Anti-vaxxers are not the enemy: Science, politics and the crisis of authority -- SALON

[nashville_brook]

This is perhaps the best thing I've seen written on the underpinnings of the vaccine controversy. What we're experiencing in this debate is the outcome of the "crisis of authority." No more no less. Today it expresses itself in the realm of vaccination -- tomorrow it will express itself elsewhere -- perhaps we'll be asked to accept a new war. Who knows.

A "crisis of authority" can lead in one of two directions depending on the programming of the people who are dealing with it at the time. If the population is leaning toward authoritarianism, it will lead to more authoritarianism. If the population is leaning is leaning toward enlightenment forms of culture, then the outcome will be better, more efficient problem solving. We've seen this repeated in history, and we're seeing it now in the Middle East.

Vaccines just happen to be a stage where Americans today are declaring their fealty to authority. Tomorrow it will be something else. I wonder what that will be. The TRUTH is that we are lied to ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Why should vaccines (or financial instruments, or the next war, or internet privacy) be any different?

What is for sure is that this is not a scientific argument, and you can tell it's not a scientific argument b/c the one thing that science does that political rhetoric/ideology doesn't do is question itself. That's the whole purpose of science. I find it ironic that those who are on the side of "science" are by definition siding with "faith" on this issue. "Have faith in science" they say.

Well, read on, and see how that might not be entirely rational.




http://www.salon.com/2015/02/07/anti_vaxxers_climate_deniers_and_the_crisis_of_authority/


Anti-vaxxers are not the enemy: Science, politics and the crisis of authority

One of the central characteristics of our age – which those of us with fancy educations often call the postmodern era, although even that term is starting to feel old – is a widespread crisis of authority. It isn’t quite true that nobody believes in anything and nobody trusts the experts, as in the rootless world of moral relativism feared by conservatives. It’s more that everybody gets to pick their own beliefs, their own experts and their own evidence...It’s entirely expected for somebody with my media platform to rage against right-wing kooks on television — or right-wing kooks in elected office, for that matter — who claim that climate change is a hoax or that vaccinating children against preventable diseases is dangerous and unnecessary. I agree that those people are deluded or misinformed, and in the case of climate denial they are serving as the agents of larger and darker powers. But those issues are not the same, no matter how closely they have become linked in the liberal and conservative hive-minds. For one thing, anti-vaccine sentiment is found across the political spectrum, although it’s most common among the libertarian-minded right and the anarchist-minded or New Agey quadrants of the left. Attempts to cram the vaccine issue into the binary discourse of partisan politics or the “culture war” are intellectually lazy, and misrepresent its true significance. Furthermore, the dangers of climate denialism are many orders of magnitude worse than the dangers of anti-vaxxer hysteria, which feels like one of those sideshow issues in American politics that’s really about something else.

(snip)


Science, properly speaking, does not “believe” in itself. Any ethical scientist will tell you that the history of science is a history of doubt and mistakes and accidental discoveries. What is demanded here is not faith in people with white coats and prestigious degrees, who are just as likely to be evil and corrupt as anyone else, but critical thinking (which, by the way, is at the core of the scientific method). I specifically mean the ability to follow the threads of ideas back to their sources, and the ability to ask who benefits and who loses when a certain idea wins out. That’s a skill that can be learned by anyone, and one that is effectively suppressed in our current educational economy. It’s also the only possible way out of the American impasse around science, and the feedback loop created by the crisis of authority.

Let me try to forestall a few of the angry comments: I am not covertly agreeing with anti-vaxxers, I don’t want to give up my smartphone or undo the elimination of smallpox, and I don’t assert, after the style of 1970s French philosophy, that there is no such thing as objective reality and that it’s all a game of language and ideology. Still, the crisis of authority is a cultural phenomenon, meaning that it really is about language and ideology more than verifiable facts. To insist that “our side” has access to true facts and legitimate authority, while the other side relies on quacks and charlatans, is not much different from saying that our God is great and yours is a filthy donkey. We may be correct (in either instance), but the case is inherently unprovable in any terms the other side is ever likely to accept.

For the past half-century and more it has largely been the left that has challenged social, cultural and political orthodoxy on white supremacy, the Vietnam War, nuclear power, the oppression of women and LGBT people and the destruction of the environment for profit, among many other things. Until recently, American conservatives saw themselves first and foremost as defenders of authority and moral order, buttresses around a fortress of shared values that was buffeted by a corrosive tide.

(snip)

Trust in science, my ass. Questioning science is an urgent and necessary aspect of contemporary critical thinking, and the questions that anti-vaxxers start with are entirely legitimate: What are you putting in my kid’s body? Is it safe, and is it necessary? Who’s making money off this, and what do we know about them? And even beyond that: Can I trust that you are telling me the truth? My kids have had all their shots, and I believe that people who refuse vaccination are putting together shreds of old anecdote and flawed evidence and conspiratorial ideology to reach a faulty conclusion. As we have recently discovered, this can have unfortunate public health consequences. But I speak for many parents when I say that I don’t begrudge those people their doubts, because I have shared them. That last question, which lies at the heart of both the vaccine issue and the entire crisis of authority — “Why should I trust you, after all the lies I’ve been told?” — still gives me a twinge sometimes.

[NuclearDem]

1. Anti-vaxxers' questions have been addressed repeatedly.

Their issue isn't with authority, it's with their desperate cling to a point of view that's completely ridiculous in the face of the overwhelming evidence.

The "I don't trust corporations" line is just a smokescreen to recruit the scared and gullible, since they have absolutely zero scientific evidence to go on.

[Humanist_Activist]

2. The "I don't trust corporations" line makes NO sense when vaccines are the much cheaper option...

If I catch a flu, I could easily spend 100 dollars or more on OTC symptom remedies with limited effectiveness, or I could have gotten the flu shot before getting infected, which, even if its for the wrong spectrum of strains, still has the effect of limiting the severity of the illness, hence saving me money. This isn't including possibly complications of catching the flu, such as hospitalization and possibly death.

[nashville_brook]

88. that might well work for you, at this point in time -- flu shots used to work for me

as a matter of fact. until then they didn't. and when they started to not work for me the began to set off immunological flares that kept me sick for weeks. it took a couple of rounds of vaccines to realize it was the shots that was making me sick.

so sure, if you think it saves you a buck and it's working for you, then that's fantastic. but, know that we're not all wired the same. humanity is diverse. we're much less of a herd and much more of...well, humanity.

[Humanist_Activist]

89. That's what makes me getting a vaccine even more important, to protect you...

it helps reduce your exposure to the flu, of course, its much more effective when everyone who is capable to get the vaccine actually gets it.

[Blue_Tires]

3. “Why should I trust you, after all the lies I’ve been told?”

"The TRUTH is that we are lied to ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Why should vaccines (or financial instruments, or the next war, or internet privacy) be any different?"


To this I would say: Fine, don't believe it...But dismissive skepticism in itself is *not* a proper refutation of established science, regardless of whether or not you "believe it"...Maybe the Center for Disease Control is lying to everyone about the measles, too -- After all, they're just a bunch of big government functionaries in white lab coats with a long history of lying to us, right?? For all we know, under the proper conditions, measles could give us superhuman powers!

In true scientific tradition, I challenge any and all anti-vaxxers to get there own BIO degrees and conduct their own individual research so they may learn the truth themselves....

[Egnever]

4. its not that I don't believe in science

What a pantload.


Navel gazing at its finest.

[closeupready]

5. Another anti-vaxx thread, another item for my 'trash thread' bin.

[NuclearDem]

6. Super cool post bro.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. "have faith in science" +1000

It must be comforting to be able to turn credulity on and off like that.

[DanTex]

8. There are different kinds of "authority"

Science is not just "authority", it's actually science. Some questions are addressable by the scientific method. For example, are human actions causing the earth to get warmer, or do certain vaccines cause autism.

Science has answered these questions. Not by "authority", but by collecting data, analyzing it, etc.

When science "says" something, what that actually means is that many experiments have been conducted and the results show that that something is true. This is completely different than when a politician says something. Lumping those things under "authority" or "we have been lied to before" is a mistake.

[nashville_brook]

68. yes, "science" is a way of knowing that is special. however, big business is a way of power

that supersedes knowledge in our culture. for example, we might "know" that dumping toxic waste into the aquifer will spoil the water for future generations, but if it's convenient for the profit of big business right now, it's going to happen because, who is going to stop them, really?

science has been the handmaiden of big business for as many generations now. there was a brief period where we made an effort with NIH to have a real, humanistic, national science program -- but that was co-opted for another form of business fairly quickly in the form of the defense industry.

in terms of "authority," science told us that it was as good as God's Word that cancer could not be communicable. this was the orthodoxy, and anyone who went against it paid a steep price. but then we discovered HPV...a form of cancer that is indeed communicable. this discovery could have happened many years sooner were it not for a long history of research being dismissed/censored/STFU'd by academe and the medical establishment.

that's just one example of "authority" not serving the interests of knowledge.

[DanTex]

73. Just to add to what you are saying.

Even though "science" is not "authority," the reason people believe or don't believe certain scientific claims isn't actually the scientific method. Almost nobody ever repeats experiments for themselves. Very few people even read the original scientific writings of the people who perform the experiments. And, even if they wanted to, most people wouldn't be qualified to.

I'm not just talking about vaxxes or climate change, but even simple things like the world being round. OK, that's pushing it a bit, because you can see for yourself that it's round by say watching ships drop off the horizon or at the curvature of the horizon out of an airplane window (although technically that only proves that it's curved, not necessarily round...). But you get my point.

What people trust or don't trust in is the entire process by which scientists perform experiments, write down their results, have those writings reviewed by other scientists, and so on. If that system itself becomes corrupted, than it's no longer the scientific method that is driving beliefs.

And even if we accept that the system is not corrupted (personally, I don't believe it to be -- I think that if you read something in a reputable science journal, that experiment actually took place and the results are reported accurately), there is still the problem of interpreting those results.

For example, if you take something like MMR and autism. The line is that there is "no risk" of MMR causing autism. And I believe that this is true. But this is not actually what the science says. The science says that there is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that MMR has a statistically significant effect on the risk of autism. That's a hugely different statement. And if you look at the confidence intervals based on the studies, you'll find that they can say with confidence that the change in risk of autism due to MMR is between something like -10% and +10% (maybe even higher, for example the upper confidence interval for this study is 24%: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134).

Then the question becomes how do you report this. If you say "the relative increase in risk of autism from MMR is no more than 10%" then people will freak out. If you say "the risk is zero", then you are saying something which, while probably true, is not scientifically defensible.

[nashville_brook]

87. totally -- and even when it's informed, educated people having nuanced conversations over

what it actually means in real life when the science says, "there is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that MMR has a statistically significant effect on the risk of autism," still get mired in the mud. there's still people for whom immunizations trigger adverse reactions, and that's always going to be the case. same as how some people can't take aspirin. or can't tolerate sulphates. we're not all wired the same, and we don't have it all mapped out yet.

i guess that's why this debate is frustrating to me. it's one where we need to be opening up avenues of discussion instead of shutting them down.

[adieu]

9. While I agree

that people should be skeptical of authorities telling them things, especially if there has been prior examples of fraud, lies and ulterior motives, the bottom line is that they choose to seek truth from those who are not providing any sort of scientific research.

Yes, it's one thing to ask, "What are you putting in my kid’s body? Is it safe, and is it necessary? Who’s making money off this, and what do we know about them? And even beyond that: Can I trust that you are telling me the truth?" I think these questions are completely legitimate, and I think the people providing the vaccines or anything else must fully and truthfully answer these questions.

But then these same people who ask this question then turn around and find answers from those who have no science background, who have no evidence, who are being fraudulent, who have ulterior motives, then you have to ask, "Why aren't you being equally critical in your questioning? Why are you not giving these people, these quacks, the same level of scrutiny that you are giving the scientific establishment, a scrutiny that I wholeheartedly endorse?"

The real answer is not "the crisis of authority", it is the brainwashing through religionism. As you can see, in America, religion is still very strong. The output of religion is exactly what these people rail against: ulterior motives, fraud, lies, unprovable claims, lack of evidence, and the worst: a terrible track record of successful outcomes. Yet, religion is often the foundation for many people's system of filtering information. When you have something as noxious and destructive as religion as your guide, then it is impossible not do the wrong thing and cast a skeptical eye at one field (science) and take on an accepting position at another field (quackery).

[Curmudgeoness]

14. You bring up a question that I had not considered.

What are the ulterior motives of the people who are against vaccinations? It seems as if it is more than just a religious issue, since there are so few people whose religion turns away from modern medicine.

[NuclearDem]

22. Andrew Wakefield was developing an alternate to the MMR vaccine when he did his study.

And he stood to potentially make quite a bit of money from that. A lot of "natural remedy" pushers hop on the anti-vaxx bandwagon.

[Curmudgeoness]

27. Ah, yes, the alternative medicine industry.

I hadn't thought of that. Nor did I know that Wakefield was developing another vaccine. Yes, he definitely would have benefitted from discrediting the current vaccines. Thanks for that info, it explains a lot, at least about the beginnings of this hysteria.

[KingCharlemagne]

24. If one really wished to get into dark CT territory, one could well ask whether Big Pharma is

Last edited Sat Feb 14, 2015, 09:47 AM - Edit history (2)

itself covertly funding the anti-vaxx bullshit, so as to allow Big Pharma to garner much higher profits from treating the diseases rather than much smaller profits from vaccinating against them.

I'm not prepared to go there, but I must admit the question has crossed my mind, using the old Latin interrogatory Cui bono (Who benefits)?

[Curmudgeoness]

26. Wow, that would be really dastardly.

Not that I would put it past them, but I have no reason to believe this is the case.....yet.

[adieu]

35. It's pretty clear, isn't it?

Andrew Wakefield wanted to sell his brand of cures. Every quack has his or her own brand they want others to use. They're not just saying, "Don't use vaccines." They're saying, "Don't use vaccines. Use this alternative instead." That alternative could be something free, like "boil water for 15 minutes, let it cool and drink it," but the instructions and booklets and seminars and classes and special "all-organic stainless steel pots" and "penta-water" aren't.

As for the religious issue, it's the overwhelming presence of religion as a basis of critical thinking in the US, regardless of what brand of religion they espouse. None of the religions are teaching, specifically, to turn away from modern medicine. What they are all teaching is how to blinding accept a dogma that is completely fraudulent, full of lies, carries almost no evidence, requires blind faith and have a track record of complete misery and failure. So when people accept that status, they don't have a working ability to properly assess one claim versus another. They either accept the medical industry's claims without reservation, or they accept some other quack's claims without reservation. They don't know how to practice the scientific method.

[nashville_brook]

69. parents see too many unexplained autistic spectrum children

and NO children with polio. they have a *rational* fear of their kids winding up on the spectrum b/c of something (they know not what). polio is NOT a fear b/c no one in our generation has seen anyone with the disease.

i think one of the things that's really hurt the vaccination rate is when the meme started that autism spectrum disorders were "just a sampling improvement." that, we only have more autistic kids b/c we're more aware of it now. everyone knows that's bullshit.

until we get some real answers on autism, there's going to be all kinds of fears about what we allow our kids to come in contact with. that's just rational parenting for anyone who is familiar with what it's like to parent to an autistic kid.

Let's say that tomorrow we decided we decided we were going to put a stop to worries. How would we do that? I believe we'd have to start with a convincing program that explains what's going on with autism. It might be that big business will have to fess-up to other environmental contaminants. So be it. That's what we're supposed to have a government for -- to bring business to heel. I'm not holding my breath, though.

[Warren Stupidity]

80. we have the real answers on vaccination and autism. There is no connection. nt.

[Curmudgeoness]

82. There is no link that any scientist has found.

The fear of vaccines is not rational. And maybe your generation has no fear of polio and no one has seen it, but I have. A friend of mine had polio and is partially crippled from it. It has not been that long ago that it was a real threat. But I don't know anyone from my generation who had autism, although I have no doubt there were some. And we all were required to have vaccinations before we were allowed into school.

There may be an environmental reason for the increase in instances of autism. Or it may be that it is better defined and diagnosed these days. Or it could be something that the mother was exposed to prior to giving birth and nothing that you do after the child is born will matter. We just don't know.

I do agree that we should be doing a better job or regulating what we are exposed to and what we eat that may be dangerous to us, but until there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are dangerous, I say that the cost/benefit is on the side of getting vaccinated.

[Iggo]

10. Yes, they are.

[Maedhros]

11. I have a science background and have conducted original research.

Trust in science, my ass.

I take issue with your depiction of science as simply a competing dogma. This is a common misapprehension, that science comprises a set of accepted truths. On the contrary, science is a method for addressing questions.

What you are questioning is the political use of the results of scientific endeavors, and I agree that healthy skepticism is warranted with any program mandated by the ruling political body. However the science - i.e. the decision-making process that tells us we should vaccinate the public against dangerous diseases - is sound. What you are questioning is not the science, but the implementation.

Yes, we should rigorously examine the implementation process. But the question of whether vaccination programs are effective and necessary has been repeatedly asked and the answer is "yes."

[KingCharlemagne]

25. My background is in the humanities and social sciences and I wish you would write an

original post for all of DU, expounding upon the logical soundness of the Scientific Method (and maybe its history, going back at least to Newton).

For me, the surest proof of the validity of the SM is that the results of experiments designed to test hypotheses can be replicated by others. I'm sure there are other proofs of the validity of the SM, but that is the one that I rely upon.

[Curmudgeoness]

12. Although I find anti-vaxxers to be irrational and stubborn

in their clinging to one study that has been discredited, I do see the point in this article. I have heard "scientists" tell us that fracking is safe, water has not been tainted by it, etc. There are some "scientists" who will still pound the drum that there is no evidence of climate change (much less that it is man-made). Yes, there are industry shills out there. But what we have to do is look at the arguments presented by both sides and see which one is more credible....not because it agrees with what we think, but because the evidence is there.

Not trusting government or industry is not bad in itself. But we should be willing to follow the facts.

[Android3.14]

13. It was disheartening to see progressives embracing totalitarianism

Moronic disclaimer required to speak intelligently to others about his topic - I support vaccinations, my kids are vaccinated, I'm vaccinated and my pets are vaccinated. Vaccinations tend to work.

When this topic gained some legs, the saddest thing to see was people calling for the government to take children from parents, force people to accept vaccinations or imprison people who refused vaccinations.

I am accustomed to debating with people who are ignorant and/or who believe strongly about certain topics to the point that they become insulting. As is true for most of us, I've been called worse by better.

But this was the first time that I was ashamed of this community. To see how easily people would relinquish their ability to control their own bodies, given the progressive stances on reproductive freedom, end of life decisions, drug policy, torture and many other topics relating to individual freedom, simply because there was a popular movement to criticize/mock/ostracize people who question organizations like the pharmaceutical companies, was a low point for the years I've spent coming here.

[DanTex]

19. Well, here's the thing about mandatory vaccinations.

An individual's choice to vaccinate or not affects more than just the individual. That's the rationale for making them mandatory. And they are already required for many schools and colleges, for exactly that reason.

The thing is, if vaccinations aren't mandatory, then a person can freeload off the herd immunity. And, in fact, for rare diseases like measles, it is arguably rational, at least for some people, to skip the vaccine, not because of any big risks, but instead because the risks of catching measles even without the vaccine are so low that the individual benefit is tiny. (I actually made an OP explaining this a few days ago, which of course got hidden immediately and I was labeled an anti-vaxxer and showered with insults).

Problem is, if everyone makes that decision, then measles comes back and everyone suffers. And measles coming back is a really bad thing that we really don't want. So if the choice is either mandatory vaccination or the return of measles, it's not so easy to just dismiss the call for mandatory vaxxes as totalitarianism.

[Curmudgeoness]

30. But what you are leaving out of your discussion

is the children who cannot get the vaccine. Kids with cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy can't get vaccinations. Neither can kids with other health issues. Those are the ones who rely on the herd immunity. So if you have children who have no reason to avoid getting the vaccine other than they are afraid of it, that just makes a larger number of unvaccinated kids.

[DanTex]

32. I agree. Further rationale for making them mandatory, obviously only for the

people who don't have special risks.

[Android3.14]

39. None so blind...

So which should we do first, incarcerate American citizens who refuse to vaccinate themselves and their children, or save many-many more children by filling all in-ground pools with cement?

Or should we eliminate peanuts from the food supply because some people continue to use peanuts as an ingredient, despite the tens of thousands of children with peanut allergies?

This is such a misleading argument, right up there with the ticking time bomb scenario to justify torture. It is through these "but think about the children" distractors that we allow ourselves to become the thing we despise.

[kcr]

50. Gun nut logic

But pools are dangerous, too! Why don't we ban them! Oh, right, guess we should just allow the school shootings to continue...

And the spreading disease now also, apparently.

[Android3.14]

38. Another GOP black-and-white mindset

"So if the choice is either mandatory vaccination or the return of measles, it's not so easy to just dismiss the call for mandatory vaxxes as totalitarianism."

To think there are only two solutions to such a complex problem is a fallacy.

[DanTex]

47. Did I say there were only two solutions?

Obviously, the best solution would be for voluntary vaccination rates to remain above the threshold where the disease in question is able to propagate. The question is what to do if they don't. What's your answer?

[Android3.14]

48. What you describe is not a solution but a result

The real question is how do we keep (or restore) vaccination rates above the threshold?

I would say that an extensive propaganda campaign, perhaps through the Ad Council, combined with rewards for compliance (tax breaks, insurance rate perks, tuition discounts, favorable student loan rates, etc) and consequences for noncompliance (additional taxes, name in a registry, restriction from attending public school, increased insurance costs, etc.) would help.

[DanTex]

49. I agree. That is the real question.

And I also agree that the strategy should be information first, financial rewards/penalties second. But I imagine even the idea of tax penalties for non-vaccinations is controversial.

[Android3.14]

59. Tax penalties or any penalties

Would be controversial. I suspect a well-planned marketing campaign would probably be sufficient, though.

[nashville_brook]

63. this actually seems like a pro-vaxx argument, to me -- i wouldn't have hid your thread

either way. just shows how irrational the debate has become.

[DanTex]

67. Yes, it is a pro-vaxx argument. And, yes the debate has become irrational.

It's a simple mathematical truth that the odds of getting measles, even if you skip the vaccine, are really tiny, at least for the average American (if you are, say Amish, or otherwise live somewhere where the vax rate is low, then the risk is higher, obviously).

That means that trying to call people who skip the vax "idiots" who put their children at risk, not only is a very bad persuasive strategy, but it's factually incorrect. But it's become such an "us versus them" thing, at least here on DU, that such truths can't be spoken.

[LanternWaste]

21. You then believe vaccinations are part and parcel of a totalitarian government...

You then believe vaccinations are part and parcel of a totalitarian government rather than a collective health issue?

From where I sit, the inability to see the relevant difference is a low point in my years on this board.

[Android3.14]

37. You missed the point

It isn't about vaccination. It's not even about forced vaccinations. It's about the broader concept of being free within my own person, just as it is with abortion, torture, end of life decisions and drug use.

I believe it is a sobering and depressing fact that many people will support totalitarian tactics with just the slightest nudge.

Your argument comes down to this. If the majority of people think a subgroup of citizens are stupid, then it is okay to withhold the stupid group's rights.

I recognize that you will not see this, because you are unwilling to see yourself as so easily manipulated. And that blindness is the age old problem that gives rise to fascism and other forms of coercive governing.

You should read the novel "This Perfect Day"

[alarimer]

31. Vaccines are not the same as birth control, as far as "control of your own body" is concerned.

A decision not to vaccinate, taken by enough people, completely RUINS the idea of herd immunity and makes the whole thing pointless. If herd immunity reaches high enough levels, close to 95% or more percent, you have effectively eliminated a disease. But because people value "personal choice" above the health and safety of all, we no longer have this herd immunity for measles and it is making a comeback. And has been pointed out on numerous occasions, there can be deadly complications even for this "childhood disease." People who don't vaccinate because of "personal choice" are basically selfish and deserve the condemnation coming their way. It is not a progressive value to be selfish and not care about the health of society as a whole.

[wisechoice]

40. I am trying to understand your points

If someone is vaccinated he is immune to the disease and hence don't have to worry about contacting virus even if there is a measles outbreak. So then why is that we need everyone to be vaccinated forcibly? Even if everyone in this country is vaccinated, there are going to be people flying in from other countries carrying measles.

BTW I support Vaccination, but I don't want to force someone to have a vaccine.

[nashville_brook]

45. completely agree, and i hate the idea of wading into the cesspool of this "debate"

but someone has to do it.

no one is "winning" this debate. i'd be willing to bet that there's precious few people who are "vaccine skeptics" who have had their minds changed by being ridiculed. instead they've dug in, gone underground and decided "well, can't trust progressives either."

you've probably noticed -- i certainly have -- that when authoritarians try to sway opinion, they ALWAYS mock and ostracize. it's always a hammer. it's never enlightening.

Mocking is like Viagra for the philosophically impotent.

[Android3.14]

60. That last line is fricken' awesome!

I am putting that in my sig line.

[nashville_brook]

72. :) awwww

[daredtowork]

54. Thank you

It's about education and rebuilding trust.

The heights of Un-Democracy DU reached over the last 3 weeks was sickening.

[Warren Stupidity]

74. Do you feel the same about mandatory hand-washing by food service employees?

Another example of totalitarianism, right?

[Android3.14]

77. Is washing your hands equivalent to an injection? No.

Should we imprison the person who refuse to wash his or her hands? No. Should they keep their job in food service? No.

Your question, even as a clumsy false equivalence, only supports the stance that those who are trying to make refusal of vaccinations a criminal offense are embracing a fascist mindset.

I'm sorry, but I know how easy it is to jump on the bandwagon when ridicule is the invitation. despite that easy herd mentality (as opposed to herd immunity), anyone will find it easy to defend the principle for respect for a person's choice to control their own body.

Until the government starts behaving with openness and honesty, as well as requiring businesses to do the same, the folks expressing skepticism and caution are not only justified in questioning everything these habitual liars say, but they stand on a solid philosophical foundation.

[Warren Stupidity]

79. It is the state requiring you to perform actions on your body.

The equivalence is not false. There are many other examples.

[Android3.14]

83. The consequence is minimal, as is the incursion on the person

Your example of hand-washing is inapplicable, as a cursory consideration reveals. Your chain of logic collapses at this point.

[99th_Monkey]

15. THANK YOU - K&R - Finally!!

Someone posts something on DU that's intelligent about the vax dust-up ..

A very good read, that puts the onus for the crisis of authority where it belongs: squarely
on the backs of chronically lying authorities.

[nashville_brook]

64. you're welcome -- i don't really have a dog in this hunt

except that i can't take flu shots, so I understand having to swim upstream against the medical establishment's orthodoxy on some things.

[bbgrunt]

16. I do believe that there is a growing crisis in

"authority". Empirical studies can never PROVE anything, they can only lend support for various hypotheses. Science is constantly being revised and revisited as new information and techniques become available.

Compound this with the multitude of lies, misrepresentations and political agendas behind most information sources and total skepticism becomes an easy sell. How else to explain the total devotion of FAUX viewers to their own set of lies. The "facts" they are given to counter their beliefs do not penetrate because they dismiss all sources of info as illegitimate or agenda driven.

The truth is that there is no truly objective information. It all becomes subjective the minute we decide what questions to ask. This is not an anti-science statement but rather a recognition of the limits of science and what we know as "facts".

[jwirr]

17. One of the rw talking points is the not trust science, government, liberals, ect. This article is

saying the same things with the exception of liberals. I hear this on DU also. I think one of my old professors said it better: "Always ask how do you know?". In other words show me the evidence.

Because I would hate to live in a world where everything around me cannot be trusted. If that is the case then I would go to the local fast food joint for my heart surgery. What would be the difference?

[whereisjustice]

28. funny you should say...

popping up like fast food joints and payday/title loan places. I'm told by the PTB a free market based health care system is better than public health care system... but I have my doubts

[nashville_brook]

66. science should be the realm where the rigorous questioning occurs

the ideal is there's system of peers who operate in a collegial atmosphere where hypotheses are proposed and tested in a tenured system unbiased by patronage.

but we have the opposite of that now where universities are wholly-owned subsidies of big businesses. some of the most convincing critics of the system are post-grads who've seen how the sausage is made -- they just don't have functioning microphones in an age when FOX news can dominate with "dum dum" talk.

[jwirr]

70. And in that case I would listen. I guess the next question of importance is "Did the evidence come

from a reputable source?" followed by "Was the evidence replicated in further studies?".

My point is that we need to be careful that we do not fall into the rw anti-intellectual - anti-everything mode.

[whereisjustice]

18. good analysis, public health is a matter of public trust and when a government

continuously puts the interests and wealth of a minority of corporate executives ahead of pubic well being, you get corrosion of public trust. The US has very little moral standing on issues of public health, having created a bloated, wasteful, inefficient and patently toxic system of health care delivery, built on faith in the purity of the free market. It is a cold, immoral and diabolical system of life and death, unprecedented in the history of money changing.

On the one hand the free market orthodoxy celebrated by New Democrats and Republicans enforces a "buyer beware, do your own research" culture even as the general public is all but shut out of the process of government, thereby limiting information and choice. On the other hand, the authority concern trolls insist on blind allegiance to one party or the other regardless of facts and evidence that many government policies are designed to work against the best interests of the majority.

Public health is a necessary priority of any civilized government. However, our government is becoming less transparent and more corrupt on a daily basis - measured in so many ways, wealth disparity, poverty, education, environment, banking regulations, incarceration, policing and ultimately health care - all indicative of a decaying society which puts the interests of the rich ahead of the general public.

It's literally "every man for himself" as we are left swimming in a cesspool of horrible government/corporate choices and values.

Therefore, the anti-vax problem is a problem of our own making.

It can be solved by proving the government can work to the benefit of ALL citizens. Not just a few chosen rich.

It won't be solved by authority trolls.

At this point the "anti-trust herd" is large enough that communities of resistance have developed against government pronouncements that they "care about our safety".

[bbgrunt]

36. well said.

[nashville_brook]

41. if we cared about public health we'd provide PAID SICK DAYS for workers

i wish the authority trolls were as concerned about sick people handling their food, and elderly relatives in assisted care settings.

[whereisjustice]

51. +1, i recently threw a sandwich away after it was obvious the person who made it was sick...

at first I thought about complaining - telling them to stop, but then I thought I would just be taking my frustration out on the wrong person. Had to get back to work so I paid for the damn sandwich and went hungry.

This part of American society is completely fucked up.

[nashville_brook]

62. where i live we passed a ballot initiative to have provide sick days...

it was passed by the voters....and the Koch-funded state legislature PREEMPTED IT. there's the real threat to public health. where's the outrage? where's the righteous indignation? the stomping of feet? the mini-meltdowns?

[MisterP]

20. this is the only vaccine thread I've ever posted to

1. what we're talking about is technocracy--I'm opposed, as are most of these doctors and countries: the old model of "you shut up and obey the authority figure" medicine died with Rosenhan and Chamberlin

the failure of Operation Ranch Hand provoked a *massive* panic in the suburbs of San Jose, Midland, and Long Island: science and innovation, the story went, had won WWII, so what the hell was going on in this pipsqueak backwater that it was managing to absorb everything we threw at it?

technocracy's decades of promises of utopia on earth through pesticides, vaccines, antibiotics, and deforestation--of godhood through rocketry--were thoroughly dead by the time the oil crisis put it do bed: it tottered on as a zombie in Kemalism and Mexico's PRI and space advocacy: when Neil Tyson says that doubling NASA's budget will "transform the country from a sullen, dispirited nation, weary of economic struggle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th century birthright to dream of tomorrow" he's being a technocrat, not a scientist: his argument's "voodoo development," like those countries that build massive stadiums because rich countries do--it's exactly like saying that bringing back the third seat in the cockpit will bring back the Pan Am panache to flying

technocracy died with Rachel Carson and the "rightsizing" of IBM and aerospace, died at the evacuation of Saigon and Chernobyl, died when they admitted women could science or that the locals could lead you to new drugs in the jungle--but its specter is still banging around (especially in Britain for some reason): it's not science but a scientistic ideology of science, one that tells lab rats and engineers that they're better historians than any professor could be because they're scientists, defenders of the guttering flame against the darkness of newspaper horoscopes and Continental philosophy

2. a nearly-unsustainable chunk of my income goes to funding vaccines in the world's darkest corners (where my career is and will be), I work with doctors, I know the benefits far outweigh the risks (which are easily caught because almost nobody uses the "fire-and-forget" model to vaccines): in fact I'm a vaccine *snob* so I knew MMR's epidemiological profile before they admitted it needed a booster; but it's not about the vaccines as an issue or as medicine, but as putting yourself on "the right side" against these foul mombies that will Destroy Us AllTM--it's a badge of identity now (just like how people "fucking love science" because it's a way to annoy creationists, who're creationist because it's a way to annoy "secularists," etc.)

[nashville_brook]

43. thank you SO much for sharing

you're the person i imagined sharing this for.

it's not about the damn vaccines. i have all my vaccines. if i had kids they'd have theirs. my dogs are vaccinated beyond logic.

my stake in this is 1) as someone interested in thinking and how we're using our noggins, and 2) as someone who has suffered incredible pain, loss of ability and money b/c of the "authority" of doctors...who, when they finally figured out how wrong they were (on one issue) just shrugged their shoulders and said "whoops," and who continue to put me in the wrong settings with my particular situation (which is not well understood, fought-over, not easily diagnosed, etc, etc).

your point here: it's not science but a scientistic ideology of science, one that tells lab rats and engineers that they're better historians than any professor could be because they're scientists, defenders of the guttering flame against the darkness of newspaper horoscopes and Continental philosophy -- this was on of my primary fields of study in college. I've been watching this fight go downhill for 30 years. And here were are.

What's funny is that I took that philosophy degree and masters work, and went into marketing and PR, and i SEE what the other side is doing here. The "keepers of the faith" have mounted an attack on a group of people who are easily mockable. Fine. What changes? The people who don't trust PHARMA aren't going to magically start trusting pharma. they're just going to be quiet...go underground. That's not a "win" for public health, IMO.

If we want to really fix this then it can't be one side yelling at the other.

[MisterP]

46. hey, that's all stuff you can get from Wiki--but again we have to pull back if we want to

see what's going on with these "mombies" and why the baying stopped when it turned out to be vaccinated adults doing the spreading--because it's not about immunology or epidemiology, it's about some weird culture clash between strawmen: if most doctors thought that way there'd be no booster shots because the first one was PERFECT

I work in Westside LA and I've seen all the "crunchy" helicopter-parent types this outbreak is tied to, and don't like that Whole Foods yuppie set at all: BUT the case is being used to push a very strange and illiberal view that we must never speak back to the whitecoats, that it's not just dangerous but blasphemous, that we need to resurrect some 1940s-60s golden age that never was, that the "arrogant doctor" trope is a good thing

the same thing happened when people complained on DU about antidepressants--it was oceanic waves of "Scientologist! murderer! Luddite!" and then after the black-box warning ("take it but be careful&quot was put on, total silence

it's not just the type that said on DU the Philae lander proved God didn't exist because it didn't miss the comet (still not over that), it's that there's a tendency to circle the wagons that pushes people closer to that pole of nonsense

[nashville_brook]

57. do we honestly know what's spreading and why...

here in florida there was an outbreak of measles from British tourists. apparently there's not the same vaccine mandates in the UK, or something. this outbreak happened a year or so ago and as i recall it also wasn't about children, it was about adults.

totally feel you on the antidepressants -- no one stopped to realize that the drugs were being doled out in lieu of insurance actually paying for counseling and therapy that can actually help people get their lives in order. if the choice is between a few months of hour-long sessions and writing a prescription...well hell, get out that pad. no one even gets the choice of trying both or one over the other...it's just the drugs or nothing. and if you don't like it, then we'll lump you in with people who believe that space aliens are god and will take your money to prove it.

I'm illustrating this thread with an image in my head of wagons circling...only they have ribbons like a maypole and instead of a tree, it's a syringe with MMR written real big on the side...helicopters swooping down to snatch children while Jenny McCarthy is burned at the foot of the needle. i think it could work.

[Bluenorthwest]

61. A bit of information on 'a year or so ago', the UK and measles....from May 2013:

Great Britain is in the midst of a measles epidemic, one that public health officials say is the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children after a safety scare that was later proved to be fraudulent.

More than 1,200 people have come down with measles so far this year, following nearly 2,000 cases in 2012. Many of the cases have been in Wales.

Childhood vaccination rates plummeted in Great Britain after a 1998 paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed that the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella had caused autism in a dozen children. That study has since been proven fraudulent, but it fueled fears about vaccine safety in Great Britain and the United States.

"This is the legacy of the Wakefield scare," Dr. David Elliman, spokesman for the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, told The Associated Press.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/21/185801259/fifteen-years-after-a-vaccine-scare-a-measles-epidemic

[MisterP]

84. heh, cheap vaccine maypole

it's one part Whiggish 1890s anticlerical [link:archive.org/stream/freethinkerspict00hest#page/204/mode/2uphttps://archive.org/stream/freethinkerspict00hest%23page/204/mode/2up|pseudohistory ]and one part a very closed, paranoid camarilla that tried to make scientists into a ruling caste; saying that science is always right ESPECIALLY when it's wrong is Orwellian and turns it into a bad boyfriend: it skips the gap between theory and praxis--but again it's not about science or scientists, not even about realism vs. constructivism, it's about a Thatcherite pseudo-philosophy gunning for hegemony

[KellyW]

85. For the Disneyland outbreak, a majority of the infected are adults

The biggest gap in immunity maybe adults born between 1957 and 1991, who either received inactive non-live vaccine or a single dose that did not produce immunity. Many of these people who are loudly demanding forced vaccinations of children may not themselves be immune.

[sendero]

23. I've been saying basically this..

...here several times. This is about TRUST and just because a paid group of self-interested scientist claim something, that doesn't mean their opinion or pronouncement is actually based on real science.

If you completely trust the medical establishment in this country and particularly pharma, after all the times they have lied and just been plain wrong, you are a dolt.

[nashville_brook]

42. well, you're also putting yourself in danger, b/c at some point...no matter how healthy you are

you're going to have to make *informed* health care decision. that means having to say "no" to doctors who have all the authority, sometimes. it means having to say yes to them too.

i can tell you from personal experience that you invite a world of hurt by accepting everything they tell you at face value.

[sendero]

44. You have it exactly backward..

... i don't uncritically follow the advice of doctors since I visited a quack back in the 70s.

They are people too and they make mistakes. As for the real question, why so many people don't believe everything they hear from the "medical establishment", it's because they are wrong so often. Like right now, still peddling statin drugs when research simply cannot find a correllation between taking statins and reducing heart attack risk.

If my doctor ever suggests them, I will politely decline.

[nashville_brook]

56. that was actually a polite "yes, and..."

sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. I have 'faith' in math.

But certainly the antivaxxer movement is a reflection of a much smaller problem that I feel is correctly pinpointed as a lack of trust in authority. One that stems from decades, if not indeed centuries or even millenia of 'authority' lying to the hoi polloi whenever it suits their needs, and is exacerbated by the tendency of those 'needs' to align with the 'needs' of a tiny fraction of the wealthiest, while the rest of us are left to go to hell in a handbasket.

Do I 'trust' science? Yes, I 'trust' that it's a process that utilizes logic and math to continually expand knowledge. What I don't automatically 'trust' is any specific given study to actually show more than is actually studied by that study, within the limits and potential confounding factors. And sure, there are occasional outright frauds perpetrated, but far more science is flawed through error or thoughtlessness than is ever perpetrated through malicious intent. Where 'science' founders is when it is taken out of the hands of people who just want to know what happens when you do 'X', and handed over to those who want to twist that study to support something they already believed, or to make money off of some application thereof, at which point parts get hidden or de-emphasized in the name of money or power.

[Archae]

33. Three letters the anti-science ditwits always go apeshit about...

G-M-O.

And the same techniques and accusations against vaccines, are used against GMO's.

I just saw this when I posted 2 videos, Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse-Tyson talking about GMO's.

[Bluenorthwest]

34. What a sad display the straight community makes of itself when they confront medical issues....

I wonder what the folks who can't figure out if vaccines are safe would have done back in the early days of the AIDS crisis. I mean, no one knew anything. It took a few years just to find the virus, at first no one was sure it was a virus. The best of medical science was 'we don't know'. The Reagan administration was openly hostile and dismissive of the pandemic even as it killed tens of thousands of people. And yet people had to make choices. No one had the privileged luxury of expecting to trust the authorities. We were organizing and protesting against the government, against the medical establishment, but also expecting that government to correct itself, those medical establishments to wake up and smell the future.
This level of paranoid, uninformed wallowing in self taught confusion is very disturbing to see in parents. I saw 24 year old disco queens handle far more stressful medical choices with far less information and a government that literally did not give a fuck if they lived or died, so when educated affluent people claim they just can't know enough to make an informed choice I really, really don't know what to make of it. Others have managed, with far less science and research to guide us and a malicious President to deal with. It's a possible thing. I've seen it done.

Plus, it just cheeses me off that the vaccine discussion is this one, and not the one we really should be having which is the one about spending more and working smarter in order to create badly needed new vaccines and improved versions of the ones we have. 36 million people, including 1.3 million in Africa last year alone have died from HIV/AIDS. It is caused by a virus, a vaccine would be a boon to humanity.
I wish Jenny McCarthy would have talked about that instead.
Knowledge = Life

[Pooka Fey]

52. K&R nt

[daredtowork]

53. I thought that article was great, too

I linked it here, and got piled upon.

5 minutes later trumad posted an OP titled something like "If you say I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but...you're an anti-vaxxer!"

I couldn't get it alerted. So apparently on DU if you fail to toe the line on putting all anti-vaxxers into one stereo-typed box and then stomping on it, then YOU are an anti-vaxxer! The truth doesn't matter! You can hold your vaccinated arm high and hoist your vaccinated children in the air, and you are still an "anti-vaxxer", because you aren't "going along". I always thought that was the way the GOP did things.

Anyway, thanks for making that article an OP. That's the truth, and realistic Americans are going to have to deal with it, whether the bullies like it or not.

Let's start the vaccination campaign from a reality-based launching point, please.

[nashville_brook]

55. i'd like to say it'll blow over, but the behavior i've seen among "progressives" lately

gives me little hope. honestly, in all the 30+ years i've been in the struggle on the left, i've held the belief that we're better than this. but, first there was the obvious NSA spying bit...the authoritarians couldn't pile on that quick enough with the ridicule and attacks. next it's this vaccine thing and we're getting a little more taste of what it looks like when progressives try on their jack boots (they're getting more broken in at this point, i suppose). whatever comes next (the next war, probably), it's sad but what credibility is left? at least as far as being associated with enlightened or progressive thinking, there's no high ground to claim once the whole damn clan has gone full spectrum Orwell.

[daredtowork]

58. perhaps its the convergence of tech values and progressives?

For instance, you might get "there is no such thing as privacy" coming from younger tech workers while older progressives are still thinking part of their mission is to defend it from NSA spying. Then there is the cognitive dissonance over Snowden (defend Obama at all costs vs. admit we want to know what Snowden leaked and Obama's actions would quash other future Snowdens from coming forth...).

The vaccine thing is in the same vein. My generation was brought up in extreme distrust of Big Science and the Military-Industrial Complex. We watched movies like The China Syndrome, Silkwood, Chinatown, Fail-Safe, etc. We dealt with tragic incidents in nuclear and toxic waste, drug safety, pesticides, etc. Perhaps these can all be grouped under the theme of Technocracy Gone Tragically Wrong. That was the theme of my generation, and that can't be unlearned. This doesn't mean the children of that era don't "believe" in science: these sorts of incidents probably made this generation more interested and educated in basic science *and its ethical ramifications* than the two or three generations that followed. Those generations inherited our mistrust...and they inherited a failing education system so they didn't have the critical tools to sort out all the science-related propaganda that was coming at them.

There is an exception of course - some children received a fairly a elite education in math/science with a focus on business and computer-related professions. This generation might take the words of technocrat experts as face value (Get Your Vaccines - It's Science!) - but they no longer have the ethical or humanistic tools to understand what's anti-Democratic about forcing people who resist being vaccinated into concentration camps.

The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has recently been represented as a "Left Liberal" on DU. That should put it in a nutshell how deeply different the "tech track" of progressive is from those outside that bubble.

[nashville_brook]

71. we might be close in generations

i just started doing political work really early, in high school. i also think i'm in the last generation of students who actually got a humanities education. i read the posts in these threads and i'm floored at how folks can't connect the dots across spectrums that are so close they're basically touching. come on people -- science and big business -- think House of Medici.

who?

nevermind.

[daredtowork]

81. lol

Probably so!

When I went to college, "interdisciplinary" was actually the big watchword. Science was already absorbing all the funding, and the Humanities were already whining about it, and major cultural institutions (like the National Endowment for the Arts) were being defunded because white males were complaining they couldn't get all the funding anymore because of "cultural relativism" and the "lack of cultural authority"...but there was still a sense that the Humanities mattered. Courses like "Bioethics", "Philosophy of Science", and "Science and Society" were really popular.

The Internet did not exist when I was in college. We had telnet email my first year of grad school, with Internet evolving rapidly thereafter. It was during that period (the early 90s) when people started to realize their college education (and later their high school education) had no relation to employment, and they ran to desperately teach themselves tech skills. Then they realized they had to continuously upgrade these tech skills. What little "downtime" they had needed to be used to relax from all this continuous upgrading and performance, so the non-thinking ease of pop culture was preferable to anything that required serious background study. The Humanities became "ivory tower" and "elitist".

I have to say, it's really embarrassing to see what used to be called Public Intellectuals (now "Thought Leaders&quot demonstrate their shallow knowledge of history and deal out frequent errors of fact. To confront these Very High Status People(tm) with their lack of knowledge would only ruffle their feathers and result in you getting kicked out of the room, so the errors just perpetuate and compound.

But I can see how it happened, and I have some empathy.

[boston bean]

65. Wait I'm confused, is the article meaning that anti vaxxers

are moving toward enlightenment because they don't trust authority?

[Warren Stupidity]

75. no they are still fucking idiots who are harming those who cannot get vaccinated. nt.

[boston bean]

76. right. I agree..

and I don't in any way think that bucking authority in this instance leads to any sort of enlightment era.

[RandySF]

78. One point of contention

Not all the anti-vaxxers are right wing, especially the ones up in Marin County.

[nashville_brook]

86. it's in there, and a it's key to the whole argument he's making...

about the intersection with authority. as a matter of fact, it's is likely the most important passage in the piece, saved for the last third of the essay.

[latebloomer]

90. I actually have been astonished

by the reaction to this issue among the liberal/leftist community. Absolutely no questioning is brooked. People who are distrustful of the government and its corporate rulers in many other areas refuse to consider even the possibility that, just maybe, 50 different shots by the time a kid hits school might not be the best way to approach children's health. That, even if you think vaccinations are crucial, it's possible to think about whether we are giving too many, or whether there should be more attention paid to what ingredients are in them, and what risks, not necessarily autism but other immune-related illnesses, the load might be causing? Or do we all uncritically trust everything that is told to us?

And some are even proclaiming that children should be taken away from their parents if they don't comply. It takes on the flavor of a witch hunt. It's a lockstep, trust-all-authority position that I for one find scary.