Trump and RFK Jr.: A relationship made in anti-vax hell

[SidDithers]

Although the Trump transition team has downplayed the implications of a meeting on Tuesday between Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr., the ominous omens for science and facts seem clear. And for those Americans who so enjoyed Donald Trump’s nostalgia-themed campaign promises, it will be interesting to see if that retro idealism applies to a potential return to once all but eradicated diseases.

On Tuesday, Kennedy, an environmentalist who humbly describes himself as “pro-vaccine,” met with Trump. Soon after, he announced that Trump had “asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. I said I would.” Kennedy further stated that his role would be to “make sure we have scientific integrity in the vaccine process for efficacy and safety.”

snip

Not so very long ago, at the beginning of this century, measles had been effectively eliminated in this country. But irrational fears and a misplaced devotion to personal freedom have reversed some of that progress. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy perpetuated a false link between vaccines and autism, thanks largely to discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s bombshell 1998 claims — which have since been fully retracted as “an elaborate fraud.”

But evidence hasn’t stopped Kennedy from repeatedly and publicly, over the past dozen years, asserting the claims of a link between the ingredients in vaccines and autism. On Tuesday Seth Mnookin, author of “The Panic Virus,” said on Twitter, “Interviewed dozens of people, read papers by dozens more for book on roots of dangerous vaccine-autism myth. RFK Jr.’s complete disregard for the truth & aggressive effort to spread lies was as shocking as anything else I covered.”

Disregard for truth? Aggressive effort to spread lies? Now, who else does that sound like? Kennedy and Donald Trump have other things in common too. Like Kennedy, Trump is a vaccine skeptic. Of course, Trump is also a man who does not believe in climate change and thinks that lightbulbs cause cancer. Back in 2012, he tweeted, “A study says @Autism is out of control — a 78% increase in 10 years. Stop giving monstrous combined vaccinations. Space out small individual shots — small babies can’t handle massive doses. Get smart — and fast — before it is too late.”

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/trump-and-rfk-jr-a-relationship-made-in-anti-vax-hell/

Sid

[guillaumeb]

1. Except that Kennedy is not actually a vaccine skeptic.

But he has been branded as such.

[ismnotwasm]

2. He links vaccines and autism

That's anti-vax, anti-science enough for me. I fucking hate anti-vaxxers

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Same here.

I was lucky back in the day to have extremely mild cases of mumps, measles and chicken pox. But because the pediatrician would never quite commit to the fact that I'd actually had those diseases, my mother used to send me to keep neighborhood kids who were sick with one of those company to test my immunity.

I remember one girl, a few years younger than me but a sister of a close girlfriend, who was horribly sick with measles. She was so bad off that the lights in her room were dimmed because her eyes and head hurt. I couldn't do much for her, but sit and wait for her to ask for something.

I never caught any of the diseases again, but at the time it was a fairly common practice. My mother's philosophy was to make sure I had the diseases as a kid rather than as an adult.

[guillaumeb]

7. He has called for more investigation into the matter.

But that does not make him anti-vaccine.

[Maru Kitteh]

9. Kennedy entertains delusional, debunked, disgraced pseudo-science more

immediately dangerous than climate denial.

"More investigation into the matter" is just so much bullshit, just as it is when Trump declares that human-caused climate change science is "not really settled." It is.

Trump believes stupid shit like that because it's convenient, he doesn't understand science and he tells us "I'm like; a really smart person."

For Kennedy to jump on the anti-science bandwagon, is embarrassing and quite frankly, deplorable. He lends credence to myth that has cost the lives of infants and the vulnerable all over this country.

New-age woo is just as ignorant and dangerous as the darkest of the darker ages where women were burned alive and demons were cast out by tying a stone to the afflicted and casting them into a lake to see if they would float.

Like climate change, the science of immunization is not up for debate.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Yeah, he is

he's an anti-science crank. There have been numerous studies looking for a relationship between vaccination and autism; no credible study has found any such relationship (there was in fact one study that found a higher prevalence in the unvaccinated cohort). He's ignorant and his ideas about vaccines are dangerous and ill-informed.

[Chasstev365]

3. All I know is that his father and uncles Jack and Ted would be appalled

at any Kennedy having anything to do with Trump!

[baldguy]

6. +1000

[hatrack]

8. Deny climate science, deny medical science, hell just deny science if it makes you feel good . . .

. . . or pays the bills.