Kennedy defended the article insisting no one has shown “one mistake” he made in the article
That's not how fact works. I can make some statement but that statement doesn't pass into "fact" just because no one has yet to provide a list of where I got it wrong. One is required to provide evidence to establish fact.
Here's an excerpt from RFK's paper.
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal
And here's the deal. Thimerosal is a preservative in vaccines. It's used to keep bacteria from growing in vaccines. However, the US goes through so much so quickly in terms of those vaccines that they give you at birth, that we just simply do not need to add a preservative in them. So the claim here is just baseless to begin with. The preservative just simply is not present in childhood vaccines. Where you will likely find it, is in vaccines that need to be shelf stable for long periods of time. Such as things like the flu vaccine. And absolutely NOT the COVID vaccine that needs refrigeration. There's literally no need for a preservative there because we keep it cool.
The component that likely triggers fears is the breakdown of Thimerosal into Ethylmercury C₂H₅Mg⁺ which has been shown to be toxic and indeed Thimerosal does indeed get eventually processed into this compound. However, the body DOES indeed expel ethylmercury in three to seven days. So, NO, it does not stay inside your body. We have thousands of studies that indicate this.
What one might have heard is something called methylmercury, which is very bad for humans but there is no means chemically to convert thimerosal into methylmercury in vivo. We've done studies on that too.
So with that said, does the ethylmercury in vaccines raise a cause for concern? Absolutely not. The amount required to keep a vaccine fresh is orders of magnitude smaller than what you'll likely find in your everyday food, especially fish. You will likely get thousands of times more ethylmercury in a single can of tuna than you will in a single childhood vaccine. So if vaccines prose a problem for a person, literally ALL FOOD on the planet Earth poses a much higher risk by massive values. And this is the thing that RFK's paper completely avoids if you ignore the inaccuracies of the chemical composition of childhood vaccines that he routinely makes.
So:
One, childhood vaccines DO NOT have the chemical that is routinely cited as the cause for autism.
Two, the chemical that is routinely cited is found in the vast majority of food being ingested.
Three, no person has put forward a model that accurately presents a lab repeatable process by which this chemical would cause such a condition.
Four, evidence suggests that autism is a genetic disorder and is indeed NOT an environmental disease.
And five, and most importantly, the vast majority of "doctors" hocking the vaccine-autism connection are doing so for finical gains, so literally they're just wanting to use people's ignorance for monetary gain.
RFK is no different in this regards. This paper was a precursor to his book (which I will not link here, but you can easily find it) and he commonly thumps his paper as a commercial for his book. And some might point to pharmaceuticals as just big "ad machines" and the difference is that the claims made in drug ads is peer reviewed. The claims in RFK's book are backed up by: The College of Shit Mr. Kennedy Just Pulled Out His Ass™. I fail to understand how the same people that fear "big pharma" trying to fleece the public is also the same people who gladly get fleeced by people who are distinctly "not doctors". I grant anyone that the way modern medicine is marketed is shitty. That is less a problem with science and more a problem with capitalism, but that is as far as I will open that Pandora's box. So if anyone has beef with medicine, it's likely you have more an issue with something distinctly NOT SCIENCE.
The only thing that has been proven that vaccines cause is less dead children. There are too many studies with millions of points of evidence that back this unifying claim up, for alternatives claiming the opposite to even remotely hold a candle to. Simple fact, childhood vaccines save lives and the vast ocean of evidence backing that claim up is overwhelming in comparison to the paltry offering of anecdotal conjecture offered by the opposition.
I remember watching a lecture from a microbiology professor dispelling common health-related myths. I believe it was polio he was describing and how after the vaccine was developed it went from killing one in every thousand children to causing “severe reactions” (but not necessarily killing) 2 in every MILLION. There was an antivaxxer in the audience who kept repeating “but how do we know children are better off if we are vaccinating all of them now? What if they could live happier healthier lives without it??” And the prof was just like we DO know what happens, literally 1000x more children will die. Wild stuff.
Very well said. And one small addition- you get more mercury (methyl, but irrelevant to my point) in a can of tuna than you do in multiple vaccines. I don’t hear anti-vaxxers raging against tuna.
To broaden this beyond “income level 4” (I’m using Hans Rosling’s categorization system instead of First, second, third world), banning thimerosal has a huge impact on worldwide vaccination efforts. It’s cheaper to supply multidose vials to lower income level places for numerous reasons, the major of which are: less packaging, and less infrastructure (refrigeration) required.
So it’s not even a matter of “well if ‘we’ (read: those in the US, Europe, etc) don’t really use/need it, why not just ban it anyways, just in case?” This is a common rebuttal to what you posted about the US not needing it due to the accessibility of refrigeration and speed with which vaccines are used, so it’s very important to remind people they are not the only people on Earth. “We” aren’t the only ones to consider. It’s very difficult for people to grok the worldwide impact of selfish, fear-based, seemingly small decisions, but this is why people who want to rid the world of vaccine-preventable infections are so frustrated with the antivax conspiracies. It’s not just an individual parent and their child in isolation. We live in a society. They are making decisions that impact everyone, and that’s not hyperbole.
All that being said, it DOES have an impact on the level 4 countries that ban it in childhood vaccines. It makes them more expensive because they’re single dose. Someone is ultimately paying that cost, be it taxpayers, insured folks, or private individuals.
WHO policy is clear on this issue, and the Organization continues to recommend the use of vaccines containing thiomersal for global immunization programmes because the benefits of using such products far outweigh any theoretical risk of toxicity.
Kennedy defended the article insisting no one has shown “one mistake” he made in the article
That’s not how fact works. can make some statement but that statement doesn’t pass into “fact” just because no one has yet to provide a list of where got it wrong.
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
The burden of proof lies with the person making the outrageous claims - in this case with conspiracy theorist RFK Jr.
The burden of proof is not on other people to disprove whatever outrageous conspiracies a conspiracy nut job comes up with.
Bannon’s idea is that he splits the democratic vote making it more likely that a republican wins. That’s the only reason rfk jr is in this race, to help republicans win.
He’s going to try to go through the primary to get as much attention as he can and then run independent to try to pull votes away from whoever actually wins the nomination.
And given that writing was on the wall from the first day he announced, it’s wild to me that his support is that high, even though having done market research before you would think I’d have already fundamentally realized 15% of people will agree to pretty much anything.
While the article characterizes it as some big defeat, when you actually watch the interview it just feels really awkward on all sides. Plus there are a lot of flaws in his arguments that Reason didn't pursue, like RFK Jr. claiming the existence of people with HIV that do not get AIDS means AIDS isn't always caused by HIV.
Maybe it’s because every 5 words the interviewer says “you know” or some other filler that distracts and makes you look less professional and intelligent in the eyes of a lot of people, subconsciously or not.
Teddy probably hated RFK Jr as a kid too, and Teddy lived long enough to see what his nephew was becoming, since RFK Jr has been on the antivaxx train since the early 2000’s.
I don’t get the hype around RFK. For all of the virtue signaling democrats do about Trump and MAGA types, they sure seem eat that shit up with a quickness when their own special brand of unhinged geriatric starts telling them what they want to hear. It’s a bit embarrassing he’s even getting this much publicity
All of the RFK hype is manufactured. I’ve met a grand total of 0 democrats or leftists that understand how he has any popularity at all, and those are groups I frequent (considering I am one of those things).
He’s just a spoiler candidate being run to help Trump win.
Agreed, totally manufactured. Not only do I not see or hear genuine support, but in its place is always this same question about why the hype. And it's a good question because there isn't any that isn't silicone.
"Democrats" eat him up? Anyone can run as anything they want. That doesn't mean they're actually part of or popular in that group. Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I haven't heard anything positive about him from left leaning communities.
There was like one poll that showed him with 20% of Democrats saying they'd vote for him in 2024-- back when the only thing people knew about him was a his name, before it became well known how insane (and how obviously a far-right plant) he was. Oh, and even then that poll was an outlier, most polls before the hype began showed him with less than 10% support-- well below the crazification factor.
People click on things that are at least vaguely familiar to them. RFK Jr. is propped up by the “K” part of his name. He’d get 1/20 as much coverage and attention if his name was Robert Francis Smith.
That’s 95% of it right there. His last name. For the rest, there’s an inherent desire in the media to create a horse race even if it makes no sense: competitive-ish elections get eyeballs, eyeballs get advertisers, advertisers give money. Pretending that he’s anything other than a pointless loudmouth lets them get more money.
He is dangerous. I don’t nessesary disagree with everything he says, but this mindset is institutionalizing dangerous non science based decision making.
I think it's fine to have theories but for a lot of the "conspiracy theorists", it's a philosophy, a religion, an ideology independent of reality. It requires belief, faith and a lot of mental gymnastics to believe you know the truth and everyone else is absolutely blind to it. And people build their personalities on these things and then you just get to a point where to admit you're wrong would mentally destroy you.
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