It’s amazing what happens when a Hollywood star, who happens to be sister in law to a Philadelphia paediatrician gets upset and worried about vaccines. A story in Cookie Magazine relates how 36 year old Amanda’s neuroticism was so rampant that her brother-in-law arranged a series of phone calls with his mentor, Dr Offit.
Presumably this was done to counter what Offit told her was the burgeoning Hollywood ignorance factor.
Imaginary conversation … ”Now Amanda, your colleagues are so dense, and you’re such a bright girl, so I’m just going to tell you all about it, so that you can rest assured that you are much more responsible and intelligent than all those silly colleagues of yours. And just think, you could also make some money fronting our Every Child by Two campaign.”
Game set and catch.
Amanda Peet wasn’t hard to for Dr Offit to convert.
Her mother had polio at 6 and with one-to-ont chats fromt the 'expert', she got the Very Special Person treatment. That isn't on Dr Offit's normal schedule, but I’m sure Dr Offit considered the resultant famous person converted, and the publicity, worth every minute of his long telephone calls.
That outcome is advertising you just can’t buy.
Amanda now repeats the Offit main-line dogma, saying that thiomersal is safe, the 14 studies show that the link between vaccines and autism is unproven, and you can’t give babies too many vaccines.
What we don’t know, is if Amanda Peet actually went and had a look at the actual studies; talked to anyone else outside the nepotistic circle, or did her own research into literature not shown to her by someone who has a vaccine patent, and sits on the board which decides what vaccines the country will have.
Amanda couldn’t resist having digs. After all, she’s also been honed to believe that the non-vaccinated children are protected by all the vaccinated children. She says, “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites.” Encouragement to vilify by name calling, and priming up pro vaccine parents to deliver this sort of pariah-tagging, is a topic those of you who have read, “From One Prick to Another” will be very familiar with.
Those who don’t vaccinate, could turn the tables and point out that Amanda Peet’s child’s vaccines are paid for with some of their taxes; and if her toddler by chance does have a reaction through her “informed” choice, will she pay all the bills herself? Or will she go for the Government compensation scheme which is also paid for from the taxes, some of which come from working families who don’t vaccinate their children?
Perhaps there should be a level playing field, with no vaccine compensation schemes . That way, anyone who choses to vaccinate, should live with any reactions which result.
If something happens to Amanda Peet’s darling toddler after a future vaccine, we know what Dr Paul Offit will say! “It’s all coincidence, my dear!” Perhaps she might have to turn to some of those “dense” colleagues of hers who have been there, done that, to get a better handle on where to research vaccines.
On Thursday 12 June 2008, New Zealand the recipient of some Offit submachine gun paced verbal largesse.
If that sentence is a mouthful, the interview (download mp3 here) was an earful.
Even host Kathryn Ryan sounded exhausted at the end of the interview, as she gushed something along the lines of, “I had all my vaccines and I’m okay!”… perhaps not realizing that if she compared today’s vaccine schedule with her own she would find that she is grossly under-vaccinated.
The questions were so well scripted you can’t help wonder if they were provided to her by Offit himself … “This is what I want you to ask me…”. Asked by Kathryn Ryan about the Hannah Poling case, Dr Offit tells how he wrote about it for the New York Times, and the New England Medical Journal. End of discussion….
Presumably two articles along with his qualifications, signals, “I’m the expert, therefore I’m in the right.” He doesn’t mention that just about every key “fact” in his New York Times article was fiction, resulting in the NY times publishing a detailed rebuttal by Hannah’s father, neurosurgeon Dr Jon Polling.
Doctor, versus doctor, huh?!!
Who do you trust? The child’s father, who is a neurosurgeon, or someone who got every major fact incorrect? Even worse, many of those mistakes were repeated in the NEMJ article.