Meeting with Trump emboldens anti-vaccine activists

Looks like the anti-vaxers are excited about the Trump presidency. One of the biggest things Trump can do is appoint a person that is sympathetic to the anti-vaxers cause to director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“For the first time in a long time, I feel very positive about this, because Donald Trump is not beholden to the pharmaceutical industry,” movement leader Andrew Wakefield told STAT in a phone interview.

Andrew Wakefield was a doctor who had his license revoked for using a fraudulent study that was later redacted to show measles vaccine causes autism. Wakefield and a small group were surprised in a one hour meeting with Trump how interested he was and open minded about the anti-vaxers cause. They said Trump would be a good ally to forward their cause.

“He didn’t rely upon [drug makers] to get him elected. And he’s a man who seems to speak his mind and act accordingly. So we shall see,” said Wakefield. A former doctor whose medical license was revoked, Wakefield launched the movement to question the safety of vaccines nearly two decades ago with a fraudulent study (which has since been retracted) suggesting that a widely administered vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella can cause autism.

Wakefield and a small group of like-minded activists spent nearly an hour with Trump in the closing months of the presidential campaign. “I found him to be extremely interested, genuinely interested, and open-minded on this issue, so that was enormously refreshing,” Wakefield said.

www.statnews.com...

This is definitely a step backwards if that is the direction the President-elect will take.

Anti-vaxxers like Andrew Wakefield are dangrous peddlers of pseudoscience and should never be allowed to give medical advice to anyone ever.

originally posted by: projectvxn
This is definitely a step backwards if that is the direction the President-elect will take.

Anti-vaxxers like Andrew Wakefield are dangrous peddlers of pseudoscience and should never be allowed to give medical advice to anyone ever.

Frankly, those who deny the risks with vaccinations and want to force them on everyone's children, like we have here in CA, are an incredible harm and risk to families and children alike, all because they refuse to do a little research and instead swallow whatever Big Pharma feeds them.

a reply to: projectvxn

All the studies show there is a very small number of people who are harmed. That is as far I have gone looking into the vaccine debate. I have my vaccines, and didn't even think about it.

a reply to: MysticPearl

"Do a little research"..

You mean like the thousands and thousands of studies done on vaccines since they were first introduced?

No?

Oh you mean youtube videos and natural news articles...Gotcha.

a reply to: projectvxn

Exactly. You proved my point.

A recent study published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics (1) revealed the stark truth that the mass media seems to refuse to acknowledge, the public is in the dark about, and dissenting pediatricians won’t reveal to their own patients for fear of having their careers jeopardized or worse, their license to practice medicine yanked.

A full 6% of pediatricians do not vaccinate their own children according to CDC guidelines and a whopping 13% do not plan to follow CDC guidelines when vaccinating their children in the future. When you expand the scenario to include pediatric specialists, the number jumps to 21%.

With regard to the MMR vaccine, the numbers aren’t much better regarding CDC compliance.
5% of general pediatricians and 19% of pediatric specialists planned to postpone the MMR jab for their own children until after 18 months of age, beyond CDC guidelines.

The most common reasons why pediatricians have already avoided at least one vaccine for their children, or plan to avoid vaccines for future children, are concerns about safety and too many vaccines given at once.

Nancy Banks, M.D.
Dr. Banks earned her medical degree at Harvard Medical School. She also earned an MBA in finance from Pace university. She completed her internship and residency at Saint Luke’s Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical Center. She is a board certified ObGyn.

"If you look at the ingredients of vaccines you’ll find that they have mercury, and they have aluminum and the vaccines are polluted with other kinds of viruses and the vaccines are grown, sometimes on human tissue. So these are vaccines that have elements that are neurotoxic and then of course they have other elements that can set up autoimmune reactions. So those are the kinds of things that we’re seeing in the children; we are seeing autoimmune reactions."

Toni Bark, M.D.
Dr. Bark has earned a B.S. in psychology from the University of Illinois, and her M.D. from Rush Medical School. She completed her Pediatric Residency at the University of Illinois. After directing the Pediatric Emergency Room at Michael Reese Hospital, she began her study of homeopathic medicine. She has also earned a masters degree in healthcare emergency management from Boston University. In 2012 she became Vice President of the American Institute of Homeopathy. A highly educated physician, she has done the research.

"The kids that come to me from other practices and are fully vaccinated often are the kids, well they are the kids in my practice with asthma, panic disorders, OCD, PANDAS [pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections], autism, Asperger’s. My kids who never have been vaccinated in my practice, I don’t see those issues. I don’t have one child who was not vaccinated who also has asthma or food allergies or Asperger’s or autism or Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis."

Now what would they know which the Big Pharma corrupted peer-reviewed studies want to hide? Hmm, go do some research instead of regurgitating Big Pharma propaganda.

a reply to: MysticPearl

Now what would they know which the Big Pharma corrupted peer-reviewed studies want to hide? Hmm, go do some research instead of regurgitating Big Pharma propaganda.

Ahh yes, the every study is corrupt by Big Pharma bit.

You do know that's a logical fallacy right?

You go ahead and believe vaccines give you autism because the internet says so.

Also, go ahead and believe a psychologist over virologists, epidemiologists, and chemists.

This stupid ass conspiracy theory relies on the notion that all these people are evil and only went to college to hurt people with their vaccines and live saving drugs.

a reply to: MysticPearl
Can I get a source please, I would like to look over this info, I haven't heard of it.

a reply to: MysticPearl

This is you anti-vaxxers:

This is something I've never understood about the VAX debate...

Have any of you looked at the fast-track approval and production waivers in that industry???

Big money, big fraud, big politics.

The autism subject is but a very small part of a much bigger story, imo.

a reply to: loam

That and tort reform. If an industry wants to circumvent the judicial system, it does make my spidey senses tingle.

a reply to: projectvxn

Naive is naive. What can I say.

You don't understand how the industry works.

a reply to: loam

Then why are there failed vaccine trials?

a reply to: seasonal

Yup. People can piss and moan about whether vaccines cause autism or other harms all day long, but if you ignore the production side of the industry and all of the issues that can be found there, you're missing the real issue.

a reply to: MysticPearl

Naive is naive. What can I say. You don't understand how the industry works.

Yeah ok.

You deny sound scientific evidence in favor of a discredited conspiracy theory, but I'm naive.

a reply to: projectvxn

Not sure I understand your point. In principle, I'm not anti vaccine and recognize their potential benefits. But what you seem to be ignoring are the significant fraud and quality control issues that affect the production side of the industry. Fraud is also easily identifiable on the approval side, but I think that's the smaller story.

So the existence of failed trials has nothing to do with those concerns.

a reply to: loam

Except it does.

It would be fraud if those trials failed and someone rubber stamped it anyway.

Doesn't seem to be the case.

It seems like we're moving the goal posts here from vaccine effectiveness to corporate machinations which is of no consequence in the context of this discussion.

originally posted by: projectvxn
This is definitely a step backwards if that is the direction the President-elect will take.

Anti-vaxxers like Andrew Wakefield are dangrous peddlers of pseudoscience and should never be allowed to give medical advice to anyone ever.

Quoted for agreement

There is a type of Autism that strikes around age 3.

Up until that point the child seems normal, and is beginning to talk. But, then the child starts regressing, losing language skills, etc.

The timing with kids that age getting vaccinations makes some parents think its the vaccine.

Its not.

The long, sordid antivaccine history of Donald Trump

Note added 9/17/2015: I knew it. The vaccine issue came up during the second debate and Donald Trump repeated basically the same nonsensical antivaccine tropes that he’s been repeating for at least eight years.It rather puts the lie to his claim that he listens to experts and changes his opinion based on what they tell him. Hilariously, Mike Adams is painting it as an attempt by CNN to “destroy” Donald Trump using the vaccine issue. Depressingly, Ben Carson, while defending vaccines, fell into the “too many, too soon,” trope, something a pediatric neurosurgeon should know better than to say. Truly, the antivaccine stupid in the heart of the Republican Party is still there.n scienceblogs.com...