The mental contortions of The Kid

Last time, I told you all about how The Kid wrote that Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia was the result of a failure of the pneumococcal vaccine. He wrote:

“Despite her proclaiming that “#vaccineswork”, the pneumonia vaccine obviously did not work for her in that instance assuming she even followed the CDC’s advice as she wanted everybody else to do.”

From his blog post.

Then, on Twitter, he doubles down on his conspiracy theory:

@doritmi @ThePoxesStory The fact that you have an infectious disease but came into contact with children.

— Jake Crosby, MPH (@JakeLCrosby) September 14, 2016

“The fact that you have an infectious disease but came into contact with children.”

Does The Kid Have Inside Knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s Pneumonia?

Of course he doesn’t. He just seems to think that he does.

In yet another rambling post by The Kid, he seems to think that he knows what kind of pneumonia Hillary Clinton has:

“The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends all adults over 65 receive a pneumococcal vaccine to prevent pneumonia. Yet shortly after collapsing during an early exit from a 9/11 memorial gathering over what her campaign blamed on the illness, 68-year old Crooked Hillary Clinton was photographed hugging a young girl. Despite her proclaiming that “#vaccineswork”, the pneumonia vaccine obviously did not work for her in that instance assuming she even followed the CDC’s advice as she wanted everybody else to do.”

So she has pneumococcal pneumonia, Jake? I mean, how else to interpret that statement. If she took the pnumococcal vaccine, and “the pneumonia vaccine obviously did not work for her,” then she must have pneumoccocal pneumonia. Clinton’s campaign has not revealed what type of pneumonia she has been diagnosed with, but facts have never really gotten in the way of a good rant by The Kid.

The Kid lets his true colors show

We haven’t talked a lot about The Kid lately. This was partly because he’s not worth the time and partly because he hasn’t had a whole hell of a lot of interesting things to say. But something caught our attention the other day, something that may very well earn The Kid a nomination for this year’s Douchebag of The Year award. In a blog post titled “Neurodiversity Is Social Justice Cancer,” The Kid shows us his true colors. He managed to be racist, elitist, and ableist at the same time.

Before we move into the meat of what The Kid wrote, let’s look at the term “Social Justice Warrior.” From Wikipedia:

“‘Social justice warrior’ (commonly abbreviated SJW) is a pejorative term for an individual promoting socially progressive views; including feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, political correctness, and identity politics. The accusation of being an SJW carries implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation.”

In other words, a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) is a hypocrite. It’s someone who goes on and on about a subject but is not really wanting to act on it. Kind of like The Kid, who writes and writes about being wronged by being vaccinated and, in his world, developing autism from those vaccines. And yet, he hasn’t put together any kind of significant (or coherent) evidence for a vaccine-autism link. Now, in desperately trying to tie together SJW and neurodiversity proponents, The Kid reveals some interesting aspects about his personality. He begins:

“Today’s political and academic climate is tainted by a new wave of “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) – far-left activists who shirk facts for emotion and who bully people they disagree with. Their weapon of choice? Political correctness.

There are third-wave feminists who exaggerate sexual assault statistics, who fabricate claims that men have higher wages than women and who advocate the killing of all white men. There is the Black Lives Matter movement which has proven itself to be a form of social justice cancer similar to feminism – advocating racially segregated dormitories and the murder of police officers (two of whom were actually murdered in New York City by a BLM supporter). But there is yet another incarnation of so-called “social justice” that has proven itself quite destructive despite catering to a smaller community: Neurodiversity.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, sexual assaults don’t happen as often as they do because of feminists. Feminists also exaggerate that there is a wage gap between genders. And the Black Lives Matter folks? Why they are racists and cop-killers. And thrown into the bunch are the growing number of scientists and autism advocates who are discovering and supporting the idea of neurodiversity. Everyone’s a liar or a hypocrite on these things, it seems.

To support his assertions about feminists and Black Lives Matter, The Kid links to some racist, elitists, and misogynistic blog posts and web sites, naturally. (He is yet to support any of his assertions with something that disagrees with his world view. Or, if he has, I’ve missed it.) Then he goes hard after Ari Ne’eman and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network:

“Recently, people in Ari Ne’eman’s group protested a screening of the documentary film Vaxxed despite never having seen it and had the nerve to argue that people hosting the venue did not have a right to film them protesting. They further dismissed the film’s director on the basis that he has no medical license, yet members of ASAN can join and consider themselves “autistic” even if they have no real diagnosis – merely if they “self-identify” as such.

While ASAN and neurodiversity claim in principle that having autism as as inevitable as being black, in practice being “autistic” to them is essentially a choice. Not only does ASAN hardly represent the autism community, some of them do not represent it at all. Moreover, many neurodiversity “autistic” self-advocates appear to be disproportionately women – especially strange considering that there are far more men and boys diagnosed with autism than there are women and girls. These folks – Ari Ne’eman included – also identify as feminists. It is hardly surprising then that neurodiversity is intimately linked with other contemporary social justice cancers that are using political correctness to advance their destructive goals.”

This is not the first time that The Kid has lost his marbles over Mr. Ne’eman. A few years ago, he went after Mr. Ne’eman on a blog post on Age of Autism because President Obama appointed Mr. Ne’eman to the National Council on Disability:

“Well President Obama, this “fine individual,” Ari Ne’eman, who you are nominating to a position on a disability council, was quoted as indicating that autism is not a disability. In an essay he wrote about autism, Ari concludes by saying, “Difference is not disability.” Furthermore, he told Newsweek that autism is not a medical mystery that needs solving, he said on Good Morning America last year that being anti-cure is not anti-progress, speaking above a superimposed caption that read, “There’s nothing wrong with us! Autistic and proud!”

Ari has called the vaccine-autism link “pseudoscience,” an assertion with no basis in science other than phony reports put out by phony scientists with drug ties to protect their employers from litigation. He has also descended further into espousing belief in outright epidemic denialism, citing an earlier diagnosis of his with ADHD as misguided proof that the tremendous growth in autism, is merely due to “better diagnosing. This does not explain an increase from 3 in 10,000 with autism spectrum disorders twenty years ago to 100 in 10,000 with autism spectrum disorders today.

Not only does he impose his views onto others based on his limited experience, but even on no experience. Ari Ne’eman has made comments about employment, speaking before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, despite having no work experience of his own whatsoever. (This was confirmed in an email from him to Jonathan Mitchell.) Ari stated that social pleasantry should be eliminated from the workplace. As a person with an autism spectrum disorder who has job experience and suffered as a result of having a very abusive boss, I take great objection to what he said, given his non-existent work experience.

Is this the kind of person we want serving in the new presidential administration? Do we want him on a council on disability policy when he does not even see autism as a disability, at least not in the classic sense of the word?”

See, for The Kid and so many others in the anti-vaccine cult, the fact that people like Ari Ne’eman and others want autistics to be accepted is some sort of an unforgivable sin. I guess that, in their view, if society accepts a person with autism as a person, then they lose any kind of ability to call autism a “tragedy” (or worse). They can’t say that their children are “lost” or “dead” due to autism. And they’ll probably have to come to terms with the fact that autism cannot be cured… And preventing it is akin to wanting to prevent someone from existing because of the way they were created/conceived/born.

But the clincher for us on why The Kid is an elitist racist misogynist is his closing paragraph on his “neurodiversity is cancer” post:

“It is shameful to think that politicians are catering to these groups. Fortunately, one presidential candidate – presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump – does not give in to such nonsense. Autism Investigated wants an honest president who speaks his mind, who slams Crooked Hillary Clinton and her shameless abuse of the woman card, who rebukes Black Lives Matter by emphasizing that all lives matter and who acknowledges that autism is an epidemic caused by vaccination instead of taking autism policy advice from the likes of Ari Ne’eman. If elected, Donald Trump will be that president who will acknowledge these harmful social justice movements – whether they be feminists, Black Lives Matter or neurodiversity – for what they are:

Cancer.”

Yes, to The Kid, people who want gender equality, civil rights protections, and acknowledgement of autistics as people and not broken things, to him all these people are cancer. To him, Donald Trump is a savior. Think about that for a second, because this is the same kid who is working on a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the University of Texas (where his uncle is on the board of regents). If the fact that someone like The Kid is getting a PhD in epidemiology doesn’t give you pause, I don’t know what will.

God help us all.

Sincerely,

The Poxes

(See what we did there?)

 

Why we’re not covering The Kid anymore

The editorial board of this blog has come together and decided that we are no longer going to cover the anti-vaccine writings of one Jacob Lawrence Crosby. The reasons for this are many, but they boil down to one main thing: We believe that he is unable to understand the context of things he reads. As such, there is nothing that we can communicate to him without him taking it personal. The evidence for this?

A few years ago, friend-of-the-blog Ren Najera wrote a “diss rap” about Jake Crosby based on the lyrics of “Fighting Trousers” by Professor Elemental. The song is about Prof. Elemental “dissing” Mr. B, another rapper. Mr. B raps about life in Victorian England, and so does Prof. Elemental. So the professor is telling Mr. B to stop copying him. Ren re-wrote those lyrics when Jake Crosby decided to be an epidemiologist (something he hasn’t achieved, by the way) and go get his master of public health degree at the George Washington University, where Ren got his MPH. Part of the lyrics read like this:

“Let’s settle this like gentlemen: armed with heavy sticks, On a rotating plate, with spikes like Flash Gordon, And you’re Peter Duncan; I gave you fair warning”

The movie “Flash Gordon” is a science fiction movie from 1980 where the title character is put to the test against a man. They both fight on a rotating platform with spikes. They fight with sticks. So Ren is using lyrics from a rapper who is poking fun at another rapper. How did Jake Crosby interpret this?

That’s right. Jake has been stating all this time that Ren physically threatened him, even writing this in a letter to different administrators at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. What was the threat? A diss rap. A spoof of a diss rap. You can read more about Ren’s interactions with Jake here.

There are other interactions with Jake by other people where his replies have made little sense, at least to us. There were his claims that Orac was being paid by Big Pharma when Orac was not being paid by Big Pharma. Orac happened to be working at a university which got research grants from pharmaceuticals, yes, but he never really got paid by said pharmaceuticals. If that were the case, that we get money from pharma because we work alongside or in an institution funded by pharma grants, then we’re all in cahoots with pharma.

Then there is the latest blog post by Jake Crosby. This one sealed the deal for us in deciding to just stop trying to refute him. In his blog post, Jake Crosby accuses a writer for The New Republic by the name of Elizabeth Bruenig as writing against anti-vaccine notions not because those notions are wrong. No, she writes them because, in Jake Crosby’s understanding, she doesn’t like Jake Crosby:

“Some “journalists” spread misinformation denying the dangers of vaccines because they are trained to by CDC, for which they deserve none of the protections intended for a free press and should be fully investigated by Congress. For The New Republic’s newly-hired Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig – who wrote hit-pieces against Rand Paul and Chris Christie while ignoring Obama contradicting himself on vaccines – the most likely reason is a lot pettier. It goes back to her years as a student at Brandeis University where she seemed to have developed a personal grudge against your humble blogger: me.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all about Jake Crosby:

“Letting a grudge from four years ago shape your views on an important public health issue is about as self-interested as it gets. The New Republic is already declining, but it hit a new low with the hiring of Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig.”

In his world, Ms. Bruenig writes about the anti-vaccine lies because she has a grudge against Jake Crosby.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is only but a small sliver of what Jake Crobsy has written and put out into the big bad world. His anti-vaccine writings are, in our opinion, more than just misguided. They are screeds attempting to connect things that are very, very far away from each other on many dimensions. While that is the game plan for most anti-vaccine activists, to try and put together events and concepts that are completely unrelated to each other, we believe that Jake Crosby takes it one step further. He genuinely seems to believe that the world somehow revolves around him. He claimed credit for Seth Mnookin leaving PLoS blogs, after all. If tomorrow any of us gets pulled over for a traffic citation or get some form of cancer, we wouldn’t be surprised if he claimed credit for that. If the day after that we write something he misunderstands, as he has misunderstood other things, he might lash out in ways that would not be good.

As a result of realizing that we’re dealing with someone who is not playing by the rules, who seemingly attributes everything to his existence, we have decided to let him be. Jake Crosby will have to say or do something phenomenally stupid to get our attention. The odds are 3 to 1 that he will.

Look to your father, young man

Yesterday, I told you about Jacob Lawrence Crosby’s apparent love for calling Dr. Paul A. Offit a “vaccine industrialist.” Were I a betting man (if I am a man or a muppet), I’d place a bet that the kid thinks that this post and that last post constitutes harassment or even “cyberstalking.” It’s not. We are just playing the same game that the kid plays when it comes to attacking the credibility and integrity of people he doesn’t personally like. It’s a game about degrees of separation.

For example, in this blog post, people are “talking heads” to the vaccine industry because of their degrees of separation from people associated with vaccine development and/or marketing. In Crosby’s Labyrinth, Seth Mnookin is a vaccine industry talking head because Mr. Mnookin knows and is related to some people that, again, in Crosby’s Labyrinth, are all about giving kids autism or something. See, Mr. Mnookin’s uncle, Robert, is a chair at Harvard Law. The mother-in-law of Alison Singer, co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation (a foundation not obsessed with vaccines and focused more on the realities of autism science, thus an anathema to the kid), is a professor there.

That’s right. You’re not seeing things. Because the mother-in-law of the founder of ASF is a professor at the school where his uncle chairs a department, Seth Mnookin is a vaccine industry “talking head.” Here’s what Larry The Kid wrote:

“While aggressively promoting his book, Seth Mnookin also claimed to have become involved purely as an objective journalist. This was later disproved – his uncle Robert Mnookin Chairs Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, where the mother-in-law of Alison Singer is also a professor. Singer runs and founded the “Autism Science Foundation” – a front group of the vaccine industry dedicated to stifling research into the vaccine autism link. Singer has also made false reassurances of Mnookin’s objectivity.”

Note that Larry The Kid never tells us how Ms. Singer’s “reassurances of Mnookin’s objectivity” are false.

In the same blog post, Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor, is in cahoots with Big Pharma because:

“…Tapper appears to have quite a rapport with Seth Mnookin, at least on Twitter. CNN led the media lynching of Dr. Wakefield in January 2011 and Fred Hassan, former president of PhRMA, sits on the board of directors for Time Warner – the company that owns CNN. Tapper gave Seth Mnookin airtime as an expert while mentioning on Twitter the fact that his book won an award from the National Association of Science Writers – a pharma-linked union of “journalists.” Tapper’s father, Dr. Theodore Tapper, is a South Philadelphia pediatrician. After a virus that causes fatal wasting disease in piglets was discovered to have contaminated millionaire vaccine industrialist Paul Offit‘s rotavirus vaccine, Dr. Tapper dismissed concerns about this as “much ado about nothing.” Like father, like son.”

Be careful with whom you associate on Twitter, otherwise you’re a pharma shill. Also, take note that Larry The Kid Crosby never tells us how the NASW is linked to pharma. He just writes it as a fact. (What are falsehoods that are written? Oh, yes, libel.)

And so it goes with Jacob “Larry The Kid” Crosby. He tried to get an oncologist fired because the school for which the oncologist works gets money from a pharmaceutical company. Not the oncologist himself in some bank account in the Cayman Islands, no. The school. If we go by that measure, then Jacob Lawrence Crosby has a lot of explaining to do to his devoted follower. (Or followers. It’s hard to tell because most of the commenters on his blog read exactly the same.)

You see, the University of Texas system, where Larry The Kid is attempting to get a PhD in epidemiology…

Hold on. Hold on. Let’s take a pause to laugh that off and then continue…

…The University of Texas system is getting money from “Big Pharma” in the form of grants for research. Now, the kid might be paying his tuition out of pocket since his family is said to be well-off. So he might be clean of getting any money from big pharma, but does that stop him from being taught by professors and faculty that are getting some of their salary from these grants? Does his self-righteousness and indignation about “big pharma” or the “vaccine industry” end when it benefits him?

I’m not even going to mention that Alex Cranberg, a regent in the UT system, is Jake Crosby’s uncle from his mother’s side, or that Mr. Cranberg is a bit of a “lightning rod”:

“Suspicion has surrounded Mr. Cranberg from Day 1. First, there was the speed with which he became a regent — one of the most prestigious appointments a governor can bestow upon a Texan. Mr. Cranberg received the nod just two weeks after registering to vote in the state following a move from Colorado for personal reasons. “Frankly, I’ve got a lot going on and would not have moved specifically for this job,” he said.

Then there were his associations. Mr. Cranberg is a longtime friend of Jeff Sandefer, the Austin energy investor who wrote a controversial set of seven proposals for changing higher education and has promoted them with Mr. Perry’s aid. “I don’t expect anybody to tell me what to do and have me do it,” Mr. Cranberg said.

Of all the regents, Mr. Cranberg was the one closest to Rick O’Donnell, a fellow former Coloradoan and an associate of Mr. Sandefer who had publicly questioned the value of academic research. The U.T. System’s hiring of Mr. O’Donnell as a special adviser to the board was one of the sparks that lit the statewide controversy. (Mr. O’Donnell’s employment was terminated after 49 days, during which he was “unfairly attacked,” Mr. Cranberg said.)

At the height of the debate, Mr. Cranberg was widely considered by critics in the Legislature and the academic community to be the ringleader of a bloc of regents who were influenced by Mr. Sandefer and others aiming to, among other things, stage an attack on academic research and coordinate an ouster of U.T.’s president, William Powers Jr. Most recently, after a request for extensive data on all the faculty members in the system, Mr. Cranberg was accused by the same groups of trying to micromanage the universities.”

For me to say that Jacob Lawrence Crosby is in any way “tainted” by his kinship with Mr. Cranberg would be disingenous. We have zero proof whatsoever that Mr. Cranberg’s position allowed a science denialist and anti-vaccine activist like Jake Crosby to enter the PhD program in Texas. None.

So let’s talk, instead, about Larry The Kid’s father, Mr. Giff Crosby. The elder Crosby has an interesting work profile. Per Liz Ditz:

“Jake Crosby’s father, Giff Crosby, appears to have spent his entire career in the advertising industry.  According to his LinkedIn profile, Giff Crosby today works for Dentsu America. Previously he was a copywriter for such products as Miracle-Gro (2008).

In 1999, Giff Crosby was employed by DDB (formerly Doyle Dane Bernbach), where he was an Executive Creative Director (ECD) slated to work on such firms as Compaq, Lockheed Martin, and The Bank of New York and new business. That same year, DDB picked up the vaccine maker Merck as a client.

The industry giant Monsanto brought RoundUP, a highly-toxic, carcinogenic weedkiller,to market. Doyle Dane Bernbach, which employed Mr. Crosby, provided advertising services to Monsanto.”

Note that Giff worked on the advertising for RoundUP. In fact, he seems proud of his work, so much so that he shows a television commercial for the stuff on a video hosting site:

Yes, of course, it could be some other Giff Crosby who posted that and other advertising videos. Jake, if your dad didn’t post those videos, or didn’t work on advertising RoundUP, please have him drop us a line.

Why does it matter what Croby, the father, did? It matters because Jacob Lawrence Crosby’s old masters make a big deal about glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUP:

“In recent weeks, we’ve learned some very disturbing truths about glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which is generously doused on genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready crops.

GE crops are typically far more contaminated with glyphosate than conventional crops, courtesy of the fact that they’re engineered to withstand extremely high levels of Roundup without perishing along with the weed.

A new peer-reviewed report authored by Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant, and a long time contributor to the Mercola.com Vital Votes Forum, and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), reveals how glyphosate wrecks human health.

…

Indeed, according to Dr. Seneff, glyphosate is possibly “the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies,” including but not limited to…”

Hint, the first chronic disease and condition on the list starts with the letter , A, and then a u.”

Autism? Is it autism? It’s autism, isn’t it? Yes, yes it is:

“Just before Christmas, a bunch of articles started making the rounds in the usual places citing a senior MIT scientist as proclaiming mind-numbingly ridiculous things like, Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT and, just the other day, MIT scientist links autism to Monsanto’s Roundup and predicts HALF of U.S. children will be autistic by 2025.”

Orac then tears apart Seneff’s assertions:

“As I’ve pointed out time and time again, if you look at two different variables that have shown an increase with time, you can almost always make it look as though there’s a correlation. Only occasionally does that correlation equal causation. It was that claim that the “autism epidemic” began (i.e., autism prevalence started increasing dramatically) beginning in the early to mid-1990s and that that correlated with an expansion of the vaccines in the vaccine schedule or, in the US, that it correlated with the addition of mercury-containing vaccines to the vaccine schedule. From these observations, it was claimed, that it had to be the vaccines, or the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal used at the time in some childhood vaccines, that was causing autism. Lots and lots of epidemiology since then has confirmed that there is no detectable link, epidemiology that I’ve written about time and time again, but that hasn’t stopped the antivaccine movement. What the increase in autism prevalence corresponds to is really the expansion of diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders that occurred in the early 1990s as well as increased screening for the condition, which, as I’ve pointed out, will always increase the prevalence of any condition.”

But what if, just what if, glyphosate did cause autism? If that were the case, we’d have three competing theories of how autism is “caused” or is “induced”.  Theory #1 is that the MMR vaccine causes children’s guts to “leak” and cause brain damage somehow. It’s Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s theory, and it has been going strong since 1998. It has been so strong that Jacob Lawrence has supported Wakefield pretty strongly (until recently), even having Andrew Jeremy go to Brandeis University and chat ever-so-poshly about the fraudulent paper that failed to associate the MMR vaccine with autism.

Ah, the memories of when Jake’s love for Andy seemed so pure, so strong. I bet Jake would have asked how high to jump if Andy had requested of Jake to jump to conclusions.

Theory #2 is that the vaccine additive thimerosal causes autism by some weird mechanism that chemical castrators say has something to do with testosterone. Larry The Kid is a big proponent of this theory as well. See, he has stated that vaccines made him “toxic”, so he fights against thimerosal with all his might, kind of. (You’re not toxic, Jake. If thimerosal did anything to you, it would have intoxicated you. To say that you are toxic is to say that you are bad for people. Aside from your anti-vaccine activism, you’re not a danger to anyone.)

Theory #3, which is making the rounds in “cure autism” or “autism is caused” circles, is that glyphosate in herbicides like RoundUP cause autism because there is a correlation between the use of the chemical and the number of diagnoses of autism. Mind you, there is no evidence of how this could be the case biologically, but things like facts and such don’t matter none to those people.

Knowing these three theories, if your father had made a living at some point selling glyphosate, which theories would you ardently support? Theory #1? Theory #2? Theory #3? Surely, you wouldn’t support theory #3, would you? You’d be selling out your dad. You’d probably ardently support other theories than #3 to take the heat off your dad’s former source of income.

No, there is no evidence at all that this is what Jacob Lawrence Crosby is doing by pushing on his handful of readers the ideas that vaccines and nothing but vaccines cause autism. Nothing in the public record shows that he is deflecting criticism of glyphosate and aiming it toward other causes in order to protect his dad. But, if you apply the lines of effed up logic that exist in the tangled-up universe that is Crosby’s Labyrinth, this all ain’t out of the real of possibilities.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Jake Crosby told us how he feels about the glyphosate theory so adored by his former friends at Age of Autism that they wrote about it here, here, here, and here? Wouldn’t you sleep better at night if he somehow reassured us that all of his “work” against vaccines is not in service of Monsanto? Of course you would.

Proof that Jacob Lawrence Crosby doesn’t know what “industrialist” means

I got bored the other night, so I decided to tally up all the names that The Kid has used for Dr. Paul A. Offit. Two of our blog readers are playing a game to see how many inaccuracies The Kid shoots off on his blog. I’d like to play, but I thought we should start with this instead. So here are the many different ways in which The Kid refers to the pediatrician he stalks goes out of his way to ask questions of. You’ll be surprised at the variety of names he calls Dr. Offit, maybe.

In the blog post “The Vaccine Industry’s Many Talking Heads“, the kid goes on a flight of fancy where almost anyone talking about the benefits of vaccines (you know, the benefits proven by science?) is a “talking head” for the vaccine industry. He calls Dr. Offit:

• A vaccine industry “talking head”
• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”, twice

In the blog post “How Dan Olmsted and David Kirby Helped Kill A Landmark Autism Lawsuit“, the kid rebels against his former handlers and manages to spout off against Dr. Offit by calling him:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “No More Federal Research Fraud – OPPOSE HR1757!“, the kid wants his three or four readers to oppose legislation aimed at an unethical “vaccinated vs. unvaccinated” study not because the study would be unethical and have serious methodological flaws (the kid doesn’t seem to know much about epidemiological methodology, bless his heart), but because the study is supported by people he sees as his enemies. How Dr. Offit figures into it is a little confusing, but the kid manages to call him, yes, you guessed it:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “Take Action: Warn Congress about vax propaganda film Invisible Threat“, the kid wants his three or four readers to warn Congress about a movie full of facts about vaccines. (What is it with him and the truth?) In it, he refers to Dr. Offit as:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”
• A “millionaire vaccine developer and industry spokesman”, for a change

In the blog post “Kennedy’s Ghostwriter Defended Thimerosal“, the chemical preservative found in minuscule concentrations in vaccines (you get more mercury from a can of tuna) which somehow turned the kid “toxic,” the kid refers to Dr. Offit as:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “CDC Cover-up’s Ivan Oransky Conceals BMC Violation“, where the kid just rambles on about conspiracies at CDC and other places, he calls Dr. Offit:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

Industrialist? I don’t think Jacob Lawrence Crosby knows what “industrialist” means. As Ren pointed out in his detailed analysis of the enemies he has made:

“For the record, several of the statements [made by the kid] about Dr. Paul Offit are plainly false. He was not reprimanded by Congress. He is not a “vaccine industrialist” if we use the common definition for industrialist. Yes, Dr. Offit helped develop a vaccine, and, yes, he was more than likely paid a ton of money for it. (I wish that is the case because developing a vaccine that has saved millions of lives should have some kind of reward.) Yet Dr. Offit has since given the patent rights away and is not getting paid for the vaccine anymore. But this is how the world of an antivaxxer operates, by quickly throwing in misinformation in between the truths.”

According to Wikipedia, an industrialist “is a businessperson of great influence, importance, or standing in a particular enterprise or field of business.” Dr. Offit is indeed very influential, important, and has great standing in the field of vaccines, but I doubt he has all that power in the business of vaccines. After all, he recused himself from voting on whether or not the vaccine he co-developed was to be added to the childhood immunization schedule. He also voted against a study to test whether younger and younger children benefit from the anthrax vaccine. (Do you know how much money could have been made by having everyone vaccinated against anthrax?)

And here’s what Dr. Offit did with the revenue from the vaccine he co-developed:

“Just for the record: I no longer financially benefit from the sales of RotaTeq. My financial interests in that vaccine have been sold out by either The Wistar Institute, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or me. I will, however, continue to stand up for the science of vaccines because unfounded fears about vaccines have hurt children. That is why I do what I do and why I have always done it. And I will continue to closely follow the distribution of rotavirus vaccines because these vaccines have the potential to save as many as 2,000 children a day, which is why I joined the research team at Children’s Hospital.”

He stated this in 2011. But here we are in 2015 and the kid appears to be obsessed with calling Dr. Offit something he clearly isn’t. I mean, six blog posts calling him the same thing? And that’s not the only unsubstantiated claim the kid has made about people he doesn’t like. For all the complaining about being libeled and whatnot, the Jacob Lawrence Crosby does seem to make a lot of unsubstantiated and sometimes less-than-truthful claims about others.

Now, if the kid wants someone or something to blame for his autism, he should look at his own father, if you are to believe the latest lie about autism being touted out there. But I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

Slowing down doesn’t mean giving up

Can you smell it? It’s the smell of fear and contempt from new students on a new academic year. It is delicious, and nothing gives me more pleasure than to impart my knowledge to unsuspecting “kids” that come along wanting to learn about this dark art called “epidemiology.” I’ll be a little busy with that for the next few months. I might not be able to post as often as I have, but I will post. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. It’s just a little bit of a slowdown.

While I get the next post ready over the coming week, I’d like to ask you all a questions. I’d like you to take a gander at The Kid’s blog and tell me if you can find one single post where he puts his epidemiological know-how to good use. After all, he fancies himself an epidemiologist. He introduces himself as one when he writes nonsensical letters to whine and complain about what he perceives to be injustices. But I keep failing to find a single blog post of his that uses epidemiology to address something. For example, in the latest brouhaha over Andrew Jeremy Wakefield and BS Hooker, The Kid never once defended the horrible epidemiology and biostatistics approach that BS Hooker had. The Kid never told us why it would be okay to use case-control data as a cohort study.

I’m willing to wager that it is because The Kid has forgotten all about the science to make room in his head for all the conspiracy theories that can fit in it. But that’s just me. So, if you can find one blog post where The Kid addresses some controversy or some issue from an epidemiological point of view, I’ll wash your car some day.

Next post this weekend, unless something happens between now and then. (And, no, Age of Autism releasing an alleged text message conversation between Andrew Jeremy and the CDC Whistleblower is not “something.” It’s the same old song, just enough to get their troops riled up. Besides, who signs their name in a text message? And it’s not like you can fake such a thing, is it?)

Is it?

Just in case there was any doubt

Ren wrote a great post on his blog the other day on what makes an epidemiologist. He didn’t mention The Kid (a.k.a. Jake Crosby) by name, but I’m pretty sure that’s who Ren was talking about. It seems that Jake Crosby, on account of having earned a Master of Public Health degree from the George Washington University, fancies himself an epidemiologist. I agree with Ren that people like Jake Crosby are not and never will be epidemiologists. Jake Crosby is not an epidemiologist because he does not work as one — to the best of my knowledge — and, most importantly, he is not an epidemiologist because he believes that vaccines should be eliminated altogether. Anyone with an ounce of decency and common sense in their bodies would not call for the end of something that has saved countless lives.

Just in case there was any doubt of his stance on vaccines, on his blog, this is what Jake Crosby wrote when one of his readers suggested that we (humanity) vaccinate no more:

The book in question is a new book by RFK Jr. about vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. As you can see, Jake Crosby and his reader appear to have developed a macropapular rash when the book is quoted as lauding vaccines for the “achievement in medical science” that they are. “That ingredient” is thimerosal, a compound that contains mercury but is touted as being nothing but mercury by people like Jake Crosby and others. Jake Crosby is apparently angry because one of his (apparently former) idols, Robert Kennedy Jr., is promoting a book about thimerosal causing, among other things, autism but doesn’t go as far as to call for the end of vaccines.

There was a time, way back when, when I would have given Jake Crosby the benefit of the doubt and chalked his anti-vaccine screeds to him just being fed anti-vaccine lies by his friends at Age of Autism. Today, Jake Crosby is an adult who has attended a four-year college and a two-year master’s degree, has been given all the tools of epidemiology to use, has been given all the evidence when it comes to vaccines, and he still calls for the elimination of the vaccine program. How he can classify himself as an epidemiologist after writing those things is beyond me, and beyond reason.

I think Ren went lightly on Jake Crosby’s antics. Me? Not so much. Jake Crosby will never be an epidemiologist because epidemiologists read the evidence and come to the reasonable and proper conclusions. They don’t see monsters under the bed or chase windmills. They don’t call for the elimination of the vaccine program and thus, in essence, call for the return of diseases that would kill thousands upon thousands of children worldwide every day. It’s par for the course for anti-vaccine types, however.

Don’t agree with me? You’re a bigot!

Ah, the kid. If you ever find yourself snowed in and not have much to do but maybe see what the latest round of “nutbaggery” the anti-vaccine activists are up to, I recommend either the kid’s blog or either one of his two Twitter accounts. Heck, I recommend his Facebook page, in which he has been lately going around in circles with his old friends, now enemies, about whether or not he is correct in his assertions and in releasing otherwise confidential emails. His latest round of nutbaggery, other than not understanding a goddamned epidemiological study though he has a degree in epidemiology, is from his Twitter account.

Let me set it up for you.

So-called epidemiologist doesn’t understand epidemiology

The kid wrote this:

“Regarding the data you speak of, I cannot publish it because I do not have access to it nor is it in my possession. We know [autism] is declining because it was discussed in email by a coauthor of then-principal investigator/now-most-wanted fugitive Poul Thorsen’s thimerosal study in email to Thorsen, his then-student and first study author Kreesten Madsen and CDC employee Diana Schendel. A much later study coauthored by Schendel was just recently published showing ASDs going down in years following thimerosal’s removal from Danish vaccines:”

He then links to this study from the University of Miami. From what he wrote above, you would expect that the paper addressed or studied a decline in the number and proportion of cases of autism in Denmark after thimerosal was removed from childhood immunizations. Did the paper address or study this?