Whereby one vaccine advisor at the meeting had expressed warranted concerns that lawyers might use preliminary study results on vaccine safety for their own ends, Kennedy, himself a lawyer, trimmed the quote to make the advisor sound conspiratorial. David Gorski pointed out at the time, Kennedy read a 260-page transcript from a vaccine safety meeting and quote-mined it to wring fear juice out of it. Salon soon appended a number of corrections to it and, five and a half years later, finally retracted it.Īs Dr. Its name was “Deadly Immunity” and it was riddled with mistakes, distorted quotes, and unsubstantiated fearmongering. His public crusade began that very summer with the publication of a highly disingenuous article, prepared with the help of an anti-vaccination activist, in both the print version of Rolling Stone magazine and the website. He became convinced they either did not understand what vaccine science was allegedly saying or they were lying. Kennedy, who was already familiar with mercury’s effect on ecosystems, was alarmed and started calling regulators. By Kennedy’s own account, Sarah Bridges would not leave Kennedy’s front porch until he had read these studies alleging a link between thimerosal and autism. Said mercury was part of a molecule called thimerosal, a preservative used since the 1940s in multi-dose vaccines to prevent bacterial growth. Her son had been diagnosed with autism and she blamed the mercury in the vaccines. ![]() In the summer of 2005, a psychologist from Minnesota by the name of Sarah Bridges went over to Kennedy’s house with a stack of papers. It wasn’t, but Wakefield had developed an idée fixe-an obsession of the mind-and it would go on to infect Kennedy’s own thoughts a few years later. In 1998, he would publish his notorious paper and hold a press conference in London in which he claimed that the vaccine could very well be responsible for the rise in the rates of autism. Wakefield then turned his attention to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and tried to link it to a “leaky gut” hypothesis where molecules escaped digestion and impacted the brain. In the early 1990s, after reading through an old virology textbook, he became obsessed with the idea that the measles virus was behind it all, for the simple reason that it had been shown to sometimes cause ulcers, which were seen in the stomach of some people with inflammatory bowel disease. Wakefield was interested in linking inflammatory bowel conditions to the clogging of blood vessels in the wall of the gut. While Kennedy was bringing corporate corruption to light, the anti-vaccination movement was re-energized thanks to Andrew Wakefield’s infamous Lancet paper, now retracted. My coverage of misinformation biases me to think it is more prevalent than it might be likewise, it could be argued that a career spent exposing corporations that carelessly dump toxic chemicals into the world might bias you to imagine harmful plots wherever industry is involved. But I think it is also important to highlight that the work we do helps shape our view of the world. Some of these cases involved contamination of waterways with mercury, a theme that would translate to his anti-vaccination crusade. When corporations and governments would skirt environmental laws, Kennedy would bring them to justice. The people frequently in his sights? Polluters. ![]() Kennedy, Jr., grew up to be an environmental lawyer. Kennedy’s nephews rise to infamy as one of the loudest voices of the modern anti-vaccination movement? Like a mind virus Instagram banned him from their platform earlier this year, although his corporation’s account remains active.Īs Kennedy releases a new “documentary” that uses medical failures toward Black people to sow distrust in the COVID-19 vaccines, I asked myself: how did one of John F. Kennedy himself is part of the Disinformation Dozen, a gaggle of influencers generating two-thirds of anti-vaccination content on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent assessment. The website Media Bias/Fact Check calls Kennedy’s corporation, Children’s Health Defense, “a strong conspiracy and quackery level advocacy group.” An academic paper published in January 2020 reported that Children’s Health Defense was one of two buyers accounting for 54% of anti-vaccine advertising content on Facebook. Kennedy is not just anti-vaccine by many recent accounts, he is one of the princes of the anti-vaccination movement, if not its king. I have yet to meet an anti-vaxxer-someone who spreads misinformation about all vaccines being harmful-who is comfortable with the label. Kennedy, Jr., does not want you to think of him as an anti-vaxxer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |