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| "The only real valuable thing is intuition." ~Albert Einstein~ |
The good old Globe and Mail did not disappoint this weekend. There were a lot of different viewpoints to consider. Margaret Wente, god love her, had the chutzpah to write about "Health Scares".
The headline, "If only there were a shot for irrational fears; Vaccination panic is strongest among educational liberal elites - the same demographic that votes green, drives a Prius and eats organic" captures the essence of her article. Great spirit forgive the human race for evolving into beings of consciousness.
Wente refers to a study by Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet about links between childhood vaccines and autism. She sites sources that point to the faults in Wakefield's study. Wente writes, "The public is fed a steady diet of scare stories cooked up by rogue scientists seeking publicity, tort lawyers looking for a payday, environmental groups hungry for both publicity and funding, and gullible media ever eager for a good bad story."
Fascinating. I would say the public is fed a steady diet of highly, but very discreetly cooked up truisms by the powers that be, tort lawyers looking for a payday, environmental groups hungry for the harmony between humans and the planet and their share of the pittance of funding that's just enough to placate a generally apathetic public and pretty-gullible-mainstream-media-turned marionettes by the great governing Oz. To think otherwise might be naive - non?
Ironically this very article is sandwiched between a story about a study by Kevin Milligan and Michael Baker (UBC and U of T respectively), that concluded longer parental leaves did not have a positive impact on child development. They measured temperament, achievement of milestones, motor and social skill development. Isn't that convenient for the government to use in defense of not paying parental leaves?
Now, in the case that was presented in the Globe, I do have to favour the government based on what is written in the article. Two parents taking leave at the same time and expecting to collect social benefits kind of has the stench of greed about it. However, I think that any well-educated liberal/conservative, Prius/Hummer, Anti-vaxer/gullible pharmaceutical zombie will admit that you can find a study that backs any argument. Data can be skewed, and outcome measurements may be a nice neat dish served on a silver platter to the decision makers in the land of Oz, but we all know in our gut what is bullshit and what is not.
Wente accurately admits that the concern over vaccinations stems from distrust of the very profitable, and therefore influential pharmaceutical industry, or Big Pharma. Wente says that "anti-vaxers" are hyper parents who are, "...obsessively worried that the world is full of hidden poisons that can harm their kids. They worry about the sun, or lawn spray, or trace amounts of chemicals in plastic toys". GAWD forbid we care about the environment and how we impact it. What on earth are people thinking being concerned about toxic chemicals coating the shiny little toys that little Billy chomps on as he cuts his teeth? Fools.
She is critical of this left wing hoo-hoo group who doesn't want their infants crawling around in fields of DDT with no studies to support trusting their intuition. Somebody please do a study to support that.
Wente's headline - "If only there were a shot for irrational fears." McDish's headline - "If only there were a shot for greedy goombas"...or something like that.
The headlines in print, on the web and on television were all over the unrest in Egypt this weekend. It all began with a university educated Tunisian whose life ended in protest over unfair governing. Another headline in the Globe read, " In a span of minutes, a country goes off-line; Government orders Internet service providers to shut down all connections, isolating 80 million people and revolt's leaders."
Hmmm. Yep. If we mindlessly swallow Ms. Wente's simple minded attack on non-vaxers or whatever condescending name she prescribed to them, we may not be too far behind Egypt in the grand scheme of things. Money talks sweeties, and Big Pharma didn't get the name Big Pharma because the CEO's wear red plaid lumberjack shirts and stand over 6'3".
This is my concession; so called Big Pharma does support non-profit work in healthcare, and profit itself is not a dirty word. But greed is.
Money whispers in the ear of our family physicians, our insurance companies, our government policy makers, and even in my ear. I do not profess expertise in vaccine science or autoimmune health issues (I bet there a heck of a lot of studies that link increased autoimmune deficiencies with environmental factors), but it would be truly ignorant to think that we, the general public can see any more than through a tiny crack in the theatre curtain of what is really going on politically. Check out movies like Wag the Dog or Charlie Wilson's War if you need to get a feel for what I'm talking about.
Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for the likes of antibiotics, ibuprofen and the pill. I'm also a big fan of that inner voice we are all blessed with as human beings. That voice, or, I guess you could call it intuition like Ms. Wente does. You know, it's that little thing called a conscience (yah, yah, I get the little lingquistic irony there, just like pen is envy that we all learn in English 101) that tells us what is fundamentally right or wrong in any given situation.
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