Saturday, September 23, 2006

Quote of the Time Being #5

Posted by "Gilligan's Sister" in a troll-heavy comment thread at Orac's. The trolls prompted this response by Orac.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A whale of a tale, whale.to
It started when the government bombed the WTC
And then it wasn't satisfied
So it started poisoning the kids

The secret chupacabre army in the underground base
Where they learned to fly UFOs
But the alien DNA experiment got out of hand
And they unleashed Lyme's Disease upon the land

Oh, the government's gonna get me soon
I can hear them knocking at my door
I wonder how the black helicopters found me
Mabye it was the tinfoil on my floor

So let's just not vaccinate
Let's shoot our kids with a Lupron bomb
Hold 'er down and listen to her cry
That's what the Geiers, Ayoub, AutismNotReality, and QuantumIdiot say makes me a good experimental Mom.

Nothing quite like the old appeal to ridicule to demonstrate just how ridiculous people's conspiracy delusions can get. What's especially silly is that there's no motive for a vaccine conspiracy: If it were money, they'd just go into decentralized quackery, which is much easier to cover up, and has a much larger profit margin. Just take a look at homeopathy. All I need is my reverse osmosis water filter and/or a bunch of "smarties."

4 comments:

Bronze Dog said...

Think you have to bang against a leather-bound book or something, first.

ebohlman said...

Yep, they call the pounding/shaking process "succussion" and consider it essential. That, by the way, means that it is possible to do a placebo-controlled study of homeopathy; the placebo is water that's been stirred rather than shaken.

Bronze Dog said...

I wonder if that explains a little tidbit about James Bond.

Anonymous said...

I'm particularly baffled by the imagined motive in the conspiracy theory that The Powers That Be are secretly causing children to be autistic with vaccines. It especially seems unprofitable for government, which will probably end up footing the bill for some cases. If pharmaceutical businesses were only in it for the money with no concern for safety, they'd surely save by (secretly, if you like, since we're in tinfoil-hattery) using homeopathic vaccines with no active ingredients. If they wanted to cause problems for the sake of treating them, there are much more effective choices than autism, for which I'm unaware of any non-woo drug treatments.