This won’t be a long diary — I don’t have time today to research this but I want to raise some important points.
FIrst—disclaimer: I loathe Stein. I think that her honest goal is to sabotage Clinton, thereby handing Trump the election, and create circumstances so dire, so awful for the underprivileged that people will flock to her movement — and to her — as some sort of “progressive” savior to lead them out of the darkness. I see her, to be honest, as worse than Trump — in that she is an utter hypocrite to truly left-wing ideals.
But she does have something right. There IS too much corporate/lobbyist pressure on regulatory agencies. My dad worked at the FDA for 20 years so he knows about these things: it is true that in some cases clinical trials are fast-tracked that shouldn’t be; that drugs get on the market without sufficient oversight; that cases of fraud do exist; even that swanky trips to the bahamas have at times been exchanged between doctors and pharamaceutical companies. On occasion, a scandal arises.
This part, at least, is fact — and needs reform. ESPECIALLY in the case of new drugs — anything you see advertised on TV, for example? Make sure you do your research. Heavy research — from trusted, science-based and medically sound sources.
But Stein does something exceedingly dangerous. She turns this legitimate concern for reform into something shadowy, and uses it to manipulate and undercut real, proven science. MMR vaccines, polio vaccines — these have been around for decades, scientifically tested again and again, and proven safe. Are there side effects? In some cases, yes. Is it humanly POSSIBLE that a serious reaction can occur? In exceedingly rare cases, yes. But it is so rare as to be infinitesmal: the health risk from contracting one of these diseases is many, many orders of magnitude greater from the tiny, tiny risk of a negative vaccine response.
What Stein does is turn this medically and statistically sound record into something dark and conspiratorial: “are we SURE? we need to ask QUESTIONS”. Her concern isn’t with the raw science: how to mitigate the statistically insignificant side-effects—which is always a good cause--but with possible corporate/government conspiracy. What that does is mobilize the pseudo-scientists and quacks, and fuel distrust among the general public that vaccines, in general, have something dark and shadowy about them….that the government is out to get you.
People usually mean well but are easily led, easily misinformed, and look to follow people who claim they “know” better. Stein is one of htese people.
In short:
1. Vaccines are safe, extensively tested, and necessary for your personal and the public health
2. Side effects are real, but exceedingly rare, and well known and established. They DO NOT IN ANY SENSE nullify point 1.
3. Do your research on any medication, but ESPECIALLY new drugs, and make sure your info comes from sound sources (not ones with an agenda). DIscuss these decisions with doctors — and try to confirm with 2nd opinions if you can.
4. Corporate/lobbyist pressure on regulatory agencies IS real, and IS a problem. Usually it manifests in terms of congressional funding, but clinical trials sometimes get fast-tracked that shouldn’t be.
5. Stein’s pseudo-scientific, conspiratorial approach is not the way to learn the facts.
6. Don’t vote for Stein — she doesn’t have your interests in mind.