My bad. You do. However, what he says here is based on the fear that was unleashed by Wakefield. This is from 2010, and is not a current church view.
That's a fair point. What he says is from 2010. His daughter's quotes, however, are quite fresh.
Nothing is "copy pasted" on this. And I doubt that everyone reading this thread "know the story". Wakefield's fraudulent study and the fear it generated are what is behind the multiple vaccine scare, not Eagle Rock International Church. That is my point.
A study that's been discredited since, at least, 2010... it's now 2013.
"Exhorted", not "extorted".
Sheesh, I should have spotted that. That's what I get for posting from my iPhone.
That is not their position. They do not advocate reliance on faith healing - they promote prayer AND medical treatment.
Previous statements they've made seem to advocate reliance on faith healing, and plenty of church members have made statements to that effect. You can argue that those members don't represent the church position accurately, but you can't just toss their statement aside.
Sure. It's in the Kentucky Observer, August 22, 2013, page 2.
Great, but hard to verify ;P But I'll take you at your word, what with being an a getbigger and all.
Copeland was upset by the number of vaccines his grandson was due to get, and warned people to make sure of what they were doing. My point is this position was very common until recently, not only within this congregation, but in many other congregations and in the general population, as well as among medical professionals as a result of Wakefield.
I don't know that it was
very common in the general population, but it wasn't among medical professionals.
I think you meant to say "uneducated". It is easy to make fun of the unsophisticated.
I did thanks - typing on the iPhone can be a pain at times; but the hilarity often makes up for it. And yes, it's easy to make fun of people who are unsophisticated. But her position was the position adopted by many others in her church. And I ask you, shouldn't the pastors of that church who tend to that "flock" after all and are presumably not unsophisticated at least attempt to correct such misconceptions, instead of encouraging and "feeding" them?
Of course. He does make mistakes in the video you linked to. However, the main point he is making about dangers in multiple vaccination was still out there as a view not yet rejected by medicine, at the time. And it was a widespread view, due to ten years of publicity concerning the Wakefield study. Still, he enjoins people to be cautious, and does not advise anyone not to seek medical care when needed.
It's true, he never outright says "don't seek medical attention." But I think that's only because he wants to avoid the legal hot waters he would invariably land himself into if he had. Legal hot waters that would cost him a lot of money.
That "single study" was enormously influential, and it did not "turn accepted scientific wisdom on its head." Vaccines like MMR were new at the time, and there had been - and continues to be - an unexplained increase in the diagnosed cases of autism. It's not as if the conventional research wisdom had been contradicted by Wakefield. Wakefield's claim was entirely novel.
It did turn accepted scientific wisdom on its head, because the general consensus was that vaccination was safe and had minimal relatively benign side-effects. Additionally, The MMR vaccine was around since the 1971 and its constituent components since the sixties and were generally recognized as safe. So MMR wasn't "new" no matter how you cut, slice or dice it, unless you mean a new formulation of the MMR vaccine.
And yes, Wakefield's claim was novel, but that doesn't mean it didn't turn accepted scientific wisdom on its head. It did - by claiming that a vaccine that was generally accepted as safe was responsible for autism and autism-spectrum disorders.
What kind of scientist were you trained as? You don't sound like a scientist.
Oops. Sorry, I'll remember to sound more sciency next time! Not that my particular field of study is relevant but since you asked, I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science and mathematics. My Math degree was with a minor in physics, my M.Sc. in computer science focused on cryptography, my M.Sc. in math involved the study of elliptic curves and my post M.Sc. research has revolved heavily around computational biology and biochemistry.
Am I enough of a scientist or are you revoking my membership?
You would uncritically take the word of a local pediatrician over the frightening link that Wakefield claimed to uncover, a study published in Lancet? No worry, no questioning, just blind acceptance?
I didn't say anything about blind acceptance; I would ask questions and do research on my own, but yes, I would absolutely take the word of my child's pediatrician; I wouldn't have a pediatrician that I didn't trust to begin with. And if his answer didn't satisfy me, I'd simply look for another, whose answer did.
There is nothing wrong or unscientific about trusting in someone who has superior training in a particular field, just as there is nothing unscientific with refusing to panic over the implications of a study that makes bold new claims and hasn't been duplicated; even a study published in as prestigious a journal as the Lancet.
Your hostility toward people who believe in God ("mystical being in the sky") is well known on this board, and is entirely beside the point in question.
I'm not particularly hostile towards people who believe in god; in fact, I find many of them to be delightful people. Although I do find such belief cannot be rationally supported, but if someone chooses to have faith that's their business, not mine.
And religion has everything to do with the topic, since we are dealing with a measles outbreak in a church, members of which have asserted that the congregation in question accepted faith healing and generally seemed to hold anti-vaccination views.
That was not the conventional wisdom at the time, at least not beyond the personal experiences you cite. And if only a few parents reacted as you state, that would not account for the massive drop in vaccinations I referenced.
There was a rather large drop in vaccination, but it seems to have been largely confined to the UK and Ireland, based on what I can find. From
"Improving uptake of MMR vaccine" by McIntyre[/quote] with emphasis added by me:
Low MMR vaccine coverage is not a trivial matter, because the accumulation of unvaccinated children will increase the risk of measles outbreaks. Confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales rose from 56 in 1998 to 971 in 2007. In the United Kingdom, coverage for MMR at 24 months is lower than for other vaccines (85% versus about 94%). Such a wide gap between coverage for MMR and other vaccines has not been seen in other countries.
Do you have children?
First you ask what kind of scientist I am, and now you ask if I have children? What's next? You'll want a copy of my tax returns?
What does it matter if I do or not? If I were to say that I don't, are you going to then turn around and say "well, it's easy to say that you'd vaccinate your kids, but since you didn't have any at the time it doesn't count, because if you were a parent you'd take those warnings more seriously because of your emotional attachment and desire to protect your child" perhaps?
Well, I do agree that your comments speak for themselves. You also called Copeland a "scamming televangelist".
Well, he is a televangelist who routinely asks people for money, whose Church never posts audited financial statement, owns private jets and a private airport. Now, granted, he's not a scammer in the same league as people like Peter Popoff or Robert Tilton. But by all accounts, he's living quite large and, to me, falls in the same broad category as Creflo Dollar. You can make your own decisions about whether that qualifies him as a scammer.
The bottom line, my friend, is the reason that "the idiots" you harangue (as well as many people that I venture to guess you would not label as idiots) were scared away from multiple vaccinations is Wakefield's research and the platform of legitimacy given him by a premier medical journal.
No doubt. The Wakefield study caused many people to worry and refuse to vaccinate their children. Although I think that I would have vaccinated my child at the time, I can understand a parent choosing not to do so. But this is 2013, and Wakefield's study has been discredited completely.
What is really scandalous is that it took ten years to discredit him, and, as a result, the effects of the hysteria he created persist even today.
I agree with you on that one. Which is why it's important for people in positions of authority and influence people like Kenneth Copeland and Terri Pearsons Copeland to act responsibly and educate people who might otherwise never know that the study was bogus and was retracted, instead of perpetuating its ill effects.