The Internet has gifted me with this brand new pet peeve: people using pseudo news sites to promote their beliefs. Liberals fucking love them some HuffPo; conservatives fucking love them some PajamasMedia. Both sides of the aisle fucking love them some Examiner.com. I get lazy sometimes here on my blog, but in general I don't argue a point without a legitimate source to back it up.
NaturalNews.com is not a legitimate source.
There is this article from that site floating around my Facebook quite a bit lately, 'cause I'm friends with lots of other moms and lots of other crunchy moms at that. So I see the anti-circumcision articles, and the pro-co-sleeping articles, and the vaccine stuff on both sides. I'm okay, generally speaking, with alternative treatments. I'm okay if you want to use homeopathics, though I prefer to take my alcohol undiluted. I'm okay with not vaccinating, or selectively vaccinating, or delaying vaccines for your kids, providing you've done your research some other manner than by listening to Jenny McCarthy.
What I am not okay with is stirring up outrage through lies. I am not okay with "news" articles that engage in misrepresentation of scientific studies to the extent that they're just making shit up. (I realize that even theoretically legit media stretches the hell out of the truth when they report on scientific studies.) I am not okay with this:
CDC researchers say mothers should stop breastfeeding to boost 'efficacy' of vaccines
I'm not okay with it 'cause it's a fucking lie, people. Nine-tenths of what is in that article is an outright fabrication and another tenth is truth-stretching, and but that final tenth contains enough truth to, apparently, make people overlook all the rest of the bullshit.
I'm not even sure which batshit insane portion of that article to quote here. It's really all contained in the headline. Ethan A Huff, the article's writer, makes the claim again and again and again that the CDC is recommending that women stop breastfeeding in order to boost the efficacy of vaccines.
Fuckballs, here's the last paragraph of the article, just so you can bask in the stupid:
This is how vaccine dogma works, though. The religion of vaccines does not have to offer any solid proof that a vaccine works, or that it is even safe. A vaccine can even cause the very thing it is touted as preventing, and vaccine apologists will say that it works and that it is necessary. And now in this case, these same psychopaths are suggesting that young babies be starved of real nutrition in order to improve the effectiveness of a vaccine.
I shit you not, that's in there. Because, as we all know, proper nutrition means you'll never ever get sick with a virus. Amirite?
About the only helpful thing Mr. Huff did was include a link to the abstract of the study itself, which I strongly suspect he did only in an attempt to give himself an aura of trustworthiness, 'cause I'd like to believe that if he thought people would actually click through and read it he'd have reined in the crazy a bit. (Then again, maybe he simply thinks NaturalNews.com's readers are too stupid to comprehend sciencetalk, which is entirely possible for regular readers I am sure.)
This is the study:
Inhibitory effect of breast milk on infectivity of live oral rotavirus vaccines.
I won't quote the entire abstract here, as I do trust my readers to be able to comprehend it on their own, but I will point out this part here:
The lower immunogenicity and efficacy of rotavirus vaccines in poor developing countries could be explained, in part, by higher titers of IgA and neutralizing activity in breast milk consumed by their infants at the time of immunization that could effectively reduce the potency of the vaccine. Strategies to overcome this negative effect, such as delaying breast-feeding at the time of immunization, should be evaluated.
You will note, please, that FUCKING NOWHERE DOES IT SAY TO NOT NURSE YOUR KID. What it says is that possibly not nursing your kid right around the time the immunization is given is something that should be evaluated
Or, to put it another way, Ethan A Huff is a lying fucktard who wouldn't be able to grasp scientific literature if I shoved it into his mouth after beating him senseless with a fellow hippie.
2 comments:
... after beating him senseless with a fellow hippie.
Pure awesome. I might pay to see that wrestling match.
Begs the question; What is legitimate news these days?
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