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Bill Gates Says Anti-Vaccine Effort Kills Children
Hugh Pickens writes writes "CNN has an interesting interview with Bill Gates who says that unbelievable progress is being made in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. The improvements could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half that. But Gates has harsh words for those who engage in anti-vaccine efforts, especially Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who falsified data to 'prove' a fraudulent link between vaccines and autism. 'It's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids,' says Gates. 'Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today.'"
The problem is why does anyone care that Bill Gates says it? That's what got us into this mess in the first place, with soccer moms listening to jenny mccarthy, over, you know, actual experts. Sure, Bill Gates has apparently listened to experts, and is saying something sensible, but that's not a reason to give him a bunch of press over people who actually study and understand these things.
If he's giving money to eradicate polio then sure, he can have press over eradicating polio, and as part of that saying vaccines don't actually cause autism is fine. But the MSM jumping up and down like this is some great revelation because Bill Gates says it is the cause of all this in the first place. 'Your Kid has Autism so yu must be an expert on what causes autism! Your kid doesn't have autism and you gave them vaccines, vaccines must not cause autism!' The people who aren't taking polio vaccines (which is admittedly drops not injections but whatever), aren't doing it because they think vaccines cause autism; that group are yuppies in north America. The people not taking polio vaccines are doing it because they either think the government is out to sterilize them, are too poor to afford it, or believe the government has some other, random evil scheme to use vaccines against them.
Bill Gates is not an expert in vaccines. His correctly knowing that vaccines do not cause autism deserves no more press than my room-mate who makes 15k/year saying the same thing. The whole question asked by Gupta is a lead in for Bill Gates to make this statement, as though he is an authority on vaccines. . Except Dr. Gupta should be an expert, and should be behaving like one on medicine 'Mr Gates, we know that there was a discredited study linking autism to vaccines. How does that sort of fraud impact your work distributing polio vaccines' , not 'in 1998 they linked autism to vaccines, what do you make of it'.
Not having your children vaccinated not only leaves your child open to disease, but then they can pass the disease onto others. Not vaccinating seriously harms you and others around you. Therefore, not vaccinating is equivalent to giving your child ciggarettes. QED.
Except smoking doesn't seriously harm others around you and the people that came up with that crock are no better than Dr Wakefield.