As far as I know, every commenter on this site is in favor of vaccinating children, but it’s still worthwhile to watch this video in which late-night host Jimmy Kimmel criticizes anti-vaxers, and, at the end, pulls out a bunch of real doctors who use some salty language to criticize those opposing vaccination. The doctors are hilarious.
And here is his update, showing some of the tw**ts he got after the anti-vaxer segment, giving his reaction to them, and sending out a bogus team of anti-vaxers (promoting the view that children should be able to choose whether to be vaccinated) to see the public’s reaction.
h/t: jsp
I saw this the other day and enjoyed it, but this is only suitable for late night TV, it can’t be used for public service announcements.
Oh yeah, pancakes make you fat.
You’re just a shill for Big fruit and veg
Hehe, Fruit – yes, but veggies – not so much, especially the green ones.
Blech. Fruit is a poor excuse for a real dessert*. If I want something sweet, it’ll be brownies, ice cream, or crème brûlée. But vegetables… Vegetables are so good and savory and delicious. I could eat asparagus, broccoli, or green beans all day long. And if you want to count starches as vegetables, if I could eat nothing but potatoes (with proper spices and seasoning) for the rest of my life, I’d still be a happy man.
*I actually do eat an apple every day with lunch (granny smith – the sourer, the better), and I’ll eat other fruit on occasion, but in general, fruit just doesn’t do it for me.
How about we email the link to Jenny McCarthy?
Did she actually learn English?
Sez you! I can’t wait to show this to my (retired, librarian) Mom next time I visit.
Still laughing!
(I did get chicken pox and mumps, but that’s cause MMR wasn’t available yet. And I turned out fine! Thanks for vaccinating me, Mom!)
PS: if bleeping doesn’t make the “naughty” words “safe” for tender ears, why do they bother?
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This is wonderful. I had not paid much attention to J. Kimmel, but he is very funny and accurate. I love the idea of Sou-Cal anti-vaxxers who still inject themselves with botox. Brilliant.
Good for Kimmel! I saw this last night and was impressed with him. Sad to say that many of the comments are of the usual type (Kimmel is a shill for big business, thimerosal, etc.), and that Don’t Likes run about 1/10 of the Likes (which is pretty high for most posts).
I believe it was pancakes make you gay.
This was good stuff and also shows a good deal of ignorance on the Tweetting world. My, who wouldn’t want to go there…
The doctors were ******* brilliant!
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Pancakes don’t make you gay?
I’m old enough to remember what “gay” used to mean, and I would argue that by that older meaning, big, fluffy blueberry pancakes, topped with fruits and syrups of various sorts would indeed make a person feel gay. Me at least, if not my arteries.
Since this is post is on vaccination on an evolution website I thought I would ask this question that has been bugging me for a while.
Will anti-vaxxers slowly decrease in numbers due to evolution? That is if you don’t vaccinate then are you less likely to pass on your genes?
I guess that would depend on if taking a anti-vax stance is genetic or not.
So nature versus nurture? So if you don’t get vaccinated you are more likely to not pass on your genes or not be able to help spread the antivax meme.
Anti-vax is a meme, or more accurately a collection of memes. Though there may indeed be some underlying, basal, cognitive features conducive to woo in general, and that are significantly determined by genetics, the specific anti-vax woo is not something that is amenable to the processes of evolution. It is a cultural thing.
Also, it would take a long time for there to be any significant change in the human gene pool even if anti-vax were a trait that was susceptible to Selection. Much longer than the anti-vax “movement”, or anything like our current society is likely to last.
The anti-vax movement is much like the financial services industry. Both have very short memories. In finance, about 10-15 tears after the last fiasco, the bright idea emerges that the best way to make money is to rapidly grow assets (i.e. lend more money). The people around for the last mess are retiring and the cycle repeats.
I was born in 1956. The polio vaccine had just been developed. But growing up throughout the 60s, people were still terrified of polio. Do people forget that the March of DImes was set up because of polio? Dimes (ten cent pieces) were collected from children to buy iron lungs for polio victims.
I remember my mother marching us down to the park to get vaccinated for a variety of things – including smallpox. Kids were lined up and vaccinated in a super efficient industrial process. I think the smallpox vaccine was given with an air gun. It was press against your arm, trigger pulled and NEXT.
The public health department did not encourage parents to get their children vaccinated. Parents were told to bring your kids on this date and get it done. No one thought this was a great imposition. The fear of polio, smallpox, et al was more than enough to get compliance.
I hope this measles outbreak stays small but I am afraid we will need such events on an ongoing basis to get people to do the right thing.
The botox point is brilliant.
These people won’t vaccinate their kids to save their lives because some vaccines in the past contained tiny amounts of mercury…
Yet they are willing to inject the MOST LETHAL TOXIN KNOWN TO MAN DIRECTLY INTO THEIR FACES because they want to smooth out a couple of wrinkles?!?!
Orac, at “Respectful Insolence” has a post on Kimmel’s videos, and on the totally over-the-top response by Mike Adams of “Natural News”.
Kimmel is excellent.
Vaccination is one of the most important reasons child mortality has dropped so much in industrialised societies. The point that was made by several here is probably true: people do not remember how it was, how smallpox killed or maimed, how polio paralysed or killed children, how measles was not so innocent, how mumps could sterilise young males, etc… still, they should remember pneumococcal meningitis (a killer and causing disability much greater than autism to survivors), that latter vaccine is quite recent.
Despite pneumococcus, vaccination has somehow become the victim of it’s own success.
according the the WHO web site, in 2013 there were 145,700 deaths from measles, down from 2.6 million in 1980, in 1967, the year the WHO says the initiative to eradicate small pox was ramped up, around 2 million died from the disease. Is that what we need, anther 2 million dead before the we accept that there are worse things out there than gluten and high fructose corn syrup?! Working with people with developmental disabilities, as I have since 2007, I find a depressing number of parents who think their child got autism from the vaccines, and more recently, from eating gluten. There are also a surprising number, the vast majority in fact, who are very religious. Perhaps it is desperation, fear, guilt, I can’t say, but it saddens me.
I honestly can’t stand Kimmel. He just annoys the crap out of me for some reason, and I don’t find him even remotely funny, but I can’t argue with his stance here! It really raises my opinion of him quite a lot.
There’s a sad strain of anti-vax b.s. running rampant through my family, including a sister who trained to be a nurse (but is forgoing the practice in order to spew out babies for jebus and her republican husband) and a mother who grew up under the dark clouds of fear brought about by the specter of polio, I just don’t understand it! Good for Kimmel, doing whatever he can, making use of his position in the media for good rather than what so many others have done.
as for pancakes, I’m sure it’s only the rooty tooty fresh and fruity pancakes that turn you gay. I, personally, have always been a waffle guys, especially real Belgian gaufres de Bruxelles, well, the gaufres de Liege are good too…whatever that says about my sexuality, or lack thereof.
Why are those doctors so angry?
Crikey, they’re almost strident!
Yeah, instead of improving healthcare, maybe we should divert funds towards an anger management program for these hotheads.
My friend was channel surfing when we happened across Jimmy Kimmel, there was much cheering and excitement when we saw the PSA.
Looking at the interviewers and the interviewed it seems to me that it is time a vaccination against obesity was introduced. I wonder if they would accept it,(or take the lollipop)?
This relates well to Jerry’s recent post about Creationism and the root cause. Both the antivax movement and Creationism have at their core a mentality that lacks intellectual respect for both science and education. It is the same mentality that permeates the recent Republican conventions and the whole anti-elitist attitude. Whether it is Sarah Palin or Jenny McCarthy, people can relate to the down home, “common sense” mentality of people who didn’t grace the halls of fancy liberal colleges. And then they decide that the doctor’s decade plus of post secondary education is really just a long time learning an equal opinion. Dunning-Kruger anyone?