Robert Kennedy, Jr. provides an instructive example. He is an environmental lawyer, and most people I know find little disagreement with any of his other positions on protecting the environment and public health from corporate negligence and our regulatory agencies from corporate capture. However, as soon as he applies the same principle…
Robert Kennedy, Jr. provides an instructive example. He is an environmental lawyer, and most people I know find little disagreement with any of his other positions on protecting the environment and public health from corporate negligence and our regulatory agencies from corporate capture. However, as soon as he applies the same principles to the vaccine industry that he applies to all other industries, mass hysteria ensues among the guardians of conventional wisdom. Suddenly, Robert Kennedy, Jr. becomes a crackpot pariah, public health enemy number one, and, of course, the subject of scads of scathing invective from both Skeptical Raptor and Orac. Why?
The vast majority of even the informed segment of scientists against mass fluoridation and even the doctors who devote their lives to sounding alarms against the evils of prescription drug manufacturers typically carve out a special exemption for vaccine manufacturers. Why? Obviously, this is not because rigorous experimentation has been performed to prove that the benefits of each recommended vaccine far exceeds its risks and costs. Instead, blind faith in the inherent wonderfulness and "pharmacological inactivity" of each and every vaccine ever developed or yet to be developed makes such experimentation "unethical."
It is as if all vaccines, even those yet to be developed, are protected in perpetuity from objective scientific scrutiny by some sort of ontological argument: "By definition, all vaccines are medical interventions that which none greater can be imagined. ... "
Since our blind faith in the monolithic good of VACCINATION tells us that the benefits of vaccines MUST always exceed their costs and risks, it is clearly and inherently unethical ever to deprive any population of any specific untested vaccine, and thus it is also unethical ever to design any scientific experiment with the potential to demonstrate that any specific untested vaccine's risks and costs exceed its benefits. Why? As far as I can tell, this whole ontological argument is based on nothing but a completely circular appeal to the overwhelming "scientific consensus" that until very recently assured us the exact same of fluoridation and circumcision (and currently still tries to assure us that the only safe place for mercury in our entire environment is the "full containment" of children's mouths).
Why does this remind of my initial reaction when I discovered my baby teeth in my mother's sewing kit and was informed that the tooth fairy was not real? "But, but, Santa Claus is still real. He must be! Right?"
Robert Kennedy, Jr. provides an instructive example. He is an environmental lawyer, and most people I know find little disagreement with any of his other positions on protecting the environment and public health from corporate negligence and our regulatory agencies from corporate capture. However, as soon as he applies the same principles to the vaccine industry that he applies to all other industries, mass hysteria ensues among the guardians of conventional wisdom. Suddenly, Robert Kennedy, Jr. becomes a crackpot pariah, public health enemy number one, and, of course, the subject of scads of scathing invective from both Skeptical Raptor and Orac. Why?
The vast majority of even the informed segment of scientists against mass fluoridation and even the doctors who devote their lives to sounding alarms against the evils of prescription drug manufacturers typically carve out a special exemption for vaccine manufacturers. Why? Obviously, this is not because rigorous experimentation has been performed to prove that the benefits of each recommended vaccine far exceeds its risks and costs. Instead, blind faith in the inherent wonderfulness and "pharmacological inactivity" of each and every vaccine ever developed or yet to be developed makes such experimentation "unethical."
It is as if all vaccines, even those yet to be developed, are protected in perpetuity from objective scientific scrutiny by some sort of ontological argument: "By definition, all vaccines are medical interventions that which none greater can be imagined. ... "
Since our blind faith in the monolithic good of VACCINATION tells us that the benefits of vaccines MUST always exceed their costs and risks, it is clearly and inherently unethical ever to deprive any population of any specific untested vaccine, and thus it is also unethical ever to design any scientific experiment with the potential to demonstrate that any specific untested vaccine's risks and costs exceed its benefits. Why? As far as I can tell, this whole ontological argument is based on nothing but a completely circular appeal to the overwhelming "scientific consensus" that until very recently assured us the exact same of fluoridation and circumcision (and currently still tries to assure us that the only safe place for mercury in our entire environment is the "full containment" of children's mouths).
Why does this remind of my initial reaction when I discovered my baby teeth in my mother's sewing kit and was informed that the tooth fairy was not real? "But, but, Santa Claus is still real. He must be! Right?"