Logical Fallacy

[Canoro Philipp]

to everyone who dont agree that autism is caused by mercury, which explanation do you believe is the correct one?

it would be more useful if instead of providing information why an explanation may not be the right one, if you could offer an explanation that you believe could supplant the other ones, or even be another piece of the puzzle and not neccesarly supplant the others, but complement them.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I like the explanation you gave in your OP:

• a teapot is, at this very moment, in orbit around the Sun between the Earth and Mars, and that because no one can prove that this ISN'T responsible for autism, it is therefore valid to say it is.

Of the other explanations given I think:

• There's no agreed definition of 'autism' about sums it up.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

to everyone who dont agree that autism is caused by mercury, which explanation do you believe is the correct one?

it would be more useful if instead of providing information why an explanation may not be the right one, if you could offer an explanation that you believe could supplant the other ones, or even be another piece of the puzzle and not neccesarly supplant the others, but complement them.

---

I believe the explanation that we don't know what causes it, and we won't know until someone comes up with sound, replicable, epidemological evidence for the cause or causes.

Vinyl flooring, maybe?  The evidence for that is, apparently, stronger than is the evidence for the proposition it's caused by mercury in vaccines.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Nooooo!  Don't say things like that; Big FloorCovering will be sending the MIB around to get you :-(

NB: The fact that Big FloorCovering has never admitted employing MIB proves they're covering-up something.  Possibly floors.

[Celestiall Nightfire]

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

to everyone who dont agree that autism is caused by mercury, which explanation do you believe is the correct one?

---

Canoro, I've been researching autism for the past 15 years.  There is an abundance of peer-reviewed and excellent research that indicates autism, like many other mental/cognitive differences, is genetic in origin.   As genetics is a complex subject, there are multiple factors, that come into play. 

I quite literally see science information monthly, on new discovered genetic links to autism (I subscribe to various scientific journals and publications).   The research is ongoing.   Do a Google search with the words "genetic causes of autism"...or other key-word searches.   You will find a plethora of reputable studies.

 

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

it would be more useful if instead of providing information why an explanation may not be the right one, if you could offer an explanation that you believe could supplant the other ones, or even be another piece of the puzzle and not neccesarly supplant the others, but complement them.

---

My own personal theory is, that autism has always been part of the human genetic variables, but in the past was described as "eccentric" or with other adjectives.   In primitive societies those with autism might not have survived.  But, as societies advanced technologically, the gene combinations that favor autistic spectrum, become more and more of an asset.  Today, we are seeing the explosion of that long-time-line of genetic selection being played out.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

 

But, as some combinations of autism genes render people unable to function (i.e., severely autistic) the idea is a difficult one.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111102/full/479025a.html

 

 

 

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Could it not be that there's a general advantage to particular genes or genetic patterns on their own but, in certain combinations, they're likely to give rise to autism?   

Or that there's a general advantage to particular genetic combinations but, unfortunately, they carry with them a higher risk of autism developing if you're exposed to particular environmental stressors (or combinations of stressors) that are more commonly encountered nowadays than previously they were?

[Celestiall Nightfire]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

Could it not be that there's a general advantage to particular genes or genetic patterns on their own but, in certain combinations, they're likely to give rise to autism?   

Or that there's a general advantage to particular genetic combinations but, unfortunately, they carry with them a higher risk of autism developing if you're exposed to particular environmental stressors (or combinations of stressors) that are more commonly encountered nowadays than previously they were?

---

Yes, and yes.  Both are possible.

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

Thanks, Madelaine.   You've saved me a lot of time, it seems, watching that.

Did he, at any point, actually come out and say, "and we know that such-and-such a vaccine causes (or is associated with) autism because of such-and-such a study, published in such-and-such a journal"?  

I want to check his references, you see, and in this context I'm not so much interested in the general, and non-contentious, proposition that, taken in sufficient amounts, mercury is bad for you as I am in the specific proposition that a particular vaccine is bad for children, be it because of the amounts of mercury it contains or for some other reason.   

It's all very well for people to dismiss studies they don't like as being rigged by "Big Pharma" (thus economically combining "ad hominem" with "The Texas Sharpshooter," I think) but I like to look up research myself.

---

There was no point where Dr. Ayoub cited such research, Innula. I really wanted him to toss me a bone, but it never happened. Every example cited was via malformed or contradictory analogy.

I have been through IRB reviews that would have shredded a presentation like Ayoub's. The sort of analogical errors he made would have gotten me shut down pretty quickly. But things really went wild when he moved from medicine to motivation. 

[Melita Magic]

---

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

Madelaine, sadly there are all the people who, having reached an unimformed decision, then decide to criminalise the opposite opionion.

 

Melita Magic wrote:... giving vaccines to infants should be criminal

 

(Melita - if you only meant that about government-enforced vaccination I misunderstood and apologise)

---

Yes, I did, although personally I would not advise giving today's super strong series to anyone under age two. Personal opinion.

Back in the day a baby might've been given a sugar cube with polio in it - a bit iffy in my opinion but I'm well aware what polio did before that began - so I realize what a Solomon's choice these things can be. But today, to give series after series to an undeveloped immune system seems unwise.

Now I broke what I said and reposted in this topic, but, I felt your question merited a reply, simply for being polite enough not to assume in total, what I had meant. Most people do not give that option online....they simply ass-ume.

[Medhue Simoni]

Did you really watch the video? Gosh this is sad. A bunch of people that can't watch and affectively understand a simple video. Maybe you need to keep rewatching the video until all the propaganda washes away from your frontal lobe. The Dr cites, dozens of studies, and papers, most of them peer reviewed. If the deniers actually have any medical background, I'm sure you were lead by hand to all your conclusion. This is why you insist on me leading you, and you can't actually extract information to check on your own. You aren't little babies like the 1's you want to jab with toxins. You have a brain, use it.

The "It's genetics" is a total cop out by fearful people in the medical community. Guess what? Everything has a genetic component! This doesn't mean it is the cause. If you ask me, people within the medical field use the genetic argument as a response to what they feel is them being attacked by parents. It's a childish he said she said, when the parents just want real answers. It's genetic is a non answer. There are numerous studies that can suggest different genes being affected, but not without a catalyst. The catalyst being mercury, even possilbly some of the different immune boosting adjunks(I know, my word}

Parents want what is best for their kids, while most of the medical community is just looking to cover their asses. The simple fact that so many doctors dismiss the account of hundreds of thousands of parents, should show any1 that those doctors are simply in denial. When you become a parent, that little baby is your life. You watch them every waking moment of their young lives. Every single parent out there knows exactly when their child started to act differently. They watched it happen, agonizingly, only to have a fearful doctor tell them there is no causation, without any facts to back that up. All of you and the medical community that are denier, need to get over yourselves. It is not about you.

As I've already said, I don't cite anything, besides videos, because I don't save the urls. There are literally thousands of pages of papers and studies to go thru. Youtube saves your video history, that's why it is so easy for me to post a video. Plus, these videos are all over Youtube. So many, I can't find the 1 I'd love to post. The average person is not going to read a whole study, but they will watch a video. And, any1 with 2 brain cells can watch the video and look up the references, or the name of the Doctor making the claim, where you will find more data. Do I need to explain how to google something?

 

 

You know the crazy part, is look at what the deniers say. Their conclusions aren't based on anything at all.

[Sy Beck]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Okay, I've watched the entire video and have some notes. I have quoted (sometimes paraphrasing slightly) at various points in the video and offer my comments thereafter.

6:40  "You know what, the EPA is right, but you have to interpret it a certain way."

The doctor implies that the "certain way" is improper without offering any explanation for why that's so. In truth, one must almost always interpret things “in a certain way”. It’s already becoming clear that Dr. Ayoub is doing precisely that, interpreting data in a way that distorts it to his ends. The transient and chronic effects of heavy metal exposures are different, and treating them the same, as the doctor does, does not mean they are the same.

6:55  “That’s like taking a six months supply (of a cardiac drug) today.”

Cardiac drugs do not act on the human body at all like heavy metals do. Digoxin, a popular cardiac drug used to treat rhythm disorders, has a low therapeutic index (the margin of safety between efficacy and toxicity), warfarin does too, it’s a life saving blood thinner at low doses, an effective rat poison at high doses, causing lethal bleed out. The doctor (the video states he is an MD) was surely taught this in medical school.

17:40  “They could have killed a horse with the doses they were giving.”

This was offered as proof that mercury was unsafe. On careful analysis, this statement actually works against the claim and simply states the obvious that horses are bigger than people and if you give someone enough poison to kill a horse, you shouldn't be surprised if it kills a human.

34.56  “The number one cause of death in the US is not heart disease or cancer, it’s medicine.”

Having read “

To Err is Human

” during a period in my career when I worked on methods to reduce medical errors, I am familiar with this particular misrepresentation of the facts. There are indeed hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in which adverse drug reactions, medical errors and the like are proximal causes. The suggestion that medicine is therefore the number one cause of death is fallacious as it ignores the deaths that would have occurred in the absence of our health care system. If I wished to make an analogous argument for heart disease, I would claim that, while heart disease killed 699,647 Americans last year, the complete absence of hearts in Americans would produce more than 300 million deaths. So, though hearts aren't perfect, I'm glad we have them.

44:40 Dr. Ayoub posits theory #3, that somebody (never mentioned) might be using mercury as a population control tool (or for genocide).

51:50 It is suggested that, during the Nixon administration, the government decided that population control might become necessary and there was no reason to tell the public if and when the government does something about it.

57:10 A female reporter writes about

GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization)

, provoking some unnamed nefarious entity to fly black helicopters over her house for three weeks. This makes me wonder if anyone has done a study of the efficacy of flying black helicopters over people’s houses.

1:00:00 “Doesn’t good health promote (population) growth? If you can’t feed yourself, why would you want ten kids?”

Ayoub’s conjecture does not agree with the data, as you can see in

Hans Rosling’s research

. Population growth

slows

as infant mortality declines. Rosling's work is known to many people, including me, but apparently not to Dr. Ayoub, who claims to have worked hard to understand these things.

1:00:39 “Nigeria’s growth was leading Africa, so it doesn’t surprise me that GAVI was immunizing the heck out of Nigeria.”

Dr. Ayoub is suggesting that governments were conspiring to reduce Nigeria’s population by vaccinating them (presumably to inflict the fertility reducing properties of mercury on the unsuspecting population). Oddly enough, if you believe Rosling’s suggestion that lowering infant mortality and increasing lifespan will lower the birth rate (because women don’t feel the need to have replacement children to counter the infant mortality rate), vaccinations will indeed lower population growth by improving quality and length of life.

 

At this point, I stopped taking notes because because the mountain of logical fallacies was threatening to bow my desktop. If I wanted to curb world population growth, would I taint vaccines with mercury in small doses, causing an anecdotal death rate? Or would I simply find ways to make the vaccines less effective, killing millions of people in the process? Apparently Dr. Ayoub thinks governments are smart enough to carry out genocidal conspiracies of global proportion but too stupid to find effective ways to do it. Simply avoiding intervention in the Congo probably eliminated a few million people, didn’t cost a dime, and placed the blame right in the Congo.

The toxic effects of heavy metals are somewhat known and research continues. There truly is a sort of grandfathering effect in medicine, where old methods and practices do not receive as much scrutiny as new ones, simply by virtue of their having been in place for so long, with no obvious deleterious effects. This is no secret. But this not mean that there is no scrutiny.

But, to suggest that vaccinations are a tool to control the world’s population by increasing infertility, with the side effect of autism makes no sense, even ignoring intent. It takes very little research to show that any harmful effect of mercury is vastly outweighed by the benefits of vaccination. Dr. Ayoub’s ignorance of some very well understood relationships casts the veracity of his entire argument into doubt.

CDC reports a 57% increase in reported Autism cases from 2002-2006. The removal of thiomersal from many vaccines should provide some epidemiological data points over the coming years which will reveal or dispute the mercury causation theory.

So Medhue, I have watched your 90 minute video and found it unconvincing. I might have been swayed by Dr. Ayoub if he hadn’t exhibited a convincing lack of understanding of things that were actually not central to his argument (population control) but upon which he dedicated the bulk of his presentation. He also used misleading analogies in the areas where he should have known better. I do hope that the mountain of logical fallacies in Dr. Ayoub's presentation don't dissuade people from keeping track of the issues he attempted to address, and I don't think it will. I have just spent three hours bringing myself up-to-date on this issue, which would not have happened if not for your post.

---

Thank you Maddy for saving me an afternoon of RSI.  I couldn't help, but remember when we discussed this subject tangentially before and the dangers therein of giving bogus science, bogus scientists and bogus interpretations, airtime and credence.  Fake MMR Scare Causes Deaths

As much as a dose of even handed media has to be taken with care there is far more danger in believing internet messiahs peddling snake oils and silver bullets dressed up as credible and evidenced science without refutation or rebuttal.  All the latest medical research papers are out there in credible journals and organisations for anybody with a critical mind to examine and to weigh up.  To propose that what some fringe scientist might say has credence does not disprove the efficacy of what is already is known in this case or that on balance it should not be continued.  If 4 out every 100 children vaccinated died because of a vaccine, but 5 out of every 100 unvaccinated children died of a particular disease then cruel logic says that you should vaccinate.

[Medhue Simoni]

Sorry Sy, but you totally missed the twisted logic you are promoting. You don't have the right to inject toxins into little babies because of your own fears, based on propaganda.

OH and please cite 1 bogus scientific example posted in this thread by me, or in the videos that I have posted? You can't.

None of Maddy's arguements are even arguements at all, or they are just twisted logic. Again, you should reread the thread OP.

It really is sad how little people care about themselves, their children, or any1 else in their family that they can't pull themselves away from a football game or a Lifetime drama to watch a couple hours of relevant videos that actually have something to do with their life. Me, I've been studying autism for over 18 years, obsessively.

In the end, it really doesn't matter what you want to believe. The truth is the truth. By exposing the truth to some1, you open a door. From then on, that door will always be there. They may choose to close that door, but it will always be there. Eventually, they will recieve little bits of information that keeps making that door relevant, until the day that the door opens itself, and there is no more denying it. So, if all I did was point at the door again, that is fine with me. Believe whatever you want to believe, but you will never get rid of that door in your mind, until you open it and accept the facts.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

---

Melita Magic wrote:

---

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

Madelaine, sadly there are all the people who, having reached an unimformed decision, then decide to criminalise the opposite opionion.

 

Melita Magic wrote:... giving vaccines to infants should be criminal

 

(Melita - if you only meant that about government-enforced vaccination I misunderstood and apologise)

---

Yes, I did, although personally I would not advise giving today's super strong series to anyone under age two. Personal opinion.

Back in the day a baby might've been given a sugar cube with polio in it - a bit iffy in my opinion but I'm well aware what polio did before that began - so I realize what a Solomon's choice these things can be. But today, to give series after series to an undeveloped immune system seems unwise.

Now I broke what I said and reposted in this topic, but, I felt your question merited a reply, simply for being polite enough not to assume in total, what I had meant. Most people do not give that option online....they simply ass-ume.

---

 

Now that's a good, sensible and unarguable post.  Melita states her opinion, as opinion, with why she holds that opinion.  No logical fallacies in that one :-)  And, yeah, I really don't want to do the vaccines argument either.

[Sy Beck]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

Sorry Sy, but you totally missed the twisted logic you are promoting. You don't have the right to inject toxins into little babies because of your own fears, based on propaganda.

OH and please cite 1 bogus scientific example posted in this thread? You can't.

None of Maddy's arguements are even arguements at all, or they are just twisted logic. Again, you should reread the thread OP.

---

My partner and I have every right to choose what medical precautions or procedures that will ensure our children's good health.  We base it on known and qualified medical knowledge available to us at any time.  I'm pretty sure sure that not allowing them medical treatment would, 99% of the time, result in being injurious to them and criminally negligent on my part.  What other parents choose to do is up to them, but I would only offer the advice that they do their research carefully and not take a You Tube video as the state of the art authority on a subject.

For your information and this is something that I would have rather not shared, but my eldest son has Asperger's though fortunately in his case it is mild.  This was flagged up to us by a pediatrician when he was about a year old because of what appeared to be a less than usual development of his motor skills and social interplay with us and others.  This was 6 months before his MMR injections so like Celestial I tend towards the genetic argument.

As regards the bogus, I'll stand by Maddy's observations of the doctor's wayward interpretations of facts.  To add to it, I will link Dr Boyd Haley's Wiki page wherein it cites that nearly all his conclusions regarding mercury contamination/toxicity are refuted by leading medical and dental organisations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyd_Haley

To quote from the opening paragraph, "His views about mercury and dental amalgams go against the consensus held in the medical community."

Furthermore, to follow up on the Thiomersal controversy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy

The thiomersal controversy describes claims that vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thiomersal contribute to the development of autism and other brain development disorders.[1] The current scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims,[2][3] and a 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".[4] 

 

I fear we will have to amicably agree to disagree with each other here.

[Anaiya Arnold]

In my experience, people who like to do their own thinking, routinely prefer to read studies and think about those for themselves, rather than watch a video to see what someone else thinks about relevent research. 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

Sorry Sy, but you totally missed the twisted logic you are promoting. You don't have the right to inject toxins into little babies because of your own fears, based on propaganda.

OH and please cite 1 bogus scientific example posted in this thread by me, or in the videos that I have posted? You can't.

...

---

Oh dear, where to start ...

• 'No is from an ought' - whether or not something is good and whether someone has a 'right' to do it are different.
• You have only included vaccines which are injected, not those given orally or by other means.
• Most moral systems would argue against causing 2.5 million deaths by ending vaccinations.
• Your obsessive study of autism has failed to provide a definition of what it actually is.
• Yes, commercial and political interests lie and cheat.  To accuse every chemist, every doctor, every bioloist and every government in the world of doing so about this issue unless they agree with you is stretching credulity.
• I don't really think people grow-up wanting to be doctors so they can spend all their time "covering their arses"

[Medhue Simoni]

Again, you missed the twisted logic.

You can do whatever you want with yourself or your children. What you don't have the right to do is enforce that on other people.

If you didn't quite catch it from my other comments, let me just let you know that my son is the 1 that I'm around everyday who was diagnosed PDD. He was what would have been seen as slightly severe autistic traits when he was very young, starting right around his 3rd birthday. With lots of work, he can now read and understand most of everything you put infront of him, but getting those words out of his mouth is still a struggle. He is musical and can play anything by ear, as well as the #1 player on his softball team, which is all autistics and he easily beats me at golf. He is now 20.

Over the past few years, since the evidence has been more conclusive. We started trying detox treatments. This is very difficult for my son as he is extremely reluctant to try any foods outside his choosen sets, and the other treatments are a bit too invasive or costly to do. So, this past year we started trying cylantro drinks, which has natural chelating properties. It's a few hour ordeal to get him to drink it everytime, so we started with adding a little at a time, to the point where now he had a drink with a decent amount of cilantro every few days, for long stretches. His speech has improved quite a bit, and I can see that he needs less time to search thru his brain for the right words. If you talk to him through text messaging, you'd hardly know he was autistic. Cilantro can help all of us and should become a part of your diet, if it is not now.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

Sorry Sy, but you totally missed the twisted logic you are promoting. You don't have the right to inject toxins into little babies because of your own fears, based on propaganda.

OH and please cite 1 bogus scientific example posted in this thread by me, or in the videos that I have posted? You can't.

...

---

Oh dear, where to start ...

• 'No is from an ought' - whether or not something is good and whether someone has a 'right' to do it are different.
  Exactly, but now you must define good, and right, and we both agree on those definitions.
• You have only included vaccines which are injected, not those given orally or by other means.
  Exactly!! Is this an arguement for or against what I'm talking about, cause i can't tell.
• Most moral systems would argue against causing 2.5 million deaths by ending vaccinations.
  Twisted logic again. You are saying it's ok to kill some, and injure many, to save, arguably, a few more. Who decides who can live and die?
• Your obsessive study of autism has failed to provide a definition of what it actually is.
  This again prove my point, not yours nor the deniers.
• Yes, commercial and political interests lie and cheat.  To accuse every chemist, every doctor, every bioloist and every government in the world of doing so about this issue unless they agree with you is stretching credulity.
  Where did I or any1 else say that. I said "generally" that the CDC was corrupt, which was probably a bit overboard, I admit, but I didn't say every chemist, doctor, or biologist. That makes not sense as I've used those same people to make my point.
• I don't really think people grow-up wanting to be doctors so they can spend all their time "covering their arses".

---

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

• Yes, commercial and political interests lie and cheat.  To accuse every chemist, every doctor, every bioloist and every government in the world of doing so about this issue unless they agree with you is stretching credulity.

---

Peter, even if you believed that every chemist, doctor, biologist and government in the world lies and cheats (they actually do! ;-), it's hard to explain such large scale collective actions as global conspiracies. One interesting property of actual conspiracies is that eventually (and more than proportionally dependent on size of the conspiracy) participants often see a profit in revealing them. One interesting property of imagined conspiracies is that people rarely imagine only one.

Welcome to humanity!

[Medhue Simoni]

So, basically, what you are saying is that there are no, have never been any, and never will be any group of rich people conspiring together? The TV told you all conspiracies are from crazy people, even the real 1's, and it makes you feel good to believe the TV. They give you no facts, and you still believe them. This is exactly what you are doing. You refute things not using facts, but twisted Logical Fallacies. And look around, every1 that wants to believe you does, cause the alternative is way to hard to deal with.

 

See, Me, I take nothing at face value. I do my homework, then I decide. I don't let others decide for me and then I run off thinking I leaned something. Nor have I ever cared what any1 else thought about me. Thinking this way takes away your own life. You end up living the life of others, just because you are afraid of what others will say. Again, I've never cared, cause I realized this when I was a kid. I was never the outcast, I was always the captain of the team, cause I'm not a sheeple. When every1 and their mother was buying a 300k house, I was selling mine. I told all my friends that they were gonna get burned, and they did. I'm not some shaman, I just don't believe what I hear. I evaluation things on their own merit, not some preconcieved design that some1 put in my head.

[Innula Zenovka]

I think what she's saying is that, on any sober analysis, the proposition that there's a huge conspiracy involving drugs companies, medical professionals and researchers, peer-reviewed journals and so on is wildly improbable.

[Medhue Simoni]

So based on the conspiracy part, which she can't prove or disprove, she rejects all the rest. Is that logical? Wildly improbable? Really? You should read up on your medical history, especially eugenics.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Some good answers Medhue and I think I begin to see why this thread has been so contentious.

It had been my understanding that YOU were saying WE must or must not give vaccines.  Hence you appeared to be saying "because vaccines are bad YOU must not give them to YOUR children".  If instead of that you are simply saying "because vaccines are bad, it is bad to give them to children" that is a much better argument.

It was also my understanding that you were objecting to vaccines per se.  Do you really mean just vaccines that are injected?  If it's the preservative used in some injected vaccines that you're objecting to then your argument is much better than I thought.

A moral dilemma is not 'twisted logic'.  It is simply a dilemma.  I am indeed saying it is ok for me to decide to kill some in order to save more.  The people who have to decide who can live and die are the people chosen to make those decisions: politicians, medics, emergency workers, military, parents, ourselves.  Would it be "right" for me to sacrifice myself to save 20 strangers?  Probably.  Does that mean I'd do it?  Probably not.  It is never an easy decision and if you ask anyone that has to do it professionally they'll tell you it's the worst part of their job.  Ultimately though - the choice must be made.  Choose to vaccinate, choose not to vaccinate.  Either way there is a risk.

Sorry - I can't see how arguing about something without a definition even makes sense, let alone how it proves anyone's point.  Shall we define "autism" as "a tendency to gyre and gymble in ye wabe"?  If that's what this is really all about then I STILL blame it on that damned teapot in orbit around the sun.

Your numerous comments to the effect that "no credible science", "blind men", etc. etc. suggest that you believe everyone who does not agree with you is ignorant or a liar.  Since chemists, doctors, biologists and politicians should all be expected not to be ignorant they must, by that argument, be liars.  (This is the one answer you gave that I don't think progresses things)

ETA: And your answers to Madelaine and Innula, while I was typing the above, STILL make me think it's all because of that teapot.

[Innula Zenovka]

It seems to me wildly improbable that there should exist some conspiracy involving medical researchers in so many different places, pubishing in so many different journals, to fake epedemilogical evidence to debunk the claim that MMR vaccinations are associated with autism.

On the balance of probabilities, which do you think more likely -- that there exist an association between MMR vaccine and autism but there also exists a huge (and largely successful) conspiracy to conceal it, or that no such association or conspiracy exist?  

 

[Medhue Simoni]

---

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

Some good answers Medhue and I think I begin to see why this thread has been so contentious.

It had been my understanding that YOU were saying WE must or must not give vaccines.  Hence you appeared to be saying "because vaccines are bad YOU must not give them to YOUR children".  If instead of that you are simply saying "because vaccines are bad, it is bad to give them to children" that is a much better argument.

It was also my understanding that you were objecting to vaccines per se.  Do you really mean just vaccines that are injected?  If it's the preservative used in some injected vaccines that you're objecting to then your argument is much better than I thought.

I'm sure that the very intelligent and moral doctors and scientists can come up with a much safer delivery system, based on real science.

A moral dilemma is not 'twisted logic'.  It is simply a dilemma.  I am indeed saying it is ok for me to decide to kill some in order to save more.  The people who

have

 to decide who can live and die are the people chosen to make those decisions: politicians, medics, emergency workers, military, parents, ourselves.  Would it be "right" for me to sacrifice myself to save 20 strangers?  Probably.  Does that mean I'd do it?  Probably not.  It is never an easy decision and if you ask anyone that has to do it professionally they'll tell you it's the worst part of their job.  Ultimately though - the choice must be made.  Choose to vaccinate, choose not to vaccinate.  Either way there is a risk.

You are excepting the premise that another human, or group of humans own you and can do whatever they want to you based on whatever logic they want. I don't assume that, and actually think of it as a crime against humanity, especially when it is bad science.

Sorry - I can't see how arguing about something without a definition even makes sense, let alone how it proves anyone's point.  Shall we define "autism" as "a tendency to

gyre and gymble in ye wabe"?  If that's what this is really all about then I STILL blame it on that damned teapot in orbit around the sun.

The arguement concerning what is autism, is that you can't prove any1 is autistic, because the spectrum is wide and gets wider everyday, and there is no provable test. This is why you can't compare how many autistics are there today compared to 20 years ago.

Your numerous comments to the effect that "no credible science", "blind men", etc. etc. suggest that you believe everyone who does not agree with you is ignorant or a liar.  Since chemists, doctors, biologists and politicians should all be expected not to be ignorant they must, by that argument, be liars.  (This is the one answer you gave that I don't think progresses things)

That is not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that if you are taught something is a fact, and that later turns out to be wrong, you are just misinformed. I use the words that I do and the incinuations because I've had this arguement hundreds of times. What I get back are cutty cutter responses that you can find word for word on any TV show, even ER. I understand that they don't see the propaganda and brainwashing because I also had to deal with this reality myself. When the facts become overwhelming than it is hard to deny the truth and at some point you have to conclude that there really are some evil people in the world.

ETA: And your answers to Madelaine and Innula, while I was typing the above, STILL make me think it's all because of that teapot.

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