This is a very long response to one small part of Aaron Barhart’s recent piece on Bialik, posted and discussed in its own thread. I have great respect and affection for our former Chief, but I believe he is wrong about Bialik not being an Anti-Vaxxer. Below I make my case in far too much detail (I had the day off today).
Here is the link to Aaron’s article: https://www.primetimer.com/barnhart/mayim-bialik-is-the-future-of-jeopardy?mc_cid=3f186cba62&mc_eid=2ecf66baff Aaron writes: “Bialik has also been finger-wagged online for not vaccinating her children, earning her the label “anti-vax” (she’s not <https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/08/jeopardy-host-mayim-bialik-says-shes-not-anti-vaxx>).” I’m afraid this is inaccurate. Bialik **is** anti-vax, in the sense that this term has been understood for most of the last quarter century. This has nothing to do with COVID, and everything to do with Autism (and other childhood disorders). Bialik chose to reveal on her own, in her own book, that she did not vaccinate her children, and acknowledged less than two years ago that her children did not receive all of the vaccines recommended by pediatricians. While not as crazy and dangerous as the anti-COVID vaccine conspiracy theories, the anti-Childhood Vaccine and Autism conspiracy theories are still plenty crazy and dangerous. In the context of the last two years (and really, just the last 13 months) the term “anti-vax” has become synonymous with being against the COVID vaccine. In that limited sense, Bialik is not, and never has been, anti-vax. This is a good reminder that, prior to the COVID Pandemic, many of us used the “Anti-Vax” position as an example of how anti-intellectual, anti-science conspiracy theories were prevalent on the Left as well as the Right, since many (though by no means all) of the anti-Vaxers prior to last year would locate themselves on the political and social Left. However, the term “anti-vax” has a long and juicy history that predates COVID. Since the late 1990s several developments (including a fraudulent article published in 1998 in the British Science journal Lancet by discredited former physician Andrew Wakefield) led to anxious conspiracy theories that childhood vaccinations, particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, caused Autism (or were in some way related to the perceived rise in the diagnosis of what is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder). I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the connection between vaccinations in general (and MMR in particular) and Autism is false. This has been shown repeatedly in a number of scientific articles – see for example: “Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses” by J. Gerber and P Offit, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2009, Feb 15, available at this link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908388/ Prior to 2020, the term “anti-vax” would have been applied (and in many cases proudly claimed) by anyone who believed that any or all of the childhood vaccines routinely recommended to be administered to children in the first 6 years of life were potentially dangerous, implicated in Autism, and should be either completely avoided or at least significantly delayed. It is in this routine and consensus pre-2020 sense of the term that Bialik clearly is “anti-vax.” In his article, Aaron cites and links a Vanity Fair article from last August, which contains the following quote from Bialik’s spokesperson: “She has been fully vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus and is not at all an anti-vaxxer.” As noted above, in the limited, COVID sense of that term, this is undoubtedly true, and has never been in question (except perhaps by causal readers of the controversy who misunderstood what was meant by calling her an anti-vaxxer in the first place). The VF article also cites a tweet from Bialik in 2015 which read: “dispelling rumors abt my stance on vaccines. i’m not anti. my kids are vaccinated. so much anger and hysteria. i hope this clears things up.” Unfortunately, no, it does not clear things up. She is being disingenuous here. The sentence “my kids are vaccinated” is only true if it is interpreted as meaning “my kids have had some vaccines.” But that is not what we mean when we say “kids are vaccinated.” What we mean is that they have had all medically recommended (in some cases legally required) vaccines on schedule. By Bialik’s own report, this was not true of her kids. In 2012 Bialik wrote that she had decided not to vaccinate her kids. In 2020 she said that her kids had not had all of the recommended vaccinations, and that she still believed that children were being over vaccinated in part so Big Pharma and doctors could make money. As noted in the VF article linked to by Aaron, Bialik wrote about her vaccine practice in her 2012 parenting book “Beyond the Sling” (which is about her approach to what is called “Attachment Parenting” – which is I find as increasingly popular approach to raising children among millennial parents which sets fewer limits with children, emphasizes natural childbirth and prolonged breast feeding when possible, and other facets which may seem a little over indulgent to many Boomer and even Gen-X parents, but which for the most part fall in the range of parental discretion). In the book, Bialik wrote: “We made an informed decision not to vaccinate our children…but this is a very personal decision that should be made only after sufficient research, which today is within reach of every parent who seeks to learn about their child’s health regardless of their medical knowledge or educational status.” In a Youtube video she put out in October 2020 (this is also in the VF article) Bialik said: “I wrote a book about 10 years ago about my experience parenting, and at the time my children had not received the typical schedule of vaccines. But I have never, not once, said that vaccines are not valuable, not useful, or not necessary, because they are…The truth is, I delayed vaccinations for reasons that you don’t necessarily get to know about simply because you follow me on social media…. As of today, my children may not have had every one of the vaccinations that your children have, but my children are vaccinated.” In the rest of the video Bialik explains her beliefs that children receive “way too many vaccines in this country” and that “the medical community often operate[s] from a place of fear in order to make money.” I have not been able to find specifically which vaccines Bialik most objects to and did not give her children. If she is smart (and she is) she would not say, because that would take her closer to giving medical advice, which she is not qualified to do (and neither am I). But in the context of the anti-vaccine debates of the last 25 years, the most natural understanding of what she has written and said is that she believes it reasonable to avoid or delay the MMR vaccine because it might contribute to Autism. At the very least, if she does not believe this, in a book about parenting in which she talks about not vaccinating her children, the burden was on her to make it clear that she rejected the conspiracy theory that the MMR vaccine caused Autism, because it was very predictable that without that qualification her statements would be understood by millions of parents as an endorsement of that conspiracy theory. The fact that she has been so quick to emphasize that her negative statements about vaccines should not be understood as an endorsement of the conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines suggests that she would have made a similar disclaimer if she was not a proponent of conspiracy theories about Autism and vaccines. None of this is directly relevant to Bialik hosting Jeopardy! I am not in favor of banning her or “deplatforming” her. It does make me not trust her. And this is on top of her record of using her real and perceived scientific credentials to endorse unsupported memory supplements, which I have discussed elsewhere on the list. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2B%3DxdFEN8Z1uMXOzFS%2BjS-yv35fJrc8YtcEet7u%2BXY91Q%40mail.gmail.com.
