The inhumanity of bias.
A kid had a seizure in one of my classes today. When I came in, he was lying on the floor, muscles all tensed, fists clenched, nobody home inside his eyes. I grasped what was going on pretty quickly into my lesson (I hadn't noticed him until shortly after diving into the day's greeting song). Two teachers were kneeling by his side, administering some sort of medication that looked like a syringe or a dropper of some sort.. They were clearly tense as well. The atmosphere of "something is wrong" pervaded the room. All the other kids kept looking back to check on their classmate. I was meant, however, to continue teaching and singing How are you! I'm happy! while this poor kid seized on the floor. It felt horrible, and extremely inhuman/unnatural. Eventually the boy came to, and his mother arrived to pick him up early from the school.
Why do I relate this little bit? Well, because it made me angry. Not this specific situation itself even, necessarily, but the general situation surrounding vaccine injury and the remarkable lack of serious attention it is given by the medical community, mainstream media, and otherwise very intelligent individuals I meet in the course of day to day life. There is something funny going on here.
When I share video after video of children who have seizures and end up neurologically damaged, autistic, or dead immediately after a "routine vaccination," the silence is profoundly telling. When I tell people of children I personally know who have had adverse reactions to vaccines, I am often met with a kind of roll of the eyes, and some useless and vague, mumbled dismissal.
I recently watched a video of several girls experiencing seizures in Mexico immediately after a Gardasil HPV vaccination. These types of videos--videos and testimonies from independent sources claiming the Gardasil vaccine caused damage to their children--are numerous. The commentator on the video was angry. F you! F you everyone who rolls their eyes and says this video is fake without investigating it! He said something along those lines.
I had to agree with him. The video seemed legit to me, but even if it were discovered (for whatever strange reason) to have been fabricated, that says nothing about the thousands of other stories out there. And it says nothing about the peer reviewed published studies calling tirelessly for more research and demonstrating very possible links between vaccines and neurological damage. When I saw that kid on the floor today, that commentator's words echoed in my heart. Fuck you. Fuck you to anyone not willing to investigate thoroughly why this shit is happening to our kids. We owe them better than this. Better than a stupid fucking "How are you? I'm happy!" song while their friends convulse on the floor.
I do not know if the seizure this child had today was the result of vaccine injury. It may very well not have been. What it did do was remind me very clearly, however, of the ridiculous, irrational, and bandwagon sucker approach to "science" in modern culture. You know what? If you dismiss hundreds of mothers and fathers swearing their kids were fine prior to a vaccination and now are damaged, if you dismiss peer reviewed study after peer reviewed study that suggests a link between vaccination and neurological damage, if you mock or roll your eyes at anyone asking common sense questions about these things....
You are doing nothing more than singing "HAPPY HAPPY" with a stupid fucking smile on your face while our kids fucking die. So yes. FUCK YOU.
Hey, I'm no doctor, so they must be right! source
The confirmation bias, bias.
Graham, I am afraid you are too biased. Graham, it is so clear you have a confirmation bias.
What almost inevitably happens when I direct people to peer-reviewed, published studies substantiating my claims, is that the other party will then respond with something like:
Well, I checked RationalWiki and it said that the authors of that study were biased, so I am not going to read it.
I respond: "Which parts of the study, specifically, are flawed or biased? Which are scientifically incorrect?"
Well, I don't have time to read it all. Plus, I am not a doctor.
"Right. Neither am I, but I am literate enough to understand abstracts from these studies, and even the basic import of the study itself."
Well, sorry, but I will need you to present some less biased info.
"How is it biased?"
Gotta go, Graham. Thanks for the chat.
This is retardation of logic. This is what I call the "confirmation bias, bias," and someone with a bad case of it is almost impossible to dialogue with rationally. Ironically enough, these RationalWiki-ites cannot seem to grasp that discounting everything contrary to one's own personal belief set, simply because "RationalWiki" says to discount it, is the height of dogmatic illogic, and a severe retardation of the sensible reasoning processes.
The dogmatic Young Earth Creationist and the adherent to Scientism are exactly the same.
In what sense? In this sense. The YEC (Young Earth Creationist) denies the validity of any potential evidence to the contrary of his personal belief system. Carbon dating!? Don't be ridiculous. God's word says it, so I believe it! Please explain to me how this is fundamentally any different from:
The SCIENCE IS SETTLED! VACCINES DON'T CAUSE AUTISM! THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SAYS IT, SO I BELIEVE IT!
(As a brief aside, the CDC actually has admitted that vaccines can and do cause Autism, and is currently embroiled in a cover up scandal and lawsuit regarding Autism and vaccines.)
Summary.
So what's my point? It's very simple really. We owe our kids better. We owe our kids actual medicine. We own them non-media-sensationalized and polarized, propagandistic "debate." We owe each and every child that comes into this life a fighting shot at a healthy life. We owe them real research. Fuck being "right." Lives are at stake. Let's find the truth. We insult each and every precious child that comes into this world with our refusal to see them. Let's give these kids what they really need. What we really owe them, which is SCIENCE, and not a saccharine stupid, media propagandized chorus of Happy, Happy, I'm OKAY! No. It's not okay, and you are a major fucking part of the problem.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)