Tag: Sherri Tenpenny

What Do Anti-Vaccine Doctors Know About Vaccines?

Here’s a tip for pre-med students – simply going to a good, or even great medical school, doesn’t guarantee that you will become a good doctor. Or even that you won’t become a bad doctor.

One of the few things that Del Bigtree has ever gotten right. Anti-vaccine doctors are a big part of the problem.
One of the few things that Del Bigtree has ever gotten right. Anti-vaccine doctors are a big part of the problem.

There are plenty of folks that end up being quacks that have gone to NYU, Harvard, and Dartmouth, etc.

“Gordon hated medical school. He almost flunked out.”

Pediatrician Jay Gordon Talks Babies, Breast Feeding, Vaccines and Almost Flunking Out of Medical School

But there are a few things that anti-vaccine pediatricians have in common.

What Do Anti-Vaccine Doctors Know About Vaccines?

For one thing, they never consider themselves to be anti-vaccine.

That probably goes without saying. Well, at least by them.

There is something else that they have in common that likely won’t surprise you.

Anti-vaccine doctors don't seem to know anything about vaccines.

They all say that they didn’t learn very much about vaccines in medical school or residency!

In fact, Bob Sears and Paul Thomas say that they learned nothing about vaccines and they are the ones who wrote books with alternative immunization schedules that are influencing parents to avoid vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Having read their books, I believe them!

“We got a lot of microbiology. We learned about diseases. We learned that vaccines were the solution to those diseases what they say are “vaccine preventable,” that’s the term that they used in my world, but what’s in the vaccines, I don’t really remember really learning anything.”

Paul Thomas

Wait, what?

Does that mean he doesn’t think that measles and polio and other diseases can really be prevented by vaccines?

“During your training in the hospital, you get everything else except vaccines. You learn about all of the rare things. All of the super rare disorders that you may never see in the office. That’s what we spend the time learning and and and almost nothing about vaccination.”

Bob Sears

Is anyone surprised that Suzanne Humphries, Joseph Mercola, and these other folks didn’t learn anything about vaccines during their training?

“Don’t buy into the lore, don’t make assumptions, and understand that the philosophical underpinnings of the vaccination program are predicated on an antiquated perspective: warring against and attempting to eradicate bad germs. Science has left that childlike notion in the dust, and so should we.”

Kelly Brogan

Do you think that Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist, learned much about vaccines at NYU? Anything about science???

Why does anyone listen to these folks?

But they learned about vaccines later, right?

“Robert Sears became interested in vaccines as a medical student after reading “DPT: A Shot in the Dark,” a 1985 book that argued that the whooping cough vaccine was dangerous. (The makeup of the vaccine has since been changed.) Sears said the book, which helped spark a backlash against vaccines, exposed him to ideas he wasn’t hearing in school.”

Vaccination controversy swirls around O.C.’s ‘Dr. Bob’

Maybe, but as in the case of Dr. Bob, it is important to note that he was influenced by a book that we know to be wrong. Later studies have shown that the original DPT vaccine did not cause any of the serious side effects that were originally blamed on it, including in the anti-vaccine book that got him started.

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Should I Stop Calling Chickenpox and Measles Diseases?

Sherri Tenpenny wants us to stop calling chickenpox and measles diseases.

She thinks that we should call them infections instead…

Should I Stop Calling Chickenpox and Measles Diseases?

If you are like most people, you are probably thinking to yourself and maybe even shouting at your computer screen right now, “who cares what you call them, just get vaccinated and stop the outbreaks!”

When you vaccinate to avoid an infection, what you are potentially doing is preventing a death!
When you vaccinate to avoid an infection, what you are potentially doing is preventing a death!

Believe it or not, there is actually some precedent for changing the way we talk about diseases. While you may still refer to them as STDs, or sexually transmitted diseases out of habit, the prefererable term is actually STI, or sexually tranmistted infection.

Of course, this has nothing to do with Tenpenny’s reasoning.

“Why the change? The concept of ‘disease,’ as in STD, suggests a clear medical problem, usually some obvious signs or symptoms. But several of the most common STDs have no signs or symptoms in the majority of persons infected. Or they have mild signs and symptoms that can be easily overlooked. So the sexually transmitted virus or bacteria can be described as creating ‘infection,’ which may or may not result in ‘disease.’ This is true of chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV), to name a few.

For this reason, for some professionals and organizations the term ‘disease’ is being replaced by ‘infection.'”

ASHA on STDs/STIs

In fact, their definitions sound nothing like Tenpennys…

Unfortunately, many STIs, even if they aren’t causing symptoms and disease, can still be contagious.

Measles and chickenpox don’t do that. Although you can be contagious just before you start to have symptoms, you will very quickly develop symptoms.

It is true that some viruses and bacteria can lead to subclinical infections, in which you develop immunity without ever developing symptoms, but that doesn’t usually happen with measles and chicken pox.

Polio is one of the best examples of when it does happen. Remember, nearly 75% of kids who got polio never had any symptoms. Tragically, those symptoms could be severe in the small percentage who did.

So as usual, Sherri Tenpenny is wrong.

Chickenpox and measles are infections that cause disease. And while most people recover after 7 to 10 days of symptoms, including a high fever and rash, some don’t.

Both also put you at risk for long-term complications, namely shingles and SSPE.

Remember, if you listen to folks like her and skip or delay your child’s vaccines and they get chickenpox or measles, the only thing you are doing is causing more people to get sick. A catchy slogan won’t prevent that or keep your kids healthy.

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How an Anti-Vaccine Safety Handbook Has Caused the Longest Measles Outbreak in Recent History

Can you believe that there were only 37 measles cases in 2004?

This year, we sometimes get reports of 37 cases in a week.

What happened?

A rise in measles cases all over the world happened. And since folks do travel, that led to outbreaks in any community that doesn’t have high rates of vaccination.

How an Anti-Vaccine Safety Handbook Has Caused the Longest Measles Outbreak in Recent History

And that’s where the PEACH Vaccine Safety Handbook comes into play.

Since at least 2014, the PEACH project folks and have been distributing their magazines filled with misinformation about vaccines in Orthodox Jewish communities.

In addition to Lakewood, the PEACH magazine was sent to “a mailing list that included a comprehensive directory of Pittsburgh families affiliated with various branches of Orthodoxy.”

And it found its way to Brooklyn and other Orthodox communities. Many of the same communities where we are now seeing the largest measles outbreaks in recent history, although there are plenty of outbreaks in other places too.

Surprisingly, PEACH is pure PRATT – anti-vaccine points refuted a thousand times.

Folks really should read the package insert of vaccines and should understand what they say. They don’t say that vaccines are associated with autism.

The cartoons were a nice touch, but should have been a tip-off that none of it was true! There is even a cartoon about the HAZMAT myth.

It all does look very official and sounds scary though, so it is easy to see how parents could be mislead by the magazine, especially when they seem to cite references for all of their “facts.”

This PEACH timeline was originally posted on several anti-vaccine websites back in 2007…

But let’s look at some of the facts in the above timeline:

  • is there any reason why Germany might have seen a rise in diphtheria cases in 1945?
  • Ghana was not declared measles-free in 1967. Unfortunately, Ghana is still not measles-free…
  • while the SV40 virus did contaminate some polio vaccines, it has not been associated with causing cancer or any other problems
  • whooping cough cases rose in Sweden and the UK because they stopped using the DPT vaccine in the late 1970s and 80s over fears of side effects. Of course, we now know that these fears were unfounded and many kids suffered because those fears were hyped by a few doctors, the media, and players from the start of the modern anti-vaccine movement
  • frivolous lawsuits over DPT side effects is what led to the rise in DPT prices
  • Jonas Salk testified that “mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases in the USA since 1961” because the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines had already controlled wild polio in the United States!!!
  • What about the idea that “the February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine?” That’s actually kind of true. But it was just a survey of a small number of employees at Los Angeles County University of Southern California Medical Center, most of whom believed that they actually were immune because they had likely been exposed to rubella so much in the past.

The rest of the magazine continues with the same kind of propaganda, trying to make folks think that vaccines don’t work, vaccines aren’t necessary, and that vaccines are dangerous.

Their experts?

From Russell Blaylock and Mark Geier to Tim O’Shea and Sherri Tenpenny, it is a who’s who of the worst folks in the modern anti-vaccine movement. They are certainly not the kind of folks you should be turning to for advice about vaccines, or anything else.

I wonder what they say about Shaken Baby Syndrome? Is it a vaccine injury too?!?

As we have seen with these growing measles outbreaks, although it makes a catchy slogan, you can’t always vaccinate later. You can wait until it is too late.

“I can only conjecture. But it has to be a combination a propensity towards conspiracy theories and religiosity gone awry based on bad information and in my view a gross misunderstanding of Halacha.”

AntiVaxxers – Religious Views Gone Awry

And that’s how you end up with the longest lasting measles outbreak in the United States in nearly 20 years.

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This Is the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement

We often like to think that we know how anti-vaccine folks think.

They are just scared and trying to do the right thing for their kids, right? Just like all of the rest of us?

Maybe some of them…

This Is the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement

Of course, you can’t group all anti-vaccine folks together, as many vaccine-hesitant or on-the-fence parents are truly just scared about the things they see and read about vaccines.

But they should know what they are getting into when they follow their favorite anti-vaccine hero, celebrity or Facebook group.

The modern anti-vaccine movement goes far deeper than worries about possible vaccine side effects.

Don’t believe me?

Hillary Simpson may not share the anti-Semitic views of one of her admins, but many of her followers do...
Hillary Simpson may not share the anti-Semitic views of one of her admins, but many of her followers do…

It is hopefully clear to everyone by now that the modern anti-vaccine movement:

Don’t believe me?

Why should this family have to come out and give an explanation for how their child died?
Why should this family have to come out and give an explanation for how their child died?

After a 4-month-old died of bacterial meningitis, anti-vaccine folks pushed the idea that it was a vaccine injury instead of an infection.

An anti-vaccine parenting group helping spread misinformation about this baby's death.
An anti-vaccine parenting group helped spread misinformation about this baby’s death.

And they push their views that everything is a vaccine injury on everyone, even though most folks understand that vaccines are not associated with SIDS, shaken baby syndrome, autism, and most other things.

There is no connection between vaccines and acute flaccid myelitis, no matter how hard anti-vaccine folks are trying to make one.
To be clear, there is no connection between vaccines and acute flaccid myelitis, no matter how hard anti-vaccine folks are trying to make one.

Award winning?

Please.

Sure, everyone and everything in anti-vaccine world is the very best, except if they are, then why are they trying so hard to convince you of that… So maybe you will agree with some of their more far-out claims, suggestions, and conspiracy theories?

Learn the risks of following bad advice. Are you really going to say no to chemotherapy if your child has cancer?
Learn the risks of following bad advice.

After all, it’s one thing to consider skipping or delaying your child’s vaccines when you think you can get away with hiding in the herd or to buy some essential oils and supplements, but are you really going to say no to chemotherapy if your child has cancer? Brandy Vaughan seems to think you should.

If there is a RISK, there must be a CHOICE.

Do you think it is okay to put infants who are too young to be vaccinated at risk for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases because you don’t like the choices you have been given between getting your kids vaccinated and protected or keeping them out of school?

What about the parents of the kid who is being treated for cancer who gets exposed to chicken pox because someone else made the choice to not vaccinate their kid? Do you think that’s fair?

The modern anti-vaccine movement is only about choice when it is about their choices and doesn’t seem to care about the risks their unvaccinated kids pose to others.

Believe it or not, the modern anti-vaccine movement also equates getting vaccinated with rape…

Don’t believe me?

Meryl Dorey has also claimed that vaccination is rape.
Meryl Dorey has also claimed that vaccination is rape.

Do you agree?

What else do most folks in the modern anti-vaccine movement believe?

They believe that:

And of course, they believe that vaccine advocates are behind a big conspiracy, are lying to you, and are trying to force everyone to get vaccinated.

Is that what you believe?

Some nurses and doctors are refusing to get a flu shot and have to wear masks at work.
Some nurses and doctors are refusing to get a flu shot and have to wear masks at work.

Even though these and every other anti-vaccine point you have heard has already been refuted a thousand times already.

The RhoGAM shot helps prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. It is not a vaccine and is not part of a Big Pharma profit ploy...
The RhoGAM shot helps prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. It is not a vaccine and is not part of a Big Pharma profit ploy…

Do you believe in chemtrails or that Bill Gates has a plan to depopulate the world using vaccines?

“As a result, multiple breakouts of measles have occurred throughout different parts of the Western world, infecting dozens of patients and even causing deaths.”

Hussain et al on The Anti-vaccination Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine

If you do, understand that you have been fooled by the propaganda of the modern anti-vaccine movement. If you don’t, understand that many of the folks in your anti-vaccine groups probably do.

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