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Survey Finds Nearly 50% In US Believe In Medical Conspiracy Theories
cold fjord writes in with some bad news for the people using water fluoridation to pacify the public and install a new world government. "About half of American adults believe in at least one medical conspiracy theory, according to new survey results. (paywalled, first page viewable) Some conspiracy theories have much more traction than others ... three times as many people believe U.S. regulators prevent people from getting natural cures as believe that a U.S. spy agency infected a large number of African Americans with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). J. Eric Oliver, the study's lead author from University of Chicago, said people may believe in conspiracy theories because they're easier to understand than complex medical information. ... Some 49 percent of the survey participants agreed with at least one of the conspiracies. In fact, in addition to the 37 percent of respondents who fully agreed that U.S. regulators are suppressing access to natural cures, less than a third were willing to say they actively disagreed with the theory. — One of the conspiracy theories, that the U.S. created HIV, was created for an active disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union against the U.S. as a form of political warfare during the Cold War, and still gets repeated."
Can they figure out how to create a Slashdot account and log in? Maybe you should get them to help you if they can!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This thread is certainly a good display of the pseudo-religious hysteria surrounding vaccination, although you also see it in other topics. Basically, the proponents will produce theories as being irrefutable fact (e.g. herd immunity **theory**), and launch into personal attacks against any who don't follow the populist opinions that the proponent subscribes to. In this case, herd immunity theory, as proferred by Fox in his Measles paper, uses a Reed-Frost statistical model consisting of a closed population of 1000 hosts. (The measles virus, like diptheria, does not follow the herd immunity theory. Outbreaks in 100% vaccinated populations have occured and been well documented) The last polio outbreak was caused by the oral polio vaccine - the human waste of the newly vaccinated infected the water source. Now if you argue that an unvaccinated child puts your vaccinated child at risk, aren't you whining that you don't believe the vaccine conferred immunity to your child?