I was involved in the organisation of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, while First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw. The 50th did not receive anything like the media coverage given to the 70th, of which more later.
Senior British visitors to Poland invariably included a concentration camp on their itinerary, and from escorting people around I visited camps a great deal more often than I would have wished. I found the experience appalling and desolate. The first I ever saw was Majdanek and I recall that I just had to sit helpless and shivering for some time. One thing the experience left me with – including meeting survivors and both Polish and German eye-witnesses, and seeing the architects’ plans for camps – was a contempt for those who claim the whole thing did not happen, or was an accident, or was small scale.
It in no way diminishes the genocidal attack on the Jews to remember that a vast number of Poles also died in the camps, as well as gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and disparate political prisoners. I tried sometimes to diminish the horror I felt at involvement with the camps, with attempts at humour. I was present at a meeting listing the guests of honour; the President of Lithuania was included. I whispered that he was coming to represent the camp guards. That was offensive, and I apologise. But there is a real problem that to this day Eastern Europe – including Poland itself – has not come to terms with historical truth about collaboration with anti-Jewish genocide and other attacks on minorities. I recommend this website, which tackles these issues very honestly and is well worth a lengthy browse.
It requires bigotry not to be able to understand why nationalist resistance movements against Russian occupation became allied with Germany during World War II. That would be reprehensible only in the same sense that allied collaboration with Stalin might be reprehensible, but for the added factor of enthusiastic collaboration with genocidal and master race programmes and fascist ideology. That is what makes the glorification of Eastern European nationalist figures from this period generally inappropriate.
I fear however that the real reason that the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz received so much more coverage than the 50th is a media desire to reinforce the narrative of the War on Terror and Western policy in the Middle East by invoking the spectre of massive anti-Semitism. There have been isolated but deplorable, apparently anti-Semitic attacks of a small-scale terrorist nature in France and Belgium in recent years. But to conflate this into stories of a wave of popular anti-Semitism in Europe is a nonsense. Maureen Lipman’s claim that she may have to leave the UK is not just silly but disingenuous. I do not believe she feels in personal danger of attack – there is absolutely no reason why she should – she is rather making a political point.
There are two factors which could exacerbate anti-Semitism at present. One is the appalling behaviour of Israel and its indefensible action in continually seizing Palestinian land and using its military superiority to dominate and occasionally massacre Palestinians. Regrettably, there are a very small minority of people who wrongly blame Jews in general for the actions of Israel.
The second factor is of course the terrible economic hardship wrought across the whole world by irresponsible banking practices, and the fact that the bankers luxury lifestyles were maintained at the cost of everybody else. There are still a tiny minority of people stuck in the medieval mindset associating banking with the Jewish community. There is in fact a very plausible argument that if any “race” has a disproportionate influence on the development and character of international banking since the mid eighteenth century, it is the Scots! But those who see banking as a racial issue are nutters.
You could construct an argument from these factors, and you could identify that anti-Semitic people do exist. They certainly do. They dominate the very small category of people who get banned even from this free speech blog. But are their opinions intellectually respectable, promoted in the mainstream or able to be expressed openly without fear of either social or legal consequences? No, no and no. Anti-semites are fortunately a tiny and strange minority. I might add that in my numerous and frequent social contacts in the British Muslim community, I have never encountered anti-Semitism (unlike, say, Poland and Russia where I encountered casual anti-Semitism quite frequently).
The final point, is of course, the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-Semitism. That seems to me the fundamental design of the media campaign exaggerating the scale of anti-Semitism at the moment. Yes, we must always remember the terrible warnings from history and it is right to remember those who died in the concentration camps, Jewish, Polish, Romany, Gay, Communist or any other category. But we should be aware of those who wish to manipulate the powerful emotions of horror thus evoked, for present objectives of the powerful.
I’d also like contributors to consider this “pyramid of argument quality” before they submit comments:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/uploads/ArgumentPyramid.jpg
Kudos to you, Clark and your anonymous correspondent.
I would urge Glenn particularly and others, of course, to read it carefully.
I was aware of this document and had read it a while back but, perhaps, it is better coming from a third party, in light of the personal animosity toward me by certain posters here.
There is also a back story to the Wakefield affair which as far as I recollect is that the UK government (Minister of Health et al)- had convened a meeting in Scotland prior to the introduction of MMR.
The DoH wanted the Glaxo, Smith, Beecham (I think they were at the time)’s version of MMR even though there were problems with one of the components, first in Japan and later Canada where it had been withdrawn due to severe adverse reactions.
Glaxo’s lawyers were very concerned and did not want the UK to take their MMR for fear of litigation. The UK Gov. gave them immunity, taking on the burden of such responsibility themselves, in spite of the warning and likelihood of damaging children’s health.
Eventually the Glaxo MMR was withrawn here too and was “dumped” on the 3rd world – South America, if I recall.
Profits I maintain are nearly always put ahead of our health – sad but true and all of us would be well advised to inform ourselves as much as we can. The mainstream, including IMO wikipedia, is corporately controlled and the profit motive is always present.
Anyway, thank you, Clark and I hope you found the David Lim talk informative and reasonably balanced.
CanSpeccy
01/02/2015 12:35 am
“[JSD 3]: No, I do not agree. Whether Matthew was a strictly observant Jew, or not, he was more than that. He was a Christian. He may have regarded himself as ceasing to be a Jew, therefore, in the way he would have understood non-Christian Jews to be, on becoming a member of the new faith.”
[CanSpeccy 3]: You’re wrong and seemingly willfully so.
Read the passage from Matthew again:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
[JSD 4]: Why don’t you read the passage from Matthew again yourself.
Even within the passage you yourself have quoted, there is evidence of anti-Semitism.
“20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The “Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics” (Green, J. [ed.], 2012) describes this passage as “subtle insult” and “invective against the Jews and Judaism” (p.73). It’s obvious why. A righteousness in the followers of Jesus equivalent to that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law will *certainly* not get them into heaven. Where does that leave the Pharisees and the teachers of the law?
[CanSpeccy 3]: Jesus, the Jew, was preaching as a Jew to Jews urging upon them strict adherence to the Jewish law.
[JSD 4]: Other parts of the Gospel contradict this picture. In Matthew 15:20 Jesus says it does not matter if Jews eat with ritually unclean hands. Similarly, in Matthew 15:2 he defends his disciples who have been “breaking the tradition of the elders”.
[CanSpeccy 3]: So how could the author of the Gospel of Matthew have “regarded himself as ceasing to be a Jew.”
[JSD 4]: Will you please try to pay attention. I did not say that the author of the Gospel according to Matthew regarded himself as ceasing to be a Jew. I said that he may have regarded himself as ceasing to be a Jew in the way he would have understood non-Christian Jews to be.
Matthew regarded himself and his fellow worshippers as qualitatively different from other Jewish people. Followers of Jesus will sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel (19:28). Stories of the disciples stealing the corpse of Jesus circulate among “the Jews to this very day” (28:15).
[CanSpeccy 3]: That the author of the Gospel of Matthew was a Christian in no way refutes that conclusion.
[JSD 4]: The fact that the author of the Gospel according to Matthew was a Christian has got everything to do with the matter. Paul of Tarsus was Jewish and wrote vicious polemic against the Jews as having killed Jesus and the prophets. Did the fact that he was himself definitely Jewish negate the anti-Semitic sentiment of his words? Absurd. Similarly, the fact that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was himself Jewish – if he was, which is debatable – in no way means that he was not showing the most virulent prejudice against the Jewish people who did not share his conception of Jesus as the Messiah. He quite clearly was – as is evidenced by the passage you yourself have quoted, for example; or in 27:25, as discussed; or in 23:35-36, or in many other passages in which Matthew demonstrates obvious anti-Jewish prejudice.
[CanSpeccy 3]: A Messiah was a Jewish leader. Jesus was a Jewish spiritual leader and therefore regarded as a Messiah.
[JSD 4]: Jesus was not regarded as the Messiah by non-Christian Jews. Not “a” Messiah. “The” Messiah. Matthew said he was. They said he was not. You have to pay attention to detail.
[CanSpeccy 3]: He was considered a leader anointed by God and was thus the Christ.
[JSD 4]: He was not considered by non-Christian Jews as anointed by God or as the Christ.
[CanSpeccy 3]: This is all perfectly Jewish.
[JSD 4]: It isn’t at all, in fact that’s the root of the problem. The idea of Jesus being the Messiah was about as anti-Jewish as you can imagine. Jews had clear expectations of who the coming Messiah was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do. To begin with, Judaism was, and is, a strictly monotheistic religion with no room in it for a manifestation of divinity other than God. Jesus himself recognized this (Mark 10:18). That did not suit Matthew, who believed that Jesus was divine (1:20 ; 17:2-5 ; 28:19). Next, the expected Messiah was to be a human king, a blood descendant of the royal lineage of David (Jeremiah 23:5), which is why Matthew invented one such lineage in 1:1-17 and Luke invented a different one in Luke 3:23-38. He was to establish a government for all peoples (Isaiah 2:2). He was to act as a judge between nations (Isaiah 2:4). He was to gather all exiled Jews back to Israel (Isaiah 11: 11-12). He was to be a great military leader. He was to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 37: 26-28). Jesus fulfilled none of these expectations, among numerous others, and hence he was rejected by Jews as Messiah. There was nothing Jewish about it.
[CanSpeccy 3]: So the fact that Jesus’s followers may have called themselves Christians did not make them any the less Jewish.
[JSD 4]: Oh yes, it did. Of course it did. What do you think non-Christian Jews thought of all this stuff that Matthew was peddling? Do you think they thought it made him more Jewish, or less?
[CanSpeccy 3]: According to Matthew’s account, the Christians were Jews urged by Jesus to show the strictest adherence to the Jewish law.
[JSD 4]: Yes, so you said before. Aside from the fact that the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew contradicts himself on this matter, I am waiting for you to explain why this means that Matthew 27:25 (“Let his blood be on us and on our children!”) does not show anti-Jewish prejudice (cf. Paul of Tarsus, above).
[CanSpeccy 3]: I’m sorry, I’m not going to deal with your other wiffle waffle.
[JSD 4]: No, of course you aren’t.
[CanSpeccy 3]: If you want to debate theology, you’ll have to learn the basic facts, rather than just making stuff up.
[JSD 4]: Yes, sure. Don’t try to patronize me, CanSpeccy, you’re just making yourself look silly. Why don’t you try to deal with my responses, instead of throwing insults and running away. Last time I looked on the blog, you had posted a couple of comments on my last response to Clark and I think they were both addressed to me. I will be pleased to respond to them, if so. After that, if you want to hear further from me, you are going to have to respond to *all* my responses to your comments, not just cherry pick the ones you believe you can get away with arguing about and ignore the rest by pretending you think they are “wiffle waffle”.
You’ll have to learn the basic facts, CanSpeccy, if you want to debate theology.
Kind regards,
John
Scouse Billy, I’m sure there are agents, working for companies, governments, individuals, and other entities – working for money, essentially – agents that “sanitise” Wikipedia for their employers. They perform perception management with varying degrees of skill. But if they remove well-sourced material it gets restored and flagged as vandalism.
In particular, information that could result in lawsuits gets removed. However, most of this process is transparent; you can look through the History of an article and find the removals. In many cases you can see the Wikipedia username that removed it, and the original information.
If you then go to the page of the user who removed the material you’ll find a link to see all their edits, so you can pretty much work out what their motivations might be. You can find lots of interesting things this way; Wikipedia is a good tool, and quite a good place for an information contest if you want to take one on.
Some things get more thoroughly removed than this. Obviously, once that’s been done you can’t really tell, but to me it looks as though this only happens to official secrets – definitely US ones, at least.
Of course if you deny mainstream science really strongly, you’d be more likely to think that Wikipedia is totally controlled.
Clark – I’ve taken a look at that PDF of yours. It is not a scientific paper, but rather an opinion piece, based on a hotch-potch of anecdotes, hearsay, supposition and malicious interpretation. It is not based on large collections of data, statistical studies, or independent, well referenced conclusions from elsewhere.
The author, Lucija Tomljenovic, is a rather notorious rising star in the anti-vaccine movement. She is most certainly not an impartial, objective scientist. It’s clear that she delves into meeting statements, picking out phrases which might – with unkind interpretation – support the conclusions she started off with.
Let me just jump to some random parts:
—-quote
This latter strategy was further refined on the JCVI Working Party on the introduction of MMR vaccine following meeting, on 17th May 1988 (http://www.dh.gov.uk/ab/JCVI/DH_095297):
—–end quote
So what? If it’s a health policy, GPs are encouraged on all manner of fronts – get their patients to lose weight, stop smoking, exercise, and get immunised. There is nothing sinister in that.
She immediately goes on:
—-quote
In spite of carefully elaborated advertising and substantial investments, the JCVI did not entirely succeed in countering public concerns over vaccine safety, as on 6th October 1989 (http:// http://www.dh.gov.uk/ab/JCVI/DH_095294):
(5.2.6)
—–end quote
OK – again, so what’s the big deal here? Uptake wasn’t as good as they would like, harmed by the peddlers of pseudo-science in the press. Why shouldn’t they be unhappy about that?
And she goes on:
—-quote
Regrettably, similar sadness was apparently not expressed by the JCVI members over a report of a vaccine-suspected death of a 16 month old child, which was discussed at the same meeting. Rather:
Science should be based on facts and experimental evidence, not feelings.
—–end quote
So let’s get this straight – she criticises them for not expressing sadness. Then she leaps on the word “felt”, and goes on to criticise them for talking in terms of feelings! Kind of hard to win with this woman!
It goes on, and on, in a very similar vein.
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One thing should be understood – vaccines do have a bad, sometimes fatal, reaction with a tiny proportion of those immunised. It’s very regrettable, but it happens. Focussing hysterically on these rare outcomes, pouring of the minutes of meetings where these cases were noted (and being appalled that they weren’t all rending their garments and gnashing teeth) is not a scientific argument against vaccines.
There’s a lot in that paper, all of it – from my scan – along the same lines. It reads as if it’s full of evidence, but nothing in there stands scrutiny. There’s no “there” there. It’s dressed in pseudo-academic language. The author has “PhD” after her name. But that ain’t no proper paper, it’s an opinion piece, with a mass of heresay shoe-horned, stove-piped and cherry-picked and then generalised into looking like a damnation of the entire practice and everyone associated with it.
Glenn, thanks for looking through it. I haven’t had a chance yet myself.
Scouse Billy, I really haven’t found much to substantiate chemtrails yet. I’ve watched a little more of the video; I will still watch the rest when I can. But the things for which Lim presents real proof are not things that substantiate chemtrails. Mostly we only have his word, and he’s pre-interpreted his evidence for us. He may be biased towards accepting chemtrails; he makes assertions but doesn’t tell us his evidence for them. Loads of times I was hoping he’d say “and here’s how we know this…”
If I find better evidence later on I’ll let you know.
Node,
Scouse Billy,
I’ve just found time to read Glenn’s 7:39 pm comment. I’ve still got that video to check out and other real-world things to do. Now I don’t regard Glenn as entirely unbiased, but since I’m short of time* I’m prepared to accept his interpretation; after all, it accords with the mainstream and I broadly trust the scientific community.
So if anyone else has found something more convincing towards the anti-vaccine position, please post the section references so I can look at them without scrutinising the whole article. Please post them with the one you find most convincing first. I’ve spent a lot of time on this and I think this is a fair.
* One reason I’m short of time is that I just browsed to http://www.jcvi.org/cms/home/ and found this:
That’s a very exciting scientific breakthrough if it’s entirely true, so I’d much rather go and check that out than wade through a load more of the sort of thing that Glenn has picked out.
– – – – –
Scouse Billy, I’ll ask you yet again:
1) Which contrarian theories do you reject?
2) Please outline the boundary between those parts of science and medicine that you accept and those you reject.
3) What’s your opinion of Spivey’s runaway bin-wagon article?
“I broadly trust the scientific community.”
If you’d trusted the scientific community towards the end of the 19th century you’d have had a bit of a shock when Modernism arrived.
But, what is the scientific community. Surely it’s no more than institutions.
It’s the professional associations, the university depts, the grant and funding apparatus.
These institutions probably no better represent the community of scientists than the institutions of the Catholic Church represent Catholics worldwide.
This guy’s quite good, on how belief systems change:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
Herbie, I have to start somewhere and take something as the most likely set of descriptions. Tell you what, do a thought experiment while I listen to Dr Doug Rokke talk about depleted uranium (off-topic on the Today’s Independence Rally). If I’d accepted mainstream science in 1899, would I be getting more stuff right or wrong if I’d broadly accepted it or broadly rejected it.
I expect I’d have been first troubled, then perplexed, and eventually delighted by the new physics. They teach physics in much the same order as it was discovered. They taught me all the classical stuff first, and only later started describing the (as you called it) modernist, relativity and quantum stuff. And that’s the emotional sequence I went through; first it disturbs the false security of the classical, objective, reductive approach. Next it perplexes with its paradoxes and seeming contradictions. Eventually it brings delight with its simplicity, elegance, inevitability and its, well, playfulness. It’s a delight to discover that the universe you’re looking at is as alive as you are, that it knows when you’re looking at it and it’s looking right back. And it predicts the electron configurations around a nucleus; that’s a delight, those horrible arbitrary number-counting rules replaced by a set of inevitable exclusive harmonic resonances.
I bet I’d still have been better off accepting the classical system than rejecting it, but if it looks otherwise to you, please tell me how so.
It was James Clerk Maxwell that got Einstein thinking…
Herbie, science is a disbelief system. I don’t believe science, I accept it. It is acceptable. Faith isn’t.
Look, science is just a set of models, a way of fitting maths to reality. Keeping that in mind is part of the scientific attitude. If someone finds a better fit or a simpler model that covers more, I’ll be delighted at the advance of science. You can’t do science without that attitude, because all experimentation is about testing the model to see how it can be improved; if you believed the model you wouldn’t bother doing any experiments.
Now, if parts of the scientific community lack this attitude and are just doing “jobs” assigned by higher authority and passing results back with no real interest in them, then I’d worry about that. I wouldn’t call that science. But even there I’d expect some inquisitive mind would object to or revolt from fakery; all she’d have to do is visit some university, hassle about until someone agreed to run the experiment. Unless she’s legally gagged by a non-disclosure clause in a contract, of course…
Someone needs to audit such things. People here complain and try to knock lumps off science, but they aren’t out looking for unethical conditions being imposed upon scientists. Ben Goldacre regularly exposed cases like these, but apparently he’s one of the bad guys because his father is involved with vaccines.
@Herbie:
About science being a belief system – Clark has covered that very well. But we’re not a tag-team on here, honestly. Indeed, we’ve rarely spoken outside work 😉
No offence whatsoever, but just in considering science to be a “belief system”, as with any other belief (such as religion, the occult, astrology, numerology and on), one completely misses what science is all about. It absolutely is the precise opposite of a belief system, because anything supposed to be true – an understanding, a hypothesis – is only taken as being the most likely candidate as being the truth, for now, given all the evidence to date. And always, absolutely always, subject to review.
The following provides a very good introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
Scientists aren’t self-declared know-alls. At least, they’re pretty bad scientists if that’s the impression the try to give.
How else do you – personally – think we arrive at the best interpretation of the truth, other than to see what fits all the available evidence? That is not a “belief system” – it is evidence and fact based.
That’s why people with real “belief” systems, unsupported by evidence, get so angry when we don’t do what they do – and just “believe”. Scientists don’t want to “believe”. They want to have the best interpretation that fits _all_ the evidence. Not just the bits we like, and definitely not leaving out the bits we don’t like. It has to be all the evidence, all the time, or it’s no longer science.
*
Incidentally, that’s what gave me a moment’s pause today, seeing that PDF from Clark. What’s this – is the whole business of vaccines a bit less clear cut than I’d thought? If so, I would _have_ to go on a long period of review on the entire subject. Sadly, it turns out that opinion-piece effort masquerading as a paper isn’t up to much at all.
Personally, I have no dog in this fight. No unvaccinated kids, fully vaccinated myself, and no shares in pharmaceuticals or bio sciences. (Or much anywhere else, for that matter.)
Btw, I have not read _all_ of that PDF Clark referenced earlier, which he put up on his site full of a pseudo-science and quackery 😉
If someone feels there is a particularly strong point there – even a page of it – please reference it, I would be glad to take a proper look. Just please don’t say “the whole thing”, because a full refutation would take weeks, and run to a length many times that of the original. Do your research, and I will do mine.
A lot of the referenced links (particularly to any reputable site) don’t actually work. For instance, on page 9 (more or less at random):
http://www.gmc-uk.org/static/documents/content/Wakefield__Smith_Murch.pdf
That doesn’t exist. 404. In fairness, nor does the same link from the BMJ. But in hunting down the reference, I chanced upon an actual article from the British Medical Journal about Smith:
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258
It’s pretty interesting. It describes a doctor’s delight at a provisional diagnosis of Crohn’s disease in an 8-year old. He “skipped into the room like a 2 year old” with this – apparently – good news for the mother. Because this might be another data point in an academic researcher’s project:
The same article referenced by Tomljenovic, apparently in support of her anti-vaxxer movement, is also used in the BMJ article. It concerns the British Medical Council’s “Fitness to Practice panel, Finding of Fact” – where Wakefield and Walker-Smith:
Hardly a ringing endorsement, from which to bolster a case. Yet Tomljenovic uses it for just that, in Clark’s correspondent’s PDF.
*
For every supposed blockbuster piece of evidence for the anti-vaxxers, we have dozens more supporting the opposite notion – that Wakefield and his mates were thoroughly unethical, self-aggrandising, and plain wrong in their jumping to conclusions. But a hysteria-eager media leapt on it because it did what they like stories to do – get attention.
Again, let’s not have it all ways, anti-vaxxers. Let’s not declare the entire body of medical science and vaccine based community all to be throughly corrupt, unethical, dupes, and in on the scam. While on the other hand assuming ahead of time that Wakefield and his mates were all thoroughly without personal motive, brilliant to a fault, whistle-blowers and truth-tellers.
*
Wakefield has – to date – published 0 (zero) papers linking MMR/vaccines and autism. I’m also chasing down references that Wakefield had interests in the provision of single vaccines, rather than the combined MMR.
Read it – please. Anyone genuinely interested in the impartiality of this whole thing.
Look at how it started. Not exactly a stumbling upon the truth:
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258
Wakefield started out working for a lawyer for an anti-vaccine group, two years before this 1998 press conference which kicked the whole thing into public view. They worked to find the conclusion, and worked the press. Look at what actually happened here.
*
Glenn, heartfelt thanks for the effort you’ve put into this. My eyes are all screwy from too much video – I’ve still got another two hours of it to look through on the Independence Rally thread, about depleted uranium.
Seems you two are on your own in your pitiful denial.
Glenn seems to think “scientists” can’t be bought and paid for like anyone else.
University tenure is a rare thing these days – even academe is beholden to their corporate funders.
The supervisory quangos are populated by interest-conflicted dupes just waiting for their turn on the “revolving door”.
As for the medical schools try looking up the Flexner Report, although wiki’s santised effort forgets the bribery and how the sponsors heavily invested in Pharma took control and gave allopathy a virtual monopoly.
But enough of that, here’s Raymond Obomsawin’s fully referenced thorough dissection of immunisation theory and practice:
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/obomsawin3.html
Oh, no, Clark it’s published on whale.to – maybe it’s one of the few sites with the guts and lack of industry ties to publish the material.
Glenn, how dare you say vaccine adverse reactions are rare. The US Supreme Court itself declared vaccines as “unavoidably unsafe”, over $2 billion has been paid out in compensation in the US even though they fight tooth and nail to deny it and obviously with many doctors sharing your attitude, under reporting is rife.
As for the standing of science that it’s not a belief system, there’s an excellent book by Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion – well worth reading. If not there are many talks given by Dr Sheldrake on youtube under the same title. He points out 10 assumptions or beliefs upon which science is predicated.
I don’t deny the many achievements of modern science and medicine that are demonstrable: emergency life-saving surgery and anti-biotics, for example but disease prevention and treatment are often woeful.
I have many doctor friends, even a family member – in private, they tend to agree with most of my evidence but they have careers…
Scouse Billy, I’m trying to engage with your arguments, but, again:
1) Which contrarian theories do you reject?
2) Please outline the boundary between those parts of science and medicine that you accept and those you reject.
3) What’s your opinion of Spivey’s runaway bin-wagon article?
And now in addition, Glenn asked for directions to the most relevant sections of the PDF I made available. It’s a reasonable request. Or do you now dismiss the whole article? But thanks for not burdening me with any more long videos; it is really getting too much.
Sites like whale.to get away with publishing contentious material because they make no claim to be factual. It’s not about “guts”, which are not needed in order to publish flat-Earth articles.
Can you really not save readers some time by posting and/or referencing the most relevant and convincing excerpt from the Flexner Report and Raymond Obomsawin’s articles? I’ve put hours looking at material you’ve linked to, and not yet found any hard evidence. Or are you going to keep “leading [readers] around by the nose” as Habbabkuk suggested?
Remember, if a hundred readers follow your suggestion, spend an hour each and find no hard evidence, you’ve wasted a week and a half of working time.
Scouse Billy, I too deplore the replacement of direct university funding with corporate sponsorship, but I did raise the issue of non-disclosure agreements, and Ben Goldacre’s work to expose examples of this practice; have you any comment?
But in any case, effectiveness of vaccination was established a long time ago; do you assert that all such work is corrupted?
If you know of reliable sources confirming “the bribery and how the sponsors heavily invested in Pharma took control”, will you make the “Wiki effort” and update Wikipedia? It’s just as much your responsibility as anyone else’s.
That’s three more questions you could engage with…
SB: Amusingly enough, you apparently think ALL the medical establishment has been bought off and totally corrupted, not just a few.
(Psst – we’re not “on our own” – there are actually quite a few people who don’t buy into your brand of science denial and cult worship. You’re starting to look desperate.)
You apparently think the US Supreme Court i the ultimate upholder of truth and light? Amazing. Perhaps you simply have no idea how rotten and corrupted that branch of the US government is. Probably, you hope others don’t know.
Apparently, you ether didn’t read, ignored, or failed to understand the point repeatedly made: A tiny proportion of those vaccinated will experience a bad reaction. I’ve stated that perhaps half a dozen times in this thread, and it’s hardly a secret.
But for reasons best known to yourself, you keep “revealing” this fact as if it’s the ultimate “gotcha”. That’s all you’ve got. That’s all any of you anti-vaxxers have got. But the fact of the matter is the overall results are still vastly better, immeasurably better, than allowing terrible diseases to rip through the population again.
You know anaesthetic will kill a tiny proportion of people, right? So why aren’t you leaping on that bandwagon, and demanding the immediate cessation of its use too? Christ almighty, maybe you do, because operations are all hoaxes too – nobody’s ever really needed one 🙂
Most doctors tend to agree with you… yeah, sure! “Oh yes, I’m a fraud and I kill people for money. But see, Billy-mate, and keep my name out of your ‘evidence’, I have to keep up payments on the car, and the kids’ college fees are huge these days…”…. Riiiiiiggghhhttt! LOL!!
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It’s all about money, right? So what happened to measles, smallpox and polio – did money just make them go away? And why do they come back ONLY ON UNVACCINATED PEOPLE? Did the money run out on them or something?
And you never got back to me on what parts of medicine are OK, and what isn’t in your rather curious worldview.
Tell you what – you look at one of my references for a change, tell me of anything untrue there. Or are you only here to dispense knowledge, call us names, and demand that we look at all sorts of stuff while you’re already in full possession of all facts?
PS – I did look at that link. It is full of absolute junk.
I remember watching one of those Sheldrake lectures. He put forward some interesting questions. BUT he claimed the conservation of energy to be an untested assumption.
? Er, NO!
Glenn: “So what happened to measles, smallpox and polio – did money just make them go away? And why do they come back ONLY ON UNVACCINATED PEOPLE?”
No, as has been demonstrated by many researchers (that you clearly have ignored), sanitation, refridgeration, transportation etc. reduced these diseases massively prior to any vaccine.
ONLY IN UNVACCINTED PEOPLE – where the hell did you get that preposterous lie from?
Vaccinated populations get the disease as much if not more than the vaccinated populations – why? Because they have not been immuno-compromised. Why do you think Bill Gates in his infamous TED talk admit that popul;ation could be reduced through vaccinations?
I’ve had enough of your lies – you clearly have some sort of vested interest.
Let readers follow the evidence, there’s plenty of it.
Should read “than the unvaccinated population” of course.
Scouse Billy, the vaccines the Gates Foundation peddle reduce fertility, thus reducing population over time. A gross misrepresentation on your part to suggest that those vaccines kill more than they protect.
Note, I’m a free software supporter, using various GNU/Linux based systems; I’m opposed to Gates and most of what he stands for. I think he’s wrong to push vaccines that also reduce fertility; people should be free to make their own decisions. But I won’t try to trick readers that those vaccines are meant to cull living people.
Despicable, Billy.
You still haven’t engaged with my broader questions. I suppose you never will, because you’re not trying to be honest. You weren’t even honest about the graph you linked to on whale.to. Look carefully. Yes, first of all improvements in conditions decrease the death rate. But then the decline levelled off, for a couple of decades or more. A further decline was then initiated by mass immunisation:
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/dec1.gif
Billy, Glenn hasn’t “ignored” these researchers. You’ve failed to provide specific assertions backed by specific references, despite being asked repeatedly, instead trying to waste your “opponents'” time by burying them under a mass of unsorted and often irrelevant data.
Reduce fertility – that’s correct.
Is that ethical – ok with you?
They are told that they are being innoculated but, in fact, are being sterilised.
Wow and you call me despicable!
Billy, stop merely fighting, or reveal what you’re fighting for. It’s obvious that you have some greater agenda because you cheat so much and ignore relevant questions.
Billy, what sterilisation rate do you claim for those vaccines?
And no, I’d already said I opposed the fertility reduction. Did you miss that or deliberately misrepresent my position in an attempt to mislead your audience?
As I said, Clark – the evidence is out there for people who look.
There are two sides to this issue – my agenda is that the counter evidence to that of the vaccine believers gets an airing too.
It is a human right to have access to all the information in order to weigh up the pro’s and con’s and to make the best decision that one can.
It is interesting that the CDC’s “CASE” initiative suggests that doctors and other medical professionals seek to persuade rather than inform using fear, if necessary. If that doesn’t have you smelling a rat, then I don’t know what will.
Billy, you are now claiming to be denying me a human right by not providing specific assertions backed by specific references. That or you claim the right to waste away some of my finite lifetime.
Giving warnings equals persuasion with fear. OK. Smallpox is indeed to be feared.
Billy, what sterilisation rate do you claim for the Gates Foundation vaccines?