Via Bad Science Watch on Twitter, via Crommunist – Simon Fraser University is hosting the “Vaccine Resistance Movement” on March 12.
Crommunist points out that British Columbia has had recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough. What the hell are you doing, SFU?
The Agora blurb says “Self-determination of the body is an inalienable right. . .” So I guess they don’t have much grasp of public health. Or of history. What the hell is wrong with these ignorant people?
And SFU has a school of public health, too, although It’s hard to tell how deeply SFU is involved in this beyond renting them the hall. But someone should have thought “Hmm we are a university. Hmm, facilitating the spread of a particularly dangerous type of ignorance? Bad idea.”
A lot of people don’t have much grasp of public health. It’s kind of scary.
A lot don’t even have much grasp of health, period. I am never forget that episode of the CBC’s Marketplace on homeopathy, in which the reporter talked to a very “sincere” woman who got her children “homeopathic vaccinations” instead of real ones. The reporter asked her how the vaccinations could work given the level of dilution involved and she said gee, she didn’t know, she’d have to find out more about that.
Ohdeargod.
Hm, although they don’t technically require payment to get in, it seems registration requires a “donation” (even of $0) via PayPal? Anyone see a way around that? I’d like to encourage some specific people to attend, but not at the expense of disclosing personal information to anti-vaxxers… PayPal transmits your address to recipients, does it not?
Oh no!!! My university! Seriously, it’s a good university apart from this b.s. (Plus they had William Lane Craig speaking today, arg)
Incidentally, that’s a space that is owned by SFU but is rented out for external meetings. AFAIK “standard boilerplate re: endorsing views of third parties etc.” applies.
BUT of course “SFU reserves the right to refuse bookings for reasons relating to safety, security, ethics and preservation of the university’s reputation.” Someone dropped the ball, there…
Of course it does not have to be the sort of complete New Age Crapfest that appears to be in store. There may be some members of various scientific departments of SFU who might just pick the ball up from where the Admin appear to have dropped it: attend the thing, put in the odd dissenting opinion, and provoke enough outraged response from the organisers to make the 7 o’clock news.
Just a thought
I will be in Vancouver mid-June. I wonder if the organisers would mind putting it off till then. ? Could be fun.
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SFU should be ashamed. Would it allow creationists or MRAs to do the same thing?
Sidenote: why is it that kooks almost invariably use horrid colours and terrible graphic design? Come on – there are like five different shades of purple on that fracking WordArt/Clip-art infested piece of crap. Looks like a a fundamentalist “truth!” webpage from 2001. I guess I shouldn’t complain though – makes them easy to spot.