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    Re: (FAIR) Boosting RFK Jr., Murdoch Pushes 2024 Rightward Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 1, 2023, 12:31 am, in reply to "Re: (FAIR) Boosting RFK Jr., Murdoch Pushes 2024 Rightward"

    I'll row back the 'he just wants them properly tested' line after reading this SBM article which argues that this is an antivax 'gambit', then going on to demand impossibly high standards of safety for vaccine 'safety':

    ' KENNEDY: What I’ve said is vaccines… I’m not anti-vaccine. I think vaccines should be subject to the same level of rigorous testing as other medications. And that is the only thing- my only position. Listen, I fought to get mercury out of fish for forty years and nobody called me anti-fish. I’m not anti-vaccine because I want safe vaccines. And I think everybody wants safe vaccines. And as we all now recognize the COVID vaccines were neither safe nor effective.

    Interestingly, Kim only observes about this exchange, “That was a recent interview, but what about in the past? Was he anti-vaccine then?” She seems to assume that the exchange above is evidence that RFK Jr. is not antivaccine, that his mere assertion that he is not antivaccine is adequate evidence that he really is “not antivaccine.” Given RFK Jr.’s long history, you and I know that a mere denial of being antivaccine is not evidence that one is not antivaccine, any more than an assertion of being provaccine is evidence of being provaccine. Actions matter more than mere assertions.

    Regular readers will recognize RFK Jr.’s gambit as “I’m not antivax; I’m pro-safe vaccine.” I note that the very first section after the introduction of my 2010 post referred to above is all about this very gambit, which Jenny McCarthy routinely used to use c.2008 when asked about whether she was “antivaccine” or not, as did J.B. Handley, even as he gloated about the decline in confidence in childhood vaccines among parents that he and his allies had stoked. (An alternative response is, “What I really am is ‘anti-toxins’ in the vaccines.”)

    RFK Jr. is basically trotting out this gambit here, and Kim fell for it. You can tell he’s full of the proverbial BS because of his statement that “vaccines should be subject to the same level of rigorous testing as other medications” is the purest BS. Vaccines are subject to the same rigorous level of testing as other medications, arguably even more rigorous. After all, they are by design intended to be administered to large numbers of healthy people in order to prevent disease, a population for whom adverse events are less tolerable. '     - https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-antivaccine-his-own-words-show-that-he-is/

    Though I wouldn't know about the details on safety testing, or whether RFK's demands are realistic or not. Hard to get to the substance behind Gorski's barrage of insults...

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