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Edited on Thu Sep-15-11 07:30 PM by HuckleB
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/09/michelle_bachmanns_anti-vaccine_statement.php"...
Interestingly, the problem of anti-science lunacy in the Republican Party has gotten to the point where it's not just the science blogosphere has noticed. Indeed, some Republicans, including a candidate who probably doesn't have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination, John Huntsman fretted about how anti-science the Republican Party has become. This inspired Paul Krugman to write an article a couple of weeks ago that he called Republicans Against Science, in which he described the Republican candidates for their party's nomination as Republican Party as "aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge."
Arguably the most wingnutty of the Republican anti-science wingnuts has to be Michelle Bachman, whose abuse of science and reason has been a regular topic among bloggers on ScienceBlogs and elsewhere in the science blogosphere for quite some time now, saying such astoundingly ignorant things such as citing "hundreds of scientists" who think "intelligent design" creationism is good science and claiming that there "isn't even one study" showing that carbon dioxide is harmful with respect to global climate change. In the interim, few politicians can bring home the stupid with such incredible regularity as Bachmann, who was also recently notorious for claiming that the recent earthquake and hurricane that hit the East Coast were God's warning to America.
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As I've pointed out time and time again, Gardasil is incredibly safe by any measure. Also by any measure, it's been very heavily tested and monitored. Of course, there is no evidence at all that the HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation. I've also pointed out how the vast majority of the reports of adverse reactions after the HPV vaccine made to the VAERS database were almost certainly not due to Gardasil and have castigated Medscape, of all publications, for buying into anti-vaccine myths about Gardasil. Meanwhile the American Academy of Pediatrics immediately issued a press release to correct Michelle Bachmann's false statements about Gardasil. What Bachmann is peddling is pure pseudoscience. I suppose I shouldn't be in the least bit surprised, given how gullible she is when it comes to science in general and how much she allows ideology to trump science.
What pleasantly surprised me was the reaction to Bachmann's pandering to the anti-vaccine movement. I noted during the 2008 election that all the major candidates pandered to some degree to some anti-vaccine beliefs. John McCain, for instance, ignorantly parroted anti-vaccine claims. Even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fell into the same trap of wanting to seem "balanced." It was a minor kerfuffle. This time around, Bachmann's ignorant statements have caused a lot of Republicans to express dismay, with some even likening her to anti-vaccine wingnut Jenny McCarthy. Conservative bloggers Ed Morrissey, The Right Scoop, Jonathan Adler, and even Instapundit (who accused Bachmann of going after the Jenny McCarthy vote) have piled on. Shockingly, even the looniest of right wingers I know of right now, Emperor Misha of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, asked For Crying Out Loud, Michelle, You Just Had to Go and Do It, Didn't You? Of course, this is a guy who routinely refers to President Obama as "Ogabe" on a blog where terms like terms like "Fabulous Obamanomics Utopia™" are thrown around as though they were clever and bloggers think nothing of advocating extrajudicial murder. It's also a blog where anthropogenic global warming denialism runs rampant with bad arguments and one of the bloggers refers to supporters of the science of anthropogenic global warming as Assholes, Charlatans, Frauds & Libelers. In other words, it's a blog that makes Vox "Hey, It Worked for Hitler" Day look almost rational by comparison.
..."------------------------------------ Can we finally become the party of science based evidence? Can we? :shrug:
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