The Harlem Vaccine Forum

It isn’t a surprise that anti-vax folks will be hosting a vaccine forum in New York and that Bobby Kennedy is a part of it.

It is a surprise to many that Rev. Al Sharpton is participating though.

The Harlem Vaccine Forum

Wait, how do we know that this is an anti-vax forum?

The website for the event organizer is named vaccines are dangerous!

A website and organizer who promotes the idea HIV is not the cause of AIDS!!!

Yes, HIV denialism is a thing…

Don’t recognize the name Christine Marjorie?

That’s because he really means Christine Maggiore.

Christine Maggiore, “the notorious AIDS denialist who barely escaped felony charges in 2006 after her baby died untreated for HIV, has herself succumbed to the disease she claimed did not exist.”

She died in 2008.

“Dr. Jay Gordon, a Santa Monica pediatrician who had treated Eliza Jane since she was a year old, said he should have demanded she be tested for the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, when, 11 days before she died, Maggiore brought her in with an apparent ear infection.”

HIV skeptic faces child’s death

Her daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, died with AIDS related pneumonia in 2005.

And now the same folks who were pushing misinformation in a forum about HIV are holding a forum about vaccines to scare people away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Or I should say another forum about vaccines pushing misinformation…

“…Reverend Sharpton’s National Action Network will host the Harlem Vaccine Forum at its 106 West 145th St. headquarters at noon. Medical doctors, holistic health practitioners, lawyers, activists and parents will discuss recent changes in New York’s vaccine laws that have a dramatic and disproportionate impact on African American families and their rights to religious practice, education and parental rights.”

Mary Holland on New York’s repeal of the religious exemption to vaccines: what it means for African American families

Misinformation from “medical doctors, holistic health practitioners, lawyers, activists and parents” targeting African American families that might already have lower vaccination rates.

“Compared with white children, black children had lower coverage with ≥3 and ≥4 doses of DTaP, the primary and full series of Hib, ≥3 and ≥4 doses of PCV, ≥2 doses of HepA, the completed rotavirus vaccine series, and the 7-vaccine series (Table 2).”

Vaccination Coverage Among Children Aged 19–35 Months — United States, 2016

Maybe Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the Harlem Vaccine Forum should focus on that issue…

“I do not believe in silencing people, because to silence people means to assume that I am so gullible that I am going to believe something because I hear it. If everyone is heard, then everyone can make their own decision.”

Rev. Al Sharpton at the Harlem HIV Forum

While he obviously doesn’t believe all of the ideas of the people that appear at his meetings, rallies, and forums, he would hopefully realize that providing these speakers with a platform to push their false ideas about vaccines creates the impression with many people that they have equal weight with the opinions of experts.

That gets in the way of the message that vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are necessary.

More on the The Harlem Vaccine Forum

• False Balance about Vaccines
• Are the Measles Outbreaks in New York a Hoax?
• Those Times Alternative Medicine Got It Wrong
• More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
• Is SB 276 a Civil Rights Issue?
• Are Vaccine Laws a Form of State Sponsored Segregation?
• Did Police Block an Unvaccinated Girl from Getting Into School?
• Harlem Vaccine Forum: Is Al Sharpton antivaccine?
• Avoiding False Balance: Vaccines in the Media
• The danger of fair and balanced
• Science deniers use false equivalence to create fake debates
• Christine Maggiore, vocal skeptic of AIDS research, dies at 52
• A Mother’s Denial, a Daughter’s Death
• Christine Maggiore and Eliza Jane Scovill: Living and dying with HIV/AIDS denialism
• HIV skeptic faces child’s death
• Did HIV-Positive Mom’s Beliefs Put Her Children at Risk?
• Challenging the Conventional Stance on AIDS
• Where Are the Black Anti-Vaxxers in the Measles Debate?
• Are Black Children at Greater Measles Risk?
• MMWR – Vaccination Coverage Among Children Aged 19–35 Months — United States, 2016
• Immunizations and African Americans
• Why the measles outbreak has roots in today’s political polarization
• Measles, Racism and How America Ignores Deadly Viruses
• HIV Denial and “Just Asking Questions”
• SXSW Wellness Expo and Goop: Accepting HIV/AIDS denialism and antivaccine pseudoscience by embracing Dr. Kelly Brogan
• The Tainted Ignorance of HIV/AIDS Denialism
• Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop double down on quackery by featuring an HIV/AIDS denialist and antivaccine quack at its upcoming Goop Summit
• Is healthcare really about civil rights?
• Anti-vaccine movement is giving diseases a 2nd life