Sorry about that. I rarely notice the name at the top. My bad.

I found Kristina and Joseph’s comments on conspiracy (in the derisive sense of the word) interesting. I understand that these are simply their opinions, and of course they have the right to state them, but I feel the need to answer with an opinion of my own.

When the facts do bear witness to the negative impact of financial COI on the public good, and those COIs are shared by an advisory body with influence over medical policy, then this is the very definition of a conspiracy in the non-derisive sense. So that would mean that those who consider such institutionalized COIs a “conspiracy” are in fact absolutely correct in every way—by definition.

And conspiracies are a great American tradition, considering the fact that the country was founded upon a conspiracy by the Founding Fathers to overthrow the legal rule of King George over the colonies. More recently, US Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy all delivered public or private invectives against conspiracies by small powerful groups of men who were more in control of the government than either the people or their elected representatives. Only after the Kennedy assassinations did Presidents stop talking about conspiracies in America.

Now I suppose it could be that as the corporations of the industrial-military complex grew into multi-national corporations that these conspiracies just stopped occurring, or it could be that those same multinational corps, having bought and consolidated more and more print and broadcast media, now can control public opinion more effectively and have greatly reinforced the opinion that conspiracies at the corporate and government levels of society just don’t occur anymore.

Main Entry:
con·spire
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
con·spired; con·spir·ing
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French conspirer, from Latin conspirare to be in harmony, conspire, from com- + spirare to breathe
Date:
14th century

transitive verb: plot, contrive
intransitive verb:
1 a: to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement
1 b: scheme
2: to act in harmony toward a common end

In regards to your answer to Kristina, it’s obvious that the way the merc militia sees conflict of interest is not as a theoretical bias that can be studied. They really do think there’s a conspiracy.

“The obsession with “conflicts of interest” strikes me as part of the general tendency towards paranoia among the “mercury/vaccine” set.”

I think that’s a very unfair stereotype. In the medical field, financial conflicts of interest have proven over and over to affect the outcome of scientific study and financing. Financial conflicts of interest in pharmaceutical industry have also consistently proven over time to lead to behaviour that is contrary to the public good. There is no conspiracy, the historical evidence is quite clear on this topic. It’s even been studied extensively in peer-reviewed journals, almost always with the same outcome.

I think you’re right. I’ve always taken the position that anyone should be able to comment but the conflict of interest should be stated up front so that people are aware of the conflict of interest.

IMO, having a conflict of interest does not disqualify one’s comments so I disagree with Kim. People just have to be aware of the high risk of bias. But as you stated, there are bias’ in everyone even without financial conflicts of interest.

Where I do draw the line however, is when people having a conflict of interest are functioning in a decision making capacity with the COI. Dr. Offit falls in that category as well.

The only comment on your Autism groups is that parents of Autistic children not engaged in the courts still have a financial interest in the outcome of certain government decisions to provide money for services—something I strongly support. I guess in that case, every taxpayer would have some sort of interest as well. I would never use that kind of financial interest to silence commentary from these parents.

The obsession with “conflicts of interest” strikes me as part of the general tendency towards paranoia among the “mercury/vaccine” set. I’m always glad for as much discussion as possible and the truth does out.