Anti-vax asshat RFK Jr. on Dr. Oz, promoting his anti-vax asshat book...
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/09/12/has-dr-oz-become-antivaccine/The Truth About Thimerosal, Part 1
The Truth About Thimerosal, Part 2
Dr. Oz had as guests on his show antivaccine loon Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his partner in crime against vaccine science, “functional medicine” expert Dr. Robert Hyman, on his show in a credulous segment about the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that buys into virtually every trope about mercury in vaccines promulgated by the antivaccine movement. The reason, of course, is because Kennedy and Hyman have a book out. It’s a book entitled Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: Mercury Toxicity in Vaccines and the Political, Regulatory, and Media Failures That Continue to Threaten Public Health that I’ve discussed before in which, as I put it, Kennedy parties about thimerosal like it’s 1999.
snip
Oz then went on to observe that vaccines have come “under a lot of fire in the medical community.” It was at this point that I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle Dr. Oz, its taking a major effort of will not to do so. (Such blatant stupidity has that effect on me, particularly dangerous antivaccine stupidity such as what Dr. Oz had just regurgitated to millions of viewers. Fortunately, I am not a violent person, but I’m sure anyone who’s pro-science will understand the momentary urge.) No, no, no, no! Vaccines have NOT come under a lot of fire from the medical community. The medical community is virtually universally supportive of vaccines. Rather, vaccines have come under fire from a number of misguided activists who mistakenly think, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, that vaccines cause autism. They’ve also come “under fire” from quackery supporters like RFK, Jr., and, yes, Mark Hyman. In any case, in order to “clear the air,” Oz went on to ask Hyman and RFK whether they are antivaccine. I almost laughed when RFK said that he’s “fiercely pro-vaccine,” which, given the level of sheer pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering, and stupidity that he’s laid down over the last nine years on the topic, has to be either a lie or the most amazing case of self-delusion I’ve seen in a very long time or an outright lie. Hyman chimed in, assuring that he, too, is pro-vaccine, which is nonsense. If you’ve collaborated with a book with the likes of RFK, Jr. that lays down scads of pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering, and misinformation about vaccines, you’ve lost your right to call yourself pro-vaccine, or at least you’ve lost any expectation that people won’t laugh in your face when you do something as risible as claiming that you are not antivaccine.
Next followed a brief video about the history of the use of thimerosal in vaccines, which noted that thimerosal came to be suspected of causing autism in the 1990s. In fairness, the segment stated that the link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism has been discredited, but that was buried under sensationalistic fear mongering, with alarming images, the observation that the government got rid of thimerosal in vaccines because, “Better safe than sorry,” and the conspicuous notation that thimerosal is gone from childhood vaccines with the “glaring exception” of some flu vaccines, not to mention the claim that the EPA considers medical products containing thimerosal to be “hazardous waste,” decorated, naturally, a big picture of a biohazard symbol in the background. At one point, he displayed an Erlenmeyer flask full of what looked like liquid mercury, swirling the liquid metal, and then added the “mercury” into a beaker of water meant to represent a multi-use vial of vaccines to demonstrate how “mercury” is added to vaccines to prevent bacterial overgrowth that can occur as a result of bacterial seeding that can result from entering the vial with more than one needle. It’s one of the dumber visual demonstrations I’ve seen on The Dr. Oz Show, and that’s saying a lot. Thimerosal is not metallic mercury. One would think that Oz might have picked up a bit of organic chemistry in his premed courses or in medical school.
Much more excellent exposure of how a once great environmentalist has fallen into dumbass woo at the link.
Sid
= new reply since forum marked as read
They once seriously put forward Andrew Wakefield, as the answer to the question "Who will be the Carl Sagan of this generation?".
Sid
You might've missed this text exchange between Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Dr. William W. Thompson, Aug 27, 2014.
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...from eating the occasional tuna sandwich. Where's the outrage about tuna? Is ole RFK on that one too? 
Response to AnalystInParadise (Reply #29)
Kennedy also called Dr. Paul Offit, a "biostitute", which he pronounces like "prostitute".
From Offit's wiki:
But Kennedy think's he's a biostitute.
Sid
After all Joe Kennedy had his own daughter lobotomized for being "rebellious" then the whole family ostracized her for nearly 20 years afterwards.
And didnt RFK JR beat the hell out of an airport security woman back in the late 90's because she wanted to inspect his bags but didnt face any changes and if I remember correctly the airport fired her too.
They always seem to be able to obtain a platform 
Last edited Mon Oct 6, 2014, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)
CHART (Source: @JBHandleyjr): [center]
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MORE:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/gr-autism_and_vaccines_world_special_report1.pdf
RELATED: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025498027
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/will-this-doctor-hurt-your-baby/
Robert F Kennedy Jr compares childhood vaccines to Nazi Death Camps
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022933992
Sid
And talk about the persistent name-calling, smears, and accusations of ulterior motives or being "paid shills for industry" toward their opponents!
I think a lot of people recognize the enormous amount of empirical scientific evidence that vaccination is, on balance, enormously positive for human health (both individually and on the collective level). I also think a lot of these same people would be happy to defend their position calmly and coherently with logic, evidence, facts, and real-life examples.
I don't see the same amount of critical thinking, respect for the scientific method, and objectivity (or at least, attempting to be objective) among the anti-vax crowd; in fact, just the opposite. That's why it's hard for me to respect them, in addition to the fact that their scaremongering tactics have had horrific consequences for a lot of people-people getting sick, and people dying. That's not OK.
and maim children and adults.
Sense. It makes none.
measles:
polio:
tetanus:
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I wish Robert had just stuck to his areas of expertise, where he was doing some very real good.
Extremely disappointing.
Same with Dr. Phil and Tyler Perry. 
Sid
The dumbasses at the Dr. Oz show aren't careful enough with their research to know that Thiomerosal was never in MMR.
Sid
But...but...he's a Kennedy!
Sid
How are those adorable lil Dithers?
and one just started driving.
They make me feel old. 
Sid
It's that if you don't believe vaccines cause autism, you must support fracking.
Yep, that totally holds up.
Sid
First of all, reducing RFK Jr. to an "Anti-vax asshat" shows a lack of class, as Thimerosal is only one of several environmental issues that he works on. It's also a lousy way to talk about any member of the Kennedy family, particularly on a Democratic message board, whatever your opinion on this particular issue, but I think you probably already know this, and don't need it explained.
Secondly, your title is not accurate. He's not "anti-vax," and if you bothered to read so much as the first sentence of your own excerpt you'd know that. His objections are to the mercury adjuvant used to preserve multiple dose vaccines, not to the vaccines themselves, the safety of which he has not to my knowledge called into question. But I think you knew that too.
Finally, you really should read his article and stop obsessing about RFK Jr. In fact I'd advise anyone interested in the subject to have a look. It's a PDF essay posted on Scribd, so just ignore any subscription offers that pop up, as you can read it for free online or download it for free and read it laterr:
link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/209365850/Tobacco-Science-and-the-Thimerosal-Scandal-Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr
to calm the fervor. The fervor precludes rationality.
He's been a blowhard for a while. His internet/radio show on pacifica was a tiresome bore.
Just proves that political dynasties should be avoided.... even the Clinton dynasty...
Or does he?
It's a wonderfully descriptive word, isn't it.
Sid
Sid
(except minute amounts in flu vaccine) and there has been a continued increase in autism regardless. Its not the cause.
Autism begins in the womb, pretty well demonstrated by modern research, and vaccine (with or without thimerosal) has nothing to do with it.
Sid
The reason I ask:
RFK, Jr. is no ''asshat.'' Why would you call a liberal Democrat that and the other things, SidDithers of DU?
I heard him speak at my alma mater, Wayne State University in 2007.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called George W Bush "that sonofabitch" and said the guy was a crook, turning over the government to the lobbyists and gangsters who've emptied our Treasury, polluted our water, land, air and children, and used humanity as cannon fodder and slave labor.
He also pegged ABCNNBCBSFoxNoiseNutwork for what they are. Among other things, he called Antonin Scalia the son of a Nazi and explained why. I would've taken notes, but I wanted to hear everything the guy said.
The writings of law professor Donald E. Wilkes are a good place to start learning about why RFK Jr. matters:
DESTINY BETRAYED:
THE CIA, OSWALD, AND
THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (Dec. 7, 2005).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.
In place of the strong sense of faith in man and mankind, we now have a heavy feeling of a failed mission, of destiny betrayed and unfulfilled. – Rav Alex Israel
The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization. – Bulletin of the Federation of American Scientists
Today, 42 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, few responsible researchers who have studied JFK’s murder accept the Warren Commission’s main conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, committed the crime. (The Warren Commission was the body appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the Kennedy assassination; it released its Report in September 1964.) As these researchers have shown again and again in scores of books and articles, evidence available to the Commission but improperly evaluated, erroneously rejected, or simply not pursued by that body, together with new evidence unavailable to the Commission, discredits the principal finding of the Warren Report. JFK’s death was, these researchers believe, carried out by a conspiracy; it was not the act of a lone assassin. Different researchers, however, have different conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists also disagree about Oswald: some maintain that he was simply one of the conspirators; others claim that, while he was a member of the conspiracy, he was also unknowingly a dupe of the other conspirators who intended for him to be the fall guy; and still other theorists think that Oswald was a wholly innocent person set up by the conspirators as the patsy. Furthermore, the theorists who regard Oswald as a conspirator disagree as to whether he fired any of the shots in Dealey Plaza.
SNIP...
The theory that JFK’s murder was engineered by the CIA (or by persons affiliated with the CIA), and that the CIA covered up its connections to the murder, warrants serious consideration and should not be peremptorily rejected. In the 1960’s the CIA more resembled an untouchable crime syndicate than a legitimate government entity. Lavishly but secretly funded, unrestrained by public opinion, cloaked in secrecy, conducting whatever foreign or domestic clandestine operations it wished without regard to laws or morals, and specializing in deception, falsification, and mystification, the CIA was riddled at all levels with ruthless, cynical officials and employees who believed that they were above the law, that any means were justified to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, and that insofar as their surreptitious activities were concerned it was justifiable to lie with impunity to anyone, even presidents and legislators. Many of these individuals, thinking he was soft on communism, that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex, and that he was to blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961), hated and despised Kennedy. The CIA routinely circumvented and defied attempts by the executive and legislative branches to monitor its activities. It was involved in innumerable unlawful or outrageous activities. It illegally opened the mail of Americans. It interfered with free elections in foreign countries and arranged to destabilize or overthrow the governments of other countries. It plotted the murder of various foreign leaders. It arranged to hire the Mafia to help with some of these proposed murder plots. It unlawfully stored–in quantities, UGA political science professor Loch K. Johnson notes, sufficient “to destroy the population of a small city”–exotic toxic agents, including cobra venom and shellfish toxin, for the purpose of committing murders. It manufactured and used sinister lethal weaponry, including what Prof. Johnson calls “the ultimate murder weapon,” an electric handgun (the CIA called it a “noise-free disseminator”) with a telescopic sight which could noiselessly and accurately fire poison-tipped darts (the CIA called them “nondiscernible microbioinoculators”) up to a distance of 250 feet. It undoubtedly carried out multiple secret murders and other heinous crimes which it successfully kept hidden. Furthermore, it is now firmly established that after the JFK assassination the CIA simultaneously lied to, and withheld important information from, the Warren Commission.
One of the first serious investigators to raise credible claims that CIA operatives or ex-CIA operatives were involved in the JFK assassination was Jim Garrison, who served as the district attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1962 to 1974. (A brief chronology of Garrison’s life and investigation is set forth at the end of this article.) Garrison and his office investigated the assassination for about five years, from late 1966 until early 1971. His investigation led Garrison to believe that, regardless of whoever actually fired the shots in Dealey Plaza, the assassination was the result of a plot hatched in New Orleans by persons with CIA connections. Furthermore, Garrison concluded, following the assassination the CIA engaged in a coverup to protect itself and the assassins. Garrison brought to trial the only criminal proceeding in which someone was actually charged with involvement in the JFK assassination. Garrison wrote two important books, the first published in 1970, the second in 1988, in which he recounted his investigation and shared the important new facts he had discovered.
In the words of journalist Fred Powledge, who wrote a magazine article on Garrison published in 1967, Garrison thought that “the assassins were CIA employees who were angered at President Kennedy’s posture on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and that the CIA was frustrating his investigation, although the agency knew the whereabouts of the assassins.” Philosophy professor Richard H. Popkin, in another magazine article published in 1967, summarized Garrison’s views on the assassination as follows: “The thesis Garrison has set forth is that a group of New Orleans-based, anti-Castroites, supported and/or encouraged by the CIA in their anti-Castro activities, in the late summer or early fall of 1963 conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy. This group, according to Garrison, included (Clay) Shaw, (David) Ferrie, (Lee Harvey) Oswald, ... and others, including Cuban exiles and American anti-Castroites.... (T)heir plan was executed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. At least part of their motivation ... was their reaction to Kennedy’s decisions at the Bay of Pigs and the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba following the missiles crisis of 1962.”
In a 1967 interview, Garrison himself phrased his basic conclusions this way: “(A) number of the men who killed the President were former employees of the CIA involved in its anti-Castro underground activities in and around New Orleans.... We must assume that the plotters were acting on their own rather than on CIA orders when they killed the President. As far as we been able to determine, they were not on the pay of the CIA at the time of the assassination.... The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President, so from the moment Kennedy’s heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.... In this respect, it has become an accessory after the fact in the assassination.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_22destiny.html
Prof. Wilkes' bibiliography is an excellent survey of what was available at the time of his writing that article. Several new works have been published since. I'll try to get back and recommend them to you when I get the time. In the meantime, here's why it's important to hear RFK, Jr. rather than "think" asshat:
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.
That's what his son and daughter, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rory Kennedy, reported in an interview with Charlie Rose last weekend in Dallas.
It's also what author and Salon founder David Talbot reported, when he called Robert F. Kennedy the "first conspiracy theorist" in 2007.
Here's why the news from Robert and Rory is so important:
RFK called the Warren Commission report "shoddy workmanship."
Attorney General Kennedy knew about the Ruby-Mafia connections immediately, which is vital when considering the Mafia were hired by Allen Dulles and the CIA during Eisenhower's administration to murder Fidel Castro -- an operation which the CIA failed to inform the president and attorney general.
The interview with Charlie Rose marked the first time members of the immediate Kennedy family have voiced the attorney general's doubts about the Warren Commission and its lone gunman theory.
Those are the facts we learned Friday, Jan. 11, 2013. It's called history.
Remember: Like medical researchers discerning truth from falsehood for the sake of the pharmaceutical industries, remember that readers are leaders -- especially when it comes to politics in and age of NSA/CIA/ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks. Those who believe Corporate McPravda tend to go along with the illegal, immoral, disastrous and endless wars of choice in Iraq and Vietnam and wherever else there's money to be had.
Also remember: RFK, Jr'.s father and his uncle stood against all that.
Sid
Don't ever change!
and saying he is above reproach for his anti-vaxx nonsense is hero worship at it's finest.
So I join you in kicking this important thread about this dangerous, misguided asshat of a man.
you crack me up!
Thank you for searching me....again!
It's like a creepy hobby or something.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5527873
Telling people not to worry about Fukushima was worth responding to, seeing how it is a peril to public health.
So. How's your journal?
It laughs at people who blame the BFEE for everything!
Sorry it went over your head.
But, now you are distracting cuz I caught you in another lie?
Oh right...you "don't remember."
Just like this guy on the stand for Iran-Contra.
Well, I guess you have something in common!
Keeping tugging at that forelock!
BTW, nothing to say about being caught in a lie?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5585489
You don't have to answer because I know that if you had, you wouldn't be carrying on like this. Please consider informing yourself:
http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalFINAL.PDF
It's not a happy, tale but it needs to be told, and unfortunately this is about the only place you're going to hear it. 
