or strength of immunizations can be lower than with a constant threat of exposure from mini-epidemics. There are legitimate risks associated with additional immunizations, so the smart move is to stop when the risks of the immunizations approach or exceed the risks they mitigate. With a large population of anti-vaxser victims, the risks from disease are higher and the crossover is pus
Re: Uh no? (Score:5, Informative)
Vaccines contain adjuvants and preservatives. The preservatives prevent bacterial growth, since you wouldn't want to inject a toxic bacterial culture (which happened before stuff like thimerosal was used). Adjuvants induce a localised inflammatory response to increase the effect of the immune system against the virus you're innoculating against. Without it, it would have reduced efficacy, or maybe no effect at all. So the reason for their presence is absolutely logical, and was determined by empirical testing to quantify exactly how much was needed, after it was determined that they *were* needed.
You're right that these aren't "nice" things. But they *are* necessary. Like everything there's a tradeoff. In this case, the toxicity of the preservatives and adjuvant against toxic bacterial growth and then benefit of the immunity to viral infection, respectively. Given the tiny amounts used, the negative effect is absolutely minor, and it will mostly get flushed out of the body within a short time. Note that they have not been shown to be harmful. Given that the tradeoff for some of these vaccines is chosing not to have brain damage, die, or suffer other long-term debilitating consequences, any negatives from the preservatives and adjuvants are greatly outweighed. Put it this way: if vaccines did cause autism as claimed by this fraud (which they don't, but let's pretend it's true), then it would *still be worth vaccinating everyone*. Why? Because the tiny chance you would get autism pales in comparison with the ~1/1000 chance of death from measles, and the still higher chance of long-term disability or serious complications. The numbers don't lie. Even if these charlatans were correct, vaccination would still be the correct choice every single time.
Do you really think that the people developing the vaccines would add this stuff for the hell of it, or not be fully aware of the risks involved? Thimerosal usage has been greatly reduced or dropped entirely in response to public hysteria. But it can only be done in the first world where you can manufacture and distribute the vaccine in bulk for immediate usage, since it can no longer be stored. In the third world, or for less commonly-used vaccines, it's still used. And that's still absolutely fine.
As for flu vaccines, like all vaccines they use dead or attenuated virus. Of course it makes you "sick"; having a mild infection (or at least the effects of an infection without actually being infected) and consequently developing an immune response to it is the *entire point* of the vaccine. The attenuation means it's not going to spread significantly in your body or to others, but it *is* sufficient to develop an immune response. Then you'll be protected when a real infection hits you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How about: The Disneyland outbreak was in fact localized in the unvaccinated (or those whose status was undocumented.)
"Among the 110 California patients, 49 (45%) were unvaccinated; five (5%) had 1 dose of measles-containing vaccine, seven (6%) had 2 doses, one (1%) had 3 doses, 47 (43%) had unknown or undocumented vaccination status, and one (1%) had immunoglobulin G seropositivity documented, which indicates prior vaccination or measles infection at an undetermined time.
"Twelve of the unvaccinated patient
Re: Uh no? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm not a virologist, I did do my PhD in an immunology lab and am fairly well grounded in how the immune system works. So it's not really "opinion", it's current scientific understanding (well, reasonably current, I've been working in another field the last four years). And it's not like the facts are not readily available. You can read about all this stuff with minimal effort. The basics are high school science (second year for me...); the more advanced stuff is in any immunology text, you can get a second hand copy of one for almost nothing, or you can look it all up online.
Regarding the outbreak, I'll defer to the other comment here regarding the numbers. However, I'll just add this: being vaccinated *does not mean you won't get infected*. It *does* mean that the body is prepared to mount a rapid secondary immune response when infection does occur. Unlike a primary immune response, which occurs on the first infection (or when mimicked with a vaccine) and takes days or weeks to elicit a response, the secondary response is much quicker since you already have the necessary memory cells waiting to be called into action, and it's also much more effective for various reasons (e.g. affinity maturation and isotype switching). You'll get over the infection quickly, and you'll likely not be as infectious to others, but you'll still have an infection for a brief period and you're still at risk of complications, though significantly reduced from an unvaccinated individual. Example: I had measles twice as a child, despite being vaccinated; the difference was it was a few days with spots feeling slightly miserable, rather than spending a fortnight seriously ill getting long term organ damage. Seriously, look up and read about herd immunity. Loss of that is a risk to the entire population, but most especially to the children of uninformed idiots who opted out of getting vaccinated. Vaccination prevents the spread of serious diseases through the population, and the stuff we vaccinate against *is* serious; don't forget that before vaccination programmes, these were routinely killing and maiming hundreds of thousands every year and child mortality was common, rather than an exception. I.e. worrying about a one in a million chance of autism when there's a one in a thousand chance of death or an even higher chance of brain or other organ damage is totally illogical.
Immunology is a fascinating field; there's a huge amount being discovered all the time, but this stuff has been well understood for many decades. There's not any doubt about any of the above, it's been studied extensively by many hundreds of thousands of researchers and medics around the world. We continue to discover new cell subsets which add extra details to the picture, and which expand our understanding of specific diseases and autoimmune conditions, but the basics were nailed down comprehensively a long while back. It's not like vaccines are new or that the way they work isn't understood. We understand how the whole lots works at the molecular level, from all the components of a virus, to how it controls the cellular machinery, to antigen presentation and detection and the selection and expansion of the immune cells to counter it, including how T and B cells vary at the genetic level, even by single base pairs, to do the affinity maturation and isotype switching I mentioned above.
What I do find incredible is that people are totally uninformed about what vaccines are, how they work, and why they are important. Not only because it's taught to everyone (it certainly is in the UK), so you don't have an excuse not to know, but also because it's trivial to *get* informed. As the comment I originally replied to showed, there's a lot of misinformed opinions flying around, partly due to irrational fear, partly due to media attention despite there being zero evidence for any problems, and partly due to irrational nutjobs. Whatever the reasons, it's takes very little effort to educate yourself about the *reality* of how this stuff works should you choose to do so, and given that the "debate" over this stuff is without any merit whatsoever, it's clear that education to get people informed is definitely needed.
Re: (Score:2)
http://xkcd.com/1357/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hint: A movement who's leading spokes-person is a vacuous Playboy Centerfold with no scientific knowledge should be a leading indicator that something is amiss. Huh. People will figure that out.
How's that working out so far? I think you have seriously underestimate how truly fucking stupid people are.
Re: (Score:2)
Hint: A movement who's leading spokes-person is a vacuous Playboy Centerfold with no scientific knowledge should be a leading indicator that something is amiss. Huh. People will figure that out.
How's that working out so far? I think you have seriously underestimated how truly fucking stupid people are.
Ha! Wait till he finds out about religion!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for demonstrating my point.
I, personally, think the anti-vaxxers are idiots. However, my own personal opinion of them should not drive an attempt to force them out of every venue and censor them using any means necessary. Their hypotheses have been shown to be flawed and this is backed up with science - backed up via reasoned thought and the scientific method.
What you're doing is evaluating what the SJW / popular opinion hivemind would think about anti-vaxxers - that they're whackjobs (which I happ
Re:Diversity of opinion is not tolerated (Score:5, Insightful)
De Niro was perfectly free to show the bloody film at Tribeca. It would have discredited his film festival, and damaged him pretty badly in the process.
Freedom of expression is not freedom from consequences. If you want to show a film defending a man whose self-serving actions has lead to harm and death, then go to it. But you'll be rightfully condemned for it, and may even suffer damage to your own reputation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Proper science doesn't censor incorrect results, it lets them speak for themselves.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Proper science doesn't censor incorrect results, it lets them speak for themselves.
Proper science is conducted in scientific journals, not through bad propaganda films.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. But proper science also doesn't censor bad propaganda films.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. But proper science also doesn't censor bad propaganda films.
Incorrect. Bad propaganda films that lead to behavior that is at best contributory negligence and at worst involuntary manslaughter definitely should be censored, with the scientific evidence that proves that the behavior is negligence or manslaughter.
Censorship is not universally bad. It is entirely reasonable for a society to decide as a whole that something is so terrible that it needs to be suppressed. Flat Earthers are mocked and derided and no one anywhere thinks they deserve to present their case
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the movie is being blocked or censored. The Tribeca Film Festival is a private event. Inclusion in this event could be seen as an endorsement by its organizers.
That didn't work out well for American Indians (Score:2)
[P]ut all the anti vaxxers in their own tribe behind an extension of trumps wall - if they survive then they should develop immunity to all those illnesses, have lower levels of autism etc. and also prove evolution.
That experiment has already been run:
- Many tribes of the American Indians had substantial public works infrastructure, medical procedures, and cultural biases (like hygiene) that helped protect them from disease.
- The Europeans went through a thousand years of "Dark Ages" when "m