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Raging Bullshit, part 3: Antivaccine celebrity Robert De Niro to make a vaccine documentary
Sigh. Here we go again. Robert De Niro is letting his antivaccine freak flag fly again, this time even higher than usual, by revealing that in the wake of the antivaccine debacle at his Tribeca Film Festival he is going to make his very own documentary about vaccines. It’s the continuation of a process that, depressingly, revealed Robert De Niro to be perhaps the biggest A-list antivaccine celebrity out there.
First, a bit of background to bring newbies up to speed. A couple of months ago, science-based medicine advocates were scratching their heads over news that the Tribeca Film Festival was going to include among its documentaries a film called VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe. The movie, which was directed by antivaccine icon Andrew Wakefield and a one time producer for the pop medicine daytime show The Doctors, Del Bigtree. From the trailer alone, which contained a number of deceptive audio edits, it was obvious that this movie was going to tell the myth of the “CDC whistleblower,” William Thompson, a CDC scientist who’s been a frequent topic of blogging here due to his having nearly two years ago been recorded by a biochemical engineer turned incompetent antivaccine epidemiologist named Brian Hooker who demonstrated his incompetence with an epically incompetent and simplistic “reanalysis” of a study by Frank DeStefano and coauthored by Thompson that claimed to have found that the CDC had “covered up” a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys, thus confirming the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement. Transcripts were released, and documents given to a Congressman by Thompson leaked, and the story keeps going on and on.
Truly, it has turned into an urban legend, and this is the legend told by VAXXED, an execrable film containing a heaping helping of antivaccine pseudoscience and misinformation. It’s a movie you don’t even have to see to know that it’s antivaccine nonsense.
more with links...http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/05/24/raging-bullsht-part-3-robert-de-niro-says-hes-teaming-up-with-harvey-weinstein-to-make-an-antivaccine-movie/
First, a bit of background to bring newbies up to speed. A couple of months ago, science-based medicine advocates were scratching their heads over news that the Tribeca Film Festival was going to include among its documentaries a film called VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe. The movie, which was directed by antivaccine icon Andrew Wakefield and a one time producer for the pop medicine daytime show The Doctors, Del Bigtree. From the trailer alone, which contained a number of deceptive audio edits, it was obvious that this movie was going to tell the myth of the “CDC whistleblower,” William Thompson, a CDC scientist who’s been a frequent topic of blogging here due to his having nearly two years ago been recorded by a biochemical engineer turned incompetent antivaccine epidemiologist named Brian Hooker who demonstrated his incompetence with an epically incompetent and simplistic “reanalysis” of a study by Frank DeStefano and coauthored by Thompson that claimed to have found that the CDC had “covered up” a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys, thus confirming the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement. Transcripts were released, and documents given to a Congressman by Thompson leaked, and the story keeps going on and on.
Truly, it has turned into an urban legend, and this is the legend told by VAXXED, an execrable film containing a heaping helping of antivaccine pseudoscience and misinformation. It’s a movie you don’t even have to see to know that it’s antivaccine nonsense.
more with links...http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/05/24/raging-bullsht-part-3-robert-de-niro-says-hes-teaming-up-with-harvey-weinstein-to-make-an-antivaccine-movie/