Trump"s vaccine conspiracy theories are a threat to your children | Celine Goudner

This week, vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr announced that he’d been nominated by President Elect Donald Trump to chair a commission on vaccine safety. A few hours later, the transition team issued a statement saying that that Trump was “exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism”. Last summer, Trump met with Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license and was found to have produced fraudulent research linking vaccines to autism. Whether Trump is creating a commission on vaccine safety or autism, the message is clear. Trump is offering prominent support to the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.

The science on vaccines is very clear: they are safe and effective. Vaccines do not cause autism. It’s a waste of our tax dollars to rehash this issue yet again. Vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine. Let’s consider measles, just one of many vaccine-preventable diseases. Before 1963, when the measles vaccine became widely available, 3-4 million Americans got measles each year, of whom 48,000 were hospitalized, 4000 developed encephalitis resulting in long-term brain damage, and 4-500 died. The country’s population has almost doubled since that time.

Trump and others have advocated delaying and spacing out vaccinations. But it’s important to understand that vaccination schedules are based on our scientific understanding of the immune system and disease transmission. A mother passes antibodies to her baby through the placenta as well as breast milk, thereby protecting her child against some infections. These antibodies don’t last forever. If you vaccinate a baby too early, the mother’s antibodies prevent the vaccine from taking effect. But if you wait too long to vaccinate, you leave the child unprotected. For example, studies have shown that by six months of age, over 95% of infants have lost the protection of their mother’s antibodies to measles.

At least until now, we’ve reaped the benefits of high vaccination rates: far less measles than in other parts of the world. When a disease becomes less common, the probability that you’ll come into contact with it goes down, actually giving us more wriggle room in our vaccination schedule. The measles vaccine also works a bit better if you wait until 12 months of age. But if you wait to vaccinate against measles until you’ve got a walking, talking toddler who’s around other kids, you’re putting that child at risk. Moreover, in the past two decades, more and more parents have chosen not to immunize their children, so much so that vaccination rates in some parts of the country are well below those seen in much poorer developing countries.

Parents want to do what’s best for their children. But in many cases, parents’ attitudes about vaccination have little to do with their understanding of the science and are driven by their distrust of the government on the right and the pharmaceutical industry on the left. Lack of trust in government – specifically its ability to create and sustain well-paying jobs in this country – helped elect Trump. As distrust in public institutions rises, conspiracy theories abound. Saying “I don’t believe you” is a way of saying “I don’t trust you,” no matter how much science there is to support a specific policy or course of action.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen conspiracy theories proliferate about medical science – and it won’t be the last.

I spent two months as an aid worker in Guinea during the Ebola epidemic. In that time, I learned far more about the politics of science and medicine than about the virus itself. West Africans have very little trust in their public institutions – for good reason. These are among the most corrupt, least democratic nations in the world. And they have reason not to trust foreigners: a long history of slave trading followed by the stripping of natural resources for the profit of multinational corporations. We heard on the news that West Africans resisted recommendations about hand washing, safe burials, contact tracing and quarantines. On the ground, they told me that public officials were using the epidemic for political purposes and that expats were mercenaries. Yet we in the West dismissed their cynicism as primitive superstition.

President Elect Donald Trump has been a vocal proponent of numerous other conspiracy theories – about climate change, the media, our elections, Obama’s place of birth, the government’s role in the 9/11 attacks, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the deaths of White House deputy counsel Vince Foster and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – to name just a few. As these false stories circulate, people lose trust in all institutions, especially the government and the media.

For now, Americans still trust scientists to act in the public’s best interest. We have a duty to live up to their trust. The lives of many Americans, our country’s future and the world’s are at stake.

Trump"s vaccine conspiracy theories are a threat to your children | Celine Goudner

Woman arrested at Heathrow on suspicion of conspiracy to commit FGM

Police have run a week-long initiative at Heathrow aimed at preventing and detecting female genital mutilation. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

A 38-12 months-old lady has been arrested at Heathrow airport on suspicion of conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation (FGM), Scotland Yard says.

The British nationwide was held after arriving on a flight from Sierra Leone and taken to a west London police station the place she stays in custody.

A 13-12 months-outdated Sierra-Leonian lady travelling with the female was taken into the care of social providers.

Metropolitan police, Border Force and Nationwide Crime Company (NCA) officers on Friday concluded a week-lengthy initiative at Heathrow aimed at preventing and detecting FGM.

Woman arrested at Heathrow on suspicion of conspiracy to commit FGM

Hyping Your Conspiracy Theory In five Effortless Methods

A case research.

one. Find anything on the web that is associated to your subject. Like this Senate committee report on an investigation of government agencies with regards to safety claims of thimerosal in vaccines.

two. Cherry-select partial estimates that seem to be to help your position (right here, that vaccines cause harm) and assert conclusions that assistance your claims. Be confident the conclusions are sufficiently scary and conspiracy worthy. Mention of kids and/or pregnant ladies is constantly great. Like this (italics theirs):

FDA inappropriately utilized Environmental Safety Company (EPA) tips concerning the dangers of mercury in vaccines containing thimerosal. Thus, the FDA could have miscalculated the toxicity of Thimerosal (sic) in vaccines routinely administered to millions of pregnant women and young children.

And this:

In addition, Senator Enzi acknowledged that a CDC-organized meeting, held June seven and 8, 2000, at the Simpsonwood United Methodist Retreat Center, to examine a study displaying a website link between mercury publicity through vaccines and autism, was questionable: “The CDC’s failure to invite to Simpsonwood representatives of advocacy groups, in blend with injudicious remarks by many Simpsonwood participants, did give rise to an physical appearance of impropriety.”

And this:

The Institute of Medication of the National Academy of Sciences, which reviewed the evidence and identified no link among mercury exposure from vaccines and autism, inappropriately screened “likely committee members for achievable conflicts of interest.”

And this:

Government data utilised to assess the link among vaccine-related mercury exposure and autism was “…significantly less than open and available to all researchers.”

And this:

Despite mercury getting decreased in some vaccines offered to American young children, no such decrease has been effected in vaccines manufactured and distributed to creating countries: “The contention that thimerosal is used in vaccines offered to third-world and developing nations is correct.”

Appears like fairly damning proof of official condemnation of a cover-up and attempt to hide data, yes? Right after all, how numerous folks, especially these neck deep in confirmation bias, will bother to discover this, rather?

3. Ignore the full context that particularly presents the reverse conclusion from the one particular you want to declare. Total context like this, from the actual Senate committee report (italics mine):

The use of inappropriate recommendations from EPA was a supply of confusion and contention in identifying the appropriate response to concern relating to thimerosal in vaccines. Nevertheless, the existing methyl mercury tips were the best details available at the time for assessing risk from ethyl mercury exposure. This error has caused many folks to conclude that ethyl mercury can be linked causally to autism.

And this:

The CDC’s failure to invite to Simpsonwood representatives of advocacy groups, in combination with injudicious remarks by a number of Simpsonwood participants, did give rise to an physical appearance of impropriety. Allegations of a cover-up are not substantiated, however. Instead of hiding the data or restricting entry to it, CDC distributed it, typically to people who had never witnessed it prior to, and solicited outside viewpoint concerning how to interpret it.

And this:

An substantial investigation by the Help Committee, which incorporated a subpoena for thousands of paperwork from the Nationwide Academies of Science and the Institute of Medicine, identified concerns with regards to the IoM’s process for screening potential committee members for achievable conflicts of interest. Nonetheless the allegation that the function of the ISR is compromised by CDC influence and conflicts of interest proved without having merit.

And this:

The allegation that the CDC manufactured the VSD non-public is not substantiated by information gathered by the Committee. The allegation that CDC intentionally manufactured the VSD information inaccessible is also not substantiated, however, the construct of the database for privacy purposes helps make accessibility less than open and accessible to all researchers.

And this:

The contention that thimerosal is utilized in vaccines provided to third-world and developing nations is precise. In accordance to the CDC, NIP, the vaccination of kids in much of the world will continue to demand the use of multiple-dose vials for purpose of value, manufacturing, and storage capability. The much less expensive multiple-dose vials need the presence of a preservative. If building nations were unable to get the much less expensive several-dose vials containing thimerosal, ailments would spread a lot more rapidly.

four. Use quotable sound bites so that the misleading data spreads to those keen to take it up and use it in similar techniques. Like this. And this. And this.

5. Periodically resurrect dead debates that you lost, shined up to appear new and scary for a new cohort of anxious folk and make claims of a coverup, despite the reality that the allegations you are resurrecting have been addressed and debunked again and yet again.

The case review supplied right here relates to vaccines, but these actions can be efficient for any person alleging a conspiracy or scientific antagonism, whether or not that be GMO, climate science, evolution, or other location in which scientific consensus is profoundly on one particular side of the concern. Be confident to refer often to the Calendar of Conspiracy Resurrection to make confident you’re not revivifying your allegations as well soon. A essential to a successful reanimation is waiting extended enough for folks to overlook they’ve noticed it all prior to. Some of us, even though, have prolonged recollections.

Hyping Your Conspiracy Theory In five Effortless Methods