Deep (Conspira)Sea Fishing: A Fundraising Drive

A large, diverse conference of people with very unusual beliefs is coming up. I want to attend as research for my book and blog posts on Violent Metaphors. Tickets are expensive, so we’re trying to keep costs down with a little crowdfunding. Please visit http://www.gofundme.com/ss29jrfk to donate if you can. If you can’t donate, just sharing the link is incredibly helpful. Pitch in, and let’s lay the groundwork for a deep discussion of far-out ideas next year! The following post is our original crowdfunding appeal.

Do you believe in acupuncture, alien abductions, ancient aliens, chi, crop circles, entity possession, “forbidden archaeology” or “forbidden religion,” homeopathy, near-death experiences, occult Nazi super-weapons, Planet X, poisoned vaccines, spiritual channeling, the new world order, or illegal immigrants from Zeta Reticuli? Do you go to bed worrying about the New World Order, the Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, the WHO, the CDC, the UN, space aliens and/or demons conspiring against you and all right-thinking people? And are you convinced that the world is ruled from the Bohemian Grove, a secret bunker under the Denver airport, Bilderberg meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations, Buckingham Palace, alien worlds or other dimensions?

Probably not, or at least probably not all of it. But thousands of people do believe those things, and other things stranger than you can imagine. This January, dozens of experts these fields will gather together on a cruise ship called the Ruby Princess. It’s called, honestly and cleverly enough, the Conspira-Sea Cruise. They’ll spend seven days explaining, discussing, and even demonstrating their beliefs. Some of them are fairly famous, like Andy Wakefield and Sherri Tenpenny, who will be sharing their theories on vaccines. Others are relatively obscure, like Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of the former president, who claims to have been recruited for a secret Mars colonization effort and that stargates began opening around the Earth in 2012. For a full week, conspiracy theorists, dreamers, and snake-oil salesmen of every stripe will be preaching and peddling their wares.
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I want to be there. You can help make that happen by visiting our Go Fund Me sitehttp://www.gofundme.com/ss29jrfk. We’re nearly halfway there!

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How the immune system works: Contrasting perspectives from science and alternative medicine

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen again and again in the comments sections of every vaccination article is a fundamental lack of understanding of how the immune system works. Many people talk vaguely of “toxins”, “pathogens” and “immunity”, but it’s clear that they have no idea exactly how this works. So I thought that I’d invite a regular commenter, Dr. Scott Nelson, to write an explanation. I think that Dr. Nelson, who teaches this subject in university courses, has done an excellent job of making a complex topic accessible to people who are not scientists or physicians.  (Note that we have provided hyperlinked definitions of many of these terms from Wikipedia for convenience. Dr. Nelson and I have both reviewed them and agree that they’re accurate. If you would like additional information beyond what is provided here, we recommend consulting any basic major textbook).

If you are “doing your own research” on vaccines, I urge you to read all the way through the end, and then watch the video, which shows an animation of the processes that Dr. Nelson describes.  Finally, because I think it’s important to illustrate the vast differences between the scientific explanation of how the immune system works, and the “alternative medical” explanation, I’ve included the homeopathic version at the end of the post. I encourage you to share your thoughts on which you find most compelling, and why. My comments following Dr. Nelson’s are in bold

–Jennifer

A common thread through many anti-vaccine posts is fear about “all the stuff that you are jabbing into a kid”. I would like all the people who think this to perform a simple experiment. Take a piece of meat-any meat-make sure it’s fresh and smells good. Put it on the counter in a nice warm place-about body temperature-cover with a screen if you like. Let it be for three days and then look at it carefully, note all the different shapes and colors. If you know somebody with a microscope, scrape a bit of stuff off and look at it under a microscope. How many different things do you see now? Each spot, each color, each bug you see under a microscope represents something that the immune system is dealing with every second of everyday. After all-wasn’t it exposed to the exact same air that you’re breathing right now? Your body is that piece of meat-your immune system is what keeps it from rotting. Right now, our best estimates are that there are 10 microorganisms for every cell in your body. Your immune system “knows” them all and has responded in various ways, which science is currently exploring. Continue reading