Jill Stein is a fearmongering crank who thinks Wi-Fi harms children's brains

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/01/jill-stein-is-a-fearmongering.html

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Just chasing votes? How do we know she doesn’t actually believe that stuff?

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It’s not clear from the quote if she’s talking about wi-fi (e.g.: 802.11 at milliwatt power scales) or wireless (e.g.: mobile phone GSM or CDMA at watt-scales, often from beside the user’s skull). While I’ve heard of no studies whose conclusions suggest a linkage between 802.11 and harm, perhaps Stein read this controversial study about mobile phone wireless: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell-phone-radiation-study-reignites-cancer-questions/

I’m not quite ready to rule her out based on this quote…

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Seriously if you think wi-fi is harmful then you should avoid that whole visible light thing as it is way more powerful radiation… maybe you should do away with that too.

Wi-Fi and cell phone microwave signasl are down there below visible light, and all the actually damaging stuff, is above which really if you go for a walk outside in the sun you are fucking awash in that shit.

It can’t cause cancer without violating the LAWS OF FUCKING PHYSICS.

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Yeah, I’m going to guess she’s just nuts.

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Dammit… Looks like it’m gonna have to vote for Johnson, then. Too bad they didn’t nominate McAfee. He’s the kind of lunatic I could really get behind.

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Either way, it’s pretty damning.

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I don’t think she believes any of it.

I think she knows that a lot of her constituency does. So she panders to them on this, while trying to equivocate as best she can and try to get disillusioned Sanders supports over to her, so that the Greens can reach the 5% threshold for more federal funding.

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Saying that insanity out loud does not help her case.

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Well, just for the sake of argument, sunlight contains UV light and that can certainly cause skin cancer as well as other harm. I think the biological impact of photons really is a function of both wavelength and intensity, and those effects are not necessarily linear from radio wavelengths up to light wavelengths.

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Right and where is UV on the picture? Above visible light, sunlight has stuff above UV as well, most of it gets reflected by the magnetosphere but not all of it.

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I think you mean absorbed by the ozone layer?

I’ll have to look at the Wi-Fi thing, (and as chromakey said, she could be talking about wireless (and/or confusing the two, she’s not an engineer. I know people who can’t tell the difference between WiFi and Bluetooth. :slight_smile: ), but the anti-vax thing is a total smear.

The Slate article quotes a small portion of her answer and twists it like crazy.

Here’s her full response:

"I don’t know if we have an “official” stance, but I can tell you my personal stance at this point. According to the most recent review of vaccination policies across the globe, mandatory vaccination that doesn’t allow for medical exemptions is practically unheard of. In most countries, people trust their regulatory agencies and have very high rates of vaccination through voluntary programs.

In the US, however, regulatory agencies are routinely packed with corporate lobbyists and CEOs. So the foxes are guarding the chicken coop as usual in the US. So who wouldn’t be skeptical? I think dropping vaccinations rates that can and must be fixed in order to get at the vaccination issue: the widespread distrust of the medical-indsutrial complex.

Vaccines in general have made a huge contribution to public health. Reducing or eliminating devastating diseases like small pox and polio. In Canada, where I happen to have some numbers, hundreds of annual death from measles and whooping cough were eliminated after vaccines were introduced. Still, vaccines should be treated like any medical procedure–each one needs to be tested and regulated by parties that do not have a financial interest in them. In an age when industry lobbyists and CEOs are routinely appointed to key regulatory positions through the notorious revolving door, its no wonder many Americans don’t trust the FDA to be an unbiased source of sound advice. A Monsanto lobbyists and CEO like Michael Taylor, former high-ranking DEA official, should not decide what food is safe for you to eat. Same goes for vaccines and pharmaceuticals. We need to take the corporate influence out of government so people will trust our health authorities, and the rest of the government for that matter. End the revolving door. Appoint qualified professionals without a financial interest in the product being regulated. Create public funding of elections to stop the buying of elections by corporations and the super-rich.

For homeopathy, just because something is untested doesn’t mean it’s safe. By the same token, being “tested” and “reviewed” by agencies tied to big pharma and the chemical industry is also problematic. There’s a lot of snake-oil in this system. We need research and licensing boards that are protected from conflicts of interest. They should not be limited by arbitrary definitions of what is “natural” or not."

So if he’d bothered to actually parse her response, what do we see?

In general, vaccines have made a huge contribution to public health.

Each vaccine needs to be tested and regulated by trusted parties without a financial interest in them.

Many lobbyists and CEOs are appointed to key regulatory positions [true] and because of that many Americans don’t trust them to regulate the very industries they’re making millions of dollars from.

Dropping vaccination rates in the U.S. Is troubling, and much of that problem is in fact the distrust these people have in the medical-industrial complex.

So we need to take corporate influence out of government, as that’s the core to many of these problems.

Fore treatments like homeopathy, which isn’t regulated, just because it’s not tested DOESN’T mean it’s safe. “Natural” remedies need the same testing and scrutiny, again by folks without a vested interest in the system.

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Aw, now you’re just makin’ up stuff.

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That is UV there is also x-rays and gamma rays that get absorbed the the van allen belts, without which earth would be a pretty desolate place.

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Are you serious? Have you actually investigated that study?

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I try.

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fucking laws of physics?

physics of fucking laws?

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Her “just asking questions” is straight out of the dogwhistle playbook, it’s as much of a “smear” as Trump’s racism.

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