The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

It doesn’t take much to outrage folks these days.

It seems like there is always someone, someplace that is outraged about something.

Ironically, the latest faux outrage comes from anti-vaccine folks.

The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

What do anti-vaccine folks have to be outraged about, besides the idea that they think we are forcing them to vaccinate and protect their kids against life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases?

“Report this Doctor – Laughing At Injured is not acceptable”

Apparently, they think that a doctor was making fun of autistic kids during a flu shot clinic at a hospital:

T: So after this shot, am I going to be good at math, Z?

Z: You’re going to be really good, because you’re going to be fully autistic, instead of just partially….

Z: You know Tom, I’m wondering if we’ve just been hit with placebo, because I didn’t feel the needle, I didn’t feel the autism coming on. None of it.

This was similar to an unscripted routine Zdogg did last year:

Z: Thomas is getting autistic as we speak, because he is full of mercury right now.

T: I can do math now. It’s awesome.

Z: That’s right. He’s gonna go gamble on the strip and clean house.

In the videos, they also talk a lot about how the flu shot is a scam by the government to control our thoughts…

Are they making fun of autistic kids or adults?

“It was a dumb joke, probably in poor taste, but it didn’t occur to me at the time because it was a live show and we were trying to be funny.”

ZDogg

It wasn’t funny and I’m glad he took down the video, even if it was under pressure from hospital administration and not because he really wanted to.

Joking about vaccines causing autism is offensive and no one should be doing it, even if it is call out and making fun of the folks in the anti-vaccine movement who try and associate vaccines with autism and do actually hurt autistic families.

But did he mock the father of a child who died of SUDC, within a day of getting vaccinated? A father who was carrying a copy of JB Handley’s autism book, who claims that “there is no money in dead babies,” and who is banging on the studio window during his interview with Paul Offit?

No.

He is simply pointing out, and seemed a little excited, that he had anti-vaccine protesters at his studio for the first time.

But if anti-vaccine folks really feel outrage over this, why is it so selective?

Where is the outrage when the comments don’t come from someone who supports vaccines?

“I want to thank the warrior moms and dads. Those of you who have an autistic child, or a child who is otherwise damaged, you know the damage isn’t always clear-cut autism. Some times it is just some variation – your kids just not quite right.

That’s why I didn’t stand and say that I have an autistic child, because my kids, I tease them and say that they are brain damaged. Uh. Sorry son.”

Paul Thomas

I don’t remember any outrage over Paul Thomas’ comments or when Del Bigtree said “Eve is autistic, that’s right, otherwise, why would she have eaten the apple,” and made this statement on his show:

“When I go visit my grandma, why don’t I see any autistic people flapping in the corner of the room.”

Apparently, the idea of autistic adults doesn’t fit into their narrative that vaccines are associated with autism.

But that isn’t even the worse thing Del has been recorded as saying…

“But I would think when you have a child with autism, you know, or on the spectrum, you have no reference point. You have no…

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s a little bit more like having a dog or a Doberman or something that you don’t understand how it thinks, you don’t know. I mean, I mean a better figure than animal reference except… you don’t have their brain.

Or you hear about stories of people that bring home of exotic you know of chimpanzee or something where they can’t, and this is not sounding right.”

At least he didn’t want it to sound wrong…

“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

The anti-vaccine world is full of talk of autistic kids being broken and damaged, they push dangerous and expensive “cures” on parents, and spread propaganda to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

And they hijack every disease, story, and tragedy to make folks think that everything is a vaccine injury.

As a physician, I assure you this story isn’t believable at any level. In my opinion, the “health officials” are conjuring meningitis fairy tales about an “unvaccinated” boogeyman to cover for the much more probable cause of this child’s death: VACCINES.

The much more likely cause is right in front of us: “The child had just received his 4-month-old vaccinations two days beforehand.”

Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan, for example, is so upset that he thinks Zdogg should lose his medical license, but he had no problem harassing the family of an infant who had just died of meningitis, claiming it was a cover up for a vaccine injury.

Have I mentioned that some of them lie about religious and medical exemptions to avoid getting their kids vaccinated and protected? And others sell those vaccine exemptions?

“A Clallam County woman in her 20s died this year from an undetected measles infection discovered only after an autopsy, state health officials said Thursday. The case is the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. in 12 years.

The woman was likely exposed to the highly contagious infection at a local medical center during a recent outbreak in Clallam County. She was at the site at the same time as someone who later developed a rash and was determined to be contagious for measles.”

Undetected measles led to death of Clallam County woman in her 20s

Where is the outrage when someone dies from a disease that could have easily been prevented by a safe and effective vaccine?

Those of us who understand the hypocrisy of the anti-vaccine movement know exactly where it is.

More on The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

• Vaccine Advocates: Don’t Discriminate Against My Autistic Son
• What Can Physicians Learn from the Neurodiversity Movement?
• Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism, But That’s Not The Point. Stop Being Ableist.
• 10 hypocrisies/double standards of the anti-vaccine movement
• Vaxxed anti-vaccine film distributor threatens autism rights advocate
• Autistic children are like chimps and dogs, don’t you know?
• The Hypocrisy of Anti-Vaxxers.
• One Injection (Flu Shot Anthem)
• I’ve Changed My Mind About Antivaxxers…
• I Was Wrong About Vaccines
• Public Health Takes on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda: Damage done, Challenges Ahead
• “Autism biomed” and the murder of Alex Spourdalakis
• Autism, Atlanta, MMR: serious questions and also how Brian Hooker and Andrew Wakefield are causing damage to the autism communities
• Repost: Autism, Vaccines, and Community: Steve Silberman Talks with Seth Mnookin circa 2011
• This Pro-Vax Comic Should Not Be Controversial
• Bizarro Cartoon About Autism and Vaccines Sparks Outrage Among Anti-Vax Community
• Why vaccination uptake matters to the autism community
• Here’s How the Anti-Vaccination Movement Hurts Autistic People
• I’m Autistic, And Believe Me, It’s A Lot Better Than Measles
• Truth and Consequences – The Anti-Vaccination Movement Exacts a Price
• Busting Anti-Vaccine Myths While Supporting Autistic People
• Untwisting Perceptions: Autism, Parenting, and Victimhood
• Map of Vaccine Preventable Outbreaks
• Vaccines and Autism
• The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google
• Before I Stopped Believing Vaccines Caused My Son’s Autism
• Jenny McCarthy: Autism Moms “Fall in the the victim role…and they are loving it”
• Editorial: Anti-vaccination hurts everyone
• Dr. Paul Thomas: A rising star in the antivaccine movement
• Where Are All The Older Autistic People? Scotland, For Example
• Autism and adults
• Study: Adults with Autism…
• Where are all the old people with autism? Most of them are dead. Can we stop denying their existence and start trying to make a difference?
• Jerry Seinfeld, the Broader Autism Phenotype and a Major Fail by some Parent Activists
• More embarrassment from faux autism advocates
• Faux advocates embarrass the autism communities by attacking high school students and their film project
• Anti-Vaccine Movement Causes Worst Measles Epidemic In 20 Years
• Undetected measles led to death of Clallam County woman in her 20s