My "conversation" with Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Carmen Balber about vaccine safety
Balber is pro-vaccine. She doesn't care that there isn't any scientific evidence supporting her belief that vaccinated kids are better off. It just doesn't matter.
Executive summary
I recently had a short SMS conversation with Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Carmen Balber.
I wanted to share this conversation with you because it was very short and it shows you exactly and concisely exactly what we are up against in trying to change people’s minds.
The short story is this:
She is not interested in hearing any evidence that she got it wrong.
It doesn’t matter that there is no evidence supporting her position. She just doesn’t want to go there.
She is right and I am wrong. Period. End of story. No discussion is warranted.
So you can point out that the Emperor has No Clothes (i.e., that there is no evidence supporting her beliefs), and you can be absolutely right, but she simply doesn’t care to re-examine her belief system and nothing you can say is going to change that.
Our conversation
Summary
People don’t like it when you challenge their belief system.
Even after you point out there is no evidence supporting their belief system, it just doesn’t matter to them. Even when lives (or the health of our kids) are at stake.
They just want you to go away so they can avoid the cognitive dissonance that would result from having to confront the fact that they got it backwards and have actually been harming people all these years, instead of helping people.
Oh… and one last thing… Mark Twain never said that, did you realize that?
For the full story on the origin of that quote, see this article.
However, I’m not going to try to convince you that you’ve been fooled on that one ;).
You certainly are tenacious Steve. I had an epiphany in 1990, with regard to health, when I was hosting a television show and exposed to an enormous amount of information on natural health. It was necessary for me to read between 100 and 200 books each year, for the show. I became a health warrior, talking to anyone and everyone who would listen. I went to politicians, to try and get them to run education programs on the maintenance of health, to try and avoid senseless degenerative disease and soaring medical costs. I spoke to the senior clergy where I live and spoke to audiences on maintaining optimum health. I kept this up for several years, until I realized that people didn't want to know. It's a little like talking about politics or religion and people have long held beliefs - rightly or wrongly. There are several reasons that I believe prevent people from becoming open to different ideas on health. One is that most people don't want to admit that they have held onto misconceptions. Another is that many people have been seduced by pharma and believe that there is a silver bullet for disease. Some are simply hanging on with blind faith. Until people realize that optimum health is simply not the absence of disease and that health is easier to maintain than reclaim, lifestyle folly will continue and doctors and pharmaceutical companies will continue to grow richer and research institutes will continue to siphon money, preying on people's empathy towards those with degenerative diseases. It's a sad but true reality and it's greed behind it all.
It was painful for me, as a parent of a son with autism, to start looking at your work, but I owe it to my son, to do so. Please never give up. You know what a mighty money machine you are up against. Well, it’s money, and maybe more.