STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Savage Attacks: Flu Debunkery Hits the Conservative Mainstream
By Staff News & Analysis - January 15, 2013

Michael Savage: Don't trust feds on flu shot … 'Not everything your government tells you is true' … Asking listeners to put aside his political orientation for a moment, talk-radio host Michael Savage questioned the federal government's recommendation that citizens get a flu shot. … "Did Harry Reid take a flu shot? Did Barack Obama take a flu shot? Did Barack Obama's lovely family take a flu shot? Did Joe Biden take a flu shot?" Savage asked. "Which of the mandarins took the flu shot?" – World Net Daily

Dominant Social Theme: Take as many jabs as you can get. They're good for you.

Free-Market Analysis: Michael Savage has come out in opposition to flu jabs. His audience of some 10 million listeners is now at least partially aware that the king of conservative shock jocks has serious questions about the flu vaccine. The popular alternative news site World Net Daily has covered Savage's denunciation (see above excerpt).

This tracks our larger assumptions about what we call the Internet Reformation and its effects on mass media and the alternative media in particular. Savage is not exactly mainstream but he is certainly less controlled than establishment communications … the Big Three US television stations, various radio networks and, of course, the print media including the Washington Post and New York Times.

Our theory is that the Internet is like the Gutenberg press before it; reality-based information hitherto not available is gradually permeating society throughout the West and then among developing countries, too. This information is debunking long held beliefs about the Way the World Works – not just when it comes to money or politics but also for science, sociology and health.

And when it comes to medicine, nowhere has the impact of the Internet Reformation been so evident as involves the vaccine industry. There are literally hundreds of English-language blogs now focused on Western medical delivery and alternative methods of healthcare including naturopathy, homeopathy and acupuncture, among others.

The whole idea of germ theory has once more come under attack, with naturopaths aggressively questioning the idea that germs are infectious agents. Naturalhealthscience.com prominently posts the following statement:

Rudolf Virchow, a contemporary of Pasteur and one of the formulators of the Cell Theory (the foundation of modern biology) reflected: "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat: diseased tissue, rather than being the cause of diseased tissue."

Savage, of course, won't go that far, or not these days. World Net Daily makes it clear that Savage is not attacking the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. "He explained that he was talking specifically about vaccines and was not advocating the avoidance of all pharmaceuticals. Savage acknowledged he has benefited from 'an awful lot of life-saving regular medicines.'"

Nonetheless, the article is fairly hard-hitting. As a writer whose first books were on herbal medicines, Savage is in a sense reviving a previous career in debunkery.

"The flu vaccine?" he asked. "No, I wouldn't take it."

Savage noted "not everything your government tells you is true."

"So it's good to have a cynic in radio who questions authority," he said.

Dr. Savage nails the diagnosis in his classic "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions," available at WND's Superstore

Savage argued that Centers for Disease Control authorities have to guess what the vaccine should be made of.

"So they choose five strains out of 250-plus strains of Influenza A, and if they don't choose the right one, you're going to get sick," he said.

"So you're putting your faith in the CDC's ability to guess the one that might be a pandemic."

He said that this year, the CDC guessed right on two of the strains and wrong on one of them.

He acknowledged that many people calculate that the risk of a side effect is one in 1 million against the one-in-10,000 risk of being hospitalized or dying.

"But I believe the risks outweigh any benefit," Savage said.

The vaccine, he pointed out, contains formaldehyde and thimerosal – an organic compound containing mercury, which impairs the neurological and immune systems – along with detergents, antibiotics and allergens that cause infertility.

The CDC itself, he noted, lists some of these ingredients on its own website as harmful, though it insists the amounts in vaccines is negligible.

Someone may well say, Savage acknowledged," Well, I took the shot and it didn't kill me."

But when you're older, he argued, "and you get ALS or Alzheimer's disease or MS, or you watch your kid develop seizures, or your kid becomes autistic, God forbid, what are you going to say?"

Savage's debunking is forceful but we would argue it is part of a larger trend. In fact, it is only one of many examples when it comes to vaccines. We would go so far as to suggest that the entire vaccine-oriented dominant social theme is in trouble, much like the global warming theme. If so, what impact does that have on pharmaceutical sales (and credibility) in the future? Please note … there are real world ramifications.

After Thoughts

Decaying memes can cost those who wield them a lot of money.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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