As the Disneyland measles outbreak continues, another voice has sprung up to promote anti-vaccine nonsense, one going by the name of Jack Wolfson. Wolfson is a relative newcomer to the vaccine debates, having emerged in Arizona in 2013 / 2014. He bills himself as a "Paleo Cardiologist" and embraced alternative medicine after marrying a chiropractor.
Wolfson is more aggressive than the typical anti-vaxxer. He freely insults those who vaccinate their children, blaming them if their children get sick or die. Here's a taste of his spiel:
“Don’t be mad at me for speaking the truth about vaccines,” Wolfson said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “Be mad at yourself, because you’re, frankly, a bad mother. You didn’t ask once about those vaccines. You didn’t ask about the chemicals in them. You didn’t ask about all the harmful things in those vaccines…. People need to learn the facts.”
My Gut Reaction: You know you're dealing with an idiot when someone says children have a right to contract measles, mumps, and rubella. No, seriously, he said that.
More below the fold...
The depth of Dr. Wolfson's repugnance is difficult to imagine. The quote featured above is far from the only offensive thing he's said. As described in the comments section of Orac's excellent Respectful Insolence blog, linked above, Wolfson went so far as to insult a woman whose daughter died of chicken pox, in a statement apparently written with his wife:
“Recently, a child died from complications of the chicken pox and now her mother wants to make sure everyone gets injected. While the death of any child is a travesty, this one could have been prevented, not with injecting more chemicals into this young girl, but with good nutrition and chemical avoidance. She was likely fed GMO, sugar, gluten, soy, corn, and other items that led to her demise. Her mother sadly blames the doctor (who advised her against the vaccine) and the rest of us who demand the freedom to choose whether or not to inject chemicals into our children. Here is the response of my wife, Dr. Heather Wolfson, to a column on Yahoo. Where do I begin?!! I can go on forever about it. First of all, the little girl was born without a spleen therefore she was immunocompromised since birth. The lack of this vital organ was probably caused by some drug the mother took while pregnant! Immunocompromised individuals are not supposed to receive vaccines. Kudos to the pediatrician who steered the mom and child away from the chicken pox shot. I’d like to shake his hand. He probably saved the girls life given she may have died due to complications of vaccines based on her poor immune status. i Maybe the mother got an extra five years of life from her daughter by not participating in vaccine schedule folly. She should be thankful to the doctor. Secondly, the mother probably gave fever reducers such as Tylenol. This depletes glutathione and is a sure fire way to allow your child to succumb to such a benign childhood illness. In this country, one in 30,000 of those with chicken pox died every year, for a grand total of 100 per annum. Those were usually adults. Please don’t pass a law forcing us to vaccinate and inject chemicals into our children because 100 people died per year. What was the health status of those 100 prior to chicken pox? Probably not good. Your healthy, breast fed, organic child will not suffer the same fate. If this mother would have sought out chiropractic care, gave just two simple vitamins A and C, she would have never developed pneumonia. Also, mom fed her garbage food and exposed her to thousands of chemicals. This little girl is dead, not from chicken pox, but from chemicals and poor nutrition. Additionally, she probably had at least one vaccine, hepatitis B, when she was first born in the hospital which would have destroyed her immune and nervous system from the start. The mother is ignorant, uneducated, and a danger to all other parents and children. She should spend her time learning how the human body works instead of spreading her deadly advice to the rest of the world.”
All of this vitriol has been spewed out in support of horribly flawed science. The canard that vaccines cause autism has been refuted too many times to go over here. (If you're curious, just go to the
Respectful Insolence blog and the
Science Based Medicine website.) Promoting this pseudo-scientific buffoonery merely puts children's lives in danger.
Seriously, why is a deluded quack like this allowed to practice medicine?