There has been a lot of talk in this election about the problem with the two-party system in the USA and people feeling forced into voting for the “lesser of two evils.” I can understand these frustrations. As someone who studied political science and is returning to school to continue my education in that field, First-Past-the-Post voting does limit people’s option and has plenty of flaws.
However, I want to bring up a criticism I have about one of the other candidates that is being pushing this year as a third party candidate: Dr. Jill Stein.
I feel that it is important to note that currently I’m not supporting Dr. Stein’s campaign and the below text is one of the reasons why in my opinion. This doesn’t mean I’m trying to tell people not to vote for a third party candidate or that you must vote one way or another for someone in particular. But if people are going to treat Dr. Stein as a legitimate candidate, she deserves as much criticism, praise, and vetting as any other candidate; which leads me to this diary.
With Dr. Stein, I want to write a bit about a continuous issue I have had with her and her campaign. Namely her own anti-science views and possible pandering to anti-science voters. In which, two issues that have recently come up in the news I feel need to be on discussed. One is her often talked about views on vaccines and her views on, of all things, the physical dangers of Wi-fi signals.
In terms of her anti-vaccine view, this has been discussed a lot over the internet. She gave a response from a Reddit AMA a few months ago where she argued that vaccines need more oversight given her concerns about who and what regulates them. She repeated this point in a recent Washington Post interview:
“I think there’s no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases — smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication,” Stein said. “Like any medication, they also should be — what shall we say? — approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence.”
This argument falls by the wayside though when you look at the fact that the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is full of mainly scientist and academics(only 2 members of the board are from pharmaceutical companies). User SkepticalRaptor talks more about the issues with this interview in their post from last week.
While this should be enough to talk about Dr. Stein’s current view on vaccines, recent developments deserves additional discussion.
Recently, Snopes published a piece arguing that Stein is not anti-vaccine per se. The gist of the article argues that Dr. Stein has repeatedly come out for vaccines and her statements only pertain to her feelings about issues about how the FDA checks their viability.
Yet, what Stein has seemingly done is work to pander to those that are anti-vaccine crowd while also arguing for them. Her past answers seem to toe the line between vaccines are good and vaccines are possibly bad and need more regulation(something that it seemingly already has plenty of). In a piece by Gizmodo, it shows her working to make her own views on vaccines potential more murky:
In the piece it talks about her being asked on twitter about vaccines and her response to the questions:
It seems that between 4:54PM and 4:59PM—@twitersgoodboy confirmed the legitimacy of the screenshots—Stein revised her response from “There’s no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines” to “I’m not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines.”
Neither response completely disavows the idea that vaccines cause autism, but changing the language of her response further illustrates her subtle pandering to the anti-vax constituency. She could’ve just tweeted “Vaccines don’t cause autism” but chose not to. Dr. Stein’s refusal to discredit anti-vaxxers makes her Harvard medical degree look like a certificate from the New York Chiropractic College.
Situations like this, including her recent comments in the Washington Post and past statements by Stein seem to point to three possible situations in terms of her views on the subject:
1. Stein is anti-vaccine, but does not want to come out in opposition of them for fear of backlash.
2. Stein is pro-vaccine, but is pandering the anti-vaccine branch of the green party.
3. Stein is pro-vaccine, but tries to be very careful with her wording.
Either or of the first two situations are potentially dangerous steps to take in the welfare of Americans, especially young children. Vaccines have been shown to be safe and important in the saving the lives of millions. Dr. Stein’s rhetoric at times comes off as dancing around the issue of whether she believes vaccines are safe, but even if she believes they are, the constant dog whistles from her and her campaign about how safe they are should give voters pause.
Stein may very well believe in the efficacy of vaccines and is not trying to pander to anyone, but her constant statements about her support vaccines and inability to completely rationalize and argue her views raises some eyebrows.
On the other side of Dr. Stein anti-science views comes from a video reported on today that was initially released in February of this year where she was speaking:
A partial transcript from the video from Gizmodo:
>Person from crowd: My school district is rapidly moving towards one-to-one computers. Can you speak to the health issues? [inaudible with clapping]
>Jill Stein: Wonderful, health issues... social issues... you name it. But to be staring at screens... we already know that kids who get put in front of TVs instead of interacting, this is not good in all kinds of ways. And it’s just not good for their cognitive, it’s not good for their social development, I mean, that is incredible that kids in kindergarten... We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education, not moving into them.
And this is another corporate ruse. This is another gimmick to try to make a buck. To make big bucks in fact. And education, and teachers, and communities suffer. So we need to stand up to that.
>Person from crowd: What about the wireless?
>Jill Stein: We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless—maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.
This concern about the harmful effects of Wifi signals on the brain has been throughly debunked multiple times and shows almost no real factual basis in reality as a legitimate medical concern.
While in a bubble, her anti-scientific view on how Wifi can physically harm others could be seen in some ways a slightly weird opinion and could be passed along as just a certain issue she is misinformed on. However, it adds onto her history on unscientific rhetoric and shows a possible pattern.
If we have had to have constant discussion about her views on vaccines, a proven, medically important tool, can she given the pass on this issue of Wifi? Not even including some of her current views on GMOs(something that has a greater scientific consensus on it being safe than there is a scientific consensus on global warming), all of this seems to show that Dr. Stein has some major misconceptions of science and/or has been pandering to the anti-science crowd to gain their support.
Both of these answers are not a good thing in my view. To help our country move forward in the scientific realm, we need to have politicians that are able make policies based around facts and science, while also fighting against misconceptions and dangerously uneducated opinions.
Dr. Stein and her campaign current statements around these issues hurt me in terms of considering to support her campaign, especially in a race as important as this one. If Dr. Stein is misinformed and/or lying about her feeling on certain scientific policies, it makes me wonder what can she bring to table as president?
At the end of the day, I can’t speak for Dr. Stein and her current views on these issues above. But I would say to all people wanting to vote for her and any other candidate to please do your research on them. Voting is too important to blindly vote for someone when you know hardly anything about them. Take the time and do the research to pick the person you feel most comfortable with and fits your values at the end of the day.