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In Their Own Words

[Some pharma gang type posts on Orac blog and others.  Catherina  Science & Mom are resident Babycentre forum pharma trolls 5 years up to 2008.]

My partner has run across the whale.to webmaster recently on the babycenter.com discussion boards. He's over there spreading his bullshit to an audience almost tailor-made for vulnerability to it. My partner is uncertain whether to alert the site moderators, or to simply let him continue to lead the anti-vaccination crowd further into the wilderness. I'm not sure which tactic to encourage. Any thoughts?

Posted by: Rev.Enki | June 15, 2008 2:31 AM

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/06/the_nuttiness_that_is_whaleto.php

The posts by Orac and Kathleen are most fortuitous as John (or someone claiming to be John) is on BCC's Immunisation Debate Board in search of, what I imagine, fresh meat. His username is AntiVax there and is refusing to answer questions regarding his support of the conspiracy theories that are on his website. With the exception of a sniveling sycophant or 2, he is being appropriately derided.----Posted by: Science Mom | June 14, 2008 12:40 PM Actually, poor ole John gets laughed off that site by the *anti*-vaccers already. The people who fall for this crap (there may be two or three) are beyond saving already and the rest is giving him unambiguous feedback about his collection :)

Posted by: Catherina | June 15, 2008 7:58 AM

John Scudamore used to post to the Evidence of Harm Yahoo group, but stopped shortly after Bob Wright (board member of General Electric and former president of NBC) joined that group. I'd like to ask Mr. Scudamore if he believes Bob Wright is an Illuminatus and if someone said he had seen Bob Wright shape-shift into a large lizard-like being, if Mr. Scudamore would believe it. Also, are there any photographs of Mr. Scudamore? Is it possible that he is a large lizard-like alien being with burn marks on his tail from sitting on satanic black-energy-field-lines.

Posted by: Ginger Li | June 15, 2008 8:25 PM

The posts by Orac and Kathleen are most fortuitous as John (or someone claiming to be John) is on BCC's Immunisation Debate Board in search of, what I imagine, fresh meat. His username is AntiVax there and is refusing to answer questions regarding his support of the conspiracy theories that are on his website. With the exception of a sniveling sycophant or 2, he is being appropriately derided.

Posted by: Science Mom | June 14, 2008 12:40 PM

 

RE: Scudamore, etc. It's the "Immunizations" topic under the "Great Debates" heading. Mr. Scudamore is running rampant at the moment.

http://boards.babycenter.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=bcus3353

Anyway, she was trying to tell me the whole babycenter operation is itself a bit "antivax," but I was always a bit skeptical. I wrote something once there myself, being the father of our baby after all, and I was promptly swarmed by the antivaccine hydra. They were (it was?) exceedingly indignant that a male had the audacity to be writing on a bulletin board about babies. I've since discovered only mothers have the magical power to intuit that vaccines are tools of the Illuminati. Or the Jews. Or the Illuminated Jewsish Jesuits. Or Merck.

I agree the guy appears to be actually, for real, insane. But so was Charlie Manson. That excuse can only take a person so far. I'm shocked anyone can take the nutjob seriously at all, but apparently some actually manage it. You'd think the overt antisemitism (not to mention the gibbering insanity) would be more of a turnoff than it actually appears to be. I just don't know anymore if it's possible to have too little faith in humanity.

Posted by: Rev.Enki | June 15, 2008 11:33 PM


I have a relation who was blined by measles. Measles can be a killer. It is not a trivial disease. Who said that MMR vaccine contains mercury? Not in my knowledge. Who said that MMR was not safe? A doctor who I understand can no longer practice in the UK, but still earns a living in America! The Yanks are welcome.  All the scientific evidence that I have ever read says that MMR is safe. If you want single vaccines, the pay for them. If your child has reacted to previous immunisations, then don't get your child vaccinated. Otherwise, don't put the next generation at risk.  Posted by: Peter Rowberry | Tuesday, 24 June 2008 at 04:41 PM

Not at all. The anti-vaccination lobby use the same tactics as anti-evolutionists (creationists), which is to obsfucate, make fallacious appeals to authority which do not back up there position, quote mine and make absolute statements from anecdotal and subjective experiences. They ignore the mountains of peer-reviewed objective scientific research over crack-pot sights like whale.to, and when their inaccurate and bogus claims are proved false they cry victim and demand their views are given legitimacy in the name of "fairness and balance", truth be damned.

If you'd like to point out the "bias" in the numerous epidemiological studies that show no link with MMR and autism, if you'd like to evaluate the papers, then by all means do. But the combatting of pseudo-science is not social repression, it's maintaining some intellectual standards.

  1. Harriet Hallon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:03 pm http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=145

    Antivax, I’m puzzled as to why you would even mention a website that represents the antithesis of all this blog stands for. It’s a bit like going on an atheist website and posting a link to the Koran.