General Discussion

HuckleB

(35,773 posts) Fri May 9, 2014, 03:28 PM May 2014

Antivaccine activists bully high school filmmakers over a student documentary about vaccines

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/05/09/antivaccine-activists-attack-and-bully-high-school-filmmakers-over-a-student-vaccine-documentary/#.U2ziLiASKgk.twitter

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There’s a famous quote by Karl Marx that says, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Well, history is repeating itself, except that it was farce the first time, and it’s even more of a farce this time. Yes, you guessed it. Now that Invisible Threat is out and being screened, antivaccination loons are doing what they, unfortunately, do best, namely to attack these high school students as pawns of the pharmaceutical company. They do it because it’s what they do and it’s all they can do, given that they don’t have the evidence on their side and that vaccines, to the best of the ability of science to detect, do not cause autism. Last week, there appeared a press release, which was, as is so often the case, rapidly regurgitated over at that wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery other than The Huffington Post, namely Age of Autism. It was from Focus Autism, a group that describes itself as “dedicated to exposing the causes of the autism epidemic, specifically the role of vaccinations,” which should tell you all you need to know about it, particularly after looking at the website it sponsors, the woefully misnamed A Shot of Truth, which is chock full of the sort of pseudoscience, misinformation, and conspiracy mongering that’s par for the course among vaccine-autism cranks. Let’s just put it this way. If Jake Crosby’s newest best friend forever and antivaccine hero Brian Hooker is a “scientific advisor” for the group, you know it’s pure antivaccine pseudoscience.

So what about the press release? It’s despicable, even by antivaccine standards, and that’s saying a lot. It starts right out referencing a report from 2008 by everyone’s favorite former CBS News reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, who was known for being as antivaccine as antivaccine can be and abusing her position at CBS News to suck up to Andrew Wakefield and compete with David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for crankiest antivaccine crank, How independent are vaccine defenders?, which is more or less a massive pharma shill gambit writ large in neon letters. Yes, when a press release starts out citing Attkisson, you know it’s going to be bad, and this one is. And who is the evil pro-vaccine force pulling the strings of these impressionable teens? Oh, take a guess. Yep, it’s Every Child By Two (ECBT). Why? Because Paul Offit was an advisor and the producer was not one of the students. Except that much of the documentary was filmed during the summer of 2012, and the producer’s daughter, Camille Posard, graduated from CHS in 2012. So at the time of filming, her daughter was a very recent graduate of CHS and no doubt had worked on the project during her senior year in high school. I don’t see a problem with that, but then I’m not an antivaccine loon.

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See what I mean. Focus Autism is asking antivaccine activists to complain to their legislators about the students’ efforts. These kids faced major challenges when making their film and are to be commended, while the antivaccine loons trying to harass them are nothing more than, yes, bullies trying to beat up on a bunch of high school students to promote their agenda to endanger public health."

I admit I think the term bully can be overused in a manner that makes those who have truly bullying feel dismissed. In this case, I do think the term is accurate, although the author certainly pulls no punches. His frustration with anti-vaccine movement is clear. Anyway, check out the movie and support the kids who made it!