A bunch of us today are trying to point out some incredible
hypocrisy and downright despicable slime being spewed by the idiots
who want to blame autism on vaccines.

The blame-vaccines crowd likes to use publicity stunts to try to
build up their case. It’s the only tactic left to them, because study after study after study has shown that there is no correlation – not just no causal link, but no correlation at all – between vaccines and autism. There’s no science on their side; no evidence; nothing but anecdotes.

So they milk the anecdotes for everything they’re worth. Jenny McCarthy parades around on TV talking about how she knows that vaccines caused her son’s autism, and that she knows that the crackpot interventions that she used cured him. She doesn’t need any scientific evidence; she says that her son is her science.

Generation rescue runs ads full of stories about how autism is caused by vaccines; they push endless stories about parents desperate to find a cure for their childrens parents. They parade parents like
Jenny McCarthy around to gather every possible bit of publicity for their cause.

The end result of this is to create opposition to vaccination. And that is a horrible thing.

Most people my age have never seen a person with polio. It was wiped out long before we were born – by vaccines. No one in the US has seen anyone with smallpox in decades. There are so many diseases, which we have no experience with anymore – because they’ve been rendered almost entirely harmless by vaccines. When’s the last time you saw someone with the measles or the mumps? When’s the last time any of us saw someone suffering from complications of one of those formerly common childhood diseases?

But thanks to people like Generation Rescue, that’s changing.

Earlier this month, there was an outbreak of measles in San Diego – the first outbreak of measles in 17 years. None of the infected children were vaccinated. Why not?

There have been recent outbreaks of the mumps in Iowa – started by
people who weren’t vaccinated, and later transferred even to some who had been.

When we hear about one of these outbreaks, the most common response is: “Big deal? Measles is no biggie.” Not true at all. Measles can, in a significant number of cases, lead to blindness (via corneal scarring), encephalitis, and brain damage. Similarly for many of the other childhood diseases that have been nearly eliminated by
vaccines – these diseases aren’t trivial things. They’re potentially serious diseases. Vaccines have eliminated things that used to be major scourges, that crippled huge numbers of people. We’ve forgotten that, because the diseases have almost disappeared.

Until these autism frauds managed to get themselves in the news. Thousands of parents have refused vaccines for their children, in the name of protecting them from a phony risk of autism, and as a result, diseases that should be unheard of are making strong comebacks.

Naturally, the doctors who care for children are concerned about this. They’re seeing parents put their children at risk, and they’re seeing children come in with diseases and complications that should never happen anymore.

So they’ve decided to take action. Through the main professional organization for pediatricians, the AAP, they’re putting together their own publicity campaign – trying to remind people of the fact that vaccines save lives. They’re looking for people who didn’t vaccinate their children, and who as a result have suffered from preventable illnesses with serious consequences:

From: Susan Martin
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:29 PM
To: SPOKESPERSONS@LISTSERV.AAP.ORG
Subject: parent spokespersons

Hello,

As part of our ongoing response to media stories regarding autism and vaccines, the AAP communications department is compiling a list of parents who support the AAP and are available for interviews. We are looking for two types of parents who could serve as spokespersons:

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders who support immunization and who do not believe there is any link between their child’s vaccines and his or her autism.

Parents of children who suffered a vaccine-preventable illness. This could be a parent who declined immunization, whose child became ill before a vaccine was available, or whose child was ineligible for immunization.

We are asking for your help identifying parents who would be good spokespersons. They do not need to be expert public speakers. They just need to be open with their story and interested in speaking out on the issue. We will contact candidates in advance to conduct pre-interviews, to offer guidance on talking to reporters and to obtain a signed waiver giving us permission to release their name.

If a parent were placed on our list, we would offer their name and contact information to select media. We hope to build a list of parents from a wide range of geographical areas.

As the Jenny McCarthy and “Eli Stone” stories illustrate, this issue is likely to recur in the national and local media. The AAP is committed to doing all we can to counter such erroneous reports with factual information supported by scientific evidence and AAP recommendations.

The anti-vaccine groups often have emotional family stories on their side. The ability to offer a reporter an interview with a similarly compelling parent who is sympathetic to the AAP’s goals is a powerful tool for our media relations program.

Please contact me if you have any questions or to suggest a parent to interview.

Thank you,

Susan Stevens Martin
Director, Division of Media Relations
American Academy of Pediatrics
847.434.7131

The autism frauds are reacting with faux outrage. How dare the AAP do anything so horrible as to put together
a publicity campaign? How dare they remind people of the consequences of not vaccinating?

When the autism frauds want to publicize their belief that autism is caused by vaccines, that’s absolutely OK. No moral issue, no problem at all. It’s just simple the right thing to do.

When people start to get sick with diseases that should be
unheard of, because they’re entirely preventable by safe vaccines,
that’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s got nothing to do with
the autism frauds and their wretched attempts to scare people.

And when doctors, upset at seeing the resurgence of diseases that
should be completely eliminated in 21st century America, do their best to remind people that these diseases are serious, and that they can protect their children from the risks of catching them – then the doctors are being horrible, unethical, disgraceful, despicable ghouls.

The ghouls are people like JB Handley – who are deliberately
playing games, moving goalposts, and propagating lies. They’re frauds whose actions are putting lives at risk. And based on the way that they’ve been changing their stories as evidence accumulates, they know that they’re frauds.

Deliberately, knowingly encouraging people to put their childrens life at risk from preventable illnesses? Now that is evil.