Just In Case There’s Any Doubt Jill Stein Sows Distrust in the U.S. Vaccination Program…

Let’s simply let her supporters answer.

Here are some comments from angry Jill Stein supporters on the Friendly Atheist Facebook page in response to my article criticizing her statements on the U.S. vaccination program.   It was gratifying to see these dwarfed by many thousands of likes and shares, as was a lovely mention as well by the national progressive humanist group Center for Inquiry’s Paul Fidalgo in his daily roundup of humanist news:

Speaking of Stein, Bo Gardiner does a good overview of Stein’s many pseudoscientific predilections.

But it’s a veritable online rule that people who disagree are the most likely to comment, and comment they did.  

As you read each sentence, preface it in your mind with the phrase that most began with in varying forms:  “She’s not discouraging vaccines, she just…”

• Wow, I’m glad people like this are here to tell me what the government should force me to inject myself with.
• I’m against government telling anyone what they can and cannot do with their body. Freedom of choice is important to me.
• No not anti vax, anti big money that distorts what is necessary & what isn’t, we need to be able to trust our healthcare provider not feel like guinea pigs.
• She just doesn’t want Pharmaceutical companies lobbying the government to make their vaccines state mandated.
• It isn’t ‘anti-science to disagree with mandates that force people to be mindlessly treated against diseases which aren’t any longer endemic or other diseases which aren’t even spread by casual contact.
• There’s a difference between having vaccinations mandated, and having it mandated that a SPECIFIC COMPANY should be able to decide and produce all the vaccines
• If you argue killing a human organism out of convenience is body autonomy but nor wanting needles shoved into my body isn’t you’ve got a pretty severe case of cognitive dissonance.
• I don’t think you should make vaccines mandatory… If you’re not going to put your child out into the “herd” you can opt out.
• Pharmaceutical companies lobby to get new versions that are basically the same as the old vaccinations mandatory only to quadruple their profits when they sell it at a higher price… The FDA has been corrupted.
• She said we need more data [on vaccinations.
• There is absolutely need for “new data”. The current childhood vaccine schedule, for instance, has not been studied for safety.
• All of these FDA approved drugs get taken off the market after some time of public use for reason. Lack of proper research before approval. Vaccines are not exempt from this process nor are they exempt from causing harm.
• Vaccines may save lives but they are also known to injure. How does that not warrant investigation?
• Giving unneeded vaccines can jeopardized an already capable immune system from fighting off a virus it is already immune to.
• 11,000 new customers born every day just in America. Don’t tell me there is no profit [in vaccines].
• She does realize that many Greens are worried about vaccs, so she carefully words her statements about vaccines when she speaks. Understand why she said what she did.
• She does support the right of choice.
• Yea, about that vaccine shit. Oh, how about we ask doctors about stress? Their ignorance in that field is shameful, let alone the wonderful training they get in nutrition, so I should blindly follow the advice to vaccinate?
• She only wants the vaccines that really help us to be mandated, rather than whatever pharmaceutical company pays the most is fucking ridiculous. Pro-vaxxers are worse than Christians these days, they just blindly follow the multi-billion dollar companies making vaccines like they’re Gods.
• Monsanto is very much in line with pharmaceutical companies.
• Love science hate vaccines..so fuck you.
• There’s a huge difference between being anti-vax (she’s not) and promoting non-consensual drug administration of a product made by for-profit companies.
• The pharmaceutical industry IS paid to lie about drugs effects. Of course they’ll cut corners on vaccines if the right Citizens United Corporate Monger pays in enough.
• She is not anti-vaxx, she is against the idea of having CEOs from pharmaceutical companies being in charge at federal institutions that force drugs on us for the profit of big pharma.
• “Vax: just do it. Because science!” Doctors used to recommend cigarettes in tobacco advertisements.and the public is wise to the corruption and kickbacks
• How do people not find it harmful to force vaccinations on children. I’m pro vaccination ok, because yes vaccinations help save lives. Which is the perfect disguise to force people to take drugs that maybe maybe not in the future could be replaced with something harmful…like the Tuskegee experiment?
• Everyone should be against the manipulating and buying of so called scientific truth. Glad you all have run these tests yourself and know for sure what your talking about. None of us know what to believe, not even you.  Really?  your defending the FDA? that’s a disgrace man.
• Honestly, even if she’s a little anti Vax, if she’s anti FDA having to much power at the same time, I might be willing to listen. Anyone in the vape industry can tell you about how fucked the current FDA is with too much power.
• My body, my choice. I’m sick of the government making me work to subsidize breeders sending their kids to public (Aka Welfare) schools.
• I however am against any industry/organization that infiltrates a government agency to unfairly pass regulations [and] approve medication.

On Patheos I received these:

• The pharmaceutical companies giving out vaccinations that do nothing for us, and still charging us out the gazoo holes for them, is a problem.
• Bo, you are misinformed on the safety data on vaccines… Your reliance on CDCs/drug company’s “safety” data and whatever “study” purports to disprove any links to harm, is cavalier.
• BoGardiner, Dr. Jill Stein is absolutely right…The CDC is corrupt as is the FDA. The CDC has hidden and manipulated data from vaccine studies that would be detrimental to the pharmaceutical industry and that shows an increase risk to the health and life of our children and adults receiving the vaccines.

Reddit:

• In 2016 the population is sicker than ever with Cancers, autoimmune diseases, allergies etc, vaccines are how Big Pharma sow the seeds of profitable disease, yet they try to fearmonger us about mild short-term childhood illnesses which are harmless in the healthy and well-nourished.
• Vaccines are currently based on more assumption than rigorous science. Real controls are needed in safety studies, the full vaccine schedule needs testing, long-term safety tests are required, but Big Pharma always have excuses to avoid these.

• Vaccines make a lot of money, they don’t require much testing as they get a bypass on real tests…However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the real money comes after the vaccines, this is because many people are left with lifelong vaccine-induced diseases which leave them dependent on drugs. Vaccines are the main cause of autoimmune disease… e.g. Diabetes Type 1 and MS. That’s why vaccines are pushed so hard, they make healthy people into sick people who become customers for life.

 

In other words, the rhetoric of Stein and her supporters is identical to that of groups widely recognized as anti-vax.

Darkly amusing are the many objectors who simply post Stein’s retort “I’m not anti-vax” …and smugly rest their case.  As if this puts all debate to rest.  As if most prominent anti-vaxxers don’t say the same.  Even their primary spokesperson Jenny McCarthy calls herself “pro-vaccine.”