Tag: Sherri Tenpenny

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.

More on Diseases vs Infections

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.

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

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.

More on the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement

What Is the One Conversation Vaccine Event?

Anti-vaccine folks are always interested in having debates about vaccines.

Why?

It helps create the impression that all views about vaccines are equally valid – the facts and science of those who support vaccines and the misinformation and pseudoscience of the anti-vaccine movement.

Of course, they aren’t.

There is no longer a debate. Vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary. Anti-vaccine points have been refuted time and again.

What Is the One Conversation Vaccine Event?

But that’s what the One Conversation Vaccine Event in Atlanta was supposed to be.

And instead of a debate, as organizers Shannon Kroner and Britney Valas originally planned, their “esteemed panel” consists of a who’s who of the modern anti-vaccine movement:

Where’s RFK, Jr and Wakefield? And Kelly Brogan?

But Shelly Wynter, the prominent FM Radio Talk Show Host who is moderating the One Conversation Event will make sure that things don’t end up leaning to any one side, right?

“Next up were Bro. Tony Muhammad and his friends who are helping to get the word out about vaccines. The point being made by the anti-vaccine advocates is the message that the vaccines are poison. Not one of them was making the argument that vaccines are not necessary; but that the CDC and its government masters are poisoning the vaccines. History tells us that this should not be thrown out so easily as a conspiracy theory. It must be investigated more and we should not be so quick to believe the “Government” over credible doctors who have blown the whistle.”

Shelly Wynter

I wouldn’t bet on it…

What about the organizers?

Shannon Kroner hosted a screening of VAXXED... with Brittney Kara, the woman who said God is against vaccines.
Shannon Kroner hosted a screening of VAXXED… with Brittney Kara, the woman who said “believing in vaccines is a mental disorder.”

Can’t be any bias against vaccines for Shannon Kroner or Britney Valas, right?

The Children's March for Humanity implied that vaccines are the cause for all childhood chronic diseases.
The Children’s March for Humanity implied that vaccines are the cause for all childhood chronic diseases.

Integrity? Neutrality? Sure…

Even the idea that funding from individual donations couldn’t bias the event is suspect.

“To maintain the integrity and neutrality of One Conversation, the One Conversation organizers purposely chose to not publicly fund raise nor tie the event to a specific organization or special interest group. Funding for One Conversation is provided by ticket sales and individual donations of which are heavily contributed personally by Dr. Kroner and Ms. Valas.”

Individual donations from whom?

Big donations from just a few individuals, like Claire Dwoskin of the CMSRI and Barry Segal of Focus for Health, would likely help fund a big event like this, but certainly wouldn’t do much to help maintain its integrity or neutrality.

So what can you expect from the One Conversation Vaccine Event?

Pay just $115, and you can find out.

In addition to “learning” about Public Health and Immunity from folks who have said that vaccines are full of toxins, you will get dinner and 2 drinks.

Or skip dinner and pay just $15 for the event.

“One Conversation” provides the platform for questions to be addressed among an esteemed panel of participants who specialize in a spectrum of specific focuses and expertise.

Will you get a real conversation about vaccines?

It’s doubtful.

“One Point of View” might have been a better name for the event…

More on the One Conversation Anti-Vaccine Event

Those Times Alternative Medicine Got It Wrong

Anti-vaccine folks like to use the fallacy that they don’t vaccinate their kids because sometimes science and doctors have been wrong in the past.

They instead turn to alternative medicine when their kids get sick and for their preventative care.

Those Times Alternative Medicine Got It Wrong

While it is true that science gets it wrong sometimes, these people seem to fail to consider that alternative medicine does too.

“…there’s no such thing as conventional or alternative or complementary or integrative or holistic medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t. And the best way to sort it out is by carefully evaluating scientific studies – not by visiting Internet chat rooms, reading magazine articles, or talking to friends.”

Paul Offit, MD on Do You Believe in Magic

More than that, they hardly ever get it right.

Remember the teen with osteosarcoma who died after he was treated with shark cartilage instead of chemotherapy?
Remember the teen with osteosarcoma who died after he was treated with shark cartilage instead of chemotherapy?

Need some examples?

  • Ayurvedic treatments can be contaminated with toxic metals
  • biomed treatments for autism – from restrictive diets and chelation to coffee and bleach enemas, these “cures” and treatments have not been shown to be safe, are sometimes known to be dangerous, and don’t even work
  • Cannabis Oil for kids with cancer – while marijuana-derived products might help some medical conditions, it doesn’t cure cancer
  • chiropractic neck manipulation of newborns and infants has no benefits and has caused deaths
  • chronic Lyme disease is not a recognized condition in modern medicine, but that doesn’t keep some ‘Lyme literate’ practitioners from recommending and charging patients for all sorts of unnecessary and sometimes harmful “treatments”
  • faith healing is still allowing children to die of very treatable conditions, from diabetes and appendicitis to common infections and premature babies
  • Gerson protocol – often discussed with other forms of cancer quackery this “radical nutritional program combined with purges (particularly coffee enemas)” is believed by some to cure cancer – it doesn’t
  • HIV denialism – yes, this is a thing, and tragically took the life of Christine Maggiore, her daughter, and many others who eventually died of AIDS
  • homemade baby formula – notorious for leaving out important nutrients, from iron vitamin D to enough calories for a growing baby
  • Hoxsey treatment – a natural treatment for cancer that has been around since the 1950s and has never been shown to work, except in people who never actually had cancer
  • laetrile for cancer – in the late-1970s, kids with treatable forms of cancer had parents who were convinced that this latest fad cure was better. It wasn’t.
  • naturopathy – although mostly looked at as a holistic alternative to other providers, some of these treatments include vitamin injections, hydrogen peroxide injections, and alternative cancer therapies
  • shark cartilage – this was the fad cancer cure in the 1990s that was killing kids who’s parents sought alternative cancer treatments. It didn’t work.

What’s the harm with these treatments?

Many, like Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Reiki, and Reflexology, etc., aren’t necessarily dangerous on their own. In fact, most don’t do anything at all, but they can lead people away from real treatments. And that essentially leaves people untreated.

Getting a fake treatment might not be a big deal when it is a condition that can go away on its own, like when Angelina Jolie talked about getting acupuncture when she had Bell’s Palsy, but it often leads to disastrous consequences when a life-threatening condition goes untreated.

Many people who push these alternative “treatments” often also recommend against standard treatments, like vitamin K shots for newborns, RhoGAM shots for their moms, and vaccines.

Those Times Anti-Vaccine Experts Got It Wrong

It shouldn’t be surprising that many of the folks who think that vaccines are dangerous, aren’t necessary, or that they don’t even work also believe in holistic or alternative treatments.

It also shouldn’t be surprising that they are also wrong a lot:

  • Meryl Dorey – equates vaccination with rape, something many of her followers aren’t even comfortable with
  • Mark and David Geier – this father and son pair are infamous for pushing a chemical castration treatment (Lupron) for autistic children, a treatment that led to Mark Geier losing his medical license (he’s a geneticist) in several states.
  • Jay Gordon, MD – once made the comment that “Heaven help us if we have a generation of kids who get a hepatitis B vaccine and a HPV vaccine and they think that now unprotected sex is okay…” Not surprisingly, studies have found that this doesn’t happen. In fact, teen pregnancy rates are at their lowest levels ever.
  • Suzanne Humphries, MD – a nephrologist who became a homeopath and now pushes anti-vaccine talking points, believes that vaccines don’t work and that polio never really disappeared, and that we don’t “see it anymore” because we changed its name to acute flaccid paralysis.
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr – continues to push the idea that thimerosal in vaccines is causing an autism epidemic.
  • Neil Z. Miller – a psychologist who has written many anti-vax books, gives lectures at chiropractic associations, and published his daughter’s book, Ambassadors Between Worlds, Intergalactic Gateway to a New Earth, which describes how they are both able to talk to intergalatic beings because she has been doing it for multiple lifetimes. No word yet if folks from the Pleiadians vaccinate their kids…
  • Tetyana Obukhanych, MD – the Harvard trained immunologist who believes that Immunology has no theoretical or evidence-based explanation for immunity.
  • Viera Scheibner – the micropaleontologist who thinks that getting a vaccine-preventable disease is good for kids, that vaccines are contaminated with amoebas, and that they cause SIDS and shaken baby syndrome
  • Bob Sears, MD – infamous for his alternative vaccine schedule that was never tested for safety or efficacy, he and now rallies folks against California’s new vaccine law
  • Stephanie Seneff – the MIT doctor (she has a doctorate in electrical engineering) who thinks that half of kids will have autism in eight years and that glyphosate causes everything from autism to school shootings and terrorist bombings.
  • Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD – an immunologist who heads the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases and is on the scientific advisory board for the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute. He is the latest to blame adjuvants for causing disease – his Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA), which is often described as being a “basically a made-up syndrome that isn’t generally accepted.”
  • Sherri Tenpenny, DO – described as an anti-vax “expert” whose advise is “chock full of vaccine pseudoscience.” Once board certified in emergency medicine, Dr. Tenpenny now sells DVDs and supplements on her website, speaks at chiropractic health events, and provides holistic medical care. In a rant about freedom of choice in vaccination, she talks about General Robert E. Lee, Southern war hero and postwar icon of the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy,” the extinction of humanity, and about slavery and eight veils that must be pierced if you want to see what is really going on in the world – that the Illuninati and other secret organizations control us and that they are being controlled by time traveling dragons, lizards, and aliens.
  • Tim O’Shea, DC – a chiropractor, he speaks at anti-vax conferences and wrote an anti-vaccination book called The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination is not Immunization. Dr. O’Shea does not believe that germs make us sick (germ theory denialism), thinks that vaccines cause peanut allergies, and he sells supplements and seminars.
  • Kelly Brogan, MD – a holistic psychiatric who recommends that patients wean off their prescribed medications and has talked about HIV denialism.
  • Erin Elizabeth – is pushing the idea that holistic practitioners are being murdered

And of course there is Andrew Wakefield – his scandal and MMR-autism fraud is well known.

Are these folks ever right?

Only if you buy into their anti-vaccine talking points.

What to Know About When Alternative Medicine Was Wrong

Alternative medicine is rarely right, and that can have life-threatening consequences when it leads folks to reject traditional treatments when they are really sick.

More on When Alternative Medicine Was Wrong