Toni Bark

Antivaxers marched on Washington last week. It was less than impressive.

oracknows — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 06:30:29 +0000

Antivaxers marched on Washington last week. It was less than impressive.

Last week, I took note of something that antivaxers hadn't done in nine years, specifically a "march on Washington." Back in 2008, Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey led a rag tag rogues' gallery of antivaccine activists on a march and rally that they called "Green Our Vaccines." The name of the rally, of course, derived from a common trope beloved of antivaccine activists that I like to refer to as the "toxin gambit." It's basically a Food Babe-like fear of those "evil chemicals" writ large in a claim that vaccines are packed full of horrific chemicals that are Making Our Babies Autistic—and/or making them asthmatic, diabetic, or even dying of sudden infant death syndrome. It's a profoundly scientifically ignorant gambit in that the dose makes the poison and the amount of the various scary-sounding chemicals to which antivaxers like to point in vaccines is tiny and safe. For instance, antivaxers love to point to formaldehyde as one of those horrific toxins, and it's true. There are tiny amounts of formaldehyde in some vaccines left over from the process of inactivating the virus. However, the human body makes formaldehyde as a normal byproduct of metabolism in amounts that far surpass that contained in any vaccine.

Nine years later, the rally is called Revolution for Truth, and the "march" and "rally" (if you can call it that) took place on Friday. I thought about ignoring it completely after my one post, but since the antivaccine movement is one of my main topics, I find it hard to let things go without one last post on this rally. Part of the reason is that the rally surprised me. No, it wasn't the content of the speeches and signs that surprised me. Much of it was very similar to what occurred in 2008, although the cast of characters was largely different, with only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Barbara Loe Fisher having appeared at both events. Also in the post-SB 277 world (SB 277 is the new law in California that banned nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates), there was a lot more talk about "freedom," and in the world of our very own Antivaxer-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, the rhetoric was much darker and more dire than in 2008. None of this is what surprised me though. What did surprise me is that, if anything, the turnout for the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2017 edition, appeared to be much smaller than the Antivaccine March on Washington, 2008 edition. Don't get me wrong. The 2008 march attracted at most a few hundred people, but by comparison the photos of the 2017 March made the 2008 march look like the the crowd for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech by comparison. (Antivaxers love to compare themselves to civil rights figures like Nelson Mandela or MLK.) I mean, take a look at the photos in this STAT News story, and you'll get an idea. Then compare to the photos from nine years ago, and you'll see what I mean.

Also, take a look at this photo on Twitter:

The anti-vax rally in front of the WH is very small. Chanting: "Awake, united, we're not going away." pic.twitter.com/6Q9H0tKqT7

— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) March 31, 2017

I honestly did not expect that. News coverage described the crowd as in the dozens, not the hundreds. Unfortunately, as I've been describing before when I lamented the politicization of vaccine mandates such that antivaxers are increasingly co-opting the rhetoric and messaging of the Tea Party to equate school vaccine mandates as tyranny and "vaccine choice" as "freedom," thus undermining what has until recently been a broad, bipartisan agreement about public health. For example:

For their lobbying day on Thursday, the activists had agreed to wear shades of the American flag: Red if they’d had a loved one injured by vaccines, and white if they were there in solidarity. (They were supposed to wear blue if a loved one had died from a vaccine injury, but STAT didn’t see anyone in the group wearing that color.)

Dressed in a red sweater and seated in a wheelchair, activist Marcella Piper-Terry teared up as she talked about her own chronic pain condition and her young adult daughter’s seizures and Asperger’s syndrome. She believes those injuries stem from vaccines.

What? They couldn't find a single antivaxer who thought that vaccines killed their child?

As tiny as the group was, we can't be complacent, as we can't say that they might not have an effect in the age of Donald Trump:

The day of demonstrations followed an intense lobbying push on Thursday. Activists held 80 meetings on Capitol Hill, many of them with staffers for members of Congress, according to Irene Pi, an organizer from Arizona. Among their goals: Push President Trump to establish a vaccine safety committee led by Kennedy.

“We’re being heard, and we’re going to enact change,” activist Jena Dalpez said.

Fortunately, that remains to be seen.

Because of the rain, unlike the rally in 2008, the speeches for Revolution for Truth took place indoors as the Washington Press Club, the very same place where a few weeks ago Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued his ridiculous "thimerosal challenge." And what a bunch of speeches that this small band of antivaxers and a few reporters sat through, including Rebecca Robbins of STAT News:

“The biggest public health emergency today is not a few measles cases at Disneyland,"spkr says.There were 147 cases https://t.co/rYqFT3siTM pic.twitter.com/90PUJbforb

— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) March 31, 2017

Because of the length, I must admit that I didn't watch all the speeches—or even close. Even a cursory listen told me that it was a lot of the same ol', same ol'. For instance, Kent Heckenlively's speech in person was even worse than it was in print in all caps:

Yes, he referred to vaccines (or vaccine scientists; I'm not sure which) as "monstrous" evil and "unbelievable" wickedness. You get the idea. This is what most of the speeches were like.

For instance, here's ~~Scientology's~~ the Nation of Islam's Minister Tony Muhammad:

We've met Muhammad before, and his speech here isn't much different than the speech he gave a year and a half ago at a protest at the CDC. There are a lot of references to "satanic forces" and conspiracies, as you would expect. In fact, as I went back and looked at my old post about that CDC "protest," it occurred to me that "Revolution for Truth" reminded me, more than anything else, of that CDC protest more than the "Green Our Vaccines" rally.

One thing that I found strange about "Revolution for Truth" is that Andrew Wakefield wasn't there, even though a lot of people involved in his antivaccine propaganda film VAXXED were there. For instance, here's one of the parents featured in VAXXED, Sheila Lewis Ealey:

At least she's honest enough to state plainly that she is antivaccine and to assert that there is "no such thing as a save vaccine." (That kind of blows the cover off of, for instance, the organizers of the rally and RFK Jr.'s claims that they are not antivaccine," especially given how the crowd roared its approval to both lines. I've observed in past antivaccine conclaves that proclaiming oneself antivaccine and saying there's no such thing as a safe vaccine are two guaranteed applause lines.) Of course, she couldn't resist throwing in some Biblical stuff about how before vaccines "people were living, and they were living up to 200 years of age and beyond." The dead silence after that statement showed that it was just a bit too batshit nuts, even for people who are so antivaccine that they are willing to travel from all over the country to Washington, DC to participate in a protest like this. That's saying something. After all, these are people who didn't bat an eye at Ealey's likening the Dredd Scott decision regarding slavery to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which created the Vaccine Court and the primary method of compensating people who suffer legitimate vaccine injury. To her, the NCVIA made children "property, not people," just as the Dredd Scott decision reinforced that slaves were property, to enthusiastic applause. When she then likened antivaxers to the "new abolitionists," the crowd went wild. Wow. Hyperbole much? Well done, Ms. Ealey! Fortunately, your bit about how before vaccines people lived 200 years made even the die-hard antivaxers who applauded your references to slavery go silent. She also revealed how parents arguing for "parental rights" with respect to vaccines think.

And here's Brian Hooker, the biochemical engineer turned incompetent epidemiologist and statistician who loves "simplicity" in statistics, with all the screwups that flow from that:

And, of course, here's the producer of VAXXED, Del Bigtree himself, whom we've met many times before:

Bigtree spends some time in the middle of his talk sarcastically beating up on a woman who didn't buy into the pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy mongering of the rally. Particularly hilarious is the part where he brags about how he doesn't care if there's a reporter doing a "hit piece" and that he'll stand in front of any camera "any day of the week" because "we're telling the truth." Um, no, Del. You might think you're telling the truth, but in reality you're spewing easily debunked lies, weaving them together into a tapestry of misinformation and pseudoscience that can be hard to penetrate if you don't—as I and some other skeptics do—have deep background knowledge of the specific threads of misinformation used to weave that tapestry. You are a propagandist, like Leni Reifenstahl, only much less talented. He then plays to the audience by referencing in contrast Paul Offit, who quite understandably got a bit pissed off at a VAXXED "reporter" who was bothering him in a hospital cafeteria while he was eating. It's a disingenuous comparison, of course. There's a difference between being a camera-hungry publicity hound of a crank desperate to speak to the press and being a real scientist tired of being hounded by antivaxers wherever he goes. Of course, disingenuous is how Bigtree rolls. It's how he's always rolled.

Of course, the main attraction had nothing to do with VAXXED. It was RFK, Jr., the environmentalist turned antivaccine crank since sometime around 2005. Specifically, he's a member of the mercury militia branch of the antivaccine movement, which is the branch that passionately believes that the mercury in the thimerosal that was used as a preservative in some childhood vaccines was responsible for the "autism epidemic." Never mind that thimerosal was removed from nearly all childhood vaccines in 2002 and in 2017, 15 years later, autism rates have not plummeted. Here he is again doing what he does best, blustering, deluding himself by claiming he's "not antivaccine," and spreading antivaccine pseudoscience hither, thither, and yon:

Notice one thing he didn't mention? Hopes were high among antivaxers that RFK Jr. would announce the "vaccine safety commission" that Donald Trump asked him to chair. (Or so he claimed; the transition team denied it that he had been offered anything, but that didn't stop him from running straight to the press to brag about how he would chair a Presidential commission on vaccine safety and/or autism.) One would think that, if it were confirmed that there would be such a commission, this "rally" would have been the perfect place to announce it.

Through it all, various antivaccine activists laid down a barrage of misinformation so thick and convoluted that Duane Gish himself would be proud. Examples were relayed on Twitter, such as:

#Revolution4Truth spkr Toni Bark: Vaccines work “if you don’t mind killing 5 kids for every 1 you save.” Fact check: No basis to those #s.

— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) March 31, 2017

Toni Bark's claim is, of course, utterly without a basis in scientific or clinical evidence. No surprise there.

There were also calls for measures that are clearly unethical and dangerous, such as this:

#Revolution4Truth spkr calls for "moratorium on all vaccinations" til safety investigated. Needless to say would never happen 4 good reason.

— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) March 31, 2017

All the while they deny that they're antivaccine while saying things like the statements above and Tweeting things like this:

Safe Vaccine Advocates Plan Protest in D.C., March 31 https://t.co/KaKh5GBX8H #Revolution4Truth #CDCTruth pic.twitter.com/JKFrP2Ky4i

— Ebony S. Muhammad (@EbonySafiyyah) March 21, 2017

Sure. You're not antivaccine. Ri-ight... Whatever you say...

In the end, as surprised as I was that this was the case, I was glad that the 2017 version of the antivaccine "march on Washington" fizzled even worse than the 2008 version. Of course, the 2008 version had actual celebrities. Even though Jenny McCarthy was at best a C-list celebrity then, Jim Carrey was still arguably A-list. They also did their march in June and were fortunate enough to have a beautiful sunny day. Even so, I would have thought that in the world of Donald Trump, antivaxers could have done better. I'm glad they didn't.

On the other hand, remember images like this:

@POTUS It's time to stop poisoning kids w/vaxx toxins #rfkcommission @jasoninthehouse is listening??#Vaxxed #MPVR #Revolution4Truth #MSleg pic.twitter.com/DvyXBkDBxB

— Kelly Sneed Hooker (@krae32012) April 3, 2017

That's a photo of antivaxers meeting with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whom Del Bigtree lobbied last summer, complete with a copy of VAXXED for him. Whether Chaffetz is just playing the marchers or really is sympathetic to their viewpoint and demands, such as a demand for an "independent" vaccine safety commission, it's a bit worrisome that antivaxers appear to have such easy access to such a powerful Congressman, particularly in the context of their apparently having the ear of the President.

Stay frosty, my friends. The Revolution for Truth rally might have been an embarrassing bust, but the real threat advocates of science and public health have to look out for exists in photos like this and what they tell us.

oracknows Tue, 04/04/2017 - 02:30

Categories

Medicine

I imagine Jim Carrey thought his star power would attract people in the thousands. When only a few hundred kooks showed up he must have realized the pit of BSC he'd leaped headfirst into.

I'm sure his agent told him, "If you want to stay relevant in Hollywood you will not do something like this again."

News coverage described the crowd as in the dozens, not the hundreds.

Dozens, plural? Admittedly there may have been more to the crowd than shown in the photo attached to the first Rebecca Robbins tweet, but I count twelve people in that photo.

Regarding Chaffetz, given his track record, I am inclined to assume the worst about him. He's used his position to repeatedly investigate Hillary's e-mails and Benghazi, repeatedly finding in both cases that there is no there there, but has no interest in investigating the much more serious allegations against Donald Trump and other Republicans.

'Dozens' is right. Their Facebook page has some video shot outside the Press Club, and I'd say no more than 5 dozen idiots were there.

Every speaker would have time to talk to every protester one on one. They could have saved money on PA system rental.

Viewed through the lens of homeopathy, the smaller the crowd, the more powerful.

I was particularly impressed by the crowds showing up from Scientology the KKK the NOI. They certainly had a great showing for this event.

Sheila Lewis Ealy laid down some truly irrational and demented stuff including allusions to racism, a lot of children's lives "snuffed out" by vaccines, and the obligatory 'religious piety' of the radicals who call for violence and death against their enemies:
"Because I'm going to tell you who I am. I AM ANTI-VACCINE! [Loud cheering and applause.]"
followed by this lunacy,
"Before the onset of vaccines people were living, and they were living up to 200 years of age and beyond. [dead silence.]"

You could almost hear the jaws hit the floor with that last statement. Isn't everyone familiar with going to the cemetery and seeing numerous markers that say, "Here lies Jeremiah Blow Age 439"?
Stark. raving. mad.

Hopefully this is an indication that the AA community isn't falling for this scam, heavily directed toward them, in any numbers.
.
I also note that Babs Low Fisher, and others, were blending anti-vaccine with anti-fluoride and anti-GMO propaganda. It makes sense as this 'Revolution4Truth' march was organized around a blending of these internet anti-science, Luddite delusions. Perhaps this indicates the anti-vaccine scammers need new blood to prey upon as they've bled the anti-vaccinationists dry.

Viewed through the lens of homeopathy, the smaller the crowd, the more powerful.

No, no, no, they have to be dilute – can't be standing all together like that. How to succuss them is anybody's guess.

Before the onset of vaccines people were living, and they were living up to 200 years of age and beyond.

Well, the Book of Genesis, which certain people regard as a reliable source, claims that someone named Methuselah lived to the age of 969. (Genesis 5:27, KJV: "And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.") And of course this was before the invention of vaccines.

In case it wasn't obvious, I am not among the people who believe that claim.

That one photo with all the umbrellas made the march look more like a lot of commuters who had just gotten off the commuter train than a demonstration.

I am glad they had good weather.

What? They couldn’t find a single antivaxer who thought that vaccines killed their child?

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons membership must have been busy that day. I am sure they have documented thousands</s hundreds scores a bunch of childhood deaths attributable to vaccines.

Great image! Best laugh I've had all week!

They tell us that the 'revolution won't be televised'
Suddenly , I can see why.

What if they gave a war revolution, and nobody came?

Well, I'm not surprised at all at the low turnout.

As best I can read the clues, I think "the anti-vax movement" has been shrinking back to core group of fringe extremists post Disneyland/SB277. In the Jenny McCarthy heyday, the way the AVs presented themselves and their case had some potential appeal expecting parents who were generally sensible folks. Even in the clusters in Orange and Sonoma counties, the vax uptake couldn't have dropped outbreak-threat low numbers without a good number of parents merely being 'vax-hesitant', falsely thinking avoiding the shots fell into "better safe than sorry" precaution. But look at that Greatest Lie image. The rhetoric is so out there, so polarizing, there's no broad appeal. Just about the only way a person can approach the frames pretty much all the AVs use now is 'all or nothing'. So you get the Sheila Lewis Ealey types, but that's it. Dozens of attendees, nothing but "the usual suspects" at the mic; only eight comments here so far and no trolls. If this ain't a dying topic, I don't know what is.

Which is not at all to say I think there's no threat, or that complacency is OK. I just don't think there's any real threat from the tattered remains of 'the anti-vax movement' per se. I think public health advocates should (re)direct their vigilance to areas where immunization rates can be affected by a sort of 'collateral damage' of other policy matters and/or ideologies – especially in the terrain of "health freedom".

And then there's Jeff Sessions, who's opposed to regulations requiring schools to protect and provide services for disabled kids, including those with ASDs. There could be some real horror stories down the road if we go backward here – a lot more pressure on parents of more severely autistic kids leading to more Kelli Stapleton-esque breakdowns and desperate bad acts – and that could re-invigorate autism fears, and refuel some sort of AV politicking.

If we wind up in that environment, I'd suggest turning your attention away from 'the usual suspects" at that embarrasing bust of a rally – those folks are spent, politically – and watch the horizen for new players, especially any sort of 'new Jenny McCarthy' figure. Someone sympathetic mediagenic, younger and new to the issue and who can present "questiions" about vaccines as a new discovery, and re-invigorate the level of mere doubt about vaccines that can get members of the next generation of non-nutjob concerned parents-to-be to be just hesitant enough about the shots to seek a PBE 'just to be safe'...

How to succuss them is anybody’s guess.

Hit them with a bible?

What if they gave a war revolution, and nobody came?

I don't know, but when you talk about unvaxed kids, don't you know that you can count me out.

At this point, I would want external evidence for any political gain they claim. There have just been too many disproven claims.

Their rousing protest in front of the National Press Club.
Literally dozens attended.
.
https://www.facebook.com/Revolution4TRUTH/videos/1294220410668812/
.
I can't help but smile at all the loons looking like drown rats halfheartedly chanting the idiotic memes. It got especially rousing when the rep. from the Weston A Price Listeriosis Society took over the microphone. /sarc

It makes you wonder why one of the anti-vaccine "heroes", like Del Bigtwig, didn't put in an appearance to buck up the troops. I guess they've all become too important to be bothered with the hoi polloi that make up their supporters.

I did think I saw a few longingly eyeing the Press Liquors store next door. Probably the folks from the TMR...

Sadmar, I won't count the anti vax loons out until my patients quit refusing vaccines and asking about "preservatives" in Vitamin K for babies.

Sadmar
I think you might have a point. Back when Wakefield first went public with his MMR scam I was a mum with 2 young autistic children and a new baby. No one was ranting about all vaccines being dangerous or wittering on about dangerous additives. It was just the MMR. Rational parents like myself were happily giving the rest of the schedule but dithering over the MMR. Now I think that genuine concerns about the MMR have been settled it is a much smaller hardcore group that have gradually become evermore paranoid. I think alas they will always have a following of 'true believers' but the sheer overwhelming dottiness of some of their beliefs means that a lot of people who might be swayed by a more moderate approach, do dismiss them as cranks. The Vaxxed team have their followers this side of the pond but they are having a hard time getting venues for their film and have had no positive media cover.

I am really proud of how well the AV groups attended this very important march, it must rank up there with MLK (being very sarcastic).

On a personal note I am in the process of planning a vacation to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am current with my normal vaccinations (just had a tetanus booster yesterday), any special vaccinations you can think of that would be appropriate?

Also, any good ideas of places to visit while I am there? I am researching places that I might want to retire to.

Thanks,

Rich

Rich @19: The CDC's website is usually pretty up-to-date with travel medicine recommendations. They suggest Hep A and typhoid.
Have you considered Costa Rica? I've only been twice but it's been lovely both times.

@Sadmar said: "As best I can read the clues, I think 'the anti-vax movement' has been shrinking back to core group of fringe extremists..."

Of course there are efforts underway to create that impression--it's critical for manufacturing consent--but the reality is just the opposite. That's the reason for the frantic push to pass SB277, and to withhold child benefits from Australians who refuse to fully vaccinate, for example.

We can expect more and more efforts to prop up the shaky vaccine house of cards with coercive laws and regulations, and lots of pro-vax propaganda in the media. There are people in very high places who cannot allow that house of cards to fall.

"Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible." -- Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

"How to succuss them is anybody’s guess."
I have a leather strap that should work fine. I'll even do the job for them.

JustaTech, I've had both the hep A and B series (part of my job requirements). I'll check out the typhoid.

Chiang Mai is one of my top relocation spots because it is central to some of the adventures that I want to do. There is a trek in Nepal called the Long Trek nd basically follows the spine of the Himalayas for 1000 miles (you can't do it in a single trekking season. Oh, there are some 20,000+ passes to go over and I have only been to 17,000.

Goodness, NWO, do you ever have anything new to say?

Out of curiosity, do you understand the germ theory of disease? Or do you ascribe all diseases to demons?

Oh, I know a great, vaccine-free place you can go! Afghanistan. You'll love it.

Liz Ditz writes,

Viewed through the lens of homeopathy, the smaller the crowd, the more powerful.

MJD say,

Very clever and funny!

From my perspective, though, the crowd reminds me of allergy immunotherapy wherein the numbers slowly increase until specific antibodies (i.e. Orac's minions) no longer consider them a threat.

Orac's is correct again when he says "Stay frosty, my friends".

To be honest, I'm anti-vaccine when the vaccine packaging says, "Warning contains natural rubber latex".

This is a coming-out (i.e., medical) personal statement from me and I feel wonderful!

Piss off, Travis J. Schwochert 239 S Church St Endeavor, WI 53930

Banhammer summoned via moderated post

Fucking Travis J. Schwochert is using the name 'Scott' now.

Yeah, I recognized it right away because he was using Scott Gavura's e-mail address. It's been dealt with.

@Orac
Can you watch my daughter for me so I can pay for an airline ticket to fly to DC to attend this event even though I am unemployed due to having to care for a permanently disabled child? Sincerely, thousands and thousands of parents of vaccine injured kids.

@Orac
If I allowed you to care for my child would you vaccinate her even though you knew it was against my wishes as a parent?

Jeff: "Sincerely, thousands and thousands of parents of vaccine injured kids."

What happened with your National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program claim? Also, do tell us what experts you called in to prove the injury was from vaccines. Also the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

Sincerely, the parents of disease injured children before the vaccine was available (which were in the tens of thousands before the mid-1960s).

Go away Travis...

“As best I can read the clues, I think ‘the anti-vax movement’ has been shrinking back to core group of fringe extremists…”

Of course there are efforts underway to create that impression...

Yeah, and it all comes from the idiot anti-vaxers themselves.

First, AoA launches a nationwide petition to the White House, and don't discourage foreign citizens from signing it, and they come up with an impressive total of less than 17,500. That's a number so small that if you put them all in California, they would each have more than 9 square miles to roam around in. It's about the population of Talladega. It's less than 1 in 18,000 Americans. I'd bet that you were one of those that signed that petition, weren't you?

Then there is the subject of our host's post, the turnout for their march. I doubt they managed to pull in enough people to fill the roster of an NFL team.

So who is behind this effort to make them look like small band loonies? How are they doing this, besides posting the truth?

Gee, our host throws out one Travis J. Schwochert 239 S Church St Endeavor, WI 53930 sock puppet, and a new one appears.

http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2017/02/the-fendlesworth-m…

Chris writes,

Also the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/latex…

MJD interjects,

From the CDC:

“If a person reports a severe (anaphylactic) allergy to latex, vaccines supplied in vials or syringes that contain natural
rubber, or whose product information does not say 'not made with natural rubber latex' should not be administered unless the benefit of vaccination outweighs the risk for a potential allergic reaction. In these cases, providers should be prepared to treat patients who are having an allergic reaction."

Offit et al. take on allergies and pediatric vaccines

http://media.chop.edu/data/files/pdfs/vaccines-allergies-qa.pdf

Result:

Allergy-induced regressive autism

Metuselah was never presented as typical, to my understanding.

They're more than dozens - their petition got about 17,000 - but they're still
A very small minority, if passionate and committed.

Jeff, I just thought of something you can do for your daughter. Find her another family that knows how to find the actual services she needs. You might start by contacting your local ARC.

She would definitely be better off with a family that did not consider her "damaged", and would actually cherish her for who she is.

On a personal note I am in the process of planning a vacation to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am current with my normal vaccinations (just had a tetanus booster yesterday), any special vaccinations you can think of that would be appropriate?

As JustaTech says, check the CDC for current information. Without looking, I would guess that you should get a yellow fever vaccination if it's been more than ten years since your last one--many countries at those latitudes require it, at least if you plan to cross land borders. You might also want to look into malaria prophylaxis--ISTR that in parts of Southeast Asia you might encounter mefloquine-resistant malaria, but I don't know if Chiangmai is one of those areas.

Re malaria:

30 days of doxycycline should do the trick. I did that when I visited Korea a few years ago, no side effects like what you find with the quinines. Cheap, too.

@NWO Reporter & @Jeff

Obviously you must realize you're clueless but just to recap your "movement" spent MONTHS organizing a "big" rally in D.C...you even had a freakin website created. And literally less people showed up than probably designed the website. There are more people working at the corner Burger King than showed up for your "big" protest. It was embarrassing. Literally the KKK got more people at their last rally. Do you think the Klan is going to be part of a movement that's going to change legislation?

You attempted a hate laced petition to "declare autistics an epidemic" and couldn't even get 20% of the required ONLINE signatures. Were those "thousands" of parents of vaccine injured children unable to spend 16 seconds doing that? Maybe they were too busy liking Natural News articles and posting their "warrior mommy" blogs?

How about that Pan recall effort where you couldn't even get a single signature?

To say this movement is growing is a disgrace and insult to movements. Most of the people in the movement are the same ones we see online. They're loud, abrasive, annoying and science challenged. But it's the same damn charlatans. Nothing new (except adding in anti-semitism and holocaust denial to the cause: https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2017/03/31/why-are-robert-kennedy-jr-…)

It's sad that somewhere in the world (or in heaven) there are parents of someone who believes:
"There are people in very high places who cannot allow that house of cards to fall."

Can you get more paranoid/tin foil hat than that ignorant and completely not-evidence based idiotic statement.

Damn, some people...

P.S. Your movement needs a COMPLETE overhaul. It's a disaster.

Jeff: Not only would I vaccinate her, I'd make sure you never saw her again. Autistic kids need and deserve better parents than anti-vax curebie crybabies.

I'm quite sure the vast majority of people who understand the real depth of vaccine fraud realize that petitions and marches on Washington will not solve the problem. That's like asking the coyotes to do a better job guarding the hen house.

@NWO Reporter

Spoken like a true beaten down man who can't actually respond to facts so he has to go 4th grade level response "I didn't care about those marches & petitions anyways!"

Funny if the march on Washington had thousands of people he'd be the first to talk about how the world is "waking up."

Maybe look back in history and see what happened in the sixties with civil rights. Or in today's age with gay rights. Marches and petitions and a REAL movement actually changed the world. Your 12 guys with idiotic signs just made your cause look even worse.

I can't think of a so-called movement that's ever been organized worse in human history. Like I said, the KKK have more respect (and numbers) that you'll ever have. That's not debatable.

I'll bite - what are "the vast majority of people who understand the real depth of vaccine fraud" doing? Posting scientifically illiterate comments on blogs, like you?

@The 'Real Truther' -- The only thing petitions and marches can do is to alert people there is a problem they need to look into. And appease people who haven't realized the depth of the vaccine fraud, and think all we need are 'safer' vaccines.

Cute name. I see that kind of doublespeak being used a lot these days. Just call it 'truth' or 'waking up' and people believe that's what you're offering.

I see that kind of doublespeak being used a lot these days. Just call it ‘truth’ or ‘waking up’ and people believe that’s what you’re offering.

Well, it's not mindless assertions that are promptly run away from, crude attempts at animation, slorping down Rappoport's emissions, and skimming heavily from overdue child-support payments, that's true.

NWO Troll, why do you hate kids? Only a sadistic child hater would want them to suffer the high fevers and possible meningitis, encephalitis, seizures and other bad things form actual vaccine preventable diseases. Seriously, why do you hate children?

Are you a sadist who gets off on kids in pain, or do you just hate children?

Chris, your hypocrisy and corruption is monumental. Science Mom is another one of your socks, right? I see you all over vaccine media stories, slinging the same tired insults and obvious propaganda. You couldn't care less about the well-being of children.

"Hypocrisy?"

How exactly?

I'd recommend that you read "The Great Derangement" by Matt Taibbi - it very clearly explains why people like you feel the need to believe in conspiracy theories.

@ Lawrence: NWO can only sling her insults because she has no facts to support her theories. She *has* to call Chris names, because if she looked at the facts, she'd find out how wrong she is, and her narcissism won't allow for that. She obviously doesn't care for children, or the adults they will become.

@NWO: you can go ahead and call me names, too. After all, I'm an adult who suffered through most of the VPDs, being a child of the 60s. And, I didn't get the fairy-tale "life-long immunity" from most of them, thanks to a quirk in my genetics. My mom and dad would be very happy to tell you about the "pleasures" of the others they suffered. Strangely, even though we have autism in our genes, they were first in line with us, as my sister and I were, to have our children vaccinated on schedule. Guess we've just been "pharma shills" for ever. Can't wait for the nearly 80 years of shill bucks to arrive...

See Jake's blog. It seems that William Shatner is a fan.

http://www.autisminvestigated.com/william-shatner/

I have a "vaccinate" bumper sticker on my car, and recently someone who disagrees with that put the needle-baby sticker under my windshield wiper. (to their credit, they didn't damage my car)

But the baby in my sticker is white. I see the updated the baby. https://twitter.com/mem_somerville/status/837400996103979009

@NWO Reporter

Please name a SINGLE movement in US history that was instrumental in creating actual change which didn't have MASSIVE OVERWHELMING numbers at rallies, protests (peaceful or not), etc.

Women's rights movement? No.
Labor movement? No.
Civil rights movement? No.
Gay rights movement? No.

Your "movement's" biggest protest of the year barely made a single newspaper. I doubt 99.9999% of the country even knew it existed.

Like I said before, the KKK has more clout, respect and better organization than the anti-vax "movement" at this point. That is NOT debatable.

Chris, your hypocrisy and corruption [sic] is monumental. Science Mom is another one of your socks, right?

There was no need to demonstrate yet again the paucity of your imagination, I assure you.

Johnny @51
It is really hard to say if Shatner is a true antivaxer in the Robert De Niro mode,just because he retweeted one of Jake's posts.He may be one of those who are on the fence about vaccines.For the last eleven years,Mr.Shatner has been a spokesman for the March of Dimes Canada,urging the eradication of polio,and promoting vaccination for same.
https://www.marchofdimes.ca/en/aboutus/about%20modc/spokesperson/pages/…
http://www.whosay.com/status/williamshatner/1001731?wsref=tw&code=pOj9m…

I don't think Shatner is an antivaxer. At least, I've never seen any evidence that he is. I think he just picked Autism Speaks as a charity to promote and was shocked (and miffed) when a lot of autistic people took him to task for it on Twitter. Retweeting Jake was really dumb, but Shatner clearly knew nothing about Jake or his antivaccine views and probably retweeted him because he was agreeing with Shatner. It's halfway tempting to try to educate Shatner about the depths of lunacy to which Jake regularly descends, but he seems to be one of those guys who doesn't take criticism well.

I mean, blocking Ari Ne'eman? Not cool, Shat. Not cool at all.

Oh No, I am vaccine damaged. I finally pulled the dot band aid off the site of my tetanus shot I received Monday and there was a spot of blood on it.

I don't know what traumatic event from this I'll now face. Probably death in another 20 or 30 years (I am 63 now).

Your “movement’s” biggest protest of the year barely made a single newspaper. I doubt 99.9999% of the country even knew it existed.

No, you're missing the Big Picture: most of those people are patsies, led by their snouts by Disinformation Agents. Ginny's "movement" is much more, ah, stolid, as they say in Maracaibo.*

* What can I say? It's a go-to.

"Probably death in another 20 or 30 years (I am 63 now)."

And to think you could have lived to be 200. I guess I'm also screwed by vaccination. It's time to update the will.

It is really hard to say if Shatner is a true antivaxer in the Robert De Niro mode,just because he retweeted one of Jake’s posts.

I don't disagree. But Jake think's Shatner is his #1 fan. Jake's so desperate for any sort of validation that his backwater of a blog has any impact, that any mention of the blog is enough for a blog post in its own right.

It would be cute if it wasn't so sad.

MI Dawn, for the record, opining that someone engages in hypocrisy and corruption is not name-calling. Name-calling would be, for example, calling Chris a "hypocritical disinformation troll," or "corrupt mercenary troll," and I resisted the temptation. Calling someone a "sadistic child hater" would clearly be considered name-calling.

Anyway, what do you mean about calling you names "too"? Are you saying you're not just another sock? :)

You must have an exceptionally weak and disfunctional immune system. That means you're at risk from literally everything, and all the vaccines in the world can't save you. You need a bubble to live in--it could help ease your "suffering."

And "autism in your genes," too? Which genes? I'm sure genetic researchers would love to know. Must be the ones that mutated into in an autism explosion a couple decades ago. :)

You mean the more than 400 genes that researchers have identified as being related, in some form, to autism?

We are talking about a very wide spectrum - and it's quite possible that different forms of what we now consider "autism" are caused by completely different genes.

And the so-called "autism" explosion is directly related to the "explosion" of the DSM criteria for determining a diagnosis of autism.

Lawrence--Just an explosion in autism diagnoses, eh? I thought ya'll backed off that ridiculously untenable position a long time ago. But anyway, vaccines don't cause autism, strictly speaking. Autism is just one of many behavioral diagnoses that could follow from brain damage caused by vaccines. That is, when the brain damage is more than subclinical.

Really NWRO?

And what does this "brain damage" look like on an MRI?

Lawrence, that is an easy question to answer: it looks like NWOR.

Lawrence–Just an explosion in autism diagnoses, eh?

Add to that increased awareness, diagnostic substitution (people who would have been diagnosed with other conditions in the past getting diagnosed with autism today), and previous underdiagnosis (many people have only been diagnosed years into adulthood).
You're wrong that that position is untenable. Just look at the different diagnostic standards between DSM-3 and DSM-5, and still try to claim that.

And you can easily check the "diagnostic substitution" aspect, since all of the official numbers show a decline in ID diagnoses which neatly correlates with a similar rise in autism diagnoses....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK332896/

Lawrence --There's no physical test to diagnose autism, as I think you know. But in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, quite a few injuries that include autism have been compensated, arising from vaccine-induced encephalopathy and seizure disorder. You can read the study here: https://www.ebcala.org/unanswered-questions

There are no cases in the NVICP where the plaintiff was compensated for a diagnosis of autism....

And NWRO - you're the one who claimed that autism is "Brain Damage."

Brain damage can be identified via MRI.

So what constitutes "brain damage" that equals autism?

Lawrence, note I said "injuries that include autism." If a parent makes a claim for autism as a vaccine injury in the VICP, the claim will always be denied because it's not on the list of 'approved' injuries. From the study I referenced:

"This empirical investigation, published in a peer-reviewed law journal, examines claims that the VICP compensated for vaccine-induced encephalopathy and seizure disorder. ... This study found 83 cases of acknowledged vaccine-induced brain damage that include autism..." https://www.ebcala.org/unanswered-questions

I've stopped answering the commenter, since it's pointless, but this comment is very wrong on several levels.

First, claims to VICP are not limited to a list of approved injuries. If someone claims a table injury, causation is presumed, so winning is easier - but the standard for causation in other cases is still the "more likely than not", and in fact, the requirements are lower than in the court.

Second, the reason people claiming ASD consistently lose in VICP is because the evidence shows vaccines don't cause ASD - and in many of these cases, the medical records don't support parental claims, either. Like Brian Hooker's case.

Third, the paper you are referring to did not have any cases where compensation was based on autism. In fact, in some cases the government claimed autism as a defense - as in, the child's problems are because of autism and have nothing to do with vaccines, and the court rejected the autism claim. Using that paper as evidence that vaccines have anything to do with autism is simply wrong.

I see you can't answer a very simple question.

See, you made the claim, therefore, you need to provide the evidence.

You also provided a link to a legal organization, not a scientific one....perhaps you should try again.

You must be a time traveler, NWOR - because your sh@t is so old.....http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/07/proof/

@JoyMama - yet we have the lowest infant and child mortality rates in history.....care to explain?

for the record, opining that someone engages in hypocrisy and corruption is not name-calling

"I love to watch the Masons squirm." – Noted late Drosophila expert

Keep digging, Ginny.

Actually, even in the US, we have mortality rates which, historically, are at their lowest points.

http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx

I really like this comparison website......because we see that European vaccine schedules aren't really any different from ours.

Travis, go away.

JoyMama, please provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

We all know that Travis hates both kids and common decency.

Dorit Reiss, thanks for the info. Do you have a list of the vaccine injuries that have been compensated in the VICP which are not listed on the table?

Please note I did NOT claim any of the cases in the study were compensated for autism--in fact I went out of my way to make that clear.

re Jake and Shatner

A standup comic who knew all of the usual jibes about Shatner and who looked up who Jake is ( easy to do on the internet I've heard) could probably concoct a few jokes and scenarios about the implicit hilarity of the situation.

I'll bet that Orac and the minions could as well...

e.g. Jake Crosby and Wm Shatner walk into a bar where...

ends with something something a "remake of *Clueless" ?.

Here's a copy of the vaccine injury compensation table. According to this document: "[T]he following is a table of vaccines, the injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths resulting from the administration of such vaccines, and the time period in which the first symptom or manifestation of onset or of the significant aggravation of such injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths is to occur after vaccine administration for purposes of receiving compensation under the Program." https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccineinjurytable.pdf

NWO Troll, you can find all of the cases that were ruled here:
http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/aggregator/sources/7

You can also find the compensation data here:
https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/data/index.html

By the way, being called a sock puppet of Science Mom is a very high compliment. Thanks. We are completely different people, and I have actually talked to Orac in real life several years ago at a TAM (The Amazing Meeting which used to held by the James Randi Foundation).

By the way, being called a sock puppet of Science Mom is a very high compliment.

It's as though teh NWOR doesn't understand what the "expanding Earth" business is for.

I'm still hoping Dorit Reiss can provide a list of just the "off-table" vaccine injuries that have been compensated. I looked around, and although there are attorneys who say they have helped clients receive awards for off-table injuries, I couldn't find any who listed what those injuries were. :)

Travis J. Schwochert 239 S Church St Endeavor, WI 53930 is up to his usual tricks, this time pretending to be KristinMH

http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2017/02/the-fendlesworth-m…

Go away Travis J Schwochert.

Travis - just go away.

How are you going to get gainful employment if you spend all of your time here, sockpuppeting?

Got him again. Amazing how he manages to keep finding commenters from the past whose e-mail addresses he can learn or guess. Ah, well, I have 350,000 comments in the archive. Although he's been scraping the barrel, there could still be a lot left.

Perhaps you should call those lawyers then....

@169 (NWO Reporter)

The law clearly lags behind the scientific evidence, and the overwhelming evidence that alleged cases of vaccine-induced encephalopathy are caused by pre-existing mutations rather than by vaccination began to accumulate little more than a decade ago. Nonetheless, it's been clear for years that the "Shot In The Dark" frenzy that reanimated the anti-vaccine movement years before Wakefield turned his attention to MMR really had nothing to do with vaccines.

The 83 claims cited in the EBCALA article would likely not be compensated today, now that the scientific evidence that the condition is caused by mutations is so clear. (Hint: these mutations cause such syndromes in unvaccinated laboratory animals.) Accordingly, the US Court of Federal Claims has begun to deny such claims and even to require genotyping--at least insofar as checking for mutations in the one particular gene (among many various genes known to cause this and similar syndromes) that is most commonly involved. Compensation was awarded in 0 of 16 recent cases that involved the suggested genotyping. See this recent decision, for example:

https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2010vv0394-130-0

Here are some of the papers that suggest that cases like those cited in the EBCALA article are caused by mutation and not by vaccination:

--Berkovic SF et al. De-novo mutations of the sodium channel gene SCN1A in alleged vaccine encephalopathy: a retrospective study. Lancet Neurol. 2006 Jun;5(6):488-92.
--Catarino CB et al. Dravet syndrome as epileptic encephalopathy: evidence from long-term course and neuropathology. Brain. 2011 Oct;134(Pt 10):2982-3010.
--Garcia-Junco-Clemente P et al. Overexpression of calcium-activated potassium channels underlies cortical dysfunction in a model of PTEN-associated autism. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Nov 5;110(45):18297-302
--Guglielmi L et al. Update on the implication of potassium channels in autism: K(+) channel autism spectrum disorder. Front Cell Neurosci. 2015 Mar 2;9:34.
--Li BM et al. Autism in Dravet syndrome: prevalence, features, and relationship to the clinical characteristics of epilepsy and mental retardation. Epilepsy Behav. 2011 Jul;21(3):291-5
--Okumura A et al. Acute encephalopathy in children with Dravet syndrome. Epilepsia. 2011 Nov 16.
--Reyes IS et al. Alleged Cases of Vaccine Encephalopathy Rediagnosed Years Later as Dravet Syndrome. Pediatrics. 2011 Aug 15.
--Schmunk G, Gargus J. Channelopathy pathogenesis in autism spectrum disorders. Front Genet. 2013 Nov 5;4:222.
--Wiznitzer M. Dravet syndrome and vaccination: when science prevails over speculation. Lancet Neurol. 2010 Jun;9(6):559-61.
--Wolff M et al. Severe myoclonic epilepsy of infants (Dravet syndrome): natural history and neuropsychological findings. Epilepsia. 2006;47 Suppl 2:45-8.

Barbara Loe Fisher has some interesting history about the VICP. Apparently, many vaccine injuries that were initially listed on the Table were removed--making compensation much more difficult to obtain. And without an accessible list of non-Table injuries that have been compensated, how many consumers will associate their serious injury with a vaccine? I mean, it's not as if their doctor is going to suggest it to them 99% of the time.

"In the 1990’s, DHHS chose to wield discretionary authority given under the Act to change the rules and eliminate almost all on-Table adverse events that would allow for presumption of causation. With the assistance of the Department of Justice, DHHS turned the administrative compensation process into a highly adversarial, lengthy, expensive, traumatic and unfair imitation of a court trial for vaccine victims and their attorneys. The only difference is that the trial is now conducted in the U.S. Court of Claims in front of one individual who acts as judge and jury.

"Ironically, parents who helped create the Act in the 1980’s were told that Congress needed to grant the Secretary of DHHS broad discretionary authority to alter the Vaccine Injury Table so the Secretary could expand the list of presumptions for injuries associated with existing and future vaccines to make the system more inclusive not less inclusive. We never imagined DHHS would take away existing presumptions from the Table because the stated purpose of the Act was to err on the side of compensating potential vaccine victims in order to offer an effective alternative to vaccine injury lawsuits."

http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation/vaccineinjury.aspx

Yes, injuries were removed when new science showed vaccines don't cause them. The table has recently been updated.

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=HRSA_FRDOC_0001-0314

"New science showed vaccines don't cause them." LOL. What a surprise. :D

But jokes aside, Dorit, if that were proven, there would be no cases in which compensation was subsequently awarded for those injuries, I assume. What non-Table injuries have been compensated? Where can consumers find a list of compensated non-Table injuries?

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doc…

The department of justice published quarterly reports of compensations.

@NWO Reporter, #86

the vaccine injury compensation table ... “[T]he following is a table of vaccines, the injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths resulting from the administration of such vaccines,..."

You are lying as usual, this time by omission and suggestion. This wording does not constitute proof that vaccines are in fact causing aforementioned harm; it merely defines the conditions and time windows for claims with the VICP to be acknowledged. See page 12 of this document for more precise information.
Also note that according to the VICP, the burden of proof has been reversed for anything listed in the vaccine injury compensation table: "If the first symptom of these [listed] injuries/conditions occurs within the listed time periods, it is presumed that the vaccine was the cause of the injury or condition unless another cause is found."

If I may repeat the important bit: "... it is presumed that the vaccine was the cause ...". In other words: if a condition mentioned in the table develops in the time frame mentioned in the table, VaccineDidIt by default, no further proof needed.

@Dorit Reiss -- The DOJ summarizes awards by vaccine and does not distinguish Table and non-Table. Where are consumers supposed to get that information?

@Richard -- I simply quoted the HRSA website (note the quotations marks). If it's a lie by omission or suggestion, it's not mine. :)

You only quoted what you wanted....

The decisions are public....perhaps you should read them.

Lawrence: The funny thing is that Chris provided a link to all the court decisions way back at comment 87, but it's not a nice neat table so NWO would have to put in effort to read all the court decisions and make a table.
And it's a lot of decisions, it would take a long time to read them all.

Sure, JustaTech. Anyone who wants to know what non-Table vaccine injuries have been compensated in the VICP can simply devote all their spare time for the next three years to reading through historical VICP decisions.

By the time they figure out whether their infant's sudden unexplained death or permanent disability may have been caused by his last round of vaccines, the statute of limitation will have run. Problem solved! :D

NWO: You could do it, and put it up online for all those parents you say you speak for. That would be very helpful to them.
Or you could crowd-source it to a larger group of like-minded people.
Or you could pay Mechanical Turk to do it for you, although that might end up being expensive; I don't know their going rate.

About autism genetics: about half of genetic sequences that cause autism are known, but they are searching for more:
https://sparkforautism.org/

It would require answering a questionnaire and getting swab samples from the child and both parents. It is explained in the following video, which notes that there are now parent groups based on the child specific autism related genetic sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOQ9s0GcG5s&feature=youtu.be

Of course not, JustaTech. She doesn't want to put that kind of effort in only to find she's wasted her time . . . because she won't find what she's looking for.

Lazy thinking. She thinks that by crying for some kind of easy to read table she can prove the government is trying to hide something.

Actually, I think summarizing the basis for the VICP awards could be a very worthwhile project. If it weren't, the government agencies charged with running the VICP would surely be doing it themselves, so the information would be readily available to the public, as well as medical professionals. :)

Well, NWO Retorter finally served a purpose. For years, I've had a reaction to carrageenan/agar-agar that hit 9 of the 10 classical symptoms of a heart attack (as it turns out, it induces an arrhythmia). I've spent a decade looking to see if there's a link between allergies and arrhythmias, never found anything. But when I was looking at the Table Injuries, I noticed that it had a definition of anaphylaxis that included brady- and tachycardias and arrhythmias.

Which finally gave me the right search term. Loads of medical info on anaphylactic arrhythmia.

Thank you, NWO. And don't forget to vaccinate your children (and yourself, for shingles and the toxoid boosters)

@96 (NWO Reporter)

Barbara Loe Fisher has some interesting history

Indeed, she does. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of that history is that Fisher has wasted much of her adult life by spewing anti-vaccine misinformation due to her misunderstanding of the sort of genetically-determined cases that you referenced in your comment regarding the pitiful EBCALA article, when she could have been doing something more productive--like this:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/8543

@NWO Troll

Medical professionals have little need for a table of court cases. Legal theories don't impact scientific conclusions, and they are not scientific evidence of anything.

Panacea--I guess by "legal theories" you're referring to VICP decisions, which are based on medical evidence and expert medical testimony. I'm afraid your sentence makes no sense. :)

NWO: the standard of evidence in VICP is basically whether or not the injury is plausible -- which, for table injuries, effectively means answering yes to two questions: "did you or your child have a table injury" and "did this injury occur within a reasonable time period after a vaccination". There is no requirement that the actual injury be proven to have been caused by the vaccine; it merely has to be plausible.

This is an easier standard than you'll find in a regular courtroom, where you actually need to prove causation.

This is indeed quite different from a scientific standard of evidence, which is far more rigorous than a legal standard is.

80% of all compensation for vaccine injuries through VICP is made through settlement agreements. That really helps keep a low profile on vaccine injuries--the settlements are confidential; and there is no admission the vaccine caused the injury.

If you read through the VICP decisions that went to a contested hearing, it's one denial of compensation after another. There is no right to a jury--the only decision-maker is paid by the system. The cases often take many years to resolve--no better than regular court cases.

The VICP needs to go. Cases of vaccine injury need to be litigated like any other product injury case--just like they used to be, until vaccine manufacturers were bailed out of the onslaught of litigation they were facing from injuries caused by their products in the 1980s.

80% of all compensation for vaccine injuries through VICP is made through settlement agreements. That really helps keep a low profile on vaccine injuries–the settlements are confidential; and there is no admission the vaccine caused the injury.

I know you are only trolling. However, this is worth commenting on. The settlement agreements are for Table injuries. These are paid out regardless of whether there is any evidence that the vaccine caused the injury. The injury merely had to occur within the specified time frame.

There is nothing low profile about the Table Injury list. They are listed on the website.

Actually, today many of the settlements are not for Table Injuries. They're still paid independent of causation. All a settlement shows it that the parties settled. It can be anything from "not worth the time" to pity money to "maybe there's a chance they'll win." We just can't know. Settlements don't show causation.

Also note that the fact that there was a settlement is not secret, there's a decision on that.

Here's a "revolutionary" idea: Let the chips fall where they may in the market when it comes to vaccines--just like they do for every other product. Require vaccine injury claimants to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the vaccine caused their injury. Let them have a right to a jury decision on the matter, just like they would in any other product liability case. If vaccine manufacturers can't stay in business because their products harm too many people, then let them go out of business, just like manufacturers of any other product.

Seems like any cheerleaders here who genuinely believe vaccines are "extraordinarily safe" should welcome the idea.

Thanks Dorit.

You've obviously never been involved in Civil Litigation....you suggest that it would be better to go back to a system where the standards of evidence are substantially higher, where the process can take a decade or more (not counting appeals), and costs the plaintiffs tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Today, we have a non-adversarial system, with a lowered standard of evidence, which costs the plaintiffs functionally no money whatsoever....a system, I'll remind you, which was created with the full support of Barbara Loe Fisher as well.

She only turned against it when she realized it wasn't going to be an unlimited piggy bank of money for anyone and everyone who felt they suffered a "vaccine injury."

Yet another anti-vaxer who really doesn't understand how the system works, or just doesn't bother to read.

NWO Reporter, do you know what Marcia Angell (quoted at #98) thinks of vaccination ?

I think NWO is hoping to bypass the actual scientific facts completely. A trial with a jury means a jury of peers. Then you face off a scientific expert trying to explain trials and evidence against highly emotional parents and their lawyers who are convinced of their case and liable to directly attack any expert as bought and paid for. The jury would be quite capable of ignoring science and going with feeling.

@NWO: sorry I didn't reply yesterday, but I had things to do. No, sorry to disappoint you, I'm not anyone's sockpuppet. Orac, whom I have met, can vouch for me. I sadly have not met the other commenters with brains who post here, and I would love to do so, one day.

Actually, I have a very good immune system normally. I get very few colds, and I am immune to most of the VPDs that I caught in childhood. Just, by some quirk, I didn't become immune to measles or mumps. Rubella, I did become immune to. Go figure. I will mount a temporary immune response with the MMR for measles and mumps, but it fades within 5 years. So I just keep getting it.

And also, yes, there are family members in my history who, if living today, would readily be diagnosed as autistic - even severely so. Cousins who were institutionalized for "mental retardation", a cousin who was "so naughty and unmanageable unless his routines were followed precisely"...lots of family letters discussing these things.

Remember, the diagnosis of autism was only created in the 1930s to give a name to a known phenomenom. And many more children and people were just thrown into institutions. All well before the "autism explosion".

By the way...explain why the diagnoses for childhood schizophrenia and children with mental retardation went down on about the same trajectory that autism diagnoses went up? Could it be clearer diagnostic rules for each disease?

Let them have a right to a jury decision on the matter, just like they would in any other product liability case.

They do have a right to a jury trial. Vaccine court decisions can be appealed.

What else do you want to be wrong about?

Also, Civil Litigation doesn't always mean "jury trial." Many, in fact, are trial by just Judge.

Product liability trials are incredibly complex & take years, sometimes decades and can cost millions of dollars....just look at how long the Tobacco Litigation took & you had both the government and hard science on the right side.

Johnny @ #124: "What else can you be wrong about?"

There's no way to tell WHAT she will be wrong about, but you can bet everything you own on the proposition that the number of errors/misstatements/fabrications per post will be greater than or equal to 1.

@ NWO Troll #113: Nice dodge. That's not what I said at all, but since you're accusomed to looking at information through a distorted lens it really is not a surprise that you didn't comprehend what I was talking about. Let me recap.

You said medical professionals could use a table of legal decisions summarizing the legal basis, not scientific basis, of VICP awards.

I said medical professionals such as myself have no use for such a table. A legal decision is not scientific evidence because legal decisions use different standards of evidence and proof. It's literally an apples vs oranges situation.

Yes I get that courts use science all the time as evidence. But the evidence flow is unidirectional: from medical researchers to the courts, to help the Special Masters understand the science so they can apply the law correctly.

The law is not applied to scientific conclusions in reverse, although legislators have tried (North Carolina's attempt to do this ended with much hilarity: http://wunc.org/post/state-outlawed-climate-change-accepts-latest-sea-l…).

How VICP rules on a claim for damages has no impact on my treatment decisions as a future nurse practitioner. I will be make my vaccine recommendations based on the CDC and AAP guidelines, not on how the Special Masters ruled on some case 25 years ago.

@Lawrence: what NWO Troll wants is a return to what happened after that horrible DPT report by Lea Thompson in the 1980's.

After that scare a lot of parents filed lawsuits against the pharma companies. The judgements could have bankrupted them. Congress recognized the public health disaster in the making and set up the VICP to allow patients with genuine injuries access to compensation without destroying a vital public health tool.

NWO Troll knows that. That's why she wants the court to go. She knows that if it were ever repealed, lawsuits would destroy our vaccination programs.

She's a real pill. She's rather see thousands of people get sick and die or suffer permanent sequelae than admit she's WRONG.

They do have a right to a jury trial. Vaccine court decisions can be appealed.

There are no juries involved in the appeals chain. Before Bruesewitz, it was nominally possible to reject the OSM decision and pick back up in state court.

^ Gah. I have to rearrange this mess or give up on blockquotes entirely.

Here’s a “revolutionary” idea: Let the chips fall where they may in the market when it comes to vaccines plaintiffs

FTFY. You're advocating a lottery system, period.

Yeah, it looks like I was wrong on the jury part.

However, vaccine court cases can still be appealed, all the way to the Supremes should one be so inclined.

You’ve obviously never been involved in Civil Litigation….

I imagine that her role as a lawyer for a child-support collection agency with a lousy reputation mostly involves boilerplate.

"or give up on blockquotes entirely"

HTML is not designed for humans. I gave up on manually editing tags in the 90s. Scienceblogs comment system should allow human-friendly editing of text, or perhaps automate it. When you type a link it correctly tags it. That's at least a start. When you get shouty it should convert your text to all upper case. For some commenters it should automagically set the font to Comic Sans.

rs: I don't know about Comic Sans, but I do remember, years ago, that some blog owners (not Orac) would dis-em-vowel trolling commentors as a final warning before banning them altogether.
That was fun because if you worked at it for a bit you could usually figure out what they were saying, even without vowels.

Circling back to the idea of making a database of all the VICP cases, it seems like something that could be automated with a decent scrape and search program.
Sadly that kind of programming is outside of my current ability, but it would be an interesting dataset to investigate. See if there are trends in cases brought by specific lawyers or if there have been changes in rates of specific table injuries.

@JustaTech: PZ Myers used to disemvowel trolls. It was fun, especially figuring out words that could go multiple ways and still make sense.

In new vaccine news, via Mike the Mad Biologist, "Five HIV patients left 'virus-free' with no need for daily drugs in early vaccine trials", here. "n" is pretty small, but here's hoping.

I almost feel sorry for AoA at this point, as it seems that they still haven't figured out that Hooker is so full of crap that he must have fallen into severe constipation as a coping mechanism.

Narad, as an Environmental Health Specialist the idea of swimming in a cesspool while severely constipated strikes me as the height of comedy.

@140 (Narad)

Special Master Hastings noted that the 2011 Amended Petition that Hooker filed in the US Court of Federal Claims alleged that Hooker's son "developed “mercury poisoning” as a result of the MMR vaccination he received on February 25, 1999, and his fourth Hib vaccination, received on May 26, 1999. . . . (Although it is noteworthy that one of those two vaccinations, the MMR, in fact did not contain any mercury.)"

Yes. Really.

Hooker might be hard-pressed to answer this question: If you're neck-deep in a latrine and someone throws a bucket of piss at you, do you duck?

Ty Bollinger, the bodybuilder turned scam artist famous for his "The Truth About Cancer" fake documentary series (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-truth-about-cancer-series-is-untru…) now is airing a new fake documentary, called "The Truth About Vaccines". He's paying for it to be a sponsored and heavily promoted site on Facebook. His followers are cultlike in their devotion - check out one of the comment threads if you feel like vomiting.

The Woo Boat

oracknows — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 07:45:17 +0000

The Woo Boat

File this one under the category: You can't make stuff like this up. (At least, I can't.)

Let's say you're a die hard all-conspiracy conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine believer (a not uncommon combination). You love Alex Jones and Mike Adams and agree with their rants that there is a New World Order trying to suppress your rights. You strongly believe that vaccines not only cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, a shaken baby-like syndrome, autoimmune diseases, sudden ovarian failure, and even outright death but are a depopulation plot hatched by Bill Gates and the Illuminati who support his agenda. Heck, you even believe that black helicopters are keeping an eye on those who have discovered this plot. To you, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are part of the same plot, pure poison and pure evil. And, of course, you just know that there is a cure for cancer—nay, cures for all diseases—out there but those evil pharmaceutical companies are keeping them from the people, the better to bolster their profits, just as they are preventing Brave Maverick Doctors like Andrew Wakefield, Mark Geier, and Sherri Tenpenny from telling the world the truth about vaccines. Heck, you just know that these same nefarious forces are even going so far as to kill vaccine "skeptic" heroes like Jeff Bradstreet (and, of course, make it look like a suicide) and holistic "pioneers" like Nicholas Gonzalez (and make it look like a heart attack).

And you like cruises.

So where do you go when you want to go on a cruise? Normal cruises are filled with people who just want to have a good time and tend to roll their eyes when you regale them with your ideas about how there is a shadowy conspiracy out there that is promoting toxic pharmaceuticals and vaccines and preventing natural cures from being used by the people, while simultaneously promoting GMOs to make people sick so that they think they need more of those pharmaceuticals and vaccines and more pliable so that their New World Order agenda faces less opposition. By the time you get to how they're also using chemtrails as another means of control, AIDS is not caused by HIV, and ebola can be cured with homeopathy, in other words, by the time you've been on the cruise a couple of days, you'll find yourself basically shunned, eating alone at dinner, and drinking alone at the bar. When you sit down at a table, everyone suddenly finds a reason to be elsewhere.

Fear not! There is now a cruise for you. See the Conspira-Sea Cruise next January, embarking in Los Angeles and taking you on a cruise through the Mexican Riviera:

Our "Conspira-Sea Cruise and Seminar-at-Sea" takes place right on our luxury cruise ship during our seven-day cruise, in conference rooms on the ship, and during our port calls in Mexico.

During this incredible, mind-blowing, truth-telling, spiritually enriching event, we will do our best to uncover the truth about things conspiratorial, including:

GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, big pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, flouridation, political corruption, government corruption, forbidden archeology, forbidden religion, Federal Reserve, truth about money, World Bank, IRS, strawman, property title, admiralty law, martial law, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, JFK, cover-ups, September 11, Star Wars agenda, nuclear plants, chemtrails, HAARP, crop circles, IRS, MK-Ultra, Fukashima, NASA, NSA, Bilderbergs, sustainability, military industrial complex, pentagon, Waco, Malaysia 370, Pan Am 103, TWA 800, Gulf Oil Spill, Halliburton, Obama, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Vatican, New World Order, false flags, Montauk, privacy, surveillance, Area 51, Dulce, Project Rainbow, Nazi Bell, Vrill, U.S.S. Eldridge, Iron Mountain, psyops, population mangement, subliminal ads, Nibiru / Planet X, Cointel Pro, technology suppression, entity possession, electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more.

Plus we will explore how to heal ourselves and others, and to attain self-mastery and greater integrity through:

Spirituality, meditation, affirmation, prayer, yoga, manifestation, self-development, holistic health, alternative lifestyles, organic foods, healthy living, wellness, self-sufficiency, prosperity, sustainability, freedom, human rights, discernment, wisdom, awakening, longevity, inner guidance, and inner peace.

The purpose of this cruise is NOT about being a victim of conspiracies. It is about taking back our power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attaining true self-authority, and realizing our genuine Self behind the masks. It is about discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization.

This cruise will not only uncover the lies. It will show us the truth. As we dispell the darkness, and shine the light of wisdom, we enter the true light of consciousness.

When I first saw this link, I really thought that it had to be a joke, a Poe of some sort. There really couldn't be a cruise like this, could there? Then I looked at the company organizing the cruise, Divine Travels, which advertises itself as a "gateway to spirtual adventures," and I had to admit that this Conspira-Sea Cruise is legit and fits right in with Divine Travels' other cruises, which are loaded with woo, such as a tour of Egypt with Cindy Reed, an energy/spiritual healer, a New Age retreat where you can learn "spiritual healing," and more. In this case, Divine Travels has outdone itself. Look at this preliminary speaker list. There are antivaccinationists, such as Andrew Wakefield, who, hilariously is listed as a "Vaccination & Autism Researcher"; Sherry Tenpenny, who is listed accurately as an "Anti-Vaccine Activist"; and Toni Bark, described as a "Vaccination Whistleblower." I know Tenpenny and Wakefield's activities well, but I didn't remember who Toni Bark is. So I Googled her and quickly found her website—and with it, some serious quackery, including homeopathy, something called "lipodissolve," links to quack movies like Gary Null's Silent Epidemic: The Untold Story of Vaccines, and several appearances on The Gary Null Show.

OK, she fits right in, and I did start to remember her when I saw her picture. For some reason, I don't recall ever having blogged about her before.

But, hey, you say. Antivaccine conspiracy theories just aren't my thing. No problem! How about alt-med conspiracy theories. In addition to Toni Bark doing double duty on vaccines and general alt-med craziness, one of my "favorite" quacks (and by "favorite" I mean favorite target of mockery), Robert O. Young, the man who thinks all cancer is due to excess acidity and that his "alkaline diet" will cure cancer and all serious diseases will be there. So will Len Horowitz and Sherry Kane. Horowitz advertises himself as "The King David of Natural Healing" versus "The Goliath of 'Slash, Burn, and Poison' Medicine," while Sherri Kane is a journalist who works with him spreading his message, describing herself as an "investigative journalist, news commentator, psycho-social analyst, and political activist, specializing in uncovering media persuasion and manipulation, conspiracy realities and women’s, children’s, and animal rights issues." Together, they are collaborating on "Healthy World Organization (HWO), the alternative to the corrupt World Health Organization (WHO), HealthyWorldAffiliates.com, and The 528 Love Revolution advancing the power of the "528 hz" frequency of Love and Healing for a Musical Revolution and Spiritual Renaissance with 528Records.com and i528tunes.com."

He's also affiliated Medical Veritas, if you remember that. I sure do, particularly its cancer quackery and HIV/AIDS denialism.

But that's not all! There are (of course!) anti-GMO activists like Jeffery Smith; HIV/AIDS denialsts, such as Robert Strecker; and "holistic healers" like Dale Allen Hoffman and Dr. Dream. But, hey, medicine isn't your conspiracy topic. For you, there are—of course!—a whole bevy of "spiritual teachers." But that's not all. Don't think other woo has been forgotten! Oh, no! There are "paranormal investigators," an "earth advocate" and "global alchemist" (whatever thatmeans) named Laura Eisenhower, and near death experience survivors. There's Nick Begich, conspiracy theorist who believes that HAARP is a form of mind control. If that's not woo-ful enough for you, they even have a chemtrails researcher named Sharon Schloss, a crop circle maven named Patty Greer, and an astrologist named Helen Sewell. Truly, I'm hard pressed to think of a form of quackery, pseudoscience, or paranormal nonsense. Oh, wait. There's no cryptozoology, no Bigfoot maven. Well, it's still early. Maybe they'll find someone.

Of course, there are testimonials from previous Spiritual Travels cruises, such as:

"The panel of speakers was by far the best attribute of the trip. The speakers covered a wide array of topics... everything from Angel wings to the modern Nazi regime. It was all around enlightenment."--D.R.M., Wyoming

"Enlightenment" isn't quite the word I'd use to describe such a cruise.

When it was suggested to me that a skeptic should sign up for this cruise, I pointed out two things that would disqualify me. First, I'd have to waste vacation time. Second, Andrew Wakefield provokes such a visceral response in me that being in his actual physical presence, particularly on a ship, might actually make me physically ill. Come to think of it, the same can be said of Robert O. Young. Also, as people who know me know, although I would certainly be amused by some of these speakers, I am not very good at hiding my contempt for quacks like Wakefield and Young. After all, a skeptic mole would have to be able to avoid getting kicked off the boat!

Still, if there are any intrepid souls willing to do this, maybe a Go Fund Me page would be able to provide the travel and cruise expenses. I'm sure there'd be blogging material for many weeks. Heck, there might even be enough material for a book!

oracknows Fri, 08/14/2015 - 03:45

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

autism

complementary and alternative medicine

Entertainment/culture

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

Vaccine Whistleblower

vaccines

complementary and alternative medicine

Even if a Go Fund Me campaign covered the cost of the cruise, I'd go bankrupt from the alcohol I would need to consume to get through this fustercluck of nonsense.

Talk about crank magnetism. If I thought there were any validity to that long list of conspiracy theories (some of which I'd never heard of--what is "Nazi Bell" supposed to refer to?), I would stay the hell away from that cruise, because I would expect "Them" to wait until the ship sails, and arrange at least one of two things: (1) an unfortunate "accident" at sea or (2) difficulties with the customs and immigration authorities.

Since I am not a conspiracy theorist, I will offer two even better reasons not to go: (1) I don't like package tours (which includes cruises) and (2) I have even less tolerance for fools than Orac does. It would be a question of which idiot would push me far enough over the edge to throw him overboard.

Eric -

No need to be so crude. The trick is to make sure that you have conversations with at least 2 wingnuts at once, and whilst never directly contradicting them, subtly point out how their theories mutually contradict. Also raise the possibility that the cruise itself has been infiltrated by people wishing to discredit [insert cause here].

Within a week you'll have most of the ship to yourself.

because I would expect “Them” to wait until the ship sails, and arrange at least one of two things: (1) an unfortunate “accident” at sea

I thought of that, but didn't want to give the cruise directors any ideas to call off the cruise or make it secret.

Man, I regret not having taken that cruise ship band gig out of college.

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati and this cruise ship is going to be disappeared MH370 style via an exocet missile or the like.

A 'red wedding' of sorts against conspiracy theorists who are getting too close to the truth...

And I see Eric already posted that. Here's what I get for posting in my not-yet-caffeinated-enough mind fog...

Bwahahaha. The Great Andy Wakefield and Sherri Tenpenny reduced to talks aboard a ship full of whackaloons. How apropos. Now in light of the pHARMa/CDC/Gates hit jobs on alternative practitioners, is it wise to put such a notable collection of Truth Tellers and their wise flock together on such a convenient target?

More like the Idio-Sea Cruise.

Snakes on a plane...meh.

How about Measles on a cruise ship instead: http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/rapid-risk-assessmen…

Tenpenny's flogging it

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Join-DrTenpenny-on-a-Cruise-to-Mexic…

I've been on a few cruises...I get the feeling that the paying guests won't have very good rooms available due to all the (cough) celebrities on board. And WTH is the issue with Montauk? Sure, it's on the eastern end of Long Island, which in and of itself is suspicious, (I'm not a LI fan...) but I'd never heard of it being part of a conspiracy...

If I wasn't already going on a cruise next year, I would so be there. Sounds like it'd be great fun.

I wonder if the cruise directors are savvy enough to have a list of names of people not to sell rooms to for this cruise. :-)

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati and this cruise ship is going to be disappeared MH370 style via an exocet missile or the like.

The world should be so lucky.

Given the requirements for traveling on a cruise ship, it would be very difficult (and almost certainly illegal) to travel under a phony name. So--they could easily have a list of us big pharma trolls they don't want on the cruise, but if the cruise is not selling well, the cruise company is going to want to sell to anyone they can. My wife and I once got insanely cheap tickets to go on a themed cruise at the last moment to sell out the empty cabins.

@ Eric Lund, Orac, EBMOD, Science Mom

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati

How comes it was the first thing so many of us thought about?

**read again laundry list of conspiracy theories, most of them being about suspicious deaths**

Never mind :-)

I cannot stop sniggering over this "cruise". I can't believe it's real and not a joke. But it is real. To think of Andy Wakefield in the company of such loons and to think of the conspiracies flying when the diarrhoea outbreak happens is just so funny. Oh how Andy has fallen; I'd be embarrassed for him if I gave a toss.

The seminar organizers haven't booked the entire 3080 passenger Ruby Princess, but appear to have booekd a block of cabins as reservations for the January 24th cruise to Mexico are available from other travel agencies which aren't advertising the seminar.

So while the seminar organizers might have their own 'no-cruise' list of names banned from attending their presentations/events, nothing would prevent anyone from going on the cruise itself and engaging seminar participants in the ship's common areas.

@ Science Mom--cruise ships are adamant about passengers hand-gelling before entering the dining areas. I feel for the staff who will have to deal with these toxinz-fearing, germ-theory-denying loons.

Oh, if ever a ship were primed to sail into the Bermuda Triangle and disappear...

And WTH is the issue with Montauk? Sure, it’s on the eastern end of Long Island, which in and of itself is suspicious, (I’m not a LI fan…) but I’d never heard of it being part of a conspiracy…

Montauk is part of the Hamptons, and of course everybody who is anybody in the financial world is expected to have a summer home in the Hamptons.

I'm also recalling a line from a movie called Deathtrap. One of the male leads, an aging playwright whose latest play has just had a disastrous opening night, is explaining why he didn't get home until after sunrise: "I passed out on the train and symbolically woke up in Montauk--the end of the line!"

Other than that, I got nothing.

Top insolence. Very very funny blog.

I wonder if the nursing staff aboard the ship will be required to treat seasickness with pressure point wrist bands instead of Bonine or promethazine.

Because you know, Big Pharma created sea sickness as a big conspiracy to sell these medications to unwary travelers.

You know, I take back my comment on the Exocet missile scenario. I'd be satisfied if there was a nice little food poisoning outbreak, instead.

Something lingering, as the Lord High Executioner says.

@Eric Lund

"what is “Nazi Bell” supposed to refer to?"

See this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Glocke

I can't wait to learn all about "Fukashima"

Panacea@23

I wonder if the nursing staff aboard the ship will be required to treat seasickness with pressure point wrist bands instead of Bonine or promethazine.

I was thinking the same thing. I have a friend who works as a paramedic on a cruise ship and he said they actually have very nice medical facilities. I feel like there's probably some kind of regulations they need to comply with but who knows, maybe a medical staff of naturopaths and chiropractors is good enough. Heck, they probably don't even need medical staff; you could swing a dead cat and hit an alt-med practitioner just among the guests and speakers.

You have got to be kidding me. I cannot imagine a more terrifying week at sea.

That said, I've taken many cruises and have often thought what an attractive "soft" target a ship with 4000 people aboard would be for conspirators.

According to Princess Cruises, "All of our onboard medical facilities meet or exceed the standards established by the American College of Emergency Physicians. Our onboard medical facilities are staffed by full-time registered doctors and nurses."

I can only image the garbage these poor doctors and nurses will have to put up with.

Another thought- imagine the scene on board if the ship lost power or had a norovirus outbreak.

Norovirus is nasty, by the way. Got it on a cruise in 1994. I wouldn't wish that on an anti-vaxxer.

@ AdamG:

I saw that too!

Actually, might the cruise itself be a form of advertisement/ foot-in-the-door for woo-meisters/ spiritualists/ charlatans to sell future services?**

Let's say you front energy-healing or trance channeling, you can acquaint yourself with potential clients whilst a conspiracy theorist can also get a list of possible website 'insider' members/ store customers/ buyers of forthcoming books - it could be the start of a beautiful relationship. Passengers can socialise with presenters especially the stars of the show. Imagine that! Lunch with Andy and Sherri! Disco night with Toni!

I do find the cruise hilarious and entirely worthy of derision.

I wonder what they're going to eat as many alties/ conspiracies theorists fear standard cuisine: GMOs, non-organic food, meat ((shudder)), dairy, fluoridated, chlorinated water, chlorine, GLUTEN, regular salt, sugar, caffeine, alcohol etc?

There may be many food prohibitions and phobias: how can they ever supply their passengers' special dietary needs? Can you imagine waiters having to listen to this? "What's in that salad- is it organic? Is the chicken free-range? I only want raw milk!"

Aren't food and drink often the focus of cruises?

** currently, a woo-meister is testing out his future spa/ health resort through an independent radio station's fundraising efforts. Estates in Florida and Texas, the later will eventually provide altie treatment we're told.

And WTH is the issue with Montauk?
Well, there's Montauk Monster - a raccoon carcass washed up on the shore that spawned some conspiracy teories due to it's unusual appearance. There's wikipedia article about that.

"How comes it was the first thing so many of us thought about?

**read again laundry list of conspiracy theories, most of them being about suspicious deaths**

Never mind :-)"

Yes, the glaring cognitive dissonance really stands out. Anyone who is truly paranoid enough to believe all of those conspiracies would surely not get within 1000 yards of this ship for fear of a trap.

Did just have another random thought, would make for an awesome prank to dress up the ship to look like a giant black helicopter...

@capnkrunch #27 I can just hear the shouts now as somebody crumples with a heart attack "Is there a homeopath on the ship"

@ Brook:

No no no!
The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper. **

( I wonder if anyone is so brainwashed as to follow this insane, potentially deadly advice?)

** via PRN

Given the gullibility of the conspiracy theorist, it's never too late to plant an interesting conspiracy prior to this ship embarking on it's journey. Imagine you are Big Pharma, Big Government, Monsanto, or [insert group here]. Now, as a member of these groups, what is the easiest way for you "silence" those spreading the "truth". It seriously can't be that hard to plant that seed of a Woo-themed Inglorious Bastards style plot to take down the top who's-who of the conspiracy movement. Seriously, can we get Bristol-Myers Squibb, Monsanto, Nabisco, and American Airlines to sponsor this cruise? Just sit back and wait for the conspiracies to bubble up.

I'm most excited for "Introduction to the Constitution" (parts 1 thru 6).

an examination of the Constitution, Article by Article, and Section by Section, leads any thinking individual to the startling conclusion that most of what our government does is unconstitutional!

It's ok, you can still attend if you don't buy into the whole 'paper money' conspiracy!

The class is valued at $300 or more, however students may attend for only $150, or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver.

@ Science Mom–cruise ships are adamant about passengers hand-gelling before entering the dining areas. I feel for the staff who will have to deal with these toxinz-fearing, germ-theory-denying loons.

But but but...Diseases are good for you and strengthen the immune system. I so want to go, really I do.

All those conspiracies! But didn't they forget alien abduction?

My tarot cards tell me that the stars say there is a Marie Celeste event in the offing, and my palm reader agrees. It'll be the final proof needed to wake up the world to the true nature of UFOs.

PS. Beware the one who calls himself Terry Wogan.

The Montauk Project

@Denice #34:

The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper.

Does the spell require the magnesium to be ignited before or after ingestion?

OK, somebody's got to do it...

"Woo, exciting and new
Come aboard, we're expecting you!
Woo, life's mindless reward,
Let it flow, it backfires on you.
The Woo Boat, soon will be making another run;
Conspiracies promising something for everyone...."

I was wondering how they would handle the contrast of "look the world is a dangerous place and we'll show you that they are all you to get you" with "join us for a nice, relaxing spiritual retreat in off the beautiful coast of Mexico".

All things considered, I think they handled it pretty well in their marketing blurb:

"The purpose of this cruise is NOT about being a victim of conspiracies. It is about taking back our power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attaining true self-authority, and realizing our genuine Self behind the masks. It is about discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization.

This cruise will not only uncover the lies. It will show us the truth. As we dispell the darkness, and shine the light of wisdom, we enter the true light of consciousness.

And we are set free.

ALL are welcome to discover the real truth, together."

Classic marketing, actually. Create a fearful need and a way to relieve it. All at a price of course. I am sure this is all a set up for selling stuff at the seminars and/or in the future.

I'd be curious to monitor the mood during the course of the week. It looks as if the seminars are a mix all throughout so maybe you could lurk in darkness or smile with joy at your discretion.

Side note: While looking at the schedule, one thing stood out as not like the others. And that is Introduction to the Constitution, Part 1 of 6.

One of the most rational documents in all of history...on a ship of fools.

The Montauk thing has to do with Camp Hero. Now it's a state park with hiking trails, but it used to be a fortified coast artillery battery. Supposedly it has something to do with disappearing/reappearing ships, time travel, and secret experiments. There was IIRC something about hauntings as well. The proximity of Plum Island, until recently a level four animal diseases lab also feeds in somehow.

"I was wondering how they would handle the contrast of “look the world is a dangerous place and we’ll show you that they are all you to get you” with “join us for a nice, relaxing spiritual retreat in off the beautiful coast of Mexico”."

Assuming this cruise ever hits international waters, seems that someone with strong entrepreneurial skills and questionable ethics could stand outside the door to the conference room offering Xanax and a paper bag for nominal fee...

@ Rich Woods:

Ha!
No, they're all in capsule form- I forget exact dosages. Probably available at his website store.

Seriously can you imagine a poor; lost, misguided elderly person or their equally lost adult son or daughter, upon experiencing /witnessing symptoms of the aforementioned conditions, ACTUALLY adminsitering the woo to forestall or cancel the MI/ stroke?

What irresponsible self-aggrandisement to offer sh!tful advice like this to unsuspecting people!

Oops. Meant to write "we’ll show you that they are all out to get you”.

EBMOD, substitute some marijuana, Amanita mushrooms and cane toads for the Xanax and I'm sure you could do a banner business (as long as you didn't kill anyone).

It really doesn't surprise me. You have to remember that a cruise line is basically a chain of floating resorts. It's not much different from booking a convention center, but with a bit more exotic cachet. More expensive than booking a convention center in Watertown, South Dakota, but much less expensive than booking a Caribbean resort while still having a certain exotic cachet.

So yeah, it's pretty goofy, but think of it like a mini ComicCon of conspiracy theorists. ;-)

I'm having a problem with the bee colony collapse . Perhaps someone can help. Is there a conspiracy to wipe out honey bees or are the reports of bee colony collapse part of a deeper darker conspiracy? Come to think of it, I suppose it could be both.

There are 76 conspiracies listed here. It's going to be something like a major scientific conference with multiple sessions going all the time. How can one choose between bee colony collapse and false flags if they are on at the same time. And for that matter what is the false flags conspiracy?

The class is valued at $300 or more, however students may attend for only $150, or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver.

The current silver price is $15.22/oz, and my first thought is that I could make a fortune standing at the door, selling 4 oz for, say, $100, saving each fool $50, and me making about $40, but there probably aren't enough of those idiots to pay for the cost of the trip.

@ Denice Walter / Rich Woods

The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper.

Does the spell require the magnesium to be ignited before or after ingestion?

That's that the cayenne pepper is for.
True connoisseurs will go for the nanopepper. That's how you make nanothermite. Much more efficient.
The vitamin C is just here to give it a lemony flavor, really.

It's obvious that there will be no nurses or practicing medical doctors on board. Rather, the spa will be staffed by acupuncturists.

jrkrideau
Big Pharma specifically Bayer is killing the bees.

If you want to believe that.

@ jkrideau

I’m having a problem with the bee colony collapse . Perhaps someone can help.

At a guess, it's because strong suspects in bee colony collapse are pesticides.
I'll let you connect the usual dots up to Big Agro, GMOs and everything else.

In reality, from what I gathered from articles on the Genetic Literacy Project and other places, it may be a bit more complicated than just "chemicals".
Although it wouldn't be a bad idea to look more closely at the interactions between agriculture, apiculture and the use of pesticides (including organic pesticides).

Criteria for return to port from norovirus on-ship infection = more vomiting heads than the ship has heads to vomit into.

Run, run away, its a conspiracy! You are being lured onto a boat that will be sunk by Monsanto's minions.

I really should start reading the other posts before I jump in.

Princess Cruises is offering a special right now: unlimited alcoholic beverages if you book a cabin with a balcony.

I really feel for the other passengers who booked the cruise for a winter break and did not realize they were part of Conspira-Sea!

Yes. Coming so soon on the heels of the Holistic Doctor Murder Conspiracy, it is obvious that this "cruise" is a Pharma plot to eliminate the top practitioners of woo who threaten its financial security (what a coup to be able to dispose of Wakefield and Tenpenny in one fell swoop). Just ..connect...the.....dots.

Maybe they could combine the conspiracy seminars with an onboard Holistic Doctor Murder Mystery, inspired by those popular mystery trains. Wakefield turns up "dead" at the buffet - whodunnit???!?*

*gotta be the MMR.

I suggest we take up a collection and send our esteemed host on this cruise. For one thing, it'll give him enough blogging material for three lifetimes, and for another, it will be interesting to see if he can retain his sanity until the cruise ends. We'll also have to include a pair of Groucho Marx glasses because if they find out he is on board, they'll probably make him walk the plank... Or perhaps have him hanging by the yardarm... If there is a yardarm on cruise ships.

If this nonsense is successful**, can you imagine the economic lure of woo tourism?

Picture if you can
- being led on a pristine, shining path through the mountains until you behold magnificent _Machu Picchu_ where you will stay in a stone hut, be treated by native shamans all whilst the pan pipes flute away and you ingest medicinal mushrooms!

- learn ancient Brythonic self-healing with herbs and distilled elixirs from a Real Druid nearly in the shadow of Stone'enge! Collect berries, nuts and pretty rocks with an authentic high priestess named Fiona! Hook up with someone in the pub!

- climb cliffs alongside the mysterioso Pacific when taking classes in chanting, meditation, spirit-guides-made-simple and hot yoga as you enjoy an organic juice fast and various water treatments in beautiful Big Sur! Lose weight and cares!

** my best guess is that it won't be
-btw- Mikey tried something similar in Ecuador

Look at the rest of the Divine Travels website. There's already quite the market for woo cruises, apparently!

If there is a yardarm on cruise ships.

No, but they have radar masts.

"ALL are welcome to discover the real truth, together."

But I thought they already know the truth. Their problem is that no one else believes them. Than again, there wouldn't be a conspiracy if everyone was in on it.

"Big Pharma specifically Bayer is killing the bees."

The conspiracy is to kill the bees, causing a global agriculture crisis, and discovering that only Bayer has the technology - Pollen-Copters - to artificially pollinate food crops. You can get a Pollen-Copter in any color you want, as long as it's black.

there probably aren’t enough of those idiots to pay for the cost of the trip.

Never underestimate the supply of idiots.

One of the most rational documents in all of history…on a ship of fools.

The Constitution itself is quite rational. I'm willing to bet that this so-called Introduction to the Constitution is not. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists who are into political conspiracies. The whole "birther" conspiracy, for instance (although that's actually been debunked thoroughly enough to have fallen by the wayside). Another example would be the notion that county sheriffs are the law (this would be problematic in Alaska, which has never had county government or the equivalent, and Connecticut, which got rid of county government in the 1960s) and the feds have no basis for enforcing federal law--at least one current state governor, Paul LePage of Maine, is known to have bought into that one (his AG has, at least for now, persuaded him otherwise). Then you have the yahoos who think the amendment allowing income tax was not validly adopted (courts have taken a dim view of such arguments), and the maniacs who are in love with their guns. I expect this so-called "Introduction to the Constitution" to be on board with most if not all of these positions.

There are legitimate, fact-based reasons for thinking that the US government is doing things that are constitutionally dubious. But I don't expect there to be more than coincidental overlap with the viewpoints that will be espoused in this seminar.

And while I'm on the subject of political conspiracies, Talking Points Memo reports that a(nother) GOP presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, has come out against vaccine mandates. According to links therein, several other GOP candidates are also on record opposing vaccine mandates, and all of the candidates who have so stated have done so since the Disneyland measles outbreak earlier this year.

So, how about we try to block buy a section of the ship for a skeptics cruise? Seriously, if I was independently wealthy, I would totally do that for the fun of being able to create those easel stand things that promoted lectures like "The truth behind vaccines" to lure them unsuspectingly into lectures that present them with the stuff they so badly do not want to hear. Also I would do subtle things to mess with them like have a meeting sign outside a conference room that had the illuminati eye/pyramid on it and said "steering group meeting". It would be truly joyful.

I'll go. Just as soon as I've figured out how to do that thing the James Bond baddy did when he fiddled the ships coordinates so they didn't know thaty they were in enemy waters. Wonder if the fund would stretch to a stealth submarine?

Of course, Bayer's Imidacloprid is only toxic in bees at level of exposure about 20-fold what could realistically be achieved by use of the compound as an agricultural insecticide. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118748)

But the conspiracy theory types liable to pay for the cruise have probablynever heard of the fundamental principle of toxicology "The dose makes the poison).

# Roger & Heliantus

Oh, of course! How could I be so stupid. Monsanto is in the list as well as Bayer.. Okay, so it is a conspiracy to kill bees not to cover it up? Or is AgCanada and/or the USDA also doing a coverup?

We have been hearing a lot about neonicinoids as a major danger to bee colonies around here but there seem to be other problems. A friend's father lost 50% of his hives two winters ago but that was partly due to a hard winter.

Ooh, I really really hope that the only remedy taken aboard for treating seasickness is homeopathic ... At least there should be a plentiful supply of shaken water on a ship ...
Come to think of it, how would they make a homeopathic seasickness remedy? Just dilute shaken water, as the ship's motion is the cause? Or would they have someone with seasickness heave in a beaker, and dilute that to infinity? At least we can be pretty sure that the stuff will *cause* the symptoms in higher concentrations ...

Anyway, thanks for this hilarious blog entry, and for all the other comments -- nothing can wipe this grin off my face for hours to come!

Many of those conspiracies are mutually contradictory like matter and antimatter. Concentrated contradictory ideas like this may very well react the same way, and the ship will either disappear with a bang, or rip open the space-time continuum and never be seen again (least not this century).

Even if a Go Fund Me campaign covered the cost of the cruise, I’d go bankrupt from the alcohol I would need to consume to get through this fustercluck of nonsense.

Just use a credit card. By the time the bill comes due your liver will have gone to the big body cavity in the sky.

The cruise is less crank caserole, and more crank smorgasbord. In the manner of trade conferences, there are parallel sessions so cruisers will likely follow their own fave CT(s) through the sessions. They might not all get along at dinner either. 'Why are you sheeple worried about Monsanto? Don't you realize GMOs are just a false flag designed to distract you from the alien shape-shifters walking amongst us right now!'

[Yes, Rich Woods, the cruise will offer a session on shape-shifters, by speaker Rosemary Ellen Guiley, identified as a board member "of the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters, a scientific organization to educate, support and research the field of ET and entity contact and abduction experiences."]

And, indeed, the 'star' of the cruise – getting a whopping six sessions, is 'Introduction to the Constitution' presenter Michael Badnarik.

Michael Badnarik is a philosopher, author, and constitutional scholar. He is a political activist and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for President of the United States in 2004. He now devotes his time to "Lighting the fires of Liberty" by lecturing, and teaching an eight-hour class on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. He is also available to speak to community groups on a variety of subjects related to private property and individual rights. He is the teacher you always wish you had. Michael will be available to sell and autograph books, as well as answer questions about the Constitution, and the possible civil war our country now faces.

Fit's right in. Might be a phony, though, if he takes silver. Gold, man, it's gotta be gold.

One of the most rational documents in all of history…

[cough, cough, ahem] slavery [ahem, cough, cough]
Fie! The electoral college makes no rational sense at all!

A chance to attend seminars by a former Libertarian candidate for president? it's tempting to go, just to see if he can answer any of the questions delysid proved so utterly incapable of addressing.

Roger Kulp @ 38 - That link is quite the dive into the deep end of interlocking and cross-pollinating conspiracy theories. It contacts all the other crap and through crank magnetism starts to form a informational black hole. Easy to see how one might immerse oneself and get lost.

Rational Wiki has a thrilling article on the Montauk conspiracy. Best bit:

Nikola Tesla, whose death was faked in a conspiracy, was the chief director of operations at the base (which, if they started in the 80s, would make him 120+).

"By the time the bill comes due your liver will have gone to the big body cavity in the sky."

I'm sure they have liver-detoxifying foot baths.

Erik Lund at 67:

a(nother) GOP presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, has come out against vaccine mandates.

It looks like it is more complicated. Matthew Herper's on the case:

.....This is not usually the decision of the local school district – making it so would be a politically conservative support of local government – but of state law. But all the much-publicized California law to force vaccinations does is remove exemptions that allowed children to attend public school without getting their shots if their parents had a religious or philosophical justification for not vaccinating. Nobody is going around vaccinating children at gunpoint. So that would actually mean that Fiorina is for strengthening vaccine laws, but is cleverly making it seem as if she is against doing so.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/08/14/carly-fiorina-is-a…

on a ship of fools.

"The allegory depicts a vessel without a pilot, populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, and seemingly ignorant of their course."

Actually the fools in Brant's Narrenshiff seem to be enjoying themselves:
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/gutenb/brant/narrens/bilder/0004.jpg
I would sign up for a Ship-of-Fools Cruise.

Come aboard, we’re expecting you

The ominousness of this line was the first thing that I thought of.

Are the people worried about "flouridation" anti-gluten activists or paleo dieters?

The cruise is less crank caserole, and more crank smorgasbord. In the manner of trade conferences,

A Conspiracy Cafetaria.
The list of catered conspiracies -- presented as a range of alternative realities, all equally valid and equally plausible -- It's like, how much more post-modern could this be? and the answer is none. None more post-modern.

"Belief" in these theories does not seem to be the objective. Rather, they are ideas to play with. For entertainment purposes only . With Andy Wakefield reduced to employment as a cruise-ship entertainer.

They left out depleted uranium!

They even left out any mention of Freemasons!

That said, I’ve taken many cruises and have often thought what an attractive “soft” target a ship with 4000 people aboard would be for conspirators.

One might recall that Richard Lester's Juggernaut is the locus classicus for the red wire/blue wire dilemma.

Do they have wifi on board? If so, sign me up! I'll be your spy.

I volunteer as tribute.

That's going to be one busy seven days. I counted 99 different subjects (why wasn't it an even 100? what do two nines mean? numerologist, please!) with the promise of much, much more.

The music should be good: a whole crew of HAARPs, Skull & Bones is undoubtedly Jerry Garcia's Band From Beyond, and I assume the Bohemian Grove is where one goes to sing a Rhapsody.

Are there any side trips offered? Perhaps a three-hour tour?

I wonder if any of these folk have read, "The Marching Morons" and wondered why this ship of woos is set to sail (er, steam)?

#75 [cough, cough, ahem] slavery [ahem, cough, cough]
Fie! The electoral college makes no rational sense at all!

Ah, sadmar, the Constitution holds a special place in my heart so I felt a need to respond. But not me specifically as I am not that bright. Although I knew there were compromises made in the writing/adoption of the document, I could not provide a cogent reply. Therefore, here is one from a JD with a special interest in constitutional law. He graduated from an Ivy League law school so, even though lawyers are worse than scientists in their level of disagreements, I hope you don't proceed to write him off as not knowing what he is talking about.

"1. Slavery was lawful and common throughout the world in the 18th Century. There's nothing inherently *irrational* about slavery. His objection is one based on morality, and thus impertinent to your point.

2. The electoral college is not at all irrational. It, like other aspects of our system (e.g., the Senate), provide a slight countermajoritarian balance so that the least populous states are not ignored and are assured at least a reasonable minimum amount of influence in the political process. Small states would have little incentive to join the Union otherwise."

Feel free to respond but I don't plan to continue on this subject or on going back to the lawyer. He wasn't interested in entering this discussion, and even though he was kind enough to reply to me once, I have no intention of intruding upon him again.

substitute some marijuana, Amanita mushrooms and cane toads for the Xanax

Not sure if Amanitas would work so well as a substitute for Xanax, or as an anxiolytic at all; the effects are quite radically different, or so a friend tells me.

With Andy Wakefield reduced to employment as a cruise-ship entertainer.

Somewhat similar was mentioned upthread. I am sure it has to gall him that this is where he ended up.

But I'd guess the money is a balm to his shattered ego.

Charlotte @69

Or maybe navigate the ship off course into The Bermuda Triangle.

Samar @75
Of course.It's all about selling book$,DVD$,etc,or in Andy's case,booking future speaking engagements.Conspiracy mongers gotta earn a living too,you know.

Of course it's a conspiracy, but on whose part?

Maybe Wakefield, Tenpenny, Bark, Young, etc., wanted a cruise holiday for free.

They conspired for their marks to pay $1279 for an interior room on the "Conspira-Sea Cruise." A normal cruise-goer will pay $579 for the same cruise.

To me, that means a $700 donation straight to the woo-meisters. Conspiracy?

^A ship full of woo-meisters dosed with Amanita Muscaria would be doubly entertaining, though. Or hellish, I suppose.

The woowoo ship is being filled
A thousand jeers, a thousand fears
A million ways to spend your dime
When we get back, I'll drop a line
- with apologies to The Doors

JP, someone who isn't you tried that!?! I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I've never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of if you are seeing psychedelic trails then you'd be less concerned with ChemTrails.

However, I think you are on to something with the "hellish" speculation. What if their trip lead to the invention of yet another, even weirder, conspiracy theory?

No, no, no.

Unless of course they provide me with a cut of the profits from all woo sold under same theory.

Or maybe navigate the ship off course into The Bermuda Triangle.

Someone might notice the passage through the Panama Canal.

I don't want to wish norovirus on anyone, but part of me would love to see Robert O Young trying to cure it via "alkalinizing."

I had a case over the Christmas holiday a few years ago. There was a bit of an outbreak at the time, and one of the papers quoted an infectious-disease doc who put it as succinctly and accurately as possible. "It is characterized by the violent expulsion of fluids from the body."

AdamG, this is happening next Tuesday, plus she has a new paper.

Chris, that paper is a crock. I'll be there with references in hand...

– with apologies to The Doors

Consider the kind of believers one would meet on a Crystal Ship cruise. Let us not go there.

AdamG, woot!

JP, someone who isn’t you tried that!?

No, it actually was a friend, back in college; the fly agaric was not terribly hard to come by, considering we lived on the border of a North American rainforest. Not as popular as cubensis, though, and really a rougher ride, as I understand it.

Interestingly, Amanita muscaria and Xanax both act on the GABA system, though, but with very different results.

I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

You never know until you try it, I suppose, but IMHO they're the most interesting of the "recreational" drugs. If the idea of them freaks you out, though, probably best to leave it alone.

{Deisher] has a new paper.
Ah, I see that Dr Deisher has progressed from publishing in mockademic journal-shaped scamjournals from predatory publishers, to "Issues in Law and Medicine"
“Issues in Law and Medicine” [...] on close attention turns out to be a nozzle through which the “National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled Inc” squeezes out an unprocessed stream of anti-abortion, anti-contraception theocratic bullsh1t .
Even the bloggers at 'Rational Catholic' are pointing at her and laughing.

@ jrkrideau:

Some alties say that GMOs kill the bees.

*false flags* are when the ( evil, corrupt, gottverdammte) government uses ops to deliberately create a mass shooting, 'terrorist' attack, bombing strike or other mayhem in order the frighten the sh...people into believing that they need surveillance or suchlike. Then you take their guns and their Freedom.

You need to read more Mikey.
-

Ha ha! Orac!
Divine Travels indeed!**

So a Peruvian Indian dude takes you to visit *muy mysterioso* sites in the Andes! For 2 weeks?

I suppose some people have very bland lives and need faery tales rather than learning and experiencing reality.

I would visit those places to see art, architecture, nature, history, an interesting culture and living people.
-btw- a university friend photographed Inca ruins there so I've seen her visions

** but I got 404s for the price list

A question to anyone:
what do you suppose the presenters are being paid?

I imagine that the room and food are included but beyond that?

Denice,

Maybe they follow, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it?

Seriously though, I would love to go to places like that too.

I looked into volunteer digs and internships years ago but that was still outside my budget so I didn't persue it.

I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

You never know until you try it, I suppose, but IMHO they’re the most interesting of the “recreational” drugs.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

They conspired for their marks to pay $1279 for an interior room on the “Conspira-Sea Cruise.” A normal cruise-goer will pay $579 for the same cruise.

And fares for this kind of trip are normally quoted per person, double occupancy, so that's $1400 if you bring the spouse/SO/mistress along, as most would.

Not all of that $1400 goes straight into the woo-meister's pockets. Presumably, Divine Travels gets a cut for marketing and conference logistics. The actual owners of the ship probably get paid for room rental (though this fee is probably less than for comparable facilities on land). Meals are usually included in the cost of the cruise, and the sort of food that woo-prone types like to eat tends to cost more (often, a lot more) than the stuff on your supermarket shelves or offered by typical restaurant supply warehouses. But yes, a big chunk of that is going into the pockets of Wakefield, Tenpenny, et al.

I really really hope that the only remedy taken aboard for treating seasickness is homeopathic

Given that homeopathic remedies are often mostly if not entirely water, taking them in large quantities for some shipboard maladies is actually a medically viable if expensive plan. Dehydration is a major issue with many food-borne illnesses. Of course, it's just as effective and much cheaper to drink water that isn't claimed to have a fraction of a molecule of some specific ingredient. And the people who sell the homeopathic remedies would obviously prefer that the cruise attendees not catch on to this particular conspiracy.

"Someone might notice the passage through the Panama Canal."

Not to worry. They'll dismiss the evidence and insist they're still in the Pacific.

Denice #109,

I obviously don't know how things work in the altie world, but at similar type events and conventions where there is a captive audience of potential customers, the speakers actually pay to appear, as this is considered advertising. To a very motivated and affluent audience.

I imagine the "A" list speakers like Wakefield are being paid, as they are the bait used to attract suckers, but many of the lesser lights on the cruise who have books, services or products to sell may not be paid or are in fact paying to speak. I'm sure they use the seven days of exposure with alt customers to drum up business everywhere: around the pool (oh no! chlorinated water!), etc.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

(In a way, this reminds me of the cruises scientology runs on their rusty barge The Freewinds. Constant pressure to buy, upgrade, donate and spend money on scientology.)

Not a Troll,

JP, someone who isn’t you tried that!?! I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

I was given some fly agaric mushrooms a few decades ago by some friends who were too afraid to try it themselves - they found them in Thetford Forest in Norfolk UK IIRC. I had a copy of Stafford's 'Psychedelic Encyclopedia' which suggested roasting or otherwise drying to convert the various chemicals to their psychoactive forms, so I stuck them in a low oven until dry. A small amount I smoked, just to see what happened (not a lot), and the rest I made into a tea, which was surprisingly delicious.

I remember a mildly altered state of consciousness, and I even collected my urine to recycle the drug, but lost my nerve, as repeating the mildly altered stated did not seem worth the effort of overcoming my psychological aversion to urine-drinking, and I was afraid of attracting unwelcome herds of reindeer. I concluded that a larger dose might be interesting but lost my interest in such matters and developed a stronger sense of self-preservation before I had the opportunity - dried fly agaric mushrooms are easily available on the internet these days as 'incense' (wink wink).

Andrija Puharich described giving some fly agaric mushrooms to a chap who remembered incarnations as an Egyptian Priest. He went into a parallel reality that sounds like a dissociative belladonna alkaloid or ketamine trip. Puharich also claimed that Uri Geller teleported a car and its occupants several hundred miles so take what he wrote with as large a pinch of salt as you think appropriate.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

F*ck if I know, it's not really my bag, but the Gazoogle seems to suggest that is one, although not of the "classic" serotonergic variety. "Psychedelic" doesn't really seem to be a pharmacological category, anyway.

@ Woo Fighter:

Sure.
I notice that Bark's website ( for her offices in Illinois) lists various woo-tinged ( testing, nutrition) and aesthetic services ( mesotherapy, skin care, vibration-based exercise) and products. She caters to a ( probably) well-to-do, worried-well, fearful of aging set,
So do high-end hair salons/ spas.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

No first-hand experience, but my second-hand impression is that A. muscaria is more of an inebriant -- a dissociating / euphoric drug.
I was harvesting porcini last August and ran into a colourfully-dressed young man who was wandering around under the same trees, and who turned out to be harvesting the fly agarics. Once we had established that we occupied different, non-competing mycophiliac niches, we had a chat. He preferred it to EtOH because the effects were more dissociating. Personally I stick with the alcohol, it is CULTURAL HERITAGE.

FWIW, fly agaric can be detoxified by simmering in salted water (because the muscimol is water-soluble) -- see the Appendix here:
http://www.davidarora.com/uploads/muscaria_revised.pdf

A cruise! Ahhh – so romantic. And the lysdexic pianist at the all-night bar tinkling the keys late into the night: 'Moo, moo, moo – hic – what a little woo-light can do.'

No first-hand experience, but my second-hand impression is that A. muscaria is more of an inebriant — a dissociating / euphoric drug.

My buddy described the experience as being significantly "speedy," which seems odd, but I suppose, say, alcohol feels pretty stimulating at certain doses also.

I’ve never felt psychedelics hallucinogenics and I would mix well.

Narad, I think I fixed it for you. I'm not exactly sure what Muscimol's classification is. There seem to be raging debates over this in the drug (ab)use forums and in the following paper, I'm not sure exactly what I've learned from it:

http://www.neurosoup.com/entheogens/hallucinogens_Halpern.pdf.

JP, no issues. I am the one who used the term not you. I tend toward the vernacular because it's all I've got, but Narad is cool to call me out when I'm incorrect. Even though impaired one should always try to be the best one can be. And if I miss the mark, I've just learned to accept looking like an a$$ sometimes.

Thanks for the info on the GABA receptors. I was on baclofen for a bit for suspected PLMD after a sleep study showed arousals not tied to breathing events. (My guess is that they were caused by silent reflux but they don't test for that around here so they picked up on a few leg movements to treat.) It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Anyway, yeah, I'm the type who doesn't like to lose control of my own mind/body so all of the psychotropics are generally out. I don't know if this impacts the experience with hallucinogens / dissociatives / psychedelics or not but I've never been willing to take that chance.

I've certainly have had plenty of chances. One of my Job Corps Centermates went to jail for a year for selling LSD. However, it took them years to catch her. I hope she is well; over the years I lost touch with her. But last I knew she was married to a physician and living a normal life.

Speaking of which, Krebiozen, your comment had me laughing out loud. And, I think that you've confirmed that I made the right decision in avoiding them.

^ Interesting. The strikethrough of the word "psychedelics" in my first (italicized) sentence failed. Not sure why and too tired to research. I hope it makes sense.

I wanna go for the forbidden archeology. Also Vrill. And Nibiru / Planet X.

Interesting. The strikethrough of the word “psychedelics” in my first (italicized) sentence failed. Not sure why and too tired to research. I hope it makes sense.

Round about these parts, ya gotta use the "del" tag.

Thanks for the info on the GABA receptors. I was on baclofen for a bit for suspected PLMD after a sleep study showed arousals not tied to breathing events. (My guess is that they were caused by silent reflux but they don’t test for that around here so they picked up on a few leg movements to treat.) It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Yeah, I've heard the withdrawals can be both awful and interminable. Similarly, regular use of benzos (like Xanax) can cause similar dependence with (possible life-threatening) withdrawal upon cessation. I haven't been offered even a small script for a benzodiazepene by my current psychiatrist, despite anxiety levels which were formerly through the roof (now slightly better), but I suspect this is a good thing, even though/because I would really like them a lot, I think. A high (200 mg) dose of sertraline is supposed to be a pretty effective anxiolytic in the long run, in any case.

I suspect there is some sort of genetic ineffectiveness to the GABAnergic system that I've inherited from my dad's side of the family; interestingly, everyone whom I've surveyed on that side of the family expressed a strong preference for alcohol over, say, marijuana. Indeed, the proclivity has in several instances been a problem.

Woo – nothing valid or new
Come aboard, we’re infecting you!
And WOO, snake oil merchants’ sweetest reward
Let it flow, like homeopathy turds, floating back to you!

“Psychedelic” doesn’t really seem to be a pharmacological category, anyway.

Oh, come on.

It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Leon Gussow is always worth checking out. The two final items here I've found to be quite interesting.

Puharich also claimed that Uri Geller teleported a car and its occupants several hundred miles so take what he wrote with as large a pinch of salt as you think appropriate.

"Ling-Ling was on close terms with Tim at the time, but disavowed any intent to perpetuate the relationship when I inquired. Her reason for being at Millbrook, aside from screwing around and getting stoned, was to advance the cause of a tiny device, contents unknown, which, when attached to any bone of the head, would unfailingly permit the deaf, even those devoid from birth of any auditory nerve, to hear with perfect clarity. This miracle was said by her to have been invented by Puharich and was in his possession."

testing, testing: if you put your passwords between two del tags it will show on screen as blocks

@NaT:

I tend toward the vernacular because it’s all I’ve got, but Narad is cool to call me out when I’m incorrect.

I wasn't, and I apologize for giving you that idea. It was just idle riffing while I was catching up with the thread.

I had to restrain myself from a dive into the GABA binding sites as a way to repress the existence of my need to do the freaking dishes. It's a subject that I was quite interested in for a while, and following things down remains a temptation.

I had to restrain myself from a dive into the GABA binding sites as a way to repress the existence of my need to do the freaking dishes. It’s a subject that I was quite interested in for a while, and following things down remains a temptation.

There have been times in my life - and this is one - when I have considered whether just throwing the dishes out and getting new ones would be the wiser course of action, especially considering they are all mismatched things I've picked up at yard sales, etc.

My friend Sarah used to have a sign above her sink that read "Мыть или не мыть? Это не вопрос! Мыть, и сразу!" Which is to say: "To wash or not to wash? There's no question! Wash, and right away!" (The words for "to wash" and "to be" rhyme in Russian.)

This would be a good approach to take myself, but it doesn't help that I have a chronic sink-being-clogged problem.

Which is to say: “To wash or not to wash? There’s no question! Wash, and right away!” (The words for “to wash” and “to be” rhyme in Russian.)

Per the usual. (It's a longer story, but... utensils.)

If we're going to GoFund somebody, maybe Banachek can reprise his Project Alpha role.

But I’d guess the money is a balm to his shattered ego.

I can also imagine that a sufficiently deep contempt for the audience who has paid one to entertain them goes a long way towards maintaining one's amour-propre.

“To wash or not to wash? There’s no question!"
My Russian colleague Galina sent me a birthday card with the message "To beer or not to beer? That is a silly question."

@ Narad, #133
Is there still anyone remembering the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?

re dishes and sinks:( although cooking is not my be-all and end- all cause in life)

I never leave dirty dishes in the sink**. That is forbidden.

HOWEVER I have solved the nagging dilemma of either having accumulations or being engaged in perpetual washing-
by only washing the 'serious' dishes/ utensils - i.e. those you absolutely need to cook and serve particular foods.

Everything else is disposable: paper plates, plastic containers from other products, etc. If a pot or pot is too hard to maintain, it is tossed . I also use frozen foods often.

** it's messy plus the cat likes the sink too much.

Whether or not speakers/celebrities taking part in cruises get well-compensated, there are definite hazards to the job.

We have touched on the mysterious disappearance angle, but this is a very real phenomenon on cruise ships.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2040248/Why-165-people-gone-m…

Cruise ships also break down and/or are halted by bad weather. The Ohio State football coach found this out when he got stuck on a ship with a horde of fanatical football fans:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/02/urban-meyer-cruise-ship-2500-ohio-state…

Just imagine poor Andy Wakefield, marooned on the Ruby Princess while the crew frantically works to restart the engines and keep a bunch of conspiracy-theorizing woo-sters from going into full-blown panic...

# 91 Not a Troll
Those of us who are not US citizens have tendency to contrast the revolutionaries' Declaration of Independence with its ringing words We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness with the US Constitution which seems to have omitted this concept

# 107 Denice Walter
Oh clearly my suspicious mind could not handle something that simple. :( False flags showed up when I was reading the Hornblower novels as a teenager. I thought it had to be something much more nefarious.

What me paranoid?

@ jrkrideau:

Oh it's simple alright- created by the simple minded for simpletons. No wonder they've found each other.

Oddly enough, today Mikey ( Natural News) recounts and interprets his vivid dream about a false flag attack,

What a psychologist might interpret instead is that Mike makes up elaborate stories presented as somehow prophetic in order to push his agenda of frightening and then, controlling, how other people think to his own benefit.

"Some alties say that GMOs kill the bees."

No, but GMO agriculture practices are contributing to the bees' decline. The bees depend on various 'weeds' being part of their habitat. They don't do well with only large areas of monocropped plants. IIRC, it has nothing to do with the GMO crops themselves, but the Roundup-resistant crops let the farms dump the glysophate more indiscriminately, killing off more non-crop plants over a wider area.

But, again IIRC, that's only one part of the larger picture of bee habitat disappearing. Land is being cleared for other uses, and folks other than GMO farms are using more herbicides.

And the habitat problem is separate from the issues with neonicotinoids. The independent research published so far suggests a strong link between neonicotinoids and Bee Colony Collapse, and Bayer did suck the FDA into approving them by use of a commisioned study that proved to be, uhh, riigged.

Conspiracy theories articulate discontents about real things via metaphoric projection onto other things. Sometimes, they just make stuff up, but other times they twist real problems to meet their fantasy melodramas. Just because a conspiracy theoriat rants about something, that doesn't mean it's not an actual and important issue. The conspiracy fan is likely to have some facts wrong, but others right. And the conclusions drawn are likely wacko, since again, e.g. the CTs aren't really interested in the bees, but in how the bees can serve as a symbol for Something Else.

Fwiw, the leading bee scientist in the U.S., Marla Spivak, has only advocated restrictions on neonicotinoids, not a ban. Among other things, within market realities, she doesn't expect farmers to go without insecticides, and she worries that replacements for neonicotinoids could be even more toxic to the bees. But as 'the dose makes the poison' she does think the present doses of neonicotinoids are way too high: “Do we have to use them on everything all the time?”

@ sadmar:

You're right- I should have been more clear.

Unfortunately, I've heard that pesticides are the problem ( therefore, " Go organic!") GMOs contribute ( therefore, " Go organic!) and hey, EM radiation and cell phone towers are RUINING everything ( therefore, " Go back to the 19th century"). I'm not joking.

@hdb #84

Any sort of Concept Cafetaria is mutil-session seminar format is quintessentially modern, not pomo. The thing is, WE may recognize the menu of this event as filled with incommensurable alternate realtiies, but the hosts and attendees don't necessarily see it that way. To the contrary, since the schedule includes several sessions where all the speakers appear together, the organizers appear to think all these folks can talk to one another, and appear to modeling some kind of unified movement against 'them', and nothing could be more modern than that.

What is unquestionably pomo is that this occurring on a sea cruise with a name so silly it could be from The Onion. Whether anyone involved has an "objective belief" in any of these theories is irrelevant. As part of a getaway-vacation-package, 'play with' and 'entertainment' values may not be the ONLY purposes present, but they dominate and dwarf any pragmatic agendas.

And, since pomo culture rules, Andy Wakefield being employed as a cruise-ship entertainer, isn't being "reduced", it's moving up the ladder from making YouTube videos., validating his status as the C-list entertainer he's always been.

In among all the lunacies is "Cointel Pro", which was actually real. It was the FBI's name for a project to infiltrate and disrupt left-wing political groups in the late 60s and early 70s, and was a major subject of the Church committee investigations later in the 1970s if I recall.

In 1971 a group of Philadelphia peace activistst broke into an FBI field office in Media, PA, and stole al lthe files in the dead of night. They sent all the hinky stuff to newspapers, and cointelpro was discovered a little while later by an investigative reporter going through the trove of documents. It proved to be very exstensive, and utterly extra-legal. The peace activists were never caught, and no one breathed a word about it until one of the conspirators spilled the beans over 40 years after the fact! There's an excellent NYT video about it all.

Just imagine poor Andy Wakefield, marooned on the Ruby Princess while the crew frantically works to restart the engines and keep a bunch of conspiracy-theorizing woo-sters from going into full-blown panic.

I've been imagining them ending up stranded on a desert isle ... either due to rough weather setting in or the other passengers, tired of being lectured about evil vaccines and other woo, tossing them overboard.

They'd finally be free of the tyranny of Big Pharma and similar evil entities and able to put their "natural living" and, for some, libertarian beliefs to the test.

Sort of a Gilligan's Island meets Lord of the Flies meets Survivor type of thing.

I'm sure much hilarity would ensue.

@ Denice #143

Oh, I know you're not joking, and it can get worse than what you mentioned.

That's one reason the movement-woo anti-s upset me so much: they such up all the oxygen in the room around real issues, and send critiques that need to be made off in the wrong direction. I'm convinced GMO foods are safe to eat. I'm also pretty well convinced that Monsanto develops and deploys their safe and potentially beneficial products in ways that cause great economic and cultural harm to indigenous people, and push Big Agra deeper into land-use practices that have negative long-term consequences for both the ecology and the agricultural economy – which have nothing to do with GMos per se; the new tech just adds more grease to the skids already in place.

Alas, there's so much noise about 'GMO POISON!' the legitimate critiques barely get heard, and the discourse has become so polarized that anyone who says anything critical about Monsanto or the land use issues exacerbated by GMO development and production automatically gets lumped in with the crazies and dismissed...

One source of potential strife on the Conspira-Sea Cruise looms on the seminar calendar for January 26.

There's a scheduled discussion on autism and what causes it (the choices are vaccines and GMOs), with panel discussion leaders Andy Wakefield, Sherry Tenpenny and Jeffery Smith (the GMO-phobe). What happens when the first two jump on vaccines and Smith insists it's the GMOs? Will a food fight break out as audience members join the fray?*

*I've learned not to underestimate the potential for violence at actual professional conferences. I was at one just last month and an audience member repeatedly interrupted the speaker with disagreements on the topic at hand. The speaker finally had enough, got down off the podium, into the heckler's face and a shouting match ensued (the moderator finally pulled the speaker away). It was the most entertaining moment of the entire conference. If I'd been faster I could have had a cellphone video which surely would've gone viral on YouTube.

@ Dangerous Bacon:

I'd love to see that video!

-btw- there seems to be yet another causative factor being hooted ( most recently at the Autism One's 'recovery panel') amongst the TMs : antibiotics caused their child's autism- one of them - the so-called *Prof*, Zoey O'Toole, claims that her son had no vaccines.

NaT #91:

The coughs and "Fie"! we're meant to indicate a lighthearted, comic, theatrical jibe. I also intended a joke, by citing the more trivial Electoral College issue directly while 'repressing' the slavery question 'off mic'. In short, I was just having a bit of fun, and meant no all-encompassing dis on the Constitution, just "don't go too far overboard there, OK?"

But since you've brought your Ivy League JD (Junior D-bag?) into the mix, I shall feel free to respond, though I'm chill with you staying out of it, and would advise you NOT to solicit further opinion form this lawyer.

1. Slavery was lawful and common throughout the world in the 18th Century. There’s nothing inherently *irrational* about slavery. His objection is one based on morality, and thus impertinent to your point.

If this fool didn't come with Ivy League authority, I might consider it beneath me to rebut someone who attempts to puff up an air or erudition in a condescending put-down, but misusing 'impertinent' instead of 'irrelevant.' But...
1. Argumentum ad populum. Authoritarian theocracy: common in the 18th century = RATIONAL!
2. Defining rationality as exclusive of anything that could come under the heading of morality just auto-Godwin's itself.
3. Putz has no clue what my objection to slavery is based on. Talk about Dunning-Kruger.

2. The electoral college is not at all irrational. It, like other aspects of our system (e.g., the Senate), provide a slight countermajoritarian balance so that the least populous states are not ignored and are assured at least a reasonable minimum amount of influence in the political process. Small states would have little incentive to join the Union otherwise.

Cute tense confusion: I wasn't aware The U.S is encouraging small territories to become states these days. Oh, he meant 'would have had little incentive. Well, besides being false (military protection, interstate trade, etc etc. weren't "little": see 'War of 1812'), his lead sentence says – minus the double negative – claims the Electoral College IS rational. Which:
1. Takes him out of the Constitution as written by the framers, which did not allow for a popular vote for President.
2. Ignores the fact that at present, the counter-majoritarian effect of the EC is anything but slight, and the influence of small states is so far above a 'reasonable minimum' that Congress is a bad joke in terms of democratic representation. (Oh yeah, "slight balance" = grammar fail #3).
_______

For a contrarian take on the view of the Constitution as 'great document of liberty!', check out Charles Beard.

Suzanne @58 that was my first thought, too - how sorry I felt for the average Joes whose long-saved-for splurge of a cruise happened to coincide with the boat full of lunatics. Though if the loons are in seminars the whole time, then there are fewer folks using the usual amenities like deck chairs and swimming pools, so it might be a win!

re: Norovirus, I wouldn't wish that misery on anyone. Well, OK, maybe Wakefield.

If rumors of plots to infect everyone on the cruise with measles, ebola, Salmonella, or a new GMO microbe, that would start a conspiracy panic and most conspirators would be too paranoid to want to go on the cruise!

This is beginning to sound like what is taught in emergency planning classes as the 'Zombies on Air Force One' scenario.

Someone has to write a scenario for a disaster exercise and starts with terrorists on a cruise boat. But that won't exercise all of the target capabilities so they add a disease outbreak. Then a busload of Girls Scouts, then zombies, then Air Force One, etc.

On the other hand, bad things often come in multiples (think Fukushima). I met an employee of the county health department for Ferguson, MO at a conference. While the riots were going on they had a major food-poisoning outbreak and all of their servers crashed.

And, indeed, the ‘star’ of the cruise – getting a whopping six sessions, is ‘Introduction to the Constitution’ presenter Michael Badnarik.

I've noticed that the people who refer to the Constitution and the Bible the most often are usually the ones who have read neither.

@Narad,

I'm sorry my reply was delayed. I was traveling earlier in the week and now back home there is much to catch up on, including sleep. But at least I came home to a clean sink. Yay!

I appreciate the explanation. No apology is necessary. The psychiatrist I correspond with refers to emails and blog comments as projective tests. I don't know how clinically he takes that but in my layman's mind it means to me that these are communication mediums that are highly subject to misinterpretation, especially of tone, and that the interpretation is greatly influenced by what is going on in our own heads.

Thanks so much for the link to The Poison Review. Interesting articles, and the link lists are fantastic!

That incident they describe in Syracuse is macabre. I didn't know about it until you directed me there (I don't watch news on TV so I'm often miss large chunks of semi-local & local news) and I hope there are no more close calls like that one.

@ sadmar,

I'm not interested in continuing to discuss the points of the Constitution as I stated. However, regarding your comments:

1. I thought you were being cute in your first comment, but you are correct, at no point did I think you were just kidding. The fact you replied with arguments and I link to an argument appears to support this.

2. I didn't contact a lawyer with a specialty in constitutional law in defense of me in my assertion that the Constitution is one of the most rational documents. I am able to defend myself; I don't need a lawyer to do so (unless in a professional capacity). I contacted this particular lawyer so he could defend the Constitution on the points you raised to question the rationality of it.

3. I didn't name / title drop for any other reason than to avoid the Dunning-Kruger card being played here because it doesn't apply (unless you're someone trained on the US Constitution and then I would be wrong). Well, I failed epically on this task because you didn't merely insinuate it, you flat out laid the card on the table.

4. I also failed to recognize that my straightforwardness, ok bluntness, would offend you in addition to the word "impertinent". He wasn't saying you were insulting my arguement, he was using it according to its legal definition.

5. I think he missed the word "had" in the small states sentence also but I didn't insert [sic] in it because I thought it was self-evident that he meant when the document was adopted.

6. Your personal attack on him was uncalled for.

Closing thought: The Constitution is rational enough to include a means to change it if you consider any part of it irrational. So if you're an American and you want to change something in it, you are free to apply yourself to that end.

HTH HAND [hat tip to Narad]

.....where are a large crew of pirates when you need them?

Ummm, would you believe on a cruise?

Haha, my god, they seem to never realized that half their conspiracies contradict each other, especially in medical one. If chemtrail, haarp, fluoride, tv, ads and media are all a mind control device, how come the illuminati are so bad at it? The world is a freaking chaos and would the new world order focus on the loon first?

Seriously, I doubt the company putting those cruise together believe in them. There so much themed cruise, they saw a niche that was not covered, a niche of people that would not go on a history (real history) cruise. All the new age spiritual people needed to be covered, and that market niche was open, so in a way, marketing wise, it's brillant. Those Loons are getting conned lol. That's just speculation, but I feel that the cruise would have been named something like "the Truth Cruise" not conspira-sea, that sounds and look ridiculous, something Jimmy Kimmel or John Oliver would have come up.

While there's been speculation here on how much Woo Boat speakers will make from the Conspira-Sea cruise, the amount surely will pale in comparison to what big-time woo docs are hauling in.

For instance, there's the host of the upcoming Dr. Roizen's Integrative and Preventive Medicine Show in Las Vegas (a conference featuring various types of woo, sponsored by Cleveland Clinic). Michael Roizen (the chief "wellness officer for CC), who already has quite the financial woo empire built up, turns out to be one of five Ohio docs who collected more than $1 million last year from medical device and/or drug makers (Roizen's reported take was $1.7 million in 2014 from this one source alone).

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/16/industry-ties-…
http://medcitynews.com/2011/11/cleveland-clinics-michael-roizen-his-man…

Even Mercola might be jealous. And it beats having to mingle with conspiracy loonies on a boat in return for chump change.

One is temped to start a crowd funding campaign to hire a submarine to torpedo the ship.

Torpedoes are old hat; these days, there's something called a cruise missile. Better to send in a Marx Bros-look-alike team with hidden cameras and mics. It would be pure gold.

I think everyone should read the paper Chris links to @ 101.It's a winner as far as sheer antivax paranoia,poor grasp of science,and novel ways of trying to connect vaccines to autism

What known biologic processes could explain this apparent causal relationship between fetal manufactured vaccines and ASD prevalence? We suggest that the contaminating fetal cellular debris and DNA fragments as well as HERVK retroviral fragments may lead to autoimmune attack and/or insertional mutagenesis in children.This paper
focuses on the potential for insertional mutagenesis.

Snipped

Furthermore, increased DNA uptake after LPS activation suggests that systemic inflammation or immune responses could increase the susceptibility for exogenous DNA uptake. Vaccines that are manufactured using human fetal cell lines
are contaminated by exogenous DNA and retroviral fragments,and vaccines elicit systemic inflammation and immune activation, a combination that may be particularly
amenable to insertional mutagenesis in vaccine recipients.

Oh, how I suddenly wish the Bermuda Triangle was really real! I picture five Grumman Avengers diving down out of the clouds and raking them stem to stern with bombs and machine guns.

sadmar, the Electoral College makes lot of sense if you think of it as a way to enhance the voting power of slave states. The infamous "three-fifths of a person" rule was actually a compromise to keep the major slaveholding states from filling up the census rolls with too many nonvoting slaves in order to have more seats in Congress. The other side of the coin is that Electoral College votes follow the total number of Senate and House seats a state has (This you know.), making it more difficult to overwhelm the more thinly populated slave states than a popular vote would.
Not for nothing, I recommend that all my fellow USAnians check out the National Popular Vote Compact, and if your state hasn't signed on, urge your legislators to enact the National Popular Vote Act.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index.php

Oh joy! The Aluminati are back!
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2015/08/04/another-frontiers-in-journ…
In which our friend Tomljenovic takes advantage of the multilevel-marketing aspect of the Frontiers business model to instigate a Research Topic, then to recruit, edit and peer-review submissions from her fellow True Believers Gherardi and Exley.

The title of Exley's contribution indicates its level of objectivity:
"Why Industry Propaganda and Political Interference Cannot Disguise the Inevitable Role Played by Human Exposure to Aluminum in Neurodegenerative Diseases, Including Alzheimer’s Disease".

The other two contributions to this Research Topic are from Pogue and Lukiw, who are new to me.

Candice H. Brown Elliott,
Please, oh please, don't invoke "The Marching Morons". Its biology is pathetically bad, on a par with 1930s eugenics. Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov co-wrote an essay, "On the Marching Morons", that takes it apart in detail. Unfortunately, the link to the only online posting has gone 404, so here is the link to a blog post on the subject by PZ Myers: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/08/there-are-no-marching-mor….
Also, here's a link to the Biology in Science Fiction blog post about it: http://blog.sciencefictionbiology.com/2007/05/marching-morons-and-inher….
I can't say how much I loathe this story, along with its companions, "The Little Black Bag" and the last section of "Search the Sky". They all are entertaining and well-written, but they are oh, so wrong in a seriously bad way.

Mein Herr Professor Doktor: "Oh joy! The Aluminati are back!"
I'm glad I'm not the only one warning about the danger of the Aluminati. They are so insidious, putting their siding on houses, getting us cooking in their pots, wrapping our food and our heads in their foil, replacing our good all-American steel in the bodies of our all-American pickup trucks, and extending their perfidious control over our minds by inserting their toxin into our vaccines. If you think Monsanto is evil, you haven't looked into Alcoa deeply enough. I only pray it's not too late.

Shirley you mean "Al-Coa".

herr doktor,

That's a crafty way of using the multilevel-marketing model, and even craftier of you to perceive that analogy..
____

Old Rockin' Dave,

The PZ Myers piece reminded me of something. Have grown up so poor I lived in a shoebox in the street that I have been told that poverty such as that doesn't exist in America, I can say that people may find it surprising where some of the most vicious elitist prejudice I've experienced has come from. But, more to your point, it doesn't do anyone any favors to assume they are morons and treat them as such.

If I had that many dollars looking for places to live (I don't), I'd be tempted by this strictly for the humour value. I'm actually quite fascinated by "conspiracy theorising" as a manifestation of popular paranoias and fringe moral panics.

I am slightly disappoint, though; I don't see anything that blatantly screams "THE JOOZ DIDDIT." What's a telephone game (the collective noun) of conspiracy theorists without an invocation of Rothschild or two? (Which brings me back to my first point...lu hayiti Rothschild...)

Did someone here already use the term "Conspiracon"? Imagine the money to be made by inviting all the fuster-heads to one annual event of events. Talk about missing the proverbial boat! First Prize would naturally go to the best conspiracy theory to explain the increasing incidence of conspiracy theories as a cover-up for something (anything) more sinister.

Need an iceberg, anyone ?

There's legitimate things in there, like MK ultra, which was a ridiculous waste of money to see if things like psychics were able to control people and other paranormal was real, it turns out no lol, no results. But on those kind of conspiracy circles it did, work! They will talk about it as if it was successful and created supersoldier and telepathic spies and what not. And contelipro would be use as a example to what is happening to them , they believe they are watched since they have THE Tuth. And since those were real "conspiracies " it will also be used as proof. Since those were real ( but they were discovered pretty fast and did not include half the planet, but chuute don't tell them that) every conspiracies they now come up with is real. That's always like that. I talked to a lot of believers and they always bring a legitimate thing, to prove their point, but they failed to ee how in fact it mostly disprove it.

I can only imagine the intense waves of paranoia among passengers aboard that ship. No pun intended... :p

NaT:

FWIW, I didn't take offense at you. I'm a 'Not a Troll' fan. I also like straightforward and even blunt ;-). While it's not cool if the thing put bluntly is somehow 'wrong'/unfair/upsetting/whatever, I'd rather get that honest and up-front than veiled in a cloak of feigned gentility. Having grown up in a shoebox on the street :-), I'd guess you too have experienced the hard fist that lurks behind 'country club' manners.

Club med sucks!
Authority sucks!
I hate golf!

Yes, we should leave the Constitution alone on RI, though I can guess the take on it offered during the Woo-Cruise would have us shuddering in harmony. (See following comment)

I confess: I do get bent out of shape have by a certain type of Ivy League snob (not that your lawyer necessarily is one – I ass-u-me'd) – having spent 10+ years amongst a college faculty dominated by same. Actually, I'm pretty OK with pretentious folks who live up to their pretentions, but... well this particular pompous cadre of colleagues said some of the dumbest shit... And they were masters of that never-straightforward fist-behind-politesse thing, too.

Anyway, re-reading #150 I see my language appeared to be ad hominem not just at the attorney, but at you for querying him and passing on his comments. But, per #156-2, I didn't have a problem with you seeking support from someone qualified in the field – it just makes sense. Nor do I think you should be reluctant to post such a response. I do sincerely apologize for my words that suggested otherwise.

I did go ad hominem on the attorney, and while that was kinda figurative, it was wrong in this context. I'm in no position to judge the lawyer on the basis of one brief comment. I should have directed my reply to the comment not the person. The comment was facile, condescending and clueless – presuming to 'know' my "objection is one based on morality" simply from the word "slavery" bracketed by juvenile coughing SFX. Perhaps, in another context – say, something other than quickly-fired-off web one-liners – I might find this fellow quite astute. Or not. But lacking more info, I shouldn't be presumptuous either, eh? Mea culpa.

I did some Google checked on Michael Badnarik, he of the 'U. S. Constitution class' on the Woo Boat. Turns out his 'constitutional scholarship' concludes that the "secret" of that document is the 'sovereign citizen' thing: the assertion that the government actually has no power to compel you to get a drivers license, settle up parking tickets, pay taxes... Oh, and for the "teaser" excerpt of his new book on his website, he's pulled a passage that specifically mentions medical 'freedom':

Does the FDA really have the authority to prevent you from drinking raw milk? Does the federal government really have the power to force you into healthcare insurance that you don't want and can't afford? Are you really going to stand there and submit to mandatory injections or passively accept the universal RFID chip under your skin? If so... close {this] book now... You are already a slave, and you shouldn't get caught reading objectionable literature such as this.

So he'll no doubt be telling the woo-cruisers that if they just say "I will not comply", they can get around all those nasty unconstitutional laws and regulations impinging on their free exercise of woofulness.

A few more choice Badnarik quotes:

• I am opposed to any individual taxes until we eliminate all of the unconstitutional agencies, and I suspect we wouldn't need a tax after that.
• Gun control means being able to hit your target. If I have a 'hot button' issue, this is definitely it.... if you try to confiscate my guns, I will feel compelled to give them to you, one bullet at a time.
• If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated.
• Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" ..fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
• If [Franklin D. Roosevelt] were alive today I would assassinate that S.O.B myself...

Even a lot of the far-fringey anti-government libertarians think Badnarik is a dangerous kook.

In a possible case of dupe-magnetism, the cruisers who choose his sessions will be shucking out an extra $150 (or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver) apiece for the pleasure of hearing the man himself deliver a 'class' that is available on video in it's entirety for free on YouTube and archive.org. I suppose the in-person appearance could generate $150 worth of entertainment value if anti-vaxers start whining about SB277, Badnarik chides them for turning over their kids' education to the nazi-nanny state instead of home-schooling, setting off a donnybrooke with an angry posse of Thinking Moms, who get so upset they rush the dais, and he pulls his Smith and Wesson...

I was gonna write 'but I don't think that will happen', but on second thought, with the potential volatility of this mixture of hole-istic characters, I'm not making any predictions one way or another. But if I was Andy Wakefield, not only would I be lamenting having fallen into such outre company, I'd be scouting spots to get clear of potential crossfire from the moment I got on board, and packing a kevlar vest, just in case.

You guys have me laughing esp since Ian, #157.

At any rate, I believe that I can add to the general temper of merriment by offering a tasty bonbon which may contain an inner filling that inadvertently reveals a common altie MO:

"The real reason Donald Trump is so popular: He's the surrogate mouthpiece for the things most Americans deeply believe ( but are afraid to say)"- Mikey, Natural News, today.

And like the Donald, Mikey too is your "warrior" ( his word, not mine) poised to intrepidly battle corruption, malfeasance and other horrors perpetrated by government/ industry/ media/ those-people-you-don't-like-who-live-down-the-street.

Seriously: he and the other idiot ( PRN) have just announced in the past few days that they are now monitoring governmental crimes ( either through a new website focused upon acronymed agencies or new faux radio programming, respectively).These additions follow their "investigations" of corporate sculduggery ( pharma cons) and endless reports about how the mainstream media has been RONG so many times it's ridiculous!
Hey, if you don't like the news, write your own!

They know their audiences well enough- despite their own florid lack of interpersonal subtlety- to realise that there is a large group of people who ARE suspicious, angry and seething with venom for those who enjoy a modicum of intelligence, success or recognition. They tap into this vitriol easily because they share many of those characteristics themselves.

I venture that both of these prevaricators imagined themselves to be intellectually superior to the average, about to conquer the world of science and journalism until they were refused entry to either a decent university ( Null) or higher levels of education ( Adams) so they're still angry at authorities and experts since those days. Their bio material continuously rants about their own excellence and accomplishments since childhood as compensation.

Probably Andy, many anti-vaxxers and cruise ship presenters fit into this model as well. they're about to reveal the Truth about those corrupt b@stards who lord it over everyone and who have kept them out of the limelight (or journals or meaningful positions.)
HOWEVER what they reveal instead is primarily about their own inner workings and *betes noires*

sadmar,

Best not to be a NaT fan. That way I won't let you down someday. ;-)

No worries. Most things on the internet blow past me with real life being the actual challenge. And even though I defended the lawyer on a personal basis, I probably didn't need to. I am positive he's comfortable with debates of all kinds. However, I did find it interesting that you took what he wrote as condescending. To me, he just writes like a lawyer would. They write funny; more so than medical professionals.

I agree with you on treatment of the Constitution on this ship which is part of the reason I made my fools statement. Makes me cringe and he is just another charlatan playing to his audience.

I did see the extra fee but figured it was because it was 6 sessions long. The humor here is if they allow questions afterward, and it is anything like the lawyer-type seminars I've been to, he is going to earn it. Everyone and their brother is going to be telling him their story in great detail trying to get free legal advice out of him. That part would be fun to watch.

There’s legitimate things in there, like MK ultra, which was a ridiculous waste of money to see if things like psychics were able to control people and other paranormal was real, it turns out no lol, no results.

No, MKUltra did not use psychics and other paranormal means, they used good ol' drugs and psychological methods, and they did get results. Not necessarily the results they wanted, but there were results aplenty.

I can't argue the 'waste of money', but not all projects work out the way you plan.

“The real reason Donald Trump is so popular: He’s the surrogate mouthpiece for the things most Americans deeply believe ( but are afraid to say)”- Mikey, Natural News, today.

Trump's main message is "Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have; also vote for me because I have lots of money and came by it through my lack of scruples." Mixed in with racism and sexism.
Perhaps Mikey is right, perhaps more than a obstreperous minority of Republican supporters do feel the same way.

May a hedgehog nest in your underwear drawer, Narad! I just blew off a perfectly good hour at The Poison Review.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, a certain surgeon researcher named David Gorski (well known to our blinkenlights host) has a very thorough analysis of Deisher's latest oeuvre:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/aborted-fetal-tissue-and-vaccines-…

No, MKUltra did not use psychics and other paranormal means, they used good ol’ drugs and psychological methods, and they did get results.

Something something Frank Olson something.

Frederick seems to have been thinking of Rima "Great Culling" Laibow's hubby's Stargate Project.

Herr doktor, what you say is true.

I imagine that our woo-meisters have even more in common with Trump:
they all worship celebrity and would do anything publicly in order to be famous/ stay famous.
Also they have poor taste, bad judgment and more money than most people.

# 182 herr doktor bimler

Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have; also vote for me because I have lots of money and came by it through my lack of scruples.” Mixed in with racism and sexism.

This sounds like a winning combination among a lot of tea-party Republicans.

I would refer you to the Robert Ford, the former major of Toronto. He makes Trump almost respectable and he got elected. Due to ill-health he did not run for re-election as mayor but was returned as a councillor.

Mind, to give him his due, I don't remember any,accusations of real racism against Rob. Perhaps a couple of slurs and so on but not real racism.

One, if not the only, reason that Darn Old Chump is so popular can be found in this article:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-…. If you don't have time to read it, the URL should give you the short answer. Or to put it in the words of H. L. Mencken, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Mind, to give him his due, I don’t remember any,accusations of real racism against Rob.

He appears to have been admirably unprejudiced about the skin colour or ethnic background of his drug suppliers.

hdb:

Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have. Also vote for me because I inherited money, and despite bad investments and bankruptcies, have been able to fool the rubes into thinking I'm way more wealthy than I am, and have profited mightily by a lack of scruples, which have actually bit me in the ass financially, but exponentially increased my celebrity.

FTFY. ;-)

I wonder if the JREF can schedule their TAM for the same cruise.

"Offering a target-rich environment" would be a good draw.

Nah... the TAMers would never go for it. The conditions would be too dangerous what with all the unvaccinated and unmedicated lunatics aboard... but, it would be glorious.

FTFY. ?

Is it just me, or have the non-BMP/surrogate-pair emoticons* been on the rise lately? I know that the SB "IT" monkeys have been rewarded for cartooning up the joint by installing the freaking slow, utterly bourgeois Emoji plugin** for those who are now... cripes, I have no idea. There are perfectly serviceable emoticons built-in (e.g., ;-)),*** if one "needs" to resort to them.

But I'm curious how and why – in a practical sense, not versus the standard**** "vocabulary" – they're being injected. Is this something that, say, mobile devices are presenting as a default input method nowadays?

* No, marketing as "different" from emoticons does not persuade me. There is no meaningful advance over crap like ":comp:" (h[]tp://www.sherlockforum.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/comp26.gif).
** This is why we (tinw) can't have nice things. Like preview.
*** I'll see whether <code> works here for ;-) .
**** I'm aware of the origins/storage history.

^ Wait, the plugin overrides ;-)? Is one reduced to the noncanonical ;)?

Let's see: ;)

^^ Nope, it's that bad.

Narad, yes, you found out the proper way through your power of logic and reason what I stumbled upon earlier up thread when I was totally blind-sided by the fact that this site changed my subtle inflection to a winking smiley face commonly used by tweens for texting.

I wasn't happy.

+100 for preview. Can we get that?

^ Wait, the plugin overrides ; - )? Is one reduced to the noncanonical ; )?

Yeah, it's obnoxious. I have been known to use an emoticon on rare occasions, but the annoying cartoon things look horrendous, and not only that, but I personally feel that they're not, semantically speaking, even the same thing as actual emoticons.

(I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc. It's actually sort of adorable coming from a 40-something year old German (by way of Singapore) man.)

I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc.

I think he is safe until he starts using Comic Sans font - then the hammer will come down on him.

Oh, wait. I am unsure of this in academia. I am speaking of the corporate world.

re #192: Let's drag out the old standby &zwnj;: ;‌-)

Yup. By the way, ;‌-) is coded as ;&zwnj;-).

I typed 'semicolon' - 'hyphen' - 'close parenthesis'. I would prefer it to be rendered as those characters, not as an icon. Not only are the icons too cutesy, unless I enlarge my screen like 400%, I can't see the wink vs. the normal smiley eye.

I would prefer not to use emoticons at all, but it seems I do need to, and my attempts at light-hearted funning tend not to read properly in text forums, especially here.

Testing:
‌-)

Testing #2:

;‌-)

Re. Sadmar @ 178, "....Sovereign Citizens...": A particular type of right-wing ideology that denies the validity of government above the level of counties, and whose adherents are known to drive with hand-lettered license plates (because "state gov is not legitimate"), and shoot the cops who pull them over for it.

Their tendency to shoot cops has made Sovereign Citizens a high priority for FBI & other LE agencies to keep an eye on, so the presence of one of their leaders on this cruise will virtually ensure the presence of at least two undercover ("u/c") officers or agents. That should be good for some extra paranoia on the part of the other attendees.

I was going to suggest that someone might want to do some "street theater" by getting together with a few friends and dressing up as "men in black" or whatever, and standing around the boarding area for the cruise, talking into their wristwatches and so on, as the passengers arrive. But if there are Sovereign Citizens in the mix, then there will be real u/c around to watch 'em, and skeptics w/ humorous intent might want to avoid stirring that particular pot.

What I wouldn't give to read the daily reports on the behaviors of these persons-of-interest and those who hang out with them!

---

Re. Chris @ 19: alcohol hand-sanitizer before entering cruise ship eating areas: That's a good start, but alcohol-based preparations are known to not kill C.Diff. But C.Diff or not C.Diff (that is the question;-), with all the Norovirus going around, you couldn't pay me to get on a cruise ship, even if all the passengers and crew had to line up at a sink and wash their hands with strong soap & water before each meal.

---

Re. psychedelic mushrooms: The Amanitas appear to be deliriant rather than psychedelic. Psilocybe species are psychedelic, per the active ingredient, psilocybin. Psilocybe mushrooms are sacred to adherents of certain native Mesoamerican traditions, who believe that they provide a means of direct contact between individuals and the deity.

When Swiss psychopharmacologist Albert Hofmann first synthesized psilocybin based on a sample of the mushrooms collected by (R. Gordon Wasson, if memory serves), he gave some of the synthetic psilocybin to an elderly shaman, who told him, "yes, you have brought the spirit of the mushroom into your pink pill." Nice example of how science and an ancient religious tradition were able to cooperate in a spirit of mutual respect. Today's adherents of herbal medicine would do well to welcome Big Pharma to seek out whatever active compounds might exist in their herbs (pharmacognosy), but they don't, and we have much to say about that in these pages.

One of the more recent (in the last decade) FDA-approved human subject research protocols for psychedelics is: 30 milligrams of psilocybin, lie on a couch listening to classical (or other instrumental) music over good stereo headphones while wearing dark eyeshades, with a psychiatrist standing by for supervision and intervention if needed. This appears to produce profoundly meaningful experiences that are typically described in religious terms. It would be interesting to see how that translates for atheists (seriously).

In an unsupervised setting, lower doses are useful as an aid to creativity and deep reflection on any subject of interest. That would mean approx. 1 gram of dried psilocybe mushrooms. OTOH spending a day deeply engaged in thought, is quite "psychedelic" in and of itself, without need of mushrooms or various compounds.

---

Interrobang @ 172: I was wondering why the promoters of this thing hadn't said "Teh Jewish Conspiracy" in so many words, but maybe they're hinting at it with a wink-nudge or a dog whistle that only other anti-Semites can hear?

---

Lastly an optimistic speculation:

At one point in his career, psychiatrist Milton Erickson was in charge of a hospital psychiatric ward, where two of the patients each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. One day Erickson arranged for these two patients to meet. The patients spent the day arguing with each other over which one of them was the real Jesus Christ. The next day each of them approached Erickson to say that they'd finally realized, for the first time, that they were crazy.

So the moral of that story is, perhaps when the Conspira Sea Cruize returns home, a decent number of the passengers, having encountered others quite like themselves in most ways, will also recognize that in the end they were crazy. One can hope.

sample of the mushrooms collected by (R. Gordon Wasson, if memory serves)

The mycophilia / mycophagia circles I mix with have been abuzz with recent realisations that Gordon Wasson simply made up a lot of his ancient shamanic mushroom traditions, and there is no ethnological value in his books. At least the realisations were recent to me.

In other woo-centric news.. conspiracies with no boats involved

- Jake ( Autism Investigated, today), to the delight of his commenters, writes about our most benevolent and sagacious host:
" Anybody who thinks that G----- and others like him in social and news media are not intentionally distorting facts to help the CDC cover up facts about vaccine risks is simply a fool."

- Mikey ( Natural News, today) has discovered that he is indeed prescient because his vivid dream, as described a few days ago, just CAME TRUE** even the ( magical) number showed up*** in events that transpired in reality
He's a prophet who profits from his proffering.

- Commenters on Dachel's post ( AoA) about Silberman's new book are not exactly thrilled with its subject matter or its author .I'm sure that Dan will be especially miffed as it reflects upon the subject matter of his book.

Thus, minions, if we give them enough time, I'm confident that they'll find a way to implicate ALL of us into these dreadful plots, subterfuges, cover-ups and malfeasance in the service of Whomever

Ah yes, the world is a bizarre place to those amongst us who are not blessed with a capacity for self-criticism.

** except he got a few minor details wrong like the religion involved, the country involved, his own actions in the dream, false flags etc .
Mike, people can go back and check your predicitons.
*** if you look hard enough and twist the news enough

Congrats to Orac for being recognized (once again) by Jake.

But did we ever congratulate our fearless leader on achieving a #4 ranking in Sharyl Atkisson's list of Top Ten Astroturfers?

https://sharylattkisson.com/top-10-astroturfers/

True, he has to share honors at the #4 spot with other "science" blogs (the "scare quotes" are Atkisson's).

This list of Top Ten Astroturfers (signifying secret payouts by Big Whatever to manipulate the minds of readers for nefarious purposes) has to be bona fide, since it stems from a poll of 169 Twitter respondents, and all Twitterians who follow Atkisson undoubtedly have the facts to back up their suspicions. Along with science/skeptic bloggers, there's a wide slice of major mainstream media on the list, along with Mother Jones (which as we know has long been in thrall to major corporations).

DB@204 -- The idea of Mother Jones being in the thrall of major corporations reminds me of this recent Onion article on Bernie Sanders:

"Tanned, exquisitely coiffed Bernie Sanders tells supporters corporations actually have a lot to offer"

http://www.theonion.com/article/tanned-exquisitely-coiffed-bernie-sande…

Surely if your own personal Belief System shows up in that list of lunacy then it must make you question its truth? Or is that too hopeful and people attending will actually think, "Well, all those fools believe in the lizard people but I know that's just a conspiracy started by Big Pharma to conceal the actual truth about how vaccines are being used to cull the population!"?

I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing. Apart from the potential head-messing fun anyone trying to counter this misinformation deserves a luxury holiday.

Oh Dangerous One:

That list includes WAY too many items to be a 'top 10', wouldn't you say?
But she didn't want to leave anyone out.

@ Cate K:

As someone who used to attend various new age events and woo-meisterly presentations, I must say that it's hard work to suppress laughter and automatic eye-rolling- it can be exhausting if the idiot goes on for hours. And they do.

Incredibly, the woo/ altie in charge usually reels off lunacy at such a quick pace that I wouldn'[t recommend a week long excursion.

Alex:

So, how about we try to block buy a section of the ship for a skeptics cruise? Seriously, if I was independently wealthy, I would totally do that for the fun of being able to create those easel stand things that promoted lectures like “The truth behind vaccines” to lure them unsuspectingly into lectures that present them with the stuff they so badly do not want to hear.

You don't have to be independently wealthy to do that. You just have to be able to sell enough people on the idea to get the trip funded. ;-) The price would be the cost of a cabin on board plus enough to cover the expenses of any guests that you book. It really is just like any other convention.

The tricky part to doing it at the same time as this would be a) making sure there is enough space on the same cruise and b) finding out about their event far enough in advance to be able to book the same cruise. ;-)

So, if there are any travel agents among the group, you could totally arrange something like that.

I'll give Jake Crosby this: I can actually read at his website without wanting to claw my eyes out from the poor visual design and navigation that you find at Age of Autism, Natural News and a few others I've had the misfortune to land on. (I know, emoticons here, but those can be avoided. Besides, this is a pleasant site to view and it has the best site search relevancy of any I've ever used ).

To Denice, and others, who visit these awful websites I applaud your fortitude in subjecting yourself to that visual abuse in order to update everyone here.

Also, did I miss something in Mike Adams dream where he writes it was a Christian campus but happened at a Hindu shrine?

For the rest of the article, the machinations he uses to match his dream to the event reminds me of a special on the History or Discovery channel (?) on the prophecies of Nostradamus and what twisted logic needed to be applied to pull any relationships out of them.

But did we ever congratulate our fearless leader on achieving a #4 ranking in Sharyl Atkisson’s list of Top Ten Astroturfers?

On 8 we find the Huffington Post, which strikes me as a bit ironic, considering how our beloved host considers it.

Poor Laura Eisenhower is President Eisenhower's great granddaughter. It's really sad to see how people like this "Dr. Dream the Holistic Healer" feed her delusions instead of helping her. http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/07/644-laura-magdalene-eisenhowe…

Really, you can't make this stuff up.

@Not a troll, you did read correctly about Mike Adams.

He also solved the Chinese explosion: http://www.naturalnews.com/050816_Tianjin_explosion_space-based_weapons…

Wow, Eisenhower and her flying monkeys have really infested the comments section of that post.

(Completely OT, a few years ago I had to review resumes for an internship from two applicants named Eisenhauer and Nimtz. I wanted to hire both just for the enjoyment I'd get out of introducing them at meetings).

"Mikey ( Natural News, today) has discovered that he is indeed prescient because his vivid dream, as described a few days ago, just CAME TRUE** even the ( magical) number showed up*** in events that transpired in reality"

I once dreamed that 2+2=5. Upon awakening I found that my computer had crashed. Coincidence?

"I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing."

That would almost certainly require sailing on an ocean with a non-Euclidean geometry.

Sadmar@ 200

Lose the hyphen.
; ) = ;)

@ Not a Troll:

Thank you for your kind words.

To be perfectly honest, I am sometimes extremely entertained by their idiocy and obviously mercenary activities.

Many of the sites are indeed ugly. I think Jake's isn't quite as bad because there is so little material on it,

Although there is certainly *visual* madness, let's not forget the terrible auditory manoeuverings resident at sites like NN ( Mike also produces music videos and lessons in various woo) , PRN ( the daily crapfest is, after all, radio), AoA/ TMR include video as well. Sometimes difficulties in verbal thought are more apparent in the spoken word than in the written one

About my own welfare despite immersion in woo-ful propaganda:
no one should worry, I am breathtakingly immune to its deleterious effects. I believe that I inherited the capacity to discern and be resilient against BS, advertising and mindless brainwashing because I am descended from a long line of business folk who managed to survive despite their exposure to prodigious amounts of similar tripe over the past ( at least) century or so,

As my late father would frequently say gleefully:
" Oh look, at this incredible line of crap they're trying to push onto people!"

“I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing.”
That would almost certainly require sailing on an ocean with a non-Euclidean geometry.

Reimannian geometry -- there are no parallel lines to cruise along.

Yeah, it’s obnoxious. I have been known to use an emoticon on rare occasions, but the annoying cartoon things look horrendous

This wasn't my point; the new appearances are non-BMP code points. They don't render at all for me – all I see is a box with the six-digit Unicode hex in it. On the other hand, when Orac uses an emoticon, it's actually rendered as a GIF (these have also recently been restyled from large and yellow to petite and orange).

I don't particularly mind simple graphical, rather than text, emoticons at this point (so long as they're not animated); overuse is simply a reflection of the level of thought put into the comment by its author.

(I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc. It’s actually sort of adorable coming from a 40-something year old German (by way of Singapore) man.)

In fact, the first instance of this phenomenon that I noticed was from a German commenter, which is why I was curious about how they were being injected, given that it seemed to be inconsistent.

It instead seems to be a (still weirdly inconsistent) case of the IT version of Intelligent Design, or something. Perhaps Orac's seeing some sort of graphical dashboard when replying that has buttons to insert the GIFs. I can't sift the HTML for the instantiations right at the moment.

DRLP [sic]: Don't expect that your emoticons are going to successfully appear for all readers in the post–Emoji plugin era.

Narad,

I mostly don't know what you are talking about with the non-BMP code but I can say that all of the images are .pngs for me.

I don't know if this helps but I found that the smileys and frowns (including Oracs) img srcs are hitting http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/wp-includes/images/...... while the winkeys are img class "emoji" and their src is hitting http://s.w.org/images/......

Herr doktor bimler @ 202:

Re. charges that Wasson made up most/all of it: Most interesting! How did that come to light, and where can I find out more? It's not in the Wikipedia article yet, but if it turns out to be correct, it should be included. Damn!, that is highly disappointing.

Two items related to Wasson remain fact as far as I know: that Wasson provided samples of mushrooms to Hofmann, and that Hofmann successfully synthesized psilocybin. But if Wasson didn't get his mushrooms from a native practitioner, who else could have told him which ones were the correct species? So it's reasonable to infer that he did have some assistance from local peoples, and then he embellished the stories and then made up other stories.

Hofmann worked for Big Pharma: Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, lately renamed Novartis (running away from their history?;-) Psilocybin was produced by Sandoz under the trade name Indocybin, and Sandoz LSD was more famously known by the trade name Delysid. Sandoz freely gave out samples of both of these to psychiatrists, hoping they would find clinical uses. At the time (1950s - mid 1960s), there was much excitement about psychedelics contributing to the emerging paradigm that mental illnesses were reducible to neurochemistry, and then later, that creativity and religious inspiration could be studied in a similar way.

If it turns out to be true that Wasson fabricated a bunch of his material, he ends up in the same category as Carlos Castaneda: what they wrote would have been good fiction (or perhaps great fiction in some circles), but by claiming it was fact, they disgraced themselves as frauds.

As far as I know, Hofmann was scrupulously honest, as was Sasha Shulgin (developer of well over a hundred new psychedelics and entactogens; I knew him when he was alive, he was world-class brilliant), and Humphrey Osmond (Canadian psychiatrist who launched Aldous Huxley on his first voyage with mescaline, which became the subject of _The Doors of Perception_), and Huxley himself was a leading mind of the 20th century. These guys were oldschool intellectuals and true Renaissance minds, with legitimate educations and achievements, and broad background in the sciences and humanities.

I have to wonder why it is that Wasson, Castaneda, and others, went way overboard. Probably some combination of quasi-religious zealotry and desire for worldly benefits such as fame and status. These outcomes, and their contrast to the works of Hofmann, Shulgin, and others, point to the need for serious caution, self-skepticism, and checks & balances, among everyone who has a legitimate academic or clinical interest in psychedelics, whether from the perspective of cog sci & psychology, psychiatry, comparative religion, the arts & literature, or other.

(I used to think these compounds should be reclassified to FDA Schedule III, but lately I've been more inclined to believe that Schedule II would be appropriate by way of reducing the risk of quacks getting involved. Credit to Orac & others here for pointing out the pervasive opportunism of quackery time and time again. The generalization applies, don't leave tempting things around where quacks might get at them. Schedule II should be a reasonable way to minimize that risk.)

Re Wasson: that's quite...interesting. He was one of the first people to call out Castaneda, according to Wikipedia. And now he appears to himself be a fraud.

You guys should send me and Mr Woo. The wife of a True Believer would never be suspected... ;-)

Since there are mycophiles here:

Can you name this mycophile?

A 20th-century American avant-garde 'master' he made virtually no money from his celebrated creative works – living in poverty until the late 1950s – at which time he co-founded the New York Mycological Society, and began to generate a modest income by supplying (edible) mushrooms to elite New York restaurants. The income was enhanced when he appeared on an Italian '21'-type guiz show as a mushroom expert.

Each week, [he] answered, with deadly accuracy, increasingly obscure questions about mushrooms. On his final appearance, he was asked to list “the twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in Atkinson.” [He] named them all, in alphabetical order, and won eight thousand dollars.

I haven't checked the Goofle but I'm guessing Cage.

Y'all won't be laughing anymore when we induce our somnolent solfeggio kitty signal onto the otherwise discordant, apathetic and chaos inducing drull of your typical world-encompassing Haarpagram.

http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/catPurrNoiseGenerator.php

======================

There is a strange, artificial signal permeating all of us. It seems to whisper 'sleep' insomuch as it sometimes doesn't:

If one happened to live near high-tension transmission lines and, for some reason, took a 9-inch hoop degaussing coil and hooked it up to an input on an old Denon amp, he would hear a pleasant 60 cycle hum.

If he took a second coil and placed it in series and antiparallel* to the first, his hum is cancelled and this strange, airy, quavering tone is left. The tone is often punctuated with sounds of old tarbell cassette transfere, to cicadas, to that special Jody Foster 'Contact' sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vFwTJ44lFw

Curious... Why would somebody abuse a consumer electronic component like that?? That's beside the point. People do. Anyways, the sounds turn out to be PLC (powerline carrier communication) and a 2kh tone as part of 'fault detection'.

I've run into the sound off and on without ever realizing what it was; I'd always attributed the somewhat soothing, shifting tone to parasitic oscillations. But could it be used for mind control? I suppose, given the lack of deguassing ring detectors, that they could take over the world somehow.

What I find really, really interesting is that most anything on Ambient Sleeping Pill goes perfectly with it; Pleasing harmonic symbiosis and punctus contra punctum all potted together into one masterpiece of serinderpitudinal symphony. How did that happen??
http://ambientsleepingpill.com/

*that is to say, at right angles to each other. Interestingly, the coil only picks up the hum when horizontal. Even the single coil 'nulls out' along any axis except obvious transformers; I take it there is some interplay between the house wiring and the transmission lines. One flipped opposite polarity cancels, as expected.

The non-colocated, opposite polarity arrangement gives surprising amplification and fidelity to a cellphone playing music inside one of the hoops.

"But could it be used for mind control?"

It's certainly controlling your mind.

Come on, rs; Can't you feel it??

Do you know what Bobby Ray Innman was doing before he was runnin' the microelectronics and the computer tech corporation? A CIA director. It's public knowledge.

Do you run out of Kleenex, paper towels, and toilet paper at the same time? You know it's true!

Puzzlin' Evidence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdCfYHNctsc

I see that nobody is on board to talk about Orgone Energy, so another topic neglected. I see the woo pitchers have taken a page out of the book of the $cientologists, who own their own cruise ship (the Freewinds, a 50 year old rust bucket they've owned for 30 years, but they use slave labor to keep it looking presentable), which they use to deliver "high level courses" and since they have so few members now, apparently also rent out for other "seminars." http://tonyortega.org/2015/08/31/home-sweet-freewinds-we-get-a-rare-loo… The good thing about the ship format from their point of the view is that they can squeeze the rubes for money, and they have nowhere to run away to, they are trapped on board the boat.

"Still, if there are any intrepid souls willing to do this, maybe a Go Fund Me page would be able to provide the travel and cruise expenses. I’m sure there’d be blogging material for many weeks. Heck, there might even be enough material for a book!"

Challenge accepted: http://www.gofundme.com/ss29jrfk

I'm planning a very non-confrontational approach, so please don't expect shouting and "gotcha!" questions. I have interviewed people with very strange ideas before, and vastly prefer establishing a good relationship. I would appreciate your assistance, even if it's just spreading the link, and your thoughts.

Bump... Go, Colin, go!