Stupid Sociology Can Be Dumber Than Stupid Science!
Say NO to Vaccine Mandates Here: http://TinyURL.com/VaccinationISViolation
Taking the vaccination wars to their illogical conclusion, a couple of bioethics researchers have suggested that a campaign dubbing women’s breast-feeding as “Only Natural” could backfire on the pro-vaccination forces because it might make natural approaches to health seem better than unnatural ones–like vaccinations, for instance.
Um, never mind that breast feeding IS natural and injecting pus and poisons is NOT natural. It’s all about perception, after all.
The headline on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHS)web page reads: “Breast-feeding: It’s Only Natural” and says “Every woman’s journey to motherhood is different. But usually, the first decision you’ll make as a mom is how to feed your child.”
Hardly anything controversial there. The main thrust of the DHS page, under the auspices of the Office on Women’s Health, seems to be that women–especially African-American women–need to be convinced that breast-feeding is a natural and acceptable practice, and that it is indeed the healthiest way to feed a newborn.
And in light of the ongoing struggle against the repressive forces that are terrified of the sight of a woman’s breast in any context, it seems like a worthy campaign.
Enter a pair of University of Pennsylvania bioethics researchers and their dutiful mouthpieces at CNN. Jessica Martucci, a researcher in advanced bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and co-author Anne Barnhill have published “Unintended Consequences of Invoking the ‘Natural’ in Breastfeeding Promotion.”
Martucci and Barnhill state: “…we are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the ‘natural’ way to feed infants…Promoting breastfeeding as ‘natural’ may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that ‘natural’ approaches are presumptively healthier. This may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.” (emphasis added.)
So let’s get this straight: promoting breastfeeding as natural–what with it being something women have done it for millennia, since before we came down out of the trees and even became anatomically modern humans–is dangerous because…people might think vaccinations are unnatural?
Well…yeah. I think you win the prize there, Sherlock.
What a load of garbage. It’s difficult to imagine a more smug and condescending tone: : “Oh, those ignorant little people are going to think “natural=good, not natural=bad” so we must change the words we use in order to prevent them from getting any silly ideas in their silly little heads.”
Thank you, Drs. Martucci and Barnhill, for perfectly illustrating all that is wrong with how the powers-that-be approach any discussion about vaccinations: with a pat on the head and a cookie for anyone who has the temerity to disagree with their entrenched, establishment position.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the authors’ fears of a backlash might just generate a backlash of their own, once people wake up and see what they’re actually saying in this CNN piece.
Let the backlash to the backlash begin.
To assert your legally protected natural right of Informed Consent to refuse unnatural vaccines, visit http://TinyURL.com/AVDCard
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/health/breast-feeding-natural-vaccine-fears/index.html
Great article! My thoughts exactly.