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Old 10-30-2009, 09:12 PM   #414
Clodfobble
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 20,012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
We have here a case of media failure. Who said the shot was causal? No doctors, no experts... Desiree made that connection, and the media cascaded along. 1000 stories in Google News said "Woman has shot, gets ill." Reporters don't take science classes, they don't take logic classes, and they and their editors are biased to cover stories that sound scary and alarming.

And then they make them scarier and more alarming. Inside Edition didn't interview any experts in their story. Did they ask a neurologist and not get a scary enough narrative out of it? Or did they simply not try?
Her neurologist says she has dystonia, as that is what he diagnosed her as having. She did not just head over to WebMD and diagnose her own symptoms. Frankly it's irrelevant whether it is specifically dystonia or not; she sure as fuck has something neurological going on. You are correct that no one can prove the flu shot caused it, either directly or indirectly. But so far no one can prove another cause for it either--and severe neurological diseases do not suddenly show up one day in normal healthy people. Historically it's already been proven that severe neurological impairments can sometimes occur as a result of rushed, poorly tested flu vaccines.

As glatt pointed out, it's a question of risk versus benefit, as is everything in life. But what if there is no benefit at all? There's a lot of evidence that the flu shot does not protect you from the flu, and the lead research developer of Gardasil says that it isn't going to measurably reduce the rate of cervical cancer in this country. 44 girls should not have to die for that, even if they're only 44 out of 20 million.
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