

Vaccines & Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy - gcheong
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-06-03#feature

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allending
Even Bill Maher has caught the disease.
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=cel...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=celeb-
vaccine-wars-peet-beats-maher-09-10-14)

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dionidium
You say "even" Bill Maher as if to imply this is surprising. Maher frequently
speaks out against "western" medicine on his show. It's a topic on which he
often says silly stuff.

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protomyth
We live in a world that has trolls. Online comment systems are still working
on how to distinguish authority from popularity. Unfortunately, trolls make
media companies money with tales of pain and suffering. Not to mention that
pretty people on TV get heard no matter their qualifications. Their is no
mystical counter or social graph displayed on the TV screen next to the former
Playboy model.

There are days I hate that technology has advanced so far to compensate for
common sense.

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jamesbritt
"Manufactroversy"? That has to be one of the worst portmanteaus yet.

There has to be a smoother way to describe invented controversies.

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iterationx
The only thing that's totally obvious is that there are some individuals that
let the State do their thinking for them.

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philk
People aren't "letting the state do their thinking for them". More correctly,
members of the anti-vaccine movement don't seem to be doing much thinking at
all:

1) Why has the anti-vaccine movment failed to produce any credible evidence at
all in the years it exists? Credible means peer reviewed journal articles that
haven't later been discredited. It does not include discredited papers, poorly
made websites exhorting readers to "do their own research", or statements by
ex-playmates.

2) Why haven't they managed to produce directly reproducible evidence, at
least in an animal model, of vaccination leading to autistic-type behaviours?
Given they've managed to induce autistic-type behaviours in mice through
genetic manipulation this should not be an impossible task.

3) Why would you trust a group of people who approach a problem in an
intellectually bankrupt fashion? Rather than asking "what causes autism", and
conducting research to determine this, they've decided "vaccines cause autism"
and then tried to support this in the face of all available evidence. (A
similar deception is employed by intelligent design advocates).

Listening to the overwhelming medical consensus isn't letting the state do
your thinking for you, particularly when the alternative is so unimpressive.

