Sad that we even need to protest about this, stupid world.
The fact that any of this HAS to be said is pathetic and embarrassing for humanity.
Medical Quackery
Mark Geier (& his son, David) have been using Lupron, a drug that causes chemical castration in males, to “treat” autism. Somehow, he decided that excess testosterone + mercury in vaccines = autism, so the only way to cure it is to get rid of that testosterone! Thus, Lupron*.
*To make matters worse, Lupron is the drug that is sometimes used as a punishment to castrate sex offenders.
As I’ve stated in a previous post, autism is NOT due to vaccines, nor to any complication with vaccines. Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who published the article regarding this finding, was paid to make claims that vaccines are the root cause of inflammatory bowel disease so that people could sue vaccine companies. He also happened to include some autistic children in there and added that to his article as well. He falsified medical histories and did not randomly select his sample. It was not an experiment at all, but an elaborate hoax that cost many children with autism the possibility of other venues of help because everyone was set on either proving Wakefield right or wrong, instead of working on other leads.
Using fraudulent data to make up some random connection with testosterone in a spiderweb of articles that only reference one another and rarely any outside sources, Mark Geier and his son managed to make an even bigger mess of the entire ordeal.
Thankfully, the senior Geier has been suspended as of May 4th. However, his attorney says
“If you read the (order), you say, ‘Holy God, this is awful.’ But if it were so awful, they should have an injured child, and they don’t,” Schwartz said. “…It’s just like shadowboxing with allegations that sound awful, but when you delve into the facts of them you say, ‘What’s the big deal here?’”
Honestly, if you can say that chemically castrating children because they are autistic, based on false claims that vaccines and testosterone caused the disease, is not WRONG, there is something wrong with you. On top of that, Geier and his son both were falsifying their credentials and treating patients under false pretenses. I really hope that neither of them are allowed to do anything that has any relevance to medicine again.
Sources:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/ct-met-autism-doctor-geier-watchdog-20110504,0,4460013.story
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/83
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html
GFP monkey. Rad.
nerd
so i really want to register for classes for grad school, but i don’t know where to start. i was gonna add the core class that i need to have first semester, but it’s not even on the registration page, and the director of the program won’t respond to my email. plus, he’s never in his office so i can’t really just go in and ask him to fix it either. poo.
i also really want to clean, and go to the pool, and go running, but i’m also REALLY lazy and i don’t even want to get off this couch and stop eating this smoothie, so i guess i’m just gonna get fat.
Shades of Gray: Pharyngula
Killing another person for nearly any reason (pretty much other than self defense) is absolutely awful. Then there are those that kill because someone burned their sacred book…
And then there are those that kill people because “every time a vivisector’s car or home — and, eventually, the abuser him/herself — blows up, flames of liberation light the sky” (with vivisector referring to researchers using animals). BTW, this quote comes from an extremist animal rights activist who is now advocating preying on student researchers because
When we attack professors, we can only expect limited gains. They are deeply entrenched in the holocaust, have vested financial interests, and enjoy a network of support and protection. Students, however, have no round-the-clock police protection, no access to the FBI, and no access to legislators. The weakest link in the chain is the student body.”
Sickening.
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
— Carl Sagan
Basically? SCIENCE RULES, AND SO DO YOU.
<3
