Court Rules Against Vaccine-Autism Claims Again 416
barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
Litigious society (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government is going to force people to get vaccinated (and they do; you can't go to school without it), there is at least some burden on them to pay for the negative effects, no matter how well intentioned.
In the US there is a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to handle precisely this sort of thing. Some people genuinely are harmed by those well-intended vaccines. They do help out everybody (herd immunity), and everybody pays into the compensation fund, to the tune of 75 cents per shot.
Clearly, that's a tempting pile of money, and desperate parents of autistic children are willing to ignore the data that says quite clearly that there's no connection in order to get to it.
Re:The urge to lay blame (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not simply urge to blame, it's also the human tendency to believe something and then do anything possible to not have to change your belief.
Although we've been blessed with the power of rational thought that allows us to override such urges, most people seem loathe to use it in that way.
Re:Litigious society (Score:2, Insightful)
It has been a central principle of legal systems world-wide, for several thousand years, that if one is wronged or harmed, one can expect to receive recompense from the perpetrator. When you buy a faulty product, do you expect to get your money back? If a drunk crashes into your car, would you not sue for damages?
What you are advocating is not justice. You are advocating for a complete lack of responsibility for wrongdoers.
Re:"antivax" people (Score:5, Insightful)
there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment,
Yep, something to always remember about any drug you might take or any treatment you might undergo. But it's also worth remembering that there's a non-zero risk to eating food (could be tainted), driving a car, or sticking your face in a fan*. Life is all about balancing the risks, not eliminating them entirely. In some ways, we're victims of our own success at risk mitigation: we've come to view risks as optional rather than a matter of course. (Applies to not just medicine, but also space travel, the way we raise our kids, and pretty much everything else.)
* With a tip of the hat to Frank Drebin, Police Squad.
Vaccines aren't as simple as people think (Score:1, Insightful)
Vaccines aren't as simple as people think.
Many, many vaccines can cause seizures, and not all seizures result in physically obvious symptoms. Once a person experiences a seizure, regardless of the cause, they are significantly more likely to have seizures in the future.
Various vaccines are being promoted by their manufacturers, not because they have actual benefits, but because it's a money making position to have a vaccine that will be forced onto the general population. Look into the HPV vaccines, actual risks. The HPV vaccines may have future benefits, but the promotion by the manufacturer has been mostly to school boards and politicians; not the public. The current commercials are based on fear mongering, not education.
Many vaccines are simply about money, not health.
Re:look at the amish (Score:5, Insightful)
The Amish also don't drive cars. Maybe your mom driving a car while pregnant with you causes autism!
Re:"Expert" witnesses for the plaintiffs? WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people out there with no knowledge on a particular subject area, but who are quick to come up with a 'theory' and pass it off as fact and themselves as 'experts' in that area. Financial advisers, anyone?
Re:vaccines (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence of such a link quite disturbing, requiring thorough investigation, though this is unlikely to happen due to the above reason.
The thorough investigation has happened. Several times. See for example here [plosone.org] and here [plosone.org]. Or you could read the CDC article [cdc.gov]. Oh, but wait, they're all government institutions! They would all be devastated by that link! That's why they lie! They all lie! The cake is a lie! Wait, wrong channel...
The point is that the anti-vaxxers - and yes, the derogative term is appropriate - are about as concerned about truth and as scientifically literate as all the Moon-hoaxers. There is nothing that scientists can do to change the minds of the anti-vaxxers, because the anti-vaxxers do not operate on a scientific basis. I just hope this blows over before too many people stop vaccinating.
Re:Litigious society (Score:2, Insightful)
Nowhere in the us are you required to send your kids to school.
Greed is nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades,
People are just as corrupt as they ever have been. If you think people are more corrupt now than in years past you are either very naive or very stupid. Go pick up a history book. The methods (sort of) change but people don't.
It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Because it sounds vaguely logical? Yes loser pays would solve some problems but it would create others. It would reduce some of the more frivolous lawsuits but it would also make some needed lawsuits too risky to attempt. Loser pays strongly tilts the playing field towards those with the most money - even more so than it already is. I don't necessarily have a problem with the general concept of loser pays but please recognize that it isn't something that is going to cure every ill in our legal system.
Frankly if you want to reduce the load on our legal system, stop the ridiculous "war on drugs" - at least the portion related to user and possession charges. The US incarcerates a percentage of the population on minor drug charges that is way out of proportion with other industrialized nations. The war on drugs has FAR more to do with our clogged legal system than frivolous torts.
Re:This won't stop... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is the mean thing here, the vaccination system can support a certain number of freeloaders, so on an individual level these do not select themselves out of the genepoop. They can rest their hands and still reap the benefits from those who actually take the really really small risk of complications stemming from an inoculation. Risk of catching and dying from an infection c*X%, risk of vaccination complications Y%. But after a vaccination quota of Z% the c modifying the X% outweights the Y% - so you are an egoist and don't go, perfectly logical!
Classical game theory, the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] subtype to be precise. The fact that rational individuals all acting in their own self interest (which you can show mathematically) can ruin it for everyone is a very good for cause for government to step in and fix this if the egoism becomes too prevalent.
Now, back to Darwin, on a larger level this can of course endanger an entire species, but also drive selection towards a new species which has the rules of cooperation, i.e. altruism, written into their genes, voilá, social animals!
Re:I find it funny (Score:4, Insightful)
The parents in this case are suffering from the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or, "after this, therefor because of this." That is, they believe that the fact that their child developed autism after being vaccinated is proof that the vaccine was the cause of the autism. This makes as much sense as saying that if you get hungry for breakfast after sunrise, the Sun's rising must have caused you to get hungry.
Re:Litigious society (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"antivax" people (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there's a question. It pops up semiregularly. Here in the United States, the most recent debate arose because some schools began to require vaccination for HPV (human papilloma virus). This was controversial because:
The fact that only girls can be vaccinated was an issue for some, but a very minor one. (If a medicine exists that can lower blood pressure but which only really works on people of African descent, that's not racism, no matter what anyone says.)
Most of the vocal complaints tended to focus on the third point: that parents were afraid that more vaccines exposed their children to greater risks. While some dissenters actually believed this, however, this argument also tended to conceal the debate over the second point.
HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease is tantamount to implying they will be having sex. Vaccinating very young girls, therefore, is absolutely abhorrent and -- to conservative Christians, in particular -- only underscores the moral depravity of modern society.
Now, just to be clear, the reason you want to vaccinate girls against HPV is not to keep them from getting unsightly genital warts when they go out having sex with strange men while they're in primary school. The reason you vaccinate them at a young age is because they're not having sex then, and a vaccine only works before you catch the disease. (Some studies suggest that up to 90 percent of the adult population carries some form of HPV.) And the reason you vaccinate them at all is not to enhance their sex lives, but because if they do catch a certain form of HPV it can lead to papillomas that can be very hard to detect until they turn into cervical cancer, which, if not detected, can kill them stone dead. In other words, this is a vaccine you give someone as a girl to aid her chances of living to become an old woman.
The problem for some, though, is that removing the threat of sexually transmitted disease tends to undermine abstinence-only sexual education programs in the United States, which are a key component of the platforms of the Christian Right and anti-abortion activists. That's right; for some people, the real problem is not that vaccination gets you autism. The problem is that vaccination gets you abortions. They don't like to talk about that, though, because abortion is such a hot-button issue and many on the Left immediately tune out at any whiff of a religious undercurrent in politics. So instead they jump on the bandwagon claiming all vaccinations are "untested," "experimental," "have unknown side effects," etc. Even people who don't believe in religion can fall for junk science.
This is just one example of how these issues can quickly become clouded by politics, but it also demonstrates why we must continue to emphasize the science and the science alone. Vaccines save lives. If you get vaccinated and it doesn't directly save your life, it still might have saved mine (through effects such as herd immunity). People shouldn't die young of any disease, be it mumps, measles, polio, of cervical cancer caused by HPV.
Smallpox is wiped out, should we still immunize for it?
Interestingly enough, in the United States we don't. So I guess the "pro-vax" folks aren't as crazy as the antivax folks want to believe.
Re:Vaccines aren't as simple as people think (Score:2, Insightful)
Many vaccines are simply about money, not health.
If you think preventing cervical cancer is not about health, then you need some of this education you are referring to.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Insightful)
thimerosal removed and did not affect autism rate (Score:2, Insightful)
Thimerosal was removed from vaccines years ago after the hysterical anti-vaccination claims. It had no effect on the autism diagnosis rates which continued to rise gradually due to ongoing improved medical awareness. this proved conclusively that Thimerosal was NOT a cause of Autism. If it was, even if traces remained in a few vaccines, we would still have seen a dramatic reduction in autism. The anti-vaccination crown still go on about vaccines as a cause and about Thimerosal though. It is idiotic, having made up their mind they will not listen to reason.
Re:This won't stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"antivax" people (Score:3, Insightful)
As a scientist I recognise the power and safety of vaccines, and I also recognise the logic in your arguments. Most of what you say I do agree with. However, I also recognise the implicit argument in your post--that vaccination should be mandatory and or the antivax crowd should be silenced--and as a human being I'm going to tell you to shove that point of view up your ass.
If you don't like the antivax crowd, you're going to have to tackle them with argument and reason, not with the iron hand of majority rules.
Re:Vaccine Related? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Insightful)
So if I try to sue a big corporation, and they decide to run up the court costs into the millions, I'm screwed if I lose? I may as well not sue, no matter how legitimate my claim.
"Loser Pays" only makes sense to people operating under the bizarre delusion that the "winner" and "loser" in a court case are always going to be the same as the one who was right and wrong. Frivolous lawsuits will result in the litigant losing their shirts, and just lawsuits will still prevail.
It's gotta be a lack of experience with the legal system, because just about the first thing any lawyer you hire will do is disabuse you of the notion that being right means being victorious. So even if you walked into the lawyer's office not concerned about paying the other side's fees, once they explain that at the end of it all you may have nothing to show for your efforts but wasted time and money, and that you'll have to pay the other side's costs too, you can bet that'll have a chilling effect on most rational people.
Oh and speaking of rationality, it seems like the "loser pays" advocates have a vastly different impression of what constitutes a frivolous lawsuit or what type of person pursues them than I. What I consider to be a frivolous litigant seems on average to be exactly the kind of person who would ignore the reality their lawyer tries to inject into their head. They're exactly the kind of person who wouldn't care about "loser pays", because they're just so damn sure that cell tower was causing their impotence, or that Three's Company reruns gave them cancer, and they just know that if they get Their Day in Court, then surely The Truth Will Out.
Assertions from positions of extreme ignorance (Score:1, Insightful)
Both sides in this are ignorant. The "experts" are totally clueless as to what even causes Autisim. Mankind currently knows jack schitt about biology despite the massive world wide investments being made in the area.
Parents see their kids getting sick or worse after getting their shots and refuse to see anything else.
The vaccination adverse reaction reports in the US at least are public knowledge anyone interested can download the raw datasets and do their own analysis. At the end of the day even if some kids are getting sick or dead as a direct result of the vaccines statistically their still MUCH better off taking them.
We know for a fact mercury makes people retarded so injecting it in any amount into a few day old baby is also retarded. Sometimes captin obvious really needs to fly in and save us all from our own rank nonsense.
The correlation between autisim and vaccination is like the correlation between cancer and insert arbitrary substance here. With 1/5th of the worlds population dieing of cancer there is just too much noise in the signal to make any definitive conclusions. Especially when there is huge potential for disruptive negative consequences be it the cell phone industry or people not getting vaccinated. The signal if it exists will simply be ignored.
This should **NOT** give industries and people a license to act stupidly and lack conservative approach WRT things mankind is currently just too clueless to fully understand.
Use of mercury is stupid. The massive scope creep of vaccinations from must have life saving to the recent laundry lists of nonsense in the current schedules in many areas is also stupid.
Taking a few pictures of myself with an x-ray camera is a safe bet.. It is very unlikely to give me cancer and is great fun for halloween. but if I repeat the process say use an orbting high power satellite to take an x-ray picture of every living person then there is a good chance that some of those people will get cancer and die as a direct result. Statistically you'll never see it so don't sue me, you can't prove it you'll loose in court.
That its even possible for lawsuits against people who are in good faith trying (and succeding by any measure) to help people is the real problem here. People are both stupid and greedy and they get what they deserve for making no effort to rid themselves of such attributes.
Re:Litigious society (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Insightful)
* If each individual were afforded the right to sue for millions of dollars, what would be the effect on the cost to produce a vaccine? Answer: costs rise
* With costs and unknown risk of lawsuits rising, if you were a manufacturer facing lawsuits, would you still make this stuff? (Ignorant people above reference "huge profits", but generic vaccines don't have huge profits, the profits are pretty minimal, and not worth the risk of unknown and massive lawsuits). Answer: Companies exit the market. As prices rise, new ones may enter, but they'd only be willing to sell at the new, higher prices
* With costs rising from lawsuits, supply crunched from manufacturers exiting and lawyers scaring the bejesus out of the public, what do you believe would happen to the percentage of people vaccinated as a percentage of the overall population? Answer: Less people vaccinated
* With less people vaccinated, what are the implications for overall public health? Answer: ??? Well, what do you think?
You're not just damned ignorant, you just don't think from anyone but your own perspective.
I think you may be the one that needs to think past your emotions and consider the wider implications of your position with a logical, economic, public health oriented mentality.
When companies and/or governments get sued the money is not pulled from a magic hat, it raises the cost of the product or service. I wish we in the USA could be as smart as the Euros are on this - this is an area where they're spot on correct. Your mentality is exactly what I was referring to when I referenced a "litigious society". When something like a vaccine goes bad for an individual, I think they should be provided public health and educational assistance, but a "quality of life" allowance in the form of cash is completely inappropriate, IMO.
Re:Legalization versus freely available (Score:3, Insightful)
Legal or freely available?
You need to make the supply chain legal, this will break the organized crime supply chains and fix a lot of problems in some of our neighboring countries (and our own). Decriminalization of use without decriminalization of supplying the stuff will only cause more problems. It's one thing if we want to make drugs illegal, but it's not really fair to export all these problems to our neighbors.
Re:Litigious society (Score:2, Insightful)
Could you imagine another outbreak of polio, or mumps, or any other disease that has virtually been stamped out
You do realize that in the US more children get sick from the polio vaccine than from the actual disease.
If suddenly there was an outbreak of polio, I support vaccinating children who have come into contact with that child. But there has been NO naturally ocuring polio in the US for decades. All cases were acquired from the vaccine itself. There is no need for it unless you actually travel to an affected country and meet some of the couple thousand of people still having this disease.
parents that understand the dangers of not immunizing
I find most people to be completely ignorant about immunizations. Many of them just have a religious zeal that if you don't immunize, you must be a 'bad' and 'evil' parent.
medically unproven opinion about immunization
It's proven - immunizations can stop diseases from spreading.
It's proven - immunizations can cause disease.
Is it proven that cigarettes cause cancer?
A few decades ago even doctors were in cigarette ads.
Medical history is filled with cases where the treatment actually caused harm, and those who proposed alternate research and treatment were shunned and laughed at while a few decades later being vindicated as everyone adopted their procedures.
What if I decided that taking the driver license test would give me cancer, and I decided I could just start driving without ever taking the test. It would be ridiculous, and I would be putting others at risk through my behavior.
Why would you think that?
You're ability to drive does not change with a piece of paper in you wallet. The driver's test is there to weed out those who can not drive safely. It does not make you a better driver.
There are people out there without a drivers license who can drive better than most other people. It's just illegal to do so. There are also bad drivers with a license who passed the test because the dmv employee was incompetent. Those people can be a far greater danger than an unlicensed - good driver who drives illegally.
It's misinformed opinions about the reasons behind vaccinations that keep the drug companies happy.
If you want to think that it's "for everybody's safety" - go ahead, but this statement, which is more often than not a "blind faith" statement is the cause that those anti-vaccine zealots (who believe that all vaccines are bad) don't get along with the pro-vaccine zealots (who think that vaccines are the best thing in the world and you are evil if you don't give them to your kids).
Vaccines work. They have stuff in them that is bad. They are overused. They make their companies alot of money.
But they have saved many lives. And hurt others.
I am pro-safe vaccines that are necessary.
Polio is not necessary. But we should have localized supplies just in case, and we should eradicate polio like we did smallpox.
And get those damn chemicals out of vaccines so that I don't have to worry about 'non-medically-proven' side-effects.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Insightful)
"What public health risk is there really?"
You are kidding, right? Right?
Okay. I am going to assume that you are merely extremely ignorant. The reason for the low public health risk is vaccines and their heavy use.
"Even un-immunized the risks of most sicknesses are quite low to cause any real damage. Measles, Mumps and Rubella generally are low-mortality when generally speaking."
Ever hear of the flu? You know, that seasonal illness that is estimated to kill about about 36K a year. I think you would consider the flu to be a rather low mortality and low risk disease. I wonder what the dead think. That doesn't count the lucky ones who just got to be hospitalized.
For measles: One in 1000 cases of measles results in encephalitis, with a high rate of permanent neurological complications in those who survive. Approximately five percent develop pneumonia. The fatality rate is between one and three per 1000 cases. Without vaccination most people would catch it. What's a couple million cases a year times a few per thousand....
"Yeah, a few kids might be really sick, but if treatment is quick enough, it is easy to contain and cure."
See above.
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Insightful)
When no one has the disease, then that's a tautology.
If suddenly there was an outbreak of polio, I support vaccinating children who have come into contact with that child.
And that's why I don't want a nutcase like you making decisions that affect others. Vaccinating people after exposure is like insurance companies offering a free oil change with every claim for a totaled car. Too little, too late. You have to vaccinate *before* exposure for there to be an effect. But then, ignorant fools that make policy decisions based on fake emotions grounded in bad data and incurable ignorance are a dime a dozen in the US.
But there has been NO naturally ocuring polio in the US for decades. All cases were acquired from the vaccine itself. There is no need for it unless you actually travel to an affected country and meet some of the couple thousand of people still having this disease.
Then we should stop all vaccinations for everything in the US. After all, it's your own damn fault for coming into contact with them, and you can always wait until you have the disease to get your vaccinations, right?
Medical history is filled with cases where the treatment actually caused harm, and those who proposed alternate research and treatment were shunned and laughed at while a few decades later being vindicated as everyone adopted their procedures.
Yeah. So? You aren't proposing alternate treatment. You aren't advocating any new procedure. We tried "don't get vaccinations" back before we had vaccinations, and guess what? People died. Lots of them. And people were crippled. Lots of them. And you are advocating that. Sure, it may not happen for a generation, but in two generations, when polio was "hiding" in remote locations for 30 years, it'll come back as bad as it was in the early 1900s. There can't be any other option. Unless you eradicate it from the surface of the planet, someone, sometime, will manage to make it to contact an American without immunization who will be in the US or bring it home, and we'll be back where we were. The manner and patterns of travel are such that immunizing after it happens will necessarily kill some people, and you'll have caused that which you are saying here you are opposed to.
I am pro-safe vaccines that are necessary.
That's a meaningless statement. That's true whether you are a pro-vaccine zealot or an anti-vaccine zealot. The only distinction is the definition of "safe" and "necessary." The pro-vaccine nuts think "safe enough" is safe and "necessary" means anyone on the planet has it. The anti-vaccine nuts think "safe" means 1000 years of testing and no person ever dying within 10 years of taking it and "necessary" meaning your neighbor has the disease. But both would agree with your stance, so it's a meaningless statement because it's its own opposite.
Re:This won't stop... (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a study that found what the person doing the study was paid to find, was done by one person finding what they want to find, and wasn't confirmed by anything else ever done before. It was "debunked" long before the fraudster was caught and the paper withdrawn. That you are incapable of evaluating the study, but feel the need to follow it anyway demonstrates something inherent in your personality.
That's the trouble with real studies vs. junk science. The junk science is so much faster to test and publish. The original study was plausible sounding, and I fell for it.
The trouble with real studies is people that want to hear something hear it, and ignore everything else. "Fell for it" indicates that you not only believed the fraud without question, but when hundreds of people claimed it was fraud, you didn't believe them. That's not a problem with science, that's a problem with you personally. You put your children at risk (and others, which is worse) because you believed one man's fraud over hundreds of people with equal pedigrees who spoke against it. Why?
The casual link between the two is within the statistical margin of error, but it does not mean it's 0.
There is no "causal link" at all. It is zero. There is no process ever stated where it could possibly cause what's being asserted it's doing. There have been assertions of "it contains mercury and we know mercury is bad" and such. But nothing where anyone's stated "mercury can cause autism by
If the problem is so weak that it can't be shown beyond the margin of error, how can it ever be proven? And, if it's so low, why worry?
It does mean that my initial caution was wrong and it put my children at a (very slightly) higher risk.
"Caution"? You irrationally put your children at risk because you are an idiot who believes one fraudulent scientist (and Jenny McCarthy, the poster child for the idiots that are anti-vaccine) over hundreds of scientists and thousands of experts who disagreed. I guess if you have to justify your abuse as "caution" that's ok. But it's a shame that you procreated. The world is worse for it.
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Insightful)
A disease, any disease, that has a 100% vaccination rate (and the vaccine is reasonably effective) will have more people harmed by the vaccine than the disease. That's the tautology. There is no "disease" if there is a 100% vaccination rate. Yes, I'm making the obvious distinction that someone harmed by the "disease" is harmed from getting it in the wild, while someone harmed by the "vaccine" is harmed by something related to receiving it, whether an infection from those given by shot, or the disease itself from those vaccines where that's possible. But if everyone's vaccinated, then no one will get it (from the wild). So the vaccine will *always* be worse than no vaccine. Always, in every case. You are using the logical conclusion of vaccines to argue against them. Or, are just having fun arguing against people regardless of what they say.
Nevertheless, for those 144 cases, the cure was worse than the disease.
And the 21,269 in 1952 were better? The sum of all injuries by the vaccine still doesn't add up to one year of the disease in the years before the vaccine. 144? Those particular individuals may be worse off than if they hadn't taken the vaccine, but the millions saved in that time by the vaccine probably outweigh those 144. Or are you not saying that, and you are just bringing them up to prove the point that no one has ever argued against, that vaccines carry risk? Apparently, the only person that ever says "vaccines are 100% safe" is the person that immediately attributes that statement to someone else, then attacks it.
Polio wasn't hiding and only 8 'wild' cases have come to the US in 30 years(reported cases), all of them in the last century.
Again, you must have your mind so closed to what I say that you can only take it in a manner that makes your pre-conceived ideas correct. It's "hiding" outside the US. There were 8 that came in 20 years. All it takes is one and a population that's completely unimmunized. We have proof that people with it come to the US.
Oh I would love it there
I left Alaska for some place better. But I keep the link up because that site is run by a friend. That and Alaska isn't bad and I don't want anyone else moving here.
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll keep an open mind - I'm not sure vaccines either do or don't cause autism.
if you have a genuinely open mind you owe it to yourself to dig a tiny bit deeper and it'll quickly become blindingly clear that they don't. Seriously - the claims of the noisy minority in this issue are absolutely paper thin, and have been conclusively and empirically refuted time and time again.