Another reason not to like Jenny McCarthy

I have plenty of reasons not to like Jenny McCarthy, what with her pseudo-scientific belief that vaccines are toxic and causes autism (both of which have not only been proven false, but are also based off of fraudulent research) which due to her "activism" in spreading this belief scared millions of parents into not vaccinating their kids, which has also caused measles to return to the United States. But now I have another reason to dislike her: She's a dangerous driver.

During her new Sirius XM radio show (why do people keep giving her jobs despite of all the damage she has caused) she brought up some "amusing" stories about how her son calls the police on her... a lot.

One of the stories she told was that her son called 911 on her because she went outside to smoke (and for some reason she thinks she is qualified to give health advice) and he thought she had abandoned him, and she had to explain what happened to the 911 operator.

Now she might find that funny, and I'm sure some people might find that story funny too, but I don't because her son was probably terrified the whole time.

This ofcourse is forgivable as her son was never in any danger.

But then she also talked about another incident involving her son calling 911 on her that one person on my Skeptic Wars Facebook page commenting on this story so adequately put it, "it appears that potentially killing innocent people because of her selfish entitlement extends beyond her antivax idiocy."

The story goes is that she was texting while driving while her son was in the car. That is dangerous as heck in itself and shows how little she cares about others as she is willing to put her son and other people in danger just so she can send a text message to someone while getting to where ever she is going on time.

Her son, showing that he is clearly the smarter and more responsible of the two, called the police on her.

So, what was Jenny's reaction you might ask? Pull over? Stop texting?

Nope, she grabbed her son's phone and threw it out the window!

She was doing something while driving that is as dangerous as driving drunk, her son does the right thing and calls the cops on her, and she prevents him from doing so.

Not only did she pretty much punish him for doing the right thing (she took his phone away), but she probably scared the heck out of him.

So, still think she is someone to take advice on anything, let alone health advice from?

Source: Mediaite

5 Things I've noticed about... Andrew Wakefield

In 1998 then Doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that the MMR vaccine causes autism, which was later found to be not true but still lead to a worldwide increase of measles cases, and in the end destroyed Wakefield's career.

There are many things that I've noticed about Andrew Wakefield (none of them good) and I've come up with about five different things.

So here are five things I've noticed about Andrew Wakefield:

5. He committed a terrible fraud.

I'm sure that everybody is aware that his aforementioned "study" was retracted in 2010 by The Lancet after a long investigation by the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer. The investigation showed that not only had he manipulated the data in his study, it also found that he had patented his own measles vaccine a year before publishing his study, and that the study was funded by lawyers who sued vaccine manufactures.

To better understand how Wakefield manipulated the data in his study, please watch this video by Youtube science vlogger C0nc0rdance:
As awful as his fraud was it would not have been as bad as it became if it wasn't for the fact that so many people took his study seriously and decided not to vaccinate their children because of it. This has directly resulted in the world wide increases of measles and mumps infections and infections from other diseases as well because many people were not vaccinating themselves or their children due to fear of any vaccines, a fear that was brought on by Wakefield's study, which has also lead to numerous unnecessary deaths.

As for Wakefield himself his fraudulent study lead to his own career being ruined and his name being struck off the UK medical register, making it illegal for him to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.

4. He turned parents in paranoid liars.

One of the direct results of Andrew Wakefield's study is that many parents have become paranoid of vaccines and have chosen not to vaccinate their children despite being legally obligated to do so in many places before they enter them into school, and the fact that it's just good common sense to do so.

Inorder to keep their children in school while at the same time keep them un-vaccinated parents will often lie to health officials and school officials about either their religious or philosophical beliefs inorder to get a vaccine exemption for their child.

Other things that some parents will do inorder to fool health and school officials is that they will go to a fake doctor (ex. Naturopath, Homeopath) and get them to write up an exemption from getting vaccinate for their children, or write up they vaccinate the child when really they didn't.

These types of actions are dangerous not only to the children whose parents did not vaccinate them, but also to anyone that couldn't get vaccinated for a legitimate medical reason, or those who the vaccine didn't immunize them for some reason.

3. He's become the Lord Voldemort of science and medicine.

Much like Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter book series Andrew Wakefield's name is something you don't use in a discussion about science and medicine, unless he is used as an example for when bad or fraudulent research is taken to seriously by the public.

As for the scientific and medical communities any research done by him before his 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" is somewhat taboo, and is usually avoided in research unless necessary. Any research done by him after his 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" is to never be used, unless you never want to be taken seriously and risk your career.

Also, you don't compare a doctor or scientist to Andrew Wakefield as doing so would be considered a huge insult, unless their research was sloppy or fraudulent and caused peoples' deaths.

2. He created alot of waste.

While the dramatic increase in vaccine preventable infections has been the most obvious result of Wakefield's fraudulent study, another thing his study has done is wasted alot of money.

The amount of money wasted because of Wakefield's study is probably within the hundreds of millions of dollars, and possibly within the billions. These costs include health care and hospital stays for people (especially children) who got an infection from diseases that are vaccine preventable.

Other costs include lost wages for parents who had to stop working inorder to take care of their sick children, and wasted money (not to mention man hours) to disprove and try to undo the damage caused by Wakefield's "research", money that could have used for more legitimate and better research projects.

Then there are the costs of funerals that can go into the thousands per funeral, and with thousands having died because of his research, the costs really adds up, but is overshadowed by the amount of pain caused by those deaths, which is a cost that is immeasurable.

1. He refuses to accept responsibility for what he's done.

Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" has been described as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". So far he has never accepted any responsibility for the damage done by his "study", nor has he faded from the public light.

To this day he continues to claim that his study was accurate, and that he didn't commit fraud, and that there is a conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies and public health officials to discredit him, and that they were paying bloggers to so, and also inflate the reports of deaths from measles.

In 2012 Wakefield attempted to sue Brian Deer, the British Medical Journal and it's editor Fiona Godlee for defamation, which was described by many as being frivolous, and was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.

To this day Wakefield continues to work in autism research and claim the title of "doctor", both of which are considered to be highly inappropriate for him to do, and that many have said he should stop doing. He currently lives and does all of this in the United States because legally he can not in the United Kingdom.

Using the fear of God to promote a Anti-Vaccine agenda

Yesterday I saw an article making rounds on pro-science and anti-anti-vaccination Facebook pages that was written by a "Christian" blogger who was claiming that God does not support vaccines. (Read the article here)

The author of the article uses several classic anti-vaccination claims to spreed her propaganda, although the one that was mostly talked about in that article is the claim that vaccines contain parts from aborted fetuses, which is false.

She combines this along with passages from the bible and her "interpretation" of those passages in an attempt to make it seem like God does not approve of vaccines.

Before I begin I'm very well aware that many of you reading this are atheists, but for the moment just for fun consider the possibly that God exists, and if you are someone that believes that God exists then please and hear what I have to say.

First, God is, according to Judea-Christian beliefs, an all powerful being that created the Universe and everything about it, including what does and does not work.

If God is all powerful and didn't want people to use vaccines, then couldn't God just will vaccines not to work?

I asked this question in the comments section, and the author responded to me:

First, before anyone points it out I believe she meant to say (although I could be wrong) that research into vaccines have not been proven to be clinically effective. This is ofcourse not true. Vaccines are very effective, and there are multiple published research papers showing how effective vaccines are. Doing a simple Google Scholar search for vaccine effectiveness will bring up thousands of papers concerning vaccine effectiveness.

The second thing the author claims is that no vaccines have a life time immunity. This is completely false.

Certain vaccines (as seen here) only provide immunity for a few years, but for other vaccines they could give a person immunity against a disease for the rest of their life, although for most additional vaccinations are recommend just to be safe, and with certain vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine, getting another vaccination several years after the first one is usually all that it takes for lifetime immunity.

I replied to the author's reply to my comment pointing these things out to her, and also once again asking her the question if God did not want people to use vaccines then why didn't he just make them not work at all:

I asked my question in this way (although I did make a little typo near the end *grumbles*) in hopes of preventing her from skirting around the question.

Not only did she not answer my question, she didn't even publish my reply. This is not surprising since she is well known for not publishing comments she doesn't like and doesn't fit her views. Infact it's very surprising she published my original comment in the first place.

So why exactly did she not answer my question that if vaccines were against God's will then why would they work at all?

Probably because the answer is (atleast for people who believe that all that works in the Universe is a result of God's will) they wouldn't, but they do work, and even she doesn't say vaccines don't work, she just thinks they're not effective.

With this in mind only one logical conclusion can be made: Vaccines are okay with God.

So why does this woman insist that God is not okay vaccines? There are two possible reasons:

First, she truly feels that God is against vaccines, but when she's confronted by someone whom can poke holes in her logic she just ignores the person and anything that person may present that questions her beliefs and would force her to reconsider them.

Second, her beliefs about vaccines are separate from her belief in God, and that she is using the fear of God's wrath, along with cherry picked passages from the bible, her own interpretation of those passages, disinformation, misinformation, and good old fashion fear mongering to promote her own anti-vaccination propaganda.

5 Things I've noticed about... vaccines

Vaccines are a medical invention that has been around for a very long time, the very first one being invented by Edward Jenner in 1796 for small pox.

There are alot of things that have been said about vaccines, and taking a look at these claims, as well as the facts about vaccines, I've come up with fives things about them.

So here are five things I've noticed about vaccines:

5. They cause extinctions.

Most people probably don't know this, or do but rarely if ever think about it is that vaccines kill things and can very easily lead to the extinction of some species. Infact vaccines have already caused the extinction of one species, small pox.

Vaccines are also very well on their way to causing the extinction of polio, and could in due time and with enough people getting vaccinated, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, and a variety of other well known diseases that can kill people, particularly young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.

Don't these viruses deserve to exist? I mean true these viruses have caused the deaths of millions, plus have left countless others disfigured and disabled, and other than to do all of that have no real purpose to exist, and are still debated over whether or not they are lifeforms, but regardless of all that you have to ask yourself, don't these useless and dangerous lifeforms/not lifeforms have a right to exist?

4. They prevent our children from having the childhood memories of our parents and grandparents.

My parents and grandparents didn't have the vaccines like my generation and my generation's children have, and I can't help but think of what kind of childhood memories might have been taken away because of vaccines.

Some of those memories I imagine would include attending the funeral of a classmate or family member that died from an infectious disease, or having to help another fellow classmate get around because they have trouble walking or are in a wheelchair due to polio, and even having to be rushed to the hospital because I contracted measles and my temperature got really high.

Yes, because of vaccines I have none of these childhood memories, nor does most of the people in my generation as well, but thanks to people like Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy, as well as numerous anti-vaccination websites, those childhood memories of the past generations are making a comeback.

3. They make people paranoid.

Vaccines make people paranoid, this is a fact.

The vaccines themselves don't actually make people paranoid, but just the thought of injecting a dead or weakened virus that's inside a mixture of chemicals that in high enough doses could be deadly, although are in low enough doses that they would be safe to take individually several times over and not harm a person, is enough to scare some people to not get themselves or their children vaccinated.

Now you couple this with something like the Wakefield paper, a paper was publish in the UK medical journal The Lancet and authored by then Dr. Andrew Wakefield that claimed that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has since long been discredited and debunked, and the paper itself was retracted due to fraud, as well as Wakefield being stripped of his medical license due to that fraud and gross ethics violations, and in the end you'll have a person to paranoid to do something which almost every medical doctor in the world says a person should do.

Maybe it's not really vaccines that cause people to become paranoid of them. Maybe it's bad and made-up information combined with a lack of willingness to do real research and a mistrust of pharmaceutical companies that cause people to become paranoid of vaccines?

2. They affect industries.

Vaccines do affect several industries and in big ways too!

The health care industry for one is greatly affected by vaccines. The reason for this is because when a vaccine makes someone immune from disease it greatly decreases their chance of contracting said disease which could require an extensive stay in a hospital and/or hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in medical treatments.

And lets not get started on all the iron lung and leg brace manufactures that have taken a major hit in profits due to the polio vaccine...

Then there are ofcourse the coffin manufactures who have had a sharp decline in the sale of children and infants' coffins due to the fact children and infants are not dying as often as they use to because they aren't contracting the deadly diseases that would usually kill them before they reached adulthood thanks to vaccines.

1. It's the greatest medical invention ever.

All joking and satire aside vaccines are without a doubt the greatest medical invention of all time.

Vaccines are safe, cheap, reliable, rarely have any negative side effects (and even those are not severe most of the time) but almost always has the positive side effect of making a person immune from a disease, and can wipe out some diseases, which it already has with small pox, and is well on it's way with polio and in the future may do so with other diseases like measles and mumps.

The money saved due to vaccines for just health care alone has been in the billions, and the lives saved due to vaccines may be immeasurable.

With the exception of legitimate health reasons there is no reason to not get vaccinated, nor is there any reason for a parent to not vaccinate their child.

To not do so simply irresponsible, and in some cases, criminal.

10 Lies Anti-vaccers tell

The anti-vaccination has caused alot of harm over the years with their fear mongering and lies. These lies have caused parents to become to afraid to vaccinate their children, and themselves as well, despite the danger in not doing so.

The following is a list of ten lies the anti-vaccination movement has told, and why they are just bogus:

10. Studies indicate that vaccines cause autism.

While there are "studies" that claim that vaccines cause autism, only one of these so called studies have been published in a well respected, peer reviewed scientific and medical journal. That study, the Wakefield study (which was published in The Lancet in 1998) was retracted in 2010 after it had been discovered that the main author of the study, Andrew Wakefield, had committed fraud. On top of that the findings in the study itself had been long since discredited and disproved before the formal retraction.

The studies that followed since the Wakefield study that claim that vaccines cause autism have never been published in any credible medical or scientific journals. The only places that these studies have ever been published are either in non-credible pay-for-publish journals, or websites that promote alternative medicine and/or conspiracy theories.

9. Signs of autism show up in children only after they have been vaccinated.

As the old skeptics' saying goes "correlation does not equal causation".

Just because a child starts to show obvious signs of autism after they have had their vaccinations, it's far more likely that they were showing signs of autism before they received their vaccinations and that no one noticed simply because the child was to young to show any noticable signs of autism to anyone but trained professionals.

8. Adverse reactions to vaccines are common, often severe, and can cause death.

Actually only about one out of every 300 people will have adverse reactions to vaccines. Most of the time these adverse reaction are mirror, short lived, and are more annoying than debilitating.

Occasionally a person will have a severe adverse reaction to a vaccine, some of which can be fatal, but these types of adverse reactions are very rare, only about one to two out of every million people. You have better odds dying in a car wreck to get a vaccination than you from the vaccination.

7. Vaccines have never been shown to be effective against reducing the spread of disease, and has even been shown to increase the spread.

I'm sure smallpox and polio would disagree. Actually alot of diseases would disagree because it's been proven time and time again that anytime vaccines were in wide spread use the rate of infections of a disease that the vaccines are meant to protect against will go down dramatically, sometimes even eliminating a disease in an area.

6. Natural immunity is superior to immunity via vaccination.

If you try to get natural immunity from a disease (i.e. getting infected and sick from said disease) there is a pretty good possibility that the disease that you hope to make yourself or your child immune from will actually kill you or your child, or atleast cause a permanent disability. Also in many cases it takes several weeks for this form of immunity to happen, during which time you will be sick as heck.

On the other hand immunity via vaccination is much faster, doesn't leave you sick, and is far, FAR less likely to kill you than getting immunity from a disease by getting infected by that disease.

5. Vaccines contain aborted fetuses.

This is completely false and is a distortion of the fact that the weakened forms of some viruses in vaccines are grown in a culture of cell lines derived from fetal tissue of fetuses aborted in the 1960's.

There are no fetal cells at all in vaccines.

4. Vaccines cause shaken baby syndrome.

No, rapidly shaking a baby back and forth and causing their head to flop around causes shaken baby syndrome.

This isn't even just a bold faced lie, this is child abuse apology.

3. Vaccines contain high amounts of toxic ingredients.

While vaccines do contain chemicals that in high enough amounts are toxic to humans, the amounts of these toxins in vaccines are so low that it wouldn't hurt anyone even if they took that chemicals by itself.

As the old saying goes "the dose makes the poison" and no vaccine contains enough of a certain chemical to make it poisonous.

2. Vaccines cause SIDS.

While DPT/DPaT vaccines have been suspected of being one of the causes of SIDS in the past, current studies into SIDS point to that abnormalities in the development and function of medullary serotonin may be the more likely cause of SIDS, and that vaccines do not cause SIDS at all.

1. Most diseases meant to be prevented by vaccines are rare and mostly harmless, and thus there is no reason to vaccinate.

Most diseases prevented by vaccines use to be rare, but a few diseases such as measles and mumps are making a comeback due to people not getting their children the MMR vaccine. Outbreaks of more common diseases such as the flu and whooping cough are made worse if large groups of people do not get vaccinated.

Also, while many people can get over these diseases they are far from harmless and can kill, especially if the person is very old, or very young, or has something wrong with their immune system and they are unable to fight off the disease.

Even if a disease is rare there is still no reason not to vaccinate against it, as vaccinating will help guarantee that disease remains rare, and may even wipe out that disease.

It's been a bad month for Anti-vaccers

The Anti-vaccination movement has had a pretty bad past month, and I would feel sorry for them too if it wasn't for the fact that their propaganda (which is mainly based upon a long since dis-proven and fraudulent study by Mr. Andrew Wakefield that was published in 1998 in The Lancet, and formerly retracted in 2010) has scared parents into not getting their kids vaccinated, which has caused numerous deaths and unnecessary illnesses, as well as permanent injuries.

First is the news reports of multiple outbreaks of measles in several communities in the United States and Canada. Many of the people who have gotten infected are young children who were deliberately not vaccinate, the results of which have been directly attributed to causing these outbreaks.

Suffice to say there has been quiet a bit of backlash against the Anti-vaccination movement, which they rightfully have coming to them. Also, since these outbreaks first started making the news there have also been multiple articles published telling parents why they need to ignore the Anti-vaccination movement and vaccinate their children, which I feel is sort of sad because it shows we as a society have to publish numerous articles about why you need to vaccinate your children and make them immune to diseases that could kill them because some parents have been scared into not doing so.

Then there is ofcourse what happened to the cult... I mean group formerly known as the deceptively named Australian Vaccination Network, which is now known as the still kind of deceptively named Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network.

What happened to the group is that it finally changed it's name after it lost an appeal against the New South Wales Office of Fair Trading, which had ordered the group to change it's name in 2012 due to group's deceptive sounding name. Shortly after the group changed it's named, it also lost it's charity status. Now I admit I'm not sure what that means for such a group under Australian law, but here in the United States that would mean losing what ever tax exemptions that comes from having been recognized as a charity by the government.

Then there's what happened to Jenny McCarthy when she asked on Twitter what one looks for in a potential partner. Now for most talk show hosts/Playboy Playmates/D-list celebrities most people would have given some BS answer. In Jenny's case however most people were very honest. By honest I mean that a lot of people were telling her that they want someone whom vaccinates their children and accepts the science behind why you should (as well as calling her a kid killer).

Finally there's the situation that happened to Chili's Bar & Grill, which was going to give 10% of the money it made from all sales on April 7 to an autism awareness and support "charity". While on the surface this sounds like a great thing for Chili's to do, there was just one little problem with this: The "charity" they were planning to donate to wasn't a autism awareness and support group. It was a Anti-vaccination group called the National Autism Association.

Almost immediately after the announcing that Chili's was going to be donating 10% of it's sales to this group there was a huge public outcry over this, as well as threats of boycotts. Within a few days time the executives at Chili's reversed their decision to donated to the ANN. This decision was praised by people who accept science and have common sense, but was also scorned and ridiculed by stupid people who still think that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism, and that there is some kind of conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies to cover it up. Suffice to say that some of the comments made on Chili's Facebook page is something that psychologists might want to study, but also shows the type of people that supports the Anti-vaccination movement.

So in the end it has been a bad month for the Anti-vaccination movement. They've had so much bad press and so many people are standing up to them, but I for one could not be happier about it!

5 Things I've noticed about... Homeopathic Medicine

Homeopathic medicine is probably one of the oldest forms of alternative medicine there is. Infact it was invented in the late 1700's by German physician Samuel Hahnemann, and has been with ever since.

Now there are lots of claims about homeopathy and what it does, and after looking into them I've noticed several different things about homeopathic medicine.

So here are five things I've noticed about homeopathic medicine:

5. You can make it at home.

Homeopathic medicine is very easy to make. You don't even need a complex chemistry lab inorder to make it. You can make it right in your kitchen!

Got a headache and you want to make some homeopathic aspirin inorder to get rid of it? Well here's what you do:

Step 1: Get one tablet of aspirin and about ten bottles of water.

Step 2: Crush aspirin and put it into one of the bottles of water.

Step 3: Shake up bottle.

Step 4: Take one drop from said bottle and put it into the next bottle.

Step 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 until done doing so with all bottles.

Now if you do all of this you will have homeopathic aspirin and your headache should go away in a few hours... same as any other normal headache would if you were to take nothing at all.

Actually this might not work, and this is because...

4. You're suppose to use something that can cause the problems that you currently have inorder to cure them.

Inorder for homeopathic medicine to actually work (atleast according to people who make and deal with homeopathic medicine) you don't use heavily diluted medicine that would cure whatever it is that you have. What you actually are suppose to use is something that could cause the symptoms that you're having rather than actually cure them. Think of it as a kind of like a vaccine, minus any backing from the scientific and medical communities.

So if you want to cure that headache of yours using heavily diluted aspirin isn't going to work. What you actually want to use is something that can cause a headache if you take it in it's pure form, like beer, only it has to be heavily diluted.

So using homeopathy logic the best thing to take when you have a headache is a ball park beer, because those things are watered down all to hell.

3. A lot of it is REALLY watered down.

If you think that the homeopathic aspirin that I gave instructions above on how to make sounds really diluted (probably to the point where three to four bottles in you're not going to find any aspirin molecules) that's nothing (pun intended) compared to what some homeopathic medicine makers sell.

Some homeopathic medicine that is currently on the market is so diluted that you would have to consume the equivalent of all the water on the Earth inorder to have a chance of getting one molecule of whatever the original ingredient was...

Then there is Oscillococcinum, which is so diluted that one would have to consume it equivalent of 10³²¹ times the number atoms in the known universe inorder to have a chance of consuming even one molecule of whatever ingredient it is that the that the manufacturers used.

Now I bet many of you at this point are probably wondering how exactly is homeopathic medicine suppose to work? There is actually a explanation for that...

2. It's suppose to work off of water memory.

According to homeopathic practitioners water has memory, and that water can somehow contain the memory of whatever it is that it has come in contact with, and somehow this memory transfers over to us, and thus the more you dilute something the more memory the water retains of it...

If water memory is real then how would putting something in our water that is suppose to make us sicker make us better? Infact if water memory actually is real then drinking any water should kill any one of us instantly due to water memory retaining memory of all of the pollutants and toxins that's ever gone into it.

Fortunately we are all still here, so it leads me to think that there is nothing to this water memory stuff, and that much like the rest of homeopathic medicine...

1. It all sounds like BS.

Multiple dilutions. Using something that's suppose to make you sick inorder to cure you. Water memory. It all sounds like BS, right?

Well there's a reason why it all sounds like BS. It is.

Homeopathic medicine has never been proven to work. At best you may get a placebo effect where you think it's curing you but really you're healing no faster than you would if you took nothing at all.

Homeopathic medicine is a fraud. It always has been and it always will be.

The only reason why anyone would believe that homeopathic medicine works is either they have been tricked into believing that it works, or they are so into alternative medicine that they refuse to believe that it doesn't work.

Anti-Vaccination & Anti-GMO: Proof that bad things do come from "Good Intentions"

Many of you probably already know about the Anti-vaccination and Anti-GMO crowds, and what they stand for. For those that do not, I'll refresh your memories:

The Anti-vaccination crowd claims that vaccines can cause debilitating in children, primarily autism, while the Anti-GMO crowds claim that food from genetically modified plants are unhealthy and possibly dangerous.

While I know that both of these groups believe very strongly that what they are saying is true, and that they are spreading whatever they think is true because they only have "good intention" and think what they're doing is right, the reality is what they are doing is very wrong.

Besides the fact that the information that both of these groups put out tends to be out right false, or is based upon outdated information, they don't seem to realize the real damage they are actually doing.

For the Anti-vaccination, the damage is very obvious.

The spreading of the anti-vaccine propaganda has caused some parents to become unnecessarily fearful of vaccines, which in turn has cause those parents to choose to not allow their children to get vaccinated, which has caused the rise of many illnesses among children that I had not even heard of anyone getting when I was in school, and that for the most part I didn't even think could kill someone because I had never heard of anyone dying from these illnesses before, more or less know someone who died from something like the measles.

As a result of this combination propaganda and paranoia, hundreds of children, if not more so, have died, and thousands of children have gotten sick unnecessarily because their parents failed to get them vaccinated, or because they were to young to get vaccinated, and they got sick from another child that was sick with something that could been prevent with a vaccine shot.

Then there is the Anti-GMO crowd, which while might not seem as harmful, could actually be worse.

While there is this popular belief that GMO foods are harmful, untested, and unregulated, all of these are false as GMO foods are heavily tested, heavily regulated, and are no more harmful than organic foods.

While organic food itself isn't actually bad, the people in the Anti-GMO crowd wants to ultimately ban GMO foods, and that is bad thing because the world population can not sustain it's current levels on organic food alone. In fact only 2/3 of that current world population would be able to sustain itself on organic food (and that's the high end).

The fact is that the world hunger problems are bad enough as they are, and would be far worse if the Anti-GMO crowd had it their way and the only food we grew was organic food.

I know that both groups have good intentions, and that both think what they are doing is for the betterment of human kind, but the fact is that they only things these two groups are doing are bringing needless suffering and death, and instead of being saviors of humanity, they are harming it.

5 Things I've noticed about... the Anti-Vaccination Movement

The anti-vaccination movement is a large group of like minded people whom believe that vaccines cause autism (along with some other stuff, but mostly autism). While there are a lot of things I've noticed about this movement, I've managed to narrow it down to five.

So here are five things I've noticed about the anti-vaccination movement:

5. There's no need for it to exist.

If you are part of the anti-vaccination movement, then you are in a movement that does not need to exist, and in fact shouldn't exist.

Every claim made about vaccines being harmful and causing debilitating neurological conditions (most commonly autism) has been proven to be false, and vaccines have been proven to be not only the cheapest method of disease control and prevention, but also the best, and the safest.

Complications from vaccines are rare (around maybe 1 and 1000) and mostly minor. Serious complications are extremely rare (around 1 to 2 per million), and deaths are even rarer than that.

4. It's biggest supporters are a bunch of cranks.

The biggest supporters (and leaders) of the anti-vaccination are not only people who should not be giving out medical advice, most of them aren't even doctors (and the ones that are tend to have some questionable credentials).

Jenny McCarthy, one of the top supporters, is not a doctor. In fact she left nursing school in order to become a model. She promotes therapies that are harmful, and she's also a liar too...

Andrew Wakefield, the ex-doctor whom's 1998 research paper that was published in the Lancet that claimed to show a connection between vaccines and autism, was stuck off of the British General Medical Council register (the British equivalent of having your medical license revoked) after the Lancet retracted his paper after it was proven his research was based off of fraud. He still claims his research was not fraudulent, and that there was a conspiracy against him to destroy his research (despite the fact that it took over ten years from the time his paper was published for his paper to be retracted, and for the GMC to strike off his name).

Then there is Alex Jones, who thinks that vaccines are being used to create genetically modified people and causes diseases, not prevent them.

3. The movement is based off of lies.

The whole bases for the anti-vaccine movement is based off of the proven fraudulent 1998 research paper by Andrew Wakefield that claims there is a connection between the MMR vaccines and austim. The paper was highly controversial even when it came out, and the claims made in it had been dis-proven years before it was formally retracted for fraud.

Other lies made by the movement are that vaccines have been made more dangerous over the years (in fact they have been made safer) and that and the rates of autism in children who are un-vaccinated is far lower then those that have been vaccinated, which is false. In fact the rates are the same.

2. People in the movement do stuff that's legally iffy.

Many of the things that people in the anti-vaccination movement do could be considered walking on the edge of the law, and even illegal.

Most states won't allow a parent to enroll their child into school unless they have been vaccinated.

Not vaccinating your child could be seen as form of child neglect.

The constant claims made against the companies that make vaccines could be considered liable and slander.

And even telling people that vaccines cause autism could be considered distribution of fraudulent medical advice.

1. What it's promoting is dangerous.

The anti-vaccination movement has been linked to the deaths of thousands of children, and not just children whom's parents got caught up in the anti-vaccine hysteria, but children who were to young to get vaccinated too.

Not only are people in this movement are putting their own children at risk of getting a serious illness, they're putting other children at risk as well. Not only is that dangerous, that's pretty selfish too.

One more thing we can call Jenny McCarthy...

There are a lot of things that Jenny McCarthy has been called in the past few years.

She's been called a bimbo, a moron, a nutcase, and even down right dangerous.

Now there is one more thing we can call the former Playboy Playmate of the Year: a liar.

For several days now there has been a huge amount of buzz and controversy going about the internet about how McCarthy was going to be headlining for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation's March 2nd fundraiser at the Ottawa Athletic Club.

The reason why this was so controversial in the first place is because she is a big promoter of the belief that vaccines cause autism, which is a form of medical quackery that's based primarily on the fraudulent works of Andrew Wakefield that has been linked to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands young children.

Immediately after it was announced that she was going to be headlining this event, there was a huge amount of backlash, and many people were calling for her to be dropped from the event. There was even a hashtag on Twitter called #DropJenny.

Well apparently the promoters of the event gave in because of the shifting (i.e. negative) attention her scheduled appearance was generating, and dropped McCarthy for fitness guru Tommy Europe, who is a far better choice.

So how McCarthy taking this? Is she angry? Is she saddened?

Nope. She's lying about it.

According to her (via her Twitter page) she was the one who dropped out of the event, and not the other way around, as you can see here:

But clearly that is not true: Read here.

The only thing in the statement that was true was that she wasn't going to be at the event (and that maybe she will be doing some taping for her new show that day).

I wonder if she will ever tell the truth about being dropped from the event, and the reason why she was dropped, and why she lied about it in the first place?

Only time will tell...

Is it a Conspiracy Theory, or is it Propaganda?

Conspiracy theories and propaganda tend to go hand in hand, mainly because many conspiracy theories tend to be against something (government, industry, etc) while at the same time trying to promote something (political beliefs, alternative medicine, etc). Sometimes it's difficult to tell which is which. Sometimes they are one in the same.

Some conspiracy theories are obviously propaganda and are generally not believed by most (including those that promote the conspiracy theory) except for those who are to deluded (or have deluded themselves because of some personal bias against a certain person or group) to not accept the conspiracy theory/propaganda, or are not smart enough to figure out the deference between what is real and what is a lies.

Examples of this would be holocaust denial and the allegations the President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Then there is the flip side of this in that some conspiracy theories have been used as some sort of propaganda. In fact it's not that uncommon that certain politicians, world leaders, and even certain celebrities will use these already established conspiracy theories in order to obtain power, maintain power, and just get attention for themselves.

Sometimes the leaders of one country who is experiencing hostilities from the leaders of another country will use already established conspiracy theories in there propaganda about their rival country as a way to try to make the leaders of that rival country to back off, and to perhaps try to sway the people in the rival country over to their side.

Probably one of the best examples of this would be the 9/11 conspiracy theories, in particular with Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has most likely used the 9/11 conspiracy theories as a way to gain support and downplay the United States, and as a way to get the US to back off from Iran.

Then there are of course conspiracy theories that you cannot tell if they were propaganda that became conspiracy theories, or if they just started as conspiracy theories, and ended up becoming propaganda. In fact many of the anti-government, modern medicine, new world order type of conspiracy theories tend to fall into this category.

This is actually where many conspiracy theories fall under simply because it's difficult to tell whether or not a conspiracy theory began as propaganda that evolved into a conspiracy theory, or vice verse. Examples of this would be FEMA camps, chemtrails, and vaccines causing autism (along with a lot of other things).

Then there are of course conspiracy theories that are so bizarre that most skeptics (and even some conspiracy theorists) suspect that they may have originally began not as propaganda but as a either a hoax or a scam.

Regardless of whether or not a conspiracy theory originally started as propaganda, or if a conspiracy theory is being exploited by someone with an agenda, the fact is that conspiracy theories are used as propaganda, and we should be skeptical of certain people or groups and ask ourselves this: are they promoting this because they seriously believe this, or do they have some type of agenda.

Embarrassing Conspiracy Theories: Vaccine Autism Connection Coverup

One of the most prominent medical related conspiracy theories out there is that pharmaceutical companies are covering up an alleged connection between vaccines and autism. They claim that the reason why these pharmaceutical companies are allegedly covering up this alleged connection is because the pharmaceutical companies make to much money off of vaccine sales to take them off the market.

It's true, pharmaceutical companies do make money off of vaccines, but in terms of total profit of what these companies make off of other things, like pain medicine, or stuff to treat a cold, vaccines are only a small percentage of the total profit they make, which tends to happens when you mass produce a product that is not only cheap to produce, but also only needs to be taken two or three times in a life time.

The reason why so many people believe that vaccines cause autism is because of a highly discredited and fraudulent British medical article written by Andrew Wakefield. The medical article he published was so flawed, and so fraudulent, that Wakefield is no longer allowed to practice medicine in Great Britain, and many of his critics have even called for his arrest due to all the deaths caused by people not getting their children vaccinated because of the article he wrote. Yet still he asserts that there is a "cover up" and for some reason he claims that not as many children died of the measles as what has been reported, even though all the research on autism says vaccines are not the cause of autism.

The fact remains is that this is probably one of the most dangerous forms of medical quackery to date, and there have been thousands of children who have gotten sick, and even died from stuff that could have easily been prevented by a simple shot.

There is no proof that vaccines cause autism, in fact vaccine manufactures stopped putting mercury preservatives in their vaccines over 15 years ago, thus making them even safer. So far, all fingers point to genetics as being the cause for autism, which isn't very surprising, because certain genetics problems can also  be the cause of many other neurological problems and mental handicaps, and the reason why there is an increase of children being diagnosed with is because there is an increased awareness of autism, and an increase of what is considered symptoms of autism. In fact not vaccinating your child may cause them to get a disease that may leave them with neurological problems, or leave them mental handicapped, if it doesn't out right kill them.

Jenny McCarthy Posing for Playboy... Not Good

It was recently announced that Jenny McCarthy would be posing for Playboy again, and quite frankly, I don't like it at all.

It's not that I don't think that Jenny isn't a beautiful woman. In fact I think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world.

The reason I don't like it that Jenny is posing for Playboy again is the fact that she is one of spokes people against vaccines.

Jenny's son is autistic, and she firmly believes that he became that way because of vaccines.

Despite the fact that the enormous amount of research shows that genetics, not vaccines, are the most likely cause of autism, there are still millions of people whom still believe otherwise.

These people base their beliefs on numerous fraud research articles that most major medical journals will not publish due to a lack of creditable research. Most famous of these is the article that started it all: The article that was written by Andrew Wakefield and published in the British Medical Journal.

The article was controversial from the start, and in 2010 was removed from the BMJ for fraud.

He is also no longer allowed to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.

Despite this, Wakefield still claims his research is truthful, and that there is a conspiracy by public health officials and pharmaceutical companies to discredit his work, and that they paid bloggers to post rumors about him over the internet and inflate the reports about the death from measles.

Jenny McCarthy is one of Wakefield's biggest supporters, and continues to preach the anti-vaccine cause. A cause that has been linked to the deaths of thousands of people, mostly children.

It angers me that Playboy is giving her another pictorial, despite the fact that her ignorance and irresponsibility has led to so many deaths. I don't suggest that people boycott Playboy, but I do think that people should mail Playboy letters stating how disappointed they are that Jenny is getting another pictorial, and that they should rip out and mail back the pictorial to Playboy in protest as well.