I’ve always regarded the vaccine-autism theories as the ne plus ultra of crazy medical rumors. But I think the idea that the government will euthanize old people as part of the health care reform package far surpasses it.
Is this bias on my part, as a liberal? (The vaccine-autism stuff seems to have more traction among liberals, while the euthanizing old people stuff is believed exclusively by conservatives.)
mcd410x
The craziest part of the Tampa meeting last night was how convinced (paranoid?) the protesters were.
Every word that was said, every gesture, every movement was taken as a personal affront. Just bizarre.
Eric U.
I think people notice signs of autism at around the age their children have inoculations. My mother held this theory about my autistic brother long before it was talked about, and before we realized he was autistic.
Don’t know what to say about euthanizing old folks, they are just projecting at this point.
r€nato
Fortunately the rightwing hasn’t figured out that we’re going to turn the old folks into Soylent Green.
Oops…
r€nato
Fortunately the rightwing hasn’t figured out that we’re going to turn the old folks into Soylent Green.
Oops…
Cat Lady
It’s funny to hear the raging paranoia from these old crazy fucktards, when both of my elderly in-laws and my elderly mother, even now deep in her dementia, would love to be euthanized when the time came. Their fears are that they will die hooked up to all those horrible machines with no dignity or say in the matter, even though they all have loving families and living wills. My mother used to say every neighborhood needs a Dr. Kevorkian.
The Moar You Know
Sadly, the vaccine/autism bullshit is believed by just as many conservatives as liberals, proving once again that stupidity is universal.
Shygetz
No, it’s not, DougJ. The scientific community actually took the vaccine-autism link hypothesis seriously, and was undecided at one point (no longer). The Obama-wants-to-kill-Granny hypothesis has always been coated in tin foil.
srv
http://www.stopmedicare.org/
DougJ
The scientific community actually took the vaccine-autism link hypothesis seriously, and was undecided at one point (no longer).
Yes, but that is part of what makes believing it so crazy, the fact that there is regular scientific evidence, frequently publicized in major news outlets, debunking it.
r€nato
@srv:
wow, you weren’t kidding. They really put that up as a talking point.
MattF
Also, many (all?) of the propagators of the health-care/euthanasia rumor are entirely cynical about it.
ellaesther
Nah, the vaccine/autism thing has a veneer of science to it — in the sense that a collection of anecdotes is occasionally mistaken for data — not to mention heartrending stories of families searching for a way to understand what has happened to their children.
Whereas “the nationalization of health care that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early” (Rep. Louie Gohmert [R-TX]), etc, is sheer fear-mongering Big Lying, based in the theory, I presume, that people don’t believe little lies, but if you tell a Big Lie, loudly and often enough, people will believe it.
Each is the unfortunate result of desperation, but one deserves compassion and the other condemnation. And pitchforks.
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
Sort of on-topic: Sir Terry Pratchett has written a moving and beautiful op-ed asking for the legalization of assisted suicide in Great Britain.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203622/Ill-die-endgame-says-Terry-Pratchett-law-allow-assisted-suicides-UK.html
am enjoying my life to the full, and hope to continue for quite some time. But I also intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod – the latter because Thomas’s music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven – and perhaps a second brandy if there is time.
Oh, and since this is England I had better add: ‘If wet, in the library.’
Hacienda
Okay, here’s a question. First, I support the government-subsidized public-insurance option, so I’m not asking this to troll. But I haven’t found a good answer anywhere, and maybe you guys can help.
My father is in his 60’s and votes GOP, always has. Needless to say, he’s against the public-insurance option. His worry is not that government is going to take over health care, but that whatever money he could direct towards his own care is going to be spent covering his raised taxes. He falls within the tax bracket that will see increases to pay for this stuff, but he’s not exactly rolling in extra dough, either (he lives in an urban area with an insane COL). He has pre-existing chronic conditions and a family history riddled with cancer and heart disease, so he’s going to need regular care from here on out. It’s a real concern for him.
I’ve pointed out that he’s already paying for everybody else’s care via increased premiums and high costs, and that this will just contain that. Anything else? (And please don’t tell me ‘he’s just a selfish asshole.’ He’s not a bad guy, he’s just misguided. I’m trying to rebut an argument– and ease a little anxiety– here.)
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
Stupid wordpress formatting.
Michael
Will elderly conservatives be euthanised on TV? And will that be available as part of a specially priced cable package, or will I have to buy each show as an an a la carte thing?
Poopyman
Ooh! Ooh! That gives me a great idea! Let’s get a rumor started that the coming swine flu vaccine is really a vector to (drumroll) kill the old folks! They’ll avoid it like the plague (ha!), then succumb to the flu. Obama’s nefarious Mission will be Accomplished!
I’m 100% certain I’m not the first to think of this, and I predict we’ll be seeing someone on the right toss this out by, at latest, mid-September.
eric
given that the elderly are more loyal to the GOP than to the Dems, you can see the logic here, right?
eric
joe from Lowell
The noble truth-tellers at Reason magazine are on the case, helping to dispel the inaccurate rumor-mongering.
Not about euthanizing old people, though. No, pretty much their entire blog is now devoted to refuting the lies that the people disrupting health care town meetings are organized by corporate lobbying firms, that they’re engaging in violent activity, or that they’re far-right activists.
Rosali
Sorry for the O/T:
I would like to think that Mel Martinez got tired of the GOP bull—t and stuck around long enough so that he could buck his party and vote for the Latina Supreme Court nominee.
Brick Oven Bill
When you extend coverage to include illegal aliens and all pre-existing conditions, and promise to contain costs, something has to give. This is called economics.
In my opinion, extending life should be the decision of the family, up to the point where the family asks the government to pay for it. Then hello Mr. Pill.
From what I can tell, the Obama Administration seeks to remove the family’s right to choose, in the name of fairness since ‘disadvantaged’ people don’t have money to choose, so why should people who have worked hard all of their lives.
So the Obama Administration would give everybody Mr. Pill. Representative Ellison stated that this would remove guilt from the family, as they would not need to make this decision, as the government would make it for them.
Glenn Beck’s position appears to be similar to DougJ’s and he covered it pretty well on yesterday’s show. In an ‘emergency’ (like say in the crazy case where the government ran out of money), Emmanuel’s brother and Suskind support limiting care. I believe you fall in the medical sweet spot if you are between 15 and 40 years old.
So if you can make it to High School, you should be alright for a couple decades.
malraux
The autism-vaccine link was at least plausible (though any of the mechanisms of action was never all that plausible). And certainly vaccines do cause some harm (revealing an unknown allergy, Guillain-Barré syndrome) even though they are mandatory. Certainly disproving the link took a fair amount of work.
Killing off old people is just stupid though. This isn’t a case of something requiring years of data gathering to check, it just takes reading the language of the bill.
David Hunt
@r€nato:
That’s a spoof site, r€nato. Look at the statistics they site. “Only 70% are satisfied with…” etc. They’re mocking arguments against Medicare. Another sure sign is that virtually all the links go to Wikipedia. I have a hard time believing that any real Conservative would link to Satan’s Lie Machine (or whatever they actually call it).
Sasha
@srv:
I’m torn between deciding if this is a clever spoof or a legitimate group. (Normally, I’d say it’s too idiotic to be real, but that isn’t true nowadays.)
CynDee
There are many things to know about what goes into vaccines. See http://www.Mercola.com before making closed decisions about them.
I’ve had the usual vaccines, and I’d probably do it again, but I keep an open mind regarding the profit motives and greed potential of any drug maker.
Poopyman
Dagnabit! WP ate the /snark after the first paragraph.
joe from Lowell
When you extend coverage to include illegal aliens…
This is a lie. Why should anyone care about what follows, when the first words out of your mouth are a lie?
Wag
True Facts About Oxygen
Anyone who has ever breathed oxygen has died, or will die.
Maybe this truth will get through to the fanatics who hate Medicare.
…don’t hold your breath, though.
Downpuppy
The autism connection started with a fairly reasonable question based on some clear facts:
Mercury is a neurotoxin
Autism is increasing
Added to that were some odd stats on non-vaccinated groups that seemed to have no autism, and the lack of good answers on why autism was increasing. So the mercury was mostly taken out of vaccines.
That it appears mercury removal hasn’t reduced autism, and that there no good evidence of connection, can’t be expected to wipe out what was a reasonable worry a few years ago instantly.
Whereas the euthanasia stuff is just pure bullshit.
Fwiffo
As others have mentioned, the autism thing at least has a very plausible mechanism. Homeopathic remedies (which have an even wider following) are easily crazier. We’re talking about products that are supposed to cure disease that *by definition* do not contain their active ingredient.
Crashman06
It’s funny how the right wing is pushing this talking point. If they had their way, they’d kill Medicare and social security, which would wind up euthanizing granny anyway. She’d freeze to death in an unheated apartment while eating dog food.
malraux
@r€nato: I’m thinking that was satire. Decently done satire, but satire nonetheless.
srv
Something I read somewhere else got me thinking:
In these times, why not create a category of public insurance for entrepreneurs? For instance, couple expansion of Small Business loans to Medicare coverage for dependents for 3 years.
neill
apples and oranges, it seems to me — the link being they’re both gov. “fruit”…
srv
@Sasha: I emailed them to ask if they could do a stoptricare.org also.
JR
For all the right-wing blowhards chanting “read the bill!” repeatedly, I would really appreciate if just ONE of them would find a neon highlighter, go to the passage in HR 3200 they think authorizes Obamacare Octogenarian Assassination Squads, and just mark it really, really clearly for the rest of us.
Downpuppy
The other thing that occurs to me is that the CDC during the Gerberding years screwed up a lot.
They need to get our faith back before swine flu turns deadly.
BongCrosby
Two other bits on the “stopmedicare” website stand out:
Q: Are the elderly people enrolled in Medicare happy with their experience?
A: NO! Among those 65 or older, the people most likely to be enrolled in Medicare, only 80% rated Medicare favorably.
…and below the “has died or will die” line:
“In a free market seniors would be free to spend their life savings and retirement income on medical care.”
malraux
@Downpuppy: Well, no, the autism-vaccine link started with the claim that the MMR vaccine was the troublesome one, and it didn’t contain mercury. That was always what bothered me about the claims, everyone making a claim had a different cause and mechanism of action and they were always contradictory.
PeakVT
@Crashman06: Exactly.
mantis
Well, people here have covered most of what I was going to say, but it seems to me what it really comes down to is that the autism theory, though wrong, explains something that is actually happening (the rise in autism and/or one’s particular child’s autism), whereas the death to granny crap is a prediction of what will happen, based on nothing at all (ok, based on lies).
I don’t blame parents for a) wanting a reason for their child’s illness, and b) not wanting that reason to be that they did something wrong. Harmful affects of vaccines gives them that reason and takes the responsibility off of them (not that it belongs there, mind you, but parents tend to blame themselves for their children’s misfortunes).
The people who believe the crap about death to granny, well they’ll believe just about anything an angry voice on the radio tells them to believe.
Maude
@Crashman06:
Yeah, but it’s cheaper.
dmsilev
Eerily reminiscent of the spoof campaign against DiHydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), featuring facts like
“Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.”
(from here, and for those whose chemistry knowledge has atrophied with time, DiHydrogen Monoxide is a fancy phrase for “water”).
-dms
Va Highlander
The “euthanizing old people” meme has legs because, demographically, the conservatives tend to be much older than liberals.
Brian J
The alleged “link” between vaccines and autism seems, at least on the surface, vaguely plausible. I know it’s not true, and perhaps it’s not at all possible, but the connection doesn’t seem like a stretch to most people. On the other hand, the argument that the government is going to start killing people because they are judged a burden on society only seems possible to those who believe the worst stereotypes and conspiracy theories about the other side. In other words, there isn’t really a plausible link, unless you are a crazy person.
Doctor Gonzo
@Sasha:
Me too, I can’t tell if it is fake or not. I’m leaning fake, but you know there are tons of people out there who would agree 100% with this.
A+ for parody.
Brachiator
@Shygetz:
It’s more that scientists had to deal with the foolishness of the anti-vaccine crowd (which was mainly liberal and Hollywood connected). They looked at the claim and ultimately debunked it, but it was never a reasonable hypothesis. And note that you still have people like actress Jenny McCarthy who insist on the autism/vaccination link.
The euthanasia rumor appears to be a variation of the stupid notion that liberal communist terrorists like Obama and Pelosi don’t respect human life (and so must be pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia). I think there may be an attempt to appeal to the “Terri Schiavo is alive” folk in the false charge that Democratic health care proposals would allow pulling the plug on the elderly without their consent.
And, sadly, the euthanasia gambit — Godwin’s Law — allows Rush and other right wing goons to do the Obama/Hitler dance of insane association.
SpotWeld
There is a certain amount of justifyable parnoia that a callous corporate enviroment coupled with a indifferent goverment one would abuse the concept of euthanasia to maximize profits via spreadsheet.
That concen is a rather nebulous one. It’s worth being concerned about such things, it’s worth working to make sure that oversight is in place and communcation is open to prevent exactly such abuses.
However there is no aspect of any version of the proposed health care reform package that either endores such an enviroment or prevents the population from activly working to prevent such an enviroment from devloping.
The concern is real, and perhaps even justified. But in regards to the current health care it is mispalced and a distraction.
Svensker
@Hacienda:
I’m not trying to be insensitive here, but how much money will he need for care? Does he not have supplemental insurance (AARP or Horizon) for his Part B — if not, he should.
My parents, whose income is their small-ish IRA plus Soc. Sec., are in the process of selling their house and moving into an apartment so they will have enough money to last out their declining years. They are fortunate to have lots of equity. They live in a wealthy suburb of NYC, so COL is a serious consideration, and believe me, my father alone is probably responsible for any deficits Medicare is running. My parents are always moaning about their tight circumstances, but from our perspective, they are pretty well off.
We have a friend whose Dad lives on Soc. Sec. alone, in NYC, has no assets (life-long NYC renter) and when his son doesn’t have any extra to help out with at the end of the month, lives on potatoes. His health isn’t great either.
So what is your Dad going to be spending all that money on that a 5% tax increase is going to hurt?
Sorry, I think I did get a bit angry.
El Cid
Every time one of these mad weeping rightloons cries “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK” we need to have liberals responding “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BECAUSE YOU BROKE IT THE LAST TIME YOU HAD IT“.
jcricket
@Fwiffo: Don’t get me started on “alternative” medicine. I’m happily willing to believe there’s tons of waste in the traditional medical field (old techniques that are unnecessary, overtesting, defensive medicine, etc) – but basically all $14b (last time I looked) spent on alternative medicine is waste. And it blows my mind that people who demand an insane level of scrutiny for evidence-based (scientific, western, etc.) medicine are willing to give alternative medicine a complete pass in that regard.
The lack of any data-driven evidence the therapies even achieve what they claim combined with the lack of a plausible mechanism has convinced me that there’s basically $14b a year that could be back in people’s pockets. Heaven help us now that insurance plans have started to cover this crap. Talk about bending the cost curve in the wrong direction.
jcricket
What’s even worse is that people like McCarthy and Suzanne Sommers are basically seen as “on par” with credible medical experts.
I don’t expect everyone to be a scientist, but Americans are incredibly stupid when it comes to knowing who to trust for their information.
The Grand Panjandrum AKA Americans for America
@Brick Oven Bill: EPIC FAIL. I thinks it’s time for this.
Evinfuilt
There is a link between the euthanasia stories and the autism scare.
Both were done for profit.
The “gentleman” who came up with the link, did so by falsifying data, and was being paid by lawyers hoping to make a killing in suits against Pharma.
Euthanasia story is also made up, and being pushed by the people who are afraid of losing money to insurance reform. As always, its about the money.
Fern
@Hacienda:
Maybe take a look at what the health-care component of taxes is in countries with single-payer health care, and compare that with his insurance premiums plus what additional out-of-pocket costs he may need to pay for his own health care?
SpotWeld
@B.O.B.
The Saff
@El Cid: Bingo! KO played that video last night on “Countdown.” And Jonathan Alter made a good point about how insurance companies discriminate against people who are ill. As a cancer survivor, Alter wouldn’t be able to get insurance on the open market.
Tattoosydney
@Brick Oven Bill:
Them’s fightin’ words, BoB.
BoB, you are a strange, horribly offensive, yet oddly compelling man. You are, I suspect, performance art, of the “woman dribbling on herself with chocolate sauce while tearing apart pictures of IUDs and National Endowment for the Arts funding application” type. You are, BoB, dada.
Or a fucking idiot. I’m not sure which.
Ben
What percentage of the population do you suppose is aware that most of our old people are already on government-funded healthcare?
The Grand Panjandrum AKA Americans for America
@El Cid: Isn’t it fascinating that the most of these people are the same ones who willingly supported a President who pillaged the 4th Amendment and the rule of law for eight years. A police state is fine, but even one whiff of an extra nickel leaving their pocket and they go nuts.
Patrick
Hacienda,
I’ve pointed out that he’s already paying for everybody else’s care via increased premiums and high costs, and that this will just contain that. Anything else?
I would think anyone in his position, pre-Medicare and with pre-existing conditions, would be scared stiff that they will not be able to buy health insurance. Everyday, thousands of people are having their policies revoked by insurance companies because they are sick or at increased risk (like your Father). Your Father has a good income, but it won’t matter much if no private firm will sell him insurance.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/16/health.care.hearing/
BombIranForChrist
My wife and I have very young kids, and we know that the link between vaccination and autism is false, but let me tell you … even a hyper-rational person such as myself gets a little emotional and irrational when it comes to my little kids. Before we got our kids vaccinated, we did a quick double-check just to make sure it was OK, and then we vaccinated them.
So that’s me, super-rational science guy who listens to Scientific American podcast on the way home from work and who reads quantum mechanics books for fun. I think folks who still believe in the link between autism and vaccination are wrong, and I think they are endangering their children’s lives because of their ignorance, but from a strictly emotional stand point, I understand where they are coming from, at least. I think it’s an ignorance and fear that comes from a strong sense of love and protection.
The euthanization scare, on the other hand, is ignorance and fear generated ex nihilo from Republicans and K Street in order to promote and protect their various interests. It’s rotten to the core without a single moral or ethical thread from its conception to its expression.
bago
Remember, the “Culture of Life” makes sense from a tribalistic viewpoint. Get sexually frustrated young men all worked up to be warriors, fearless in combat so that they die for god, glory, and heavenly poon, while keeping the actual women as property. This lets the “wise” old men to enjoy the women and let them give birth to the next generation of suckers.
Religion: A dirty old man’s guide to riches and bitches.
malraux
No, they are endangering your children’s lives.
wbk
The one thing I’ll add about the autism thing is that it’s in part based on the fact that statistical thinking is not our natural way of looking at the world. I teach stats at the college level, so I know how unnatural it can be. People are generally much more easily convinced by a compelling story than by data, particularly when the story confirms their preconceptions. Because of this, I don’t think the autism/vaccine stuff is going away until we find the cause of autism, or possibly even until we find a cure.
As lots of others have pointed out…in contrast, the Medicare thing is just a lie.
Tsulagi
Fear and victimization anger always works with x-number of people on any given issue.
Don’t know how many times a serious adult has told me Democrats are gonna take all my guns. Doesn’t matter when I point out between both sides I’ve had family live through all D-presidents in history and not one of them nor I have ever had a D-van show up to take anything with a barrel. That’s breezed aside like they’ve gotten the secret intel memo this time is different.
Fear and fear of being a victim worked really well for Bush/Cheney after 9/11. If we didn’t give the two tards sheriff’s badges with unchecked executive power plus let them do Iraq we were all gonna die in a mushroom cloud. So do that, then go shopping, and don’t forget to pick up the duct tape and plastic on the way home.
So now the Dems are coming for granny. Twofer. When they come with a syringe for granny they can also take all her guns on the same trip. Efficiency.
monkeyboy
While the anti-vaccine stuff has more traction among liberals than forced-euthanasia nonsense I wouldn’t call it a liberal position. Instead it is more of a “women’s” position and it tends to be called liberal because:
1) Women tend to be more liberal than men (except for the apolitical who vote like their husbands tell them to).
2) Vaccine nonsense is spread by women’s talk shows such as Oprah which is seen as liberal.
Women’s movements tend to made up of women though there are often men who exist in leadership roles.
The progressive movement in the US was essentially a middle class women’s movement starting with abolition and was full of maternal concerns for the lives of poor people and children (food, drugs, working conditions). When progressivism became mainstream many more men became involved but it was still largely a women’s movement – just look at its two worse laws.
1) The Mann Act to prevent swarthy foreigners from kidnapping white women and selling them across state lines into sexual slavery – a phenoma that didn’t exist in real life but was popular in trashy novels.
2) Prohibition which addressed the real problem of poor men with horrible jobs who spent too much of their pay on alcohol and then would act out their frustration by beating their wives, children, and pets. Banning alcohol was an unpopular fix that did little to address the underlying problems.
I think Prohibition made “progressive” a dirty word and lead to the substitution of “liberal”.
Of today’s movements the following two seem to be mainly right wing women’s movements.
1) anti-abortion
2) “Marriage protection” which seems to be mainly against male homosexuality (not female), where the fear is that husbands will leave their wives for other men if it is seen as socially ok.
Brick Oven Bill
I do believe the proposed legislation extends health coverage to everybody in America Joe, including our friends from Guatemala and El Salvador, who will surely be more inclined to bring their families and stay if everything is free for them here, creating an even greater drain on the system. A line saying something like:
“No public benefits shall be extended to non-Citizens” would clear this up. But there is no differentiation in the bill that I have seen between Citizens, Permanent Residents, and Illegal Aliens. Absent this language, everybody gets the same public treatment.
Bye bye grandma. Medical care pretty much sucks for most everybody in Central America. There are lots of Central Americans, most of them needy.
This being the Internet, I am more than willing to be enlightened.
Cat
I always find in odd that nobody checks the other first world countries and what they did about the whole autism/vaccine/mercury thing.
Sweden jumped on this way before the US did and their autism rates have still been climbing. I think their current theory is its the off gases from all the petroleum/plastic products we use in our homes.
They are still looking for an external source. Nobody wants to admit their DNA when mixed with some DNA they spent a good deal of time and investment getting access to turned out to be evolutionary dead end.
David Hunt
@mantis:
“but it seems to me what it really comes down to is that the autism theory, though wrong, explains something that is actually happening (the rise in autism and/or one’s particular child’s autism),”
This is compelling, but meaningless taken by itself. There is, indeed a sharp rise in the number autism cases reported, but it is matched with an equal dip in reports of various forms of mental retardation. What is going on is that a wide variety of things that used to be classed by themselves as a form a mental retardation have been re-defined as a variant of autism.
winguts to iraq
callous and mean, but seriously, we would save tons of money if we did euthanize old people after some point.
What is it, you spend 60% of your medical money in the last 3 months of life?
I’ve seen my own grandparents kept alive with tubes and stuff… and who are they being kept alive for? themselves or MY parents who didn’t want to let their parents go?
I hope some winger finds this post and says its proof Dems want to kill old people.
SpotWeld
B.O.B. / Crack Cheeks
You said : “No public benefits shall be extended to non-Citizens”
Guess what, it does “In fact, the legislation specifically states that “undocumented aliens” will not be eligible for credits to help them buy health insurance, in Section 246 on page 143.”
Now blow, wind.
You cannot be enlightened.
burnspbesq
@srv:
“It makes entrepreneurship intolerably risky for many people, as you really have to bet that you won’t get any serious illnesses during the time period between ‘quitting your job’ and ‘large enough that the insurance company won’t drop you if you get cancer.’
In these times, why not create a category of public insurance for entrepreneurs? For instance, couple expansion of Small Business loans to Medicare coverage for dependents for 3 years.”
Yes, but when one tries to explain to a wingnut that the sorry state of healthcare in this country is stifling innovation and job creation and otherwise screwing up their precious free markets, he/she can’t process the disconnect, and one is left with a nasty mess to clean up after his/her head explodes.
Sirkowski
It’s “nec plus ultra”.
A Mom Anon
@jcricket:
I have an autistic child and if I ever see Jenny McCarthy in person I’m smacking her in the head. Twice. She’s done more damage than good. My MIL cannot stop with the McCarthy/Oprah emails and “advice”,and thinks I should have been doing all these therapies and interventions and the like. Like I’ve sat here and done nothing for 15 yrs. Gah. Never mind the kid is in 10th grade and is in regular classes with minimal help from the Special Ed dept. Nooo,I haven’t done enough because I haven’t done what Jenny did. Jenny is a fucking dingbat. I also don’t think her kid was autistic since he’s “cured”now,but that is a whole other thing.
jcricket
@A Mom Anon: Glad to hear it (about hte smacking, not the autistic child). People like McCarthy are not just harming their own kid, but thousands, if not millions, of others, by peddling quack cures, false hope and ginning up phony controversy.
The best example of what’s going on is that spokesperson for the Autism group who resigned and was quoted as saying the autism/vaccination (and other shenanigans/hocus pocus) stuff is a major diversion from where the real attention/money needs to be put.
Let’s not even get started on Scientologists, shall we?
Molly
@monkeyboy: “Of today’s movements the following two seem to be mainly right wing women’s movements.
1) anti-abortion
2) “Marriage protection” which seems to be mainly against male homosexuality (not female), where the fear is that husbands will leave their wives for other men if it is seen as socially ok.”
These are much more correlated to religious belief than gender.
And your reasoning for #2 is, um, silly. For most people, this is a Biblical issue, and the Bible was written by…men.
Erik Vanderhoff
It’s important to note that a mercury/autism link has not been refuted, because it’s not been fully investigated. Mercury exists in far more vectors — groundwater, large fish, high fructose corn syrup — than just thimerosal. One must also note that there are some researchers who claim that the amount of mercury used as vaccine-preservative was/is much higher than officially reported. That said, I would find myself in complete agreement with the refutation of a vaccine-autism link (my employer was one of the data-gathering sites for the California epidemiological study on the matter). As one commenter stated above, autism’s most obvious symptoms manifest clearly around the same age that vaccines start being delivered. It’s a simple matter of correlation not equaling causation.
Erik Vanderhoff
I miss the buttons. What the hell is wrong with the formatting here?
catclub
BombIranforChrist@62
You wrote: “I think it’s an ignorance and fear that comes from a strong sense of love and protection.”
That sense of love and protection you describe
was clearly NOT motivated
by watching a child DIE from whooping cough.
It happens rarely – because there are vaccines.
Frank
Going back to DougJ’s original question:
I think that a lot conservatives tend reflexively to distrust government, even when there’s no particular reason to (it is ironic that the least trustworth administrations we have had–Harding and Bush–were “conservative”) and liberals tend to reflexively distrust big business (not there’s–cough, cough–any reason to.
I can’t find the link, but I remember reading a while ago that the first study which claimed to find a link between vaccines and autism has been thoroughly discredited to the extent that it could even be called fraudulent. Maybe someone can help on that.
And this from Molly caught my eye as I was typing this:
My take: Conservatives are against homosexuality except when it’s two hot chicks in a pr0n flick.
Betsy
@monkeyboy:
Um, what is your evidence for this? Women support gay marriage rights at higher rates than do men. Women are slightly more hostile to abortion rights, but not by much, and historically, the modern anti-abortion movement was started by men in the Catholic church. Which does not make it a women’s movement as you define the term above.
cs
I actually have a bit of sympathy for the elderly paranoids who think the government is going to euthanize them because I’ve seen this first hand with my mum.
She recently turned 89, but is still sharp and still very active, doing more work in her garden every day than I’d ever do in a week. There’s no signs of dementia and the only mental problems i’ve noticed is taking a bit longer to remember someone’s name. Should also note that she’s a lifelong Democrat who is one of Obama’s biggest fans and she’s open to the idea of the public option, though she’s also a bit skeptical of how effective it would be.
She doesn’t think Obama or the Democrats have any plans to turn her into Soylent Green, but she does think that this outcome is inevitable with the way the world is going. And her paranoia has grown as she’s gotten older but only comes out when she’s feeling weak, or useless, or lonely. Fortunately she’s surrounded by people who still need her, so this doesn’t happen often.
But I can see this paranoia being first and foremost in the minds of people who don’t have their children around, whose physical infirmities keep them from doing much, the general feeling of being useless and unwanted, and the fear of the young that some elderly have. A dash of dementia would help push that paranoia along as well.
Sure, these people should know better, considering AARP is one of the strongest lobbies and both parties regularly court this age group. But I’m still sympathetic to those feelings of depression and uselessness that would lead to such fears.
No sympathy at all, of course, for the politicians cynically exploiting them and encouraging them to persist in their depressive paranoia.
Betsy
@Hacienda:
I think the trouble is that in order to effectively confirm or refute your dad’s belief, you would have to be both his accountant and a specialist on the bill. It’s not really possible to make generalizations without knowing what his income is, what he means by “money that he would direct toward his own care,” (maybe this care would be covered under the bill anyway), what his most basic living expenses are (housing, food, utilities, transportation) and so on.
But it sounds like what it basically boils down to is that he is afraid that the health care bill will raise his taxes, and that this tax increase would make it impossible for him to pay for things that medicare (or whatever) won’t cover in his old age. This seems dubious to me, but without knowing all the details, no one would be able to refute it to his satisfaction. This is really an accounting question, more than a political one.
monkeyboy
Nobody yet can explain autism but I get the impression that many of the top researchers are in the ‘innate camp’ (present at birth) like all sorts of other neurological development conditions (including homosexuality).
This Scientific American article brings up the hypothesis that Vitamin-D deficiency is involved. It starts out by noting that Somali immigrants in Stockholm and Minnesota show unusual levels of autism which may be caused by their black skin and weak sunshine at those lattitudes.
Toward the end is says
Betsy
@Hacienda:
Ok, my long answer to you somehow got stuck in the mod queue for reasons I don’t understand, but basically what I said is that the question is an accounting one, not a political one. No one could answer it to your dad’s satisfaction without knowing the details of his income, expenses, current health plan, future health plan, etc.
Betsy
@Betsy:
Oh, it’s because I used the word spec1alist in the earlier comment. Stupid words that have boner drugs in their names…grrr.
BDeevDad
The vitamin D stuff is utter crap. Research the doctor’s pushing that theory. The same folks blame vitamin D deficiency for Alzheimer’s, MS, Parkinson’s and whatever other neurological disease you can think of.
If you look at the population, a Wired article noted a large proportion of children diagnosed with Autism in CA were from Silicon Valley and other high-tech areas where engineers and scientists live many of whom have Autistic or Asperger’s like symptoms.
monkeyboy
@Betsy:
I would call a “women’s movement” one in which the large part of the passionate rank and file members are women. It doesn’t matter who started it or who leads it. Statistically women are less politically active then men which makes women’s movements more noticeable. (From this perspective Libertarianism seems a good example almost a pure “men’s movement).
Pro and anti abortion are both more women’s than men’s movements. As is the far edge of animal rights such as PETA and animal liberation. Likewise for Veganism and Paganism.
@Molly:
The rallying cry against gay marriage is that “it will destroy the family”. While the Bible is an authority that can be used to justify an action it is not the source of this fear of destruction. It is often fear that motivates people to become politically passionate and in this case I think the fear is that husbands will leave their wives for other men.
Bob In Pacifica
The vaccination/autism meme, as someone pointed out, at least had some observable connection. Autism is generally observed in children after they get their vaccinations.
Science has pretty much dismissed the argument. What lingers is that there is not absolute proof as to cause or causes of autism. As long as scientists can’t definitively show what causes autism there will be doubters and there will be scam artists who take advantage of doubts.
With the killing old folks meme you’ve got projection working. The same bastards who cut off coverage and care for people and let people die are the ones who are behind these eruptions. Fascists are the ones who call democrats fascists. Projection.
RememberNovember
Vaccinate the old people? As for autism, the thimerosol debate is hotly contested- but lets also not ignore other environmental factors over the past two decades like the explosion of portable microwave communication devices ( Cell Phones) and other electronics. Add to that the growth hormones fed to cattle and the omnipresent antibiotics.
EnderWiggin
No, not a bias. The vaccine-autism stuff is completely stupid, but simply shows a tendency to allow ones fears to override an understanding of science, with a little bit of silly conspiracy theory crazy.
The belief that the government is going to run around euthanizing people is so stupid as to completely remove the person from any kind of discussion. I wonder how people like this manage to bath themselves in the morning, let alone hold down a job.
Uloborus
I worked in health care. I don’t really have anything *new* to say, but I will throw in that I agree with some pre-made points.
The vaccine/autism link: There was enough science that the industry considered it a real question and investigated. It got disproven pretty thoroughly, and the validity and motivations of the initial research were called into question. To people who don’t understand what’s scientifically valid – most people, and who can blame them? – the initial accusations seem as convincing as the debunking.
Euthanizing old people: Is there even any kernel that could have spawned this goofy idea? The best I can come up with is support for living will counciling. Basically, the only reason I can think of anybody believes this is because they panic easily or just automatically assume liberals are evil.
So. No opinion on vaccines and autism is much biased by political orientation. How you accept the euthanization scare is very much biased by political orientation.
Darkrose
@monkeyboy:
No, the fear is that if traditional gender roles are not rigidly maintained, men will no longer be able to control women’s sexuality, and their own place at the top of the social hierarchy will be threatened if “head of the household” no longer automatically means “straight male paterfamilias”.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
The vaccine-autism connection was unevidenced but not a priori implausible (think thalidomide). The euthanasia thing, however, is straight out of Crazyville. The U.S. and many other places on Earth already have socialized medicine for old people, and I’m not aware of anybody being sent off to the Soylent Green factory. North Korea, perhaps?
Brachiator
@Bob In Pacifica:
This is the logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”) and don’t mean squat.
Autism doubters are as loopy as birthers.
It’s more than projection; it’s the vile lie that Obama is some kind of anti-Christ/socialist/terrorist/black nationalist with secret plans to oppress and kill “real Americans” (especially young white babies and old white folks).
Nonsense. I noted in another thread that you can eat elemental mercury and it will not kill you. Inhale a sufficient quantity and you are a goner. And pretty much anything you read about bad, bad high fructose corn syrup is junk science.
Here’s the relevant link:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/01/latest-scare-du-jour-mercury-in-hfcs.html
sab
Isn’t euthanizing old people murder in 48 states? (Oregon has voluntary assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who want it. Texas has involuntary sedatives when they pull the respirator plug for non-terminally ill patients who can’t afford extended care. No other state has any assisted suicide provisions.
On the other hand, I have a close relative who has a degenerative neurological condition. She’s having a lot of trouble walking and some trouble talking. At some point she will have trouble eating, swallowing, and eventually breathing. She would really like to have a do not resusitate order in place. She would also really like to be able to refuse a ventilator if it gets to that, but by then she won’t be able to talk.
Her very busy gerontologist handed her a blank “do not resusitate” form, but it’s confusing. Should she fill it in with her primary care physician’s name, or leave the doctor’s name blank so whoever is on the scene can fill in his/her own name? Etc. We could probably spend some money consulting a lawyer on this, but they probably don’t know what they are talking about. We would rather talk to a doctor about this, but her extremely busy primary care physician (not knocking her, because those guys work their tails off on the cheap end of the medical food chain) feels she did her duty by giving us the blank form we don’t know how to fill out correctly.
These aren’t casual issues. These are end of life issues, and a formed filled out wrong could have an unintended death on one hand, or years of unwanted excessive medical intervention on the other.
The house bills want to mandate that your primary care physician will be reimbursed for a half hour consultation with you every five years, if you want it, to discuss these issues. And the idiot Republicans want to label this counselling euthanasia.
I’m so mad I could spit, or riot at a town hall meeting. My relative, a formerly life-long (third generation) Republican can only change her registration to Independent and vote absentee.
Makewi
The government is good, and the decisions made by people in it’s employ always have the best interest of the individual in mind. Which is why Mr. Gates was not arrested for being “disruptive” last week. It can’t happen, based on what we know about how it is supposed to work, so it won’t.
Betsy
@monkeyboy:
Again, evidence? I’m not trying to be belligerent, but I just don’t know where you’re getting your data or how you’re defining your terms. It’s certainly true that slightly more women than men in the U.S. call themselves pro-life. But that’s doesn’t get at the “passionate rank and file members” to which you refer.
Anne Laurie
Hey, the Swine Flu Vaccine will contain thimerosal, sheeple! As soon as it was announced that pregnant women would be given high priority for the H1N1 vacc, because for some as-yet-unknown reason they’re ten times as likely to die from swine flu, that nice Katie Couric was careful to alert us all to the thimerosal “factor”. Which, yeah, better to have the issue refuted on the network news than chain-emailed with ‘What Teh Gubmint WON’T TELL YOU ! ! !” headers, but for sure there are already plenty of theorists ready to link injecting deadly poison into citizens’ veins with their personal anti-Obama scam-of-the-week.
sab
To Annie Laurie:
Supposedly this flu is related to a 1957 flu, which everyone born then and now alive has already survived and developed immunity to. So any restrictions on the vaccine endangers the young. Everyone in AARP is probably immune. This ain’t your usual flu outbreak.
This should be helpful for the over 50 set who were laid off this year in the economic meltdown. When all the libertarian kids die off in the flu pandemic, we can go back to doing the jobs they stole from us with their lower insurance rates.
Brachiator
Goddamn, I hate this stuff. I wonder whether the insurance companies are running a double game of misdirection here, getting the teabaggers to shout about euthanasia in order to get proponents of healthcare to dismiss them as kooks, while hiding something almost as bad in the proposed health care bill.
The website junkfood science suggests that there is language in the bill that (obviously) is not about euthanasia, but which would require that seriously ill people and seniors sign off on treatment decisions — or risk losing their insurance coverage.
The junkfood science site has been pretty good on analysis in the past, but I am not suggesting that anyone rely on a single source.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-american-can-ever-say-they-didnt.html
However, I think this issue deserves further review, and hope that others can help determine whether there is something here, or whether it represents a misunderstanding of elements of the proposed healthcare bill.
Worse case scenario: the insurance industry and sympathetic agents in the Congress are deliberately inserting language in the bill which will cause it to be vetoed.
Or maybe I’m just in a Conspiracy State of Mind.
rs
Sadly, this misinformation campaign of the RepubliKKKans obscures the fact that any meaningful attempt to control health care spending has to include a serious discussion of end-of-life care. I work in an ER, and frankly, far too much of our time and resources are directed at people (mostly old, but sometimes young victims of accident or disease) for whom hospice care is the sane option, and not only for economic reasons- I often wonder if people know what they’re signing on for when they want “everything” done for themselves or their families. Remarkably, the cognitive dissonance exhibited by the old people who want the government out of their healthcare is matched by more than a few physicians and nurses I work with. While they can be quite verbal about the futility of our efforts while we’re doing what we do, engaging the same person in a conversation away from the bedside offers a fascinating insight into the power of superstition and religious dogma.
Orac
Not exactly. The medical community always thought the vaccine-autism link was dubious and had a very low probability of being true. They took it seriously more for political than medical reasons, in the false hope that research failing to find a link would persuade the anti-vaccine movement that vaccines are safe.
Hacienda
Betsy, Patrick, Fern, Svensker– thanks for the replies.
I think a big problem I have in debating him is that I *don’t* know what his specific medical expenses are or what his specific income is, so I have no idea if he really should be worried or if he’s just reciting wingnut memes. I’m sure his litany of pre-existings means that he won’t be able to get new private insurance without a hell of a private outlay, but I don’t know if that would actually be significantly impacted by a 5% tax increase. I just don’t know. I was just wondering if the tax increase was going to be that significant such that the people on the bottom of the top tax rate were going to end up with a significantly greater impact than the upper echelons.
(And yeah, I know, poor financially-secure old white guy, tiny violins, etc. But he’s my dad, and ‘there is still good in him…I can sense it.’ :b)