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[A²]

An Ouroborous of shit.

[Brentai]

I am never coming to your house for chile rellenos.

[Thad]

Perry does something sane; Bachmann tears into him for it.

The The USA Today: Bachmann keeps up HPV attack on Perry

"To have innocent little 12-year old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong," Bachmann says in her e-mail requesting donations, titled "I'm Offended."

...
...whaaaAAAAAAAA?

I mean, yes, okay, I know that according to GOP orthodoxy STD's are things only bad people get, but...I'm preeeetty sure that the issue of the government "forcing" children to get vaccinated against diseases is pretty well settled at this point.

And honestly, good for (cancer survivor) Perry on this one.  Not to put too fine a point on it, we have CURED A FORM OF CANCER, and ensuring that the public GETS that cure is EXACTLY the reason we have a goddamn government.  If there's a better use for tax money than DISTRIBUTING A CURE FOR CANCER, I'd love to hear it.

[Disposable Ninja]

... well, I suppose if your opponent is otherwise a perfect little conservative who has a real shot of winning, you're just going to have to go after that one bit of empathy he has towards his fellow people.

Man, fuck Bachmann.

[Thad]

Well, it's the same issue as the "let him die" bit in the other thread.  That is the debate we are, for some reason, having: whether the richest people in America should have to spend money on preventing people from dying of horrible diseases.

The people on the "against" side are, of course, the ones who spend the most time talking about how Christian they are.

EDIT: LA Times has a bit more on Perry's ties to big pharma.  I am, obviously, not a fan of the government being run by rich lobbyists, but I'm still going to have to side with the guys who want to prevent girls from getting cancer.

[Bal]

I wonder if Bachman is anti-vaccination in general. I wouldn't be surprised.

[Thad]

It does seem like a bit of a Freudian slip, but I'm more inclined to think it's cognitive dissonance.  Hard to say; don't really care as she's batshit enough on every other issue.

[Royal☭]

It's worth noting that Perry was requiring the vaccination, but not providing it. I'm all for the government giving us cures to diseases, but Perry was still making people pay out of pocket for it.

[Thad]

...of course.  Silly me, assuming that "require" meant "pay for".  You'd think I'd have learned by now.

Ugh, Bachmann's full quote is worse than the one above:

The governor  chose by himself unilaterally to sign an executive order to put through the requirement that all innocent little 12-year-old girls or 11-year-old girls in state of Texas would be forced by the government to take an injection of what potentially could be a very dangerous drug.

Is there any actual evidence that the HPV vaccine is "potentially very dangerous", or am I correct in understanding that it's no more dangerous than any other vaccine?

(I guess all vaccines are "potentially very dangerous".  My girlfriend got rubella from one as a child.  But it's still fucking insane to go from there to suggesting children shouldn't be vaccinated against rubella.)

[Royal☭]

It's "potentially very dangerous" because then she might feel like she can have sex, which to the right-wing is more dangerous than cancer.

[McDohl]

Forgive me for attempting to interpret Bachmann's words, but I believe she was getting at this:

Government mandate tells you what vaccines you have to get.  This worries the people she represents.  BIG GUBMENT TELLIN" ME WHAT TO DO.

I'm guessing that's what she's getting at, but yeah, it's still stupid.

Besides, the Texas Legislature shot down the executive order, and Perry didn't veto it.  By Texas Constitution, the legislature's measure trumps Perry.

[sei]

If there's a better use for tax money than DISTRIBUTING A CURE FOR CANCER, I'd love to hear it.

Funding ch—

The people on the "against" side are, of course, the ones who spend the most time talking about how Christian they are.

—urches. Mother fucker. Beat me to it.

[Thad]

Forgive me for attempting to interpret Bachmann's words, but I believe she was getting at this:

Government mandate tells you what vaccines you have to get.  This worries the people she represents.  BIG GUBMENT TELLIN" ME WHAT TO DO.

I'm guessing that's what she's getting at, but yeah, it's still stupid.

She chose an example that is specific to STD prevention.  Precisely because the abstinence-only approach to hazards of sex is relatively mainstream.

Actual full-on opposition to vaccinations is fucking crazy, even among Bachmann's supporters.  It is a fringe of a fringe of a fringe.  I think there's a reason she didn't go that far -- though certainly her words are open to that interpretation.

Besides, the Texas Legislature shot down the executive order, and Perry didn't veto it.  By Texas Constitution, the legislature's measure trumps Perry.

Sure, but what she's getting at is that he supported it, whether it went into effect or not.

[sei]

Actual full-on opposition to vaccinations is fucking crazy, even among Bachmann's supporters.  It is a fringe of a fringe of a fringe.  I think there's a reason she didn't go that far -- though certainly her words are open to that interpretation.

These troubling statistics show that the failure to vaccinate children endangers both the health of children themselves as well as others who would not be exposed to preventable illness if the community as a whole were better protected. Equally troubling, the number of deliberately unvaccinated children has grown large enough that it may be fueling more severe outbreaks. In a recent survey of more than 1,500 parents, one quarter held the mistaken belief that vaccines can cause autism in healthy children, and more than one in 10 had refused at least one recommended vaccine.

~25% is fairly common. Holding the belief isn't quite "fringe," but being dumb and vocal enough to publicly argue with the backing science is.

[Thad]

Believing in a vaccination/autism link is not the same thing as opposing vaccination; it's the 10% that's the relevant statistic there.

Longtime forumgoers may remember me supporting the thimerosal/autism hypothesis some years back, but I NEVER said people shouldn't vaccinate their kids, only that we should find a preservative that doesn't contain mercury.  The link has now been thoroughly refuted and its major proponent exposed as a liar and a fraud.  I backed the wrong horse, and have no problem admitting it -- that's science; you go with the information you have and, if better information comes along, you go with that instead.

While it's troubling that 25% of the population still believes in the link even though it's been debunked, it's heartening that most of that group still vaccinates their kids anyway.  And of the 10% of the population that refused at least one vaccination, well, we only know from that data that they refused at least one vaccination -- and we don't know what or why.  There are occasionally valid reasons to refuse a vaccination: my girlfriend's mother stopped having her vaccinated for rubella after she got rubella from a vaccine.  It's extremely rare but it happens.  (Though I don't have stats in front of me and maybe it's not common enough to make a statistical dent in that 10%.)  And the article even mentions the chicken pox vaccine on page 2 -- refusing the chicken pox vaccine is pretty damn different from refusing the polio vaccine.

And even if we go by the 25% statistic -- it's hardly a subset of "potential Bachmann voters".  There are plenty of liberals who buy the autism/vaccination link.  It's one of many reasons I no longer read the Huffington Post.

[Classic]

One of my professors (talking soundly outside her real area of expertise) mentioned that what she was most leery about with vaccinations was that heavy metals (I think it's the same link Thad was talking about) were used to cripple the healthy virus in a vaccine.
I don't know if she just objected to vaccinations so shortly after birth or in general. But... Yeah. Even I didn't buy it at the time. Exposure to small amounts of heavy metals << Basically every life-long-crippling disease you get vaccinated against.

[Thad]

I don't know if she just objected to vaccinations so shortly after birth or in general.

Right, and that's another distinction.

10% (plus margin of error) is, effectively, our ceiling on people who are opposed to vaccinations on principle.  The real number is almost certainly smaller.  And of that, we don't even know what the overlap is with the 25% who believe in the autism connection, versus Jehovah's Witnesses or what-have-you.  (And from my knowledge of Jehovah's Witnesses, any of them who are by-the-book enough to refuse vaccinations are not going to be voting in any elections.  Staying out of politics is part of the religion -- and I thank them for that.)

[sei]

The link has now been thoroughly refuted and its major proponent exposed as a liar and a fraud.

This is the key thing that I was referring to. I didn't mean any slight against your prior position, but rather those sticking to "their" (his findings') guns in the face of new information (that said findings were bunk).

Also, there's always someone who has some story about "I knew X, and her kid Y was fine, until BOOM the day after the vaccine, AUTISTIC!"

[Büge]

that's science; you go with the information you have and, if better information comes along, you go with that instead.

I can understand why so many regard science with suspicion when it's put into those terms.

[Bal]

You would prefer a more intellectually dishonest position? This example is only bad because it was debunked before it was proposed by the simple fact that there isn't enough mercury in a vaccine to match a fish dinner and it's not even the right kind of mercury.