The New York couple donating millions to the anti-vax movement | Hacker News Reader

The New York couple donating millions to the anti-vax movement

washingtonpost.com

23 pointsrbanffy13 comments

In all seriousness, these people seem to think their mission is noble... Imagine, for a second, that you are convinced of some "irrefutable truth," and it seems all political, government and scientific bodies are against you. Everyone has colluded together to put profit and money first, and the safety of humans last (not an unreasonable conclusion to make given the state of our medical industry). You, alone, are the thing that stands between children and suffering... (putting aside the obvious fact that having measles causes much more suffering, but bear with me here).

How does anyone convince this couple that they're wrong?

Force them to raise children with measles?

Take a step back. If any company you know could produce a product for which they could never be held liable for misproducing, you would call foul and that people must by all means be protected from that lack of accountability.

Enter big pharma as a vaccination company. Suddenly, the good they are doing overwhelms any and all sense of holding them accountable for bad actions.

Surely, this kind of thinking must strike you as duplicitous, no? Vaccinations are good, by and large when there is good feedback and accountability as to their safety and effectiveness. However, when a company no longer has a need to be accountable to its customers, what happens?

Remember the US auto industry in the 70's? They made the worst cars pretty much in history. Why? Because they could get away with it.

This should be shut down. This isn't philantrophy, it's a public health hazard. And of course Andrew Wakefield is involved.

And they’re getting a tax break for their “philanthropy”. Quite a system we have in the US.

Look into the history of the "philanthropic" income tax deduction.

I went looking for some support for ant-vaxers. This was a top DDG hit <http://traceamounts.com/ten-lies-told-about-mercury-in-vacci..., which was remarkable in its lack of references. The very first claim is

The Facts: The Eli Lilly Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Thimerosal acknowledges that exposure to Thimerosal in utero and in children can cause “mild to severe mental retardation and mild to severe gross motor impairment.”

Ok, so where is the actual data sheet? You've got a link to it to bavck up this claim, right? Err, No? The rest of it isn't much better.

I actually met my first and only anti-vaxer a few months ago. She quite clearly didn't have a clue about chemistry and wanted to make out this big pharma conspiracy (I used to work in medical trialling so I knew more about the crap that goes on than she ever would). I basically called her a crank.

Seems there is no reasoning with these people because it's not about reason or truth.

> I basically called her a crank

That doesn’t help.

The people that get swept up in these movements have been called similar in the past and if anything it strengthens their resolve when they finally do find that group of likeminded people.

Then what will help, because if reason doesn't then I don't know of an alternative.

I listened carefully to her - I didn't prejudge her. I wanted to hear her side. She was clueless.

Tell me what I should have done.

It would be cheaper in terms of lives and suffering to raise a GoFundMe or Kickstarter to have these affluenza poxes on society snuffed out, Dostoevsky-style but with much less regret.

Careful now. Advocating violence in a public forum is illegal.

Funny that antivax is always portryed as a far right christian movement, but clearly there is another group promoting it more.

> Funny that antivax is always portryed as a far right christian movement, but clearly there is another group promoting it more.

Always? I don't believe that to be the case. I haven't read _every_ piece written on anti-vaccination, but have read a lot about it and can't recall even one making this assertion. Of course that doesn't mean that it's _never_ been asserted, but I have a hard to believing that it's _always_ being asserted.

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