DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Hax Community
HTML https://haxnuts.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Interesting stuff
*****************************************************
#Post#: 291946--------------------------------------------------
What we're facing with RFK
By: LabPartner Date: December 17, 2024, 6:22 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil Steinberg
Chicago Sun-Times
December 17, 2024
HTML https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2024/12/17/rfk-jr-robert-kennedy-polio-vaccine-study-health-human-services-hhs-director-trump-cabinet
Study! I love to study. A pot of coffee, a comfortable chair and
a deadline that isn’t today — nothing makes me happier than to
dive into a subject, stacks of books around me, obscure
databases on the screen. It’s perhaps the most appealing aspect
of my job.
One day, I’m digging into the circumstances behind Oscar Wilde’s
famous line about the Water Tower (“a castellated monstrosity
with pepperboxes stuck all over it” — not a quip, as commonly
described, but premeditated provocation). The next, I’m
exploring solar eclipses (if you are ever stumped as to where
helium was first detected, remember helios is Greek for “the
sun,” where the gas was noticed spectrographically during an
eclipse in India in 1868).
So study is good. However. I also know that “study” can be a
code word for wanton dismissal of facts that don’t serve your
personal narrative, and I’ll give you an example. If someone
says they are studying the Holocaust, trying to determine what
really happened, then you can be sure you are not dealing with a
scholar, but an antisemite. Your immediate answer should be
along the lines of: “Well, I hope your ‘study’ involves reading
a few of the thousands of meticulously documented books
outlining the precise enormity of the crime, you odious bigot.
Sticklers for bookkeeping, those Germans were. Fifteen minutes
in a library should lay it out pretty clearly.”
With anti-vax advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. up for the role of
secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Senate
minority leader Mitch McConnell, whose spine occasionally
stiffens before going soft again, warned that nominees hoping
for Senate approval should “steer clear” of undermining the
polio vaccine.
Prompting a classic weasel response from Katie Miller, RFK Jr.'s
transition spokesperson.
“Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to
the public and thoroughly and properly studied,” she said.
Proper study! What a good idea. Let’s look into it! How about
taking 1,349,135 children and submitting them to a blind trial
at 244 test areas around the country, with half getting the
cherry-red vaccine, and half a placebo, or nothing. Then we’ll
really find out if this vaccine is any good.
Oh wait, we did that. In the spring and summer of 1954. To this
day, it’s the largest medical experiment in United States
history. Thousands of doctors, nurses, principals, teachers,
parents and other volunteers banded together, working for free —
the government wasn’t paying because that smacked of socialized
medicine.
Gosh Neil, you might ask, being yourself an inquisitive sort,
just like me, why did thousands of doctors, nurses, principals,
etc., all supposedly with busy lives, drop everything to help
run this giant medical test for no compensation? Possibly
because polio was scything through their children: more than
57,000 cases in 1952, with over 3,000 deaths. A child could be
healthy at breakfast and dead by dinner. That catches the
attention of the neighbors and dials up public spiritedness.
The Sun-Times trumpeted the success of the polio vaccine on its
April 13, 1955 front page after a nationwide test. Parents lined
up to get their kids vaccinated, though in later years many
would forget the horrors of the disease and draw back from the
cure.Sun-Times files
The vaccine worked. Now that kids don’t die of polio, alas,
we’ve forgotten they ever have. Society has atomized into a
buzzing cloud of random individuals, bouncing off one another.
Respect for authority that isn’t Donald Trump has evaporated,
and many in our country are deciding: Screw this medical
authority business, I alone will determine what is good for my
children. Ignorant rejectionism has put on the trappings of
genuine academic skepticism and wanders the land, gaining
converts.
Nor should we overlook the first part of Miller’s sentence: “Mr.
Kennedy believes the vaccine should be available to the public
...”
Well gosh, that’s big of him, considering that he’s spent years
urging gullible people to swallow the lie that vaccines cause
autism.
People are sheep. The recent election proved that. After Kennedy
soft-pedaled a measles outbreak in American Samoa in 2019 and
cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines, he was accused of
causing dozens of people to die needlessly.
Baseless undermining of medical advances is nothing new. Just
before the 1954 test began, radio commentator Walter Winchell —
the Fox News of his day —- went on the air to warn the vaccine
“may be a killer” and that the authorities were stockpiling
“little white coffins” just in case. The next week, 10% of
children were pulled from the experiment by worried parents.
They were worried about the wrong thing. The vaccine wasn’t the
killer; polio was. That’s as true today as it was in 1954.
History will some day gape in shock that a leader could try to
lure us back into the past. Actually, we don’t have to wait for
history to pass judgment. It’s pretty shocking right now.
#Post#: 291949--------------------------------------------------
Re: What we're facing with RFK
By: Aardtacha Date: December 17, 2024, 7:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Yay. The person in charge of Health and Human Services is only
going to be about 75 years behind modern medicine.
Him and his brain worm.
*****************************************************