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Anti-Vaccination Conspiracy Theories Thrive on Amazon (cnn.com)
Amid a growing measles outbreak in the United States, the role of powerful tech companies like YouTube and Facebook in spreading vaccine misinformation is under heavy scrutiny. But there is another massive platform offering spurious anti-vaccination content to people seeking information: Amazon, the world's largest online marketplace.
CNN Business: And, asked about it, an Amazon spokesperson only pointed CNN Business to the company's content guidelines page, which says the following: "As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content." A recent search for "vaccine" on Amazon yielded a search page dominated by anti-vaccination content. Of the 18 books and movies listed on the search page, 15 contained anti-vaccination content. The first listing was a sponsored post -- that is, an ad for which Amazon was paid -- for the book "Vaccines on Trial: Truth and Consequences of Mandatory Shots" by Pierre St. Clair, which Amazon was also offering for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
UPDATE (3/2/2019): Amazon "has apparently started removing anti-vaccine documentaries from its Amazon Prime Video streaming service," CNN reports.
However, "a number of anti-vaccine books were still available for purchase on Amazon.com when CNN Business reviewed search results on Friday afternoon, and some were still being offered for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers."
UPDATE (3/2/2019): Amazon "has apparently started removing anti-vaccine documentaries from its Amazon Prime Video streaming service," CNN reports.
However, "a number of anti-vaccine books were still available for purchase on Amazon.com when CNN Business reviewed search results on Friday afternoon, and some were still being offered for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers."
There's hardly a freedom more important than the right to be wrong. The right to hold, discuss, and publish ideas that more people think are downright stupid and dangerous is the core right in a free society. After all, saying and doing what everyone in society thinks is correct needs little protection.
If people want to separate fools from their money on Amazon, that's their clear right. The nice thing is: if a clear bestseller emerges, education can then be focused on debunking that specific work, and have a very broad reach compared to a million stupid misconceptions across the internet.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Actually smoking is a really good comparison because failure to vaccinate harms not just the individual who doesn't have a vaccine but people around them. Here immunity is important https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity.
How many people love to write a conspiracy-laden book about evil corporations and doctors, and promise enlightenment by not following that path?
My guess is the latter.
Is that really Amazon's fault that there are more Anti-Vax books than Pro-Vax? My guess is any brick-and-mortar book store would contain the same.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. Welcome to our brave new world where it is 'common sense' to ban everything that doesn't fall in the 'consensus'.
The word "ban" is nowhere in the article.
Your argument seems to be that any discussion whatsoever of what is sold by Amazon can have no purpose other than resulting in a call for banning books. Therefore, even if banning books is not mentioned at all, you will react as if it was a proposal to ban books.
By attempting to shut down discussion of something that you think might lead maybe to somebody expressing an opinion you don't like... you are the example of what you criticize.
...Also, I will certainly never get a vaccine shot with aluminium or mercury in it.
They stopped using Thimerosal in pediatric vaccines in 2000.
If you want to avoid mercury exposure, don't eat fish.
No vaccine is 100% effective, and none advertise that they are. Annually, about 20% of flu deaths in otherwise healthy children (so kids without other conditions that would make them particularly vulnerable) in the US are children who were properly vaccinated. Then there are people who cannot, for legitimate reasons, get vaccinated. So no, it's not just people who choose not to that are protected by herd immunity.
As for vaccines not working, when was the last time you heard about polio epidemics in western countries? Measles was all but eliminated in the US before the anti-vax movement. It's still early days but we are also already seeing positive results from HPV vaccination campaigns as well. Going back to my first statistic, around 80% of the deaths in healthy children from the flu each year is in non-vaccinated kids. 4 out of every 5.
It's a bold face lie to say vaccines do not work.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
When my youngest son was two weeks old he developed whooping cough while on a trip to visit my parents. I remember him going from slight cough to blue lips in about an hour. I will never forget the desperate trip to the local hospital, the ambulance to the slightly larger regional hospital, and the air ambulance trip to the major center. We were lucky, my son is still with us and healthy today. But it was touch and go.
There is some question of how he contracted it, but still the most likely vector is from someone who was unvaccinated. The church I attended at the time was quite conservative and vaccination conspiracy theories were pretty popular then.
If vaccination conspiracy nuts only hurt themselves, I would tend to agree. But there are many diseases that you can't vaccinate for right away. Plus, remember, it's not the conspiracy nut who is the one hurt in any case. It's the conspiracy nut's innocent children. They don't deserve deadly diseases, or the knowledge that they passed on a lethal disease to an infant.
A theory has a meaning in science and society, and there is no such thing as a anti-vaccination theory, because no evidence has been presented to agree with the hypothesis that vaccinates cause things such as Autism.
THIS!
I've argued with the Anti-Vaxx militants, they are seriously long on opinion and very short on knowledge and caring about anybody including their own children.
Measles is a SERIOUS illness for babies not yet born or to young to be vaccinated. It may not be as serious as it used to be, when it killed 1 in 10K or so, but it can still kill. It still causes serious illness, high fevers, and sends kids to the hospital with frightening frequency. It is VERY easy to transmit and extremely hard to avoid exposure for the unvaccinated.
The problem here is that the Anti-Vaxx lobby have a whole host of "The MMR vaccine causes X" statements which are absolute hogwash. I've heard it causes autism, SIDS and all sorts of childhood illnesses. NONE of these theories are borne out in the scientific studies, none. Yet they keep pushing them, scaring the young impressionable parent who think they are doing right by their kids by refusing the vaccines in their religious like fervor.
The MMR vaccine is highly effective if administered as directed. It is also safe, compared to the alternative.
What's missing here is that most parents don't have any experience with any of these nasty childhood illnesses. The vaccines have been so very effective that nobody remembers what polio was or how unpleasant Measles really is for children. They have no idea what they are avoiding, so the minimal risks associated with the vaccine look huge in comparison.
I wonder if the whole anti-vaxx thing would die on the vine if some illness like Measles was running rampant, kids where routinely getting seriously ill, some where hospitalized and even a few died? I think it would and quick. The Anti-Vaxx Zealots would be relegated to the tin-foil hat conspiracy level and laughed at like the flat earth folks, because THAT's exactly what they really are.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Physician here. Arguably, no intervention is health care is 100% effective.
It is maddening that anti-vaxxers say vaccines are not 100% effective so they are ineffective. It is flawed logic. Effective means it makes a difference when studied in a large group of people. Not effective means it has no effect on a large study group.
Many interventions in health care have numbers needed to treat (NNT) in the 10 or even 100 range to create one positive outcome. These are effective interventions. Vaccines are highly effective compared to most other interventions done in healthcare. Finding effective interventions in health care is hard.
On the other hand, antivaxxers and the like often push vitamins, herbs, adjustments, accupuncture and all sorts of other interventions that have no proven efficacy or even have been proven to have no efficacy (NNT is infinity!). There logic is literally backwards.
The so-called 'religious right' has been selling 'science is of the Devil' for a long time now, because 'knowledge is power' and The Few that hold positions of power within mainstream religion are no different than anyone else who has power: they don't want to give it up, and having people be knowledgeable makes them harder to maintain control over. I wouldn't at all be surprised if mainstream religion has something to do with the anti-vax 'movement'.
I think a more accurate headline would have been "Anti-Vaccination Conspiracy Theories Remain Popular and Lucrative - Amazon Marketplace Reflects This". And, for that matter, it's not limited to anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. Societies have always had problems with people who are all too willing to believe what they want to believe regardless of evidence to the contrary, and others willing to exploit those people for money.
When your mirror shows you something that upsets you, the correct solution is not to try to bend the mirror.