What was that that Dr. Mark Sawyer said?

“Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

Yeah. Catholic clerics do something very similar and Catholic MPs follow suit. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh:

I believe that a greater challenge than that [man, woman, marriage, children – ed] even faces us – the possibility now facing our country is that animal-human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

The ‘excuse.’ Mark … Read the rest

Oh, so this is where ‘respect’ for ‘beliefs’ gets you.

While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they are often able to find doctors who support their choice…“I don’t think it is such a critical public health issue that we should force parents into it,” Dr. Sears said. “I don’t lecture the parents or try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their decision.”

Why? Why does Dr Sears feel he should be very respectful of parents’ stupid, misinformed, dangerous to their child and other children decision? What exactly is … Read the rest

Interesting.The producer of ‘Expelled’ interviews Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and PZ Myers for his movie, having misled all of them into thinking it was a movie about the conflict between ID and science as opposed to a pro-ID movie. Then he throws PZ out of the theatre before a screening of the movie. (He would have thrown Dawkins out too, of course, had he recognized him there in the line with PZ, but he didn’t, which certainly makes a good joke.) First he interviews PZ for the movie, then he expels him from the theater before he has a chance to see the movie he is in. I think Mark Mathis needs to take a refresher course in PR.… Read the rest

There was one school of thought in 2006 that said the Danish cartoons were deliberate provocations, just as there was a school of thought in 1989 that said Salman Rushdie knew perfectly well he was being offensive in The Satanic Verses and more or less deserved whatever he got. Flemming Rose (the Jyllands Posten editor who commissioned the cartoons) says they were not. In reply to Wolf Blitzer’s question ‘Was it your intention when you asked for these 12 cartoons to provoke a response, to incite, if you will, a reaction among Muslims?’ he said

Of course not. I was focused on the question of self- censorship, and I did not pay much attention to the reactions of Muslims.

The editor of The Irish Catholic, Gary O’Sullivan, says ‘the Church should apologise to and seek forgiveness from people it has hurt.’ The Church? Hurt people? Oh surely not.

Commenting on Cardinal Seán Brady’s call on people to return to confession, Mr O’Sullivan warned that many feel it is the Church that needs repentance before they will darken its door again…Among the past wrongs he challenges the hierarchy to apologise for are frequent hellfire and brimstone sermons promoting a false God of fear and punishment, clericalism lacking any Gospel humility, and preaching about Limbo and the burden it placed on suffering mothers. Mr O’Sullivan wonders if the bishops will also apologise ‘for the way clerics spoke about sin and the