RFK Jr.

I don't doubt that vaccines can be harmful. I feel like almost almost anything can be harmful or have side effects for some people and to some degree. For some, eating peanuts can be fatal, for example. I'm sure anything we inject or ingest poses a risk which is greater than zero. People have even died from drinking excessive amounts of water.

Going back to his contention that he's not "anti-vaccine," I don't know. I didn't see any instance of him ever endorsing or promoting any vaccine anywhere in the world. Granted, I didn't spend much time looking, and I could be wrong. But if he's never met a vaccine he liked, I think it's fair to call him "anti-vaccine" even if he leaves open the possibility that a hypothetical vaccine might come around which meets his standards. If the test is zero harm and zero side effects, I doubt any vaccine could ever meet that test. At least the cost benefit analysis is easier for you since you don't think viruses are real in the first place. He does think they're real, so he's got to figure out how much harm he might accept relative to the alternative.

 

Maybe the difference between him and me is that he doesn’t promote them, whereas I ask: why promote them at all ?

Larger picture: never mind just vaccines, I regard healthcare (all its medications and procedures) as possibly the leading cause of death in the US.

 

Yeah, I guess practically he wouldn't have to actively encourage anyone to take any particular vaccine in order to counter the characterization of him being anti-vax. It would go a long way to showing he's not just generally anti-vax if he could point to one or two examples of vaccines that have ever met his criteria.

 

He appears to oppose medical tyranny and wants to draw down the military-industrial complex. That alone makes him a formidable candidate in my mind.

 

‎This Week in Virology: Eddie Holmes on SARS-CoV-2 origins on Apple Podcasts



A new Eddie Holmes interview on origin.

‎This Week in Virology: Eddie Holmes on SARS-CoV-2 origins on Apple Podcasts

 

He opposes the tyranny of arresting and jailing people for using marijuana. I'm sure both sides will find things he says that they agree with.

 

The autism links started with Dr Richard Wakefield in a “study” published by the Lancet in the late 90’s that supposedly linked the MMR shot to Autism.

It was retracted 12 years later when more information came about that showed it was fraudulent.

Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines


In the original paper, Wakefield and 12 coauthors claimed to have investigated “a consecutive series” of 12 children referred to the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine with chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder. The authors reported that the parents of eight of the 12 children associated their loss of acquired skills, including language, with the MMR vaccination. The authors concluded that “possible environmental triggers” (i.e. the vaccine) were associated with the onset of both the gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression.

In fact, as Britain’s General Medical Council ruled in January, the children that Wakefield studied were carefully selected and some of Wakefield’s research was funded by lawyers acting for parents who were involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. The council found Wake-field had acted unethically and had shown “callous disregard” for the children in his study, upon whom invasive tests were performed.


It notes that it wasn’t against any of the vaccines per se, but the combination all at once, at that age. The thing that really fueled the fire are cases of autism - regressive autism - where a toddler seems to be normal and somewhere around 3 takes a tragic turn and starts exhibiting severe symptoms of autism

Regressive Autism – Why It Occurs.

My recollection is this tends to happen right around the time one of the MMR shots are taken (Mumps Measels Rubella). Given almost everybody is vaccinated, there will be instances where the regressive autism takes place shortly after the vaccine, and it seems like a direct link, when in actuality it’s a terrible coincidence. These heartbreaking stories go viral then you have a fraudulent study on a whopping 12 kids that even after retracted never goes away.

Now some anti MMR want the shots to be broken up and spread out more, at a little bit older age. At one level that may seem reasonable, but that also increases a child’s unvaccinated status longer, and also requires more appointments with more shots.

Also the spurious correlation of increasing autism and increasing vaccination is brought up, even though there is no proven linkage. Diagnosis of autism is much broader than it used to be, and other factors such as older parents are theorized to play a factor.

MMR link debunked:

The MMR Vaccine and Autism

The MMR vaccine and autism: Sensation, refutation, retraction, and fraud


The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al.[1] were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts).[9] The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain.[10–13] It is a matter of concern that the exposé was a result of journalistic investigation, rather than academic vigilance followed by the institution of corrective measures. Readers may be interested to learn that the journalist on the Wakefield case, Brian Deer, had earlier reported on the false implication of thiomersal (in vaccines) in the etiology of autism.[14] However, Deer had not played an investigative role in that report.[

https://www.autismspeaks.org/scienc...k-large-study-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-kids

In all, the researchers analyzed the health records of 95,727 children, including more than 15,000 children unvaccinated at age 2 and more than 8,000 still unvaccinated at age 5. Nearly 2,000 of these children were considered at risk for autism because they were born into families that already had a child with the disorder.

The report appears today in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Consistent with studies in other populations, we observed no association between MMR vaccination and increased ASD risk,” the authors write. “We also found no evidence that receipt of either one or two doses of MMR vaccination was associated with an increased risk of ASD among children who had older siblings with ASD.”



Also, there was a lot of unfounded speculation that a vaccine preservative called Thimerserol, which has trace amounts of mercury, was causing autism. 20 years ago I asked my kids pediatrician and he said you’d get more mercury walking in your lawn the vaccine FWIW. Needless to say no linkage has ever been found.


Thimerosal and Vaccines | Vaccine Safety | CDC.

Large scale studies in Europe were done that demonstrated no linkage. In spite of that, due to the press and bad publicity, Thimerserol was taken out of childhood vaccines in 2001. Guess what? Autism continued to increase.

So there are some that are concerned with the concentration and timing of shots. Others are just against vaccines in general. RFK Jr has talked about supposed suppression of evidence of vaccines and autism. He frequently was a keynote speaker at events where you had mass collections of people hostile to vaccines, for one reason or another. I have ‘t gone through every statement of his to try to figure out explicitly what he is for and what he is against. He is already so far away from the evidence and science I’m not sure what the point is.

 

LOL, the notion that the autism connection hangs by a thread.

 

I’m 10 years younger and started working out more but my joints limit what I can do, including push ups. I mostly avoid free weights.

 

While Maher is not an anti vaxer per se, he does flirt with vaccine skeptical positions, so he isn’t hostile to anti vaxers.

 

That is complete nonsense. Can you provide any evidence for that?

So how are they different?

 

So you can’t back this up. Only tell me to watch a podcast where they make unverifiable claims. Right.

 

Maher spends as much time attacking the left as the right. I thought it was a pretty interesting interview since I haven’t really followed Kennedy over the years and they talked about other topics, too.

 

Tell me what the lie is. I tried looking at the interview but it is 2 hours and has commercials and goes all over the place. If you have a specific assertion, make it and back it up. If you can’t just shut up about it.

 

I haven’t read the link within the link but the study is mentioned.

Bill Maher Gives Anti-Vaxxer RFK Jr. Another Big Boost

Later, the two discussed the nature of COVID-19 vaccines. Maher conceded that he only got his shot so that he could return to work and shared his personal view that getting multiple injections of the vaccine further increases one’s risk of COVID-19. Still, Maher noted that the vaccine likely lessened the impact the virus had on his immune system—indicating its effectiveness. “Do you think that’s possible at all?” Maher probed Kennedy, seemingly seeking a concession.

Kennedy tried to cite a Cleveland Clinic study that supported Maher’s belief, though a study author told Factcheck.org the observational study was not intended to determine that and there were numerous factors that could have led to that result. When acknowledging vaccines, Kennedy was blunt.

“Are you better off avoiding death or serious hospitalization?” Kennedy said. “My belief about that is there is no advantage to the vaccine although, you know, there are claims that there are.”

Maher pushed back, noting that while he would rather have the liberty to choose which shots he receives, some vaccines could be useful. “There’s advantages for some and not others,” Maher said.