I think the antivax business is somewhere between pathetic and infuriating, but I don’t necessarily think that all GMOs are okay.
I’m my country there is no labelling of GMO products. I think my government actually prohibits it. As a consumer I’d like to have the choice. Many of the companies designing these things are companies that I don’t particularity trust.
GMO tech may be the only way we can feed this hungry world, but that doesn’t mean that the industry can do no wrong. Are we really all fine with Roundup?
We were feeling like Morgellons sufferers this spring when we suspected we might have scabies or some other mite infestation. I eventually concluded we were sharing a minor Staph skin infection. We had fun with a USB microscope and transparent tape trying to capture the source of itching, but only turned up an aphid nymph. However, we are covered with Morgellons like fibers from our clothing.
The best part was when we brought in a local exterminator, a genial old fellow who said he could not find anything. I asked him about delusional Morgellons cases, and he said he’d seen a few. One lady was waving her hands in the air saying “Can’t you see them? They are flying out of the air conditioning vent!” And then she stuck out her tongue at him and said “Look! They are crawling on my tongue!”
Some people just need lithium before they end up ranting about conspiracies in a cheap motel room lined with aluminum foil and full of roach foggers and bug zappers, like the play/movie “Bug”.
I think of that movie every time morgellons comes up. That movie was pitch perfect creepy.
Michael Shannon is terrifying. (See also Take Shelter) He is far too good at playing small town creepy dudes.
He played a very popular character on Boardwalk Empire as a prohibition agent that ends up working as an enforcer for Al Capone, and he was General Zod in Zack Snyder’s “Man Of Steel.”
Regards “follow the money” - I notice that some of the most relentless GMO opponents (not here) always post links to antivaxxer sites while calling everyone else “shills.” But are the anti-GMO posters the real shills? Because they sure are spamming for antivaxxer sites, the question is, are they doing it for money? The fact that this is what they always accuse people of is doubly suspicious.
I’m not really sensing a respect for or understanding of science here.
“Ethical Skeptics apply skepticism as one of a set of tools employed inside a life characterized by open curiosity, discipline, observation. They continually investigate in order to ask the right question in accordance with the scientific method; not defend the right answer. They bear paramount, the personal and professional ethic of defending the integrity of the knowledge development process. Skepticism is a way of preparing the mind and data sets, in order to accomplish science.” – The Ethical Skeptic. http://theethicalskeptic.com/2015/04/08/a-new-ethic/
The integrity of the knowledge development process.
If you’re using the pejorative meant-to-demonize, inaccurate term “anti-vaxxer” you’ve already abandoned authentic skepticism.
If you study the science of vaccines, you know that they are not perfectly safe medical procedures for everyone, all the time. Trying to pretend that there is no such thing as vaccine injury, or that our understanding of the interplay between disease, our immune systems, and the effects of intervention through vaccination is perfect and complete, is …well…not logical, or ethical for that matter.
To the commentor with a lot of time on his hands who crudely attempted to use a good deal of it in order to smear scientist Stephanie Seneff: Demonizing those who continue the scientific process of asking and testing questions related to an area of inquiry that you happen to dislike, is not pro-science, its pro-defending-a-position.
You’ve just provided an excellent example of why the term “skeptic” is problematic when used in public discussion about science, because it’s been appropriated for the purpose of obfuscation.
You’re going to have to point out where someone claimed this. Because a strong argument of the PRO-vaccination “side” is that some people cannot be vaccinated for various reasons and thus rely on other people to protect them. By not getting the preventable diseases.
I was permanently injured as the result of a “harmless” childhood disease. I’ll probably have my second open-heart surgery before my 50th birthday. If you were really weighing the scientific evidence, you’d be balancing the kids injured by vaccines against the ones injured by everything else that they no longer get.
I contended that the use of the term “anti-vaxxer” used in an inaccurate pejorative marginalizing manner, reflects bias, and would not be used by an authentic skeptic.
I would have said the same thing if the article above and following comments purported to be adding value and clarity to a discussion about alternatives to state-supported capitalism, and made use of the term “commie”. Or if the article purported to be adding value and clarity to an article about the availability of abortion services and used the term “babykiller”.
In replies, views I never expressed were then attributed to me, along with a demand that I defend the non-expressed view.
My comment was one about integrity or lack thereof in terms of intellectual process, and its impact on our culture’s knowledge development process.
I’m not really sure what you’re doing, but it is an option to just actually engage on the topic I brought up. It seems you’d rather not. I’m going back to work now.
This is the topic you brought up, as an antivaxxer and pseudoskeptic.
This is why you are not taken seriously, as a sincere skeptic.
If you study the science of vaccines, you know that they are not perfectly safe medical procedures for everyone, all the time. Trying to pretend that there is no such thing as vaccine injury, or that our understanding of the interplay between disease, our immune systems, and the effects of intervention through vaccination is perfect and complete, is …well…not logical, or ethical for that matter.
If you’re going to speak, do so from a position of education before you criticize skeptics. Try becoming one yourself! Try researching those claims you just made!
Think for yourself instead of just taking these claims at face value.
“Anti-vaxxer” is certainly a pejorative term, I’ll give you that. I don’t exactly get how it’s inaccurate. Perhaps “people who advocate a position that increases my children’s risk of contracting serious diseases” would be a more neutral term we could all agree on.
I really doubt anyone said this, since we are aware that among things that are not perfectly safe are all things. Bringing this up seems like you are trying to foist this view on anti-anti-vaxxers.
I understand Stephanie Seneff is a computer science who published a paper touching a variety of disciplines she has no background in that was widely criticized by various scientists for its scientific faults (mistaking correlation with causation, misrepresenting the results of other studies referenced). You say people are attributing positions to you that you didn’t take, but defending her gives people reason to think that you think there is merit to her claims.
I kind of wonder, what term would s/he prefer we use? “Anti-vaxxer” for someone who is against (that is, anti) mandatory vaccinations is apparently too pejorative. So um … “Person who is skeptical about the efficacy of vaccinations in the general populace?” It’s a bit much to type every time.
